The seventh of July was the first day of the college entrance exam. That afternoon a sudden heavy rainstorm fell on Xi Tie Cheng, and not until evening did the sky clear.

In the courtyard of the correctional facility, Xiao Man had just won a round of cards. He put the cigarettes he’d won to his lips, lit one, and asked everyone around him: was today the college exam? A group of younger followers laughed and said: Mister Man, you’re still thinking about the college exam? You really are a wolf dreaming of going vegetarian.

That summer in Xi Tie Cheng was especially hot; the slightest movement would have you drenched in sweat. At noon on the hottest day, Xiao Man was called to the visitation room. He walked in and saw, just as expected, Xia Lei and Xiao Dan. The guard left Xiao Man there and went next door to eat watermelon. Seeing that there was no one else in the visitation room, Xia Lei pulled a vacuum-packed roast chicken from his trouser pocket.

“Talented friend, you’re truly amazing — a whole roast chicken actually fits in your trouser pocket!” Xiao Man gave a thumbs-up in admiration.

“These are my pants with the biggest pockets,” Xia Lei patted his pocket. “I specifically wore them today.”

“Xiao Man, eat quickly — someone will be coming soon!” Xiao Dan urged.

“Eating like this in front of you? Too undignified — I need to maintain my image!”

“Stop posturing, eat quickly — that’s an order!” Xiao Dan urged him on.

“Sigh, why does everyone keep calling me a posturing wolf…”

When Xiao Man had eaten nearly enough, Xiao Dan finally said: “Xiao Man, I’m sorry about something. My family is moving to Suzhou next month.”

“I know about this — it’s the adults’ decision. Don’t blame yourself.” Xiao Man smiled and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How did you know?” Xiao Dan asked. “Did you hear some rumor?”

“I… dreamed it!” Xiao Man raised the last drumstick. “Darling, I won’t be able to see you off — I won’t be released until winter.”

For all these years, Director Yan had been looking for a chance to transfer back to Suzhou, frequently returning to Suzhou under the guise of business trips to work his connections. At last, a college classmate had processed his entry as a specially recruited talent, and he went to work at the Suzhou Industrial Park Development Corporation that was being established, with the title of deputy division chief — one rank lower than his standing in Xi Tie Cheng.

That late summer, Director Yan sat in his new work unit’s office in Suzhou studying a development zone planning map. He measured the scale with his palm, closed the map, and murmured to himself: “First it was the western outskirts of Xi Tie Cheng, now it’s the eastern outskirts of Suzhou — why am I always fated to be on the outskirts, never the center of the city?”

No one at the time foresaw that ten years later, the Suzhou Industrial Park would take off spectacularly, becoming the most dazzlingly brilliant joint-venture industrial jewel of the Yangtze River Delta. Had he known back then that his career path would prove so brilliantly straight and clear, Director Yan would have slapped himself a hundred times in the face and taken back that helpless sigh.

The moment Xia Lei received his university admission notice, he started thinking about how to take the train to Shanghai to report in. Xi Tie Cheng was in a remote location, with no direct trains to Shanghai; heading south all required a transfer through Beijing. In the end, he and his father lingered at Beijing Station for a whole day without managing to buy a sleeper berth ticket, so they had no choice but to buy standing tickets.

Once on the train, Xia Lei discovered what true crowding was: getting to the toilet and back could take more than ten minutes, requiring him to twist his body like a Transformer and squeeze through gaps like a loach or earthworm. The train didn’t reach Shandong until deep into the night. Xia Lei’s father borrowed a broom from the train attendant, swept the floor under their seats clean, spread out a thick towel, and had Xia Lei lie down on it.

Xia Lei felt no embarrassment about this — after all, there were people sleeping sitting on the washroom countertops, so being able to lie flat was already a luxury. He rolled under the seat and lay on his back, and with his eyes closed, the clear sound of the train’s “clang-clang-clang” of forward progress filled his ears. At that moment he thought of the night three years ago when he had run away from home — that night’s train, that night’s wind, the stars on the slide that refused to sleep — he had somehow gotten through those three years.

When he woke up, the train had already reached Nanjing. His father had sat upright in the seat all night long, the schoolbag containing the tuition fees gripped tightly in his hands. After washing up, Xia Lei leaned against the window watching the scenery of the south of the Yangtze River changing past. He thought of Xi Tie Cheng’s mountains and rivers again. Every “clang-clang” of the train heading south meant he was ten meters farther from home. From this journey onward, he had begun to say hello to the future and goodbye to the past.

