SHEN Yichen_HKU_CM_Portfolio

Divergence

Living in the suburbs of Shanghai, I have noticed that as the big cities rapidly expand, the encircled and transformed countryside at the edge of the cities becomes a unique junction: the Urban-Rural Binding Region. I attempt to build an intersection in time and space by using independent stories through prose-like, fragmented narratives centred on characters. This in-between zone, constantly under impact and being washed away, is unique in that it neither belongs to the countryside nor can it truly belong to the city. In other words, it can neither maintain its independence in the midst of an irreversible trend nor easily integrate into a stronger group. This in-between zone is in an awkward and passive position.

The cultures of the city and the countryside have been artificially and hastily squeezed into one space and clash with each other. The former slowly begins to engulf the latter, while the latter begins to disap pear, affecting the content of the former. The resistance and struggle are reflected in the people who live in this space: they have the identity of the new urban household. Still, they cannot disregard traditional customs and a homeland built on farmland. In the Urban-Rural Binding Region, where the past and future disappear, those people should be called a group of in-betweeners who share a confusion of loss in their identity, and it is this confusion that I want to recreate and reproduce.

The animals share the typical character of the land. 動物分享著這塊土地的典型性格

In this part, I try to show the human character by depicting dogs that live on the land.

I have found that dogs’ personality is closely related to the area in which they live. The personalities of dogs in the city, countryside, and the border between urban and rural areas, which I am writing about, are very different. They are individuals with different personalities, but at the same time, they share a certain fundamental similarity because of the consistency of their living space.

Dogs gather by their will or are forced to form a ‘dog herd’, which is made up of blood and geography. The dog herd has an immobile breeding of generations fixed in one area and an outward expansion of the blood line. The qualities formed by the environment can be inherited, developed or changed. The addition of the unrelated ‘new dog’ will allow these qualities in the bloodline to be highlighted in conflicts.

At first, it was difficult for me to clearly and coherently show the pack’s characteristics and personalities of the different dogs clearly and coherently. After observing the various dogs and collecting a certain amount of material for my writing, I decided to place them in a fixed scene in order of generations, a scene that provides them with more ma terial abundance but lacks spiritual comfort. Here, the dog herd become a habitually desired, though at the same time, dispensable and almost for gotten thing. The dilemma of their lives is highly similar to the dilemma of those people who I call the ‘in-between group’.

爸爸告訴我她死了，我不覺得驚訝， 穿上雨披，跟著他來到院子里，問有什麼

In the winter of two years ago, the dog died. No one knows when, why or how she died. Only the fact that she died in her house. Sitting beside her in a cage outside the house, her only son saw us from a dis tance and stood up, wagging his tail habitually, not approaching but just standing in the corner, seeming ly a little puzzled.

I wasn’t surprised when my father told me she was dead. I put on my raincoat and followed him into the yard, asking what I could do to help. He asked me to dig a grave hole.

To the north of their house is a grapefruit tree. There was a hornet nest above the tree, which some one disposed of three years ago, and no more hornets have flown in the yard since. Underneath the tree, there are many holes dug and filled in over and over again, where many dead animals are buried.

Most of them were her sons and daughters, born from her body and passed away, lying quietly beside their mother, asleep forever. The first group of dead were buried deeper, so long ago that I cannot re member exactly when they were buried. The second group of dogs died perhaps six years ago, and the third group was buried shallower about three years ago, stacked on top of their siblings. A hedgehog accompanied them to the grave. We didn’t keep the hedgehog. It just came into this yard and died, so we buried it on the spot.

Other animals, like the red and white carps

died from lacking oxygen and the birds that died from crashing into the balcony, were brought back

就無需顧忌其他，因為已經斷了生——斷 生這個詞很微妙，活著的動物我們稱之為 生的，死了的，能吃的，也被叫做「生的」。

除了稀奇古怪的不吃，存在民間傳說

的不吃，狗可以吃，老鄉下的狗死了後大

多是要回歸於他們的主人的。在城裡不吃， 大抵是因為狗有了新的社會身份了，與人 的分別像是顯得模糊起來。

我們將草坪挖開一個橢圓的坑，形狀

不美觀，縱向不到一米，橫里也窄，深度

又不夠。下雨，泥土粘在鐵鏟上，讓它變

得很沈重。我在下鏟的時候覺得猶豫，總

害怕將過去埋下的身體鏟出來，但實際上 鐵鏟不會碰到他們，它離找到他們很遙遠。 柚子樹在地下蔓延的根系像岩石那樣堅固， 盤曲著改變了地下的結構。過去開挖泥土

by the gardeners and cooked in a pot. They do not consider the death of an animal to be taboo as long as it is cooked to the degree that chopsticks can split it, meaning it’s not raw anymore. The word “raw” is intricate as living animals are regarded as “raw”, and so are the dead, edible ones.

Apart from the odd ones or things in folklore, everything is to be consumed, even dogs. Most dogs in the countryside will contribute to their owners one last time when they die. In the city, dogs are buried, probably because they have a new social identity, and the distinction between them and humans seems to blur.

We dug an oval hole in the lawn, unattractive in shape, less than a meter in length, narrow in width, and not deep enough. It rained, and the mud stuck to the shovel, making it heavy. I feel hesitant when digging down with the shovel, always afraid of shov elling out the buried bodies, but in reality, the shovel won’t touch them. It’s far from finding them. The roots of the teak trees spreading underground are as strong as a rock, coiling and changing the structure of the ground. The memory of the past digging was lost in the present, wrapped in these roots and veins exposed to the autumn rains in a dark brown glitter. We are ignorant of its history, only surprised.

It’s impossible to dig down. I said.

Father dug down twice with his shovel, hearing the metal and roots clanging together. He stopped and stood up straight. Mother didn’t like dogs. She stayed in the house.

Do you want to go and have a look? He asked me.

Have a look? I asked.

Take a look, father said, she is in the house.

I walked to the fence and heard the thin plastic raincoat on my body rubbing and rattling. I didn’t push the door open. I peered in from a distance and felt the dog lying as I saw two hind legs stretched straight in peace. Her short black fur was still smooth. Death was as silent and downy as some silk.

2

In 2012, our new house was finished, and its walls appeared snowy white. My father suddenly called out to me, standing downstairs. It was an autumn morning, just before eight o’clock. I remember the time because the reed ponds were yellow in the distance, and the clusters of wheatstalk-like branches shook and rustled in the wind. The fog was rising around us, and one or two egrets were landing from the sky.

When I heard the call, I went downstairs, changed into my trainers and walked out into the yard, where her beady eyes met me through the wooden cage. Initially, she didn’t show anything spe cial, and I only came home two days a week. I didn’t know her well. In fact, I neither particularly loved nor hated dogs in the slightest — I just felt used to having them there.

In the beginning, everything changes fast. In the second month, father decided to get an extra dog of

公園，那天那座公園仍然免費對所有人開 放，也是我們唯一一次帶著他和他的姐姐

去洗澡。我們的鎮子不大，總是見不到人，

坐落在城市和農村交界的邊緣，被一條高

速道路切過外沿。但鎮子里總有一家寵物

店，名字永遠不相同，轟轟烈烈開張，在 一片混亂和寂寥中關門，不是這家，就是 那家，各個店面都買過三隻吹風機和三個 大理石貼磚的水池，都承擔過一次洗剪吹 寵物的責任，也都遵循自然規律似的倒閉。

the same breed into the house. The second dog was like a little black bear, heavy in hand. We thought he fit the imagination of a distant jungle, so we called him Tarzan and took him for a shower in the car, only for Tarzan to shake like a milk bottle in a fourwheeled machine, open his mouth and puke on me. I opened the door and climbed onto the grass after him. The car stopped by the road to the park. The park was open to the public that day, and that was the only time we took him and his sister for a shower.

Our town is small, and we always see no one. It sits on the edge of the border between urban and rural areas, cut through the outer edge by a highway. But there was always a pet shop in town, and they never had the same name. The pet shops all opened with a bang and closed in a state of confusion and silence. Each shop has bought three hair dryers and three marble-tiled sinks, all have taken on the responsibility of washing pets, and all have closed down as if following the natural order of things.

Tarzan finished his bath first, and I put him on my lap, feeling like I was holding a human baby. I went to caress his soft tummy while he slept softly with his eyes closed.

A pet shop is a wonderful place where people study their friends of different species and enjoy it. I thought of the dogs running in the vegetable patch and on the concrete ground during cloudy days, smelling like a particular dog scent in the rain, walk ing on four legs through the river in succession. The wind whips through the distant green grass, leaving them jagged, the overcast clouds pressing against the village sky. All those endless sounds of hair dryer

第二個週一我去上課，週末回家。媽

媽告訴我泰山死了，或許是因為感冒，或 許是因為其他原因，已經埋葬。我問：埋

and the warmth made me sleepy. I sat on a wooden bench, watching Tarzan sleep as if I already had a hunch in my mind that we would not return to this pet shop.

The following Monday, I went to class and came home for the weekend. Mother told me that Tarzan had died, perhaps from a cold or something else, and had been buried. I asked: where was it buried? I forget the answer, except it was probably a park or a cemetery outside a hotel with European architecture.

It was one that makes delicious wine dumplings. Turn right out of the hotel car park, drive through the pitch road, and turn left, where the car wheels will run over the black fruit falling from the tall balsam fir trees on both sides and along the main road wing unfolded two patches of grass with factory buildings cascading in the distance. They told me that perhaps Tarzan is buried here. 3

Father brought home a new dog during the winter. In the photo, its two ears are hanging limply, with un fading fluff and a glint on the tip of his nose. Father called me to ask if I had any suggestions for a name. I remembered the wolf’s image in the cartoon and said: Tairo. Their names all start with ta, father said. He was thinking of “Tar”, as in Tarzan.

Father always loved well-known breeds, and this one too, a German Shepherd, was banned in the city, but father still managed to get the dog into the

用雨傘去擋開他，狗仍然高高興興地哼哼，

保持熱情。

隔壁鄰居家新養了狗，也是一條德牧，

大概五月大的時候被我們家的狗咬傷。這 件事我是聽說來的，那時候這條小狗跑出

car somehow, a sort of the second brother to her. When he was little, he was kept loose in the yard, sometimes in a wooden cage with her. I took a liking to him, thinking that a furry animal was cute and be longed to my family, so it should be looked after. He probably liked me too, wagging his tail when he saw me, sticking his tongue out, flicking both ears back and breathing out hot, white air in winter. But the truth is that he was happy to see anyone and always had perseverance that kept the dog humming happily and remaining enthusiastic even when my mother used her umbrella to keep him away because she was afraid of him.

Our next-door neighbour had a new dog, also a German Shepherd, who was bitten by our dog when he was about five months old. I heard about this in cident when this little dog ran out of their yard, and our yard gate was open, so two dogs bit each other, one on the leg and one on the chest. One of our help tried to pull them apart and got a bite on her leg. The little dog was taken to the hospital with a lame hind leg and a punctured lung, walking wobbly, but it was alive. Father paid ￥8,000 out of his pocket, ￥5,000 to the neighbour, ￥3,000 to the help and the medical bills were all covered.

The neighbours called their dog Dalong (which means a big dragon), and Father called the neigh bours’ dog little limp. Little limp survived, thin and dry, his back arched and somewhat bouncy. He wandered in front of the courtyard gate, with his eyes darting over the street, constantly barking and his voice so shrill and thin that Father said he was scared out of his wits, and that made him look like a eunuch who pinched his voice to speak instead of a

路過的人叫，對著車叫，對著空地叫，總 是破音，激動得上下竄動，發亮的皮毛包

住了他的骨頭，顯得滑稽。

曾經爸爸牽著我們的兩條狗站在門前，

那條被咬傷了的動物凝固在車輛的旁邊，遠

離來自門外的嗅聞。但他很快開始搖尾巴，

而在爸爸伸出手的時候發出一種嗚咽的聲

音，仍然尖銳，細微，模糊地從喉嚨里擠出

來。小殘把鼻子伸出鐵門之間的縫隙，爸爸

把手從上方伸進去，放到他的頭頂。尾巴的

搖動讓狗的後肢在空中擺著，那條殘缺了的 腿蜷縮在腹側，激動地抽搐。他要麼是全然 不清楚自己是殘疾的，要麼就是已然把事實 和過去忘卻——忘卻讓他感受到被撫摸的 快樂，要麼是他把過去都原諒。

wolf-dog. The neighbour’s iron gate was hollowed out and I could see the garden of their house with tall and short plants, like a tropical rainforest, except for a small clearing in front of the iron gate, which was fenced off and made into a car park, surrounded by a stone wall higher than the roof of the car. Dalong could have gone elsewhere, but he always stayed, stubbornly guarding the gate, barking at people pass ing by, at vehicles or the air, always breaking into tones, scurrying up and down in agitation. His shiny fur hilariously wrapped around his bones.

Once Father stood in front of the door with our two dogs, the bitten animal frozen beside the vehi cle, away from our dogs’ sniffing from the outside. But he soon began to wag his tail while making a whimpering sound, still sharp, subtle and muffled, squeezed out of his throat as Father held out his hand. Little limp stuck his nose out of the gap be tween the iron gates, and father put his hand in from above, on top of his head. The wagging of his tail makes the dog’s hind limbs swing in the air, and the mangled leg curled up on the side of his belly, twitching in agitation. Either little limp was unaware that he was disabled, or he had forgotten the truth— forgetting allowed him to feel the joy of being petted—or he had forgiven the past altogether.

Tairo had grown too, his ears fully erect, his body strong, his fleece fading cleanly, and his tail sweeping powerfully. He began to be tied to the car park for longer and longer, running in the garden for less and less, the chain getting thicker and thicker. The chain length allowed him to go halfway around the car, but he couldn’t touch the lawn.

一些狗不是在這片土地上繁衍的，而

是急匆匆地被推到這裡來，夾在水泥同泥

水之間，受到很大的禁錮和折磨。泰郎總

是在那個木屋的旁邊蹲坐著，姿勢像軍犬

那麼標準，每每見到我們，就站起來搖尾

巴，同金屬的摩擦聲一起發出那種嗚鳴。

In those days, my father could take the side road west of the toll booth and go to the cinema across the province in fifteen minutes. I came back once a week, and the car drove us to the movies every week. We always come home at eight or nine o’clock at night. Every Saturday night, when the vehicle was reversing, the distance-sensing device sound ed a warning of an object behind. I would see Taro jumping left and right, standing on his hind legs, revealing his pale-yellow belly as he jumped up. The chain that held him was tied to the post of the small wooden house next to the car park with the red tail lights shining on it. It looked like the flash of light when the shutter was pressed.

Some dogs were not bred on this land but were pushed here in a hurry, caught between concrete, mud, and water and subjected to great confinement and torture. Tairo always sat crouched beside the hut in the standard posture of a military dog, and when ever he saw us, he stood up and wagged his tail, making that whine with the scraping of metal. I’d pet him on the head, and he’d jump up and lunge at me, standing ten centimetres taller than me without diffi culty. He was robust but not as strong as the chains, and I hesitated when I looked into his eyes and touched his fur with my hand. The hesitation that, in retrospect, was probably a combination of guilt and my fear of pity when I felt his warm head.

I stopped touching him because he was too en thusiastic about me as if he was sending me an expec tation that I could free him, and I couldn’t afford it.

It’s hard to remember how long the chain held him. I left the house, returned for the weekend, and

鐵門如何敞開著。我家的門口正對著一條

the dog was gone. Father told me that the chain had come off the post, and Tairo had run away.

My father and mother chatted at the dinner table, retelling his escape, telling me how the chain had come off the post and the iron gate was open. The entrance to my house faced a tarred road that fits two cars. Father said he had heard the gardeners shouting in the backyard, the chains dragging on the ground. And when he rushed to the front yard, he saw Tairo darting out, running headlong in people’s shout to somewhere he had never been before.

我想起在泰郎過去走在青草地上，一 個小雨的黃昏，天是輕飄飄的灰紅色，而 在那些一個又一個重復的夜晚之中，拖行 的、徘徊的、無休止的金屬聲音消失了， 變成了馬蹄鐵那樣響亮的敲擊聲，那是他 跑得最快，最遠的一次。

它被關得太久啦。爸爸說。它瘋了。

I recalled when Tariro used to walk on the green grass on a light rainy evening. The sky was light grey-red, and in those repeated nights after nights, the dragging, wandering, and endless metal sounds disappeared and became the clatter of horseshoes. It was the fastest and furthest he ever ran.

It’s been locked up too long. Father said. It’s gone mad.

The chain rubbed against the ground in a series of sparks, and the dog next door must have seen those sparks and heard that sound as Tairo rushed out. He must have kept barking and barking all night as if it were him running.

Now, we still talk about Tairo. My father and grandfather say that the dog probably got caught, they laugh, and it should have become someone’s meal.

Or maybe he was adopted by someone else. I said.

I really don’t know where he would have gone,

正好好可以捧在手心。它將頭墊在爸爸的 鞋子上睡覺，行走的時候總要咬著我的褲 腳。他留下的時間不是很長，身體的寬度 沒有增加多少就被接走，過了大概一年的 時間又回來，毛髮在跑動的時候飄著，已 經近成年，寄養了個把星期，又被接走。

一段時間後，爸爸說她，也就是我們 的第一條狗，應該是懷孕了。

實際上，我到現在都不清楚她的懷孕 週期有多長，哪怕她已經生育過三次，我

and sometimes I read stories of reunions and imagine what it would have been like to see him on the side of the road. I believe that he’d not want to be seen by me again, but I also believe that he’d be like the lame dog, wagging his tail, lowering his head, letting out a tiny whimper, forgiving and forgetting everything.

