Time seems to slip by without leaving even the slightest trace on her body. There is no way of guessing her age, but her thin, supple body, glowing white skin, and clearly defined features all make her look like a young woman still in the prime of her youth. The most telling details lie in her expression – that mildly amused look so common among young girls. The edges of her mouth tilt slightly upwards, as do her eyes, that’s one of the reasons her expression is so distinctive. Her face is nearly devoid of wrinkles; even when she smiles the skin on her face remains smooth and even, with the exception of a hint of crow’s feet. But even those tiny lines seem to accentuate the natural curvature of her eyes, increasing her allure. There is nothing aged about her appearance – she doesn’t even seem to have fully matured – she looks more like a girl in the spring of youth. It is hard to believe. Could she really be that young? There is something about her that gradually reveals the passage of time. Once those tiny details emerge, they quickly multiply. Beneath her supple body, glowing skin, and perfectly manicured appearance there is something frozen and fixed. It is difficult to express. Nothing changes, but it is as if more and more is added to her, layer upon layer. Who knows? Perhaps at some point her appearance will actually begin to transform. That’s why, while everyone repeatedly remarks ‘how young she looks’, between the lines, what they are saying is that her youth has passed.
There is no way of guessing her real age; it’s impossible to tell. She is obviously past the age most women get married – she clearly passed that point a long time ago. This is clear because there is something pure and simple about her – there is no trace of passion left. This purity is frozen and therefore very different from the purity one sees in a young girl. A young girl’s purity is chaotic, tangled, prickly, overflowing from all kinds of unfamiliar experiences. After a certain number of years, that youthful purity hardens, eventually transforming into something resembling a fossil. It is from the preserved youthful appearance of someone like her that the ravages of time are seen clearly, even more clearly than on a face with typical signs of aging. Those fluid elements also reveal a kind of vitality and over time they gnaw away at one’s muscles and skin, transforming the face’s makeup and shape. They also bring a kind of ugliness, but that imbues the person with a livelier personality. This kind of personality always has the qualities of youth. It is due to the restless nature of youth that one’s appearance is twisted, contorted, and left coarse.
It would be wrong to say she hasn’t experienced life. Instead, it would be more apt to describe her as someone whom time has slipped by without leaving the slightest trace. She has always grown, but never seemed to really grow up. When she crooks her head to the side as she pops dried banana chips or dried orange slices into her mouth, she still seems like a young girl. The way the corners of her eyes and mouth curl up when she smiles makes her look like a teenager. Her pitch black hair, devoid of even a single strand of gray, hangs straight down to her waist, and is kept in place by an oversized handkerchief, which is loosely tied. If she’s a young girl, she’s an old fashioned one; this was the fashion for young girls who came from humble family circumstances roughly twenty years ago. The style was everywhere, indoors and out, in the longtang alley neighborhoods and out on the main boulevards. It was a style that developed partially out of laziness. She may be a young girl, but a young girl from two decades past. Whenever she goes out, she always applies a few sprays of perfume to her handkerchief, fan, and behind her ears. When she attends lavish events, she wears a black, silk cheongsam and a pair of high-heeled shoes which extend her petite frame, accentuating her long, slender figure. A crimson shawl embroidered with peach blossoms and a small handbag inlaid with pearls give her the appearance of a virtuous maiden reincarnated from another world. She swims through the sea of time, never resisting its current. Resistance would have left behind scars. This is another reason why time has left no scratch on her.
However, despite appearances, she hasn’t emerged from a fairytale. She attended elementary school, middle school, graduated during the Cultural Revolution, and was unemployed for a period of time before finally finding a job as a bookkeeper for a kindergarten. These historical periods more or less reveal her true age. But who would ever believe that? The difference between her real age and her perceived one is several decades. No one ever dares ask her to her face, but behind her back they are constantly whispering to one another: How old is she? If she ever happens to overhear them she always turns and, with a smile, declares: I’m an old lady! There is something unreconcilable between her smile and an old lady’s; it feels so unnatural, yet there is something that leaves you with no choice but to believe what she says is true. Frankly, there is something dark and strange about this smiling ‘old lady’. But things are often strange like that. In situations like this, it seems to no longer be an issue of whether or not she is young or pretty, it is something else . . . but what that could be is not clear.
No one understands anything about her life; that’s not because of the complexity of her lifestyle, but the opposite – its overly simplistic nature. It is so simple that it is almost beyond comprehension. She has always lived with just one other person – her mother. The identity of her father – whether he passed away or left them, and, if he had left them, where he had gone – is a mystery that no one knows the answer to. And no one cares to ask. Back during that era, the early 1950s, things could have gone either way. Whatever happened was likely a product of the times, a moment of revolutionary change, where it was quite common for families to have both heads chopped off. In those crowded old-style longtang neighborhoods, how many confused children growing up in single-parent homes had the urge to search for their missing parents?
But she did have a mother, so what about her? Most would say that a mother-daughter living together was a nice, small family unit – simple, stable, and peaceful. The daughter had someone to raise her when she was a child and the mother would have someone to care for her when she grew old. Without the constant bickering of a husband and wife, or sibling rivalries, the relationship between a mother and daughter takes on a sisterly dynamic – they are perfect companions for each other.
Indeed, her mother looks more like her older sister than her actual mother. She too has a slender, petite body, alluring eyes, and a fair complexion. The way she dresses is also quite appealing. And, just like her daughter, she too looks much younger than her age. However, given a certain period has past, the accumulation of time has pushed down on that frozen core inside her to the point that her external appearance has finally changed. This change manifests itself with a tendency to shrink and contract, and not with growing thin or developing wrinkles; her skin remains clear and well-cared for, but slightly darkened and not as radiant as before. Her mother is better read than her and, if nothing else, she experienced the changes a woman goes through when she gets married and has children; these are experiences that transform time’s quality and leave their mark. This is why her mother’s eyes reveal a worldliness and the relaxed sensibility of someone finally at home with herself after everything she has experienced. This alone gives her a dimension her daughter is lacking. It also explains why she is, ever so slightly, better looking than her daughter. But when it comes down to it, mother and daughter are quite similar – after all they share the same genes and same detached air that allows their experience to leave less of an mark on them than most people. Mother may indeed be an old lady, but a youthful one; both pretty and lively. Next to her daughter, they were indeed like sisters.
