On August 13, 1975, the very instant I cracked my eyes open, I saw my roommate, Xiao G, standing right beside me. Looking at me with deep concern, she asked, "Fen, you’re awake? Do you know what kind of place this is?" I looked all around us. The sparse arrangement of beds, the few nightstands, and the walls were all a sterile, pristine white. "It's a hospital." "Do you know how you ended up in here?" "No, I don't." "What are you supposed to be doing right now?" she prodded. "I’m supposed to be on the road back to Shanghai... How on earth did I end up here?"
Part II: Xiao G Fills the Blank Canvas of My Memory
My memory had cut out completely around midday. On the levee right in front of the fishery team's dormitory, Xiao P had been sitting aboard his hand-tractor, waiting anxiously for those of us heading home for the holidays. He was coming from a place of pure kindness, wanting to hitch us a short ride to the long-distance bus terminal at the farm center. Walking there on foot would have taken a solid forty-five minutes. The tractor was already fired up, its engine letting out an impatient thut-thut-thut-thut that perfectly mirrored its owner’s eager spirit.
The sideboards of the cargo bed were already packed tight with people, and everyone was simply waiting on me; I had been delayed a bit by some final accounting work. Clutching my luggage, I dashed up the embankment, scrambled into the cargo bed, and squeezed into the absolute furthest spot at the back. Xiao P immediately revved the engine, accelerating onto the road with a series of sharp, explosive pop-pop-pop-pops. The road to the bus station wasn't inherently difficult to navigate; it was shaped like a "コ" (a rigid, three-sided block layout), with the middle stretch being considerably longer and paved with fine, crushed gravel. Xiao P’s tractor went "streaking like the wind" down that stretch, and our whole group was laughing and chatting merrily. Everything that happened after that was a total blank.
Xiao G filled me in on the rest of the incident. It turned out that when the tractor hit the second sharp, 90-degree turn, Xiao P didn't slow down in the slightest. The sheer centrifugal force hurled me clean out of the vehicle. My head struck the ground back-first, crashing hard right against the edge of a concrete bridge at the corner, knocking me completely unconscious on the spot. Everyone began shouting and screaming for Xiao P to stop the tractor. Some cried out my name, while others firmly pinched my philtrum—the groove right above my upper lip—trying to shock me awake, but I gave absolutely no reaction.
In a frantic scramble of hands and feet, everyone carried me off to the hospital. Fortunately, the farm hospital was located close by. The rest of the group eventually boarded their buses back to Shanghai, but Xiao G stayed behind to keep me company.
I reached up and touched the groove above my lip; sure enough, it was swollen, and the skin was broken. I couldn't see or feel any other wounds, and in my dazed state, I completely forgot to ask about the exact location of my head injury or the precise spot on the ground where I had fallen.
Part III: A Mental Inventory and a Wave of Relief
The accident had happened a little after 11:00 AM, and it wasn't until roughly 1:00 PM that I finally came to. I threw up once. The doctor explained that this was a standard reaction to a concussion, concluding that I had suffered a mild brain injury. Hearing that diagnosis, a cold wave of absolute terror washed through my core.
Lying there on the hospital bed, I began frantically digging through my mind. One after the other, I silently rehearsed every song I had ever sung, scenes from revolutionary model operas, Tang and Song dynasty poems I had memorized, the Thirty-Six Stratagems, famous idioms from vernacular novels, and even my multiplication tables. I went through the periodic table of chemical elements, and even ran through Chairman Mao’s "Three Constantly Read Articles." I even managed to excavate a cynical bit of old verse from Stories to Awaken the World: "Should there come a day when your beautiful face fades away, even if you stretch out both hands to welcome a suitor, no suitor will come." Lying there, I felt a deep, overwhelming pity for myself. I haven’t even gotten to live life as a proper adult yet, I thought, I absolutely cannot let myself become broken right here!
In the end, with tears welling in my eyes, I quietly rejoiced. I remembered! I still remembered everything! I hadn't turned foolish! I was hospitalized on the 13th, discharged on the 16th, spent the rest of my leave resting and recovering in Shanghai, and finally reported back to my unit on August 28th.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
A Blind Kinship, a Bamboo Forest Dream, and the Creaking of a Bamboo Bed
Part I: Gaining a Family Connection
Accountant D, Lao L, and Lao S were all the backbone of our team, and they were also close, dependable buddies. Their homes were all located outside the state farm, requiring a one- to two-hour bicycle ride each way. Accountant D was my direct supervisor—a rigorous man who served as the team's "third-in-command." One day, he invited me and my roommate, Xiao G, to his home to celebrate his youngest daughter's first birthday, and he proposed that the two of us become the child's Ji Niang (godmothers). At the time, we were completely bewildered. We were practically children ourselves, so how could we suddenly become "mothers"?
Several banquet tables were set up right in front of his house in the town, making for a tremendously lively, open-air feast. Looking back on it today, we really lacked basic worldly wisdom; we arrived at the banquet empty-handed without a single gift, nor did we give our new goddaughter any sort of blessing present. Yet, the pure and simple-hearted Accountant D didn't seem to care in the slightest.
