Mu Wen's hometown was called Yakeshi, an obscure fourth-tier small city.
This place was remarkable—it stretched like a silk ribbon, connecting the boundless Hulunbuir grasslands with the Greater Khingan Mountains.
Back in high school, Mu Wen once boasted in an essay: "I possess both the vast heart of the grasslands and the tolerance of the forest…" Her teacher liked Mu Wen and said, "Your essay is well written. It would be even better if you could be a bit more modest."
Mu Wen snapped to attention and saluted her teacher, saying, "Yes, teacher! I'll remember that!"
Yakeshi's summers were short, its winters long. Half the year was winter. The first snow fell at the end of September every year, and then winter came galloping in without delay.
Her father, Mou Dechang, no longer drove big trucks.
Mou Dechang had weathered many hardships. Over the years of truck driving, he had saved up a decent nest egg, enough to live comfortably in Yakeshi without worrying about food or clothing. One winter, he ran into a blizzard and got into a car accident on the highway. Mou Dechang's cab was crushed out of shape. When the traffic police pulled him out of the vehicle, his whole body was flattened, with only a breath of life left in him.
Following standard procedure, he was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. He underwent over a dozen major and minor surgeries and managed to survive. His savings were gone, and he was saddled with some debt. Fortunately, Mu Wen's parents were hardworking and optimistic, and slowly they got their lives back on track.
Mu Wen had originally been a playful child, relying on her natural cleverness to coast along in the upper-middle ranks of her class. After her father was injured, she thought to herself, I need to study hard and show Dad all my certificates for being a model student and getting first place. She kept her word—from then on, she always ranked first and never slipped again.
Now things were good. Dad didn't drive big trucks anymore, and Mom didn't have to worry herself sick. Dad drove a small car, shuttling between the pastoral areas and the forest, delivering people and goods, and sometimes taking tourists around Hulunbuir.
Though the income was unstable, life was steady.
Mu Wen loved following her father on his delivery runs.
She had just gotten home, her feet barely warmed up, when she went with Mou Dechang to the Ewenki Banner. Going to the banner in winter was great fun. They'd find a safe spot and watch hawks circle the sky. It was an absolutely magnificent sight.
What flooded her eyes now was white stretching in every direction. Mu Wen wore a pair of small sunglasses, wrapped herself in a wool blanket, and sniffled as she said to Mou Dechang, "Dad, should we get a new car next year?"
"This one still runs!" Mou Dechang cranked the heater to maximum, but it was useless. The little car, on the verge of being scrapped, seemed to let wind in from every direction.
Mu Wen's heart ached for her father, but she stayed optimistic: "Once I graduate, I'll start working for real. My employer pays really well—I'm definitely going to buy you a new car."
Mou Dechang didn't want to dampen her spirits, so he gave a simple, honest laugh. "Alright, then get me a small pickup truck. A pickup can haul more cargo."
"Deal!" Mu Wen said proudly. "I know all about cars now—from cheap ones at thirty or fifty thousand, all the way up to three or five million! I know them all inside and out!"
"You know about cars worth three to five million too?"
"Heh heh. I've ridden in one." Mu Wen said. "A client during my internship gave me a ride once. But Dad, that car was expensive, sure, but it was too well-sealed—I got carsick sitting in it too long." She tapped her finger against the frost flowers on the window. "Our car is better. It keeps you grounded and wide awake!"
"Wide awake, alright—it's frozen your nose into a runny mess!" Mou Dechang roared with laughter.
In the afternoon, they arrived at the gacha, unloaded the supplies at the village committee office, and called each herder one by one to come pick up their goods. Mu Wen loved the job of calling the herders, because the cell signal here was terrible—she had to find a spot with better reception first, then start shouting into the phone.
After going to Tianjin for school, Mu Wen had been domesticated by urban civilization and rarely got the chance to experience the feeling of yelling at the top of her lungs.
She stood in the heavy falling snow and shouted at the top of her voice:
"Sukhebalu! Your stuff is at the village committee office! Where? The village! Committee! Office!"
"Naritsong! Your stuff is at the village committee office! Village! Committee! Office!"
…
Mou Dechang stood off to the side chatting with a cadre from the gacha. The cadre said that once the road here was repaired, they'd run a passenger bus route to Ulanhot. In a few more years, they'd build a railway, and trains would run all the way to Hohhot…
Mou Dechang said, "Then I'll be out of a job. Once everyone can get around easily, they won't need help buying and hauling supplies."
"Once transportation improves, more people will come here. Then you can work as a tour guide," the young cadre said. "You're really capable."
Mu Wen saw her father smile happily.
Her phone buzzed with an unfamiliar incoming call. She answered and spoke, but the person on the other end seemed unable to hear her clearly. She shouted for a while, then hung up. In the midst of it, she caught three or five words that sounded like "Xie Chong." She was dazed for a moment, then decided it couldn't be him. She had his number, after all!
Herders rode in on horseback through the wind and snow to pick up their goods, and Mu Wen once again played the role of salesgirl, selling off all of her father's remaining stock. Someone recognized her and asked, "Little girl, on break from school? Come back to be a village cadre?"
