At the time, the villagers saw the construction boss come and had no idea what had happened, no idea what Qin Ziheng had done, but for a big boss to come begging at their door in person, they figured this Bao Wa’er was really something.
He was all the way off in Beijing, yet he’d somehow managed to reach a hand all the way over here and force a big boss to show up in person. The child had made it, he was formidable.
The money did get paid in the end, but Qin Liang spent it all on his leg. As for what was left, word had it that when Liang Jinlan’s mother fell ill, the Liang family borrowed a hundred thousand, and after that there was nothing left.
Yet Qin Liang’s house stood a full three stories, beautifully finished, not just painted but tiled inside and out, the finest house in the village.
When Qin Ming wanted to sue his son, the villagers would point at Qin Liang’s place and say, You see the house your brother built?
Wasn’t that stating the obvious?
Qin Ming and Qin Liang lived right next to each other, how could he not see it?
The villagers said, Your brother paid the boy’s way for two years, and the boy paid to build your brother a house, clearly he’s soft-hearted. Talk to him properly, and if he forgives you, you might get a little something out of it too. But sue him and provoke him, and with that brain of his, that money of his, ruining you would be as easy as child’s play.
Qin Ming wavered.
The villagers ‘coerced and cajoled’ Qin Ming into not making trouble, and that was because they had watched Qin Ziheng grow up. They had seen with their own eyes what kind of life he’d led, so pitiful, both parents still living yet as good as dead to him, leaving him alone to depend on his grandfather, the two of them clinging to each other to survive. [1]meaning: with only each other left to rely on jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2954288_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2954288_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });
In those days no one in the village had a car, and there were no paved roads, just a single dirt track leading into town, muddy and treacherous whenever it rained.
Town was far from the village. Qin Ziheng attended primary school in town, and the old school had no dormitory building. When morning classes let out he couldn’t get home, the other children could go back for a hot meal, but he could only sit alone in the classroom eating a cold steamed bun. And on rainy days, his shoes would stay wet the whole day, so that his feet were pruned white by the time he got home. Winters were harder still, the classroom leaked drafts from every side, and all winter long his face stayed cracked and chapped.
Had it been easy for him to reach where he was today?
Not easy at all.
Qin Ming had fathered him and raised him for two years, but after that Qin Ming was always away, ignoring even his own father. In the two years Grandpa Qin’s mind was failing, it was Qin Ziheng who cared for him constantly, cleaning up after him at both ends. That was Qin Ziheng doing a son’s duty in Qin Ming’s place, so if anything, he owed Qin Ming nothing. He owed only old Grandpa Qin.
The villagers pitied him, and naturally spoke up for him. Qin Ming feared that if he really sued and lost, the villagers would shun his whole family, that would be losing more than he gained, so he dropped it.
In earlier years, when work wasn’t too busy, Qin Ziheng would still come back at New Year to visit his uncle and aunt, and his honest, simple cousin.
But Qin Ming and Qin Liang’s houses stood right beside each other, and every time he came back, Qin Ming would bring his wife over, all calculated flattery, which Qin Ziheng found utterly repugnant.
After that he stopped coming back, except on Qingming, when he would return to sweep his grandfather’s grave, and once that was done he would leave without staying the night.
Every year he came back, however busy his work, however far the distance, without fail.
The villagers knew this was because he couldn’t let it go, still holding his grandfather in his heart.
Grandpa Qin had only married after returning from his years in the countryside. Qin Ming had married young, but his first marriage ‘dragged on’ for years, and it was only after divorcing and remarrying that Qin Ziheng was born. So by the time Qin Ziheng came into the world, Grandpa Qin was already very old, nearly sixty-three.
Years of labor and cattle-herding had made his life hard, and he aged faster than others. The year Qin Ziheng was in his last year of middle school, Grandpa Qin fell while herding cattle in the hills and spent the better part of a month in the hospital. His leg healed, and they thought he could be discharged, but when Qin Ziheng came to visit after his high school entrance exams, Grandpa Qin looked at him and suddenly said, “Whose child is this? How’d he grow up so good-looking? So fair, like a little girl.”
Qin Ziheng’s mind went blank with a roar, and he froze in the doorway.
