Trace of Time E-Book

Rong Jiang

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 639

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

This collection of novellas opens a window onto the hidden corners of China recent history, portraying the struggles, desires, and resilience of ordinary people caught in turbulent times. Rather than focusing on grand historical narratives, the stories concentrate on the intimate, fragile, and often painful experiences of individuals whose voices rarely appear in official records. The novellas reveal not only how people at the margins endure oppression and humiliation while clinging to labor, resilience, and kindness as their means of survival. These stories are not only a portrait of hardship but also a testament to dignity, conscience, and the indomitable human spirit; in a society lacking justice, simply surviving becomes an act of defiance.

Leseprobe

—— To my Parents

The author has worked as a farmer, a factory worker, a university student, a philosophy teacher, and a government employee. Though not a professsional writer, she has been deeply inspired by her own turbulent life and by decades of close encounters with the hardships and struggles of China’s underprivileged. Motivated by a near-sense of mission, she chooses to focus on a seemingly insignificant corner of Chinese society, revealing how ordinary people at the bottom struggle to survive—relying on their diligence, resilience, and kindness—in an environment deprived of basic justice and conscience.

Il y a un spectacle plus grand que la mer, c’est le ciel ; il y a un spectacle plus grand que le ciel, c’est l’intérieur de l’âme.

— Victor Hugo

Contents

Dandelion

I am Soil, but You are the Clouds

The Past of Li Xianhao and his Family

Heaven’s Retribution

Dandelio

1

When her father passed away, Ai Fang was thirteen years old and had just entered the first year of junior high school.

It was a Saturday. That afternoon, thick layers of clouds drifted across the sky, piled up like mountains of cotton. The sun hid behind the clouds, half-revealed like a pipa player veiled in mystery—shy, elusive, and full of unspoken charm. The air was heavy and oppressive, as if a thunderstorm were about to break.

Ai Fang boarded at school and only returned home on weekends. Her home was located in a distant suburb of the city

The suburb where Ai Fang’s family lived was more like a small town—far less bustling than the city center or even the nearer suburbs. There were no buses running through the local streets; people had to walk everywhere, whether they were shopping for groceries, buying grain or coal. Locals joked that they all rode “Bus No. 11”—their own two legs. Schoolchildren were no exception. Ai Fang’s school was seven or eight li from home, and there was a river in between. By the time she made it back that day, it was already past five o’clock

Her mother was busy in the kitchen. Upon hearing the footsteps, she called out, “Fang’er (Chinese suffix, the last character of a name plus “er”, used as a nickname for children by parents or for wives (girlfriends) by husbands (young men)), my little, you’re back.”

“Mhm.” Ai Fang’s conversations with her mother were always simple. It wasn’t that she didn’t like talking; it was just that she didn’t enjoy talking to her mother. Her mother didn’t work and was practically illiterate. When she spoke, her words often meandered without end, which Ai Fang found annoying.

Ai Fang had started junior high. She was diligent in her studies, con-sistently ranking among the top 10 in her class. She also had a deep love for reading, spending her spare time poring over the literary works available in the school library. In her family, Ai Fang could be considered a little intellectual. Between the intellectuals and the illiterate, it seemed that the common ground for conversation was growing increasingly scarce

The room was messy. Although her mother didn’t work, she had never managed to keep the house tidy and orderly enough that one would feel the comfort and tranquility of home upon entering. Ai Fang put down her schoolbag and started cleaning up. She heard her mother greeting someone and peeked out to see that it was Uncle Wei and Uncle Liu from her father’s workplace

Approaching, Wei and Liu greeted her mother. Their faces lit up with smiles, but their facial muscles were stiff, making their smiles look unnatural. Ai Fang felt that their smiles were forced, as if squeezed out.

That’s just what happened. After exchanging a few pleasantries with her mother, they got directly to the point, and what they said directly thrust Ai Fang's family into an abyss from which there would be no return. Wei began to stutter. “Look, I... we, we came to... to tell... tell...” He paused, struggling to get the words out. After a long while, clearing his throat, he seemed to muster his resolve and said, “You must hold on, Ai Fang’s father... something happened to him.”

Mother was still holding a bamboo sieve filled with dripping wet vegetables. With a plop, the sieve fell to the floor, scattering vegetables everywhere. Her legs gave out, and she began to collapse, but Wei and Liu caught her just in time

They helped her mother over to the bed and sat her down, repeating over and over, “Sister, sister, please, no panic, don’t let this break you…” Then they fell silent, unable to utter a single word.

Mother’s voice immediately turned hoarse: “Is he... still alive?”

Silence.

Mother struggled to her feet and said, “Let’s go, I’ll go with you... I’ll go with you...”

Ai Fang’s father was a boatman for the “Lingjiang River Transport Society.” During this trip, the boat had suffered a “bowing away” on a dangerous shoal.

“Bowing away’ is a term used in the wooden boat transport trade. When a boat crosses a dangerous shoal, it struggles against the current like an obstinate donkey, with the boatmen exerting all their strength to battle the rushing water, crawling on all fours like gorillas to inch forward. If the helmsman loses focus, even for a moment, and the bow drifts slightly off course, the boat will be pushed out of the channel, losing all control. This is what is called “bowing away.”

When a bowing away occurred, the trackers had only ten seconds or so to react. They had to swiftly unfasten their shoulder packs, loosen the tow ropes, and break free from the boat. A moment’s hesitation could be fatal—if one was yanked off a cliff, they might not even have time for a final cry before being reduced to a mangled heap of flesh. If dragged into the middle of the river and swept away by the current, they might vanish without a trace, as if evaporated from the face of the earth. For years, tragedies like this had played out again and again along that river.

Her father was an old hand on the river, a veteran boatman with more than twenty years of experience. He had long since mastered all the necessary skills and was a strong swimmer. But this time, it was as if he had been cursed. Despite his skill and instinct, he failed to unfasten his harness in time. The raging current seized the boat with such overwhelming force that it dragged him straight into the river—and once he went under, he vanished without a trace. His crewmates fought desperately to recover him, finally managing to pull him from the waters several miles downstream. But by then, all signs of life had slipped away.