Mu Wen waved her hand. "I'm going to work in Beijing."
The person would open their eyes wide. "Beijing? That far? I love Tiananmen Square."
Mu Wen would tease them: "Pretty impressive of me, right?"
The herdsman said in a thick accent, "Amazing, amazing!"
She was happy throughout the whole New Year—being with her parents was enough to make her happy. Occasionally she would think of Xie Chong, wondering what he was doing. Would he think of her, even for a moment?
She was, after all, a few years younger, her heart burning hot and not yet filled with too many things. She would hope that Xie Chong would call her and chat for a while—after all, their last meeting had been warm, and they had seemed like friends by then.
But she overlooked one thing: some people are warm when you meet them, but cold when you're apart. Xie Chong was exactly that kind of person.
He had thought of Mu Wen when passing by Baishi Bridge, but only for a fleeting moment. He had too many things to deal with. Mu Wen's appearance was like the finale of 2010—unique. But 2010 would eventually pass, and they would move on to 2011.
He successfully collected his accounts and, on New Year's Eve, went to the new apartment.
According to Mu Wen, the place should have white walls and wooden floors by now, clean and tidy. She hadn't lied to him.
Qian Song carried two camping chairs from the car and set them in the empty living room. The two sat quietly for a while.
Qian Song mentioned that Jiang Wu had been spending a lot of time with some man lately, and urged Xie Chong to step it up, or Jiang Wu would slip away. Xie Chong felt listless—he believed he and Jiang Wu simply had no fate left.
He would always think of Jiang Wu leaping heroically on horseback, or fearlessly throwing herself in front of his suddenly agitated horse to save him.
He wouldn't fight or snatch. He always felt that people who fought over love looked pathetic. Anything that required fighting for wasn't true love.
He needed to go to Foshan to meet his parents, who were living there temporarily, and then head to England to handle some work.
Remembering that the renovation still had some finishing touches, he took out his phone to call Mu Wen—but the battery was dead. He borrowed Qian Song's phone and called. That careless Mu Wen, who knew what she was doing—the wind was howling loudly on the other end, and she wasn't even speaking properly, just shouting, "Who are you? Who are you?"
Even through the phone, he could feel the wind stinging her forehead, and it was probably snowing too. He even joked, "Did you get sold off to some remote mountain village?" His joke fell flat because Mu Wen couldn't hear him at all. She kept asking tirelessly, "Who—are—you?"
Xie Chong unconsciously raised his voice to match hers: "I'm Xie! Chong!"
She, meanwhile, kept asking, "Who! Are! You! Do! You! Need! Something?!"
Xie Chong got annoyed and shouted, "I'm your uncle!" then hung up the phone.
Qian Song laughed so hard he nearly fell off the camping chair. "Hahaha, how did a phone call turn into a shouting match? And how did you become someone's uncle?"
"Crazy!" Xie Chong was still irritated. "Never met such a strange person!"
The next day he went to Foshan and met his parents, Xie Dongfeng and Liao Xiaohua.
His parents had always been in business. He'd grown up rotating between his maternal grandparents' and paternal grandparents' homes, so he wasn't really "close" to his parents. The family of three toured Foshan, took some tourist photos, had a few meals, and then Xie Chong left for England.
Mu Wen started arranging her return to school on February 25th.
When she went back, Yakeshi was still in its long winter. Her parents took her to Hailar to catch the train. Mu Wen looked at her hometown, still in its winter hibernation, and felt a deep reluctance to leave.
Before parting, she said to Mou Dechang repeatedly, "When New Year comes, I'm definitely going to buy you a new little car, Dad! Trust me!"
Mou Dechang didn't actually care whether he got a new car. He just hoped his daughter wouldn't have to work so hard. He felt that because of his car accident, his daughter had already been forced to give up parts of her life—otherwise, with grades as good as hers, she could have continued on to a master's or even a doctorate, immersed in the sea of books she loved.
As the train pulled away, Mu Wen shed two little golden beans again. Her hometown receded into the distance, and she traveled from the frozen tundra all the way to Tianjin.
"Graduation season" seemed to drag on forever. She rarely left campus. She didn't go to Fifth Avenue, which she loved, or watch the Liberation Bridge open, which she'd wanted to see. She spent all her time preparing for graduation. During that period, she almost completely cut off contact with the outside world. Finally, her college years came to a perfect end.
She was going back to Beijing.
Chu Ling had already rented an apartment in advance.
It was a two-bedroom on the first floor. The landlord had locked some things in the second bedroom, and the master bedroom had two single beds with a long narrow table between them. She and Chu Ling split the 1,500 yuan rent evenly. They had their own bathroom and kitchen. Chu Ling sent photos of the room to Mu Wen, and when Mu Wen saw the little potted flowers on the windowsill, her mood brightened instantly. She immediately went to the bank and transferred the rent to Chu Ling.
The money for the rent was the second 5,000 yuan Xie Chong had given her as a reward before she left Beijing. She'd saved the first 5,000 for emergencies.