Mother and daughter even dressed in almost identical fashion. As a little girl, her mother dressed her up as a delicate young maiden, braiding her long hair and putting it up in a bun. She wore a camel-wool cotton-padded jacket with woven brocade sleeves and toggle buttons, which her mother made from leftover scraps of fabric. She matched her jacket with her mother’s old Savile Row-style trousers, which her mother had altered, by widening the ankles with a patch of cowhide. The look was completed with a pair of leather shoes with faux-squirrel fur around the opening. When mother and daughter went out together, they were the image of two elegant women. By the time she was thirteen or fourteen, she was already as tall as her mother and had begun to develop her own opinions about the world. Mother and daughter began to visit the silk shop where, after much haggling, they would return home with all the materials to make new clothing. When it came to ready-made outfits, the two of them would pick out clothes with only slight variations so they would match whenever they went out together. During this period of her life, her style was a bit old-fashioned, but only because she was imitating her mother’s. This phase lasted long into her teenage years. That was back during the days of the Cultural Revolution when the prevalent street fashion veered towards the rustic; those peasant and worker uniforms of the day came off as a bit dramatic. It was popular for girls at the time to wear male-style military outfits such as wide-legged trousers, leather belts, and shirts buttoned all the way up to the collar. Mother and daughter resembled refugees of time who had been locked away in a small garret since the last century. They made slight adjustments to their trousers, widening their pant legs to the accepted six inches. They also removed the lace and embroidery from their shirts, eliminating all the symbols of decadence and rot from their old-style clothing. Yet they managed to find a way to express their sense of fashion in private. At the time, there were all kinds of embroidery styles, like the Albanian stitch, being quietly passed around. As soon as they came home, mother and daughter would ascend to the garret and remove their outer garments to reveal brightly colored sweaters with unique patterns. Gradually, their true age began to blur and fade; you could describe them as ‘gorgeous’ or a ‘pair of beauties’, but they were outdated, out of step with the era they lived in. This was especially the case for her. This was, after all, her era. And yet, not only did she fail to keep up with what was happening, but regressed into the past. By this time, she had graduated high school; it was probably the time in which young students were all mobilized up to the mountains and down to the countryside as part of the Rustication Movement, yet mother and daughter never considered it. Knowing that this widowed mother and only child had only each other, her school and the neighborhood committee didn’t press hard to separate them; instead, her name was added to the list awaiting employment allocation. In any case, her mother already had a job as a cashier at the district food company and they never felt that living off her mother’s single salary was a burden. During the period that she was waiting for employment, mother and daughter became obsessed with crocheted lace. Every season, everyone was granted a yarn coupon to purchase four balls of string or yarn. They would trade some of their other ration coupons, such as their fish coupons, meat coupons, egg coupons, and even grain coupons for more yarn coupons. It was lucky that they were both slight and neither had a strong appetite. The cotton would be transformed into crochet tea towels, tablecloths, sofa covers, and gloves; they were always exchanging lace patterns with one another. She even crocheted a buttonless black top with wide sleeves and a Mandarin collar that could be worn over a shirt during the spring and autumn months, showing off the shirt’s patterns through the black lace, which was quite stylish for that era. The wild, restless days of her teenage years were in fact spent rather peacefully, even as chaos raged throughout society, leaving behind an entire house filled with crocheted clothes and decorations. One look at them was enough to reveal the chaos and luxury of that era. But since most of the articles were white, they always maintained a kind of purity. Later, she ended up being assigned to a local kindergarten where, coincidently, she ended up handling their bookkeeping, just like her mother. By this time, it was the mid-1970s and the Cultural Revolution was already in its final years, and fashion had finally returned to a sense of the everyday. By this time, she had grown into a bona-fide woman. Her clothes no longer felt old-fashioned; they were just right. Her fashion sense was considered conservative with a bit of flash; just as the seasons changed from late winter to early spring, for instance, she wore a pastel wool coat, a red and green scarf around her neck, navy wool pants, and a pair of short leather boots. She wore her hair in two long braids, which were held together with an acrylic hairpin. By then, her fashion sense was rather measured. She no longer had the anxious sensibility she had when she was younger; now her look was more cosmopolitan and quite contemporary.
It was during those years that she and her mother truly stood out on streets of the city. Her mother looked just like her, but they were set apart by their hairstyles. Her mother wore hers in a single braid looped around her forehead and secured with a hairpin. Then, by the late 1970s, when things started to really open up, her mother began wearing her hair as a bun, which she secured with a hairnet. She, on the other hand, opted to keep her hair in a ponytail. By this point, her age was finally beginning to catch up with her fashion, sometimes even surpassing it. However, both mother and daughter’s fashion seemed to stand the test of time. It was similar to playing the female qingyi role in traditional Chinese opera, where a good actor could play the same role from youth through to old age. In some ways, she seemed younger than before. And as the national mood continued to relax, mother and daughter added something new to their arsenal – makeup. Initally they applied each other’s makeup, but began to do their own once they’d got the hang of it. They would each sit before the old-fashioned vanity with three mirror panels, and apply their foundation, draw their eyebrows, and paint on eyeliner, making sure to add a slight upward curve at the edge of their eyes. They would purse their lips as they accentuated the corner of their mouths. The final touch would be powder to set their makeup. At this time, skirts came back into style. They both loved wearing skirts, especially long ones that went down to the ankle. In winter, they would wear wool skirts paired with ankle books to conceal the cuffs of the cotton pants they wore underneath. Only when velvet tights came into fashion did they begin to adjust their style. Skirts were much more versatile than pants; they could wear all different types of sweaters and jackets, which could make a look much more refined. They would finish it off with a long coat with an upturned collar. Once ready, they would descend, out the door, off to dance.