Arriving in Shanghai, Xia Lei completed registration at the school and settled into his dormitory. The eight people in the dormitory came from every part of the country and quickly became acquainted. Xia Lei got on best with Lao Ba in the dormitory — Lao Ba was the child of a defense industry factory worker in the outskirts of Baoji in Shaanxi Province. The factory produced radar, and reportedly when converting from military to civilian production, it had also made refrigerators and haw rolls. The two of them hit it off at first meeting and fell into conversation.

Lao Ba and Xia Lei’s eating capacity was the undisputed peak of the dormitory. Xia Lei ate seven taels of rice per meal, Lao Ba ate eight. The cafeteria serving aunties all knew Lao Ba, because he would split a six-tael portion into two portions of three taels and manage to get eight taels of rice out of the deal.

Lao Ba’s family, like Xia Lei’s, came from a struggling three-line factory, and his living expenses were no more generous than Xia Lei’s. Beyond daily expenses, neither of them could save much, let alone set aside money to buy a computer. After settling into campus life, the two of them planned to take up part-time work as private tutors on weekends. Private tutoring rates in Shanghai at the time were twenty yuan per hour — equivalent to two days’ worth of meals. Neither of them knew anyone in the city and had no idea where to find tutoring leads, so they could only write “All-subject tutoring” on pieces of cardboard and go stand on the street in the city market.

Xia Lei wandered back and forth at the entrance of the market for half a day and couldn’t bring himself to unfold the cardboard. His mind kept calling up an illustration from a history textbook: “A corner of the slave market on the island of Delos in Ancient Greece.” In the end, steeled by Lao Ba’s encouragement, he stood there red-faced with his sign for two evenings, and from five or six people who showed interest eventually landed one trial English tutoring opportunity.

This trial session went very poorly. Xia Lei’s English grades were solid, but his pronunciation was somewhat lacking. Understandably — the workers’ children’s school in Xi Tie Cheng didn’t even have a language lab. He found on his first tutoring session that Shanghai middle schools placed great emphasis on listening and speaking, while his plasticky English pronunciation made the student quite dissatisfied. Xia Lei said one sentence of English, and the child rolled his eyes once. Finally the child said his pronunciation was not English but Chinglish. Xia Lei had no recourse but to bow to the parents and say his abilities were limited. The parents produced ten yuan and said he’d made the effort, take it. Xia Lei couldn’t bring himself to extend his hand for it, and bolted down the stairs.

After this initial defeat, Xia Lei changed “All-subject tutoring” to “Math, Physics, and Chemistry tutoring” on the cardboard and went to stand at a different market. On the third day, he came across another trial opportunity in mathematics. This trial went smoothly, just as expected. From then on he began a long tutoring career that would last three years.

Xia Lei was patient and meticulous with his students and put in genuine effort, and very quickly earned favorable reviews from parents. Parents introduced him to colleagues and friends, and Xia Lei’s tutoring engagements grew from one to three — he no longer needed to stand on the street soliciting work. On the busiest weekends, he set out from the dormitory early in the morning and traveled across three districts to give six hours of tutoring at three different families. At that time, the Huangpu River ferries in Shanghai still operated on monthly passes, and buses still used pre-sold tickets with a conductor who was also called a ticket seller. The time he spent on the road was as long as the time he spent tutoring.

After finishing a full day of this, he would come back to the dormitory at night, first pour a basin of cold water over himself, then suppress his drowsiness and practice his English listening. In the darkness, the MP3 player’s screen lit up, and from the earphones came the familiar opening of the slow-speed English program: “Welcome to…”

The first year of tutoring work gave Xia Lei a thorough familiarity with half of Shanghai. He had walked into many Shanghai families and heard many Shanghai stories. He had eaten casual meals at students’ homes, and finally understood two things: first, why math teacher Gu A-La bought vegetables with such meticulous precision, and second, how the large northern rice bowls had shrunk into side-dish bowls in Shanghai. Xia Lei’s experience of Shanghai’s winters taught him that temperature is not the same as perceived cold, and that beyond the world of central heating there is a kind of cold called chilblains. The damp chill of cold rain was more miserable than the snowfall of Xi Tie Cheng. Still, he quickly grew to love Shanghai, growing fond of its order and its civility. On rare winter sunny days, walking through old alleyways full of bamboo drying poles, he would often be delightfully surprised by the tinkling sound of someone practicing piano.