4

Father brought home the fourth dog, a golden re triever. The length of an adult hand from the tips of the fingers to the base of the palm is about twenty centimetres, and he appears in the yard just right to be held in the palm. He slept with his head on my father’s shoes and always nipped at my trouser leg when he walks. He didn’t stay very long and was picked up without putting much weight on his body. It came back after about a year with fur fluttering as he ran. He was nearly a grown-up and stayed for a week before returning to his owner’s house.

Sometime later, father said, our first dog was probably pregnant.

In fact, I’m still not sure how long her pregnan cy cycle was, even though she had given birth three times. All I remember is that the guess was correct and that it was winter when that my father’s assump tion was confirmed. It was snowing in Shanghai. Father tidied up the wooden house next to the park ing, moved two bicycles with rusted-out benches outside and placed them against the chained post to make room for about a metre of birthing space across. He bought a new doghouse, found some old

的、老鼠似的小動物。 第一胎的時候生了八隻，死了三隻， 不會是溫度的問題，也不會是疾病，只能 將之歸結為優勝劣汰。爸爸告知我這件事 的時候已經第一次挖開了柚子樹下還鬆軟 的泥土，把它們埋了進去。

那段時間發生的事情我竟然一點都不 記得了，只知道留下了一隻小公狗和他的 母親生活在一起，在那之後，她又一次懷 孕，生下來的又是八隻狗，又只活了五隻， 又埋葬了但是，我們又留下了一隻，仍然 是公狗。她最後一次懷孕是在二零一八年 的春夏之交，又是八隻，仍然活下來五隻， 留下來一隻，那一隻也就是那個在她死的 時候坐在柵欄里的兒子，名字叫做阿福。

blankets and a small sun (one kind of heater), locked the windows and let her move in.

Her personality was already mild by then— again, this is my assumption. I only remember her character as gentle, calm, and silent. She rarely barked in the period before her death. So it was pre sumably this past winter that this personality began to develop. I returned from school, still carrying my backpack, and went into the cabin, where I could see her lying on her side in the hot interior. The light from the little sun made the place look like a furnace. She lay on her side with a few small oval-shaped, mouse-like creatures under her belly.

Eight were born in the first given birth, and three died. It would not have been a matter of tempera ture or disease. It could only come down to natural selection. Father had already dug up the still-soft soil under the grapefruit tree and buried them when he informed me of this.

I don’t remember anything that happened during that time, except that a young male puppy was left to live with his mother. After that, she became pregnant again and gave birth to another eight dogs. Only five more survived, and the dead were buried again. We still kept one dog, still a male. Her last pregnancy was in the spring and summer of 2018. She still gave birth to eight, five survived, and one was left behind, the same puppy sitting by the fence when she died. His name was Afu.

Afu was not smart. The main reason could be that he was the product of inbreeding. My father always thought he had some of the symptoms of Down’s syndrome in dogs. He was like Faulkner’s

時候他拒絕再動。轉角的風景他不熟悉， 在他日日所看到的那條路的盡頭右轉居然 還有路，這是一種可怕的事實。

他在方方面面都像是本傑明，對著偶

爾出現的走錯路的人大喊大叫，想從鐵門裡 衝出去。如果我們出現在他面前，他就顯得 和平而溫順，像是我們是他的凱蒂。但是阿

福的確不擅長控制自己的生理反應，當我們 站在平地上而我試圖去碰他的腦袋的時候， 他並不理解我的意圖，只是趴伏著來到腳 邊，動作有些滑稽地躺下，翻出肚子，總是 會尿，因為他太過激動，原因是平時和我

Benji, gigantic in stature but mindless.

At four months old, he ran out of the metal door after the car, waited until the door closed before thinking about going home, and was so intent on getting back through the door that he ended up with his head stuck inside and his bottom outside. The incident repeated itself when Afu was six months old when his physique matured and therefore got stuck even more tightly, and as my father tried to push him in, Afu grunted while pissing on his rescuer’s hand.

After that, he never set foot outside the metal gate of his own accord. We tried to walk the dog with the leash attached to his collar. When he reached the corner of the road, he refused to move because the view around the corner was unfamiliar to him, and the fact that there was actually a road to the right at the end of the road he saw every day was kind of scary.

He was like Benjamin in every way, shouting at the occasional person who appeared to be lost and trying to burst through the iron gates. If we appeared in front of him, he seemed peaceful and docile, like we were his Katie. But, indeed, Afu is not good at controlling his physical reactions. When we stand on the ground and try to touch his head, he doesn’t understand our intentions and crouches down to his feet, lies down funnily, rolls out his belly and always pees because he is so excited. The reason is that he spends so little time with us while he does rely on us, which makes the slightest touch seem like a form of love. He does not lack anything he needs to survive: his accommodation is a separate small yard and

wooden hut that is cleaned regularly, and water and food are plentiful and nutritious. It has made him a bit fat but strong, with a smooth coat and a mild disposition.

Afu’s two brothers and their two fathers were sent to my grandfather to be watchdogs. They were kept in the innermost shed of the factory in the coun tryside and were occasionally let out to run around the artificial lake or to roll around among some sickly peach trees. Afu did not have the company of anyone, and after the death of his mother or grand mother’s death, this loneliness became more evident. When alone, he began to howl, either against the silent stone wall or in response to the sirens of ambu lances, police cars and fire engines. His howls were loud, passing through many barriers to my room, one after another, until the end when the sound dropped, muffled little by little, and finally became a low, hoarse whine. He kept learning the signals from the mechanical device, like a confession or conversation, and at some point, after the honking was far away, Afu’s cries came to an abrupt end. The surroundings returned to a gentle silence.

friend of my parents has a dog in their house. Technically I’d call them godparents, closer than friends, but still not quite family. We live in the same neighbourhood, and as their family is wealthy, it is only natural that they would want a dog of style. The father of that family brought home a solid black

前腿腳還不錯。乾爸又說：媽媽從前還給卡

卡洗澡。乾爸笑起來，說買了專門用的浴

缸、沐浴露和一個木桶，讓卡卡自己跳進去。

這麼有耐心，幫狗洗澡，我小時候，媽媽

都沒有那樣幫我洗過澡。

我們剛見面的時候那條狗在客廳的籠 子里，藍色的細鐵絲刮著他的牙齒，被啃 得掉了色，他隔著鐵絲舔著我的手指。幾 個月以後，他的住處搬到了後院。卡卡趴 在柵欄上，隔著客廳的玻璃向內看。我拿 著零食餵他而他在我們打算離開的時候他 開始大叫。我走到客廳里，隔著一層薄紗

guard dog named Kaka, the same as that Brazilian football star.

But he can’t run as fast, agile and pretty as the football star. In fact, he wasn’t quite able to run due to the giant size of his body and the restricted space. It made his hind legs seem out of place with the development of his whole body. His front limbs and head were already in the shape of an adult dog, while the hind limbs remained as they had been when he had just been picked up and brought home—thin and soft, which forced him to sit crouched, and the weight of his front half causing him to hunch his back slightly and keep his head down.

Godmother talked about this dog at the dinner table and said he was growing too fast. His hind legs were undeveloped and lacked calcium. Father said to give him more supplements like calcium tablets would be good. Bones would be good but don’t feed him chicken bones. They will scratch his gullet. Godfather said that he was eating too well and that he was only growing his front legs. Godfather added: my mother used to bathe Kaka. He laughed and said she had bought a unique bathtub, a bathing gel and a wooden bucket for Kaka to jump into. She was so patient when bathing the dog, and his mother didn’t even do that for him when he was little.

The dog was in his cage in the living room when we first met, licking my fingers through the wire. The thin blue wire scraped against his teeth and was gnawed off. A few months later, his place moved to the backyard. Kaka leaned on the fence, looking in through the living room glass. I fed him a snack, and he started yelling just as we were about to leave. I

黃色的回來，不過幾個月大，裝在阿克蘇

蘋果的紙板箱里，像只土豆，兩個耳朵軟

著，倒三角似的支在他頭頂。因為那天是 六月六號，近端午，他的名字於是就叫做 六六，六六大順，也吉利。

六六和誰都不一樣，他在打開車門的

walked into the living room and could still see his head resting on the fence and his front paws on either side of his mouth in the fading light of day through the veil curtains.

Kaka stood up and fell back down, repeating the act for two hours, and until I said goodbye to my godmother and godfather, he was still bouncing up and down and shouting, with his voice fading as it made its way through the fence, the glass, the living room and the stone wall. I wonder how those two thin, young hind legs made him jump up and poke his head over the fence.

6

The factory janitor also had two unleashed dogs, black and white, male and female. In the spring and summer of 2019, the female dog had given birth to her pups and was run over by a car on the road. My father picked a yellow one out of a group of siblings, just a few months old, packed in a cardboard box of Aksu apples, like a potato, with two ears flopping and propped up on top of his head like an inverted triangle. As it was the sixth day of the sixth month, near the Dragon Boat Festival, it was named Liuliu (double six in Chinese), representing good fortune.

Unlike anyone else, Liuliu jumped out as the car door was open and darted through the metal gate, rushing out from the metal door, with my father and I chasing after him for half an hour before we found him under the car on the side of the road and grabbed him from the ground.

的天性而被控制著，永遠顯得暴躁又憤怒； 要麼躺在地上，眯起來的眼睛旁的白色毛 髮上叮著一些蚊蟲，透明的翅膀在正午的 太陽里發亮。

爸爸等待六六長大，等待著鐵門的門 縫開始變得狹窄。他用磚頭將兩側的空隙 填堵起來，又買了鐵絲，將鐵門的下半部 分纏繞，把多出來的鐵絲剪成小段，用鉗 子扭成一個個鋒利的結。院門合攏起來的 時候，追求自由成為了一種過錯。 六六來這裡的時候發生了一次圍捕， 目的是讓他住進院子，而在離開這裡的時 候又發生了一次追捕，為了把他帶出去。

The gap in the iron gate was wide enough for Liuliu to get in and out, so he was free to come and go. He defied discipline, and once he was let out, he would squeeze through the gaps in the gate, arch his back and walk down the road, tearing through neigh bours’ rubbish bags, picking bones out of the wet rubbish, never returning when people call him.

He looks like a field dog, dry and thin, with his tail curled up. Both ears are erect after he has spent his early childhood, his nails long and displaying almost typical, familiar characteristics of some field dogs. The dogs that wander on the fields, always roaming around during the day and returning home at night, do not leave the village, living aimlessly like young men with dyed yellow hair, passing the game house and the paddy fields, kicking and tap ping their toes on the reflective concrete, unobserved and unrestricted. Some other dogs are chained in the yard, either controlled by their biting nature, perpet ually grumpy and angry, or lying on the ground with mosquitoes stinging on their white fur next to their squinting eyes, with the insects’ transparent wings glowing in the midday sun.

Father waited for Liuliu to grow up and for the gaps in the iron gate to start getting narrower. He filled the gaps on both sides with bricks and bought wire, wrapped the lower part of the iron gate around it, cut the extra wire into small sections and twisted it with pliers into a sharp knot. The pursuit of freedom became a fault when the courtyard gate was closed.

A round-up happened when Liuliu came here to get him to live in the yard, and another chase oc curred when we took him out. Father’s friend needed

a watchdog, so two vans stopped at the entrance, and six men got out of the white Jinbei car. Liuliu broke free from his strap but was grabbed and picked up during the hour-long chase, with his two hind legs stretched downwards, showing his belly, the front legs held flat in the air. His body was rigid, showing a melancholy look.

His eyes were familiar to me; his eyes belonged to the life with oily, loose brown skin, always look ing both sad and hopeful between the fields.

Liuliu was shoved into the van, and before the vehicle started, father took a frontal picture of him through the green window glass for the first time. I later heard that Liuliu carried out a third escape. Af ter getting out of the van, he sped through the inner roads and grass of the factory campus, hiding among the steel, before being caught after more than two hours. I also heard that he went on a hunger strike after being caught. Only on the morning of the fourth day the friend who ran the factory saw that the food bowl was empty. 7

Before Liuliu was taken away, another dog was fostered at my house. In July and August, when the sun was shining, an extra plastic doghouse was built by the fish pond. His name was little tiger. He was a light grey field dog with soft yellow ears and a tail, and the most typical feature was the white rings around his eyes, which looked like two slices of onion over his face.

He shared a high degree of consistency with Liuliu’s character, being both friendly and unwilling to be disciplined. He chewed off a red tow rope to free himself from the side of a fish pond, chewed off a rubber tie to free himself from under a tree, jumped out of his carrier to free himself, and broke the iron chains to free himself.

This breakaway seemed to ignite his desire to watch over the house. Being leashed at night, he tended to be quiet and treated all creatures as if they were friends, but off the leash, he began to bark and patrol around the compound with extreme serious ness. Not sure if he was chasing away animals who harboured malicious intentions, but it did wipe out all our sleep.

There was a tug-of-war between submission and disobedience, which applied to both human and dog relationships. I didn’t know if insomnia caused the desire for change. My father led the dog from the lawn to the parking space with a skipping rope and a chain. In front of the wooden house of the parking space were two poles, the one on the inside where Tairo had used to be tied and the one on the outside where the new dog was now tied. When my father did this, it was perhaps not in retaliation for the dog’s disobedience but with a sense of responsibility to make the dog a faithful watchdog.

That new dog was quiet, and instead of going berserk like his predecessor in the parking space, he kept silent in the darkness with a kind of per severance. The thin chain began to rub back and forth again on the concrete and marble floor, drag ging out white scratches. During the day, when the

分散向兩個方向，別人才知道他們並不是 主人同看門狗，而是一對陌生路人。

實際上，排除了那些被鍊子拴在院子 里的狗之外，另一部分狗被飼養的原因真 是不清不楚，他們既對生產毫無幫助，也 不能看家護院，同時，人們也不希望他們 提供情感支持，也不熱衷於撫摸他們，但 依舊允許這些狗進入房門，用剩飯餵養， 並放任他們在白天離開院落，在街道自由

gates opened and closed, people came in and out, that chain also became agitated, the dog emitting a sharp and shrill cry. When it was at night, everything around it seemed frozen, and the chain began an occasional whirl, which circled and rang every few minutes.

8

In the countryside, it’s hard to tell between stray dogs and dogs with owners. They always wander about in the daytime, travelling alone or in groups. Some dogs know about traffic rules, smarter than some children. They may walk alongside the people to cross the bridge and head in different directions after crossing. Only then would others realise that they are not the owner and the watchdog but a pair of passers-by who don’t know each other.

In fact, excluding those chained in the yard, it is unclear why some dogs are kept. They are neither helpful to the production of the field nor do they look after the house, while they are not expected to pro vide any emotional support. But the owners of the houses still allow these dogs to enter the yard, feed them with leftovers and let them leave the compound during the day to roam freely in the streets.

This relationship has become particularly pro nounced where the city and the countryside meet. The owners of the compounds that do not live on the farmland anymore still carry the habit of the farmer with them. They keep their dogs between the pots where they grow greens and potatoes and the

courtyards paved with bricks and concrete. Instead of rotten mud floors, straw, cardboard, tin plates and the back of tricycles, they provide padded cushions for the dogs. But here, the dogs are kept in the home as a symbol of the past. They lose their purpose that is slowly being forgotten, wandering in an unseen confusion on this borderland.

9

We failed to dig the hole and shovelled the dirt back in to fill it in. Mother found a pet funeral company on the internet and asked them to come and pick her up.

The city was under curfew at the time. We couldn’t get out. Those with passes could get in— but I’m not sure whether that was the case anymore, memories of this year mixed with past memories. Those most intimate times and spaces that I once had had become blurred between the seams of the strange and the familiar feelings— they came in a black car and brought a coffin with pulleys.

The youngest puppy who stayed with her didn’t follow when father moved her out of the shed. By the time the metal door closed, mother had asked if I had any photos that could be used for the commem orative video, for there wasn’t a single photo of the dog in their phone. I browsed through the phone to find four pictures that were barely enough for the video. The company sent over a video based on its template, and after a few photos showed up, it was a row of words with an ornamental script: Forever in our hearts.

她卻從來都沒有發表什麼意見，從來都不 獨自嚎叫，從來都對於她的房子內多出一 個同伴或者少了一個豪不在意，讓自己從 起點流淌向終點，成為生命的基底，對自 己所處的境地渾然不覺，亦或是坦然接受。

The black car drove up to the house again. The driver and co-driver bent low in their suits, looking serious and sullen, handed over a box with four square corners, and reversed away. So an extra small pit was found under the grapefruit tree, and the dog was mixed with a handful of earth to cover the beds of her first, second and third generations of children, without a real name.

I didn’t feel much sadness; the emotions were as silent as her presence, and this dog’s image and char acter were surprisingly vague.

I can no longer remember how she behaved during each phase of her life, except that she did experience the coming and going of companions and children. Whether young or mature, the one that died always came and went in haste. She never expressed nor howled alone, never cared if there was an extra companion or a missing one in her house. The dog simply allowed herself to flow from the beginning to the end to become the base of life. She can be obliv ious to the situation she finds herself in, or perhaps she has long since accepted it.