Usually they went to those neighborhood dance halls, or dance parties held in abandoned factories frequented by middle-age people. Admission prices were low and everyone conducted themselves like perfect ladies and gentlemen. They also attended social dances organized by their workplaces, which were also quite orderly and devoid of any strange people or drama. Neither of them ever brought a date; they just danced with each other. They were in perfect harmony, always complimenting one another’s moves regardless of the style of dance. Naturally, there were also times in which someone else would invite one of them to dance. Hidden in those adult dance halls, there were always a handful of middle-aged men who were true gentlemen from the old days. They would approach, bow ever so slightly, as if they were about to bend the knee, then take one of them by the hand and silently head onto the dance floor. Most of those dance floors were concrete, but the soles of their shoes tended to smooth them out over time. Both mother and daughter were light on their feet and let those gentlemen take the lead as they gracefully glided across the dance floor. When the song ended, it was back to the two of them dancing together. By the time the last song played it was usually not too late, maybe 10:30 p.m. or 11:00 p.m., and they would put on their jackets and head outside, to follow the twists and turns of the neighborhood streets and longtang alleys back home.
They lived in the garret-style pavilion of an old-style longtang apartment with two north-facing windows and a back window facing the patio; it was actually a double pavilion that was almost twice as large as the typical garret. They’d lived here ever since she was born. They shared a bathroom with the people on the second floor, and the kitchen was just outside the front door. Near the corner of the stairway was a gas stove, referred to as a ‘turtle head’, which they could use to boil water and cook. One would think their apartment would have been sparsely decorated, but it was actually filled with rosewood Western-style furniture, which was adorned with crocheted fabric covers of the time. The entire place had an elegant, feminine atmosphere. Mother and daughter gradually became obsessive about cleaning and managed to keep their twelve-or-thirteen-square-meter room free from even a single speck of dust. Who could have even imagined another world had existed within their small garret apartment – the paint peeling off the wall, the doors and windows rotten to the point that they are almost falling off their frames. In the summer they used cattail leaf fans whose edges were rolled with fine hemp rope and handles wrapped in thin strips of bamboo then bound with silk rope; the fans hung on the hook behind the closet door in the place usually reserved for men’s hats or ties. The hot water bag with the cover they had sewn from scraps of cloth was only used in winter – during the summer months it was stored in the bottom drawer of a large chest. Beside it was a tin container with buttons they had removed from old clothes, a bundle of sewing needles, and a tin chocolate box. The chocolate long eaten, the box now contained an assortment of random items – empty perfume bottles, which were now of no use but they couldn’t bear to throw them away, and three or four very rare New Year’s cards from a distant relative. He’d sent a few seemingly on a whim, but never bothered sending more. Every year when they did their big spring cleaning, they would think about whether or not to throw those cards away, but they would always push the decision back to the following year, just replacing the paper lining in the drawer and putting everything back where it had been. They used to line the drawers with old newspaper since they’d heard the smell of ink was a natural moth repellent. But when stiffer and smoother calendar paper became available, they replaced the paper lining at the bottom of every drawer with that instead, then also replaced the lining on the top of the cabinet. On top of the chest were a pair of abacuses, which mother and daughter both needed for their jobs, but they also served as their playthings. Back in the days before television, they would sit down with their abacuses after dinner and play various numbers games, seeing who could calculate various equations the fastest and with the greatest accuracy. Using three fingers on each hand, they would manipulate the upper and lower beads in a way that was both mesmerizing to watch and pleasing to the ear. Eventually, their abacuses were replaced with digital calculators and although they were no longer of any practical use, they continued playing their abacus games for a while before they gradually stopped. Instead, they began to watch television. Their old abacuses were relegated to the top of the chest. So there were changes in their lives, but they were soft, gentle changes rather than turbulent revolutions.
However, their apartment wasn’t as quiet as it seemed. They actually had quite a few regular visitors. Mother had one old friend – he was actually a distant relative – that she referred to as Brother Yun; her daughter called him Uncle Yun. He lived in the Pudong district of the city; back then people who lived in Pudong had a different accent. Whenever he came over he would bring snacks – sweet sorghum, steamed water chestnuts, homemake cakes, and, occasionally, he would bring something really special, like a full roasted hen – yellow beak, feet, and all. Mother refused to let him go home empty-handed, so she always filled his bag with treats of her own – cloud cakes, chicken crisps, and two jin of white cakes. Whenever he came over, they would sit down and reminisce about the past, such as that year when a fire broke out during someone’s funeral, or the time someone on Dongjiadu Road dressed up as a ghost to scam people out of their money – that guy scared the hell out of one woman. All of these stories sounded like typical gossip, but they somehow made the stories sound more serious. After hearing these kinds of rumors for so many years, their dark and tragic quality had faded; they were now simply another part of the everyday. During her days waiting to be assigned a job, Uncle Yun tried to set her up with a marriage prospect. The man was a technician who was five years older than her, a native of Pudong, and his family owned a house. By these measures, he should have been a good choice for her; after all, at the time she didn’t seem to have any other prospects. However, the simple fact that his family home was in Pudong put her off. She had grown up on the west side of the city, which was the more prosperous and cosmopolitan part of Shanghai – even if it meant living in a small north-facing room in an old alley neighborhood that froze in the winter, sweltered in the summer, and whose roof leaked during typhoon season, she still preferred it to Pudong. She was accustomed to her lifestyle; anywhere more than a few bus stops away was like an alien world. There were a few times during her middle school years where she’d been sent down to the countryside during autumn to participate in labor retreats in Fengxian, Songjiang, and Beixinjing. Before each trip, her mother prepared a backpack filled with underwear and safety pins; one of each for each day she was to be away. If the trip was for two weeks, there would be fourteen pairs of underwear and fourteen safety pins. Mother instructed her to change her underwear every day, wrapping the dirty pairs up and fastening them with a pin to take back home to wash – who knows how many thousands of different types of bacteria lived in the water in the countryside. The failed matchmaking attempt led to some tension between mother and Uncle Yun; she thought Uncle Yun was treating her daughter like some old maid that couldn’t find a husband. She didn’t realize just how many unemployed young women would have loved to have such an opportunity. It didn’t take long at all for that guy in Pudong to find a partner – the woman he ended up marrying was not only two years younger than her, but also came from a wealthy family. She didn’t want to be sent off to the countryside and marrying him allowed her to stay in Shanghai. When Uncle Yun came by to share the news with them, mother and daughter both smiled – neither seemed to have an ounce of regret.