Accompanied by both Wei and Liu, Ai Fang and her mother came down the riverside. Her father’s body had just been carried off the boat and now lay still on the shore. His face, perhaps twisted by his final struggle underwater, was grim and distorted. Ai Fang’s mother, who had been supported by the others, broke free the moment she saw him and flung herself at him like someone deranged. A low rumble of thunder rolled suddenly across the sky, and the rain came crashing down all at once, as if a long-held grief had suddenly broken free. Collapsing beside her husband’s body, she lost consciousness.

At the very moment her mother collapsed, Ai Fang saw a dandelion beside her mother rise into the air. The fuzzy, round ball instantly transformed into tiny umbrellas, gently drifting in all directions, leaving only a thin, bare stalk behind. For some reason, the scene of the dandelion scattering in the wind became etched in Ai Fang’s memory, perhaps even more deeply than the image of her father’s body lying by the riverbank. It became an eternal moment in her life.

The River Transport Cooperative was a cooperative group, small in scale and financially weak. After the funeral was arranged for her father, Wei and Liu came to Ai Fang's home to discuss the compensation arrangements with her mother.

Wei said, “Look, sister, our group is not like those state-owned enterprises, where everything is covered by the government. Now, with the boat broken and having already handled Ai Fang’s father’s funeral, this disaster makes our group really unable to pay any considerable compensation.”

Hearing this, her mother broke into sobs. “You won’t take care of a widow and her children?! Then I’ll take them, throw ourselves into the river and end it all! We’ll go be with their dad!” With that, she burst into loud wails, tears and snot streaming down her face, she wiped them with her hands, and then flung them onto the ground.

The two, in harry, spoke in unison, “Sister, that’s not what we meant. What the leadership means is, they’re hoping you can understand how difficult things are for the group right now. So instead of a one-time compensation, the group will provide your family with a monthly subsidy of twenty-five yuan, five yuan per person. How does that sound to you?”

Mother still did not calm down. “Just my girl’s monthly food expenses in the school come to six yuan and fifty cents. And next year, her younger brother will be starting middle school too.”

Wei exchanged a glance with Liu and said, “How about this, six yuan per person each month, until all the kids turn eighteen. Sound OK?”

The mother, though uneducated and with a rough manner, was not one to throw tantrums or act unreasonable. She understood the difficulties of the River Transport Co-operative, so she said nothing further. With her swollen, vacant eyes, she stared blankly into the distance, nodding weakly.

The two sighed in relief, stood up, and said, “Then, see you?”

At the age of thirteen, Ai Fang and her younger siblings became fatherless orphanы. The support from the river transport cooperative was just enough for the family of five to survive. Her mother counted every penny, used it sparingly, but most of the time, they could only afford pickled vegetables to eat.

The mother had changed. In the past, she was always nagging, either scolding her son, reprimanding her daughter, or lecturing her husband. But back then, her scolding, her reprimanding, her nagging—each was a way for her to express her love. The surface meaning of her words was completely different from the deeper intent behind them. This was the grass-roots cultural tradition of the lower classes, the most common way for ordinary people to express their emotions. As the saying goes, “Beatings are a sign of affection, and scolding is love.” An uneducated mother could only convey her feelings to her family in this grassroots manner. She wasn't like Lin Daiyu, nor was she like Cui Yingying. She didn’t nestle into her man’s embrace, nor did she understand romance and poetry. But in a sense, she was luckier than Lin Daiyu and Cui Yingying. Her man, like a tall, sturdy tree, sheltered her, protecting her from the wind and rain. In the shade of that tree, the nagging mother was a carefree little woman, happy and at ease.

Mother was an orphan. She lost both her parents at the age of twelve and was sold into a whorehouse. After the Liberation, she was placed in a government-run reformatory, and upon her release, she was married off through a matchmaker. Her husband took her away from their home-town to the small city where the family now lives. He buried her past there, turning it into a secret he never spoke of — not even to his own children. He was a boat tracker, making a living by pulling boats wherever he went. Here, he joined the “Lingjiang” River Transport Cooperative, and from that point on, their life began to settle. Father was the sky above the family. It might not have been a vast sky, nor one that ever saw rainbows, but under that sky, the sun shone and the rain fell the same on every child. Though what he could provide was modest, Mother lived those days in quiet contentment and genuine happiness.

But Father was gone—taken from them all of a sudden. Their sky turned overcast, pouring with relentless rain, swept by howling wind and snow. Mother was not yet forty, and now she was a widow. A widow with four underage children. She trudged on through the mud, battled through blizzards. Life pressed down on her like a millstone, grinding over her again and again, without end. The weight of it left her with-drawn and silent. It also made her a little unhinged. At times, out of nowhere, she would explode in a fit of shouting, leaving the four siblings startled and fearful

Ai Fang missed her father. Although he was unlettered and earned a modest income, he was loving and kind. The boatmen were at the very bottom of society, often despised and even referred to as "dead men but not buried," a term that reflected their lowly status. Because of this, many of them had become somewhat self-destructive, with drinking, yelling at their wives, and beating their children being common occurrences in their households. But Ai Fang’s father was different. No matter how hard and exhausting his work was, he never took his frustration out on his wife and children, nor did he waste any money on himself.

Occasionally, he would bring back a piece of floral fabric, a pretty plastic hairpin, or a colorful butterfly bow for her hair from another city where he transported goods. Every time Ai Fang received these small gifts from her father, her heart was filled with joy. Though she grew up in a modest boatman's family, when she reached the age where she began to appreciate beauty, Ai Fang never felt inferior among her classmates because of her simple clothes.

Ai Fang was just as unprepared for her father’s sudden death. She was thirteen, but still far too young to help her mother hold together a home that had been left swaying in the storm of the father’s absence. Her mother’s nervous outbursts were something she couldn’t understand, let alone handle at that age. Sometimes, her mother’s face would seem to plummet from summer into winter in an instant. Over the smallest things, she’d explode in anger, jab Ai Fang on the forehead and yell, “When will you stop being a useless wastrel?” In those moments, Ai Fang missed her father terribly—missed the days when she was surrounded by the warmth of his gentle love. A quiet resentment toward her mother began to take root. She even found herself thinking: The moment I can make my own money, I’ll move out. I’ll move out and never again look at that face, always clouded with rage and bitterness. I’ll never again hear those curses spat at me through gritted teeth, never again face those burning, furious eyes.