猜測那條狗大概也是死了。

We heard no more of that faint barking coming from our neighbour’s house for two weeks after her death. We then realised that the lame dog was proba bly dead too.

The overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to do when arriving at the border on the other side is shown in its purest form in this special group. Maomao’s mind stops developing while her body continues to grow, and this dislocation of life pushes her into a state of eternal innocence. Her mother loves her, but the care from a loved one does not enable Maomao to be truly in tune with the outside world. Maomao’s thirty-fifth birthday becomes as much of a turning point as her third birthday. On her third birthday, the difference between Mao’s age and her mind begins, and on her thirty-fifth birthday, the negativity that characterises this difference is powerfully revealed.

I created this story because of the relationship between body and ma terial conditions, mind and cultural perceptions in the story. One factor has irreversibly developed, while the other has not been able to grow to match it. In the first part, I try to construct a metaphorical relationship between two groups, and in this part, I want to reflect on the predicament of the group in terms of the individual. The protagonists’ plight is also the plight of the ‘in-between’. But the difference is that Maomao possesses a distinct imperfection and the pain it has caused is in plain sight. By contrast, the latter’s predicament is perplexing. In terms of physical and mental con dition, the people living in the junction appear to be both complete and incomplete. They ponder the question: What is a complete person? What does it mean to be whole?

找李小燕的時候，她正在廁所絞那塊 毛巾。

太陽在玻璃門另一側閃著，溫熱的橙 黃色從樓道間的青灰色里辟出一塊天地來， 汩汩地湧著，沿著青色地磚緩緩拉長，變淡。

毛毛媽媽呢？毛毛媽媽今朝沒來嗎？不會，

剛剛看見她在前頭的。阿姨阿婆站在走廊

里，踩著幾雙款式一樣的玫紅的、天藍的鞋。

When they looked for Li Xiaoyan, she was twisting the towel in the toilet.

The sun glinted on the other side of the glass door, and the warm orange yellow carved a space out of the greenish grey between the buildings, bubbling and gurgling, slowly lengthening and fading along the greenish floor tiles. Where is Maomao’s mother? Is Maomao’s mother not here this morning? I just saw her at the front. Other parents were standing in the corridor, wearing rose and sky-blue shoes of the same style.

The words “Mao, Mao, Ma, Ma” come out of their mouths with their upper and lower lips touching each other four times, and these four touches land crisply in the empty, high hallway and echo mutely.

When Li Xiaoyan heard the sound and came out of the toilet next to the stairs, holding a white square towel with a small line of words embroidered on it: Jia Bin Hotel. She approached in a few steps, the end of her ponytail sticking up, slightly yellow, the hallway behind her still dark and dull, but her eyes lit up.

Is class over? Li Xiaoyan asked gently.

李小燕住的小區不算老，九十年代建 的，本來只有十來棟樓房，零零年又開了 河邊的一片地，多造出一個區委會小樓， 一個居民活動廣場，還有幾十棟樓房，和 老房子一樣，都是六層的。毛毛家大約是 零三年搬來的，沒買新房，接的二手，一樓，

兩室一廳，主臥連著十平米的小院，第一 任房主砌了磚牆，三面圍起，靠南的牆上 挖了幾個小洞，做了個仿蘇州園林的小窗， 頂棚安了鐵的柵欄，微微向上拱起，籠子 似得把院子封起來，上面鋪著老小區統一 樣式的青色透明擋板，太陽大的時候，藍 綠色的光像是水紋似的游在紅磚的地上。 她家就挨著廣場，中間隔一條車道，

The community Li Xiaoyan lived in is not that old. Built in the nineties, it originally had only ten build ings or so. In the year 2000, a piece of land by the river was opened up to construct a small building for the district committee, a residents’ activity square, and dozens of buildings that are the same as the old six-storey houses. Maomao’s family moved in 2003. It was an old house in the first follow, with two rooms and a living room. The main bedroom is connected to a tiny yard of ten square meters. The previous owner of the house built a brick wall and surrounded it on three sides, with a few small holes dug in the south wall to make a small window im itating a Suzhou Garden. Iron fences are installed on the roof with a slightly upward shape as if a cage captures the yard within. Green plastic shields of the traditional community are laid out on the top. When the sun is high, the blue-green light reflects on the red brick floor as if it were a wind-blown lake.

Her house is right next to the square, separat ed by a driveway lined with balsam fir, which has grown tall and large over the decades, and a few pines planted along the square. At night, the colour of the electronic screen reflects on her house’s fa cade, mixed with the wobbly shadows of a few trees. In fact, this has little effect on Li Xiaoyan’s house, which has only two windows, a narrow one in the kitchen, to the north, with a frosted window paper, and the other one in the second bedroom, facing the street, which is not used at all.

The window is not used, not because it faces the street, that people coming and going can glance in. It is not much of a problem for people who have moved over from the old neighbourhood, as they

小區搬過來的人不在乎這個。這扇窗不能

用是因為它被封住了，不是別的封法，是 用木板四個角上打釘子，一層又一層釘， 鋪天蓋地，將一整個窗子遮沒。不知道是 一開始就沒用完整的木料，還是因為時間 久了開裂剝落，這一面封起來的窗上竟是 什麼樣的木板都有的，長的、方的、三角的， 紅的、青的、黃的，有的上面還可見「某美 亞材料有限公司」，但已經是多少都泛了深 棕色，雨天一淋，幾條防盜窗鋼管子遮了幾 滴雨，攔出斑斑駁駁深淺不一的黑，油光光 一層，河流似的從上往下流，順著綠白色馬 賽克的牆壁，淌到水泥地上，那窗在路燈里 發亮，但燈光是進不去也出不來的。 窗子具體是什麼時候釘起來的，沒人

have become less concerned with the preservation of their personal privacy in their crowded lives. The window doesn’t work because it’s sealed. It is not simply sealed in any other way, but a whole window is covered with countless layers of wood planks and nails driven into the four corners to secure it.

I don’t know if the wood was intact from the start or if it had cracked and peeled over time, but this side of the window was sealed with all kinds of boards, long, square, triangular, red, green, yellow, some of which were visible as “ Red Star Macall ine Group Corporation Ltd.”, but they were already more or less all dark brown. When it rains, a few security window pipes block a few drops of rain, and the wood panels show patches of varying shades of black, which seems like a greasy layer that flows like a river from top to bottom, down the green and white mosaic walls and onto the concrete floor. The win dow is glowing in the streetlight, but the light can neither enter nor come out.

No one could remember exactly when the win dow was nailed up, but an old man in the square said that it was sealed because Li Xiaoyan’s daughter got her head stuck in the security window not long after she had moved in. A younger man asked: “It would be better to lock the window. What is the point of sealing it up? When the child grew up, she would understand what she shouldn’t do. “ The old man glanced around twice, nodded, wrinkled his eyebrows and pursed his lips, then touched his collar before saying that the child of Li Xiaoyan was a foolish one.

In fact, they don’t call the woman Li Xiaoyan. They call her Maomao’s mother or one of Maomao’s family.

盤著，劉海一字齊平，遮到眉毛上邊一兩

寸。要說她胖是不準確的，她是有些發腫，

臉上不紅的地方就發白，擠得兩隻眼睛眯 起來，但那眼珠子亮得很，黑得很，往里看，

是一點也看不到底的。

可毛毛偏偏喜歡盯著人看，誰和她講 話，和李小燕講話，或是站在一旁，毛毛 那雙眼睛就看過去，一下子轉到那個人身

Maomao is called Mao Chunhua, large figure, more than one hundred and ninety pounds, not good-looking, not ugly, round face, cheekbones raised, and the two pieces of meat on the cheeks appear red. She has a fat cheek, and her two lips are also thick, always slightly open, showing her front teeth. Her hair is short, shaved on both sides. Her black hair coils at the top of her head, with straight bangs that cover an inch or two above her eyebrows. It would be inaccurate to say that she is fat. To be precise, she is a little bit swollen, with her face white where it is not red, and her eyes squeezed into a squint. But those pupils are so deep and dark that when you look into her eyes, you cannot see the bottom at all.

But Maomao likes to stare at people. She stares at whoever talks to her, Li Xiaoyan, or just stands aside. Her eyes will look over and turn to that person at once, and when that person notices this gaze and looks back, Mao Chunhua’s eyes still stare motion lessly, with a dark and heavy gaze. But on closer in spection, she isn’t actually looking at anyone. There is a light falling into the blackness, lightly holding Maomao’s gaze and flying away through the person being gazed at.

The thin wall of Maomao’s house, a sealed window and the distance of a dozen paces could block the view but not the sound. When Li Xiaoyan and Mao Chunhua were not on the playground or the road, they always seemed to have vanished in their house. When someone walks past the window or stands still outside their door, he will hear no sound but the wind blowing the wooden boards against the security window, “tinkling, tinkling”. The sound

窗子里的確生活著毛毛和媽媽嗎？的 確生活著的，李小燕提著菜回去，流水的 聲音總不被還沈睡的人們聽見。正午，白 色的太陽里「哧啦」的炒菜聲，低迷的黃昏 顏色里，「叩叩」、「叩叩」，刀碰著案板， 連同那屋子里的囁嚅低語，和抹布擦過地 面的摩擦聲，被一股風捎帶著，從窗縫的 黑里鑽出來，霧氣似的飄散。 可她們總歸要曬太陽。李小燕就帶 毛毛出來，每天都出來，春夏秋冬，散步 是不能停的，他們管這叫出來溜。夏天太

travel through the green, painted iron door, turns into a dark corner, and after the key has chimed crisply, all human voices fade into the silence.

They do live there. When Li Xiaoyan carries the food back home, the sound of running water is silent to those still asleep. The sound of stir-frying in the white midday sun, the “knock” of knives on the counter in the dusky colours, together with the mum bling and whispering of the house and the scraping of rags on the floor, are carried by a breeze through the blackness of the windows and then dispersed like mist.

But they need the sun. Li Xiaoyan took Maomao out every day in spring, summer, autumn and winter. They could not stop taking a walk. They called it a stroll. When it is the hot summer season, Maomao will wear a pink short sleeve, the same colour as the pink on her face, but at other times she always has thick clothes made of cotton on her. These clothes were probably sewn by Li Xiaoyan herself, so the in terior was filled with extra material, and the threads fell extra densely. When Maomao put them on, her figure was even bigger, just like a mountain. Li Xiaoyan will wear a pale blue cardigan and snuggle up short to Maomao, like a small grass growing near a tree. She is small and thin, with a low ponytail. Her hair is grey, but the tips of her ponytail are yellow and tenaciously turn outwards. She always keeps her eyes looking down between the front and the ground while walking.

Li Xiaoyan goes to the square, holding Mao mao’s arms as if she is grabbing her or holding her up. It was only a dozen steps long walk from the

李小燕貼著毛毛，頭微微地轉了轉， 脖子又微微地伸，四處望著，像是在找一

個什麼東西，如果有人視線和她對上了，

她便別過頭去，望風景似的，而如果誰向 她走過來，開口叫她毛毛媽媽，再問一句

door of the house to the square. They stroll, and when they reach the square, they will stand on its edge, near a large pine tree in the green belt.

Li Xiaoyan stands close to Maomao. Her head turns slightly, her neck stretches slightly as if she were looking for something, and if someone’s eyes meet hers, she looks away as if she were looking at nothing else but the scenery. And if anyone comes up to her, greets her for a chat, and asks, “Did you take Maomao out for a walk?” Li Xiaoyan will look up, with her eyes downcast, shake Mao Chunhua and reply: “Ah yes, take her out for a walk.” Then she will pat Maomao’s arm, or very seriously, as if it is something vital, tuck Maomao’s sleeve little by little, and say: she does need to go out for a walk.

Whether Maomao needs a break is something that will never be known. Maomao spends most of her time outside just standing or being held by Li Xiaoyan. Li Xiaoyan talks to Maomao and uses a white towel to wipe her face, over and over again, as Maomao bends down and lowers her head to comply. Maomao knows how to behave, but not that much. Whenever Li Xiaoyan talks to someone else, Maomao stands with her two lips parted in a smile. People call her over and charm her, saying, “Mao mao, this is your uncle. Maomao, this is your gran ny.” She then hides behind Li Xiaoyan’s back, with a thick muttering in her throat, humming and pouting. Everyone laughs.

里，冬天就在車道上走，好擋住樓間的風。

居委會後面開小門，她們就從小門上樓梯。

去得早，總是第一個。

樓梯很寬，階沿鑲著防滑的金邊，時 間久了，鬆動了，踩上去咔嗒作響。頂高， 空間深廣，一步踏在台階上，回聲就響起 來，咔嗒、咔嗒、咔嗒，像是節拍又像海浪， 一層層打著那漆成綠色的牆。二層左邊是 沒有路的，右邊一條路往廁所，一條路往 陽光之家，正對著樓梯擺著一排藍色的塑

The small building on the square has two floors. The residents’ committee is on the ground floor. Passing through the committee, it’s where Maomao takes her class on the second floor. Li Xiaoyan takes a long detour with Maomao every time. Leaving home, they walk on the square in summer to walk in the shadow of the pine trees; in winter, they walk on the driveway to shelter from the wind between the build ings. If the committee opened a door at the back of the residence hall, they’d go up the stairs through it. They are always the first to arrive in class.

The staircase is wide, and the steps are edged with non-slip frames that have loosened over time, making clicks as they step on it. The top of the build ing is high and the space is deep and wide, and as soon as they start to go up the stairs, the echoes ring out, click, click, click, like a beat or a wave, beating against the green-painted walls layer by layer. There is no path on the left side of the first floor; as for the right side, one path leads to the toilets and the other to the “House of Sunshine”. Directly opposite the stairs, there is a blue three-seater plastic chair.

Five days a week, Li Xiaoyan takes Maomao to school every morning, goes back home, cooks lunch, picks up Maomao for lunch, and takes a nap before sending her over again. She picks up Maomao around 3 pm, returns home, cooks dinner, helps Maomao take a bath, chats with her and then goes to bed.

The classes are very informative, with a piano in the classroom and a big grey screen on which col ourful pictures are projected. The afternoon sunbath ers in the square could always hear songs from the first floor, singing “he has improved the lives of the

people”, singing “my family lives on the shore of the river” and “La so mi do re”. Most of the time, these songs are just fragments repeatedly played on the piano. But after a few weeks, the pieces are joined into a song and form complete singing. Then they applauded and let out a lively laugh. The singing, the applause and the laughter all mingle together, and all seem to fly high into the sky.

Usually, when Mao Chunhua goes to class, Li Xiaoyan goes back to her chores, but today Li Xiaoyan just stares at Mao from behind the glass door. If she gets tired of standing, she sits down for a while, but just five minutes after she sits down, she presses herself to the glass door again. She always has Maomao hanging on her heart, but now the hang-up is like a needle stab, and with every breath Li Xiaoyan takes and every minute that passes, she is more hurt by the thorns. She watches as Maomao sits in class in the first row by the window, rocking back and forth, that chubby, red head bobbing back and forth. Maomao’s eyes are open, but she has her head hanging down, and those eyes are looking at no one and no place. She knows that Maomao does not sing or listen to any lessons but does understand how to read some words. The teacher asks Maomao what this word is. She doesn’t say anything. The teacher continues to ask her, saying: “Do you know this word?“ Maomao nods her head as she shakes her body. “Who taught you that?” Maomao lifts her head and looks in the direction of the door. Li Xiaoyan is standing there, leaning against the wall or the glass door, sticking half of her from the frosted part of the door and meeting Maomao’s eyes. Maomao’s mother smiles up and waves at her daughter.

廣場上的大電子屏過段時間就會換宣 傳畫，有時候是「光盤行動」，有時候是「全 面扶貧」，有時候是第幾幾屆幾中全會，李 小燕讀一遍，踮著腳，用手指著字再讀一遍， 一遍又一遍，毛毛終於跟著發出有些渾濁 的音，李小燕就問，我們毛毛阿是最最聰 明的？我們毛毛阿是最最聰明的？毛毛笑 了，蘋果似的臉頰紅通通的。李小燕又教 她認車子，站在街沿上面指著路邊停的車，

The big electronic screen in the square changes its posters now and then, sometimes with the mes sage “Empty the Plate Action”, sometimes with the message “All-rounded Poverty Alleviation”, and sometimes with the news “ The National People’s Congress”. Li Xiaoyan reads it, stands on tiptoe, and repeats the words with her fingers pointing at them. When Maomao finally mutters with a somewhat muffled sound in her throat, Li Xiaoyan will ask, “Is our Maomao the smartest? Isn’t our Maomao the smartest?” Maomao smiles. Her apple-like cheeks are red and flushed.

Li Xiaoyan also teaches her to recognise vehi cles, standing on streets and pointing out the cars parked by the roadside, saying that the one with four circles is an Audi, the one with a “W” inside is a Volkswagen, the yellow cross is a Chevrolet, and the silver lion is a Peugeot. Once when she was chatting with people in the square, a red car drove by, and Mao Chunhua popped out the phrase “Volkswagen”. When Maomao was a child, she was so bright that she could read many words on the street. Maomao’s mother told them and was almost overjoyed.

But Li Xiaoyan remembered the day the teacher called her and told her that Mao Chunhua would not be able to come to class soon. She was already thir ty-four years old and would be thirty-five after her birthday in June this year, so according to the rules, she was no longer fit to attend classes.