Busy as he was, Xia Lei rarely participated in campus activities. One day he received an invitation to a school fellow-villagers’ social gathering. His weekend schedule was already packed solid, but he thought it over and postponed a tutoring session by one day.

The fellow-villagers’ social gathering was held in a small cafeteria within the college. As the meeting opened, the host suggested that each new attendee introduce themselves, “and since we’re all fellow-villagers meeting fellow-villagers, let’s introduce ourselves in our home dialect.”

Upon hearing this, Xia Lei groaned inwardly. The entire factory of Xi Tie Cheng only spoke the factory’s own dialect — he could understand the local dialect but couldn’t speak it.

The microphone passed from person to person, and when it reached Xia Lei’s hands, he took it up with a palm full of sweat, first apologized, and said: “I’m from a factory in the western outskirts of Xi Tie Cheng. But I can’t really speak the local dialect, because our factory was relocated here later and is fairly isolated. Even so, I was born and raised on this land, and the first digits of my identity card number are the same as everyone else’s here…”

At this point he looked up and saw the fellow-villagers below all staring at each other, their expressions all conveying one four-character phrase: “Not up to standard.”

Sure enough, no one invited the stand-in Xia Lei to the second event of the fellow-villagers’ gathering. Xia Lei relayed this experience to his dormitory mate Lao Ba, who laughed so hard rolling around on the upper bunk that he nearly fell off, saying: “Not welcomed by your birth family, not loved by your married-into family — what can we say? That’s the fate of us three-line factory workers who live in an enclave.”

When Xi Tie Cheng received its first snowfall, Xiao Man was released from the correctional facility.

During those six months, Xiao Man had missed seeing Xiao Dan off, and also missed the technical school entrance examination. On the second day after returning to Xi Tie Cheng, he went to find Officer Ma in the administrative building to ask for help. Officer Ma also knew that Xiao Man had suffered this ordeal because he had reported bad people, but what justification was there for supplementary enrollment? Officer Ma felt it was a bit of a difficult situation.

The matter was neither public nor private — a phone call to communicate it would lack force. Officer Ma decided to personally go to the technical school to meet Director Jin. Director Jin asked carefully about the background and circumstances, and then said: “This child I actually know. He sold dressed vegetables at the crossroads with his grandmother from a young age. Later he appeared on the factory television station in the singing competition. Although he ended up in the juvenile correctional facility, he’s fundamentally not a bad child.”

“That’s right — if it weren’t for him getting on the wrong side of Boss Zhao, who knows how many people might have died if the gas station exploded! If he can’t study at the technical school, he has no way to enter the factory as a worker. A good child with no good prospects — that’s unfair, and it doesn’t look good either.”

“But our enrollment regulations are not easily broken, either. Making a supplementary enrollment arrangement just for him would certainly invite gossip, and I can’t bear that,” Director Jin said, a look of difficulty on his face. “Whatever else may be said, he did come out of a correctional facility — his record has a mark on it. If we take him now, that’s already doing him a favor. A supplementary enrollment this year is really not likely.”

“Then let’s ask Old Tian from the factory administrative office to weigh in,” Officer Ma suggested.

“Fine — go ask Deputy Director Tian from the administrative office and see what he thinks is appropriate,” Director Jin agreed.

The work of the factory administrative office required adhering to principles while also showing flexibility. Officer Ma and Administrative Officer Deputy Director Tian were good friends privately, so asking him to weigh in was finding the right advisor. So Officer Ma planted himself in Director Jin’s office chair, picked up the phone, and called the administrative office — not noticing in the process that he had cracked the glass plate on the desktop with a curved line.

On the other end of the line, Deputy Director Tian listened as Officer Ma explained the full background, and was silent for a long while before saying: “Little Ma, have Director Jin take the phone.”

Director Jin was still feeling sorry about his cracked glass desktop pad. He took the phone and heard Deputy Director Tian saying on the other end: “Old Jin, this child is a factory child. We all watched him grow up. He’s essentially an orphan at this point and a good kid too — we should help when we can.”

“Deputy Director Tian, I genuinely want to help him too, but the entrance examination regulations are also not easily broken. Even though my place here is a modest temple, it still has its rules,” Director Jin explained.