To avoid her mother’s scorn, or maybe just to stay out of the way of someone whose nerves were always stretched thin, Ai Fang began to withdraw. She threw herself completely into school life. Every Saturday, when the pupils were allowed to go home for the night, she would volunteer to stay behind and take over dorm duty from someone else. The classmates she covered for would light up with joy, slip their Sunday meal coupons into her hand as payment, swing their backpacks over their shoulders, and bounce off, grinning from ear to ear.

Ai Fang went home once a month to get from mother the money for the school’s monthly meal fee.

Near the end of the second class, just as final exams were approaching, the Cultural Revolution broke out. The Party’s work group moved into the school, announcing the start of the movement—there would be no more exams. The pupils reacted as if they’d been jolted awake. Even at midnight, the dormitories were alive with chatter, like flocks of birds returning at dusk, thrilled after a long day’s foraging. Following the work group’s lead, they picked up their pens like daggers. Dazibao spread across the walls—denouncing teachers, attacking the school’s powerholders.

Of course, middle-school pupils had no real grasp of theory. Their “criticisms” came mostly from practice—from life. They dug deep into the everyday: which pupils a teacher liked or disliked, what shoes a teacher had worn that hinted at bourgeois tastes, or some careless remark that seemed, in hindsight, to grumble against the present order. With their memories at their sharpest, they reached back through the tunnel of time, dredging up scraps and fragments. Then they worked to hang these petty recollections with slogans of class struggle and political line—turning trivia into revolutionary ammunition.

Ai Fang didn’t join in the criticism of her teachers. She couldn’t think of any reason why they should be condemned. To her, the care her teacher showed was like a constant sunbeam, warm and soft, gently covering her in the cold days after her father’s death. The teacher liked Ai Fang, often reading aloud and praising her essays as examples for the class, which encouraged Ai Fang immensely. Not only did the teacher help her apply for a scholarship, but she also visited her home under the guise of a home visit, bringing daily necessities for her mother and chatting with her in a way only women could. The teacher’s help far exceeded the duties of a typical educator. Ai Fang’s mother was deeply grateful. Every time the teacher visited, she was especially happy, and when she was happy, the whole family seemed tobe enveloped in a peaceful warmth.

At the height of the early criticism, Ai Fang was like a lonely blade of grass, sprouting from a crack in the stone, quietly standing in a forgotten corner, unnoticed by anyone. The restless pupils seemed to have forgotten all about her.

But then, the Party’s work group called Ai Fang in for a talk. One of the group members asked, “Ai Fang, do you know what kind of person this teacher is?” Ai Fang was puzzled but answered confidently, “She’s our homeroom teacher and also our Chinese teacher.” The group member shook his head. “She’s a big landowner—a hidden landowner, just like Liu Wencai, a ruthless landlord!”

Ai Fang’s heart skipped a beat. She knew who Liu Wencai was. The school had once invited Mother Leng, who had escaped from Liu Wencai’s water prison, to give a “report on suffering.” Ai Fang had heard that Mother Leng had been invited to many places, many units, to give her report. Wherever she went, her tearful, blood-stained accusations stirred up fierce hatred for the landlord class and sparked a deep love for socialism.

That day at the school, it was the same. Mother Leng’s tearful, heart-wrenching accusations filled the air, and the entire auditorium was drowned in a soft, mournful hum of sobbing. Ai Fang cried a lot, grieving for the tragic fate of the working people.

The talk between Ai Fang and the members of the Party’s work group took place just after the Leng’s report. The member spoke to the under-fifteen-year-old pupil with great earnestness: “You are a child of the revo= lutionary classes. In the face of the great storm of class struggle, you must not shrink back. Our revolution doesn’t lacking a single Dazibao from you. But to defend Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, to protect the proletariat’s red stronghold, should the children of the working class remain silent and stay behind? If everyone were like you, our red state would lose its color, and the working class would suffer a second round of hardship and suffering! Think about it: will Liu Wencai truly stand with us, the workers and peasants? The landlord class will willingly agree to lose their paradise? This teacher, disguised as an educator, is trying to win you over—why? What do you think sugar-coated bullets are? Do you know what a poisonous snake in disguise of beautiful woman is? There’s no such thing as love without reason in this world!

The member’s rapid-fire questions stirred up a great upheaval in the mind of our simple and naïve pupil.

Ai Fang harbored deep hatred for the exploiting classes, even though her boatman father had never given his children any “memories of hardship” education. All of Ai Fang’s class consciousness came from the school lessons, the books she had access to, and the films and exhibitions aimed at edu-cating pupils about class. The words “landlord,” “capitalist,” and “exploiting class” conjured images in her mind of ruthless devils, their eyes flashing with murderous intent, hands dripping with blood, killing without a second thought.

But those devils belonged to a remote, faded time and space, far removed from Ai Fang’s world. In real life, she had seen for herself who her teacher truly was. Ever since her mother got to know the teacher, she would often say that the teacher was like the living Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of mercy. Ai Fang didn’t know much about Buddhism, nor did she believe in it, but she did know who Guanyin was—the one who saves people from suffering. How could someone so kind be a devil? Could it be that the teacher was simply too good at hiding her true self, and that Ai Fang, with her poor class awareness, lacked the sharp instinct to tell the truth? A wave of anxiety swept over her, then a chill. In this swirl of confusion and contradiction, she began to repeatedly question and examine her own class standpoint.

After much inner turmoil, and under the close guidance of the Party’s work group, Ai Fang wrote her first, and only Dazibao, denouncing her teacher. “...Chairman Mao teaches us: ‘There is no such thing as love or hate without reason.’ Her kindness toward me was no kindness at all. It was a calculated attempt to use the methods of the exploiting class to corrupt the revolutionary descendants of proletariat. By pulling us in, she aim to change the color of our red state and bring about a counterrevolutionary restoration! As children of the proletariat, as heirs to the red revolution, how can we tolerate this? We cannot!” Ai Fang then listed, one by one, what this so-called people’s teacher, this landlord in disguise, had done to win her over, to poison her heart.

After Ai Fang’s Dazibao was posted, it was met with praise from the Party’s work group. They said everyone had been waiting for Ai Fang to strike back, and her words were a heavy revolutionary blow. But Ai Fang felt no joy at all. She hardly recognized herself. How had she turned the care and kindness her teacher had shown her into sharp, explosive attacks? The shame brought on by this unfamiliar version of herself crept quietly through every cell in her body, leaving her restless, unable to eat or sleep

The rapid development of the movement quickly pushed the word “culture” out of the stage of the “Cultural Revolution,” both in terms of content and form.