At that moment, she thought of Xie Chong again.
She would always think of him at unexpected times, but she never once reached out to him on her own.
She could imagine Xie Chong's reaction—if he received an unwanted call, he would definitely consider it a waste of time. And if he wanted to contact someone, he would simply do it. Xie Chong had probably completely forgotten about her by now; his life was packed with too many interesting people and things. He could be lively when he wanted, quiet when he wanted, living entirely by his own whims. That was a life Mu Wen didn't yet have, but she always felt: she would have it someday.
In July, Beijing had just had a rain shower, and the weather was unbearably humid and hot. Mu Wen stood in her "new home." The new home was across from the overpass, and she was closer to the supermarket now. It was in a very old neighborhood, where many elderly people and children lived.
Chu Ling had already cleaned the new home thoroughly. To welcome Mu Wen's return, she had specially gone to the supermarket to buy meat and prepared hotpot at home.
Yes, they now had a kitchen, cookware, their own induction cooker, wok, and tableware. Back when they lived in bunk beds in a shared dorm, the two had occasionally dreamed of one day no longer living in group rentals, saying goodbye to that pervert who occasionally ran around naked. But back then, they hadn't imagined this day would come so soon.
Mu Wen's inexhaustible "bull energy" surged up again. She told Chu Ling to wait—she was going to make hand-pulled noodles, a proper staple to go with their hotpot.
The skill of kneading dough was honed under Ge Yunqing's guidance. She put on an apron and dove into the kitchen. The old range hood above her made a loud rumbling noise, and the summer kitchen was stuffy and humid. A small electric fan on the counter blew at her with a whir. Her hair, soaked with sweat, clung to her forehead in strands.
She hummed a tune while making the noodles, and Chu Ling helped on the side: "Mu Wen, why are you so happy?"
Mu Wen held her hand up to Chu Ling's nose: "Smell it—doesn't it smell wonderful?"
The scent of flour enveloped her entire hand, and it made her feel at ease. It was a habit formed during the long, idle winters in her hometown of Yakeshi: when the house has provisions, the winter passes without worry.
This dissolved the lingering melancholy from leaving school and eased the faint unease she felt about truly living in Beijing.
"I love the kitchen so much, Chu Ling." Mu Wen raised her "little white hand" and swore to Chu Ling: "From now on, every free weekend, I'll be in the kitchen, cooking everything I've ever learned for you."
Chu Ling clapped on the side: "Then every weekend, I'll go buy a bouquet of fresh flowers and fill our room with their fragrance."
Just imagining such days was beautiful, and Mu Wen was overjoyed. In the afternoon, it rained again. Mu Wen walked Chu Ling to her evening shift, and on the way back, she passed the restaurant where she had once run into Xie Chong.
A person stood at the stone pillar by the entrance, holding an umbrella and talking on the phone. The umbrella hid his face, but the figure was achingly familiar to Mu Wen. She couldn't help but stop in her tracks and hold her breath.
Rainwater streamed off the umbrella in continuous lines, shattering into scattered droplets the moment they hit the ground, forming splashing circles that isolated him in a solitary world.
Mu Wen walked past him holding her own umbrella. The rain was loud, and she heard him say: "Who would buy that piece of junk? Unless they sold it to Africa."
It really was Xie Chong.
The world was so small, so incredibly small.
Mu Wen was delighted—she had to say hello to Xie Chong. After all, on her very first day back in Beijing, she had run into him!
She reached out and tapped his umbrella, and heard him curse: "Are you crazy?"
She laughed out loud, raised her umbrella higher, and just as he was about to unleash a torrent of abuse, she revealed her cheerful face: "Mr. Xie! It really is you!"
Xie Chong's brow furrowed slightly, as if for a moment he couldn't remember who she was.
Mu Wen pointed at her own nose: "It's me, it's me! Mu Wen, the intern who helped with your renovation! Mr. Xie, have you lost your memory?"
She waited expectantly for him to recognize her, but instead, another hand suddenly emerged from under Xie Chong's umbrella, and someone was mocking him: "Hiding from the drinks all the way out here?? Let's go!"
Xie Chong was pulled away.
Mu Wen felt it was such a shame: the great man forgets easily—he actually didn't remember her.
She realized that in a city like Beijing, people's meetings and partings were truly like rushing water, always flowing eastward. Small grains of sand and pebbles would be carried away, and only stones big enough would remain.
In Xie Chong's heart, she wasn't that big stone. She was the sand.
This cruel realization made Mu Wen feel a pang of disappointment.
She went home, took a hot shower, and sat cross-legged on the bed with wet hair, flipping through a book. It felt so comfortable. Earphones in her ears, her old 5300 played songs for her.
"Rain and tears are the same…"
Mu Wen put down her book, leaned her head against the window, and watched the rain pour down and wash the city clean. Her phone rang. Without checking who it was, she picked it up casually.
The voice on the other end was a bit hoarse, and said: "Mu Wen, you're back in Beijing."
Mu Wen instinctively glanced at the phone. The caller ID displayed a name:
Xie Chong.