Among their other frequent visitors were two or three of her old classmates from elementary school and middle school. They were all rather average girls with a similar disposition to her own and fairly indifferent to most things. But when they were together, they knew how to have fun. They would gossip about other girls, talk about what rumors they had heard spreading through the neighborhood, go to the local movie theater – they liked tragedies the best, that way they could all cry together. It would be growing dark by the time they emerged from the movie, some of the streetlights were just starting to turn on, and they would feel as if something inside them had been transformed. It would only be after they had walked a block or two from the theater that they gradually settled back into reality. After saying goodbye, she would stroll back down the alley where she lived and, as she arrived at the rear door, she would see the light on in the northern garret window, shining through the curtains embroidered with peach blossoms, projecting a series of flower shadows. The drama she had just watched on screen seemed to now be so very far away. When girls spent time together, they always ended up sharing some secrets with each other. During those days in which she was waiting to be assigned a job, she and her friends were all around eighteen or nineteen; how could they not think about marriage? But how could any of them dare to mention it? When they wanted to talk about it, they would instead share stories about other people. One such story was about a girl from some school who ended up getting knocked up by a married man. She bound her stomach tightly with a white cloth to conceal it, but one day while she was playing basketball at school, one of her classmates asked her why she was so fat. She erupted into a fit of anger, scolding her classmate for talking nonsense. There was another story about a pair of sisters from one of the local longtang neighborhoods; they were both in love with one of their cousins. The three of them spent all their time together, but their cousin couldn’t decide which one to be with – in the end, he married one of their classmates instead. These all felt like stories that could have come straight from a Jane Austen novel, with a touch of the vulgarity that comes with neighborhood gossip. There was something equally terrifying and thrilling about the way they privately gossiped about those taboo stories. Yet somehow those stories felt even more distant to her than the tragedies she saw playing out on screen at the movies. At the very least, the people and events displayed on the silver screen were in line with her aesthetic view of the world, whereas those other stories seemed completely unrelated to her. She was convinced that no such things could ever possibly happen to her – those were all extreme catastrophes, like a terrible disease, whereas her life was always a bastion of safety. Among this group of frequent visitors to their house there was one girl who was sent down to Anhui for re-education; another was assigned a job in a factory and no longer had time to spend with them; and then there was another girl – the one who first introduced them to the art of crochet lace – who continued to hang around for a while, but was also terribly anxious about getting assigned a job. They would often sit together, their heads practically touching, as they leaned over to crochet all kinds of designs. One would think they were extremely close with one another, but owing to their rather limited experience and simple lives, they were emotionally closed off. On a spiritual level, they were somewhat impoverished, and there wasn’t much for them to share with each other. That’s why they ended up spending all their time chatting about sewing and other trivial matters. By this time, there weren’t even any movies to see. It wasn’t long before that girl found herself a boyfriend and gradually stopped coming by their apartment.
Once she was assigned a job, she ended up getting along with one or two colleagues, but at her age it was already getting difficult to build a deeper relationship with new friends. She was very private, so her relationship with those new colleagues never evolved beyond the most pedestrian. That said, one of her colleagues did try setting her up with her brother-in-law and they actually went on a date! They met in a park one Sunday. They strolled the concrete paths, surrounded by the shrieks of playing children, and maintained enough distance that someone could have easily stood between them. It’s unclear if he ever even got a good look at her, she certainly didn’t get a good look at him – all she really took note of was his pair of triple-stich cap-toe black leather shoes and perfectly fitting tight nylon socks. What did they even talk about? He seemed to talk about his job as a technician at a metallurgical plant. Although she barely understood a thing he said, she didn’t necessarily find him boring. It wasn’t bad having someone near her, babbling on and on. At this point in her life she had begun to think it might be time for her to get married and settle down. However, after she got home and discussed everything with mother, she realized that if she married him her colleague would become her sister-in-law, which might make things at work complicated, so she turned him down. This kind of thing happened multiple times; there were always well-intentioned people who would cross the line by trying to set her up with various men. By then, she was past the ideal age for marriage; the ship of eligible bachelors had set sail. All of the men she was introduced to always had some kind of deficiency that made them unable to live up to her standards. Deep down she did want to get married, but she was in no rush, and in fact, it wasn’t something she spent very much thought on. Perhaps if she had been more focused on marriage, she would have been nervous, but after a few years, even that unconscious yearning faded.