The day the teacher was publicly humiliated, the pupils, filled with righteous anger, acted as if they had generations of deep blood feuds with her. They swarmed around her, shaving her head, hanging bricks and black plate around her neck, with the sign reading, “The big landlord XXX disguised as a people's teacher.” One pupil swung a military leather belt, its metal buckle gleaming with a murderous gleam under the pale sunlight. He raised the belt and lashed it toward the teacher’s head. The teacher let out a scream, and blood oozed out from the corner of her forehead, creeping like a thick, crimson worm. Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were filled with a heavy veil of despair

She was pushed along by the masses, holding a broken basin, banging it as she walked, shouting: “I am a demon of the old society! I am a class traitor, a landlord's son plotting to restore the old ways! I have tried to corrupt and win over the revolutionary descendants of the proletariat...”

The teacher’s hoarse voice struck Ai Fang like a whip, each word landing with a sting. She shrank back behind the restless crowd, distant and dazed, as her teacher’s kind face and familiar, patient voice clung stubbornly to her memory. Never had she imagined the teacher would be subjected to such humiliation, such beatings, and such brutal violence. True, none of it had happened solely because of her Dazibao, but still, she couldn’t escape the sense that she had added insult to injury at the very moment her teacher was being cast out. The thought sent tears rising in her eyes, spreading in silent, widening ripples.

She could no longer bear to stay at school

As she stepped through the door, her mother looked at her in surprise. “It’s not time to pick up the meal money yet, is it?” she said.

Ai Fang stood still, staring at her mother in a daze. All at once, she noticed the countless white strands that had crept into her mother’s hair, though she was only in her early forties.

She remembered the weekend just before the Party’s work team came to the school. She hadn’t gone home, and the teacher had invited her to her home. After dinner, the teacher looked at her with a gaze full of love, gently stroking her for a long while. Finally, in a soft voice, she said, "Child, you're almost fifteen now, nearly old enough to join the Communist Youth League. This means you’ve grown up, from a child into a young girl. At school, it’s not only about obtaining knowledge; what’s more important is to learn how tobe a good person, a kind person, a loving person. Given your situation, the first thing you should learn is to understand your mother. She’s a woman raising four children, without work or income. You might not fully experience how difficult that is now, but you can’t remain unaware of it forever. Do you understand?”

At this moment, as Ai Fang looked at her still-impoverished mother, a mother who was weary, haggard, and growing old but still standing strong, the teacher's words echoed again, surrounding Ai Fang from all directions, falling from the sky, rising from the ground, and creeping in from every corner. Ai Fang's tears streamed down her face. The faces of the teacher and her mother alternated in her mind, like close-up shots from a movie, flickering before her eyes. Overcome with emotion, she impulsively threw herself toward her mother in a way no one had ever seen before, called out, “Mom.”

Startled, her mother asked in a panic, "Fang’er, who has bullied you? Tell me!”

Ai Fang hesitated for a moment, then mumbled, our teacher was beaten at school. They shaved her head, half bald, half hair and made her wear a black signboard through the streets. I… I wrote a Dazibao against her too…

Smack! A sharp slap landed on Ai Fang’s face. Her mother shouted, you heartless thing! You ungrateful little beast!

Ai Fang didn’t even cover her burning cheek after her mother’s slap. She gripped the strap of her schoolbag tight, lowered her head, and tears fell drop by drop onto the ground.

……

Ten days or so later, the teacher was gone—she had taken her own life. The Party work group said her suicide was a rejection of the Party and the people, a betrayal in the end.

That night, Ai Fang had a sleepless night—her first time ever. Her teacher’s loose hair floated before her eyes, drifting and swirling. The teacher’s desperate gaze wrapped around her like a coil. The fresh blood trickling from the teacher’s temple hit her heart drop by drop. The pain radiated through her body like electric waves. Blurred by tears, she thought, “I really am a heartless thing! A wild beast that won’t ever be tamed.”

2

The Cultural Revolution pressed forward to new depths, carried by the endless triumphant cheers. But Ai Fang’s revolution ended with the death of her teacher. From the big rallies to see Chairman Mao in Beijing, to classmates splitting into bitter, irreconcilable factions, then to close-quarters fights with cold weapons and to “three-dimensional warfare” with firearms, Ai Fang stayed completely out of it. She remained an outsider to all the factions and revolutionary struggles, devoting herself at home to caring for her mother and helping with the chores. Time to time she’d borrow a few good books from a neighbor’s older sister, books that had survived the early Cultural Revolution’s raids and destruction of the “Four Olds” and, with no one to manage them, slowly made their way back into society. In her free moments, Ai Fang read them eagerly, like a starving child.

Life was still modest, but her mother smiled more often now. She said, “Our Fang’er has grown up, hasn’t she?

Ai Fang had only one wish—that the chaos would end someday, and she could get a job, so she could help support her mother, who already looked old and worn at just forty.

However, just as the chaos seemed tobe ending, although not quite, Chairman Mao issued a new directive. Day and night, loudspeakers at schools and on the streets blared the message: “It is very necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside to receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants. Urban cadres and others must be persuaded tosend their children, those who’ve finished middle school, high school, or even university, down to the villages. A full mobilization. Our comrades in the countryside should welcome them.”

As the masses took to the streets with drums and gongs, cheering as they always did whenever Chairman Mao's latest directive was announced, Ai Fang let out a sigh: there was no hope of getting a job now.

Not long after Chairman Mao’s latest directive was issued, the revolutionary committees at all levels, schools’, neighborhood offices’ launched the so-called “mobilization.” There were four children in Ai Fang’s family, and two of them, she and the eldest of her younger brothers, now met the standard of “educated youth.” The local revolutionary committee and neighborhood office made no exceptions for their family’s hardships. A woman about the same age as Ai Fang’s mother said coldly, “The two oldest both have to go.” Ai Fang said, “Mom, we’re going tobe sent anyway. Let’s be in the first group. It’s better to go willingly than to be driven out later.” Her mother opened her mouth, but no words came.

