He washed gold his entire life and remained poor his entire life. Of course he was an “amateur” gold washer at best, his real “profession” being cultivating farmland. He was already 70 years old, bony, visibly hunchbacked, but kept on washing gold and cultivating farmland.
Every spring, as soon as he had planted rice and corn seeds into the good earth, he would follow the warm sunshine to the riverside where he stripped off his tattered shirt; his sun-scorched back would be scorched even more until it oozed with dark oily sweat.
He chose a place close to the road to set up his gold mining site. The tools were simple: a spade, a pickaxe, a metal rake about a foot long, and a gourd dipper. The most important of these was a boat-like winnowing fan. At the bottom of the U-shaped fan was a thumb-sized niche called a gold trough. With the winnowing fan popped up by the river, one end touching the water, he would bend so low and dig and spade the rocks into the fan while gasping for air. Then he would pour gourdfuls of water into the fan while raking out rocks bigger than nuts; smaller rocks and sand would be washed away by water. What remained was a small amount of fine sand, which he would “wash” again in the water—shaking the boat-shaped winnowing fan in the water long and hard until all the sand was washed away and gold—if there was any—fell into the thumb-sized trough. Each day he could wash four or five winnowing fans of rocks and sand, each yielding very little gold; one or two pieces the size of one-quarter to one-half a grain of rice would be a good harvest. Often, though, he would get nothing.
Whatever gold he found he put inside a small buffalo horn and then stuffed the horn with a stop, rags wrapped inside a piece of silk tied into the shape of clove of garlic. Once he finished washing and spotted a few pieces of sand gold in the trough, he would grin happily and tremble with joy and reach to pick them up with quivering fingers. He would hold the gold in one palm, fish out the buffalo horn case from a pocket, unplug the silk stop, and let the newcomers join those which had already gathered there.
Day after day, year after year, he followed the same routine and repeated the same moves. At that time gold was cheap. One ounce of sand gold was worth 70 to 80 yuan at the most. Unlike now, a gram of pink gold is worth more than 50 yuan. Even through several years of washing, the yield was not even an ounce of gold, so he lived in poverty. Yet he would not give up and he refused to be disheartened. He would wash quietly day after day, year after year, using the same tools, the same method, the same moves.
Curious passers-by would stop and watch him work, but nobody would say anything, lest the gold would be scared away. He would keep doing what he was doing, oblivious to whoever was watching, an alchemist absorbed in a world of his own.
Only once did he have a chance of striking it rich, but luck passed him by. Narrowly. One day—no one remembered the exact day or month or year—a bridegroom was accompanying his bride to visit her home. The young bride was riding a donkey while the bridegroom walked behind. Just when they passed the gold washer, the bride fell from the donkey and landed on the pile of rocks and sand the old man had just dug up. Stunned, the bridegroom hurried to her side. The bride blushed, smiled mysteriously, and hastened away once she was on her feet again.
The gold washer thought the bride had fallen because she had been so taken by the sight of him gold mining.
They hadn’t gone far before the bridegroom asked his bride: “Why did you fall?”
The bride smiled like a flower. She bent closer, gave him a meaningful look, and whispered, “I’ve found a piece of gold.” She unclenched her right fist. In it was a piece of gold the size of a nut; it glittered under the sun. Obviously, the gold had been unearthed by the gold washer.
The bridegroom couldn’t help but turn his head. The old, hunchbacked gold washer was still digging away with his pickaxe; its echo could still be heard. The young man took another look at the gold in his hand and looked again at the old gold washer, not knowing if he should feel joy for his own luck or sorrow for the old man.
(1985)