He knew his grandfather wasn’t joking, because every time he came home from an exam, the first thing the old man did was pat his head and say, Our Bao Wa’er has worked so hard, tonight Grandpa will kill a chicken for you.
A checkup later, the doctor said it was dementia. Grandpa Qin no longer remembered people.
He no longer remembered the Bao Wa’er he had raised through such hardship.
He no longer remembered his two sons, always away working, who so rarely came home. He no longer remembered the neighbors he’d gotten on so well with. Nor the cattle he’d herded all his life, his old companions, nor the mountain paths he’d walked all his life. All of it, gone.
Qin Liang had no choice but to quit his job and bring his wife back from the site to care for him. In that state, Qin Liang didn’t dare let the old man go out, but he couldn’t sit still. Skinny and small as he was, the moment you looked away he’d vanish, the old man walked frighteningly fast.
At his wits’ end, Qin Liang could only shut the door and lock him inside the house. But when they wouldn’t let him go work, he’d throw a fit.
Grandpa Qin’s room was right by the village road, its window facing the road. Back then anti-theft window bars hadn’t come into fashion, just plain iron rods, one after another. He’d grip the bars like a prisoner and call out to passing neighbors, asking whether they could help him: he wanted to get out, he had work to do.
They’d ask what he was making a fuss about, what work did he have to do?
The old man would say, “My Bao Wa’er still has to go to school, don’t you see. If I don’t work, where’s my Bao Wa’er going to get his tuition? I’ve got to save up to send my Bao Wa’er to school, send him to high school. My Bao Wa’er is clever, maybe he’ll even go to university someday. Have you seen my Bao Wa’er? He’s so well-behaved.”
He remembered no one, not the grown Bao Wa’er, only the little one Qin Ming had sent back: the small boy so reliant on him, who’d eaten meals with him in the mud-brick house and tipped his head back to call him Grandpa.
The old man’s fits were fierce and could not be contained, so Qin Liang and his wife could only let him out and watch him every second, unable to get anything done. But they still had a child to raise. Qin Ziheng said he’d quit school and come home to care for his grandfather, and Qin Liang gave him a scolding for it, The old man’s lost his mind and he still wants you to study. If you quit, you’ll be failing your grandfather. Only when you make something of yourself will your grandfather be happy.
So Qin Ziheng went back to school. He knew his grandfather’s greatest wish was to see him attend university. The old man had loved learning best of all, he’d simply been born unlucky and never had the chance to go further, so he wanted his child, his grandchild, to make it all the way to university.
In middle school Qin Ziheng had always boarded, later he applied to live off-campus, going to school by day and coming home at night to care for his grandfather, feeding him, washing his feet.
The old man didn’t remember him, but whenever Qin Ziheng was short of money, he would secretly pull him into the room and take out, from a battered cabinet, a black plastic bag he’d found from who-knows-where, the money wrapped tightly inside, all of it in ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, one-yuan and two-yuan notes, the largest was a single twenty.
The old man earned money the hard way. He had almost no income in the village, he grew corn to feed the pigs and cattle, and every big note he made went to Qin Ziheng’s tuition. This small change was all saved up from foraging chestnuts in the hills and collecting bottles.
He’d smooth each note flat before handing them to Qin Ziheng, asking whether the boy could take them to Bao Wa’er for him, he was at the primary school in town. And he’d ask Qin Ziheng, Do you know him? He has big eyes, a fair clean little face, so pretty. If you see him, tell him to come home after school to see his grandfather. Grandfather misses him.
Every time, it cut Qin Ziheng to the heart, choked him so he couldn’t get out a single word.
The summer at the end of his first year of high school, Qin Ziheng had just finished his exams when Qin Liang came running to find him, telling him to hurry home, Grandpa Qin was gone.
In that instant a ringing filled Qin Ziheng’s ears. He couldn’t remember afterward how he got home, only that the house was full of people.
Grandpa Qin was wrapped tightly in white cloth, just as they were lifting him into the coffin. Village custom held that the dead should lie in state at home for seven days before being carried up the mountain for burial. But the weather was hot then, and Grandpa Qin had already been dead several days, he couldn’t be kept, so they’d decided to coffin him and carry him up the hill.