In the days that followed, the whole family seemed busy preparing for Ai Fang and her brother to go to the countryside, though, truth be told, there wasn’t much to prepare. Ai Fang went with mother to the designated stores to buy the special supplies the state allocated to educated youth heading to the countryside: a cotton quilt, fabric for two sets of clothes, a pair of simple canvas shoes with rubber soles, a flashlight, and some tooth-paste and soap. Beyond that, there was little else tobe done. Before leaving, none of the educated youth seemed especially sad, Ai Fang included. No one, not even the pupils’ parents, truly understood what life in the countryside meant, or what it really meant tobe “sent down.” To most, it felt vaguely like going off to help with farm work, just like the school-organized field labor during harvest season, only this time, it might last a bit longer.

The night before they left, Ai Fang and her younger brother each rolled up a large bedding bundle and packed their washbasins, toiletries, and other small items into mesh bags.

Mother was busy in the kitchen, she wanted to prepare some solid food for the siblings on the road. Ai Fang stood at the kitchen doorway, watching her mother bustling about. Slowly, tears welled up in her eyes. She said, “Mom.”

Mother, busy with her work, only answered with a soft “Mm.”

Ai Fang called again, “Mom.”

This time, mother turned around and looked at her tear-filled eyes. Suddenly, her own eyes reddened too.

The mother and daughter stared at each other with tear-filled eyes, frozen for a long moment, then mother lifted her sleeve to wipe her eyes and said quietly, “Who knows when you’ll come back home.” At mother’s words, Ai Fang’s right eyelid twitched sharply. There’s an old saying: “Left eye twitches mean good luck; right eye twitches mean trouble.” Her heart tightened. Suddenly, she felt a swirl of dandelion seeds floating before her eyes, drifting slowly apart

She kept her feelings to herself. Like all young people of her time, Ai Fang was an atheist, of course, she wouldn’t think that some mysterious, powerful force was controlling people’s lives, using hidden signs to reveal the secrets of existence. Yet two or three years later, when the educated youth Ai Fang looked back on her mother’s words, she was indeed nearing the end of her life.

The next morning, Ai Fang and her brother got up while it was still dark. They had already said their goodbyes to their mother and little brothers over and over the night before. Ai Fang insisted that their mother not see them off, they didn’t want to wake her or their two little brothers, nor did they want to make the atmosphere at home so heavy and sad again. The two quietly got dressed in the dark, took the food their mother had prepared, and slipped out the door.

The early spring chill rushed in through the door, making Ai Fang shiver uncontrollably. Just then, she heard her mother calling from inside, “Fang’er, be careful on the road. When you arrive, write me a letter.

The siblings answered in unison, “Don’t worry, Mom.” They stepped out of the house and melted into the dark, cold air. When they reached the street corner, the brother and sister parted ways, each heading toward their own school.

Ai Fang arrived at the school, where the playground was already lined with Jiefang trucks (a Chinese-made truck brand) ready tosend pupils down to the countryside. Pupils and their seeing-off parents gradually filled the gaps between the trucks. The girls held hands with their mothers and sisters, tears welling in their eyes, speechless and choked with emotion. At dawn, the drivers began honking their horns, engines roared to life, and both on and off the trucks, tears poured down like rain. Sharp cries and sobs soared straight into the sky.

Ai Fang glanced around the schoolyard from the back of the truck, taking in the familiar sights one last time. She fought back her tears, quietly glad that she hadn’t let her mother come see her off. The truck roared as it pulled onto the road, kicking up clouds of dust. Just then, Ai Fang saw her mother, dragging two younger brothers, wrapped in the swirling dust, searching, scanning the passing trucks.

“Ma—!” Ai Fang shouted.

But her mother didn’t hear.

The truck picked up speed. Her mother and brothers fell quickly behind. Through tears and dust, Ai Fang watched her mother and brothers shrink into tiny, distant specks.

3

Ai Fang was sent to a remote mountain county called Yuancang in the north. The county seat was over three hundred kilometers from Yubei City. Given the conditions back then, even on a smooth journey, it would take three days to get from the commune to the city. Ai Fang had never traveled far from home, so this stretch of space and time made her feel as if she and her brother had been cast off to the ends of the earth.

On the night before her departure, mother gently ran her coarse hands through daughter’s hair with love. A rare moment of tenderness that caught in her throat as she said, “Fang’er, you're a young girl, Things out there aren’t always kind, you need tobe very-very careful wherever and when-ever.”

The boatman’s family is usually called the “brute households riverbank,” where grown-ups in their world never watched their tongues. The neighbors often treated those adult matters as mere gossip seasoning, laughing and joking without restraint while children were nearby, without any embarrassment. Ai Fang was not yet eighteen, but growing up in that environment, she had come to understand something, if only vaguely, about such matters. So when her mother told her tobe careful as a girl, she knew exactly what was meant.

What she didn’t expect was that trouble of that sort would find her, and so soon.

Not long after leaving Yubei, Ai Fang began to feel it: a strange, unsettling gaze staring on her as, like a piece of treacle clinging to her back. The convoy of trucks, carrying thousands of pupils sent down to the countryside, rolled grandly into Chongnan City. That evening, the “educated youth” were herded into the cafeteria of a local teachers’ college for dinner. In the noisy, crowded hall, Ai Fang’s sixth sense told her that something sticky, like sugar syrup, was clinging to her back. She turned instinctively, and met a pair of eyes. They were brazen and lewd, glinting with raw desire. When her gaze collided with his, the man’s eyes didn’t flinch. There was no shame, no hesitation— just an unrelenting, obscene tugging, like a rapist tearing at a woman’s clothes. Ai Fang froze. Her mother’s parting words rang out in her ears like a warning bell. She turned and fled.

That was the gaze of Ma. His full name was Ma Zhengxiu, was a cadre from Tianshui Commune in Yuan-chang County. He was sent to pick up the educated youth from Yubei City. He was around thirty, tall and lanky, with slanted eyes and a hooked nose set in a flat, slightly puffy face, features that gave off an unmistakable air of sly calcu-lation, like a man full of tricks and bad intentions.

Two months earlier, in response to Chairman Mao’s latest directive that “educated youth must go to the countryside tobe re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants,” the county revolutionary committee of Yuanchang had organized a propaganda team, comprising publicity officers from various communes. The team toured middle schools in Yubei City, giving reports on the vast rural world that awaited the pupils. Ma Zhengxiu was a member of that team. Ai Fang saw him for the first time at one of the school’s propaganda rallies.