Life was like a warm current of water flowing right past her. All of those whirlpools and undercurrents that might have otherwise swept her away simply slipped by without ever impacting her. Like when she was a little girl, she still shared a bed with her mother. It was a double bed, just four-and-a-half-feet wide. But neither of them took up much space. In fact, even after several decades the coir ropes supporting the mattress were still firm. There was only one or two occasions in which mother hired a neighborhood worker to replace a few of the coir ropes and tighten them up a bit. The bedspread used to be made from seersucker with red, blue, and yellow stripes but they later replaced it with a white poplin bedspread with an underlining embroidered with red strawberries. It was as if time stopped moving forward and was instead slipping back to the days of her childhood. Since they regularly waxed the furniture, the rosewood still glimmered with a healthy glow, as if new. Rosewood furniture also came back into fashion, especially that with Victorian-style carvings and patterns. It was as if contemporary style had suddenly stopped advancing. The ornamental covers on the furniture were a more recent trend and still in fashion. One new addition was a refrigerator with an ornamental handle decorated with pea-green and cranberry flowers; it added an extra layer of boudoir-style to their room. Over the past several years, they have replaced their television set several times. They started with a twelve-inch black-and-white set, then came a fourteen-inch color model, which they more recently swapped out for a twenty-five-inch flatscreen. They always kept the channel tuned to those Hong Kong and Taiwanese soap operas and every night, after they ate and did the dishes, mother and daughter would tune in to watch the latest episode of their favorite show. Together they would sigh, they would cry, but ultimately, they were watching those dramas with an air of indifference. Their lives were always so restrained, and because they consumed so very little, there was never anything to lose.
Every morning, mother had breakfast ready for her by the time she woke up; it was always something light, usually consisting of rice gruel, fermented tofu, or homemade bamboo shoots with beans. She washed her face and combed her hair in the sunlightless apartment. Their room was on the dark side of the garret and the vanity was situated against the wall between two north-facing windows. Without sunlight, whatever image was reflected in the mirror always appeared dark. But this was no issue, because the darkness masked her age; the reflection she saw in the mirror resembled a girl still in her twenties. Her skin was smooth, her hair a shiny black, and her eyes sparkled through the darkness. By the time she finished washing up, her rice gruel would already be growing cold. It was sitting on the table in a fine porcelain bowl with gold trim they had used for many years, bowls it would be impossible to find nowadays. The few out there are either cheap, unconvincing reproductions; poorly constructed from a coarse low-grade porcelain; or are those especially expensive and luxurious ones reserved for display during banquets. But none have that delicate homey quality of their porcelain set. After breakfast she would head off to work. They were fortunate that their traditional alley neighborhood somehow managed to avoid being targeted for demolition over the course of several urban reconstruction plans. The nearby roads were expanded and high-rise buildings went up all around their neighborhood, but somehow their traditional longtang remained untouched. That said, the people who lived in the neighborhood had changed quite a bit, especially those from her generation; most had married off or bought apartments elsewhere. There were some old-timers still hanging on in the neighborhood; they kept getting older, but since they were already old to begin with, they didn’t look much different from before. When they saw her strolling through the alleys they would affectionately greet her as ‘Meimei’ or ‘little sister’. There didn’t seem to be as many children in the neighborhood as before, when there used to be groups of them pouring out of every household. Nowadays they would only occasionally appear in groups of two or three, but only rarely. It was only in the mornings and evenings that the sounds of adults scolding their children, or kids arguing with their parents would ring out through the windows facing the courtyard. On rare occasions one could hear the sound of a baby crying. After a while, the cries would drift off and turn into babbling.
The bus she took to work changed its route several times. She used to be able to board it on the main road not far from the longtang, but later she needed to go to a stop on the small road behind her neighborhood, later that entire line was cancelled and she needed to take a different bus, which required multiple transfers. Eventually, she was able to take the subway. Strolling into the broad and brightly lit subway station waiting for the subway to rush towards her and stop at the platform, she could feel the progress of this era in which she lived; it was exciting. However, it wasn’t long at all before she gradually came to view all of that as perfectly natural; in fact, she could barely remember what the street even looked like before the subway station was built. All of those crowded little shops, apartments, primary schools, and noisy intersections were suddenly swallowed up by new thoroughfares as if they never even existed. All of those specialized items like peach crisps, salted candied dates, and roasted olives which used to be sold at southern goods market or the smoke shop were now all found together on the shelves of supermarkets. The pleasure involved in carefully selecting which item to buy along with the meticulous calculations involved were now swallowed by the process of bulk purchases. At first she felt as if she had lost her footing in this new world, but she quickly grew accustomed to things. There was actually something about taking entire bags of these products off the shelves that gave her a sense of affluence. While she didn’t have the kind of personality that actively pursued change, nor was she particularly tied to the past. She was someone who lived in the present moment; never thinking much about the past or the future, for the here and now was the only thing that was real.
The kindergarten where she worked had been relocated several times and even merged once or twice with other schools. Due to the One Child Policy, the number of children enrolled continued to decline until the point at which, approximately three years ago, her kindergarten had been converted into a retirement home. Throughout all of these changes, she continued to be the bookkeeper. Over the course of the past decade, the profession had become quite popular, and a great number of young women who’d already achieved advanced degrees began attending night schools for accounting. Most of those girls tried to work for those private or joint-venture companies, so as a bookkeeper working for a small neighborhood kindergarten, she wasn’t worried about facing competion. When it came to work, she was always meticulous, never made mistakes in her accounts, and kept her books extremely organized. Her entire professional life had been free of trouble or risk. If one were to insist upon her talking about the occupational hazards in her line of work, there were only one or two small examples that came to mind. One involved a bookkeeper who worked at a neighboring kindergarten, who was apparently a graduate of the famous Profit and Prosperity Accounting School. To please her boyfriend, she stole 170,000 RMB from the student meal fund – she was sentenced to death for her crime. This incident shook the entire early childhood educational system to its core. Even though she knew that she would never be capable of committing such a crime, she couldn’t help but feel anxious. Who knew? What if she were unconsciously making some mistake with one of the accounts? Thankfully she wasn’t the kind of person to get too anxious though, and that touch of anxiety quickly passed. The other hazard had to do with an article she read in the newspaper that claimed 10% of people diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases are accountants. The high ratio of infections was due to the fact that they frequently handled various banknotes, which, given their wide circulation, carry countless germs. This news terrified her, but the report also said that washing one’s hands could eliminate the risk of infection. From that point on, she was sure to wash her hands after touching any banknotes. She also made sure to wash her hands before and after going to the restroom and before and after eating. This allowed her to move through this minor crisis safely.
