Old Alley, Mortal World

In the late 1980s, in Yangxin, southeastern Hubei, there was an ancient alley called Xiamashi. The bluestone slabs were soaked with moss, and the old locust tree guarded the alley morning and dusk. The childhood of the boy Tong Chuan was deeply engraved by two figures. At the alley entrance, Old Chen kept a popcorn stall. The stove blazed, and with a loud bang, the sweet aroma spread through the entire street. He was lively and enthusiastic, giving children all over the world a mouthful of sweetness, yet in his heart he hid a long wait for separated flesh and blood. Under the eaves, Old Li sat alone in the shadows, his hammer lightly tapping the diamond drill, silently repairing broken porcelain pieces. He had endured half a lifetime of catastrophe, his wife and daughter scattered; he could repair thousands of cracks in objects, but could not mend his own devastated fate. One noisy, one silent; one hot, one cold—two bottom-rung craftsmen, each in their own way, ferrying others and themselves through the world. Time rolled on, cheap new products swept the countryside, and the wave of migrant work carried away the young and strong from the alley. Crafts dwindled day by day, and old acquaintances left one after another. The youth left home for the assembly lines of the south, drifting in the sea of strangers in a foreign land. At midnight in dreams, his ears still rang with the roar of the popcorn machine and the light tap of the rivet hammer. Twenty-five years passed, and middle-aged Tong Chuan returned home. The ancient alley was nine parts empty, the people and things all changed. The old pot with its rivet nails in plum-blossom pattern was still intact, but the old acquaintances were long gone. This book has no melodramatic grudges; it uses a restrained, blunt pen to write the ups and downs, joys and sorrows of ordinary people under the iteration of the times. The vanishing crafts will eventually come to an end, but that simple, silent kindness from the impoverished years echoes through the mortal world year after year. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Old Alley, Mortal World — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