Recalling the old days, the shopkeeper’s wife sighed. “That child loved learning from the time he was tiny, and he was brave to a fault, too. Second Uncle Qin would go off to herd the cattle during the day and leave the house empty, and the boy would go all the way into town by himself, standing on tiptoe and pressing himself against the window of the old parish schoolhouse to listen to the teacher’s lessons. I’d only just married into the village back then. I saw him a few times. I thought he was such a well-behaved, good-looking little thing, so I was always teasing him, and he was sweet about it, he’d politely call every grown-up ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie.’ I never imagined a child that gentle would dare walk all the way into town on his own.”
“It must have been the year he was four, almost five. Second Uncle Qin’s ox had wandered into the paddy field and gotten stuck, couldn’t climb out, so he came back to fetch people to help. He passed his own door and didn’t see Bao Wa’er, but he didn’t think much of it, figured the child was napping inside, and he was in a rush, worried about the ox, so it never crossed his mind. Once they’d hauled the ox out, he came home meaning to kill a chicken and cook a dinner to thank everyone, and only when he stepped through the door did he realize Bao Wa’er was gone.”
The young bride grew anxious. “So where had he gone?”
“Into town,” the shopkeeper’s wife said. “Second Uncle Qin searched the whole village and couldn’t find him. You’ve no idea, he was weeping and shouting all at once, shouted himself hoarse, poor thing. Later he even begged people to go dredge the pond at the head of the village.”
That was out of fear the child had fallen into the pond. And still they didn’t find him.
Weeping, Grandpa Qin went back and dug through his own outhouse.
In those days toilets didn’t have proper basins, and they weren’t inside the house either. Usually a family would build a little shed out back, a pit dug into the ground, wooden boards laid across it, cement bricks around the sides, roof tiles on top. Very crude.
Some households were a bit better off and had built biogas tanks. People would raise pigs above the tank, shovel the pig manure and urine down into it, and use the biogas for cooking or lighting.
The Qin family hadn’t built a biogas tank yet back then, still the old-fashioned latrine, the pit deep and wide. Having found nothing at the pond, Grandpa Qin feared the child had fallen into his own latrine pit, and went back to search, and found nothing there either.
Someone muttered that maybe he’d been snatched by child traffickers, and Grandpa Qin was struck with such grief that his body toppled straight over backward.
Everyone was terrified. They called to him and shook him, but Grandpa Qin wouldn’t wake no matter what, until someone shouted that the child was back, the child was back, and only then did he come to.
Afterward Grandpa Qin asked where Qin Ziheng had gone.
Qin Ziheng knelt at his bedside and, not daring to hide anything, told the truth.
Grandpa Qin doted on the boy and couldn’t bring himself to scold him. Later, hunched over and alone, he carried a catty of pork into town to find the old teacher.
The old teacher and Grandpa Qin had been sent to the countryside together in their youth, so they knew each other. Grandpa Qin asked whether the child could be sent to study there.
Ordinarily, no.
The boy wasn’t even five yet, just barely past four, still needed looking after. How could he go to school?
But pull a few strings and it could be done.
And so, before he’d even turned five, Qin Ziheng went off to school.
The teacher was his grandfather’s sworn brother, and he was strict with the boy day in and day out. Qin Ziheng rose to it, too, at the worst school around, he pulled grades no one else could hope to match. [1]meaning: so far ahead that no one else could catch up jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2954287_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2954287_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
With the teacher’s help, it took him only four years to finish primary school.
Then he went on to the best middle school in town.
In his final year he tested into Beijing as the provincial top scorer in the sciences. While pursuing his master’s, he teamed up with an upperclassman he knew to develop a game, and made over two million yuan. Then, the moment he graduated, he joined a foreign firm and settled in Beijing.
The young bride’s mouth fell open. Two, two million and more?!
For some people, that sum might be the price of a car. But for a laborer with no background, no education, scraping by on three or four thousand a month, two million was, without question, a jaw-dropping figure.
Some of them might never earn that much in their entire lives.
Yet Qin Ziheng, before he’d even graduated, had earned over two million on nothing but skill.
The young bride swallowed, then blurted out, “And Uncle Qin, how did he react?”
Put in his shoes: if her own son had graduated from a prestigious university and pulled in a salary in the millions, she’d certainly be trying to ‘claim’ the boy back too.
“React?” The shopkeeper’s wife let out a scornful snort. “How do you think, he and Tang Juan were like dogs catching the scent of meat. [2]pouncing greedily jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2954287_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2954287_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); The moment Bao Wa’er’s exam results came out, the two of them came rushing back, wanting to take him home to raise.”
The young bride said quickly, “Did Bao Wa’er go off with his mother?” If so, it would be no surprise she’d never seen him at New Year or the festivals.
She might be newly married in, but she had at least spent one New Year in the village, and at New Year, who doesn’t come home?
She’d met all the villagers. This Qin Ziheng was the only one she’d never seen, never even heard of. If the shopkeeper’s wife hadn’t brought him up today, she’d never have known the village had such a person at all.
But the shopkeeper’s wife shook her head.
“No, he didn’t go with anyone. The county officials came around at the time, and with them there, Qin Ming and Tang Juan didn’t dare pull anything. Later, around when Bao Wa’er graduated, Qin Ming even went all the way to Beijing to find him.”
The young bride asked, “To find him for what?”
“Seems Qin Zili had lost money gambling. Qin Ming was living with them in Guangdong back then, and word was he’d lost eighty thousand. Eighty thousand was a lot in those days, not like now. Qin Ming and Lu Meiyan had no money to pay it back, so Qin Ming ran off to Beijing to find Bao Wa’er and get some money out of him. And Bao Wa’er…” Here the shopkeeper’s wife paused, and only continued when the young bride was about to burst in with a question. “That child seems so mild. When I heard Qin Ming had gone to Beijing, I thought for sure he’d come back with his wallet stuffed full. But who’d have guessed, Bao Wa’er didn’t give him a single cent.”