Part II: A Secluded Abode — A Bamboo Forest Dream at Lao L’s House
Lao L was affectionately nicknamed "Zhuge Liang" for his clever wit. His home was located in the Situan Commune—a quintessential southern Chinese courtyard house. The front yard featured a deep water well, and a lush bamboo grove flourished behind the house. The entire property was bordered on its northwest sides by a wide, sweeping river, making it as quiet and serene as a hidden peach-blossom paradise.
That day, the hostess specially slaughtered an old hen for us and had placed a whole watermelon down into the well early in the morning to chill it. Their two young children played happily by the doorway. The eldest son, around six or seven years old, caught a few frogs down by the riverbank, picked fresh vegetables from the plot, and helped his mother by gathering firewood and cooking.
The aroma of that year's newly harvested rice, cooked with fresh well water over a wood-burning stove, was a fragrant perfection that city dwellers simply could never imagine.
After our meal, we wandered into the bamboo grove in the backyard, the thick carpet of fallen leaves crunching softly beneath our feet. In a small clearing right in the middle of the grove sat a large, old, solid-wood door panel that had been polished perfectly smooth over time. Lying down upon it, we surrendered ourselves to the cool breeze brushing across our faces.
All around us, vibrant, emerald-green bamboo stalks surged toward the heavens, their slender tips clustering high above our heads and swaying gently with the wind. The sunlight, filtered and shattered by the bamboo leaves, dappled the forest floor and our bodies. The distant hum of cicadas and the faint, rhythmic thumping of river laundry drifted into our ears. As a wave of drowsiness washed over me, I closed my eyes, utterly careless of "what day or year it was."
The little boy quietly carried over a basin filled with freshly picked dates, peaches, and sweet sorghum canes, and then slipped away just as softly as he had arrived.
Part III: A Restless Night — The Carved Bed at Lao S’s House
Lao S lived the farthest away, in Datuan. Perhaps seeing that the others had already hosted us, he refused to be left out. Yingzi and I spent the night at his house, sleeping in an old-fashioned, intricately carved wooden bed that his daughter had left behind after getting married. However, throughout that entire night, the bamboo cot in the adjoining room creaked and groaned—ji-ga, ji-ga—without a single moment of rest, keeping us from falling into a sound sleep.
Years later, I finally understood the true cause behind the relentless creaking of Lao S's bamboo bed. I only truly figured it out today: back then, getting a chance to travel all the way home took ten days or even half a month. In those years of grueling travel and constant separation, that noise was simply the uniquely passionate, fleeting domestic warmth of rugged men snatching a brief moment with their families. As for us back then, we were truly as pure and blank as sheets of white paper; we knew absolutely nothing about the world, and spent the whole night fruitlessly listening to that "noise," haha!
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
Part I: That Absurd yet Romantic "Boat Stealing" Incident
In August of 1974, I was transferred from the paper bag factory to the fishery team to serve as their cashier. Although working in the office meant I didn't have to go out and do manual labor, I occasionally loved to join them out on the water to catch fish—especially when we took the waterways.
In the crisp early morning, a delicate mist would float lazily across the water's surface before anyone was fully awake. Sitting aboard, my ears would fill with the steady thut-thut-thut of the motorized boat's engine, accompanied by the gentle, gurgling slosh of the river lapping against the hull. I would lose myself in a trance, watching the boat glide forward, carving out two rolling white wakes that cascaded outward in a V-shape toward both banks, gently slapping against the river levees. With the cool breeze brushing against my face and my hair flying in the wind, I felt in those moments as though I had stepped into an entirely different world.
Boats were a rare sight along the Suitang River. Our driver, Xiao Pan, was a cheerful Shanghai Laosanjie sent-down youth. He absolutely loved speed, and he steered our team's wooden motorized boat with the fierce momentum of a speedboat. Whenever we chanced upon a tiny sampan, he couldn't resist a bit of mischief—revving the engine to full throttle to streak past them. Watching the little boat rock helplessly back and forth in our turbulent waves, he would burst into a roaring laugh.
One day, we went out to fish, and the spot where we cast our nets happened to be the exact location where my girlfriends and I had "caused trouble" just a few months earlier when I was still at the paper bag factory. It had been a warm afternoon. Zhenzhu, Fangfang, Rongrong, and I—four young girls—decided we wanted to go see the ocean. Looking at the map, we thought the sea was just a stone's throw away, so we headed straight south. Little did we know the path would wind relentlessly, eventually requiring us to scale a massive sea defense levee.
More than two hours passed, and without catching even a single whiff of the salty sea air, our path was completely cut off by a wide, rushing river. Tied up by the riverbank was a small wooden rowboat. Guided by the reckless confidence of having rowed a boat a handful of times on the lake in Shanghai's Changfeng Park, I urged everyone: "Get in!" And so, we gingerly made our way down the steep, muddy bank. Yet, looking out at the swift, turbulent currents, fear gripped everyone's hearts. None of the other three had ever rowed a boat before; it became clear that the beach was an impossible dream.
In a fit of wild imagination, I suggested that we lift the boat and carry it over to the reed marshes where the water was shallow. We dragged the boat ashore and carried it on our shoulders for about a li until we reached the edge of that enchanting reed marsh. However, the water at the bank was far too shallow, choked with weeds and thick silt, making it impossible for the boat to glide. We had no choice but to give up. Thus, we completely missed out on the poetic romance of "startling a shore full of herons and gulls." Foolish and ignorant as we were, we simply abandoned the little boat right there, shook out our aching arms, and headed home.