This rural cadre sat on the stage in the auditorium, foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth as he described the beautiful, vast mountains, fields, forests, crops, and the sweet, delicious snow pears of Tianshui Commune in Yuanchang County. But every phrase he uttered was laced with rough, vulgar language, full of coarse slang and swearing, like the constant swearing you often hear in American movies, making his praise sound ridiculous and absurd, turning his description of the rural scenery into something bizarre.

The pupils had never heard such a strange accent before, nor had they ever encountered such crude language in a serious setting. They burst into uncontrollable laughter that turned the whole propaganda presentation into a farce.

Ai Fang couldn’t stand Ma Zhengxiu, the commune cadre. His sly face, his coarse language, the way he spit as he spoke, it all filled her with disgust. She had grown up hearing all kinds of vulgar talk from the boatmen around her, but this felt different. Those men were uneducated laborers; Ma Zhengxiu, on the other hand, was a state official. How could he speak like a boatman, especially at something as serious and formal as a public address?

Of the entire report, the only thing that stayed with Ai Fang was this: Tianshui Commune lay right beside the Ling River. That single detail stirred a sense of familiarity in her heart—as if the river flowing past her hometown of Yubei also reached gently toward the distant countryside, binding the two places so closely, just the as old idiom said, there is only a robe's sash lies between them.

When Ma Zhengxiu first arrived in Yubei, he was riding high. The propaganda team had come bearing what felt like an imperial edict, an official mandate straight from Chairman Mao himself. In his own eyes, he was like an emissary from the capital, outranking all local authority. What he hadn’t expected was the sharp contempt he encountered the moment he set foot in the city. The high school pupils didn’t see him as any kind of official. During the Cultural Revolution, officials far higher than a rural cadre like him had been para-ded through the streets in dunce caps, forced to kneel and confess their abuses and misconduct, what was so special about some country bumpkin from the commune. These cocky, self-assured youngsters wasted no time in teaching him a harsh lesson in the deep-seated contempt city folks, especially big-city folks, held for people like him.

Stepping down from the stage, Ma Zhengxiu put on the kindly air of a superior inspecting the grassroots, acting every bit the part of an official on a benevolent tour. He smiles so broadly that his eyes nearly vanished into slits. He approached a group of pupils huddled in animated discussion.

But before he could say a word, the girls let out a collective “Pfft!”, then whipped their braids and turned away, arms linked, backs straight, leaving behind a floor strewn with disdain.

The boys dealt with him differently: they grinned, sly and mocking. These were Red Guards who, in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, were fearless enough that even dared to pull emperors off their thrones, who had stared death in the face and marched through storms of blood and gun-powder in violent factional battles. They didn’t just carry the pride of city youth; they moved with the fierce swagger of warriors returned from hell, convinced the world owed them something.

The soon-to-be-sent-down youths had yet to grasp the full meaning of the newly issued directive, “Let the edu-cated youth go to the country-side.” So when they encoun-tered Ma Zhengxiu, this country bumps in wearing an official mask, they found hard to stomach and began to taunt him with a cocky nonchalance. They patted his face, tousled his hair, and jeered, “So your name’s Ma Zhengxiu, huh? Why not Ma Xiuzheng instead? Like Revisionism, get it?” Then someone shouted, “Hey, look at that face—doesn’t he just scream ‘revisionist’? Eh?” Laughter exploded around him. A chorus of mocking laughter, bold and unafraid, with eyes fixed on him, brimming with challenge.

Ma Zhengxiu was filled with anger, especially at the girls’ contemptuous ‘Pfft’—like a sharp dagger, it pierced once more the wound in his heart that would never heal.

When Ma Zhengxiu came to Yubei City the second time to receive the sent-down youths, the city didn’t welcome him with drums beating and trumpets blaring, but gave him one pleasant surprise after another., but it gave him one pleasant surprise after another. The city was still the same city, the pupils still the same pupils, but their attitude toward him had changed dramatically.

After two months of nonstop “mobilization,” while revolutionary committees of every level, military and worker propaganda teams in the schools, and subdistrict offices were all working together, the middle school pupils, still carrying the instincts of fighting and struggle, were finally made to understand one thing clearly: getting a job and staying in the city was as impossible as plucking a star from the sky. Their urban identity would vanish along with their household registration and grain ration. Like any villager, they would soon be carrying hoes and hauling manure, earning work points, instead of money, for getting their everyday food.

As for whether they could ever return to the city, no one had any answer. All they had was a slogan that grew louder by the day: “Take root in the countryside and make revolution; in the wide open fields, temper your red heart.” It rolled over them in waves, each one dimming their hopes a little more. They also came to understand something else: the way of “picking up the pen (or the stick) as a weapon and concentrating fire on the black elements”, guiding their behaviors up to now, and was no longer valid. In the countryside, what awaited them was simple and unglamorous: they would obey the village cadres, just like any other peasant.

The most important thing was this: everyone assigned to Tianshui Commune now knew that Ma Zhengxiu, a local cadre, would be their direct superior. And a direct superior meant that their fate had become a set of tally marks on Ma’s abacus; a single flick of his fingers could tip their future one way or the other. It was at this point that they came to a deeper understanding of just how important this country bumpkin really was. No one dared look down on him or make fun of him anymore. The schoolers approached him now with flattery in their eyes, eager to curry favor.

This change followed the natural logic of things, and with it Ma’s spirits rose, wave after wave. What a feeling, tobe surrounded and fawned over by these naïve middle schoo-lers! Over and over, the ordinary commune cadre Ma Zhengxiu said to himself: Ma Zhengxiu, oh Ma Zhengxiu, your fate has always been in someone else’s hands. But today, it’s their fate you’re holding!

On the day of departure, Ma received an unexpected gift from the city: during roll call he spotted Ai Fang. His eyes dropped straight to her chest, and stayed there, frozen

Another full, voluptuous chest came to mind, along with the woman who had once pierced a gaping hole in his heart. That wound had never healed. He nearly gasped. Heaven was finally smiling on him! He was no longer the same foolish man he had been all those years ago. And now, such a creature had fallen into his palm, just like Sun Wukong trapped in the Buddha’s hand!