And just like that, her retirement was drawing near. Retirement also serves as a harsh warning, informing people that a certain amount of their time is up and life is about to entire a new phase. But this was no concern for her; after all, witnessing her mother’s life after retirement had already shown her what it was like. Her mother retired during her second year on the job – a change both mother and daughter greeted with relief. From that point forward they could bid farewell to their hectic lifestyle: the two of them no longer had to squeeze in front of the vanity each morning to get ready, they didn’t have to worry about not having enough time to wash their dirty dishes from breakfast before going to work, nor did they have to rush home from work to cook dinner. After retirement, mother would wake up an hour before her daughter so she had time to do her hair, cook breakfast, and buy groceries for lunch and dinner. After her daughter would leave for work, mother would tidy up the apartment and even had time to go for a stroll in the park and get some sun. After lunch she would take a nap to make up for that hour of sleep she lost waking up early. By the time her daughter got home, there was a hot meal already waiting for her on the table. In the park, mother met a few other retired women, one of which was a fan of Yue opera. One of the interesting things about that park was that it had a special corner devoted to Yue opera; every morning singers and musicians would gather to perform. There were also two women who would practice swordplay at the park; they very enthusiastically volunteered to give her lessons. Between listening to Yue opera and practicing swordplay, mother’s schedule at the park filled right up. Eventually, there was a widowed and retired teacher who developed a crush on her. He gave her a bouquet of roses on Mother’s Day. That day, as she entered the longtang neighborhood with those flowers in hand, the look on her face was a combination of embarrassment and joy – she looked like a teenage girl. That was also the reason she stopped going to the park. And before long a real estate developer took over more than half of the park; they demolished the original park wall and turned it into a green space in the middle of the street. She, on the other hand, found a new place to spend her time – the church. Following the urgings of one of her neighbors, mother turned to Christianity. She started attending church services every Sunday morning. At the same time, the Christian hymns helped her develop an affinity for singing. Naturally, mother had a much more open personality than her daughter; this wasn’t due to her richer life experience but simply because she had a more childlike disposition. Although daughter was naturally more closed off, thanks to her mother’s guidance, she too was able to start a new life. That is why the daughter was never worried about retirement.
Before long, it was her turn to retire. Just before her retirement, her work unit had arranged for her to participate in a trip to Zhangjiajie in the Hunan province, sponsored by the district trade union. This was a big deal for both mother and daughter. It may be hard to believe, but neither of them had ever set foot outside their city. Most think that peasants in the countryside are the only ones who never get out to see the world, but people in this city are equally cloistered, in fact, and it is even harder for them to leave because they lack the curiosity about the outside world that peasants have. They believe that living anywhere other than Shanghai is utterly unthinkable. However, times were changing and all kinds of new things began to emerge. One of those new things was traveling for leisure. Neither of them was very enthusiastic when it came to travel, but nor were they indifferent. If they had the opportunity to go see some new places and have a good time, why not take advantage of it? It’s not like they were setting out to earn a living. The television, magazines, and advertisements from various travel agencies all brought those faraway places much closer to them – they no longer felt so distant and terrifying. All of this began to invisibly transform these conservative urbanites’ view of the world.
Mother and daughter excitedly began preparations several days before her trip. Their first consideration was hygiene. Mother bought a bottle of alcohol cotton balls, disposable wet wipes, paper towels, and toilet paper, which she carefully packed into plastic bags. In order to prevent cross-contamination, she also prepared a bottle of Dettol antiseptic liquid. The second thing they prepared was food, which mainly consisted of crackers and instant noodles, which she could eat in case she didn’t like the local food. She was actually quite picky, and there were all kinds of things she didn’t eat: lamb, beef, chili, garlic, coriander, radish, pepper, and egg yolk. In case she did eat something that upset her stomach, they packed plenty of Berberine. In terms of clothing, they focused on packing outfits that would keep her warm. Although it was early autumn, they insisted on packing cotton pants, a wool sweater, and a raincoat. Figuring that she would likely do a lot of walking and mountain hiking, they bought her a pair of hiking shoes. Those shoes were a departure from their usual fashion, bringing an athletic energy and a sudden burst of modern sensibility to her elegant style. Finally, they couldn’t help but think about the colleagues she would be travelling with. Mother and daughter were both affable and valued their relationships with others highly. Now that she would be traveling with her colleagues, it would be especially important for her to look out for one another and maintain a close relationship with her fellow travelers. That led them to take a trip to the supermarket to buy a bunch of snacks she could share with everyone: prunes, Taiwanese plums, hawthorn slices, Want Want senbei crackers, and chocolate covered nuts. They divided the snacks up into small packets, which they stuffed into all the remaining nooks in her already packed suitcase – somehow they managed to squeeze it all in. With all these snacks and the rest, her luggage ended up extremely heavy. The day she boarded the train, they even recruited Uncle Yun to help carry her suitcases. By this time, Uncle Yun was already an old man with a large bald spot, but he was still strong enough to help with her luggage, carrying each large suitcase under each arm. Mother and daughter shuffled behind him, carrying just a bunch of small odds and ends. Once aboard the train, each of her suitcases took up an entire row on the luggage rack. The colleagues traveling with them were actually from different work units, so they didn’t know each other, but since they were traveling together and everyone was excited for the trip, they all helped each other out. No one uttered a word that could spoil the mood. This put mother at ease and she motioned for her daughter to pass around some of the snacks they had prepared. That meant that they had to take down the large suitcase they had just put up on the rack, open it up, and search for those packages of snacks tucked away inside. By then, the train was about to depart and the conductor was already instructing those without tickets to leave the train. They were still passing the snacks around when the train began to gradually pull away from the station, interrupting the emotional moment when mother and daughter were about to say goodbye. But in a way, the hasty departure helped them avoid making it into an awkward public scene.