Qin Ziheng flung himself forward like a madman, absolutely refusing to let them put his grandfather into the coffin. Qin Liang and several others pulled at him, but who’d have thought, thin as he looked, his strength was astonishing, they couldn’t hold him back. Tears streaming down his face, jaw clenched tight, he was like a beast out of control, not a word anyone said reached him.
This grandfather and grandson had once had only each other to lean on, and now, with one of them gone without the slightest warning, how could the one left behind bear it?
Someone who couldn’t stand to watch said, Let the child see him, consider it seeing his grandfather off on his final journey.
The moment they let go, Qin Ziheng’s body went limp. He knelt on the ground and crawled on all fours to his grandfather’s body, lifted the white cloth. Grandpa Qin lay there quietly, the sockets of his eyes sunken and pitted, the eyeballs gone, his mouth agape, his face covered in death-spots, a frightful sight.
No one dared look then. The several grown men who’d gone to bring the body back were so shaken they couldn’t sleep that night. Yet Qin Ziheng seemed unafraid. He threw his arms around the grandfather who had raised him for over ten years and wailed, “How did it come to this? Grandpa, how did you end up like this?”
Only last weekend when he’d come home, the old man had been perfectly fine. As Qin Ziheng was heading back to school, he’d even come chasing after him and called out, “Bao Wa’er”, and Qin Ziheng had been overjoyed.
How, in only five days apart, could the old man have come to this?
Grandpa Qin had suddenly run off on a rainy night four days earlier. He’d reached the village entrance just as a young fellow from the village was coming back from an internet café in town, shining a flashlight. Seeing Grandpa Qin, he asked where he was going, and Grandpa Qin said his ox was missing, he had to go find it.
The young man knew the old man’s mind was gone and didn’t dare let him leave. He pulled at him, saying no, wait for daylight tomorrow, it was raining, after all.
Grandpa Qin refused. He said he’d raised that ox for several years, counting on selling it for money for his Bao Wa’er’s schooling, it couldn’t be lost, it was his Bao Wa’er’s ox.
Who knew where an old man got such strength, the young fellow couldn’t hold him. Afraid something would happen to Grandpa Qin, he rushed off into the village to call for help.
But in that short spell, Grandpa Qin was already gone.
The villagers searched everywhere nearby, not a trace of him.
It was three days later, some sixty kilometers from Wande Village, that someone called the police to report a body seen on a mountain.
The police notified Qin Liang to come identify it. Grandpa Qin had probably never found his ox and just kept searching and searching, or perhaps, unable to find it, had wanted to go home but forgotten the way. And so he walked and walked, farther and farther from home, lost himself in the mountains, and by ill luck tumbled down a slope, and that was how it happened.
But what had truly occurred, how he’d gotten to a place so far away, no one knew.
He had lain dead on the mountain for three days, his eye sockets, his ears, and other parts had already been gnawed away by ants.
Qin Ziheng held his grandfather and wept the whole night through. No final words, and to die in such a way, no one could have borne it. The villagers were sick at heart over it, let alone Qin Ziheng.
Holding that body, already unrecognizable, he asked over and over: “Grandpa, I haven’t even given you a good life yet, how could you leave? You’ve gone, what am I to do? From now on… what am I supposed to do?”
He was alone now.
……
The shopkeeper’s wife said, “I’d already married in by then, and I went to help at the Qin house. That boy, all these years he’s still kept his grandfather in his heart. Second Uncle Qin’s been dead eleven years, and every single year he comes back. The moment he first started earning, he came home and bought bricks to repair his grandfather’s grave. He didn’t hire anyone, he hauled a whole cart of bricks up the mountain himself, said that in life his grandfather never got to live in a fine house, so over on the other side he ought to live a little better.”
The young bride listened a long while, her heart stirred by countless feelings, her mouth opening and closing without a word for the longest time, and she was filled with curiosity about Qin Ziheng.
Highly educated, high-earning, and handsome, any one of those alone was enough to draw people’s eyes.
By 2019, university graduates were common, not as ‘precious’ as they’d been in the nineties, but in all of Wande Village, no one besides Qin Ziheng had ever attended a top university. The next most successful was someone who’d gotten into a second-tier school, now graduated, word was he was studying for the civil-service exam, home four years, no job, and hadn’t passed.
She was about to ask more when the shopkeeper’s wife suddenly said, “Oh! Bao Wa’er’s back.”
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