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When the snow falls, the ground is covered in thick and thin bands of snow, but the distant mountains remain indigo. In the summer, the rice in the fields spreads out in a dense sheet a peculiar shade of green that sits at the juncture of blue and yellow. The sun is bright. It shines down on the people who move alone or in pairs through the fields, watering the crops, spreading pesticide, and greeting each other.
When it comes time to eat lunch, the fields are empty. Everyone returns home for their midday meal. Once they have eaten, they spread their bamboo mats on the floor and take a quick nap. The sun rises and burns down on the fields until it takes on the appearance of pale green mist. It’s so peaceful that even the grasshoppers go quiet. The pond is only half full and the sluice gate is kept tightly shut, so no more water can run out. The wind creates gentle ripples across the surface of the water. At that moment, if you stand in your doorway, facing to the west, and look around, shading your eyes against the sun, you will have the sense of a place shrouded in verdant stillness. It is only in the spring, when the air is moist, and new green growth is sprouting, that this place is possessed by a different sort of life.
There was a time when this village was not so desolate. But that was an age ago. There was no way for a kid like Lingfeng to know that. He was only 10 years old. There were only about 10 or so kids of Lingfeng’s age left in the village. In the summertime, they would wash up in the pond together. Walking the dozen or so li to the township school, they would dawdle together, looking for things to amuse themselves with. But once they grew up and left, the village would become even more desolate. It was difficult to imagine how that emptiness might eventually be refilled with hope. The young and able went to the city. They filed into the lower classes and worked at the sort of jobs that require only enthusiasm. Only a few young people continued their education.
The people who left the village, no matter their occupation, were referred to by those who remained as having “ gone out for work .” It was the elderly who were left behind , along with some of the children. There were very few able-bodied young people left in the village. Even if a few people from a household stayed behind, some of their relatives had to have gone out. Some people went out to earn a living, and some had to remain. The men who stayed in the village drank and smoked. With their farm work on top of that, they aged prematurely: once they hit 50, they started to look much older than their age, with grim faces and hoarse voices.
After the population began to thin, even the planting and harvesting days, which were usually the most lively, became fragmentary. A harvester, borrowed from the county government, could harvest all the rice in a single week. The machine tore up the straw and spit it out. There was no longer any straw to pile up, feed to the cattle, or burn on the fields in winter. Since the harvester replaced the sickle, there was no need for the rice to be transplanted into neat lines. Seeds could be scattered haphazardly and the seedlings tossed into the field. There were no more straight lines of seedlings, and the days of families helping out with spring planting were gone. Only in the few low places that the harvester couldn’t reach would people still bend down to plant seedlings individually. Those had to be harvested with a sickle, as they always had.
On spring mornings, there were no longer children rubbing their eyes and stumbling sleepily out of bed to take the family cow down the dewy ridges between paddy fields. With tractors to do the work, there was no need for cows. There was no need to take them down to the pond on summer nights. There was no need to house them in barns all winter—and there was no rice straw to feed them. Nobody had to whip a cow around a paddy field for plowing. And so, most of the village cattle ended up hanging from a hook in a butcher’s stall. Once the cows were gone, the grass along the paddy ridges began to grow up all together at an alarming rate. Even on the busiest roads through the village, the sagewood grew more than a meter tall on both sides.
All of this remained beyond Lingfeng’s comprehension. He was only in the third grade. Every morning before six, he stood with the other children at the dike at the entrance to the village. They waited together on the concrete bridge for the van that would take them to school. Lingfeng had lived with his grandmother since he was young and his parents had “gone out for work.” He only saw them when the New Year came and during summer vacation. He was used to it. It didn’t occur to him that it was possible to have a close relationship with one’s parents. He just naturally developed a bond with Grandma and her oldest son—his uncle.
Even if he didn’t share much with Lingfeng, Uncle knew how the village had been in the past. When he was young, he used to take a hen cage down to the pond and catch fish. Lingfeng could not have imagined how life had once been. Uncle had grown up in the village, and now he was growing old there. He had been left behind to watch over the place. His wife and daughters were in Nanjing . He would see them a few times a year when he made the trip into the city, carting plastic canvas bags of vegetables and chickens. He would spend a few days there, or sometimes even a month, but he always returned. He brought with him candy and soda for Lingfeng, as well as books and pencils bought by his daughters. They asked him to move to the city. The family could be together, and he would be able to find a job much less backbreaking than working on the farm. He turned them down, though. He had a single reason for staying behind: if he left, there would be nobody to look after his mother and his nephew. They needed someone to watch over them.
A few dozen meters from the front door of Lingfeng’s house were the paddy fields that had been divided up between each resident of the village. Further still was the triangular pond, lined with leaning willow trees. The house had been passed down by Lingfeng’s grandfather. There were three tile-roofed buildings on the property, but the family spent most of their time in the one that housed the kitchen and their bedroom. The kitchen was large, with a stove against one wall, a cupboard, and a counter with a cutting board. Against the back wall was a hen cage. Up in the eaves, Lingfeng’s grandmother—his Nainai—had placed the dark red coffin she’d had a carpenter build for her on her 70th birthday. It had been up there for a decade, collecting a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.
A wooden door led from the kitchen into an adjoining room. The walls, painted with lime however many years before, had tarnished to a dark yellow, and the plaster was starting to come off in chunks. Here and there were crooked Chinese characters written by children with sticks of charcoal. The characters were left by his elder cousins, who had by now all gone out to work or attend university. Two beds were placed tightly together in the center of the room. Newspapers from decades before were taped up to the heads of the beds. Over the years, the sheets of newsprint had yellowed until they were the same color as the tape that held them in place. Across from the bed was an old four-legged wardrobe wrapped in cedar veneer. Its drawers overflowed with ancient and recent possessions. A television set rested on a lower shelf. Beside the television, there was a rice cooker. Near the large window, there was a low dining table with two stools set around it. A recliner faced the television. Apart from high summer, there was always a thin padded jacket laid over it.
Nainai was already over 80, but she still took care of all the washing and cooking. Her eyesight was still good. When she had free time, she liked to walk the couple of li to the village down the river to play cards at her family’s home. Sometimes she even came back with a few yuan in winnings. Her hearing was getting worse, though, and talking to her required shouting. There were times when she fell ill and the barefoot doctor from the village up the river had to be sent for. After being on a drip for a few days, she would usually recover her spirits. And life went on.
It was the 15th day of the first lunar month of the year , and the semester had already begun for third grade students. The sun began to glow a bit warmer. Soft new growth appeared in every corner of the village. Lingfeng took the van home from school and arrived at the village around five in the afternoon. He took his homework out of his bag and went to work at the dining table. His writing was wild and cramped. It leaned to one side so severely that it looked as if it might slip right off the page. However, there was nobody around to notice or to tell him not to hold his pen that way, so he kept at it. Arriving at questions he could not answer, there was nobody around to ask, so he left them blank. None of this caused him any distress. In the kitchen, Nainai sat in front of the stove, feeding it with fuel. She fried green cabbage and garlic scapes, fresh from the garden. Uncle usually joined them, but he had gone to the dike to drink that day.
On the table, positioned close to the window, was a canteen of boiled water. Beside it was a ceramic cup with Nainai’s leftover tea . The inside of the cup was lacquered with a thin layer of tea leaf glaze. When his homework was done, Lingfeng put his notebooks and textbooks beside the recliner. He grabbed the cup and guzzled cold tea.
Nainai, crouched in front of the stove, scolded, “Don’t drink cold tea. You’ll get sick! That cup doesn’t have a lid on it. It might’ve gotten bugs in it!”
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