The sanitary conditions on the train were actually much better than what she had imagined. She was lucky in that the passenger car seemed new, with a fresh carpet, new bedding and curtains. Even the conductor’s uniform seemed to be a new design. Sitting together in that bright, clean carriage, she quickly got to know everyone sitting with her. Going out of town allowed her to leave all those random daily tasks aside; she felt particularly relaxed and her speech grew excitable, punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter. There were about a dozen people in her tour group, six of whom were women, and they all slept together in the same sleeper compartment on the train. Once they arrived, some of the hotel rooms had three beds while others had two, so the women divided themselves up into groups based on the size of the rooms. She partnered up with Xiao Hong, who worked for the trade union and helped organized the trip. Xiao Hong was in her late twenties and had a child that had just learned to walk. She seemed to have left a favorable impression on Xiao Hong, who suggested they share a room. Their room had three beds, so they added a girl named Xiuping, who was a model worker in their district and director of some neighborhood committee. Although she was only forty, she looked much older than her. Among their group, there were two others she became close with; she spent a lot of time with them all on the trip and just being with them made her feel more at ease. For their first meal together on the train, everyone sat together with the food they’d brought. With sausage, eggs stewed in tea, roasted chicken, cake, hamburgers, instant noodles, and all kinds of fruits, nuts, and drinks, it was quite the sumptuous feast. For their second meal, they divided up into small groups – the men either went to the meal car or stayed behind to wait for the vendor that sold box lunches. The women on the other hand just finished up their leftovers from the previous meal. Xiao Hong didn’t eat anything, instead choosing to crawl into her bunk and take a nap – everyone said she must be missing her son. Once the lights came on and the world outside the window grew dark, the train carriage seemed warmer. Only on the rarest of occasions had she ever spent the night away from home; she felt like she had been transported to different world. Sitting on the bunk and gazing out at the broad expanse of darkness outside the window, she would occasionally catch sight of a flurry of lights shooting past. As they approached their first stop, the lights flashed by more frequently, there was something almost resplendent about them. When the train pulled into the station, crowds of people on the platform rushed towards the door urgently. A vendor on the platform pushed a cart alongside the train windows to sell snacks to the passengers already aboard; in contrast to the chaos of the people trying to board, the vendor appeared completely at ease. Even though she looked about the same age as Xiao Hong, she was actually the only one among the group nearing retirement age, so they let her have the bottom bunk. She didn’t sleep very well that night. Every time they pulled into another station she would wake up and turn to look out the window. Although it was the middle of the night, the station lights were all brightly lit and the platform was filled with people busting around and getting on and off the train. Oh, what a lively night it was! As she slipped in and out of sleep, she gradually got further and further away from Shanghai, beginning her life of travel.
She turned out to be more adaptable than she had imagined. The weather in Hunan was extremely humid – she would hand wash her clothes but after two days they still weren’t dry and then she’d have to move on to the next hotel. She constantly felt hot and sticky. There were a few times she thought she was on the verge of getting sick, but somehow managed to avoid it. In the end, it was Xiao Hong that had the hardest time adapting; she broke out in a rash and developed an upset stomach – she was the one who ended up having to take care of Xiao Hong. Most of the food in Hunan used a lot of hot peppers. When they ate hot pot there were a few bright red peppers floating in the broth; she didn’t realize how spicy they were until it was too late. Later she learned to fish those red peppers out of the broth as soon as they brought the pot to the table; but it was always hard to get them all out. Over the course of the subsequent days, she surprisingly discovered that she could actually handle spicy food and found it especially good with rice. On one occasion she ate a piece of meat that she couldn’t identify; only after trying it did the restaurant owner tell her it was turtle meat. Although it was a bit strange for her to eat something like that, there wasn’t much she could do since she had already eaten it. The next time turtle meat was on the menu she just went ahead and ate it; she had, after all, already crossed that bridge. She also found that she was quite the walker, being light and nimble meant that she could hike for long distances without getting tired. But she never did wear those hiking shoes she brought; they just didn’t look right on her. Instead, she just wore her usual pair of light brown leather shoes with short heels, which felt perfectly comfortable. They even took a bamboo raft out on the Mengdong River. Several of the women held hands and gripped one another tightly as their raft tossed up and down against the waves. They exhausted themselves with laughter. The scenery was so gorgeous it looked like a painting and she felt like she was now a part of that painting.
Her favorite thing was the tourist products sold at each scenic location they visited. Those items were actually all quite similar, yet she nevertheless loved going from one vendor to the next, carefully looking at all the products and haggling over prices. The trinkets sold were all low-quality and poorly designed, yet she found them to be a source of endless fascination. She had actually seen so very little of the world that her perspective on things was likely no different from that of a girl who’d grown up on a farm. It wasn’t long before the trinkets she bought took up all the space in her luggage that had once been occupied by those snacks and instant noodles. Whenever the vendors were women, they would ask her all kinds of questions, like where was she from, what kind of work she did, how many children she had, and how old she was. At first she would answer truthfully, telling them that she wasn’t married but gradually came to think twice about that, instead simply saying: They’re in Shanghai! For the vendors that were particularly chatty and insisted on knowing how many kids she had, their ages, and whether they were boys or girls, she would just smile and walk away. Later she took a feistier approach, spewing lies and teasing them. Sometimes she’d tell them she had a little boy, other times she would say she had a little girl; sometimes she said she only had one child, other times she would say she had two; as for their ages, sometimes she would say they were in kindergarten, other times she would say they were in college. Hearing that, some of the vendors would get suspicious and ask just how old she was. She would tell them the truth but none of them believed her. If they asked again, she would simply repeat her answer. Gradually she came to take pleasure in these exchanges, sometimes even kicking off the conversation. For instance, when she saw a child she would ask the mother: How old is he? Where do you plan on sending him to school? Then the mother would naturally start asking her similar questions. There was only one occasion in which a woman she was chatting with pointed to the male members of her group and asked: Which one of them is your husband? The question left her so embarrassed she simply scurried away.