Li Xiaoyan was still squeezing the towel, the warmth of her palm covering it to heat. She wanted to wipe Maomao’s face and sweat at the end of class. Her lips moved as if she was going to say something

到那棵松樹的影子在道上拉長，蓋上了那

木頭封起來的窗子，像是從窗子流流出來 的一條暗河。

but forgot what to say, and finally, it was a question: So, where is she going?

The question was undoubtedly unanswered. When Li Xiaoyan took Maomao back, they stood for a moment at the entrance to the staircase, where the green paint on the wall had turned white, before making their way down the stairs. The sound of the anti-slip frame clashing with the marble steps was crisp. It was getting dark, a Chevrolet turned off at the side of the road, and its lights flashed twice, so Li Xiaoyan’s eyes flashed twice too. She walked with Mao Chunhua along the street slowly and saw the shadow of the pine tree lengthening on the road, covering the wooden sealed window like a dark river flowing out of it.

Now, Li Xiaoyan is leaning against the glass door, watching Maomao rocking her seat. After to day, Maomao will not be able to come back to class. The thorn in Li Xiaoyan’s heart moves again, and the pain is not severe. It’s stuck in the heart and can’t be pushed through or pulled out. It was clear that there was a thorn in her heart, but she felt like a hole had opened up there. Li Xiaoyan watches the bright sun gradually dissipate in the corridor. She waited and waited until the aunts and grannies came up next to her one by one. She kept waiting and finally held Maomao in her arms, walking out of the building’s soughing cyan light.

The balsam fir started to lose its leaves. The wind blows past and shakes off one or two leaves from the trees. They fall on the asphalt concrete, roll down the steps, or knock on the green fender. That’s when they give a faint cry, soft and thin, and then

lie bare-chested on the ground, quietly closing their eyes until a Volkswagen speeds past and the wind lifts them again.

Li Xiaoyan grasps Maomao as the light on the security window flashes distantly. To tell her or not to tell her? Li Xiaoyan ponders. She and Maomao walk slowly, passing under the pine trees, in front of the electronic screen in the square, and passing by the courtyard wall. Li Xiaoyan hears leaves falling to the ground, one after another. Then she makes her decision and lifts her head. Those dodging eyes shot a gaze that darted straight to Maomao under Li Xiaoyan’s drooping eyelids, but Maomao’s black eyes were looking right at her. Li Xiaoyan sees herself in Mao Chunhua’s eyes, with a black window that flows through the dark river behind her.

The new and the dying are all in the same blurred set of orders. 新生的和行將就木的人們都處在一套逐漸模糊了的秩序之中。

I have chosen the children and the elderly as the protagonists of the two stories in this part because there is a contrast between these two groups. The former confronts a reality in which they must blend in, while the latter faces a reality that is bound to fade away.

In the child’s story, the protagonist, Yang Yang, has a family but no sense of belonging. He uses his anger and stubbornness to resist the pres sure this life puts on him. He is asking for an absolute affirmation of his young and passionate life. And in the elder’s story, the protagonist faces

the trial of death. She has a strong desire to return to the countryside and its tradition after her death, which denies the city’s geographical exist ence and cultural perception and, finally, the city itself. But the fact that this wish is not fulfilled signifies that the junction will not revert to a rural space but will inevitably develop into an urban area. The development will finally lead to the disappearance of some unique customs. Whether this change is for the better or the worse, these forgotten customs that people once regarded as spiritual sustenance have gradually drifted away. The result is that those “in-between” seem to fall into a drifted condition without being aware. At this moment, the land itself begins to become the protagonist. It begins to absorb the forsaken emotions of the crowd and thus possesses an elusive agony.

喝點酒，明天早上不要起不了早。 桌上三菜一湯，爺爺開了一瓶小叔叔

從奧地利捎回來的紅酒，正把酒瓶傾倒了 往玻璃高腳杯里倒，現在是三月里，晚飯

也吃得早，五點不到，天還泛著青藍色， 窗里照進來的明晃晃的光映在靠近窗的鐵 架子上，一層一層地往上爬。蔬菜在鐵架 子上堆成了山，鐵架下邊塞著一隻銅盆：平 時它也在這兒，不過是看不見的，塑料袋 和各種捨不得扔的包裝袋把它的黃銅的大 肚子塞得滿滿當當，像浪花似的，嘩嘩翻 滾著淹沒了它。而今天奶奶把它乾乾淨淨 地放出來了，抹去了一整年的灰塵，它的

“Tomorrow we have an ancestral ritual, are you go ing out with your classmates?” my Grandma asked.

Grandma wanted me to enjoy a free day, so it was up to me to stay for this event or not. I was now all grown up and she was delighted at that. Before I could look up from my rice bowl to utter an an swer, she hurriedly told Grandpa to drink less wine or otherwise, he might fail to wake up early in the morning.

With three dishes and soup on the table, Grandpa opened a bottle of red wine that my young uncle had brought back from Austria, and poured wine into a glass goblet. It was March and dinner was early. It’s not yet five o’clock. The sky was still greenish-blue, and the bright light from the window was reflecting on the iron shelf near the window, climbing up in layers. The vegetables were piled up in mountains on the iron shelves, underneath which a brass basin was tucked. The basin was usually there too but out of sight. Since plastic bags and all sorts of bags could not be thrown away, they were stuffed in the brass pot to the brim, tumbling and drowning it like a wave. Today, my grandmother wiped a whole year’s dust. The edges of the brass basin were glowing with the sunset-like glow it must send up at this time of year. Its blackened, charred basin bottom must gain a new layer of burning ashes. Each member of our family will drop tin-foil-folded silver ingots into the basin, while listening to my grandmother read each person’s name over and over again, comparing the long list with last year’s. Those who have died can be added to the side of those that have received the shoe-shaped silver ingots, which are burned as part of the ritual. Considering that an extra child who was

我不喜歡祭祖，並不是有什麼對祖先

們不尊重的意思，也並不是對這火燒的味 道過敏：一是因為我一個小孩子，在場除了

磕個頭，就是傻傻站著，實在不必要回回 都在墊子上拜三拜，這動作在清明的時候

做或許更好些，祖先們還不必從十幾個人 里用吃貢品的長筷挑出一個垂頭喪氣的我

來；二是因為人實在太多，又都是我不認識

卻認識我的公公阿婆、舅舅姨媽們，夾在 其中，好像被裝進了套子的小猴，任人參 觀調笑，表情僵硬，動彈不得。

我要和同學出去。我放筷，卻又立刻

born this year is still too young to breathe the smoke emanating from the fire in the brass basin, he was not allowed to come near the scene.

I didn’t like ancestral rituals and it is not because I had any disrespect for my ancestors, or because I was allergic to the smell of fire. Rather, it was be cause as a small child, apart from kowtowing, there was not much I can do. Besides, there were too many in-laws, aunts and uncles who I did not know in per son but who knew me. I was caught in the middle, like a monkey in a trap, being visited and teased and my expression was of course rigid and immutable.

Actually, I would have wanted to go out with my classmates. In contemplation, I put my chop sticks down and immediately remember with some misery that tomorrow is Sunday. It was the day my friends were set to go back to school and I took time off work to stay at home. Since I haven’t done my homework, it’s probably better to be cooped up in my study than wandering in the streets. So, I decide that tomorrow I would fill a small bowl with rice and go to my study while eating.

“But tomorrow Yang Yang is coming too.” Grandma said.

Before I thought about it, my body preceded me, and I asked a quizzical question that made it look like he was unwelcome. I asked, “Is he coming too?” Grandma then responded, “It’s not like he has anyone to look after him at home. How will he live a day if he doesn’t come with his grandmother?”

Yang Yang is both familiar and unfamiliar to me. We must have met once at a New Year’s Eve

樣的？他的頭髮是怎樣的？他的神態又如

何？有關這些，我是一點印象也沒有的。 他多數時間都存在於家裡人的描述里。那

些飯後茶余的議論，帶著些憐惜帶著些看

客冷漠和好奇的話語里，鑽出一個八九歲 的孩子來。我對他抱著些「敬而遠之」的態 度，照親戚們的話來說，他似乎的確是個

頑劣的孩子，恃寵而驕，無法無天，在學

校里書也讀得差勁。遛貓鬥狗，抓蟲找蛙， 不然便是哭鬧著要電視、電腦，要是不依 他的意思，他就撒潑打滾，哇哇大哭。

誰也喜歡不來這樣的孩子，更何況他 明天要到我家裡來了，於是我心裡大為不 滿，甚至有些輕微的惶恐，我想給房間上

dinner, but I found it hard to recall exactly what he looked like. What did his cheeks look like? What did his hair look like? What was his demeanor? I had no recollection of any of this. Most of the time, he existed in the family’s descriptions. The after-dinner talk, the pity, the indifference and the curiosity of the watchers, buried a child of eight or nine. I treated him with some respect, but going by the words of my relatives, he did seem to be a mischievous child, bully, unruly, and poorly study at school. He walked the cat, fought with the dog, caught bugs and frogs and cried for the TV and computer. If he didn’t get his way, he would roll around and cry.

No one likes such a child, least of all when he is coming to my house tomorrow. I got so upset, and even mildly frightened, that I wanted to put a lock on my room to keep him out. Lest he could damage my books or go through them with greasestained hands, I closed all the bookcases securely after supper, and neatly packed all the miscellaneous things on the table. I stuffed them into boxes and put them in the cupboard, out of his sight. I feared that he could make a scene among the grown-ups, but at the same time I hope that seeing my unwelcome face could curb his temper a little. I had never met him, so how could I be so sure that he must be bad-tem pered? Maybe the gossip at home had distorted how I regarded him.

五點，爺爺奶奶起床張羅祭祖，橢圓 的台面上緊密地排列著小的青花瓷酒杯和

木筷，沿著邊緣圍成一圈，將一桌的好酒

好菜兜攬起來。靠門的一側空出一方台面，

放著小小的香爐，桌子前的地面上放著一 塊坐墊，用來墊一墊上了年紀的子孫們的 腿腳，好給祖先磕個頭。銅盆搬出來了，

錫箔疊好了，放在樓道里靠牆角的地方， 不能在自家燒，一是不安全，二是味道大，

在樓道里開著窗戶，風也能早些把消息捎

出去。 門鈴響了。

At five o’clock, my grandparents woke up to pre pare for the ancestral ritual. Small celadon cups and wooden chopsticks were arranged in a tight circle along the edge of the oval table to enclose a table full of good wine and food. A small incense burner sat on the empty side of the table in front of the door. A cushion was placed on the floor in front of the table to cushion the legs and feet of the older family members so they could kowtow to their ancestors without hurting themselves. The copper pots were moved out, and the tin foil was folded and placed in the hallway against the corner.

The doorbell rang.

“Ah, Yang Yang is here!” Grandma said as she set up a large and small pair of slippers. I stood in the doorway, like a welcoming pine, bent over and stuck my head out towards the door.

“Oops! Oops! Ah! Mingjuan!” A voice rolled over like a thunderclap, as if it were shouting. The small hallway was not as generous as the fields. Here, it was a little too loud, high and hoarse, with the word “Juan” breaking in a somewhat comical way. Yang Yang’s Grandma was panting heavily, wearing a thick purple cotton jacket with red flowers on it. The sun and the earth giving her an earthy red skin that is glowing with the light of joy.

“Where’s Yang Yang?”

“Ah! This little thing is still back there and won’t come up!”

Yang Yang’s grandmother yelled at the top of her lungs, “Yang Yang! Grandma’s calling you!”

陽陽外婆扯開嗓子一吼：「陽陽！阿婆 叫你！」 樓道消化這過高的分貝花了一點時間， 在這陣輕微的沈默過後，下面的樓層響起 了「咔嗒」、「咔嗒」的聲音，伴隨著一會兒 輕一會兒重的腳步聲，越來越清晰，不一 會兒，從樓梯拐角的地方露出一個頭髮剃 得短短的腦袋來，「春捂秋凍」 ，他外婆怕 他凍著，將他緊緊地包裹起來，藍色夾著 灰色的衝鋒衣在他身上顯得肥大，黑色的 褲子，膝蓋部位還沾著泥灰，米奇運動鞋， 背著喜羊羊的方書包，和鞋子一樣是藍色 的，髒兮兮的泛著黑，他手裡攥著一根繩子， 牽著一輛藍色底，黃色棚的塑料巴士，那「咔

It took a while for the hallway to digest the ex cessive decibel level. After this slight silence, click ing noises sounded from the floor below, accom panied by the sound of footsteps, sometimes light, sometimes heavy, becoming clearer and clearer. Before long, a shaved head appeared from the corner of the stairs. His grandmother was afraid he would freeze and wrapped him up tightly in a blue jacket with a grey layer, black trousers with mud and dust on his knees, wearing Mickey trainers and carrying a cartoon goat square schoolbag. He clutches a rope in his hand and holds a plastic bus with a blue bottom and a yellow shed, the “click” and “clack” sound it makes as it is dragged up the stairs, knocking against one step after another. He had a similar complexion to his grandmother’s, a tightly pursed mouth and thick, short, dark eyebrows, and his eyes came up to meet mine for a moment before he turned his head away.

His grandmother told him to hurry up with a stern face, lifted him in one swift motion with those thick hands and routinely told him to call for some one.

“Say hello to aunty!” “Hello, aunty.”

“This is your sister.” “Hello, sister.”

He called out, inclining his head, and I followed his gaze, watching him wrap the rope around his fingers in a circle.

He needed to change his shoes before entering.

他叫人，偏著腦袋，我順著他的目光， 看他把繩子一圈一圈往手指上繞。

進門前得先換鞋，他站得筆直，把腳 一蹬，那米奇運動鞋就給他甩飛出去，在 地上滾了一圈，又把腳往拖鞋里一塞，算 是換好了。他外婆去撿了那雙米奇，往成 年人大碼的皮鞋中間塞，那鞋子是藍色的，

帆船似的，在棕色和黑色的海裡勉強地擠

出一塊陸地，歪歪扭扭地靠著，一隻鞋踩

著另一隻，翹起鞋頭，像個倔強的士兵。

親戚們已經到了兩三家了，大概有十

來個人，他們見到陽陽，就叫道「陽陽來啦 「，他外婆應和著，把陽陽往親戚里推送著。 他不樂意，外婆推著他的肩膀，他就偏偏

He stood up straight and kicked off the Mickey trainers until they rolled around on the floor. He then shoved his feet into his slippers. His grandmother went and picked up the Mickeys and shoved them between the adult’s leather shoes. The shoes were blue, like a sailboat, barely squeezing a piece of land out of the sea of brown and black, leaning crookedly, one shoe stepping on the other, flexing the toe like a stubborn soldier.

There were roughly ten relatives who arrived. When they saw Yang Yang, they called out, “Yang Yang is here”, and his grandmother responded by pushing him towards the relatives. He didn’t like it. When his grandmother pushed on his shoulders, he threw them in the other direction, squinting his eyes, his cheeks tinted red with anger.

“Hey, what are you doing? Let the aunties and uncles have a look at you!”

Yang Yang did not say anything. He just made some sharp grunts, the child’s usual expression of opposition.

“Yang Yang, why are you so shy? You’re so mean. You won’t even let aunty take a look at you. “

“Yang Yang, have you finished your homework? Do you have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Yang Yang, why isn’t your mother coming? “

Yang Yang’s face turned like a balloon that was about to burst. I think he couldn’t stay here any longer because he twisted around at once, avoiding grandma’s hand on his shoulder, and shouted, “I don’t know!” Everyone laughed out loud, told him

他沒辦法呆在這兒了，我想，因為他一下 子扭過身子，躲開外婆按在肩上的手，大叫： 「我不知道啊！」大家哈哈的笑開了，叫他 別生氣，又問他要不要看電視。陽陽喊道： 「我不要！」

他們又指指我，說：「那要不要和姐姐 玩？」 他瞥了我一眼，叫道：「我不要！」 「為什麼不要呀，姐姐不是和你差不多 大嗎？」

not to be angry, and asked if he wanted to watch TV. Yang Yang shouted, “I don’t want to!”

They pointed at me again and said, “So, want to play with your sister?”

He glanced at me and barked, “I don’t want it!”

“Why not? Isn’t my sister about the same age as you?”

This time he didn’t even speak, he just shouted rudely, his shoulders shrugging high around that round head, and as I watched from a distance, he did look red-faced, his shoulders raised, his hairy head seemingly as big as a puffer fish. I couldn’t understand what he was doing or trying to say. Yang Yang just kept up his angry, agitated look, pushing his aunts and uncles away with his spiky spines and standing next to his Mickey sneakers to make a dec laration: leave me alone! The adults laughed again and issued a friendly proclamation: OK, go ahead and play by yourself.

So the one-sided war was suddenly over, and with round eyes and a thin neck propped up round head, holding his chariot, he watched as his enemies suddenly all withdrew from the battlefield, leaving a lone general, still waving his flag and trying to charge, to turn his eyes and see where there was an opponent to fight him.

I stood at the opposite side of him, clearing a path to the living room. When the vast, joking session had passed, I turned towards my study and glanced over my shoulder at him, standing next to his Mickey sneakers, still carrying the blue and black square schoolbag.

By the time he put down his school bag, his grand mother was already calling him for his nap. After the ancestors had enjoyed the aroma of the food, the relatives gathered up their long chopsticks and porcelain cups and replaced them with short chop sticks and plastic cups for us, feasting and drinking to the fullest. The grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles made themselves comfortable on the long sofa and laid down leisurely.