“I didn’t ask you to break any rules — regulations are fixed, but human minds are flexible,” Deputy Director Tian said. “Let me ask you: as principal, do you have the authority to arrange for auditing students?”

“Yes, I do,” Director Jin said.

“And do you have the authority to let students skip a grade?” Deputy Director Tian continued.

“That too,” Director Jin said.

“Well there you have it!” Deputy Director Tian said. “This year, have the child attend as an auditing student. Next year, let him sit the entrance examination. Once enrolled, he has student registration status. Once he has student registration, let him skip a grade directly into the second-year curriculum. Understand?”

Director Jin was like a man seeing the clouds part to reveal sunlight: “Understood, understood. This approach makes sense! How did I not think of it — Deputy Director Tian, you’re brilliant!”

Deputy Director Tian added: “This approach is both reasonable and workable, and requires no responsibility on your part whatsoever.”

Director Jin expressed his admiration through the phone: “We in education always think in rigid terms. You in the political work department have the methods. Deputy Director Tian, your approach moves mountains with a gentle touch — your future is limitless.”

Deputy Director Tian said: “Forget it, don’t talk to me about limitless futures. I’m almost turning into a big wine barrel — spending every day drinking with inspection teams. I’ve drunk my stomach into a prolapsed condition. How about you come take a couple of those rounds for me?”

When Xi Tie Cheng received its second snowfall, Xiao Man went to the technical school to register and attend class. The moment he stepped into the chemical machinery class’s classroom, before his back foot had even crossed the threshold, he heard the whole room burst into warm applause. Xiao Man looked around at the thoroughly familiar faces of his classmates — Wang Dongdong, Xiao Bai, He Laosan, Cheng Xiaoguang — these children of workers from the first residential compound, the close friends of both northern and southern schools, all reunited in the technical school’s classroom.

At the class meeting, the students stirred up enough of a fuss to elect Xiao Man class president. Director Jin slapped the table and stopped everyone’s nonsense: “How can an auditing student who just came out of a correctional facility be class president? Do you want your chemical machinery class to become the Taliban?”

Everyone then changed their tune and said that Xiao Man was good at basketball, so he should be the sports representative.

Director Jin snorted and said: “Don’t forget — the most important position of study representative hasn’t been filled yet!”

Everyone burst out laughing: “We ended up at a technical school precisely because we’re bad at studying. Now you want us to elect a study representative? Isn’t that like selecting a Red Flag Bearer from among the women of the Eight Great Alleyways?”

In the end, everyone nominated the honest and reliable Xiao Bai as study representative, since being study representative meant you couldn’t easily skip class anymore. Everyone said that Xiao Bai couldn’t even tell the difference between the molecular formulas for sulfuric acid and nitric acid, so he’d be likely to cause an accident in the workshop someday, which was why he should insist on attending class.

“Why not elect Xiao Man?” Xiao Bai protested. “Xiao Man’s eyes were exposed to chlorine gas back in middle school — he’s got even more reason to study carefully.”

Xiao Man tossed a chalk stub that hit Xiao Bai square on the nose and scolded him: “Xiao Bai, if you don’t want to do it then just don’t, but why are you dragging me into it? Right — if you don’t take the position, I’ll pull your trousers down after class!”

Xiao Bai immediately backed down: “Alright, alright — I’ll do it.”

The basic chemistry course was dry and tedious. All forty students in the class, including study representative Xiao Bai, sat there dozing.

Seeing that everyone’s attention had drifted, the subject teacher Teng threw out a question: “Students, who can answer: what is gunpowder? What is an explosive? You need to understand this first before you can be considered qualified Xi Tie Cheng workers.”

“Aren’t those two the same thing?” one student who wasn’t asleep asked back.

Teacher Teng raised his left hand and said: “Gunpowder burns,” then raised his right hand, “explosives detonate.”

“I understand — gunpowder is like a sky-spinning rocket, explosives are like a flashing thunder bomb,” Wang Dongdong cut in.

“Hmm, that analogy isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s too colloquial,” Teacher Teng commented. “The combustion speed of gunpowder is a few millimeters to a few hundred meters per second; the detonation speed of an explosive is a few thousand meters per second.”

The half-drowsy students all snapped awake at that — a few thousand meters per second?

Teacher Teng surveyed the students and asked: “Can anyone give a colloquial analogy for that effect?”

