“Hey! Tao Tao! Tao—”
“Come downstairs and eat!”
Tao Tao was jolted awake by a chubby elbow nudging her side.
Her body was covered in the imprints of her bamboo sleeping mat. She pulled herself up from the bed and sat there in a daze for a long while.
The small west-facing room was bathed in orange from the setting sun.
“Your dad’s calling you again…” Rao Lili, who was sleeping against the wall, mumbled as she rolled over, revealing a sweaty patch on her back. She flopped back down on the already warm mat and continued snoring soundly.
Tao Tao stared blankly at that sturdy little figure—wearing elastic-waist shorts, butt up in the air, fast asleep—for quite some time before slowly dragging herself out of bed. Her bare feet touched the cool terrazzo floor, sending a shiver through her body. She looked down and hesitated for a moment before slipping her feet into a pair of pink Sailor Moon plastic slippers that were lying upside down by the bed.
She stood up, right there in the golden glow of dusk, completely at a loss.
A green metal desk fan sat on a small square stool beside the bed, its plug lying on the floor. It hummed as it oscillated left and right, pushing the muggy summer air back and forth. She stared at the fan several times, feeling even dizzier as she walked over to the window framed with blue-tinted glass.
She had become so short. She had to jump just to get her elbows onto the windowsill.
Tao Tao propped her elbows on the sill and struggled to reach out, pushing open the green screen window.
Swish!
The dusk of a 1990s summer flooded before her eyes all at once.
Outside, the sky was ablaze with fiery clouds. Beneath them lay an alleyway both familiar and strange. All kinds of signs—horizontal, vertical, hand-painted—jutted out from the walls on both sides: Xiaofen Hair Salon, Jiaqiang Grocery, Shoe & Zipper Repair… These signs crisscrossed with tangled wires. Someone had even hung laundry directly on the power lines.
It was dinnertime. The alley was half-warm, half-cool in the shade. It was so hot that every household had their iron-grated doors wide open. Cooking smoke drifted out from doorways, carrying the mingled aromas of various dishes.
A few elderly men and women had dragged bamboo chairs outside their shop’s roll-up doors. Holding large bowls decorated with peonies and magpies, they ate and chatted. Every now and then, a neighbor carrying groceries would pass by, and they’d call out to exchange a few words.
“Teacher Luo, back from buying vegetables?”
“Yes, Auntie Ying. Have you eaten yet?”
Tao Tao gripped the windowsill, leaning her head out, staring as if her soul had left her body.
“Girl! Come inside and eat! At least answer me—I’ve yelled myself hoarse!”
From the next room came an even louder yell from a middle-aged man. The elderly folks sitting downstairs laughed as if this were perfectly routine: “Here we go again. Guangzhi can’t find his daughter again!”
Tao Tao’s heart jolted. She quickly scrambled down from the window.
Behind her, Rao Lili sat up, rubbing her eyes: “Grape, why are you wearing my shoes?”
As if electrocuted, Tao Tao pulled her head back in and pattered back to the bed. She stood there dumbly for a second, then dropped to the floor and dove under the bed, rummaging through a pile of odds and ends until she found another pair of plastic slippers—green with a cartoon spotted dog on them.
She remembered! She had been obsessed with that cartoon featuring a spotted dog as a kid. She couldn’t recall the name now, but she remembered constantly begging her dad for a dog. Meanwhile, Rao Lili loved Sailor Moon—she’d drape a bedsheet over her shoulders, wave a laundry pole around, and shout “I’ll punish you!” at the moon.
As an adult, Tao Tao had long since stopped caring about spotted dogs. But Rao Lili remained loyal—even close to thirty, her online nickname was still Sailor Moon Loves Clay Pot Rice.
Tao Tao changed into her own shoes and was about to leave when a cool breeze hit her as she pushed the door open, clearing her head a little. Rao Lili chased after her and asked, “Are you coming out to play after you eat?”