From the Mengdong River, the group arrived at a place called Wang Village. It was a remote village that became famous after it was used as the shooting location for a film. The village capitalized on the film by naming all of its restaurants and sites after people, places, scenes, and plotlines from the film. They also performed all kinds of local songs, dances, dragon boat races, rain ceremonies, and other traditional rituals. Wang Village was located alongside the Mengdong River and in the distance were a series of dark green mountains surrounded by pristine blue water and a forest of jade green trees. The town that developed alongside this waterway must have been a prosperous hub. The local houses in the town are adorned with blue-gray bricks, black tile roofs, and high retaining walls. There is something truly enchanting, almost seductive, about the area which was once the cradle of Chu civilization. There was a woman standing in a doorway holding a little girl that couldn’t have been more than a year old. The little girl was wearing a small hat that resembled the mythical qilin; she had bright red lips, dark black eyes, and suddenly cast them a strange glance. It was the kind of look that clearly only an adult woman would be capable of making – the corners of her eyes shot up, her cheeks displayed what appeared to be a smile, and a mysterious look crossed her face – the whole thing was extremely strange. She couldn’t help but be shocked by the girl’s expression.
Playing out on stage of a pop-up theater in front of the bluestone street was a traditional tale about love and marriage. The performers didn’t look like professional singers or dancers. Their movements were uncoordinated and their singing and acting seemed to lack any formal training. Their expressions also appeared somewhat restrained; they couldn’t compare to the vitality expressed by the local mountain people walking in the streets; yet there was something quite beautiful about their appearances and the way they sang. The girls on stage all had a pure beauty and a unique twinkle in their eyes. Hidden beneath the surface of their awkwardness was the romantic yearning of a budding love – they must have all been little demons when they were young, like the girl she’d seen in the doorway. Of the two lovers the story was about, the boy was more petite than the girl and extremely thin. He was less striking than the girl, but he had an intense look in his eyes. When he locked eyes with the girl it was as if he were silently conveying thousands of thoughts to her. Although she couldn’t understand the lyrics they were singing, their voices had a purity about them, and though the drums and melody were a bit out of tune, their rhythm and overall spirit were perfectly in sync. Once they’d finished their song, the boy and girl exchanged bouquets of hydrangeas and held hands. Next on stage was a clownish grandmother character played by a young man – she was the matchmaker. Together they drank and sang in a scene that was clearly a wedding banquet. As their singing continued, it grew in intensity. Finally, out of nowhere, a palanquin appeared, carried down from the stage and into the crowd of tourists. A woman announced in Mandarin Chinese: ‘Someone is trying to kidnap the bride!’
Once the sedan chair arrives at the crowded street, the performance reached its climax. The onlookers grew chaotic as they made way for the sedan chair to pass. Leading the procession were four girls dressed in pink. The sedan was covered with a banner of shining red silk and carried by four young men dressed in green who danced through the crowds. Next came the sound of horns and flutes, announcing the festive atmosphere. Auspicious clouds suddenly appeared in the sky above, hovering above the peaks of the green mountains. Several boats came to the shore, bringing with them even more tourists. A smile appeared on the actresses’ faces, but they were much more natural than when they were on stage. This was clearly their favorite part of the performance, it had a mischievous spirit about it. The actresses scanned the crowd, searching for someone in the audience who could play the role of the bride. They looked up and down through the bustling crowd as they walked half the length of the street. All the girls in the crowd laughed and screamed as they moved out of their way. They were all terrified of being pulled into the sedan chair, but in fact, they all secretly hoped to be chosen. The performers smiled but didn’t stop, until they reached her. The four girls suddenly exchanged glances and came to a halt; this signalled to the four boys behind them to lower the sedan chair and wait. That is when four pairs of hands suddenly reached out to grab, snatching her up before she even had the chance to scream. Seemingly out of thin air, they conjured up a red wedding robe, which they slipped over her before pushing her into the sedan chair, raising it off the ground, and shuttling her away. This time, the young men carrying the sedan chair break into a light jog as they crossed the street. The horns blaring behind them became more furious. Everyone in the street was clapping and cheering, especially her colleagues, whose palms grew red from clapping. Deep down, they are all rather surprised – after all, she isn’t the youngest or prettiest, how did those actors so quickly figure out that she is a single and unmarried woman?
Those young men and women surrounded the sedan chair as they trotted in a circle around the bluestone streets. Only when they finally returned to the spot where they picked her up did they stop to let her out of the palanquin. Wearing that crimson silk robe, she was smiling, her face bright red. Xiao Hong and Xiuping helped her down from the chair and out of that wedding robe, tossing it back to the palanquin bearers. She laughed so hard that her body grew limp and she couldn’t speak, but her heart was racing. The sound of the drums and horns gradually faded into the distance before eventually falling silent. The crowd began to disperse and the mood of jubilation died down. But she was still laughing, as were her colleagues, who surrounded her. In that moment, she was like a celebrity, and not knowing how to act, all she could do was laugh. The sound of her laughter echoed along the bluestone streets. Had this village been devoid of all these tourists and performances, it would have been an extremely peaceful place. They could hear the sound of their footsteps, which rang out against the bluestone streets. After laughing for so long, she began to feel tired. Her laughter suddenly ceased and she felt tears in her eyes.
Image © Europeana