The moment I finished sharing this old memory with everyone on the fishing boat, the words had barely left my mouth when Lao Si, a local village man, let out a hearty, booming laugh: "Aha! So that was your doing! You made us look for that boat for days!" The entire boat erupted into a chorus of roaring laughter. "Oh my goodness, I am so terribly sorry! I'm so sorry!" I apologized repeatedly. As the tall, dark-skinned Lao Si smiled, his two deep dimples seemed brimful of the pure, innocent spirit unique to that bygone era.
Part II: "When the Main Line is Raised, All the Mesh Opens" — Hauling Nets Under the Scorching Sun
All the waterways on the farm fell under the jurisdiction of our fishery team. At one end of the river section where we intended to fish, a small wooden rowboat sat crosswise in the middle of the current, dropping a "blocking net" to cut off the fishes' retreat. About two or three li away at the opposite end, a massive "trawl net" was lowered into the water. Another small boat sat anchored in the center of the river, holding the heavy main haul lines of the trawl. The white floats along the line surged and bobbed with the waves, and every single mesh of the net fully opened within the current. This was the vivid, literal embodiment of the old phrase: "When the main line is raised, all the mesh opens."
On both riverbanks, people lined up like the famous boat-pullers of the Yellow River, dragging the immense net with wooden harness boards strapped across their chests. With the wooden boards pressing diagonally against our chests, our bodies leaned heavily forward, our toes dug into the earth, and we shuffled along, step by agonizing step. When the harness chafed our chests too painfully, we would shift it down to our hips and walk backward. The riverbed changed constantly, shifting from wide to narrow, and the banks alternated between flat, muddy slopes and steep, rugged inclines. Sometimes, to bypass thick clusters of wild brambles, we even had to plunge into the waist-deep, freezing water and trudge forward with great difficulty.
Panicked fish broke the surface of the water from time to time, some successfully making their escape. Others, less fortunate, leaped straight into the small rowboat, engaging in a "life-or-death struggle" with the young man guarding the vessel. That honest, clumsy local lad would get completely flustered, his face frequently whipped by frantic fish tails until he was covered in scales and muddy spray. This always threw the people on the banks into fits of roaring laughter, with some laughing so hard they literally collapsed onto the ground. The young girls, terrified that their delicate skin would be blackened by the relentless sun and coarsened by the sea breeze, wrapped their faces tightly in towels and pressed the brims of their straw hats low. No matter how stifling the heat, they insisted on wearing long sleeves. In the eyes of passing strangers, this sweat-stained crowd clad in patched clothing certainly didn't look like much. Yet, the moment those passersby caught sight of the youthful faces hidden beneath the towels, enduring such grueling labor under the scorching sun, a flicker of pity and bittersweet lament would always soften their gaze.
After about an hour or two, the two giant nets converged. As the netting was steadily hauled onto the bank, massive fish and tiny shrimp leaped frantically out of the water in a primal instinct to break free. The same local lad who had just been "slapped in the face" by the fish excitedly offered to teach us how to eat live shrimp right there on the spot. Right in the middle of that splashing, chaotic harvest, he scooped up a live shrimp, gave it a quick rinse in the river water, pinched the struggling head and tail, and brought the curved back of the shrimp to his lips. With a gentle, practiced press of his lips, the tender, translucent shrimp meat slid flawlessly into his mouth, while the shell in his hand remained perfectly intact.
We tried it countless times, but either the meat didn't come out clean or we ended up biting the shell to pieces; we simply couldn't master his trick of spitting out a whole, unbroken shell. This small triumph finally allowed the local lad to "save face." Beaming with a mix of pride and rustic innocence, he narrowed his eyes and couldn't stop smiling. That was the very first time in our lives we had ever eaten "live seafood"—though, at the time, none of us had ever even heard the word Sashimi.
Hauling the nets, scooping the catch, weighing the haul, and making sales—that was our routine. Bighead carp (also known as fat-head carp), silver carp, and common carp sold for a mere 0.21 yuan per jin. Black carp, grass carp, bream, sea bass, mullet, and even the prized hairy crabs all went for 0.42 yuan per jin.
By the time we charted our return course against the setting sun, we were completely drenched in sweat and reeking of fish—yet every single one of us was brimming with pure, unadulterated happiness.
Part III: Washing Up After the Day's Labor
After finishing our hard labor, we always needed a proper bath. Back then, upon returning to our sector, everyone would simply grab their thermoses and washbasins, fetch a bit of hot water from the kitchen, and wash up inside the dormitory. Later on, when we relocated to the fishery team's second living quarters, there happened to be a chemical plant nearby. From then on, we girls would head over to that factory to take our baths after knocking off work. Every single time we approached the guardroom at the main gate holding our washbasins, my heart would flutter with anxious uncertainty, terrified that we would be scolded and barred from entering.
While taking a bath, we would wash our clothes at the same time. Walking back out the gate was equally nerve-wracking; we would keep our heads bowed low and walk at a hurried pace. It was only when we finally passed beyond the line of sight of the guards that we could let out a sigh of relief, feeling very much like "fish that had successfully slipped through the net." Fortunately, most of the time, the guards chose to turn a blind eye and let us pass.
