After Father died, I took on something of depression’s manner. Naturally I disliked school. While doing homework, I would lose myself staring at knuckles blackened with ink. Mother taught at the university and Father had worked in its academic office, so I grew up on campus and seldom went anywhere else; yet never before had heaven and earth felt so narrow. One day the school loudspeakers played Girl with Wings. Their sound was vast and hazy as sunset, carrying a great distance. When Joey Yung sang, ‘Proudly I tell the sky: I flew upon your wind,’ something struck my heart like metal. I could not breathe. In the evening light, two lines of tears ran down my face without a sound.
Even after I returned to class, while Zhou Hua explained formulas at the board, I would stare at the orderly chalk marks, lift my head in despair and cry. I imagined, wishfully, that perhaps Gauss and Russell had also wept over formulas like this—not for any particular person or thing.
My deskmate, the top student in our year, loved the game Chinese Paladin. She found my behaviour alarming and was deeply worried. Relatives on Father’s side came to quarrel about the inheritance and even took me for a paternity test. Eventually I was allowed to rest at home. Mother’s eyes were full of dread—the look of someone watching red-hot lava move towards her.
Between middle school and high school I transferred several times, withdrew and returned several times, and eventually circled back to my old school. My former classmates were now a year ahead, preparing for the gaokao. Above each of them hung a strangely coloured cloud; some were clouds about to rain. One day at the gate I met a close childhood friend. ‘Look at what you’re doing with yourself now,’ he said.
Online I found a post seeking a volunteer teacher in Fenghuang, western Hunan. I had already decided not to take the gaokao and had left school to prepare for an English examination overseas. Everything was suspended, like a train that had left its rails, flown over a cliff and was drifting for a long time through the air. I contacted the person who posted it, the previous volunteer. Conditions had been so harsh that he stayed only a week. When he left, the village-school teacher wanted to go with him and asked for help finding work in Changsha as a security guard.
I took the night train from Changsha to Jishou. At the time I was learning guitar from Xiaochao. I carried a cracked wooden guitar on my back and music books for Xu Wei and Pu Shu in my bag. The sleeper carriage was dark. The farther we travelled towards Huaihua, the colder the weather felt. I liked the regular clang-clang as the wheels crossed the rails. I could have lived forever on a train: at least the destination and time had been decided, so I did not have to exhaust myself choosing. The man in the berth above smoked without stopping and made my eyes water, so I sat by the window and watched lights slip past. Near a station the train slowed. Small bright windows appeared and I imagined who lived behind them and what they were doing. Beyond the station we entered fields. Lights thinned out; there were more tall poles carrying wires, and now and then a streetlamp illuminating carriages parked on a siding and a pointsman walking among the tracks. Then the shadow of a mountain rushed up and blocked the view. Trains have a peculiar smell: sheets unwashed for years, instant noodles and beer, cigarette smoke that never disperses, toilets that can never be made clean; and in the smell of the rails, metal mixed with earth, gravel and excrement. I found all of it miraculous. Sometimes solitude is a black hole that devours a person; sometimes it is freedom.
From Fenghuang I had to change vehicles for La’ershan. Teacher Long said he would meet me in the township, where Hunan touches the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau and reaches its highest elevation. I wandered the streets of Fenghuang. From the bridge I watched the Tuo River glitter beautifully and move without tiring. Two rows of stilt houses followed the water; the old city had a long wall, windows opening towards the river, a white pagoda where the current bent, great wooden waterwheels, pleasure boats, wine sellers and boxed meals for five yuan. Thin morning sunlight fell across the stone road. The vehicles left from a shallow bank beside the river. While we waited for enough passengers, I found a place to sit. Clouds lay reflected in the water and moved very slowly. The world before me had nothing to do with me. Perhaps there was still a predicament waiting at home, but if I did not think of it, it did not exist. Perhaps what troubled me had never been in the outside world. The vehicle crossed mountain peaks; I saw people digging medicinal herbs halfway up the slopes and waterfalls dropping from above.
La’ershan was wholly unlike Fenghuang: muddy roads stained everywhere with coal dust; black wires tangled overhead; low concrete houses; one hotel a few storeys taller, Qixing Hotel painted in red on a wooden sign. Local people spoke little standard Mandarin. While waiting for Teacher Long to take me to the village, I ate two bowls of mung-bean noodles mixed with chilli powder. Teacher Long’s hair was greying and he had three years until retirement. He was thin, with a smiling expression that narrowed his eyes to lines, and wore a green army cap. The moment we met he shook my hand, then took me to buy a cartload of coal briquettes, a coal stove, an induction cooker, a hair dryer, a kettle and a thermos. He hired a minivan to carry everything to the village.
