WHEELS

IT MUST HAPPEN all the time: you’re on your bike, your concentration slips, you bump into someone, you find yourself in a whole load of trouble. It’s a bit like catching a cold: almost everyone gets one at some point and doesn’t give it a second thought when they do. Practically ever since they emerged from the primordial swamp, humans have had four choices in how to get from A to B: first, walk or climb; second, swim, the precondition for which is knowing how to swim; third, fly, for which you need to grab hold of an ample bird to whom you have clearly explained your desired destination. The final option—rolling—has proved the most popular across the centuries and millennia. Now, this last mode of travel comes in motorized and nonmotorized forms, the former dividing into further subcategories according to size and power of engine. Nonmotorized modes of wheeled transport come in two varieties, animal- and human-powered, easily distinguished by a respective tendency, or lack thereof, to defecate in public. But all types of rolling have one point in common: every single one effects spatial motion through the agency of wheels. The crucial historical shift, the force driving humanity ever forward, ever faster toward meltdown, is the move from two legs to the wheel. At this advanced hour in history, even I, a mere boiler serviceman in an electrical factory, can sense that we’re freewheeling helplessly, inexorably toward some kind of doomsday.

One day, as I set about my work, safety-helmeted and wielding my wrench like a young girl off to pick mushrooms in a steel forest, I struggled to imagine how my naked ancestors Adam and Eve passed their time in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, knowing nothing, doing nothing. And then an idea suddenly came to me: it should have been a big, shiny golden wheel hanging on that fateful tree, not an apple. But as every edition of the Bible seems pretty adamant on this point, that it was an apple and not a wheel, I’ve never had much truck with Christianity. I’ve always had more of a soft spot for Buddhism, with all its wheels of reincarnation. I’m not that bothered about what its doctrines actually say or mean: as long as there’s a wheel in there somewhere, they can’t be too far wrong. Centuries ago in the West, one of those medieval Europeans devised a whole Wheel of Fortune theory, which had some winged guy up in heaven with a hotline to God cranking the needle of time around the seven stars of government, bringing good or bad luck to the poor helpless bastards down below. But this theory strikes me as a bit simplistic, a bit like ancient Chinese divination—different technique, same idea. Wheels are everywhere, sometimes working invisibly, moving in beautiful but mysterious ways. They’re the very devil. . . .

Because wheels move faster than legs and are harder to control, humans sometimes have to face up to the unexpected consequences of wheeled movement, viz. traffic accidents. Some claim that the Asian economic crisis and the Gulf War were caused by traffic accidents. Or that the Second World War was just one particularly long, drawn-out, and harrowing traffic accident. I like explanations like this: there has to be something in them, because they bring vehicles and wheels into the equation. Nostradamus predicted that in July 1999 a cataclysmic traffic accident would engulf the world. I won’t comment for the time being, as it’s already 1998 and history will soon speak for itself.

And while I’m on the subject, I might as well point out that wheels are implicated—heavily—in AIDS, the most terrifying viral threat of the last twenty years of the millennium, too. It’s thanks to wheels that people can now get around like they do. Wheels carry people over enormous distances to have sex, spreading AIDS as they go.

But let’s get back to everyday sorts of traffic accidents, thereby enriching our understanding of larger-scale traffic accidents. In my experience, rollers don’t get along too well with walkers, who tend to cast themselves as victims. It isn’t surprising that walkers hate rollers: the wheel-less are always going to hate the wheeled, just like poor people hate the rich. There are also splits within the rolling ranks: nonmotors hate motors, two-wheelers hate four-wheelers. Even four-wheeled motors are a fractious bunch: Fiats hate Volkswagens, Volkswagens hate Audis, Audis hate Porsches, and so on. Basically, wheels mean trouble.

In this big unhappy family of rollers, I’m a fully paid-up member of the nonmotorized two-wheeler class. I’d now like to give you a full and frank introduction to the bicycle that has been my faithful companion for eleven years: it’s a black Phoenix 28, minus bell, minus mudguards, minus kickstand, minus rear brake (though the front brake functions gloriously). In short, it’s the kind of crappy old bike you could leave unlocked in front of the railway station and still no one would steal. But: it does have a spanking new lock, which didn’t come cheap. My colleagues laughed at me when I got it fitted: it was the lock, not the bike I should be worried about people stealing, they said. But I’ve always stuck up for my faithful companion, who, like all of us, was young once, and beautiful too. She’s carried me safely around for ten years now, and put up with all sorts of crap along the way.

I’ve heard that because so many mailmen suffer from the occupational hazard of swollen testicles and inflamed prostate, the government’s trying to recruit women—or at least women without testicles or prostate—to deliver the mail. I don’t see any reason to blame these injuries on bicycles: as long as you’re careful how you sit, you won’t suffer any ill effects. Look at me: I’ve been cycling for eleven years now and my bike’s almost completely done for, but there’s nothing wrong with me. And on the few occasions I don’t have my bike and have to walk, my knees always act up, limping creakily between heavy and light steps. In China, where the bike rules supreme, where nobody listens and everybody shouts at each other, we’ll never be half decent at a running game like soccer. But this, we should remember, is a sign of necessary evolution, of progress. If we follow this train of thought through to its Darwinian conclusion, human legs will eventually wither away into two neat little Catherine wheels in order to facilitate wheeled motion.