We had heard rumors that chemical plants were toxic and could severely affect a woman's fertility, which was why the factory distributed free milk to its workers. Consequently, every trip there filled me with a double layer of dread: I was terrified of the guards, and I didn't even dare to take a deep breath. In reality, there was absolutely no strange odor in the air; it was entirely a manifestation of my own psychological tension.
Part IV: A Lavish Compensation in an Age of Scarcity
When I was a child, I often had to endure an empty stomach. Even when I was starving, I never dared to make a sound, because my mother couldn't bear to hear it—she simply had no extra food to give us anyway. What was there to do? When hunger struck, I would swallow a mouthful of water, or use what little strength I had left to croon the revolutionary song, "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." Eventually, my mother caught on to the underlying meaning of my singing and forbade me from singing it altogether.
During the 1960s, meals had to be strictly weighed on a scale to measure the portions. My father, as the head of the household, was exempt from limits. My older brothers were allotted a mere one or two liang (approx. 50–100 grams) of grain, and my share was smaller still. I spent my days constantly starving, my stomach practically pinned to my backbone. In those years, grain was strictly rationed: elementary school students received 19 jin a month, junior high students got 27 jin, and high school students were allowed 31 jin. Our generation suffered from widespread malnutrition. During my first year of work, my monthly wage was a meager 18 yuan. Just being able to eat our fill was considered a luxury; we had absolutely no concept that a growing body required vast amounts of proper nutrition.
Perhaps as a form of cosmic compensation from destiny, after I arrived at the fishery team, fresh fish became an absolute staple of our daily meals. For just ten cents, one could purchase a massive bowl containing half of a live, foot-long fish. Even when it was simply boiled in plain water with nothing but a handful of salt thrown in, it tasted like the ultimate, exquisite delicacy. The leftover fish meat, meticulously cleared of bones, along with the broth, would sit out overnight. By the next morning, it would congeal into a beautiful, crystalline fish jelly.
Fortunately, we suffered from a profound lack of scientific knowledge back then and had no idea that food left at room temperature for two hours would swarm with bacteria—otherwise, how could we have ever eaten it with such relish? There were certainly no refrigerators in those days. Of course, if something went spoiled and turned rancid, we knew well enough to throw it out; that was basic common sense everyone possessed. But our fish jelly showed no visible signs of spoilage to the naked eye, and it tasted absolutely divine.
That fresh, savory flavor, laced with just a faint hint of earthy river mud, slowly built back up the deep deficiencies in our bodies. In the beginning, seeing how much I loved eating the meat along the fish's spine, the old veteran fishermen taught me their wisdom: "To truly experience the flavor, you must eat the head, the fins, the belly, and the tail. That is where the real savor lies."
Looking back today, that beautiful slice of time—when I ate so well that my face grew completely round—turned out to be the most generous, bountiful gift the river could have ever bestowed upon us during that impoverished era.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
The Last Glimpse: He Passed Away Quietly That Night, Aged 19
I. A Ridiculous Yet Romantic Youth
In 1974, at the fishery team, four girls in their early twenties—including myself—shared a dormitory. I suggested taking one character from each of our names to name our room: "The Yan-Lan-Fen-Hong Villa." We even wrote it on a piece of paper and pasted it above the door. To us, it was romantic and poetic. But before long, the old Party Secretary tore it down. Back then, we were so innocent we were almost transparent; we couldn't even detect the "indecent" connotations others might project onto such a name.
II. Two Lives—I Could Barely Manage One
Lao Diao was introverted and rarely seen. His friends from other units always seemed handsome and aloof. One day, they came to our team and began telling stories in the open space before our dorm. These were the "underground" hand-copied novels circulating at the time: The Plum Blossom Party, A Pair of Embroidered Shoes, The Green Corpse, and The Second Handshake.
As night fell, the storytelling moved into our dormitory. We lit a single candle. The flickering, unsteady light added warmth to the romantic tales and a chilling shiver to the thrillers. I remember one storyteller began with: "A person’s life consists of two kinds of existence: the daily life, and the sexual life."
I noticed one girl’s eyes flash with excitement, her lips curling into a smile. Others lowered their gaze. But I just stared with wide, ignorant eyes, completely bewildered. I thought to myself: "Between working and earning a wage, I can barely handle one kind of life. Why on earth do we need two?"
III. The Long Scarf and the Rumors
At the time, I owned a long, pure wool scarf that I absolutely cherished. Long scarves were a brand-new fashion trend back then; the shops had only ever sold short ones before. I bought it the moment it first hit the market for 15 yuan. It cost me nearly a whole month’s wages, which was only 18 yuan at the time. A girl in our production team saw my newly purchased black scarf and asked to borrow it to take a photo. When she returned it, not only did she fail to mention that the yarn had been snagged and pulled out, but she had actually taken scissors and cut the loose thread off. My beautiful scarf was left with a gaping hole and a tightly puckered ruin along the edge. I was utterly heartbroken.