A feverish heat surged through his body; he could feel his blood boiling, ready to burst from his veins. And just as Ai Fang was stepping out onto the fringe of the so-called vast world, Ma Zhengxiu had already marked her as prey he would soon pocket.

By facial features alone, Ai Fang might not have drawn much attention walking down the street. But she turned heads all the same: her skin was astonishingly fair and tender, like silken tofu that might break at the slightest touch. A faint flush, like the soft glow of dawn, dusted her cheeks, giving her face an uncommon charm. Ai Fang’s figure was full and mature, almost like a grown woman rather than a girl her age. Standing among her peers, her ample bosom, rounded hips, and supple waist combined to form an allure that was hard to ignore. Paired with rosy cheeks and translucent complexion, she became an unmistakable presence.

Ai Fang left Ma Zhengxiu beside himself with distraction all along the way. He sat in the cab of the truck right behind hers, crouching like a hunter, his eyes glued like a hawk’s on its prey. It was as if his gaze could pierce through the truck’s rear panel to caress the alluring body that set his nerves ablaze.

4

Ma Zhengxiu was nothing more than a clerk in Tianshui Commune, belonging to the lowest rank of rural administration.

About six or seven winters ago, Ma Zhengxiu, like all rural kids eager to escape the mountains, joined the army. In those days, enlisting was nearly the only way for them to catch a glimpse of the outside world. Yet whether luck carried them to bustling cities or dumped them at remote, desolate border outposts, the vast majority shed their uniforms three years later and returned to the very starting point of that hopeful path. Only a rare few were promoted within the ranks, leaving behind their peasant roots to live on the state’s guaranteed grain supply. The successful career made them enduring local celebrities across hundreds of miles and role models for young people striving to follow in their footsteps. Ma Zhengxiu joined the army harboring such lofty ambition.

He was a soldier from the countryside, but not quite like the rest. He had attended middle school, could handle a pen better than most, and was street-smart in a way that set him apart from the average village recruit. More importantly, he had a distant maternal uncle who had taken that rainbow-colored path so many dreamed of: from a rural boy to a soldier, and from a soldier to a state cadre.

This maternal uncle is his mother’s cousin, a far-flung relative by generational standards. In local custom, kin that distant typically fell outside the circle of relative one would ever expect to see in his lifetime, let alone stay in touch with. But this uncle was no ordinary distant relative. From the day he donned the bright red flower of enlistment, he had stepped away, one firm stride after another, from a life of backs bent to the earth and faces baked by the sun. Without a word of promotion, he became a living legend, a figure of immense power and admiration across hundreds of miles.

To most young men, Ma Zhengxiu’s distant uncle was just that distant. He was like a rainbow in the sky: visible, dazzling, but forever out of reach. But to Ma Zhengxiu, this model of success was something far more tangible. A cousin just far enough to be called distant relative, but near enough to claim. Whenever the boys from the same mountain village gathered to dream aloud about escaping the hills, this uncle was the one they spoke of with awe and admiration. And in those moments, Ma Zhengxiu’s chest would swell with pride—as if the man weren’t a distant relative, but his own dad.

Because he had such a tangible role model, ever since starting middle school, Ma Zhengxiu had been pestering his mother to let him visit his uncle’s home. He was desperate to find out how, among all those soldiers in the army, his uncle had managed to become a standout.

At first, Ma Zhengxiu’s mother felt a bit embarrassed, worried others would mock them, and scorn their behavior as “poor men flocked to flatter a rich distant relative in the remote mountains.” But both mother and son shared the same hope: Ma Zhengxiu could, like his uncle, start as a soldier and gradually become a government official. So they began to often visit the uncle’s home, and always bearing generous gifts.

After several years of visiting back and forth, they grew familiar and close with his uncle’s family, becoming comforttable and casual. But Ma Zhengxiu didn’t receive the concrete guidance about the path to his ideals that he had hoped for. His uncle did tell him one clear thing: once enlisted, he must strive to join the Party as soon as possible and stand out through his performance. The goal of joining the Party was clear, but what “standing out” meant, and how to do it, remained vague—his uncle never explained that to Ma Zhengxiu.

After entering the barracks, Ma Zhengxiu threw himself into standing out—according to his own understanding of what that meant. He made a point of appearing on wall posters and bulletin boards, showcasing his talents at every opportunity. In those years, when faith in revolutionary spirit was said to triumph even over nuclear bombs, soon he seemed to stand head and shoulders above his peers.

Of course, if it had only been this kind of petty maneuvering, Ma Zhengxiu’s lofty dream would have remained nothing more than a fantasy. But before long, an opportunity presented itself.

That night, long after lights-out had sounded through the camp, Ma Zhengxiu lay wide-eyed on his bunk, racking his brain—how could he stand out even more? Suddenly, a flurry of chaotic shouts drifted in from a distance: Fire! Fire!

A farmhouse near the barracks had caught fire. The blaze was fierce, within moments, half the sky was glowing red. Ma Zhengxiu reacted instantly. He leapt from his bed, grabbed a washbasin, and dashed out. Ahead of him, he saw the political instructor already running toward the flames. But just as they neared the fire, the instructor suddenly crumpled: his body dropped low and vanished in under two seconds.

“Instructor! Instructor—!” Ma Zhengxiu shouted at the top of his lungs.

When he reached the spot, he saw that the political instructor had fallen into one of those dung-filled huge manure pits typical of the area. The pit was thick as a swamp, a viscous sea of filth, with floating refuse fused together into a hideous scum that had swallowed the man whole. For a long moment, there was no sign of him, until, finally, Ma saw a pair of hands broke through the surface, flailing desperately for life.

Ma Zhengxiu lunged forward, grabbed the instructor’s hand, and pulled with all his might. Finally, the instructor was dragged out of the manure pit, his body reeking foully. He spat twice onto the ground, muttering, “Hah! In my rush, I forgot my glasses and couldn’t see clearly. Thought I stepped into a mud puddle… but after swallowing a couple mouthfuls, turns out it was shit”. Steadying himself, he glanced at Ma Zhengxiu and said sharply, “Run!” Then, like a bullet, he shot off.