“I’ll see…” Tao Tao mumbled vaguely.
She hadn’t spoken the local dialect in years. Her mind was a mess right now, her heart pounding. She could barely bring herself to speak. She quickly glanced around—outside the door was the second-floor hallway of Rao Lili’s house, with stairs leading both up and down.
She was about to head downstairs when Rao Lili grabbed her arm and pulled her upstairs instead.
“Come out after you eat.” Rao Lili’s chubby hand tugged hers as she pushed open the rooftop door, speaking with exaggerated world-weariness. “I’ll wait for you by the drainpipe under my building. Come quietly, though. I don’t want to play with Zhang Jiaming—his mom is so annoying. Last time we barely played for a while, and she immediately tattled to my mom that I took him tree climbing! Said I had no manners!”
The two walked one after the other across the rooftop, which was draped with drying laundry. Several summer blankets printed with big red peonies or peacock patterns were still hung over bamboo poles, having absorbed the last heat of the evening sun, giving off a fluffy scent of sunshine and cotton.
Rao Lili led Tao Tao to the cement wall connecting their two homes and said earnestly, “You have to come out. My dad made me a mango-picking pole last night—he tied a wire loop to the end, and it’s this long!” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “We’re not playing jump rope tonight—let’s hit the streets and knock down some mangoes! Haven’t you been wanting to do that forever?”
Tao Tao’s mind was still a fog, so she just nodded. “Alright.”
Satisfied, Rao Lili finally let go of her, grinning to reveal the gap where her two front teeth hadn’t fully grown in yet.
Tao Tao stepped over the large flowerpot—home to Mrs. Rao’s tea plant, which had been stripped down to a bare trunk—and climbed across the shared cement wall, landing on her own family’s rooftop terrace.
There wasn’t much up there: some miscellaneous items covered with tarps, laundry hanging on lines, and a few foam boxes where her dad grew scallions and celery. The most important thing, though, was a massive satellite dish—a real treasure. You could pick up all kinds of channels with it. She remembered watching Tonneru no Minasan from Japan, and her favorite, Star Satellite TV!
Too bad none of that would last much longer!
This was an era where you didn’t need a subscription to watch anything. Tao Tao touched the dish fondly, then walked around it. She fished out the copper key tied to a yarn cord from her shorts pocket, unlocked the wooden door to the rooftop, and started down the stairs.
The stairwell had a very familiar smell. She took a deep breath of that unique fragrance of baked goods—flour, sugar, and cooked oil—that belonged to her family.
Breathing that scent, which had accompanied her entire childhood, she finally felt a sliver of reality.
She grew up in Zhangxi Town, in the old city district at the corner of South Lane by Shengli Road’s intersection. Back then, there was no concept of residential complexes. The storefronts on this old street were all attached row houses, just two or three stories tall. The first floor was the shop, the upper floors were for living, one building per family, and every rooftop was flat.
The rooftops were all connected to each other. As kids, they didn’t need to go downstairs to visit—they could just climb from one roof to the next. Close friends would even exchange keys to each other’s rooftop doors.
Yes, now she remembered. This was how she and Rao Lili went back and forth as kids. Neither of them ever used the front door to find the other.
She thumped down the stairs. When she reached the second floor, she paused, then quickly ducked into the bathroom to look in the mirror.
The bathroom was tiny. No toilet—just a squatting pan, painted green.
The walls were covered in very old, square, white-and-green tiles. Quite a few were cracked. The sink was ceramic, also painted a pale green. It looked old. On the wall hung a square mirror covered in limescale.
The whole bathroom was tinged with green. Really—such an interesting aesthetic from this era.
She stepped onto a little plastic stool and leaned forward to look.
The mirror reflected an eight-year-old girl with a round face and a bewildered expression. Her hair was a mess from sleep, her double ponytails lopsided—one already half undone.