A few days later, our team was granted some time off, and we all boarded the long-distance bus heading back to the city. While on the bus, Lao Diao overheard me talking to the other girls about how my scarf had been ruined. He told me he knew someone who could reweave and mend it, so I handed the scarf over to him. In truth, his real surname was not Diao; because he was incredibly introverted and rarely spoke, his friends felt his deeply reserved temperament shared a striking resemblance to Chief of Staff Diao from Shajiabang—a Peking opera that was sweeping the nation at the time—and so they affectionately nicknamed him "Lao Diao." A few days later, he came to my house to return the beautifully mended scarf. I was home alone reading a book at the time, and being terribly awkward, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He stayed just long enough to finish a single cup of tea and then left. That brief afternoon was the entire extent of our private interaction. Yet, soon after, rumors began to fly that I was his girlfriend.
In my heart, I carried a deeply traditional ideal of marriage and academic success, and so, to protect myself, I built a high fence around my heart. I deliberately avoided him. Even later on, when he fell gravely ill, I hardened my heart and refused to visit him out of a paralyzing fear of causing further misunderstanding. The other young people from our team had gone to see him several times. When they returned to the team, one of the young men in our team said to me, "It's time to go visit Lao Diao. He can't even speak anymore." They told me that every time they walked in, Lao Diao would weakly scan their faces, and upon realizing I wasn't with them, a profound look of disappointment would wash over him. Back when he could still speak, during their earlier visits, Lao Diao had even asked them bluntly, "Why hasn't Fen come?"
This continued until his mother traveled all the way from Shanghai to find our fishery team, desperately asking around for a girl named Fen. Holding my hand with tears streaming down her face, she begged me to go see her son. The team granted me two days of leave. At the time, he was staying at a relative's house near the hospital. Lying on the sickbed, Lao Diao was half-paralyzed, yet he anxiously pushed away his mother's hand—she had been wiping the saliva from the corner of his mouth and was temporarily blocking his view. He stared at me, his eyes locked onto mine without blinking. I felt incredibly stifled and awkward; I sat there for a mere ten minutes before getting up to leave. As I said my goodbyes, he turned his head all the way to the other side. When he turned back, the tears at the corners of his eyes could no longer be contained, spilling down his face. I promised him I would visit one more time the next day before heading back to the farm.
That afternoon, I met up with my close friend Rongrong from the paper bag factory. We went shopping along Huaihai Road and visited her parents' home in Shanghai. When I finally returned home that evening, I found that Lao Diao's mother had already been looking for me. She had left a frantic note: "Fen, please come to the hospital immediately. I beg of you." Terrified, I rushed to Huashan Hospital, only to find Lao Diao lying on the bed, covered in a maze of tubes. A circle of close friends and relatives was gathered all around his bedside. His mother wept, telling me that the moment I left him earlier that day, he fell into a coma, was rushed to the hospital, and had not woken up since. I stayed in the hospital room for twenty minutes, telling his mother I would return first thing in the morning. But when I went back the next morning, the bed was already empty. He had slipped away at midnight, right after I left. He was only nineteen years old.
Epilogue
In the years since, I have often wondered: was he desperately waiting just to see me one last time, refusing to let go until that final tear fell? If I had worried less about my own reputation back then, if I had simply held that hand which still possessed sensation... would it have offered a final shred of comfort to him and his mother?
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
An Era When Hearts Were Harder to Reach Than Phone Lines
Part I: A Voice with Magnetism
In 1974, telephone calls between the various sectors of the farm had to be routed through the central switchboard of the Shanghai Municipal May Seventh Cadre School. The operator, a young man named Xiao S, would always call me to chat, spinning a conversation out of nothing at all. Being someone of few words, I would simply reply to his questions: "Have you eaten?" "Not yet." "What are you doing?" "Accounting."
Whenever things got busy on his end, he would make me wait, leaving me with a firm instruction: "Don't hang up." Even if I had to step away for a moment, he wouldn't let me end the call. Everyone used to tell me that my voice over the phone sounded rather mature, unlike a typical young person's, so I always wondered why he spent so much time chatting with me. His voice, however, possessed a true magnetism—deep and resonant, much like the voice actors who dubbed foreign films at the Shanghai Dubbing Studio.
As to whether he had ever seen me before, I had no way of knowing, though the opportunity was certainly there. Whenever we caught fish, we sold them directly by the riverbank. Sometimes I would be there on-site to collect payments and write invoices, and the crowd of buyers was always immense. Squeezing and jostling through that bustling throng of young and old were production managers from other sectors holding large wicker baskets, alongside numerous workers' family members carrying shopping baskets. I didn't go every single time, as there was another girl in our team who also handled the fish sales.
Part II: The Unreliability of Imagination
One day, Accountant D mentioned that Xiao S was coming to our sector to buy fish. Knowing we were finally about to meet made my heart flutter like a trapped rabbit. That day, Xiao S and Accountant D stood out in front of the dormitory; they never actually stepped into the accounting office. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of him from afar, peering through the office window. Imagination can be a terribly cruel thing—with that single, hurried glance, my fantasy was instantly shattered by reality. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, but rather that the image I had built in my mind was so utterly flawless that the real person simply couldn't measure up. I felt a wave of deep disappointment over it, and for quite a while afterward, Xiao S stopped calling me. Perhaps he, too, felt disappointed in me. In truth, that glimpse of mine had been flawed from the start: for one, I was looking down at him from above, and furthermore, Accountant D stood at least one point eight meters tall.
