The summer heat always began to recede around this time of day. Even the wind sweeping in from the rice fields carried a faint, cooling crispness.
Li Zhuiyuan turned toward the paddies, closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths.
“Little Yuanhou, what is it? Does your great-grandpa stink or something?”
“No, Great-Grandpa, I’m smelling the rice.”
“Oh? And did you smell it?”
“No. It’s not like what they describe in the essays. They say the fragrance of rice is wonderful.”
“Silly child, your timing’s off. Wait until they fertilize or spray pesticides. I guarantee that scent will hit you like a brick!”
“Great-Grandpa, you’re messing with me.”
“Hahaha.” Li Sanjiang rolled his neck and kept walking along the narrow ridge between fields with the boy on his back. “Right now, yeah, it doesn’t smell like much. But come harvest time—once it’s dried, husked, and turned into steamed rice or rice cakes, with steam wafting up from the pot—that smell’ll hit you from miles away.”
“You’re right, Great-Grandpa.”Li Sanjiang paused and turned to look at the field too. “Actually, what those essays say isn’t wrong either. For farming folks like us, when the crops in the field are growing well, when there’s grain in the granary and rice in the pot, no fear of going hungry—your heart feels settled. Just standing there, closing your eyes and taking a breath—it’s sweet all the same.”
“I get it.”
“No, you don’t. Little Yuanhou, you’ve never gone truly hungry. You can’t really understand what that kind of peace feels like. Honestly, being able to fill your belly at every meal—that’s a fairly new blessing.
Even now, it doesn’t compare to the days before Liberation.”
“Huh?” Li Zhuiyuan blinked in surprise. “Before Liberation, people had enough to eat?”
“Oh yeah, before Liberation, every soul could eat their fill. Nobody starved.”
“Great-Grandpa, that doesn’t sound right.”
“Because livestock didn’t count as people.”
“Huh?”
“Little Yuanhou, before Liberation, your great-grandpa made it all the way to Shanghai.”
“Then did you know Xu Wenqiang?”
“Xu who? Never heard of him. I took a boat—easy trip, since Nantong and Shanghai are just separated by a stretch of river.
Back then, I figured big old Shanghai must have more jobs. Anything’d be better than working the landlord’s fields back home.
I was lucky. Found work almost the moment I arrived.”
“What kind of work did you find, Great-Grandpa?”
“Corpse-carrying crew.”
“You worked at a funeral home?”
“Heh, there were funeral homes back then, sure—but regular folks didn’t get anywhere near them. Step one foot in, you’d have to bolt out the next. Couldn’t afford it.
I joined a corpse-carrying crew. The city government chipped in a bit, and some rich folks donated too. The job was… gather corpses at dawn, carry the ones found on the streets and in alleyways to the local charity morgue.
When times were good, we even got donated coffins. But don’t think it was one corpse per coffin—nah, a single box would be crammed full of them.
I still remember once, a bunch of kids your size got brought in. Took forever to stuff them in properly.
Couldn’t even jiggle it—it was packed too tight.
Know what I mean?”
“You mean it was so heavy it wouldn’t budge, and inside, they were wedged so tight they couldn’t move either?”
“Exactly. And that was during the good times—at least they got a coffin. When things were worse, bodies just got wrapped in straw mats. If there wasn’t time to cremate or bury them, we dumped them in the outskirts. Let the wild dogs have at it.
Winter was the worst. God, what a nightmare.
You’d go out at dawn and see whole families huddled together, frozen solid.
Little Yuanhou, this was Shanghai. A proper big city, filthy rich. Any random rich guy could drop a crumb and feed a whole family.
But your great-grandpa? I worked all year round, non-stop. There was never an end to it.
I used to wonder...
You’ve got fancy cars on the roads, grand theaters and ballrooms in the French Concession, people walking around in foreign suits looking like royalty—and in the cracks between buildings, people still starved to death every day.
I thought long and hard, and finally figured it out.
We all had two eyes, one nose, walked on two legs—but only that tiny handful of folks counted as human. The rest… nah, the rest were just goddamned livestock.
No, worse—livestock’s worth something. They at least get fed a handful of hay when times are bad. But those people? They weren’t even worth a sliver of coffin wood. The only reason we picked up their bodies was so the city wouldn’t look bad.”
Li Zhuiyuan squeezed Li Sanjiang’s neck a little tighter and pressed his face against the old man’s back. “Is that when you learned your skills, Great-Grandpa?”
“You could say that. Back then, hauling corpses all day just earned enough for one meal. Nowadays, pulling one body from the water can feed me for a good while.
Liberation’s a blessing. People finally count as people. Finally worth something.”
“My grandpa said when he was little, he worked for a landlord and got whipped.”
“Don’t listen to Hanhou’s bullshit. He barely had fuzz on his chin when Liberation hit. The landlords were already…” He trailed off. “Wait—Little Yuanhou, you weren’t talking about Hanhou?”
“No, I meant my grandpa in Beijing.”
“Hahaha, that old man? Your dad’s dad?”
“Yeah. He said if he hadn’t been desperate, he wouldn’t have joined the revolution.”
Li Sanjiang suddenly froze mid-step, turning to look back at the boy.
“What?”
“What is it?”
“Your Beijing grandpa… he fought in the war?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s still alive?”
“He is.”
“Did he fight the Japs first?”
“That came later.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk!”
“What is it, Great-Grandpa?”
“Little Yuanhou, are you close with your Beijing grandpa?”
“During holidays, I go back with Mom and Dad to eat dinner.”
“And the rest of the year?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t visit?”
“Grandma and Mom don’t get along.”
Li Sanjiang: “…”
“My uncle’s family lives with them. Me, Mom, and Dad live elsewhere. Mom doesn’t let me go over there. Even Dad sneaks back when he visits—he’s scared she’ll find out.”
“That Lanhou… what’s going on in her head?”
Li Sanjiang couldn’t understand. Sure, he knew it was normal for mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law to butt heads. But you had to consider the in-laws!
With in-laws like that, you should be fawning over them, not avoiding them.
Then again, thinking it over, he realized—yeah, that was exactly the kind of thing Li Lan would do.
A house full of plain, mud-stuck dogs, and suddenly a golden phoenix flutters out.
If Li Weihan’s grave hadn’t been next to his, he’d have thought the man’s ancestors caught fire—too much good luck for one lifetime.
That girl had been sweet and clever as a child, won everyone over. As she grew older, she could make her four brothers quail with just a glare. Even the village’s worst gossips and sleaziest men didn’t dare mess with her. One look from her—smiling all the while—and it was enough to make your skin crawl.
He remembered the year she brought her fiancé home. Hanhou and Guiying were too nervous to even look at him. Li Sanjiang, being worldly, had given the man a good once-over and even struck up a chat.
He’d noticed then—around Lanhou, that man bowed his head like a pecking chick. Anyone who didn’t know better might’ve thought the fair-skinned fellow was some poor bride abducted by traffickers.
Li Sanjiang also knew about her divorce. That’s why Little Yuanhou was temporarily left with him. Normally, when a couple split, sympathy leaned toward the woman. But in Lanhou’s case… he almost felt sorry for the man. Putting up with her for over ten years—must’ve taken guts.
“Little Yuanhou, you changed your surname, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Sigh.”
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