“Yang Yang! Wait a minute, and don’t make any noise!”

“Yang Yang! Come along and get some sleep!”

Yang Yang washed his hands, still dripping, and he wiped them loosely on his trousers.

“Well,” he said, “I want to watch TV.”

“What are you watching on TV? Come to bed!”

I was about to go back to the study again and didn’t look to see if he was sleeping or watching TV when I heard movement behind me, and they dragged and tugged, probably leading him to the sofa.

I realised I had been sitting for a long time when my back became sore. I went out of the room to get some water, only to find that the curtains were drawn in the living room as if it were nighttime, the TV screen was flickering, the snores were rising and falling, like a symphony orchestra, quite loud but comical. The TV seemed to be playing some happy cartoon, only muted.

The cartoon characters were making hoot noises. They hooted and laughed, and the birds also hooted.

里窗簾都拉了起來，像是晚上似的，電視

的屏幕在熒熒閃爍，呼嚕聲此起彼伏，好

似交響樂隊，頗為吵鬧，卻又十分滑稽，

電視里好像在放什麼歡樂的動畫片子，只

是調成了靜音。

卡通人物說了一句呼嚕，又說了一句

呼嚕，他們呼嚕呼嚕地大笑著，鳥也是呼

嚕的叫著。音樂會現場只有一個陽陽醒著，

他在一片東倒西歪，酣然入夢的親戚中坐 著，推擠著周邊龐大的身子，在沙發中間 部分擠出一塊屬地，他聽見我出來，瞧了

Only Yang Yang was awake at the concert, sitting in cluttered, soundly dreaming relatives, squeezing between massive bodies. He heard me come out, looked at me and turned his head back to the mut ed TV. His face reflected the changing blue light projected by the TV, pursing his lips, very serious, not like he was watching a cartoon, but like he was reading some document.

What’s playing? I looked at the screen with a full glass of water in hand: I’ve seen this cartoon, but I didn’t think it was still on. I’m not familiar with the protagonists anymore. The sofa has become a nest. They are huddled together next to each other like an imals seeking warmth. Their muddy breath and heat emanated from their bodies. The crowded, overlap ping gestures, the flickering, shifting light, the closed windows, and the smell of burning candles overhead made me dizzy as I walked past.

Yang Yang is hunkered down on the sofa as usual. Two dark eyes glinted with the screen’s cold light; his face was blue. He wasn’t going anywhere.

At dusk, they were wakened by the thunder-like noise made by the range hood. The sun at dusk reflected a cold golden light through the kitchen glass. The aunties and grannies, having gained their strength from the early spring sun, got up one by one and gathered in the living room in a lively manner, feasting on mountains of pork, roast lamb, pork knuckles and chicken feet. I had finished my meal

等到接近傍晚的時候，他們挨個醒了，

原因大抵是廚房裡油煙機的抽響，像是驚

蟄春雷般地把他們喚醒了，黃昏時候的太

陽，透過廚房的玻璃，折射出冷的金光來，

於是阿伯們、阿婆們又從初春的太陽里獲

得了清醒的力氣，一個個都站了起來，熱 鬧地聚在客廳里，將走油肉啊、紅燒羊肉啊、 豬肘、雞爪堆成的山墾平。我早早地吃完了， 只是覺得出於禮貌的必要，不得提前走開， 於是就乾脆看起他們吃飯來。

等酒飽飯足，爺爺便舉著紅酒杯，來！ 乾杯！ 此時天還沒有暗，男人們的臉色和夕 陽一般紅。 矮胖個子，左臉長著一塊紫紅的胎記 的是某個舅舅，他喝得正高興，而後忽地

early but felt obliged to stay out of courtesy, so I simply watched them eat.

When they had plenty, grandpa raised his glass of red wine, “Come on! Cheers!”

It was not yet dark, and the men’s faces were as red as the setting sun.

The short, fat man with a purple-red birthmark on the left side of his face was an uncle. He was hap pily drinking and suddenly woke up from his dream and asked, surprisedly, “Why, why isn’t Wenjuan here? Then the relatives echoed, “Yes, what’s going on? Wenjuan has not come yet!

The dozen or so people slowly spread out, like the petals of a flower opening to reveal the stamens, causing me to follow their gaze: Yang Yang was sit ting beside his grandmother on a wooden stool with an extra seat, the bowl in front of him stacked with layer upon layer of vegetables, a piece of oily meat lying brightly and lazily at the top, with a bite tak en, reflecting white oil. He grips half a chicken foot firmly and spits unfinished bone one after another onto the table. He should have spat on his plate.

“Wenjuan, she’s having a party with someone else tonight…… Oh, or is it some social activities? I forgot all of a sudden!” Yang Yang’s grandmother wiped her mouth with a tissue, “You know, they’re always busy.”

“So how will you and Yang Yang go back later?” Grandma asked.

“Me and him? By electric bike.” Yang Yang’s grandmother balled up the tissue paper and threw it

油光已經泛白了。他牢牢地抓著半個雞爪，

「噗噗」地將一節又一節未啃乾淨的骨頭吐

到桌面上。他應該吐在盤子里。

「文娟啊，她晚上和別人有聚會咧

哦，還是有什麼應酬，我一下子怎麼忘記 了呢！」陽陽外婆捏著紙巾，給陽陽擦了嘴，

「你曉得的呀，她們總歸很忙的。」

「那你和陽陽等些怎麼回去呢？」奶奶問。

「我和他麼，電瓶車呀！」陽陽外婆把 紙巾團一團，丟到骨頭中間，「我們剛剛也 是這樣過來的呀。」

between the bones, “That’s how we came.”

It was the beginning of spring, and the sun was going down but perhaps not so cold. I watched them put on their shoes and go downstairs. Yang Yang was holding his toys. He just insisted on carrying them instead of having them in his bag. He was running ahead. His grandmother was rushing behind. It was hard to see when we got downstairs. The night was very dark in early spring. Only a tail of red lights went through the blackness and escaped far away.

I suddenly recalled this scene in the cemetery on the morning of this year’s Qingming. The two-wheeled electric bike that night looked like a small boat swaying on the narrow river. Such a narrow river could not pass a boat.

It is only thirty centimetres from the surface of the water on both sides of the rocky shore. You can touch the slightly green water when you get under the railing and stretch out your hand. Heavy rain can make it overflow. It is narrow, but the water is alive, trickling gently under the bridge on a clear, misty morning. The willows by the gravel bank rest with their eyes downcast, the monoliths look serene, and everything else around them is pale.

One thing I liked about the Qingming ancestral ritual was that it was basically nothing for me to do, I just had to pay my respects by kowtowing three times, and that was it. I was free to move around for

它兩邊石頭的岸沿距離水面不過三十

公分，從欄桿下邊鑽出去，伸出手，就能

碰到微綠的水面，一場大雨就能使得它滿

溢了，從這岸到那岸不過一個人躺下來的 距離，只有兩塊青石做的平橋橫在上邊，

側邊和岸沿一道生了青苔。狹窄，但是水

是活的，在清明帶著濕霧的早晨，涓涓地

從橋下輕輕流過去，岸上石子路旁的柳垂 眸歇息著，石碑也顯得寧靜，周圍一切都 有著一種淺淡的色彩。

清明的祭祖有一點我是喜歡的，那就

是基本沒有我的事情，我只需拜三拜就了 事，剩餘的時間可以自由地活動，也不需 要守候在原地。我們去得早，奶奶叫我提

著橘子和紅蠟燭，拿一盒青團，一包煙。 走在小道上，地上和樹上都見了綠，顫著 擁在一起，等著太陽升高些，拂去四周清 澈的寒氣。我的媽媽來了，走在小道旁邊，

the rest of the day. I didn’t need to stand by. We went early, and my grandmother told me to carry orang es and red candles, take a box of green dough and a packet of cigarettes. Walking down the path, the ground and trees saw green, trembling and hugging together, waiting for the sun to rise a little and brush away the clear chill around us. My mother came and walked beside the path. My father did not come. He was away on business and just needed to say hello to his ancestors and kowtow on their behalf, nothing significant. We crossed the willow path, walked a lit tle way along the white walls of the black tiles, and passed small pavilion where the benches had fallen into the dust. With a slight warmth on my cheeks, I saw someone already standing on the side of the narrow stream in front of the first monument to the right of the stone bridge.

“They’re already here,” Grandma said.

So while I was still in front of them, before they realised we were watching from a distance, I looked up to observe more closely: a child in a blue coat and two women in grey and black. I knew it was Yang Yang, Yang Yang’s mother and Yang Yang’s grand mother. Yang Yang was sticking to his mother’s side. It was amazing, I hadn’t remembered him at all in previous years, but in the two months of this spring, we had seen each other twice.

We didn’t cry out to them, perhaps because the morning was so quiet and chilly that people slowed down their steps. When we got closer and crossed the bridge, about ten or so steps away, Yang Yang’s grandma happened to turn her head and saw us, and she let out an “oooh” and came forward to take my

穿著灰黑色的女人。我知道那是陽陽，陽 陽媽媽和陽陽外婆，陽陽正貼在他媽媽的 身側。真是奇妙，前幾年我對他一點印象 都沒有，但在今年春天的兩個月里，我們 已經見了兩回了。

grandma’s hand and shook it heavily: “Mingjuan, we just happened to run into each other! “

They exchanged pleasantries, and I stood off to the side with an orange in my hand. Yang Yang’s mother was holding hands with my mother, they didn’t know each other well, but they were smiling happily. Yang Yang’s mother’s name was Wen Juan. I forget her surname because, in casual conversation, relatives rarely mention her full name. She wore a black jumper and a grey tweed trench coat. She carried a small bag. Her hair was wavy, the brown colour still fading. She brought up a fragrant breeze as she walked past me. The breeze reminds me of her on New Year’s Eve, the warm smile, the brown and black, white ringlets of fur scarf, the long wavy hair and the smell of perfume that rushes through my nose as she calls me by my nickname, “Ouch, you have grown so tall!” She exclaims this yearly and hands me a five hundred dollar “pocket money”.

She always comes and then leaves halfway through.

“She’s going to be with her boyfriend.” One granny said, “she doesn’t even have a nice meal with everyone on New Year’s Eve.”

I knew all these rumours, and my family never avoided talking about them, like someone’s grandson was having a baby shower party, some young man seemed to be going to America, or some old man had a stroke and was in the hospital. They always chatted in Shanghainese at this time, telling stories repeated ly with great interest. So from childhood, I learned a dialect from these casual conversations over meals, getting to know everyone before I met them and

「她要去和男朋友一起咧。」一個阿婆 這樣說；「過年的時候也不和大家好好吃頓 飯的。」 關於這些我都是知道的，家裡人談論 這些事情從不避開我，誰家孫子要辦滿月 酒啦，誰家年輕人好像要去美國啦，誰家 老頭因為中風摔了進醫院啦，他們在這時 候總是用上海話聊天，興致勃勃地把故事 講了一次又一次。於是從小到大，我在這 些飯中閒談里學會了一門方言，在見到每 個人，記住每個人前，把他們的孩子、丈夫、 父親、女兒、妻子、母親或是情人們都認 識了。 我知道陽陽媽媽什麼時候離了婚，什 麼時候換了新的男朋友，某一段時間里， 父母對談論這件事情尤其熱衷，那是因為 陽陽媽媽又交了個新男友，「外國黑人，不

remembered their children, husbands, fathers, daugh ters, wives, mothers or lovers.

I know when Yang Yang’s mother got divorced and when she got a new boyfriend. For some time, my parents were particularly keen to talk about it, and that was because Yang Yang’s mother had a new boyfriend, “a foreign black man will never work out” my parents despised her, but they were in love. She works in an office in the Volkswagen factory, often saying that she works three shifts, which is very hard. She asked my mother and father to help her find a new job. At our family dinner table, my mother accused her of being unmindful of her family and unable to bear hardship, being “wild” at her age and not knowing how to take care of the elderly and children.

But I don’t think Yang Yang has any resentment towards his mother. He stood beside her very affec tionately. Yang Yang was dressed the same as the last time we met, with his blue and grey jacket pulled open and a high-collared, brown jumper underneath, which stood out among the grey and black clothes. Still, with short hair and red cheeks, he was always looking around, intentionally or unintentionally. He looked happy today. As he squatted, his grandmother told him to go play elsewhere. He jumped and patted the dirt on his grey trousers, flung a long, plucked wicker from somewhere and bounded over to the narrow river.

Grandpa and Grandma took the stuff from me and began to spread it out on the cold, cross-set mar ble. I saw nothing they needed me for and stepped away a bit. I was uncomfortable with occasions that

的毛剌剌的頭髮，紅彤彤的臉頰，總是有 意或是無意地四處張望著。他今天看起來

很高興，他蹲著，外婆叫他到一邊玩去的 時候，他跳著拍了拍灰色長褲上的土，甩 著不知從哪兒拽來的，一根拔光了葉子的 長柳條兒，往那窄窄的河邊蹦過去了。

爺爺和奶奶從我手裡接過東西，開始

在冰涼的橫擺的大理石上鋪開，我見他們 沒什麼需要我的地方，就走開了些，我總

required a serious feeling. I had nothing to do, so I stood aside and watched as Yang Yang used the willow as a fishing rod.

The place is considered peaceful and pretty, the clover piles undulating low in the wind, the stone paths lying with delicate fallen leaves. As far as the eye can see, it was bright, open and neat. The railings along the path are carved with rustic floral patterns. For as long as I can remember, I have come here every year at this time of year. I came with my sister for the ritual on my father’s side, and for the one on my mother’s side, I came alone. But this year, I ran into Yang Yang, which was different from the case in previous years.

He squatted on the bank, flicking the water with his willow, picking up the splashes, watching them scatter, and so on dozens of times, screamed, “there are tadpoles here!”

Tadpoles. I remembered that there were tadpoles in the river at this time of year, as I had seen them last year when I was here. My sister and I had not seen many of these little creatures, so I was surprised to see them for once. I squatted on the bank for a long time to watch them: small, almost uncatchable figures, like wisps of shadow, bobbing in the clear glass-like water, swimming in groups. Sometimes intimately close to each other, passing through some floating green algae. I still remember my sister ask ing me, “Do you want to take one back?” I declined, thinking it probably wouldn’t survive away from the river and the other tadpoles.

Yang Yang climbed up, his trousers stained with a few water stains, wiped his hands on his

姐姐沒怎麼看到過這樣的小生物，難得見 到一次，十分驚喜，蹲在岸邊看了許久：小

得幾乎難以捕捉的身影，像是一縷一縷的 陰影，晃動在透明的玻璃似的河水里，一 群一群的結隊游著，有時，親暱地彼此接 近，從一些浮動的綠藻中間穿過。我仍記 得姐姐問我：「要帶回去一條嗎？」我拒絕 了，我想它離開了河道和其他的蝌蚪，大 概就活不成了。

陽陽爬起來，褲子上染著幾片水漬， 又在衣服上擦了擦手，還捏著柳條呢，跑 到他媽媽的身邊。

shirt again, still squeezing the willow, and ran to his mother’s side.

“There are tadpoles in the river! Mummy, there are tadpoles in the river!”

Yang Yang’s mother was typing on her phone. She nodded: Well, really?

“It’s true. Come and see!”

Yang Yang tugged at his mother’s clothes and hurriedly asked her to go and see, shouting, “Come and see!” Yang Yang’s mother echoed, “Wait, wait.”

Yang Yang’s grandmother, with a stern face, tried to grab Yang Yang aside and scolded, “Be gentle!” But Yang Yang wouldn’t give up. He looked more ener getic, tugging at his mother’s sleeve and pulling her towards the river, shouting: “Really, really!”

“Where is it?”

“It’s right here,” Yang Yang went to point with her hand, “don’t you see it?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s just down there.”

He got anxious and tried to get down again, but his mother pulled his arm, “

It’s dirty!”

So he extended the willow, “Did you see that? It’s right there in the river!”

“I see it.”

“Then why did you just say you didn’t see it?” He got a little angry.

“I see it, I see it.” Yang Yang’s mother said, put ting her phone back in her little carry-on bag, saying a few words to her mother and turning to say good bye to us, “I’ve got things to do first! Take your time - see you, see you! Yang Yang, you go back with grandma later!”

Yang Yang was standing by the river. He paused and listened, so he turned his head and crouched down again, showing his back to us. We can vaguely see the brown willow branches hanging in the air. He ignored her. Yang Yang’s mother tightened her grey jacket and spoke again: Yang Yang! I’m leaving! Yangyang ignored it. So Yang Yang’s mother walked across the short bridge and down the path, her shad ow wavering by the pavilion and disappearing, the sound of her high heels knocking on the stones far away.

“Kid, come and pay your respects,” grandma called to me.

The red wax oil flowed onto the marble and con gealed into a puddle. I kowtowed three times while my grandmother held my shoulders, introduced my name and identity to the old ancestor for keeping me healthy and studying hard, mentioning it every year as if she was afraid the ancestors would forget. She and my grandfather had always taken care of these things, my parents knew a little about them, but I knew nothing about them, except that I had to send my thoughts once a year, but I couldn’t even remem ber exactly when.

“Yang Yang, come and pay your respects too!” Grandma called to him.