One day, a young man who worked in the cafeteria of the paper bag factory called me out of the blue, asking me to come back because someone wanted to see me. It was only when I arrived that I realized it was Xiao S. Time had washed away the old awkwardness, and the barriers and anxieties were gone. The three of us played a game of ping-pong together, just like old friends. During our casual conversation, I mentioned that I would be traveling back to Shanghai soon. Xiao S immediately offered, saying he could arrange a ride for me.
Part III: A Hint of Melancholy upon Arrival
Being able to hitch a ride back to Shanghai was a double blessing—it cost nothing and saved time, cutting the usual four-hour journey clean in half. But getting a ride wasn't easy; only units with regular cargo transport routes to the city center enjoyed such a luxury. To catch a ride, you either had to ask someone who knew the drivers for a favor, or rely on sheer luck by waiting right beside the vehicles. I had hitched rides once or twice with colleagues from my team. Generally, the drivers were quite sympathetic, unless there was absolutely no space left. Some of the young men would hand the driver a cigarette as a small "bribe." Those hitching a ride would sit in the open cargo bed, packed tight with goods, squeezing into the narrow gaps or sitting right on top of the freight. The wind along the road was punishingly cold, freezing us to the bone, and with the truck bed's sideboards barely two feet high, it was incredibly dangerous if you didn’t hold onto the ropes binding the cargo. Every time we hitched a ride, there would be at least a dozen of us, and by the time we reached Shanghai, we were all disheveled and covered in dust. Yet, strangely enough, as we entered the city center and it came time to get down, a faint sliver of melancholy would wash over my heart, making me wish the ride would just go on forever. The moment we hit the urban streets, the driver would hurriedly tell us to get off and disperse immediately, terrified of running into the police.
Part IV: Standing Close to a Boy for the Very First Time
On the day I was to hitch a ride, I walked six or seven li through the pitch-black darkness, arriving at the cadre school just as the first faint glimmers of dawn began to break. The equipment room was up on the second floor—a small, dimly lit room with polished, waxed hardwood floors. In the center of the room stood several large, towering cabinets crammed with crisscrossing patch cords. I stood quietly by the north window. Looking out, some thirty or forty meters ahead under the dim amber glow of a streetlamp, sat the large cargo truck I was meant to board. A few silhouettes were busy loading and unloading freight.
The solid wooden window frame was low, barely reaching knee height. Xiao S’s workstation was just a single step away from where I stood. After being busy at the switchboard for a while, he set down his headset and microphone and quietly walked over, standing directly behind me. For the first time in my life, I felt the electrifying awareness of standing so incredibly close to the opposite sex. I was completely enveloped by his masculine presence. Though there was absolutely no physical contact, it left my thoughts drifting, airy and impossible to tether. My body felt soft, almost swaying, and a few hazy, delicate expectations began to bloom in my heart. Using the last shred of my remaining reason, I held my ground and kept myself from collapsing backward.
Those few fleeting seconds felt like they spanned several lifetimes. Because nothing actually happened, that hazy expectation slowly curdled into a faint, lingering ache of resentment. Fortunately, the sky was not yet bright, and the darkness gracefully shielded that momentary awkwardness.
Part V: My Experience Riding in the Truck Cab
This time, I got to sit inside the truck cab, which was infinitely more comfortable than my previous two experiences riding in the open cargo bed. I sat directly behind the driver. Inside the cab were three cargo handlers—all four of them young, robust men. Nobody uttered a single word the entire way. That day, the truck didn’t even drive straight toward the Shanghai city center. Instead, they went first to Jinshan and several other places to load and unload goods—all of which were desolate, sparsely populated areas out in the wild countryside.
An inexplicable tension and anxiety gripped me the whole time, and I couldn't help but regret hitching the ride, my mind spiraling into terrifying imaginings. What should have been a four-hour trip wound its way through so many twists and turns that by the time we finally reached the city center, darkness had already fallen. After bidding them goodbye, I had to navigate several public buses just to get home.
Thinking back on it later, the people of that era were actually very pure and simple. As I sat packed inside, everyone remained dead silent simply because my sudden presence had awkwardly intruded upon them, robbing them of the laughter and chatter they usually shared on the road. They must have felt terribly self-conscious that day too.
I never hitched a ride ever again.
Part VI: Seeing Xiao S Again, but Lacking the Courage to Speak
After that truck ride, Xiao S never called again. Finally, forcing down the frantic fluttering in my chest, I picked up the receiver myself, only to hear a completely unfamiliar voice on the other end. Later, I casually brought it up with Accountant D, trying my best to sound nonchalant. He told me that Xiao S had been transferred away long ago. It wasn't appropriate for me to pry into where he had gone—after all, we had never so much as held hands. Yet, a part of me couldn't help but think that since we had become such familiar fixtures over the phone line, he should have at least said goodbye before leaving.
On October 21, 1974, several girls from our team and I walked eighteen li through the pitch-black morning to visit Fengcheng. Just as we approached the town, the first faint light of dawn began to color the sky, and the telephone wires atop the poles began to branch out in every direction. A few more steps and a turn around the bend brought the houses on the town's outskirts into view. At that exact moment, I suddenly spotted a figure not far away, perched on a telegraph pole connecting phone lines. As I drew closer and looked up—ah! It was Xiao S! My heart instantly dropped, and a sudden, burning heat flushed across my face. He saw me too, but neither of us said a word. After all, we had only ever met a handful of times in person, and it had been so long since I last had any news of him. I hesitated for a brief, fleeting second, but I did not stop my feet.