She wore a bright pink T-shirt with a spotted dog print and athletic shorts. Both pieces of clothing were worn and baggy, the dog’s face on the shirt cracked, the shorts covered in little pills.
When she’d seen her small feet dotted with mosquito bites at Rao Lili’s house, she’d already guessed. But seeing it with her own eyes still made her gasp.
How… had she gone back to being a child?
Hadn’t she just been dozing off in her small bakery in the middle of the afternoon?
She left the bathroom and went to the second-floor living room. Inside, she immediately spotted the Joey Wong pin-up calendar hanging beside the TV. More than half of its pages had already been torn off.
August 1, 1997.
A good year. But Tao Tao stared at the calendar as if she couldn’t read, tilting her head and flipping through it several times, then turned and drifted downstairs like a sleepwalker.
Sitting on the stairs, she awkwardly fastened her once-beloved crystal plastic sandals. When she reached the kitchen, surprisingly, no one was there. In the old red plastic-shelled rice cooker, green bean, tangerine peel, and lotus seed porridge was simmering. In the steamer basket sat leftover Mei Cai Kou Rou from the last meal. On the round dining table just outside the kitchen were a plate of radish omelet and a dish of salt-fried peanuts.
Tao Tao picked up a peanut and ate it. Still warm. Her dad must have just fried them.
It seemed not all the dishes were ready yet. That was just like her dad—always falsely claiming dinner was ready. When she was little, she’d rush home halfway through playing, only to find nothing even in the wok yet!
Then he’d take the opportunity to make her peel potatoes, shell beans, wash cucumbers, or pick vegetables.
Sneaky!
She walked out of the kitchen, passed through the dark stairwell, and pushed open the door connected to the front shop.
Light flooded in.
“…the handover ceremony of the Special Administrative Region. As the clock strikes midnight, a brand-new era is about to begin…”
The shop wasn’t very big. On the counter sat a 14-inch black-and-white TV, replaying the Hong Kong handover ceremony—the biggest event of the year, rebroadcast for over a month now.
Along the walls, two rows of old glass display cases stood left and right. Outside the door, a wooden rack extended onto the sidewalk, displaying bulk-packaged sponge cakes and pies. The rack was covered with a thick white cotton cloth, and on top sat large tin baking trays filled with freshly made, cheaper old-fashioned pastries sold by weight.
Her dad, Tao Guangzhi, wearing flip-flops and a flower-trimmed apron, stood behind the wooden rack. He was cheerfully packing some mung bean cookies for an elderly lady in a floral dress, complimenting her and bragging at the same time: “Your nose is really sharp—you could smell these from far away! That’s right, you’ve come to the right place. All the pastries from the old Huanhuan Food Factory? I made every single one!”
Tao Tao felt a little embarrassed listening to this. Actually, her dad was just an ordinary baker on one of the dozen or so production lines at the factory—not even a master baker. How could one person make everything from such a large factory?
Huanhuan Food Factory was a county-run state-owned food factory in Zhangxi Town, specializing in canned goods, pastries, and bread. But in 1995, as part of state-owned enterprise reforms, the factory went through liquidation and shut down.
Her dad had his years of service bought out. Since he hadn’t worked there very long, he only received a little over three thousand yuan in severance pay. He fixed up the old house left behind by her grandfather and, pivoting to a new career, opened this bakery—South Street Bakery.
The name was actually chosen pretty casually. Since their home was at 35 South Lane, Shengli Road, her dad had struggled to choose between “Shengli Bakery” and “South Street Bakery”—ultimately picking the one that sounded slightly more modern.
Honestly, it was also because that street already had Shengli Foot Care, Shengli Leather Shoes, and Shengli Shoe Insoles. If he named it Shengli Bakery, sandwiched in between, it would’ve felt a bit… foot-fungus-adjacent.
Though it was called a bakery, most of the handmade items in their shop were traditional Chinese pastries like pies and chickpea cakes. Western-style goods like small flower basket cream cakes, cream sandwiches, and dinner buns were all bought wholesale from outside.