“Teacher Teng, let’s not bother with analogies — it’s too terrifying!” the students who had caught up exclaimed. “If an accident happened, we’d be turned into meat patties in the blink of an eye.”

“Don’t be in such a rush to become meat patties! There are even more powerful super-explosives: RDX and HMX,” Teacher Teng continued to alarm everyone. “HMX has a detonation speed of ten thousand meters per second — faster than nerve signal transmission. The upside of this super-explosive is that when it blows you up, you feel nothing.”

“Well, that’s good at least — no feeling means no suffering,” the students clutched their chests.

“But!” Teacher Teng shifted his tone. “Our factory does not produce RDX or HMX. We produce gunpowder — nitroguanidine-type. It burns slowly, and cutting a person with it is like cutting meat with a wooden knife: very slow, very painful!”

“Teacher Teng, your class is too agonizing!” The whole class immediately erupted in uproar, everyone begging Teacher Teng together: “Stop frightening us! If you keep frightening us, we’ll apply for a transfer to work at a different military-industrial factory.”

“A different factory? Dream on! Do you know what the sister factories produce? TNT — trinitrotoluene — which blows people directly into mincemeat!” Teacher Teng continued to create an atmosphere of terror. “Right, and you could also apply to transfer to one of the Nuclear Industry Ministry’s factories. Their explosions are painless — the human body directly vaporizes. Vaporizes! Turns directly into a cloud!”

The whole class fell into despair. Everyone stared blankly out of the classroom window at a passing cloud. An unknown voice murmured softly, “a cloud made from vaporized people floating in the wind,” and study representative Xiao Bai, unable to suppress his nausea, let out a “BLEGH” and vomited his breakfast.

Seeing that everyone had been frightened out of their wits, Teacher Teng quickly pulled the topic back: “There is, though, one benefit of producing nitrate gunpowder — veteran factory workers who suffer angina at home, if they come in to work on the nitration production line, the illness clears right up.”

“Is that really so miraculous?” the students asked.

“Certainly. When you’re off production duty and have nothing to do, you can lick the gunpowder — it tastes sweet,” Teacher Teng said with satisfaction, putting away his teaching materials and wrapping up. “Alright everyone, remember: nitric acid plus cotton equals nitrocellulose; nitrocellulose is a basic-grade gunpowder. Add nitroglycerin and nitroguanidine, and you have high-grade gunpowder. Everyone remember today’s two new characters: the character ‘guanidine’ uses the radicals for ‘flesh’ and ‘melon’; the character ‘amine’ uses the radicals for ‘flesh’ and ‘peace.’ These two characters are not in middle school chemistry — class dismissed!”

As the new year drew near, a new name appeared on the small blackboard of the technical school’s mail room — it was a letter from Xiao Dan for Xiao Man.

Xiao Man happily took the letter back to the classroom and opened it, finding a postcard of the Humble Administrator’s Garden tucked inside. The front of the card showed a pond of mandarin ducks and a courtyard of camellias, with an inscription on the pillars of the curved water pavilion reading: “Green thoughts and red feelings, spring breeze and night rain; high mountains and flowing streams, the sound of a zither and of books.” On the back of the card, Xiao Dan had written: “Welcome, dearest Xiao Man, to visit Suzhou,” signed off with: “Your dearest Magellan.”

Xiao Man showed the postcard to Wang Dongdong, who looked it over and exclaimed: “The classical gardens of Suzhou are truly enchanting — no wonder Xiao Dan’s father would go to any lengths to transfer back to Suzhou.”

“That’s for certain! What’s interesting about staying here with our double-base powder and nitroguanidine all day?” Xiao Man agreed. “I’m thinking about going to Suzhou during the summer holiday to see what the south of the Yangtze River is like.”

“By summer holiday, Xiao Dan might already have a new boyfriend, you know.”

“Shut that crow’s mouth!” Xiao Man raised his notebook folder and gave Wang Dongdong a thorough pounding on the head. “One more word and I’ll throw you into the acid pool as a living sacrifice to the production line!”

The following year’s technical school entrance examination still required Xiao Man to go through the formality, per Director Jin’s instructions.

For the last exam subject, it was Teacher Teng overseeing the exam. He walked over to Xiao Man with a folding fan, pointed its handle at the last big question, and asked: you really can’t do it? Xiao Man said: really can’t. Teacher Teng said: then write some song lyrics if nothing else — you can’t leave it blank. Xiao Man asked: what should I write? Teacher Teng said: write some lyrics — “a cloud in the wind made of rain.”