Immediately afterward, I began to doubt myself, wondering if my eyes had simply played a trick on me.
Part VII: The Truth Behind That Sudden Departure
It is only in these past couple of days that I have truly come to understand why he left so abruptly back then, without even being able to call me to say goodbye. That transfer must have been sudden and unexpected. He likely never had another opportunity to use the equipment room's telephones for personal calls, nor could he come to the fishery team in person to say farewell.
After all, in that era, every single conversation had to pass through the main switchboard. Facing the listening ears of all the other familiar operators, those secrets hidden deep within the telephone lines were simply too difficult to put into words.
Beneath that telegraph pole on the outskirts of Fengcheng, we shared a split-second locking of eyes. The sky was just beginning to pale with dawn, and neither of us spoke. Perhaps the location was just too unexpected—who could have imagined that in such a remote, wild place (so far from the farm, so far from the municipal cadre school), we would collide so entirely unprepared? In that exact moment, reserved and guarded as I always was, I faltered and failed to stop my steps. And he, perhaps, was doubting his very own eyes.
To walk past, to cross paths, to miss each other entirely—life is always like this, completely out of our hands.
Looking back, even I find it somewhat unbelievable. An emotion I poured myself so completely into turned out, in the end, to be something where I never even learned his full name. To this day, I do not know if his surname was spelled "Si" (斯) or "Si" (司).
Even more unbelievable is that all of this unfolded in the span of just two short months. I was transferred to the fishery team in August of 1974, and October 21 marked our very last glimpse of one another. How could so many stories pack themselves into just two brief months? Did time truly move at a painfully slower pace during those years?
But at that age, when one is so deeply in love with illusion, perhaps what I was truly infatuated with was the beautiful, unattainable haze of it all. As the years bleed away, his blurred silhouette perched upon that telegraph pole in the first light of dawn has simply gathered one more soft layer of mist.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
From "Hiding the Smile" to Frosty Aloofness: A Youth Tethered by Teeth and Redeemed by Soul
I. The Internalized Shackle: When a Smile Becomes a Secret
During my youth, the prevailing ethos for women was "preferring military fatigues to silken robes." My mother’s upbringing was strict; she constantly reminded me to smile without showing my teeth. To a young girl then, the concepts of beauty and ugliness were still blurred.
That tranquility shattered in 1970. A group of "White Coats" in military uniform bluntly critiqued my appearance in front of dozens, declaring my teeth "unsightly." From that moment, I forgot how to smile. I learned that beauty was defined by "teeth like rows of cowrie shells," and my own—missing two canines—seemed jarringly uncoordinated.
The label of "buckteeth" planted a seed of inferiority in my subconscious. It bloomed most painfully at the photo studio. Whenever the photographer shouted "Smile!" before pressing the shutter, it felt like a starting pistol, forcing my anxiety to the surface. The resulting photos captured stiff muscles and defensive eyes. People said I was "unphotogenic." I tore those photos to shreds, yet I couldn't extinguish the burning desire to record my youth.
II. The Missed Encounter: A Silent Barrier
On Christmas Eve, 1976, fate brushed past me. While I was chatting in the farm’s canteen, a few men from the Shanghai Theatre Academy—"talent scouts," as we call them now—spotted me. They asked the party secretary to find the "girl in military uniform in the kitchen" for a talk.
Though I answered their questions, I remained mentally "unable to open my mouth." The shame planted by the "White Coats" shadowed me; I was so hyper-aware of my teeth that I suppressed every vivid expression. The encounter was like a shooting star—brief and unreachable. Despite their polite offer for a written test, my stifled confidence and the years away from school made failure inevitable. It was a poignant sting of youth.
III. Spiritual Redemption: Wandering Within Great Works
Fortunately, there was literature. During a time when foreign books were branded "poisonous weeds," a classmate named Wenhao became my guide. We had never spoken a word in school, yet he began passing stacks of "forbidden books" through my window.
He led a girl with no literary background to the gates of a grand temple. I became immersed in the ocean of Western and Chinese classics. I stopped yearning for a radiant smile and instead embraced a "frosty, aloof" demeanor. Since prejudice had stolen my smile, I chose not to smile at all. It was simpler, and in that coldness, I found a strange freedom.
IV. Reflection: The Necessary Detour
Years later, I look back at the extracted canines and the imperfect correction. Did I take a long, unnecessary detour? If I had kept those teeth—like the iconic Momoe Yamaguchi—would I have been more uniquely myself?
Perhaps this journey was exactly what I needed to experience. Without that struggle over my reflection, I might never have found the profound, cool liberty that awaited me within the pages of those books.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
Only after decades of life have settled and clarified do I finally arrive at a sudden, piercing realization: my mother’s heavy political label as a "Counter-Revolutionary" back then was actually the most invisible amulet the heavens could have gifted our family during those turbulent years. Yet at the time, we felt nothing but endless, unyielding pain.
Chapter 2: An Innate Safeguard
In truth, I was born with a natural shield of my own—my snaggleteeth (canine fangs). Before I started elementary school, my father took me to have them pulled out. In the only three photographs remaining from my early childhood, my expressions are uniformly solemn, completely hiding my teeth. It wasn't until a photograph from 1970 that a smile finally emerged on my face. But looking back, that was an exceptionally fleeting, carefree laugh in the grand canvas of my life.
