The news of Zhong Jiming’s transfer back to the State Planning Commission had not yet been officially announced. Lin Zhiqian knew because his wife also worked at the Commission and had happened to mention it a couple of days earlier.
As expected, Zhong Jiming glanced at him, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
“You’re pretty well-informed.”
Lin Zhiqian gave an awkward cough.
“I almost forgot.” Zhong Jiming continued, his tone teasing. “From now on, your sister-in-law and I will be colleagues.”
“You’d better remember that.” Lin Zhiqian shot him an annoyed look. “You’ll have to treat my wife with a little more courtesy at work.”
“Of course.” Zhong Jiming smiled faintly.
His smile soon faded, and his voice dropped.
“I’m going to Guangdong on official business. But while I’m there, I want to make a trip to Hong Kong. I’ve already submitted the application.”
At the mention of Hong Kong, Lin Zhiqian’s heart gave a sudden jolt.
That place was the scar Zhong Jiming had carried in his heart for years, a wound that had never truly healed.
In the spring of 1977, Gu Wangshu had died of illness in Hong Kong.
She had been only twenty-three, in the prime of her life.
When the news reached Beijing, Lin Zhiqian had been in a meeting at work.
He still remembered that Beijing spring day—the same deceptive warmth followed by bitter cold. He had rushed out of the meeting room and stood in the corridor, staring at the gray sky outside, his entire body trembling.
He couldn’t imagine what Zhong Jiming’s reaction had been when the news reached him.
“You…” Lin Zhiqian carefully searched for the right words before asking softly, “Have you finally let go?”
Zhong Jiming didn’t answer.
He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the hawthorn tree in the courtyard.
The sky outside was still overcast. Every now and then, a few rays of sunlight slipped through gaps in the clouds, only to disappear almost immediately.
The hawthorn tree stood there in silence, its first tender buds beginning to unfurl. They looked especially fragile in the chill of early spring, yet there was something remarkably resilient about them too.
“I’ve been running from it all these years,” he said quietly, almost as if he were talking to himself. “Making excuses for myself all these years.”
Ten years.
Ten years was enough time for a baby to grow into a teenager, enough for a sapling to become a tree, enough for seas to change into fields.
And yet some things could not be taken away by time.
He turned around and looked at Lin Zhiqian.
The light from outside fell across his face from behind, casting alternating patches of brightness and shadow over his features.
At that moment, his eyes seemed deeper than ever, carrying ten years of longing, ten years of pain, and ten years of unwillingness to accept what had happened.
“I still can’t let her go.”
He spoke the words slowly, each one seeming to come from the very depths of his heart.
“If you can’t let go, then face it.”
Zhong Jiming continued, “I was part of her life for the first twenty-two years. There’s no reason I should know nothing about that final year.”
That final year.
From 1976 to 1977.
The year Gu Wangshu left Beijing for Hong Kong.
The year that became the final year of her life.
What had happened during that year?
What had she gone through?
How had she lived through those days?
And what had she been thinking during the final moments of her life?
Lin Zhiqian felt a sting in his nose.
He lowered his head and pretended to take a sip of tea, hiding the moisture in his eyes.
A phrase suddenly came to mind—
Love too deeply, and life becomes too short.
The ancients had said that those who loved too deeply were destined for sorrow, and that great wisdom often brought great pain.
Gu Wangshu and Zhong Jiming were two people Lin Zhiqian had watched grow up.
“You came to me because you want…” he began.
Zhong Jiming returned to the table and sat down. His expression had already settled back into calm.
“Although I haven’t been in Beijing these past few years, I’ve heard a little about what’s been happening with your family,” he said. “Your younger cousin married the daughter of the Bai family in Hong Kong, didn’t he?”
Lin Zhiqian nodded.
“That’s right.”
“I want to ask her for a favor,” Zhong Jiming said. “I want her to look into some old matters for me in Hong Kong.”
Lin Zhiqian already knew the answer, but he asked anyway.
“About Wangshu?”
“Mm.”
“All right.”
Lin Zhiqian drew a deep breath and nodded solemnly.
“I’ll do it.”
Zhong Jiming cupped his hands toward him in thanks.
“Thank you.”
Lin Zhiqian waved him off.
“We’re brothers. No need to thank me for something like this.”
The two men continued talking for a while, catching up on their lives and reminiscing about old friends.
Lin Zhiqian told him about his work over the years, his wife and children, and the changes Beijing had undergone.
Zhong Jiming listened quietly, occasionally nodding or asking a question. He didn’t say much, but his manner was sincere.
Time passed quickly.
Before they realized it, the clouds outside had begun to break apart. A few rays of sunlight streamed through the glass and spilled into the room, bathing everything in a faint golden glow.
Lin Zhiqian rose to leave.
Zhong Jiming walked him out.
The two men stepped into the courtyard. A gust of wind swept through, carrying the distinctive chill of early spring. Lin Zhiqian instinctively hunched his shoulders and pulled his coat tighter around himself.
He had reached the middle of the courtyard when he suddenly stopped.
Turning around, he looked at Zhong Jiming standing on the steps. After hesitating for a moment, he finally asked,
“Does your former brother-in-law know you’re back?”
By “former brother-in-law,” he meant Gu Wangshu’s older brother, Gu Xiuyuan.
Zhong Jiming stood on the steps with his hands in his pockets and replied calmly,
“Drop the ‘former.’”
Lin Zhiqian froze for a moment before understanding what he meant.
In Zhong Jiming’s heart, Gu Wangshu would always be his wife.
And if that was the case, then Gu Xiuyuan would always be his brother-in-law.
There was no such thing as “former.”
“He went to Dunhuang. He’ll be back next month,” Zhong Jiming continued. “I saw him when I was in the northwest.”
Lin Zhiqian nodded and didn’t ask anything further.
His gaze fell once more on the hawthorn tree on the eastern side of the courtyard.
“I remember…” He frowned slightly. “I don’t think that tree was here before, was it?”
Zhong Jiming followed his gaze.
His eyes grew distant and deep, as though he were looking through the tree toward somewhere far, far away.
“Mm. It was planted later.”
“When?”
Zhong Jiming paused.
The wind swept through the courtyard, and the tender branches of the hawthorn tree trembled gently.
The newly opened buds looked so fragile in the biting chill of spring, yet they stubbornly faced the wind and the sunlight, still carrying the cold of winter, and continued reaching toward life.
“The year she left.”
Zhong Jiming’s voice was barely audible, as soft as a sigh.
Ten years.
Ten springs.
Ten summers.
Ten autumns.
Ten winters.
More than 3,600 days and nights.
Countless sleepless nights.
Countless dusks when the sight of something familiar brought back memories of the person who was gone.
The tree had grown from a tiny sapling into what it was today.
And the man who had planted it had grown from a twenty-three-year-old young man into a thirty-three-year-old man.
The years had left traces of weariness around his eyes, while his heart had buried more longing than he could ever put into words.
Lin Zhiqian’s eyes suddenly grew hot.
He remembered an ancient essay written by Gui Youguang of the Ming Dynasty, Record of Xiangjixuan. He had memorized a line from it back in middle school, and even now, he could still recite it from memory:
“There was a loquat tree in the courtyard, planted by my wife with her own hands the year she died. Now it has grown tall and graceful, its branches spreading like a canopy.”
Just twenty-one characters, yet they conveyed the deepest longing and grief of the human heart.
Gui Youguang had planted a loquat tree.
Zhong Jiming had planted a hawthorn tree.
The trees were different.
The love behind them was the same.