A Day in Hometown

I am a time traveler.

I am on the basketball court at the primary school. It is early morning, and no one is here. Threads of light appear along the eastern horizon, carefully soaking into the pale sky. Spring has just arrived, and drops of last night’s rain still cling to the tips of the grass. This may be the only patch of green in this gray, desolate city. The benches beside the court are still wet, so I lean in the entrance porch of the classroom building, waiting for the people who will come into the school one by one. I go into a classroom on the second floor. The students sit at their desks; among the voices reading aloud are some students who are not quite awake. A girl leans beside a pivoting wooden window. As she glances carelessly outside, she draws a deep breath. The poplars in the schoolyard, withered and yellow like bald old men, have had buds grafted onto them overnight, pale and tender, striking at her heart.

I come into the sky, among the clouds, where I can just make out a temple on the summit. It is the third day of the third lunar month, 1978, the birthday of Bixia Yuanjun. The path up Mount Tai is packed with devout people. She is wearing a little floral-print apron top, and a tall, sturdy, silver-haired grandmother holds her small hand. They look at the crowd, and at some old women with bound feet, wearing traditional side-fastening jackets and leggings wrapped around their calves. Every few steps, the women kneel and kowtow toward the mountain. Their little feet move slowly. Perhaps it will already be dark by the time they reach the summit. They may have come to ask Grandmother Mount Tai for her protection against illness and misfortune; perhaps their lives have already become peaceful and they have come to fulfill a vow. Whatever the reason, they must express their sincerity to the deity through this firm belief and worship. The girl tugs at her grandmother’s hand, wanting to go down the slope. She still wants to play at the Dai Temple today. Her grandmother says, “Little one, look how many people there are today. It’s too crowded. We won’t go today. Grandma will take you to the kindergarten to play on the slide.” I want to see what this three-year-old child is doing when she is my age.

I go to May 1989. She is fourteen then. The university students have begun their first march. Her father is very anxious. He says they must protect the students and follow them. He also calls her older sisters, who are at university in other cities, and tells them they must not go to Beijing and must come home at once. Having lived through such things himself, her father knows very well that this movement will end painfully. Even now, she still dimly remembers two phrases from that evening: “protect the students” and “settle scores later.”

One morning a few days later, just after her graduation exams, she follows an older neighbor to join the university students’ march, simply to see what is going on and experience the excitement. University students fill the whole street, carrying signs that read “Punish Corruption, Down with Official Profiteering.” The procession moves slowly westward from the university at the far eastern end. She walks in its midst, feeling only curiosity and novelty. Sometimes foreigners stand on higher ground, pointing their cameras at the crowd. Whenever this happens, she ducks behind the tall university students and buries her head. After June 4, she never discusses social or national affairs with her classmates again. There is only studying, having fun, and enjoying food and drink. Everyone, consciously or not, blocks out and avoids that part of their thinking, replacing it with meaningful sighs. In the years that follow, she feels life growing more and more prosperous. Yet in this fine, flourishing age, something of weight is missing, something of concern for the future.

A few more years pass, and I want to see her just after she has become an adult. In 1994, she should be nineteen. A song I have heard before drifts from the campus at the foot of the mountain: “You, My Deskmate.” So this is a song from twenty-eight years ago, and even now it has not gone out of date. It is five in the afternoon, time for dinner and the campus broadcast. In the busiest triangular area of campus, students pause to talk and laugh in front of display boards and club posters, some holding lunchboxes, others washbasins with soap and towels in them. The campus radio station is in the attic of the auditorium nearby. She and a male student called Wang Yunbo are on the air. The afternoon broadcast is nearly over; it is time for song requests. After a few songs, the broadcast ends. They switch off the equipment, but as if by mutual understanding, neither leaves immediately. Yes, they have had the same thought: they must hurry and listen to the album before the student comes to collect the cassette. I move closer to look carefully at it. On the cover it says, “Campus Folk Songs 1 1983–1993. Every song comes from a moving story; every story takes place all around you.” At opposite ends of the table, they fold their arms and rest on them, quietly listening to every song on the album. By the time it ends, dusk has fallen. They look at each other without speaking, still savoring the album’s melodies. On this campus, there is no pressure to sit postgraduate entrance exams or civil service exams, no worry about having to find their own jobs. They can see the last light of sunset slanting through the western window onto the plain green carpet.