Chapter 3: Pain of the Past, Gratitude of Today
In 1970, Shanghai’s famous "Top Ten Luxury Hotels" conducted a beauty-pageant-style recruitment drive across various local high schools. The school administration selected me—and me alone from our entire institution—to go to the District Education Bureau for the recruitment physical and interview.
Inside the room, the medical examiners in military-style white coats deliberately told a joke that triggered an explosion of laughter among the fifty or sixty applicants gathered there. Right in front of everyone, the "white coats" clicked their tongues and sighed directly at me: "Ah, what a pity! This girl looks so beautiful when she doesn't smile, but those two front teeth of hers..."
Those words deeply stung my adolescent pride. From that day onward, I never dared to smile freely again. Whenever a camera was pointed at me, my facial muscles would freeze up with a profound lack of self-confidence.
Yet, decades later, when I look back on that painful day, I realize it was nothing short of divine intervention. If I had possessed a set of flawless teeth and had actually been selected by those luxury hotels, where would that twist of fate have pushed my life? Every time this thought crosses my mind, a cold shiver runs down my spine.
Chapter 4: Unexplained Abdominal Pain
In the early summer of 1987, a young man who worked at my university asked me a peculiar question: "Do you want to watch a video tape?" He added, "If you miss this chance, you will miss out on it for the rest of your life." His expression was strangely intense.
"An adult tape?" I asked bluntly.
"Yes," he replied.
"Can I bring a friend with me?"
"Male or female?"
"A female friend."
He pondered it for a moment and said, "Alright, as long as she can keep a secret."
In those years, watching smuggled adult videotapes was strictly illegal. At an age where curiosity routinely triumphed over fear, I brought along a close friend—a sweet, charming girl (a classic Shanghai Dia-Meme)—to boost my courage. The young man worked at our university, so I assumed his character must be decent. He also played the piano beautifully. In the era we grew up in, ordinary people rarely had access to a piano, and private lessons were strictly prohibited by society. To me, this signaled that he came from a highly cultured, educated family. Of course, that was just the naive logic of my simple mind back then.
The viewing took place at his friend’s apartment. The male host was roughly our age. After brief introductions, we entered the room, and the host poured us some tea. "If you hear anyone knocking on the door, stay calm," he instructed. He pointed to the university colleague: "You turn on the main light." Then he pointed to the two of us: "You two just sit there and chat naturally, okay?" With that, he hit the play button.
My friend and I were utterly paralyzed. We had never imagined images could be so incredibly "graphic!" It was genuinely stomach-churning. We held our breath, staring blankly at the screen, entirely at a loss for what to do or say. Should we demand they turn it off? Should we immediately stand up and walk out? Should we show righteous indignation? In our shock, we did absolutely nothing.
The tape rolled on. Suddenly—knock, knock, knock—someone was at the door!
The young man sitting on the edge of the bed instantly cut the power and threw a large towel over the television set. The host leaped off the bed, flipped the light switch on, and put his index finger to his lips, gesturing for absolute silence. Our faces were burning crimson.
The front door creaked open slightly, and we heard him call out, "Mom!" Luckily, his mother did not come inside the room. The young man turned back to us, letting out a breath: "Wow, that was a close call!" He pressed a button on a tape recorder, flooding the tense room with music. "Let's relax a bit, you guys are way too stiff," he urged. "Come on, let's dance!"
"I don't know how to dance," my sweet friend blurted out.
"It doesn't matter, just relax." They started to move to the music. The two of us were incredibly anxious; we had firmly agreed before coming that we did not want anything compromising to happen. Just as the atmosphere was descending into a profoundly subtle, awkward tension, a sharp, excruciating pain suddenly tore through my abdomen. It was entirely unbearable. Grabbing onto the excuse of this sudden illness, we immediately said our goodbyes and escaped.
The second incident occurred during the height of summer that same year. On a trip to Guangzhou, I had purchased a hard-sleeper train ticket and was assigned the middle berth. The journey took about thirty hours. Directly opposite me, occupying the upper and lower berths, were two highly loquacious young men from Shanghai who were into private commerce. They chatted animatedly about how easy it was to make money, boasting that they had amassed a fortune in just three years by sourcing goods from Guangzhou to sell back in Shanghai.
After returning to Shanghai, I accepted their invitation to meet up at a roadside food stall to chat over drinks. Without warning, the exact same pattern of excruciating abdominal pain descended upon me out of nowhere. It forced me to cut the gathering short and leave immediately.
Normally, I never suffered from random, unprovoked stomach aches. Yet on those two specific occasions, when my completely naive, defenseless self had absolutely no idea how to gracefully exit a dangerous or uncomfortable situation, my own body stepped in and made the executive decision for me.
Chapter 5: The Hand of the Heavens?
Those agonizing moments, the harsh rejection of my appearance, and even those sudden, mysterious bodily pains—I now see them for what they truly were. They were the manifestations of a divine hand. Seeing how terribly oblivious and innocent I was, the heavens had quietly reached down at the critical intersections of my life, gently but firmly pulling me back from the edge.
特別感謝 Gemini AI 提供充滿活力的翻譯和文本潤色。
Special thanks to Gemini AI for providing the spirited translation and text refinement.