While I’m on the subject, researchers in the West have shown that in all mammals (humans included), the male sexual organ is progressively shrinking due to changes in lifestyle, triggering a sharp decline in reproductive capacity that many find deeply disquieting. Personally, though, I see this as another necessary and inevitable part of evolution. If, like me, you belong to the oppressed majority that is the nonmotorized two-wheeler class, you’re bound to see what I mean: cycling would get very awkward if your thing were any bigger. The wheels of daily existence turn those of evolution. If the world doesn’t end in a massive traffic accident in July 1999, the science textbooks of the future will surely hypothesize that the male human sexual organ will shrink further and further to accommodate the wheel, until it retracts inside the abdominal cavity, just as giraffes’ necks have grown longer and longer to reach leaves higher up. Humans will finally, at evolutionary snail’s pace, succeed in ridding themselves of their second tail.

My room was a couple of bus stops away from the factory, a perfect biking distance. The route took in a steep slope, about the distance between the two stops, of around one in twenty-five, I’d guess. My journey to work took me down the hill, my journey home took me up. Descending the hill was, of course, hugely enjoyable, but because I was always hurrying in late to work, I was never in the mood to appreciate the delights of gliding downward, while having to climb back up the hill after a mind-numbing day at work made me feel even worse than I already did. My most cherished dream during that period in my life was for my room and the factory to swap places. Given the chance, in fact, I’d have swapped a whole lot of things in my life. When my spirits and energy were at a low ebb, I’d have to dismount halfway up and push my two wheels the rest of the way on legs that had turned to cotton. At times like that, the hill felt like the back of a huge whale adrift in the unbounded darkness of the ocean: after one arbitrary roll, I’d be left buried at the bottom of the sea. As you can see, once people get off their wheels and stand on their own two feet, they’re only a trip and a limp away from self-pity. The stop at the top of the hill was called Xinzhuang, the stop at the bottom Xiejiadian, and the locals called it Big Xie Hill.

My unexpected encounter on Big Xie Hill was so ordinary it can be explained in a few sentences. No one knocked me over, nor I them; all that happened was I brushed against some old man’s arm as I rode down the hill. But this old man and his bloodsucking relatives sank their fangs into me and insisted on a hospital checkup. Not just a regular checkup, a full checkup, in which it was discovered the old man had a tumor in his stomach the size of a broad bean. Not long afterward, the old man, who’d lived perfectly happily up to that point, kicked the bucket.

All this happened in 1992, six years ago, but I sometimes think back to that fateful cycle ride down the hill and still can’t feel sure I really did bump into that old man. Every rush hour, morning and evening, the hill would be a black, swarming mass of bikes, with a sprinkling of pedestrians blurred into the torrent, emerging into view only after most of the swarm had departed, like a scattering of solitary stalks of wheat fortunate enough to be left standing after a plague of locusts. Collisions were always happening, but nothing too serious. That evening, as I toiled up the hill on my way home, a skinny guy wearing biker glasses and wielding a chain lock blocked my path upward. Get off! he shouted. My heart quailed when I heard his strong local accent: this was obviously going to be sticky. The factory where I worked was in an industrial area—segregated from Nanjing proper by the river—which had started out as a small town renowned only for being the most murderously violent hole in the entire Jiangbei region. More recently, the government had purposely developed it into a satellite zone, where almost all Nanjing’s industry was now concentrated. It must, of course, also have entered into the government’s calculations that a satellite can get hideously polluted without having much effect on the mother planet. A satellite, as it spins merrily around, will trace one massive wheel in space, and wherever there’s a wheel, there’ll be trouble. In addition to the usual difficulties faced all over any developing country, Nanjing’s industrial zone suffered from certain specific social problems, namely that the local residents were not the kind of people you’d want to have to dinner every, or any, night. The whole area was rife with triads, always fighting one epic gangland war or another. I stopped but didn’t actually dismount, resting one foot on the ground. What do you want? I asked, affecting total nonchalance. The skinny guy took off his glasses, stuck one earpiece into his buttonhole, and pointed to the side of the road: Over here, he said. He then turned and walked there without a backward glance at me. Not so long ago, some local criminal had stopped a university graduate newly arrived to work in the steel factory around Xiejiadian and asked him for a pack of cigarettes. As the ex-student only gave him one, not a whole pack, he and a whole gang of his associates dragged the graduate kicking and screaming to a public toilet nearby, where they buggered him one by one. If I’d found myself in a similar situation, I reckon I’d have given him two packs, no questions asked. So I warily followed the skinny guy over to a noodle restaurant at the side of the road. In the mornings, this noodle place did pretty good rice balls, and as the portions were on the generous side as well, sometimes I’d stop and buy a couple on my way to work. Still without looking in my direction, the skinny guy frowned and said, Leave your bike over there. He had this look of total disgust on his face, as if I’d already pushed him to the edge and beyond. Hurry up and say what you’ve got to say, I said. My bike doesn’t have a kickstand, I can’t just leave it anywhere. He glanced at my bike, still without looking at me. Slowly, deliberately, he proposed, in a tone that suggested he was exercising remarkable self-restraint, Can’t you lean it against the wall? There was something in what he said, I thought, so I wheeled the bike over to rest against the wall of the noodle place. Meandering over behind me, the skinny guy locked my bike with the chain he was carrying, all in the most casual way imaginable, as if he were locking up his own bike, pulled out the key, slipped it into his trouser pocket, then walked over to a stool in the doorway of the shop and calmly sat down. I snapped out of my stupor and went after him: What the hell’re you doing locking my bike up? I asked. Acting as if he hadn’t heard me, the skinny guy bent his head over to light a cigarette.