紹我的姓名和身份，又叫老祖宗保佑我身 體健康，好好讀書，年年都要提一遍，生 怕老人家忘記似的。這些事情向來是她和 爺爺操持，我爸媽略有所知，我一竅不通， 只曉得每年要這樣寄一回思念，卻連具體 的時間也記不清楚。 「陽陽，也來拜一拜！」奶奶叫他。 陽陽仍然蹲著，仍然甩著柳條，濺起

Still crouching, still flinging his willow and splashing. He ignored the call and stubbornly stuck to the edge of the river. He holds this position, his jacket dragging on the ground. I thought it was going to get dirty.

“Yang Yang! Did you hear me? Grandma is calling you to come and pay your respects!” Grand ma called out to him. The willow slapping the wa ter suddenly stopped, but still, he didn’t get up nor answer, holding the thin willow tightly in one mo tion, huddling strongly, resolutely pulling us into the confrontation. My grandmother and mother looked at him, as did Yang Yang’s grandmother, who stood, chest out, still holding three pillars of incense in her hand. Her earthy reddish-brown face was grim, her foreshortened browbone casting a dark cloud of shadows over it. We were both silent, and I felt a pulling, resisting force growing in the corner.

“Yang Yang! Get over here!” His grandmother called to him.

“Yang Yang, come here!” My grandmother called to him.

But he was like a small, crooked-necked tree rooted in the river, staring out at the water, silent at his reflection. So Yang Yang’s grandmother rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulders to lift him. But Yang Yang struggled violently, waving his hands to pull and tug at the hands that were clamped on him. He failed in strength, so he sat on his buttocks, clutching his grandmother’s arm with both hands, viciously holding a comical pose: his jacket was lifted up, he leaned forward with his buttocks on the ground and a messy pile on his chest, revealing

於是陽陽外婆大步地邁過去，抓著他的肩 膀，要將他拎起來，陽陽卻猛地掙扎起來， 揮著手去拉拽鉗著他的手，拽不動，他就 一屁股坐在地上，兩只手緊緊地抓著他外 婆的手臂，惡狠狠地保持著滑稽的姿勢：外 套被提起來，身子前傾，屁股著地，亂糟 糟的堆在胸前，露出一小截腰和褲帶來， 柳條支稜著，橫在他和他外婆之間。他外 婆呢？撅著屁股，弓著背，像在拔一顆大 頭蘿蔔。 陽陽的臉憋得通紅，他叫道：「我不要！

a small part of his waist and the belt of his trousers.

The willow is strung out between him and his grand mother. And his grandmother? Pouting and arching her back like she was plucking a large-headed turnip.

Yang Yang’s face turned red as he shouted, “I don’t want to! I don’t want to! Leave me alone……”

“Don’t act like this!” Yang Yang’s Grandma’s face reddened as well, “stop misbehaving!”

“Leave me alone!” Yang Yang got louder.

“All right, all right! Let him be!” My grand mother finally interrupted. She separated the two and said to Yang Yang’s grandmother, “Just pay respects for him, won’t you? Children don’t know any better. Just let him be.”

“They are really the same!” Grandma Yangyang was furious, “No respect for anything at all!”

Yang Yang was still sitting on the ground, wait ing for his grandmother to move away before he got up. He patted on his trousers and glanced at me. In the brief moment when our eyes met, I couldn’t read his expression, but I could see a few drops of sweat hanging on that red face next to his thick eyebrows. His trousers were wet, and his bottom was covered with a few puddles of water and a few blades of grass, quite funny. But he didn’t care, and Yang Yang threw the willow that he had been holding for so long into the river. I wanted to ask him, “What are you doing.” Or “Do you want to play something?”

I wanted to ask him if he had been hurt in the tug of war, but I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say any thing. We didn’t know each other that well. I decided to stand a little further away.

他不在意，陽陽把那握在手裡許久的柳條 往河道里一扔，丟了。我想問他「你在幹什 麼。」或是「你要玩什麼嗎」？想去慰問他在 剛才的拉扯中或許受傷了的心思，但終究 是閉著嘴巴，沒有吱聲，我們實在不熟悉， 這是不合適的。我決定站得遠一些。

他站著，他蹲下，他趴下了，他把手

伸到水里。遠遠的，我看不清他到底在做 什麼，只看到他把腦袋探出河沿，手在水 流里划著，撈著。過了一會兒，也就一轉

眼的工夫，他支稜起身子來，兩只手都放 到水里去了，撈一下，捧著一汪水看一眼， 再撈一下，反復幾次後，他停下了，將手 裡捧著的一汪水倒進河沿上一個小小的石 坑里，而後加了一捧水進去，便對著這汪 小小的湖研究起來，不動了。 他在做什麼？我在這樣一剎那的疑惑 之後，不知怎的想到了答案，像是突然的 貫通：他在撈蝌蚪。小小的蝌蚪，一條或者 兩條，在淺淺的小小的水窪里游動著，陽 陽蹲在一邊靜靜地看著。

He stood and squatted. He got down and put his hands in the water. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing from a distance, only that he was poking his head out over the edge of the river, his hands paddling and fishing in the current. After a while, in the twinkling of an eye, he stretched himself up and put both hands in the water, holding a pool of water and looking at it. He kept scoping for a few repe titions, then stopped and poured the pool of water he was holding into a small stone pit on the river’s edge. He added a handful of water and studied the small lake, not moving.

What was he doing? After such a moment of confusion, the answer somehow came to me, as if by sudden penetration: he was fishing for tadpoles. Tiny tadpoles, one or two, swam in a shallow little puddle while Yang Yang crouched and watched quietly.

The Old Ancestor blesses Yang Yang with good health and good grades every day. So said Yang Yang’s grandmother as she kowtowed three times. The sun had been up for a long time, and the sound of the stream flowing was just out of earshot as it crossed the stone bridge, splashing water on the green moss marks.

The smoke is burnt out, and the incense is finished.

“That’s about it. Let’s go.” Grandma put on a new incense as she said told us. Yang Yang stood up and his grandmother took his hand, “You’re getting water all over your clothes!” He didn’t say anything. I glanced at the watery pool as I passed by: shallow, irregular puddles, a black tadpole hovering. It spun in circles, the water glistening in the sun, slowly evaporating.

We walked together along the narrow river, crossed the bridge, passed the pavilion and left the cemetery. As we parted, grandma asked Yang Yang’s grandma, “Do you want a lift?”

Yang Yang’s grandmother was holding Yang Yang’s hand, carrying a yellow Auchan supermarket plastic bag in her other hand and a checkered hand bag on her chest. She patted the pocket of her grey and black jacket and waved her hand: “No! I’ll take the bus back with Yang Yang! See you later!” Yang Yang stood quietly with her head down. A bus came roaring by, and Yang Yang’s grandmother took one look at it and exclaimed, “Let’s go”, pulling Yang Yang and turning around. They disappeared into the crowd.

It was September when I saw Yang Yang for the third time. After the hot season, it gradually cooled off when there was no sun. I went with my grandparents to distribute the Mid-Autumn gifts, but I didn’t see Yang Yang’s grandmother or Yang Yang. I knocked on the door and the person who came to open it was Yang Yang’s mother, who was wearing an earring in one ear and not yet in the other.

“Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. Ah, Wenjuan,

就逐漸地涼快起來。我和爺爺奶奶一同去

分送中秋禮物，卻沒見到陽陽外婆和陽陽，

敲門，來開門的是陽陽的媽媽，她一隻耳

朵上戴著耳環，另一隻還沒戴上。

「中秋節快樂哦，文娟，你阿媽到哪裡 去了？」爺爺舉了舉手中的紅酒瓶。

「阿媽大概帶陽陽一道去搓麻將了吧，

我也不太清楚呀。」她接過我手中的月餅禮

盒，放在門邊，「等歇就會回來的，去尋尋 看也可以！進來坐，進來坐。」

「沒事，沒事，我們正好沒事做，去尋

where has your mama gone?” Grandpa held up the bottle of red wine in his hand.

“Grandma probably took Yang Yang to play mahjong with her; I’m not sure.” She took the moon cake box from me and put it by the door, “They’ll be back soon if you don’t mind! Come in and sit down.”

“It’s all right. It’s all right. We’ve got just about nothing to do. We’ll go look for them.” Grandpa waved his hand.

Of course, my grandfather knew where the mahjong room was. He grew up in the area, then the neighbourhood was demolished, and the game room was torn down along with it. When new homes were built, the chess room was built along with it. Every year my grandparents came here for some kind of festival, and they would bring me along. To this day, I still remember the cold, wet sensation of catching snails in the doorway of the game room as a child and letting them squirm on the back of my hand.

We didn’t drive, and walking is slower than driving. We walked over a thin-necked bridge across a two-man-wide dirt road surrounded by vegetable fields. The fields were small, maybe not even the size of an acre, with lots of gravel on the ground. A chicken coop on one side and a pig pen on the other, which stood not far away, sandwiched by a round, rolling building maybe two or three stories high. It perhaps used to store something, with a skinny dog scurrying out next to it. The sky is grey, the air smells bad, and even the surrounding fields feel sickly. There were no patches of fields, golden rice, no green trees, and the fields in the city countryside always looked half dead. Dirty e-bikes were skewed.

麼東西的，旁邊竄出一條瘦瘦的狗來。天 是灰蒙蒙的，空氣里帶著難聞的味道，連

周遭的田野也讓人覺得是病殃殃的，這裡

沒有成片成片的田野和金黃的稻穀，也沒 有綠樹成蔭，城市郊野的田總是半死不活 的樣子，髒兮兮的電瓶車歪歪斜斜，土地 裡夾著石頭，一切都是雞零狗碎的模樣，

連春天的油菜花，都是三支兩支的開。

穿過菜田，零零落落出現幾家的院子 來，離田最近的那家開了個美髮店，用藍

紫色的玻璃貼花糊著門窗，一個四五十歲 的中年婦人正在燙頭，老闆發了福，叼著 煙站在一邊擺弄手機。旁邊竪著立牌，白 底紅字：「棋牌室」，下寫小字一行：「請上 二樓」。 美髮店的左邊一人寬的窄梯可以上二 樓，樓梯陡峭，木制的結構，腳一踏上去 便吱呀吱呀地響，表面磨得油光發亮。二 樓棋牌室的門是普通的木門，漆的朱紅掉

The land was lined with rocks. Everything looked falling apart. Even the Nanohana in spring bloom only in twos and threes.

Pass through the field, there were a few yards. A beauty salon with blue glass stood next to the field.

A middle-aged woman in her forties or fifties was having her hair permed, and the owner was chubby, standing with a cigarette in his mouth and fiddling with his mobile phone. Next to it stood a sign in red letters on a white background: “Game Room”, with a small line underneath: “Please go up to the second floor”.

The stairs are steep and wooden, creaking as soon as you step on them, the surface polished and shiny. The door to the game room on the second floor is a plain wooden door, the vermilion paint falling off piece by piece, and there is an oily, dry old man at the door, as dark as a knot of skinny wood that has soaked after the rain.

Grandpa asked, “Fellow! I haven’t seen you for a long time. Do you know where Yang Yang’s Grandma is?”

The old man pushed the door, “She is at the innermost.”

When the door opened, the smell of cigarettes and the noise came out at once. The light of sway ing bulbs dangling from wires, the agitated tapping of tables, the crowd was coming up to meet them, women and old men sitting in all sorts of flowered jackets. One person was standing beside the other with the shoes off and legs crossed. The other one was fumbling with a mahjong tile, making sounds of

的由電線吊著的燈泡的光，激動的拍桌的 動作，擁擠的人群都迎面撲上來了，穿著

各式花外套的婦女們、老伯們坐著，一個

人站在另一個的身邊，把鞋子脫了，把腿 翹著，一個人翻弄著一塊塊麻將牌，劈里

啪啦，如同打穀場上曬豆般成片的波浪聲， 一個人大叫著，唾沫星子在橘黃的燈光下

起飛，鑽過香煙和茶水的白霧，精准降落 在另一個的臉上。

waves like the rippling sound of beans drying on a grain farm. Another was shouting, spittle taking off in the orange light, burrowing through the white mist of cigarettes and tea and landing precisely on the other’s face.

“You know what you’re doing! Don’t count it like that!” A voice came out, and Yang Yang’s grand mother was standing at the corner table, talking to another woman of about the same age, “How can you be so unreasonable?”

“Auntie, it’s still my card!”

“I want this card? I want this one card of yours?” Yang Yang’s grandmother didn’t wait for her to say anything and waved her hand, “I don’t want to hear it. I’m not going to talk to you.” Then she turned her head and yelled, “Yang Yang! Go home!”

A head emerged from under the high mahjong table: Yang Yang had moved a low stool and was sitting in the corner, holding a plastic, crystal-shaped fruit bowl with a small pile of sunflower seeds inside. He picked up his blue school bag - half his size - and carried it on his back, walking alone towards the door without waiting for his grandmother.

“Yang Yang, call your grandmother!” Grandpa greeted.

He saw us but hesitated for three or two seconds as if he wasn’t sure. He turned his head to look at his grandmother, who was stuffing unfinished melon seeds in a red plastic bag into the small tartan hand bag, still muttering and arguing about something with another woman. They were pulling at each other, the light flickering on their newly permed

完的瓜子裝在一個紅色塑料袋里，往那格 子布的手提小包里塞，仍嘀嘀咕咕地和另 一個女人爭論著什麼，兩個人相互拉扯著， 燈光在她們新燙的捲髮上閃爍著，散出白 色的光暈來，嘩啦一聲，隔壁一桌胡了，「咔 嗒」，一個穿著棕色夾克衫的男人站起來點 了一根煙。陽陽開口：「我要先回去了。」爺 爺叫我：你和陽陽一道回去吧。

curls, giving off a white glow, and with a crash, the next table declared a winner in mahjong. A man in a brown jacket stood up and lit a cigarette. Yang Yang said, “I’m going to go back now.” Grandpa called me, “you should go back with Yang Yang.”

So we went down the stairs. The woman was still getting her hair permed, the owner sat down, and the salon lamp was on. We walked down the lane, once again through fields, chicken sheds and pig pens, he walked ahead, and I followed. The sky was slightly overcast, the moon was out, and the wind was cold, sweeping back and forth across the fields. The houses stood alone in the distance like the dim shadows of the full moon, there were no tall trees around, and the fields were darkened. He kicked a stone as a ball. I pulled my coat and watched his schoolbag sway with his steps. We were silent the whole way.

His home is not far from the bridge. The door was not shut properly. Yang Yang sneaked into the house like a ghost. I had just changed my shoes, and he was already sitting on the hard wooden sofa with the TV turned on. The house was large, about three storeys, and behind the living room, a door to the courtyard was open, facing the front door. A gust of wind blew in. The electric rice cooker in the kitchen was making a ticking noise, and a box of moon cakes had been unwrapped in pieces: they were the Mid-Autumn Festival gifts we had brought. Yang

Applicant: SHEN Yichen

煲滴滴響著，一盒月餅已經拆的七零八落： 那是我們帶來的中秋節禮物。陽陽撿出盒 子里的月餅，抱到沙發上，擺攤似得排成 一排。一共八隻，口味不同，他端詳了一 會，將它們各個都拆開了，豆沙餡的、五 仁的、蛋黃的、蓮蓉的 每個都嘗了一口。 我沒說什麼，也沒有再看他，只是低下頭 玩起手機來。他或許是自覺沒意思，「咚咚」 地四處跑起來，每每往我這兒靠近些，下 一刻就又離開了，繞了幾圈，跑上樓去了。

我低下頭，瞥見他的拖鞋地上翻過來一隻， 沙發上一隻。 我覺得有些冷了，穿堂風呼呼地吹， 因走路而出的汗讓背上發涼，外邊安靜十 分，偶爾傳來一兩聲狗吠，天晚了，月亮

Yang picked out the mooncakes from the box, car ried them to the sofa and arranged them in a row like a vendor. There were eight of them in total, with dif ferent flavours, and after examining them for a while, he unwrapped them all: the ones with bean paste, the ones with five nuts, the ones with egg yolk, the ones with lotus seed paste. He tasted each one. I didn’t say anything and didn’t look at him again. I just put my head down and looked through my phone. He ran around, probably because he felt bored, but he came closer to me, then left the next moment, circled around a few times and ran upstairs. I looked down and saw one of his slippers on the floor and the one on the sofa.

I felt a little cold. The wind was blowing through the hall, the sweat from the walk was chilling my back, it was hushed outside with the occasional barks, it was late, and the light of the moon was shining brightly on the ground.

At that moment, footsteps sounded upstairs, and Yang Yang’s mother came downstairs, carrying a small leather bag, with Yang Yang following her, looking disillusioned. He asked, “Where are you going?” Yang Yang’s mother said, “A friend’s party. I am expected to be there!”

Yangyang stood still as he yelled upstairs, “You’re going out again! When are you coming back?”

陽陽媽媽又道：「等會兒就吃飯了，你

怎麼還吃月餅。」

我沒聽見陽陽回答她的問題，只是聽

到門掩上時吱呀一聲，汽車發動了，「嘟嘟」

倒車，而後一定開過了橋，在鄉間的道路

上開遠了。陽陽沈默地站了一會兒，往客

廳走來，電視上放著動畫，絢爛的顏色變

化著，在這兒，在這時候，我感到空氣里

生出一股疲憊困倦的氣息來。我不去看他， 余光里，他走近了，把月餅全收進盒子，

從客廳後面，那灌風的門裡出去了。我不

Yang Yang’s mother added, “Dinner will be ready soon. Why are you still eating mooncakes.”