As the instructor’s figure darted into the roaring blaze, Ma Zhengxiu caught a dazzling flash of insight, a redemption of this puzzle suddenly became crystal clear before his eyes. Startled but determined, he snapped to attention and quickly followed right behind the instructor. Ma Zhengxiu ran back and forth alongside him, but without joining the rescue or fire-fighting efforts. Instead, like a war correspondent on the frontline, he busied himself observing and gathering material that might help him stand out even more.

An entire page of the division’s newspaper was dedi-cated to a report titled “Blazing Flames Forge a Loyal Heart, Selflessly Serving the People.” The instructor became a role model for all officers and soldiers in the division. The article was written by Ma Zhengxiu himself.

His skillful pen not only powerfully captured the instructor’s fearless actions—leaping out of the barracks, falling into the manure pit, and rushing headlong into the fire to fight the blaze—, but also vividly interwove a series of the instructor’s exemplary deeds since he enlisted. Ma concluded: Under the brilliant light of Mao Zedong Thought, in this great era of ours, a piece of high-quality ore has been tempered into steel by the mighty furnace of the People’s Liberation Army! The instructor is our army’s living Lei Feng. Inspired by this powerful example, more Lei Fengs will surely emerge in our ranks like mushrooms after the rain!

The officers and soldiers were deeply moved and inspired, sparking a wave of enthusiasm throughout the entire division to learn from the instructor.

That article marked a turning point for Ma. In making a hero of the instructor, he had also made something of himself. The divisional head-quarters sent someone to help Ma adapt the story into a living newspaper play tobe performed at the army’s cultural showcase. Ma was suddenly on fire. Like a breakout star on a talent show, he had transformed over-night from a nameless wild weed in the backcountry into a prized bonsai in a lavish showroom. Every nerve ending in his body was buzzing with the same message: his lofty dream was no longer just a dream, it was beginning, piece by piece, to become reality.

The political instructor of company was promoted to deputy political officer of the battalion. Under his direct guidance and support, Ma submitted his application to join the Party. He was soon accepted after the organizational review, fulfilling a long-cherished wish. Promotions followed swiftly: first assistant squad leader, then full squad leader. Not long after, he was selected for a training program by the division headquarters, and upon his return, word spread that the higher-ups were considering transferring him to a clerical post at division headquarters. Ma felt as if a warm spring breeze were carrying him forward. In his mind’s eye, he could see himself astride a tall steed, clip-clopping proudly down the wide road toward becoming a state official.

He felt a bit unmoored and lost his sense of direction.

Ma Zhengxiu met Wang Hehua, a shop assistant at the supply and marketing cooperative in a nearby commune town. What caught his interest was a promise he had made to himself as a boy: to find a wife like his maternal uncle’s wife. Wang Hehua resembled his uncle’s wife in some ways, espe-cially in her figure, those soft curves that could captivate anyone’s soul.

Since learning he might be transferred to the divisional staff, Ma began to swell and float like a hot air balloon. He drifted over to Wang and shared with her his bright future as a military officer and his grand plan to marry her. Together they floated along, but soon they drifted off course and ended up in a cornfield, where they were caught stark naked by the commune’s militia.

Ma Zhengxiu knew the army had rules forbidding soldiers from courting local women near the base. Yet he not only placed himself prematurely in the role of an officer but also jumped the gun by imagi-ning himself already as Wang Hehua’s husband. This leap was too large, too far ahead of reality, making it impossible to hit the mark. He had missed his target altogether.

Ma Zhengxiu was escorted back to the company under guard.

At the company headquarters Ma met the deputy political officer of the battalion. The deputy’s face was like the sky before a storm: thick with heavy clouds. Ma expected a fierce scolding and secretly hoped for the tempest; he thought that as long as the deputy still scolded him, it meant there was still some hope: perhaps a shred of sympathy behind the anger. But the deputy officer didn’t even glance at him and uttered just three words: “Wait for orders.” Each word in his utterance struck Ma Zhengxiu like a downpour of freezing water filled with shards of ice, dumped straight over his head, sharp, brutal, and merciless, each word was like a sharp blade cutting his future to dust and ashes.

He knew it was over for him. He had nothing to say, not because he didn’t want to speak, but because even if he had a thousand mouths, he couldn’t offer any explanation. Even if he were a military cadre, even if he had been sincerely courting a young woman, in those days his actions could only be seen as improper relations between a man and a woman—a moral failing. That meant his troubles went far beyond just breaking military rules. Fortunately, Wang Hehua still had some conscience and didn’t pin all the blame on him, sparing him from being branded a rapist and thrown into the brig.

After bursting forth with a dazzling brilliance like a newborn star, Ma Zhengxiu faded just as quickly into darkness. Like a man gone mad, he ran to a deserted place and slapped himself hard across the face a dozen times. Standing on the harsh ground of reality, he looked up in despair and saw the road he had painstakingly built toward becoming a state cadre, snap—broken. The ideal he had been inching toward, step by step, was now undergoing a redshift, receding rapidly into the distance.

Soon, the army dealt with him by discharging him and sending him back to his village

Before leaving, he went to see Wang Hehua. He said, “Huar, my feelings for you are sincere. If you’re willing tobe with me, I’ll take you home with me.”

Wang didn’t respond the way Ma had expected. She showed none of the heartbreak, none of the soul-crushing despair he had imagined. Her face showed not a trace of sadness. She gave the thick braid draped over her chest a cold flick and scoffed, “Pfft! You’re something else. You came to me saying you were getting promoted, becoming an officer, and that once we got married, I could move with you as part of the military household. That’s why I got involved with you. Hmph, I’ve already done you a huge favor by not accusing you of rape. And now you’ve got the nerve to ask a town girl like me to marry a bumpkin like you? I’m not an idiot, you know. Pfft!”

That repeated “pfft!” carried the deep scorn urban dwellers who lived off the state felt toward peasants. Each “pfft!” shattered what was left of Ma’s delusions and attachment. Each “pfft!” stabbed like a blade into his heart, leaving behind a wound that would never heal. So when, years later, a group of city-bred girls-pupils let out the same collective “pfft!” at him, what welled up from that old wound in his chest was a mix of fresh and festering hatred.

Ma Zhengxiu’s sincere love, military career, and bright future dreams all burst like colorful soap bubbles, shattered without leaving any trace worth remembering.

5

After being demobilized from the army and returning to the countryside, Ma Zhengxiu found that the party secretary of Tianshui Commune was none other than his maternal uncle, Wu Jinming.