Zhuzhou was just a distant memory for Xia as she navigated the bustling streets of Shanghai each morning. The air was thick with the scent of steaming wheaten food and the sound of vendors calling out their wares. She weaved through the crowds of people, her eyes fixed on the skyscrapers under construction in the distance. For Xia, this city was a world away from the quiet, idyllic life she had left behind. However, as she turned onto a side street, the sounds of the city faded away and she found herself in front of a modest school building.
She walked through the expansive hallways, glancing at the young faces of the students passing by. As a teacher, it was her duty to nurture them, to help shape them into confident and capable individuals who would pave the next chapter of history. The hallway buzzed with waves of laughter and occasional shouts of excitement. Xia finally arrived at room 302. She paused momentarily, adjusted her hair, and opened the door.
“Good morning,” she said. The class responded with a warm greeting. Morning light streamed in through the windows on the left wall, casting beams onto the students’ cheeks and occasionally illuminating dancing specks of dust. After settling her bag on the floor, Xia began the day’s lesson. “We should finish the last chapter of The True Story of Ah Q today. Does anyone feel comfortable sharing their thoughts on the story as a whole?”
Wei raised his hand and Xia nodded at him. Standing up with the book in his hand, he began: “I think Lu Xun tells a powerful story that shows how people are shaped by their circumstances, as well as how they cope with the challenges of their environment.”
“Very good,” the teacher said. “Ah Q is just one of the many written works by Lu Xun that exposes the corruption and hypocrisy of traditional Chinese feudal society. Anyone else?”
A sudden knock on the door.
“Come in,” Xia said.
The door opened with a creak, and the tiny school administrator appeared in the doorframe. “Lin Xia, could you please come to the main office?”
Xia noticed a subtle frown on the administrator’s face — something was up. “Yes,” she answered, leaving her lecture material on the front podium. She panted to the office and picked up the telephone handset. Through the speaker, a muffled voice said: “Your father is in the hospital.”
As the evening sun began to sink, a haunting aura cloaked Xia, and the laughter of the passersby became distant echoes. Xia remembered the day she sat in an antique bus, staring through the window at her father’s empty face. His blank eyes proclaimed disappointment and disgust. His shout reverberated in her ears: “I’m warning you, Lin Xia: If you leave, you’re on your own. Don’t come crawling back when you fail.” Next to her, stood her brother. He’d been only twelve and had looked more confused than disappointed. Xia wondered at times if her mother, who’d died when Xia was only three, would have stood up for her.
At that moment, she could have walked off the bus and returned to her family. But when the engine sounded, she relaxed and watched the two people that she loved the most turn around and walk away into the morning mist.
She never regretted her decision. And now nine years had passed without even a word from her father. After returning home, she put down her backpack and approached the phone that sat on her desk. She knew her brother, Haojie, was the only person who might still be with their father. Xia opened her dusty contact book and flipped through several pages to find the work number that he had mailed her some years ago. She took a deep breath and dialed.
“This is Lin Xia, may I talk to Lin Haojie right now?” She said as her fingers started fiddling with the coiled cord attached to the receiver.
A pause. “Hi Xia,” her brother’s voice appeared, much deeper than it had been the last time she’d spoken to him. In the background, she could hear the grinding sound of machines.
“Haojie, do you have a moment to talk?”
“Only a moment.”
Xia could sense the resentment in her brother’s voice. She’d left everything behind a long time ago, and now, out of nowhere, she had resurfaced.
“The hospital called me earlier today, saying Pa was found unconscious at home this morning.”
“Yes, they called me too.”
“Do you still live with him?”
“No,” he answered. “I live nearby. Right now I am working overtime in a factory miles away from town.” “Would you be able to check in on him?”
There was a tense moment before he replied, “No. I don’t have time for that. If he’s in a hospital, there are people taking care of him.”
The two fell silent. Xia tightened her grip on the phone. “He is your Pa, Haojie.” When she spat out that sentence, she immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“He is also yours. Years ago I moved out for a job, just like you did. And every time I spoke to him after that, he would berate me and insist I return to the farm. He will never change. So if you want to check in on him, do it. But it’s none of my business anymore.”
Xia was unsure of how to proceed with the conversation. She could continue to urge her brother to visit their father, but he sounded adamant.
“Haojie?” Xia repeated the name in the handset, but her voice only echoed into emptiness.
For the first time, it occurred to her that she could check on the old man herself. It would be difficult: She lived in Shanghai and it was too far to travel. She also despised that static place: Zhuzhou would always be the same; her father would always be the same. He would never comprehend the reason why she’d left and who she had become. Yet a voice arose to reason with herself: Shouldn’t a daughter visit her father when he’s in the hospital?
In the early morning, Xia boarded the six o’clock train and relaxed on a wooden bench with little legroom. The train rumbled, snorted, and lurched forward. She gazed at the receding cityscape as she settled in for the long journey ahead.
Xia remembered an afternoon she’d spent engrossed in a book she had found at the local library. It was The True Story of Ah Q, a satire that exposed the absurdities of the feudal system; it was the same book she now taught her students. As she had sat reading under a dim, yellow bulb, something had sparked within her. She was not only reading the story, she was living the very reality that the author had mocked. The farmland, once a place that had meant stability to her, suddenly felt like a cage that confined her.
She remembered a surge of determination arising within her. She would not be resigned to a life of servitude like the generations that had come before her. She would do something else, go somewhere else.