A concrete road led out of town. Beside it, half-sunken brick kilns glowed with fire. Elsewhere stood scattered houses and fields. Once we turned onto a dirt road, the houses vanished. There were only harvested paddies, stones and weeds. At a fork the vehicle turned downhill, drawing us towards a village at the road’s end: several dozen tiled houses, open yards with chickens, ducks and dogs, ponds and wells, low rolling mountains all around. Everyone spoke Miao. Old people wrapped cloth around their heads; children rolled in the fields.
The school consisted of two connected tiled rooms, one for preschool, the other for grades one through three. Black paint applied straight to the wall served as a blackboard. I lived in a little office beside the classrooms. The older children spoke better Mandarin, so I taught them. When I arrived they were already seated, waiting, every eye wide. Teacher Long raised his arm with great official ceremony. ‘Say hello to Teacher Zhu.’ Then he began to clap. ‘Now please welcome Teacher Zhu to speak.’
I had eleven pupils. Some were too young to walk the mountain road to the complete primary school in town every day, or to board there. Others were far older than third-graders. Their parents had left for migrant work, so they remained at the village school and repeated third grade again and again.
Before I came, Shiliuli was the best student. She had a narrow, monkey-like face and startlingly large eyes, a little like a Tim Burton doll. She had a younger brother and sister. Her brother, Shi Zhengbao, was also in my class. His nose never stopped running. He smiled simply, never started a fight, but whenever someone else did, he jumped in with excitement.
Shiliuli’s family was very poor and received the most assistance. Her father gambled. Later we heard that he had even gambled away money donated for her school fees, so none of us dared give funds directly to the family.
Her mother had intermittent psychosis and, during an episode, would cut herself with a kitchen knife. She had once been hospitalised, then returned home when her condition improved; there were still three children to raise. One day Shiliuli ran to the office and asked the volunteer teacher if she could sleep there for the night. When the teacher went to her home, he found her mother covered in blood, asleep on the bed, with the little sister sleeping in her arms.
On the day I left after finishing the term, I divided some household things among families in difficulty, including Shiliuli’s and Long Jingfen’s. I visited Shiliuli first. She followed me afterwards and watched me carry a kettle, several pairs of socks and the induction cooker to Jingfen’s home. She burst into anxious tears and asked why I had not given them to her. The question stunned me, and I began crying too.
A charity supported Shiliuli for years. When we found each other again a decade later, she told me she had left school. She had been studying nursing at a health vocational school in the city and had only two years left, but everything there was expensive and the teaching was poor. She did not want to continue. She was returning to the village to marry.
Shi Zhengbao used to smell and hated bathing. Later Shiliuli told me he was taking a driving test so he could haul goods. Hearing only her words, I could not connect him with the boy I knew. In my mind, a tiny Zhengbao with a runny nose sat in the driver’s seat of a truck, looking shyly at the dashboard, his feet barely able to reach the brake and accelerator.
Long Jingfen and Long Jingzhu were sisters. They also had two older sisters, both of whom left for work after middle school. Their first father died early. Their mother had a hearing impairment and could hardly speak, making only a few simple sounds. Their stepfather felled trees and carried timber on the mountain, the heaviest labour, for thirty yuan a day.
His greatest wish was for a son. A year after I left, he called me, plainly drunk. ‘Teacher Zhu, we’ve had our fifth. At last it’s a boy. Not bad, eh? Not bad?’
Jingfen and Jingzhu were both kind. Five-year-old Jingzhu always looked innocent and sly at once, with a secret little smile. She was a small monster—rough, lively, humanity at its most alive. When she entered the office for water in the morning and found me staring into space, she tugged my sleeve and wiped her nose all over me. When I was about to leave, she avoided me for no reason. I went to say goodbye at their home. She shrank into a corner and suddenly began to howl, crying like a little monster too.
I often gave Jingfen stationery. ‘Teacher, aren’t you giving any to Zhang Hui?’ she would ask. Zhang Hui was her closest friend in class. Once I invited the pupils to eat what I had cooked. I was bad at lighting the fire and used too much oil. Everyone said the food was terrible—which was true. Jingfen said, ‘Teacher’s cooking is good. It’s just that we don’t like eggs.’
Their house was small, with a tiny television. A pit in the centre of the floor was used for boiling water and keeping warm. The two older sisters slept by the door; the stepfather and mother beside the stove. When I asked where Jingfen and Jingzhu slept, he pointed to the ceiling. I climbed a ladder and found another bed above, a bare bulb hanging in the air and giving off warm orange light. Straw covered the boards to stop dust falling from the roof tiles.