“And Uncle Qin didn’t make a scene?”
“Of course he made a scene. When Bao Wa’er wouldn’t give in, he even threatened to sue him. And Bao Wa’er just said, Go ahead, sue me, which court? I’ll see it through to the end.”
That was all anyone knew. What they didn’t know was how furious Qin Ming had been at the time, threatening Qin Ziheng that if he wouldn’t give the money, he’d go make a scene at Qin Ziheng’s company.
“I hear you’re some kind of general manager now. If you’re not afraid of losing face, go ahead and try me. I’m your father, you think I can’t handle you?”
Qin Ziheng had laughed right then and there. “Go right ahead. But let me warn you first, push me too far and I have ways to get you locked up. You’re over fifty now, aren’t you? Never been to prison? Actually, a stint inside might not be bad, otherwise you probably don’t even know which way the cell door swings. I can put you in there, and I can put those two fine little brothers of mine in there too. Care to give it a try?”
However bullheaded Qin Ming was, when he ran into someone even more bullheaded than himself, he caved.
Qin Ming didn’t get his money, and was so furious his face went iron-gray. He paid off the boy’s debt, and then, on account of his age, got laid off, so the whole family simply moved back to the village. Sometimes, worn out from work and after a few swigs of cheap liquor, Qin Ming would grumble around the village that he was going to sue Qin Ziheng.
But the villagers always talked him out of it.
Sue him how?
The villagers didn’t know much about the law, but think about it, why on earth should Bao Wa’er pay Qin Ming a cent of support money?
Had Qin Ming ever raised him?
The man was no kind of father, and no filial son either. After the divorce he remarried at once, came home for New Year only those first couple of years, and after that, not so much as a shadow of him. He never came back to see his son, didn’t even come to see his own father, and never sent a single cent for the child’s upkeep.
Now that his son had become the most successful man the village had ever produced, now that he had money, Qin Ming had the gall to fantasize that the boy would support him in his old age, that he’d get to eat well and live well off him.
Pah.
They’d never seen anyone so shameless.
And that Tang Juan was just the same.
Tang Juan hadn’t married far, as it turned out, just to the neighboring county. Over the years she’d had a son and a daughter, neither of whom had even finished vocational school.
Each of them had started a new family and had new children. The children they’d cherished had amounted to nothing, while the one they’d cast aside and all but forgotten had tested his way out of the village, to the county town, to the city, and then all the way to Beijing, becoming the ‘successful child’ everyone spoke of, the golden phoenix that had flown out of their little village.
And looking at those other four children…
No comparison.
Truly, no comparison.
They couldn’t compare in schooling, and even less in looks.
They were all born of the same two people, how could the gap be so wide?
“Back when Bao Wa’er hadn’t gone off to Beijing yet, he’d come home every school holiday. That child was so thoughtful. In the old days, when Second Uncle Qin was up in the hills with the cattle and couldn’t get back, the boy would go hungry, and the villagers pitied him. Seeing him sitting at his door waiting for his grandfather, they’d always slip him a bit of something to eat. And that child never took it for nothing, he remembered it all. Auntie Liang and Auntie Wei used to give him the most buns of anyone. Even in his busy final year of high school, he’d still come back over the summer to help Grandma Liang and Grandma Wei cut the rice.”
Both those households had only one son each, and the sons had gone off to work, leaving old folks who couldn’t sit still, who, even aged and unable to straighten their backs, still worked the fields. When the autumn harvest overwhelmed them, Qin Ziheng always helped.
“Second Uncle Qin passed the year Bao Wa’er was in his first year of high school. In his second and third years, it was Qin Liang who paid his way, two whole years, and Bao Wa’er remembered it. The moment he started earning, he sent four hundred thousand back to Qin Liang to build a new house. And the year Qin Liang had his accident, it was Bao Wa’er who stepped in to help.”
The young bride murmured, no wonder.
Qin Liang was like Qin Ming, neither brother had much education. Qin Liang had married a woman from the same village, Liang Jinlan, and the two of them had worked at a construction site in the city.
Six years ago, Qin Liang was plastering a wall on the site when he fell and broke his leg, his head needed surgery too. Seeing how serious it was, the labor contractor fled, and the higher-ups refused to acknowledge any liability, insisting instead that Qin Liang had operated improperly, that he’d fallen while coating the exterior wall through his own carelessness, failing to follow procedure. Operating improperly, not following the rules, when something goes wrong, whose fault is that?
Qin Liang had no idea what to do. He needed several surgeries but couldn’t get any compensation, and had poured in the savings he’d scraped together over years of hard work, and even so, the medical bills weren’t fully paid.
The villagers could offer no way out.
What way was there?
The contractor had vanished.
The boss said it was their own fault and refused even to see them, tossed them eight thousand yuan and hid away in another province. What else could they do?
They were people with no knowledge and no education, who knew nothing of the law. The other side was a boss, well-dressed, the moment they laid eyes on him they already felt inferior, and when he raised his voice and spun a few lies, they took him at his word.
In the end, at her wits’ end, Liang Jinlan called Qin Ziheng. He told her not to worry, he’d handle it.
He hadn’t even graduated then, he was just past twenty. Yet hearing his words, Liang Jinlan inexplicably felt she had nothing to fear, nothing to panic over, that she had someone to lean on.
Later, the villagers never learned what Qin Ziheng did. All they knew was that the boss came scurrying back on his own, came to the village looking for Qin Liang, asking whether he’d drop the suit, he was willing to pay, he begged them to withdraw it, his construction site had been shut down.
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