I didn’t hear Yang Yang answer her question, only the creak of the door as it closed and the car started, “tooting” in reverse. It must have driven over the bridge and away on the country road. Yang Yang stood in silence for a moment, walking towards the living room with the cartoons playing on the TV. The colours changed in splendour. At this time, I felt a tiring, sleepy air coming through. I don’t look at him, but from the corner of my eye, he comes closer. He put all the mooncakes in the box and went out through the draughty door at the back of the living room. I didn’t know what he would do, so I just sat on the sofa and did my own thing.

About ten minutes or so, Yangyang’s grandmoth er came back with my grandparents. She was carrying some cooked food, and as soon as she entered the door, she turned on the light and looked for Yangyang before she had even taken off her coat or changed her shoes. “Yang Yang! Yang Yang! Come and serve the rice. It’s time to eat!” Her thick, hoarse voice bounced off the walls around her and dissipated.

“Wenjuan probably went out. Did he follow?”

“No way”, Yang Yang’s Grandma waved her hand. I said, “I saw him go out to the back.”

Yang Yang’s grandmother nodded as if she had an “I knew it” look and said, “Girl, go get him for me.”

I nodded and got up to the backyard. It was ut terly dark, and the short houses in the distance were lit up in twos and threes. It was called a backyard,

我點點頭，起身往後院走去，天完全 黑了，遠處的矮房三三兩兩地亮著燈，說 是後院，實際上是一片水泥澆的院子，鐵 柵欄在四周圍了一圈，大鐵門鎖著，地上 擺著許許多多的花盆，高的，矮的，種的 不是花，而是菜，牆壁上靠著一輛孩子用 的自行車，輪子癟著，一旁還有一座壓水 式的水井。水泥地反射著月光，顯得格外 亮堂，格外空闊和安靜，陽陽坐在水井旁 邊的竹矮凳上，他正吃著月餅。

我叫了他一聲，說：「你外婆叫你吃飯 了。」

他正好吃完一隻，瞧了瞧我，站起身來， 抱著那月餅的盒子，廚房裡叮叮噹噹，熱 菜下鍋，好不熱鬧，風吹得我發冷，正要 先走進去，冷冷清清的天空下卻突然竄起 一串狗叫聲，我回頭一望，那明亮的、圓 滿的月亮正低低地懸在漆黑的田野上。

but it was actually a concrete-poured courtyard with an iron fence and a locked large iron gate. There were many flower pots on the ground, tall and short, planted not with flowers but with vegetables. The concrete floor reflects the moonlight, making it look extra bright, empty and quiet. Yang Yang was sitting on a low bamboo bench next to the well, eating a mooncake.

I called out to him and said, “Your grandmother is calling you for dinner.”

He just finished one, glanced at me and stood up, clutching the box of mooncakes. The kitchen was busy with dishes frying in the pot. It was so cheerful, the wind was chilling me, and I was about to go in first when a series of dogs suddenly barked under the cold, clear sky. I looked back and saw the bright, full moon hanging low over the dark fields.

泥牆壁的時候向北轉彎，正面的道路的盡 頭也許又是一家裁縫店，向著那家店鋪行 走，右手側經過第二棟居民樓的時候向東 轉彎，在第二或者第三個綠色油漆的鐵門 處停下，拿出鑰匙，開門，敲響第一層的 某一扇窗。

Before 2008, starting from the north gate of the Lak eview neighbourhood, walk north, there is a bridge on the west or east side. Cross it over the pavement that extends over the flat ground to a dry cleaner or a tailor’s shop, turn west, walk to the entrance of an alley, and turn north when you see two concrete pillars with bird’s nest-like wires and greyish-yellow, rough concrete wall. The end of the front road may be another walk towards the tailor shop, turn east as you pass a second residential building on your right, stop at the second or third green painted iron gate, take out the key, open the door and knock on one of the windows on the ground floor.

I remember the route well enough, but I cannot remember exactly which side of the bridge it was on. But there was such a wide bridge over a moat, arching high in the middle, a walled version separat ing two worlds, with what seemed like a hundred or so pedestrian stairs on the side. It narrowly spreading upwards between the railings to get onto the bridge was like climbing a mountain. The top of the bridge held the rising sun, the vertical, slim steel TV tower flashing red signals at the far end. When looking under the bridge, the other side always has a sense of strangeness that makes the 500-metre distance a mystery.

If this route, as I remember, is on the east side of the bridge, it is bordered by a fiery red intersec tion with flashing traffic lights. The neighbourhood is still unpainted, a plain white iron swing. People, especially children, walk along the road, shops open ing on both sides of the street. Everything appears to be tight and crowded. But if this route is on the west side of the bridge, then everything begins to

交通燈閃爍，小區還未粉刷，有一座純白

色的鐵鞦韆，人們，尤其是孩子們，在道

路上走動著，街道兩側開滿了商鋪，什麼 都緊密、熱鬧又擁擠。但如果這條路線在

橋的西側，那麼一切都開始變得遙遠又空 曠，正對街面的小賣部的綠色玻璃展櫃里

列著一包又一包的煙，沈靜地站立在倒影

之下，那條有裁縫店的道路在記憶里呈現

出一種可以供三輛車並行的樣子，店鋪貼

著西側的白色牆壁，牆外是香樟的枝葉，

東側的道路空曠著，繼續向北蔓延，盡頭 是一片白光。

總之，敲響某一戶人家的窗，連廊有 可能是十戶一層的，窗戶對著橫向上下的 樓梯，扶手的棗紅色木漆開始剝落，光照 穿過了雕花了的北向的牆，回蕩在冷淡潮 濕的樓道里；有可能是兩戶一層的，兩扇防 盜門面對著面，同時打開就相碰，而有兩

look distant and empty. The kiosk directly across the street sells packs of cigarettes listed in its green glass display case, standing stoically under its reflection. The road with the tailor’s shop takes on the appear ance in memory of a road that could have been used for three cars to run alongside. The shops are against the white wall on the west side. Balsam fir branch es extend beyond the wall, and the road on the east side is empty and continuing northwards, ending in white light.

In any case, knocking on the window of a par ticular house, the connecting corridor could be ten houses on a floor, with the window facing the stair case going up and down horizontally. The date red paint of the handrail is beginning to peel. The light shone through the carved north-facing wall, echoing in the cold, damp hallway; it could be two houses on a floor, with two security doors facing each other. The doors touch each other when opened simultane ously. While two people standing in the stairwell at the same time would be crowded.

Standing in front of the door that is about to open, stepping on the rag used as a carpet. One smells a distinctive odour, a stuffy, sluggish smell that is hard to describe and recall but in the absence of other distractions, it appears suddenly in all places and people. People with the smell are unaware of it, but those around them will know that something is about to come to an end.

Opening the door, there is a square living room, just a few square metres, with a four-cornered wooden table set against the north wall. A narrow window is open above, illuminating the upside-down

把門打開，一個四方的客廳，不過幾

平米，一個四角的木桌緊貼著北側的牆壁 擺放，牆壁上方一扇窄窗打開著，照亮桌面

上倒扣著的防蠅罩——紅色的塑料倒扣在 桌面上，半球形，漁網那般多孔洞，下緣向

上翻起來，已經發白——以及裡面擺放著的 菜：總有吃了半邊的魚，葉片垂出瓷盆邊緣

的青菜。桌面被摸得發了黑，油光水滑的一 層蠟，從里向外擺著各年的老黃曆、保健品、 紀念品、手錶和舊鐘，全部落了一層沈重的 浮灰。收音機里爆發出一陣歡呼，遙遠的田 徑場在午後充斥在房間里。 太爺坐在桌前，他有一把帶靠背的椅 子，拿著銀亮的剪子剪一隻蟹，或者是一隻

fly cover on the table - red plastic covers the table upside-down, hemispherical, with holes like a fish ing net. The lower edge turns upwards and is already white. There are dishes inside: half-eaten fish and vegetables hanging off the edge of the porcelain pot. The table top was blackened and oiled with wax. From the inside out, there were old calendars from various years, health products, souvenirs, watches and old clocks, all with a heavy layer of floating dust. A cheer erupts from the radio, and the distant athletic field fills the room in the late afternoon.

The great-grandfather sits by the table on a chair with a backrest. He holds a silver shear to cut a crab or a chicken. In the bedroom on the south side, four wooden uprights are supported at the corners of the bed, holding up a bed of white veil that drops down from the roof to the floor and covers half the room. The great-grandfather clanks on his shears as if he is fused into the wooden chair. His skin is smooth dark brown, and his bones are slim and straight, just like the chair. He stood up as if he had been removed from the chair. The shears cupped in his hand, pre tending to come and cut my hair.

The scene sometimes takes place in the living room. Sometimes it suddenly shifts to the bedroom. The common feature is that it is always as dim as if there were no light nor sun, but in the dimness, all the objects, the wooden cupboards and bed frames, every corner of the table and faded plastic coverings are as clear as if they were emitting white light. The great-grandfather chases slowly behind me as I run around the bed inside and outside, jumping onto the bed and floor, and walking in circles like one circle around the funeral. The white veils drape around the

白光那樣清晰。太爺在身後緩步地追逐， 我繞著床跑，從裡面的床頭跑到外面的床 頭，跳到床上，跳到地上，完成一周圈的 行走，就像在葬禮上完成一周圈的行走， 那些垂在床邊將被褥圍繞和保護的白紗裹

在人們的腰上和頭上，我們等在門口的階 梯上，兩側的鋼制空心扶手在衣角擦過的 時刻發出嗡鳴和震動。

所有人都是黑白色的，除了那些棕黃 色的疲憊的皮膚，我被托舉起來，放在爸

爸的肩膀上，那似乎是我有記憶以來第一 次這樣俯視所有人，看到他們黑色的頭髮、 黑色的眼睛、黑色的上衣、袖子上黑色的 布片、黑色的長褲和黑色的皮鞋，以及他 們肩膀到腰間纏繞的白色麻布和頭頂上的 白色花朵。 坐在爸爸肩膀上的那一天，我的身上 沒有白色，曲別針穿過羽絨服的外殼，將 一片黑色的紗布和一小塊四方的紅色紗布

bed to surround and protect the bedding wrapped around people’s waists and heads. We wait on the stairs by the door, the hollow steel handrails on both sides humming and vibrating as the corners of our clothes brush against them.

Everyone was black and white, except for the tan, tired skin. I was lifted and placed on my dad’s shoulders. It seemed like the first time since I could remember looking down on everyone like that, see ing their black hair, black eyes, black tops, the black pieces of cloth on their sleeves, their black trousers and black leather shoes. The white linen is wrapped around their shoulders to their waists, and the white flowers are placed on their heads.

The day I sat on my dad’s shoulder, I wasn’t wearing white. The crank pin went through the shell of the duvet and pinned a piece of black gauze and a small square of red gauze to my shirt. The black piece of gauze remained on my left arm for the autumn that followed, but the little red piece disap peared over the years as other children wore it. I took a long piece of white linen cloth, wrapped it around my waist, and carried it across my right shoulder like a carrying pole.

There was white everywhere. Fabric drying in the smoke from the incense, concrete hallways posted with information of locksmiths, the address of educational institutions, and the contact of sec ondhand car agencies. The yellow and white papers were stacked in a messy, damp curl as it began to rain outside, clouds piling up one on top of the other to form a wall that blocked the sun. A pale blue board fell with the rain so that a drizzle began to fall,

鎖修鎖的電話，告知教育機構的地址，告

知二手車機構的聯繫方式。這些黃色和白 色的紙張凌亂地堆疊在一起，潮濕地捲曲，

因為外面開始下雨，雲一朵一朵堆積成阻

攔了太陽的牆，淡藍色的廣隨著雨落下來 於是小雨開始下，從頭頂半透明的雨棚上

滾動著藍綠色的水珠，節奏很緩慢，就像

被沾濕了的人群向前移動的速度那樣遲鈍。 人群並立著，扎成捆的桌腿那樣一簇又一 簇，高矮胖瘦，排成了牆往前走。

我們經過了樓梯，穿過了大門，來到

rolling blue-green droplets from the translucent can opy overhead. The rhythm was slow, as sluggish as the sodden crowd moving forward. The group stood side by side, clustered like tied table legs. Tall, short, fat and thin, moving forward in a wall.

We passed the stairs and went through the gate to the coffin, going round and round, chasing each other as if playing a game of chase, head after tail, tail after head. While the great-grandfather lay motionless on a bed, people’s white linen was blown up by the wind like a bed veil. I looked down and saw a blurred face. The smell that once existed in the hallway was gone from him. I no longer remember his face, and I never knew his name from the be ginning. These people slip to the edge of the world, losing their names in the memories of the newcom ers. Their names are replaced with their family role. Grandfather was the eldest son, who was to drive the first nail in the coffin’s corner. The others gathered at the bottom of the steps, looking up, watching as the eldest son took the hammer, lifted it up, and then heaved it on the nail.

Sometime after that, the great-grandmother began to move. The nursing home was a new land where people picked out sick and out-of-touch old people like vegetables, stripping them from their network of family and friends. She doesn’t want to live in a nursing home; she has children in the coun try and city. She is determined to stay in a home one month and move to that one the next. Her children took her around in cars, tricycles and on foot, over and over again. I asked if the great-grandmother had her own house, and Grandma told me yes, the old house across the road, only she wouldn’t go back to

院，在鄉下她有子女，在城裡她有子女， 她決心這個月住在這家，下個月搬到那家，

子女們用汽車、三輪車和步行帶著她輾轉 徘徊，一次又一次。我問：阿太是否有自己 的房子，奶奶告訴我有的，就是馬路對面 那個舊房，只是她不會再回去居住。我沒 有再多問，那個時候的我不願意再深究了，

只是現在想起來，仍然不清楚流浪是否緩 解了她的孤獨。

從城市到屬於他們的鄉村，或是從屬

於他們的鄉村到城裡必須要從座橋上走過

去。而那座橋已經很老了，灰色的石頭變 成了黑色，又變成了黃色，在村裡決定把 泥路修成水泥路的時候，它在一種尊敬之 中得到了保留。它通體都堅硬，通體都細瘦， 護欄像是要融斷了的一截硬糖那樣粘在薄 薄的石板上，橋身吊在水面上，如同老人 乾枯狹長的脖頸。在橋面下邊，一條河流

live there. I didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t feel like digging any deeper at that time, but now, when I think about it, I’m still unsure if wandering eased her loneliness.

One had to walk over a bridge to get from the city to the village where they belonged or from their village to the city. And that bridge was old, the grey stones turning black and yellow, and it was pre served in a kind of respect when the village decided to make the dirt road concrete. It is hard and thin all over, the rails sticking to the thin stone slab like a hard candy about to melt off. The bridge dangles over the water like an old man’s dry, narrow neck. Below the bridge, a river flows quietly. In spring and summer, grasshoppers on the grassy banks can jump to the bank on the other side. The river is brownish like earth, with few fish, shrimp or crabs. By the time autumn and winter arrive, the grass on either side is thin and yellow. The land, deprived of grass, is exposed and bare, interspersed with stones and bricks. The river reflects the white of the sky, and the water flows into the farmland through the slabs of stone further down and bridge holes.

So she travelled the path between the ridges of the fields and crossed this narrow bridge. She went to the three-storey self-built house with its thin white tiles and visited the attic with its green mosaic walls in the suburban. Then she went to the third floor behind the security door of the six-storey building. The scenery on either side changes rapidly, and the great-grandmother’s reflection journeyed across the barren landscape between the two places.

At every festival, we always gathered togeth

房，到達城中村裡綠色馬賽克牆面的閣樓，

到達六層樓房防盜門後的第三層。兩側的 景色飛速的變換著，阿太的倒影在兩地之 間的荒蕪之上飛馳。

在每一個節日，我們總是要聚集在一

起，爺爺開車載著我來到打穀地上，豬在 棚子里散髮的氣味彌散在油菜花田之間，

道路上總是泥濘或者乾燥，蚯蚓產生的泥

土一段一段地扭著，在無雨的天氣里，和

生產者自身一同在鞋底下被擰碎。

她總是顯得沈默，沈默地坐在飯桌的 中央位置，正對著大門，很少說話，眼睛 低垂，幾乎是一言不發。實際上，我已經 完全不記得她的眼睛是如何，聲音又是如 何的了，我從來沒有見過她和誰談天說地 或是和誰抱怨任何事，時間從她厚實的彎 曲的背脊上溜過去而聲音在她的喉嚨里消 失，像一場真空，這種真空這在鄉下的泥 土上，在這個被婦女們的囁嚅包圍了的世

er. My grandfather drove me to the threshing floor, where the smell from the pigs in their sheds perme ated the fields of nanohana, where the roads were always muddy or dry. The earthworms produced a twisted section of mud that, in rainless weather, was squeezed under the shoes along with the producers themselves.

She always seemed silent, sitting silently in the centre of the dining table, facing the door, rarely speaking. Her eyes were downcast, and she hardly spoke a word. In fact, I don’t remember how her eyes looked or how her voice sounded at all. I never saw her talking to anyone or complaining to anyone about anything. Time slipped past her thick curved back, and her voice disappeared in her throat like a vacuum. A vacuum that was uncanny in the coun tryside, in a world surrounded by the mumbling of women, so uncanny that it became an almost gro tesque isolation.