When I found them again ten years later, Jingfen and Jingzhu had both long since left school and followed their sisters to work in Zhejiang. Jingfen worked in a beauty salon. Their second sister had married. I saw a photograph of all four in Miao dress, their hair dyed. I could barely tell Jingfen from Jingzhu. On WeChat I saw that Jingfen had a boyfriend, thin, wearing glasses, his Afro dyed gold. When I was small, a young couple lived above the hair salon downstairs from our home. The two of them felt much the same.
Wu Yugang was tall. His younger sister, Wu Xianli, was a sturdy, round-headed girl missing two front teeth and stood apart in preschool. I never remember seeing her cry, though every other girl seemed to have cried from a heart broken by one thing or another. Xianli was always happy or angry, watching or declaring an opinion, playing or resting. Yugang cried many times, usually after Wu Xiaoli hit him. Xiaoli was the only pupil taller than he was. She was twelve and still in third grade. She had a fierce temper. Her brother was next door; if anyone bullied him, she became furious. ‘Teacher, they’re hitting my brother!’ Before the words were out, she charged. Armed with a broom, she could take on three boys at once—Long Zaihua, Longhua, Wu Yugang, Shi Zhengbao. They all took pride in making her cry, but I saw it only once, after Long Zaihua struck the back of her head hard with a badminton racket. At the end of term, I ate at Yugang’s house. Xianli was delighted and insisted on lighting my way with a torch. Many ears of maize hung from the rafters. ‘Who are those for?’ I asked. ‘Who else but my fat sister?’ He always sounded helpless when he spoke of her. Ten years later the tone had not changed. Xianli was in the final year of a tourism vocational programme and wanted to quit. She thought a diploma would not get her a job, so she might as well start working. ‘Why don’t you persuade her?’ I asked Yugang. ‘I don’t really know about her affairs. Her temper is terrible now.’ ‘Have the two of you fallen out?’ I assumed. He seemed not to understand. ‘She’s my own sister.’
When I left, Yugang promised not to bully girls any more. He was torn. Had I not said I would wait for their final results? Heavy snow was falling in town. The roads iced over and were repeatedly closed until people cleared them. As the closure dragged on, I worried that unless I reached Fenghuang, I would spend New Year in the village. So I went down ten days before the exams and bought my train ticket.
Yugang left school after sixth grade and went to construction sites in Hangzhou to install plumbing and wiring. He regularly sent money to Xianli, who was still studying. I asked what he did when he was not working—did he read? ‘How could I?’ he answered sincerely. ‘I just scroll Douyin.’ When I offered to send technical books, he accepted with equal sincerity. Yugang and Xianli both possessed a deep sense of security, softly accepting the people around them.
Tang Longjun always wore a hat. His older sister Tang Yulian was in our class too. She disliked speaking. Only once, when I asked why she was always silent, did she say, ‘Talking is too tiring. I don’t like it.’ Her voice was beautiful and her pronunciation precise. The rest of the time she drew, lovingly rendering details: mountains of different colours, all covered in trees. Her gaze stayed low and she rarely looked happy, though she was always willing to play when Wu Xiaoli asked. Longjun drew too, always a man cultivating a field. At first it was only earth. Then shoots appeared. Each time he drew it, the crop had grown a little. One day he brought it to me. ‘Teacher, look how big my pineapples are now.’ His sense of time and space was unusual, and he described things vividly. If I assigned too much work, he said, ‘Teacher, your words turned into a row of arrows and shot me dead.’ When I passed him: ‘Teacher, you stepped on my shadow and broke one of its feet.’
Later I learned that Longjun studied motor repair and had just graduated from technical school. On the telephone he was guarded and sparing with words. He did not plan to work with cars and had not decided what to do. When I offered to send books, he said, ‘Mm. Thank you. No need.’ His profile on social media read, ‘I am human.’ Sensitive people live closer to the thing itself; for the same reason, they are more easily wounded, and more likely to develop a disappointment and suspicion of the world that cannot be resolved.
After I arrived, Longjun gradually replaced Shiliuli as the strongest pupil. What he showed was not competitiveness but imagination and curiosity. When Shiliuli received a corrected exam paper, she laid her head on the desk and sobbed more than once. At the time, I did not yet know how to understand any of it.