Comrade Tao Guangzhi had been in charge of the pie production line at the factory. Tao Tao later thought that was probably one of the reasons this little shop couldn’t survive more than a few years.
A few years later, after entering the millennium, the times changed as if someone had hit fast-forward. Every industry transformed daily. Even their remote little southern town started developing a new city center. Construction roared everywhere, and at least ten new bakeries popped up in town—not even counting the bulk pastry stalls. Each one was constantly innovating. By then, her dad simply couldn’t keep up.
And around that time… Auntie Yu was finally driven away by her sharp, selfish younger self. After the second divorce, her dad was devastated. Overnight, he seemed to age several years.
Then, year after year… he grew old alone, turning into a bald-headed elderly man.
Tao Tao tilted her head back and looked at Tao Guangzhi’s still-so-young, tall silhouette. Her dad was barely over thirty this year, wasn’t he? He was her closest family, yet she couldn’t help but feel he was a stranger. But look—his hair was so dark and thick now, his back so straight. As she watched, her eyes grew hot.
Just then, she heard a click-clack sound near her feet. She looked down instinctively.
The old glass display case had glass panels set into tin frames. The glass was thick and heavy, covered in scratches from years of use, making it look foggy and far less clear than the glass that would come later. But today’s sunset was rich and thick, and large patches of light passed through the glass, refracting into countless tiny, dancing specks of brightness.
When Tao Tao looked down, the light stung her eyes. She squinted and first saw a green-patterned tin frog. Then she saw a small hand reaching toward it.
That hand was very small, very pale. On the back of the hand were a few shallow dimples.
The small hand pressed down on the frog, pinched the little metal knob on its side, and wound it—slowly, deliberately—round and round. When it was fully wound, the hand pressed down firmly on the frog, stubbornly refusing to let it jump away just yet, until it had carefully positioned it in the right direction.
Click-clack, click-clack. The child stared without blinking as the frog hopped away.
Tao Tao’s heartbeat quickened. Her vision trembled as she followed that small hand upward.
Seven-year-old Yu Luan was tiny. He wore a fairly fashionable-for-the-era blue-trimmed collared short-sleeve shirt, dress shorts, white socks, and little black leather shoes.
He was crouched beneath the display case, under a few wholesale flower basket cakes. A beam of sunset light passed through the hazy glass and fell on one side of his face and his soft, fine hair, making his skin look almost translucent, unreal.
Tao Tao stared at him, dazed.
He was so small. Crouched there, he looked like that little milky white puppy Rao Lili had just found. He was an exceptionally fair-skinned child, with narrow double eyelids, jet-black pupils, a perky little nose. He was quiet and never got dirty.
Everyone who saw him would say, “That is one beautiful kid.”
But little Tao Tao just didn’t like him.
She thought he never wanted to interact with anyone, barely spoke, and just played with his own little toys all day or sat there spacing out. To eight-year-old Tao Tao, he couldn’t catch beetles, couldn’t catch shrimp, couldn’t catch fish. He wasn’t fun at all. He was so boring!
And besides, he was that dull kid Auntie Yu had brought with her!
Tao Tao remembered being stubborn as a mule as a child—three oxen couldn’t have pulled her back. She didn’t have a mother. She’d never admit it out loud, but every time an adult would teasingly ask, “Grape, do you miss your mom?” she’d feel utterly heartbroken inside. Of course she envied other kids for having mothers. That envy had grown into a strange, persistent fixation.
As a little girl, she always thought: I don’t care. I just want to grow up fast. She saved her New Year’s money every year, and every year she hoped… that when she grew up, she would go find her real mother.
So she didn’t want any new mother or little brother!
Eight-year-old Tao Tao had used every trick in her petty, flawed, stubbornly malicious playbook, day after day, determined to drive Yu Luan and Auntie Yu out of her home.
But even so, she never imagined that not long from now…
Yu Luan would die.