The women, dressed in red and purple, wrap their cloth scarves around their heads in the cold wind. They talk in twos and threes about everything, their legs bulging outward, their hands behind their backs plucking the roots of wild vegetables. The whites of their eyes, the same colour as their skin, faded and reappeared from side to side. At those times, the great-grandmother is silent, standing stubbornly among her children who pass her by. The tips of their chopsticks picked up the flesh of chick en legs and fish cheeks. They echoed “Mum” and delivered it into her bowl.

After dinner, we said goodbye, and she never looked out of the window at us.

去，雞腿和魚面頰上的肉在筷尖飛舞著，

喊著「媽媽」和「老娘」，進入她的碗中。

吃完飯，我們就告別，她從不在窗口 眺望我們。

在太爺用剪刀剪下一隻蟹腳的時候， 阿太在一邊拿著一罐螺。我不理解那種螺 的形狀，他們擁擠在一個玻璃瓶里，探出

來的肉呈現出一種蝸牛的樣子，殼半張半 閉，像一輛銀灰色的小轎車，只是沒有頭 也沒有尾。阿太從來不配菜，只是將筷子 伸進去攪，再把筷和螺一同放到口中吮吸 過一遍。 我和她並不像是有某種血緣關係，我

While great-grandfather was cutting off a crab’s foot with scissors, great-grandmother was holding a jar of snails off to the side. I didn’t understand the shape of the snails. They were crammed into a glass jar. The flesh poking out took on the appearance of a snail, the shell was half open, and half closed, like a small silvery grey car, only without a head or a tail. Great-grandmother never served them with vege tables. She just stuck her chopsticks in and stirred them, then put them in her mouth and sucked them through with chopsticks.

It wasn’t as if she and I were somehow related by blood. We were more like neighbours who knew each other. She never approached me to talk about anything, and every morning we sat face to face eating our breakfasts, neither of us looking at the other nor saying a word. I always finished faster, and by the time she was still working on the snail one by one. I handed the bowl back to my grandmother and walked to my room. Great-grandmother would get up after a while and not go anywhere, just walk to her living room and later take out her tin foil.

The rectangular tin foil, dyed red or green on one side, is silvery white on one side, shining only brightly, reflecting no faint human figures; on the other side, it is brownish-yellow, with veins arranged in a grid-like a straw mat. A single sheet of tin foil has no weight, but thousands of sheets overlapping in bundles are heavy to carry. When they are moved and touched, they drop tin flakes, which flip in the air and fall into a silvery snowfall. Using two sheets of tin foil, yellow sides facing each other, one verti cal and one horizontal, with the vertical side overlap ping the horizontal side. With the horizontal edge as

紙沒有分量，幾百幾千張重疊著扎成捆拎 起來卻很沈，在被移動、被觸碰的時候掉 下錫的碎屑，在空中翻轉著落成一地銀雪。 用兩張錫箔紙，黃色的面相對，一張竪著， 一張橫著，竪邊與橫邊相疊。以橫邊為底， 向上折起來，留下大約三釐米的餘地，而 後捏住左下方和右下方兩只角向里彎曲， 再將竪起來的那張錫箔紙向下翻折，拇指 與食指把錫箔紙從中間撐開，像槳撐飽一 隻船那樣一頂。

她一個動作一個動作地教我，我一個

動作一個動作地跟著學，奶奶坐在一邊，

告訴我要學會，他們老百年之後都需靠我，

the bottom, fold upwards, leaving a margin of about three centimetres. Then pinch the bottom left and right corners and bend them inwards, then fold the vertical piece of tin foil downwards and hold it up in the middle with your thumb and forefinger, like an oar holding up a boat.

She taught me one step at a time, and I followed one step at a time, while my grandmother sat and told me that I had to learn, that they would all need me when they were gone. She took the folded silver dollar from me and dropped it into the cut opening of the fertiliser sack. The sack was brought from the countryside and was made of the same material as the gunny sack, with the word ‘fertiliser ‘ printed in red inside a yellow box in the middle of the flowery green. The sack will be tied up when it is full.

She folded like this every morning, afternoon, and night, sitting on the sofa. The waxed mahogany floor flowed around her like a red river. For a long time after the great grandfather’s death, she folded bags of paper money for the dead every day, from the moment she opened her eyes until the sun went down. Never have someone fold tin foil like this. Those silvery ravioli-like paper money overwhelmed the living room, surging like waves in the sun, light tumbling over the paper as she sat in the middle of the sea.

After the seventh day since the great-grandfa ther died, great-grandmother stopped folding paper like that, only three times a year on Qing Ming, the ancestral ritual and the day he died. Later, it became twice, only at Qing Ming and the ancestral ritual. These two times, children who never saw each other

在頭七後，阿太不再那樣疊紙，一年

只疊三次，清明、祭祖和忌日，再後來是 兩次，只有清明和祭祖。在這兩個時間，

從不認識，似乎從無瓜葛的孩子們來了，

聚集在一起，輪流向她問好，再向那些姓

名全不知曉，全然隱形了的祖宗們磕頭。

她對每個人都點頭，坐在門口，把一隻一 隻的元寶投進旺盛的火盆里，那些在她手 下產生的摺紙們失去形狀，銀白色轉瞬消

失，蜷曲起來，化作飛灰，在熱風裡向上 飛舞起來，四十五分鐘，黃銅盆里的紅色 把她兩個月的時間燃燒殆盡。 她到廚房水鬥右下角最底層的拉門裡 掏出一隻鞋盒來：紅的，寫著海燕牌這三 個字，沒用繩子捆起來，箱子的六面都被

and seemed unrelated came and gathered, taking turns greeting her and then kowtowing to the in visible ancestors whose names were unknown. She nodded to each one and sat in the doorway, throwing the folded paper into the roaring fire one by one. The handmade folded paper lost its shape. Its silvery whiteness disappeared in a flash, curling up and turning to ash, fluttering upwards in the hot wind. Two months of her work burned away in forty-five minutes with the red fire in the bronze vessel.

She pulled out a shoebox from the bottom right corner of the kitchen water faucet: it was red, with the word Haiyan written on it, free of strings. All six sides of the box flattened, the edges of the box protruding like a long field. The glued areas of the box had long since dried and glowing a distinct yellow, and the shoebox lid lifted with a large crack on one side. A bundle of brown and wood-coloured chopsticks tied up with blue shoelaces, twenty-sev en small celadon cups and twelve small bowls of light-coloured orchids are neatly arranged.

She arranged all the utensils in a tight circle along the glass platform on the mahogany table. She sometimes counted from the first on the left and turned anticlockwise, sometimes counting from the first on the right, without particular order. After 2008 an extra set of utensils were added, and the table became more occupied. According to the rules, she was supposed to shout, greet those distant people with that wide, loud voice, and do her duty as the oldest and most dignified hostess so that those living in the world would not lose their way. She should shout as if standing on the ridge of a field, shouting to the land caught between two worlds: Oh, old an

擠一分。依照規矩，她是需要大喊的，需 要用那寬厚響亮的嗓子招呼那些遙遠的人， 盡她作為最年長的、最有威嚴的女主人的 責任，讓已然客居世間的人們不至於迷失 方向。應該像站在田埂上那樣大叫，向夾 在兩個世界的土地大叫：家門裡的老祖宗 啊，爸爸媽媽啊 …… 可阿太那樣嚴肅地把

嘴抿著，那兩瓣乾枯的嘴唇緊密地擁抱在 一起，她拿著一壺黃酒，在點香的時候倒

第一輪，在香燃燒至一半的時候倒第二輪， 在香燒盡的時候倒最後一輪。 地上鋪了一層報紙，報紙上放著一隻 靠枕，在最後一輪酒結束之後她的子女們 攙扶著她跪下來。阿太把手併攏在一起， 掌心相貼，前後晃動三次，而後彎下腰，

cestors in the house, Oh, mother and father…… But great-grandmother pursed her lips so solemnly, those two dry lips hugging each other closely as she took a pot of yellow wine and poured the first round when the incense was lit. The second round was poured when it was half-burned and the last when it was burnt out.

The floor was covered with a layer of newspaper on which a cushion had been placed, and after the last round of drinks, her children helped her to kneel down. Great-grandmother puts her hands together, closes her palms, and shakes them back and forth three times before bending over and burying her head so deeply that it touches the cold tiled floor. The chanting of blessings should have sounded: blessings for peace at home, blessings for good health, bless ings for the children to study well and receive ex cellent scores at their mid-term and entrance exams. But she remains silent, her eyes closed, completing nine hand waves and three kowtows, standing up, kneeling again, paying her respects on behalf of her sons and daughters who were not there, that body prostrate on the ground repeatedly like a rock.

The incense and burning ashes burned from the third to the sixth floor and down again, spreading all the way to the ground floor. The incense never burned like this again after great-grandmother died, but gathered in the basin in a small, roaring fire. The air became bad, and burning was banned.

My grandfather drove me to the threshing floor. The sky was still overcast, and it seemed that every time we came to this land, it was always grey. The dog hastily avoided the car’s tail lights, its brow

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furrowed. The wind blew across the broken masonry floor with a mournful look. We walked east along the road leading from the threshing floor to the cottage, the chicken coop and pigsty on the left-hand side, the barn on the right-hand side, and the road ragged be neath our feet. We walked across the narrow bridge, where the tiny river washed away the yellowed grass that hung over its banks.

爺爺開車，再一次載著我來到打穀場。

天仍然是陰沈的，似乎每一次來到這片土

地上，它所展現的畫面永遠是灰色，狗倉

皇地避開汽車的尾燈，眉頭緊蹙著，風吹

過破碎的磚石地，顯得很哀愁。我們沿著

打穀場通向平房的道路向東走，左手側是 雞窩和豬圈，右手側是穀倉，腳下的道路

凹凸不平。我們走過那座窄橋，細小的河 流衝刷著垂在河畔、枯黃了的青草。

我們來到了一個房間，我對這個房間

存留的印象只有記憶和想象共同的產物：它

單獨地立在院子的西側，像是工廠那巨大 的水泥煙囪被從當中劈開佇立著，東側的 牆壁上開著一扇暗淡的窗，但整個房間籠 罩在一種無光的、悶熱而潮濕的昏暗之中。 南側的一半是一個炕，大紅的、暗紅的、 粉紅色的毛毯和被褥重重疊疊，它們把阿

We came to a room of which I have only the combined memory with imagination: it stood alone on the west side of the courtyard, like the vast concrete chimney of a factory split down the mid dle, with a dull window in the east wall. But the whole room was shrouded in a shadowy, stifling, damp dimness. Halfway down the south side was a bed made of large red, scarlet and pink blankets. The bedding overlapped and wrapped around the great-grandmother like a midwife wrapping a baby.

A few of her children sat beside her, a few stood, and some came and went. The door closed softly behind me. Go on, go on. They pushed me forward. I walked over to great-grandmother, forgetting for a moment where her head was until those clasped hands parted and shoved my hand into her palm. It was the first time I had ever been held tightly in her grip and seen her eyes gaze like a torch, staring at me that long. She began to speak, her lips parting and closing. Grandmother stuck her head over to listen and then relayed. And the lamppost-like eyes slid away from me as she gazed into the dark brown grey behind me.

Let the girl go out first. Grandmother said. I left that room, the chickens and ducks murmuring and prowling incessantly behind the yard, the sound of

讓妹妹先出去吧。阿婆說。我離開了

那個房間，雞鴨在院後不斷地呢喃和徘徊 著，狗脖子上的鎖鏈聲悉悉索索地響。動 物們對話，身上的熱量和氣味將門後的聲 音阻隔。

阿太很快地死了，她在最後一天急切 地要回到出生的村莊去，子女們等待著攙 扶她從床上下來，而她卻死得快到不符合

安排。我們回到城裡的第二天下午就知道 了這個消息，汽車又發動，我們穿過了兩 座橋。

喪事在這裡是不能做的。她的一個女 兒說，其他的兄弟姐妹們附和著也抵觸。

那麼，我們就去城裡做。爺爺奶奶不

the chains around the dog’s neck squeaking. The animals conversed, the heat and smell of their bodies blocking out the sounds behind the door.

Great-grandmother died quickly. She was eager to return to the village of her birth on her last day. Her children were waiting to assist her out of bed, while she died too quickly to fit the arrangements. We learned the news the afternoon after we returned to town, the car started up again, and we crossed two bridges.

Funerals are not allowed here. One of her daugh ters said, and the other siblings agreed on the rejec tion.

Then, we’ll do it in the city. My grandparents said no more, just made up their minds to transport her to the city. I can’t remember much more clearly, but the image vaguely presents: in the middle of the threshing floor, sundried rice stalks are stuck in the ground in the shape of a tent, tied up with twine at the top and blazing in flames. A man in a whitened Taoist tunic walks along the dirt floor, waving a whisk around, as great-grandmother is put into the car, leaving silent children around the place.

Grandpa could not find anyone willing to do the ceremony when he arrived in the city. He returned to the country to find the Daoist, but there was no place for the ceremony. The city cannot offer a reasonably compliant site. The riverside walk is too narrow and the river too swift. The squares are public but filled with tiles, gym equipment and flower beds - flower beds planted with not vegetables but real flowers. Not so in the countryside, where the squares are also called public squares and the roads are public roads,

合理合規的場地，河畔的步道太狹窄了， 而河流太湍急，廣場是公共的，總是瓷磚、 健身器材和花壇——花壇里種下的不是青

菜，而是真正的花。鄉下不一樣，廣場也 叫公共廣場，道路也是公共道路，但人們

對它們所屬權的界定存在著一種默契，在 白事的號子聲響起來的時候，歸屬變得和

血緣有關，誰喪失了親人，那塊土地就短 暫的屬於他。而城市和鄉村之間的交界地 猶豫著接受，又猶豫著拒絕。

but there is an unspoken agreement that people define their belonging. As the sound of the funer al trumpets rises, the territory becomes related to blood, and whoever loses a relative, that land briefly belongs to him. And the borderland between city and country hesitates in acceptance and rejection.

Grandpa went back to the city. He contacted the funeral home, made an appointment and queued for a number. The electronic screen scrolled over the words “Forever in your memory” pixel by pixel, followed by names in red, which I didn’t remember. Wreaths were placed around the room, rice paper cut into strips, a few eulogies were written in ink, and then removed when it was over, like the great-grand mother lying in the centre waiting to be replaced. None of which lasted as long as the wreath. Before those cries on the long asphalt road took place, we started walking around great-grandmother again. The car could follow the hearse, but we must walk to see her face. The women stood in the fields and began to talk as they said that this great-grandmother had gone. The word “go” encompasses everything as I go with the crowd, going round and round, thinking that all people are walking in circles in life, moving in one direction. So that time stands still while we are alive. When someone dies, he stops and stands still, and others realise as they walk past that person, becoming aware of their own movement and unable to distinguish in their surprise direction. Instead, they say to the one who stopped: he is gone.

When great-grandmother was buried in a famous cemetery in the countryside, a Taoist priest was hired to hang “fish” on the tombstones. It was called “fish” but actually has no specific name. Its pronuncia

太姥姥落葬，埋在鄉下有名的大墓

園，請了個道士，在墓碑上掛了魚，說是

魚，其實並無具體名目，這兩字讀起來用

普通話直譯叫「孤恩」，在土話里與「掛魚」

發音一致，那是一種銅錢樣子的紙串，紅

的、綠的，在風裡飄起來。道士同我們告

別，外套脫下來，換成一套西裝去區里開會。

仙人也來了，她被相信是能通靈的，只是 通靈的話到現在才願意和所有人說。

仙人說阿太在死前一天的夜裡見到了

太爺，她第一次那樣含糊不清地喊著：來接

tion sounds like “hanging fish” in the dialect. It is a copper coin-like string of paper of red and green that flutters in the wind. The Taoist priest said goodbye to us, took off his jacket and changed into a suit for a party meeting in the district. A psychic was pres ent. She waited till then to share what she learned through her psychic power.

The psychic said that great-grandmother saw her husband the night before she died, and for the first time, she shouted in that vague way: Come and get me, come and take me away. She shouted: I want to go back to Xujia village. My Great-grandmother was a believer in Buddhism. She still wanted to die in Xujia Village to do the Taoist work after her death, which she could not do in the city. She wanted to have the ceremony, recite the sutra, walk the lan terns, scatter bits, and scoop up water from the river and sprinkle it on the ridge of the field.

But when she died, she was hurriedly sent to the city for cremation. What was the matter with the Daoist ritual? It’s the modern age. There is no Daoist ceremony. A handful of fire burns to the ashes. There is no chance of walking around the village, like a thin river around the field. Not to mention other things. Having gone to the city and got back, being pushed and driven, the coffin was finally closed. The nail-pounding routine of the eldest son was never used again, and she certainly didn’t know who was the first to decide to hammer the nails for her par ents. Naturally, she didn’t know who would be the last, nor did I. None of us did. Perhaps the sound of hammering the nail in the coffin in 2008 was the last cry. Where is the eldest sons’ hammer now? Proba bly it’s buried in the river somewhere.

At the great-grandmother’s funeral feast, the women exchanged bright and unsettling eyes with each other, talking about midterms, entrance exams, work, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. Rows of red Xi( which means joy in Chinese) were taped to the windows, which hadn’t been able to remove from the marriage ceremony of the last family.