Before the results were even announced, Xiao Man had already received his technical school admission notice. He took the notice to find Officer Ma and asked for a leave of absence, saying he needed to go somewhere over the summer holiday. Officer Ma had just bought a mobile phone and was in his office familiarizing himself with its functions from the manual, and asked without looking up: “Going where? What for?”

“Traveling to Suzhou.”

“I’ve never heard of a five-guarantee welfare recipient going on vacation,” Officer Ma looked up at Xiao Man. “Who do you think you are — a roaming free traveler? No way!”

“Even if you won’t agree, I’m still going!” Xiao Man came back with a stubborn streak. “Worst case — I’ll give up the subsidy.”

“Oh? Your wings are hardened now, are they? Tell me honestly — what are you going to Suzhou for?”

“To see Yan Xiaodan.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me the truth!” Officer Ma couldn’t keep from smiling and poked Xiao Man on the head. “Who’d have thought you’d be such a devoted romantic. Can the two of you actually have a future together?”

“We will. Absolutely we will.” Xiao Man made a gesture of certain victory.

“There’s no stopping you. Go then,” Officer Ma waved his hand. “If you run into Director Yan, give him my regards!”

Before setting off, Xiao Man had long since prepared his gifts: in addition to the Sony Walkman he had poured his entire savings into, he had also handcrafted a zinc-plated globe. The globe was the size of a fist — not exactly refined, but not crude either. The outlines of the five continents were clearly defined, and the zinc plating gleamed brightly. Even making such a simple little globe required seven or eight stages of production. Fortunately the chemical factory provided the right conditions, and Xiao Man found production masters one by one to help him: from grinding the sphere to polishing, from transfer-printing to curing, from etching to passivating, and finally assembly. When the finished piece was assembled, he carved four characters into the base: “A gift for Magellan.” The small handcrafted globe was just like Xiao Man himself — whether for its strengths or its flaws, there would never be a second one like it in the world.

This journey south was Xiao Man’s first time leaving Xi Tie Cheng.

Squeezed into the hard-seat carriage with him were migrant workers heading south and university students just released for the holidays. Xiao Man sat in a window seat, watching the Yiwulü Mountains rise up out of nowhere, the North China Plain spread out beneath a low-hanging sea of stars, and the sorghum growing wild and abundant across the land of Qi and Lu. What intrigued him most was the bamboo groves of the rural areas south of the Huai River — he had never before seen living, green bamboo. As the train was about to pull onto the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, the train’s broadcast system came on with Jiang Shan’s “Dream of a Water Village”: “In the dusk of a spring day, please accompany me to the water village of my dreams…”

When word got out that Xiao Man was coming to Suzhou, Xiao Dan’s parents both wore expressions of displeasure.

Director Yan said: “Xiao Dan, it’s better you don’t let him come. We don’t welcome him coming here to pester us.”

Her mother also objected: “Xiao Man has no civility — he pulls out a knife at the drop of a hat. Such a crude person — I really can’t understand what you see in him.”

“Why don’t you speak of it as excessive self-defense?” Xiao Dan asked. “Without him, the gas station in Xi Tie Cheng might well have already exploded. Can it be that because he’s a northerner he’s crude?”

“It’s not a question of being from the north or south. The issue is that he and we are not on the same level — you need to be clear about that,” Director Yan said. “Xiao Dan, stop thinking of yourself as a fifteen or sixteen-year-old. Only girls going through adolescence fall for someone like him — that rootless wandering type. The two of you were never the same kind of person from birth. He’ll work as a factory worker, and you’re going to study abroad in the future. You’ll only drift further and further apart. Let me put it plainly right now, and we’ll see.”

Father walked off with his teacup, and Mother followed behind, nattering away. Left alone in the room, Xiao Dan stared blankly up at the fluorescent light on the ceiling.

Since starting at Suzhou University, Xiao Dan had never lacked for outstanding admirers. But she still couldn’t forget Xiao Man, often thinking back to the time Xiao Man used his chest to warm her feet while they watched the snow fall thick and wide together; often thinking back to Xiao Man raising his guitar high on the gala stage, singing that “Dare to Love, Dare to Do” dedicated to YXD.

At the train station in north Suzhou, Xiao Dan spotted the tall figure of Xiao Man at first glance.