Suddenly, her father stormed into the room, and before she could hide the book under the bedsheet, he snatched it from her hands.
“What is this nonsense?” he bellowed. He couldn’t read and hated when she read anything. “You should be doing your chores right now!”
“But I—”
He ripped out several pages, crumpled them, and tossed them on the ground. “Why should you read anyway?”
Xia stood up, cleared her throat, and said, “I want to be a teacher when I grow up.” Her voice was barely audible over the din.
Her father’s face contorted into a sneer. “A teacher?” he scoffed. “What use is that? They have their heads in the clouds, far from the reality of hard work.”
“It would be better than being stuck in this place!”
He slapped her. A sound that she still remembered today. Xia sat on the train and smiled at her own past bravery. But she didn’t feel brave now. As the train stopped at each station, she felt compelled to leave. She could feel the sting on her cheek as if the slap had happened only an hour before: she resented having to visit her father and wondered why she’d talked herself into this. She realized that she still held onto the bitterness she’d felt all those years ago and it was still choking her. She opened her backpack and took out a copy of the book. She flipped to the first page and saw what she had written to herself when she’d first bought the copy: “There are no dreams on a farm, only crops.”
That was true. Zhuzhou, unlike the changing world around it, would always remain constant: a collection of miniature abodes crafted from bricks and tiles, nestled amidst an infinite expanse of rolling lands that ebbed and flowed. In the fields, peasants clad in loose-fitting hemp clothing could be seen plowing fields under the blazing sun. From afar, Xia had always been able to pick out her father among them.
But when she got off the train, she saw, to her surprise, that her rural hometown had begun a phase of industrialization. Taller buildings were under construction, with the odor of coal permeating the air. Narrow alleyways and traditional storefronts now coexisted with wider boulevards and more modern commercial establishments, such as department stores and large teahouses. Cyclists and pedestrians shared the road with the occasional car and the road itself. The cobblestone and brick roads had been replaced with asphalt and concrete. How strange, Xia thought: This place looked a lot like Shanghai. What if Pa had also changed after years of solitude? She suddenly thought.
At the central hospital, the receptionist, a young woman in a crisp white uniform, scribbled down directions to her father’s room on a slip of paper and gave them to Xia.
“Thank you.” Xia nodded and made her way to the elevator. When she got out, she glided through the hallways, glancing at the faces of elderly patients reclining in their mobile beds. They were lit by a bright white ceiling light, making each of them look pale and on the brink of death.
Xia eventually arrived at room 247. She paused outside the door as the fear she had felt on the train returned: the sting on her cheek felt fresh. But, as she stood there frozen, she realized that the slap had been worth it: she’d accomplished her goal in spite of her father. She took a cleansing breath and opened the door.
The room was brightly illuminated with large windows that allowed the soft sunshine to filter in, creating a peaceful atmosphere. Monitors beeped gently in the background, providing a comforting rhythm like a lullaby.
The old man was connected to a ventilator; his eyes were closed and he looked so frail that his skin was almost translucent.
Xia sat on the edge of the bed and placed her hands on her father’s, which stirred the old man. A hoarse voice began, “It’s quiet in here. Isn’t it?”
“It is,” Xia said. “ I am here now, Pa. Xia is here.”
“Xia… what a beautiful name.”
She smiled at her father’s rare compliment. “You gave me that name because of how much you loved summer.”
“I did?”
“Don’t you remember?”
He thought about it. “Of course, I remember. I remember.” A moment passed and he still looked confused. He turned toward her. “Who are you?”
Xia paused. A lump formed in her throat.
She felt all the resentment and fear that had been welling up inside her dissipate. She had worried he might still be able to make her feel like a scared child. But she hadn’t anticipated this. There wasn’t a single remnant left of her within him. The Pa she’d once known was gone, his memories had been washed away like footprints on a beach.
“Why are you crying?” The old man asked.
“Oh, no reason. It’s just great to see you again.”
She realized how pathetic her grudge toward her father was. In front of her was a man who had lost everything in his life. His wife, son, and daughter had all left him on a piece of depleting farmland that had dried out, and now, even that land was covered with factories and office buildings. Her father was like a living ghost.
In the evening, Xia began walking back to the train station. Amidst the pungent odors of coal, something unexpected wafted into her nostrils, stirring up ancient memories from her youth: how the family would walk to the center of town every Saturday. She could picture the smile on her father’s face as he bought each of them their own rice cake.
She walked toward the smell and eventually stopped in front of a small, weathered storefront. An elderly shopkeeper, with thin, drawn lips and deep-set eyes sat kneading and shaping dough to dip in hot peanut oil. He moved stiffly and yet his hands remained nimble.
“I’d like a few of those rice cakes, please,” she said.
The shopkeeper stopped what he was doing and nodded at Xia, packaged a dozen of the treats in a small paper cup, and handed them to her. Still a dozen, she thought.
Xia settled into her seat by the window on the evening train back to Shanghai, skewered a single rice cake, and took a bite. She savored it and then ate the next, and then another. The sweetness brought her back to a Sunday evening ritual from when she was a child—her father returning home, weary but smiling, with two cups of these same rice cakes for her and her brother, a souvenir from his weekly trip to the town marketplace. She leaned her head against the cool window. As the memory of her father’s smile began to fade, the rhythmic noise of the train’s wheels marked the passage from one chapter of her life to the next.
(Story by Evan)