Longhua was poor at mathematics and liked repeating a sentence several times. ‘Teacher, I want water. Teacher, water.’ Before I woke in the morning, I heard him calling outside. He drank yesterday’s well water straight from the dipper. His face was permanently frostbitten. Unable to manage basic addition and subtraction, he was kept after class and rubbed out his answers again and again until the paper tore, crying while he wrote. The sheet was covered with marks from a cheap eraser, tears and mucus. It was pitiful and did nothing to help him understand arithmetic. Longhua was very good with cattle; he seemed better at communicating with them than at school. His father spoke little Mandarin and was always cutting firewood on the mountain or carrying water. The father’s brother ran a hotel in Fenghuang. The family was prosperous by village standards and often invited me for meat. Unless it came from your own animal, meat could only be bought at market. I seldom went, and had no way to store it, so I mostly ate egg fried rice and instant noodles. Fortunately the Miao loved entertaining guests. Building a house, marrying, having a child—each occasion brought a running feast outside the home. Sometimes you gave a twenty-yuan red packet, sometimes only a pack of cigarettes, and you could eat until after midnight. What I looked forward to most was dinner at Longhua’s or visiting a nearby Miao village with Teacher Long. I went more than two months without a hot shower. Too many lice and you stop itching; given enough time, I could no longer smell myself. When I went to Fenghuang for my ticket, Longhua’s cousin Longlin strongly suggested I bathe at a hotel. Astonishingly, I refused.
I used to imagine Longhua would keep herding cattle when he grew up. He was so good he might offer a service tending other families’ herds. This was another city-dweller’s wishful thought. He too left school young and went to Changsha, installing ceilings and wooden floors. He learned many ways of asking people for money. ‘Teacher Zhu, I’m at the market and fifty yuan short of the fare home. I can show you my location if you don’t believe me.’ ‘Teacher Zhu, are you back in Changsha? I’m coming to work. Lend me five hundred first.’ Later I heard he spoke this way to everyone in the village, until even his father had partly given up on him. His tone remained exactly as it had been in childhood, one sentence repeated several times.
I loved La’ershan: its quiet, remoteness and cold. I even loved the absence of a phone signal, the way rain or snow cut the power and left me reading by candlelight until the flame caught my untidy hair. I loved that, apart from being treated as an outsider who had come to teach, no demands could be placed upon me. Villagers were good to me because I taught their children. They brought vegetables they had grown and fresh rice after milling the grain. Teacher Long said the school needed a playground and a scholarship fund. We raised money several times, then found some of it unaccounted for; his explanations were vague. Still, I liked him. Once, after drinking at a feast, I ate spoiled soybean soup after midnight. I had diarrhoea and fever for three days. In the end Teacher Long cooked me white rice congee with sugar and took me at night to a doctor for an injection. Heavy snow often fell on La’ershan. It made a soft shushing sound. After one night, I opened the door to find the whole village under thick snow. My heart became quiet, filled with an inexpressible joy. Long Hui told me cabbage tasted best after snow.
Xiaoli and her brother lived in another village. She was twelve, about Shiliuli’s age, stubborn and often fighting boys. Her home was so far away that although she invited me to eat, I never went. In the end I never knew where she lived. I remember only that she was tall, with long hair in a braid and hands always marked by frostbite. Every day after school she hurried back to light the fire and cook for her grandmother. She liked fetching water for me, perhaps because they all thought I staggered when I walked and had no strength. When I left, the pupils followed Teacher Long to see me off. He solemnly set off a string of firecrackers, making the departure almost festive. Jingfen’s stepfather carried me towards town on his motorcycle. The road was frozen, and chains were wrapped around the tyres, but on a bend we still fell together into a field. As we crossed the hill above Xiaoli’s village, I saw her waiting on the slope in a long red padded coat and cotton shoes, hands in her pockets. ‘Teacher,’ she called. She said nothing more, only stood there with one foot angled out, looking cool. Beneath her were weeds and last night’s ice. The sun rose behind her, setting her in a golden outline.
Looking through the journal I kept then, I found that only in my message to Xiaoli had I mentioned marriage and children: ‘One day you will grow into a graceful young woman, marry into a good family, and have a plump baby.’ Of course I felt sad that I had imagined such a future for a girl and believed I was blessing her. As if the words had made themselves true, Xiaoli neither left for work nor continued at school. She married early. Ten years passed; at twenty-two she had already borne two children.
Yugang said he met her in the street during the New Year market. She had married into a distant village, and no one had her contact details.
Perhaps sadness has no reason. Yet when Yugang told me, I saw the same little Wu Xiaoli, her fringe cut on a slant, walking through the market with her child on her back. It was too difficult to comprehend. Perhaps long ago I should have abandoned all my wishful thinking, self-centred habits and city values. No one but the person living a life knows its warmth or cold. Again and again I think: I should have gone to eat at Xiaoli’s grandmother’s house. The village was not far. I was simply too afraid of inconvenience.