A year without seeing each other, and Xiao Man was still upright as a birch tree — but the lines of his frame were more solid now, and his manner carried with it the sweeping expanse of the north, not at all like the gentle refinement of a young man raised in the soft rains of the south. Xiao Man also saw Xiao Dan waving at him — she too was no longer the ponytailed girl from before, but had grown into a young woman with shoulder-length hair.

“Hey, my Xiao Dan.” Xiao Man lifted Xiao Dan high off the ground with both arms.

“You lovable fool!” Xiao Dan cupped Xiao Man’s face in her hands and said shyly: “Put me down quickly — there are so many people at the station watching.”

The two of them linked arms just as before, talking and laughing their way from the train station all the way to Guanqian Street for lunch. Xiao Dan ordered Xiao Man a bowl of eel-strip noodles, and Xiao Man asked whether he could also have a bowl of that legendary plain noodle soup. Xiao Dan said the plain noodle soup was too simple. Xiao Man said he had to try it — it had been his heart’s wish back in Chinese class all those years ago!

Xiao Dan settled Xiao Man in the male student dormitory of the university, where she introduced him to her dormitory mates: “Xiao Man — my boyfriend. From the same high school.” The mates all said: “So handsome — what kind of school is yours? Everyone who comes out of there is good-looking.”

Xiao Man said: “Xi Tie Cheng… the factory, not the watch…”

Every morning the two of them finished breakfast in the cafeteria and then walked hand in hand to wander among the various scenic spots. Xiao Man followed Xiao Dan through Tiger Hill and the Humble Administrator’s Garden, and at the “Hall of the Thirty-Six Pairs of Mandarin Ducks” — a place he had long yearned to see — in a moment when tourists were sparse, Xiao Man held Xiao Dan tightly in his arms, one arm full of gentleness, just as in a dream of the south of the Yangtze River.

They also went to the Pingjiang Road Cultural Center to listen to authentic Suzhou storytelling ballads. The two of them sat among a group of white-haired elders, holding large cups of tea, constantly blowing steam. They listened to an old woman in a qipao singing “Pearl Tower”: “Coming to this place with a face weathered and worn, a shoulder carrying all my burdens to the gate. Ashamed to come empty-handed and with nothing, too shy to face the guests gathered to celebrate in the grand hall.”

On the last day, the two of them went to Mudu Town in the west of the city to climb Lingyan Mountain.

They first toured the Yinguang Pagoda and the Flower-Washing Pool halfway up the mountain, then lingered for a round through Lingyan Temple, and finally took the small path beside the temple and climbed toward the summit. The stone steps of the mountain trail were quiet with no one around, and on both sides grew lush and verdant bamboo forests. Xiao Man and Xiao Dan stopped and shared their first kiss — like a bolt of lightning passing through the sky above the bamboo forest, leaving both of them flushed red in the face.

Reaching the mountaintop, they found a great rock standing solid and resolute. The two sat shoulder to shoulder on it as a cool breeze swept away the heat. Xiao Dan joked: “Fellow student Xiao Man, you’ve been going around recklessly kissing other girls — your future wife is not going to be happy about that.”

“She won’t mind,” Xiao Man was quiet for a moment facing the wind, then said. “I made up my mind long ago never to marry.”

“How terrible!” Xiao Dan said unhappily. “What a spineless thing to say.”

The two of them sat on the mountaintop letting the breeze of the south of the Yangtze River wash over them for a while. The bell of Lingyan Temple halfway up the mountain echoed faintly, and below, wisps of cooking smoke rose in slow curls from the farmhouses in the waterlogged fields. Where was the boundary between this pure and tranquil land and the ordinary mundane world?

Going down the mountain, Xiao Man fashioned a walking stick for Xiao Dan from a green bamboo stalk. At the midpoint of the mountain, the two of them stopped to rest in a mountain pavilion for a moment. Xiao Dan happened to notice a couplet on the pavilion’s pillars and read it out character by character: “If only there were a medicine to cool and clear the mind, that everyone could take to be sober.”

Xiao Man read out the lower couplet to match it: “A person of deep feeling will inevitably become one of little feeling — feeling is the hardest thing of all to sustain.”

Hearing this, Xiao Dan was overcome with sadness. She dropped her walking stick and pulled Xiao Man into a tight embrace from behind, tears falling onto his shoulder.

Youth, if it had a face that never aged — may all things remain forever unchanged.