Thought you could run away, did you, you little fucker? Try running after I break both your legs! a voice like a wheezy gong boomed out somewhere behind me. Turning to look, I discovered it belonged to a white-haired but burly old man, seated on a square stool, his back resting against a table, a blue cotton jacket, filthy with grease, over his shoulders. His body listed slightly to the left, with his right hand supporting his left shoulder. His head was the size of a bucket, his face a dark purple expanse of pure fury, in which browless eyes darted about like a pair of jumping beans, the corners of his mouth furred with snowy spittle. His hair was completely white, but it was still thick and stood straight up, half an inch all over, like a toilet brush, although, weirdly enough, the straggly, uneven moustache on his upper lip was still black. All he was wearing under the jacket was a yellowish-brown sweater over a filthy, open-necked white shirt. None the wiser, I looked at the old man, then back at the skinny guy. So the old man kept on barking at me, stringing every word together with emphatic urgency—his entire body shaking with the effort. While riding down the hill that morning, he made abundantly clear to me, I’d bumped into his left arm, which was now completely paralyzed. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, he’d yelled after me for all he was worth, but I’d just pedaled off. I had absolutely no memory of this: Sure you haven’t got me mixed up with someone else? I asked him. The old man glared at me, his eyes bulging like fish balls: I might forget your face, but I’d recognize that bike of yours again anywhere. I had to admit my bike was rather more memorable than I was, and forced myself to go contritely back in my head over the events of that morning, but I still had no idea what he was going on about. The old man got up, his right hand still supporting his left shoulder, and shrugged his shoulders without dislodging his jacket. Follow me, he said, jutting his chin out. We crossed over to the opposite side of the street, him in front, me behind, then climbed a few steps up the hill. The old man stopped, looked both ways: Yep, he said, it was here all right. I squinted back over at the other side of the street, where the skinny guy was still sitting at a table by the entrance to the shop, smoking in between gulps of noodles. The old man reenacted the scene over and over, spattering my face with gobs of spittle as he got increasingly excited. Frankly, he was boring the pants off me. So I said to him, perfectly politely, Look, you old . . . gentleman, I heard you the first time, and I really don’t know what you’re talking about. But, as you’re so sure, and we’re not talking about anything really serious here, I’ll take your word for it. So how do you want to settle things? The old man calmed down a fair bit and took a sidelong squint at me: What factory are you? was what he wanted to know next. Electrical, I said. Soon as I’d said this I regretted it, because although none of the big factories was in clover, electrical was at least doing a bit better than some, so the locals all thought the people who worked there were millionaires. So I wasn’t that surprised when the old man made a few quick calculations in his head, then named his price: Five hundred yuan! The moment the words were out of his mouth, he involuntarily retreated a step, blown backward by the outrageous size of the sum he’d demanded. While I computed, just as fast, that his mouth was big enough to stuff 500 in small change into. I dug out all the money I had in my pockets, even the cents, which in total came to only a few dozen yuan. See for yourself, I said to him, straight up, I’m stone broke, I have to borrow money at the end of each month just to get by.

We kept arguing all the way back to the noodle restaurant. Or, I said, how about we all go to a hospital and I pay for your treatment, however much it costs, even if the doctor says he’s got to saw your arm off and swap it for a leg, I’ll pay, all right? The old man didn’t like this idea one bit; it was the money he wanted. He’d gotten this far in life without ever setting foot in a hospital, he said, he hated them. The skinny guy didn’t look too keen on getting involved, just stayed on his stool, studiedly picking his teeth. But I noted the expression on his face: embarrassment at the exorbitant sum—500 yuan—the old man was demanding. As it was getting dark and I really didn’t want to get in much deeper than I already was, I ended up saying to the old man, okay, you win, how about I give you my bike and we call it quits. I then walked off. After a couple of steps, I paused, twisted the bike lock key off my key ring, and chucked it at him. Neither of them came after me. Although they’d said they wanted 500 yuan, I figured they knew in their heart of hearts they were doing well just to get a bike out of it. By the time I got to the building where I lived, I’d started to miss that crappy old bike of mine. Lots of times I’d thought of giving it away and getting a new one, but I’d never managed to offload it onto anyone. And it would’ve been a waste just to put it away somewhere to collect dust, so I’d had no choice but to keep riding it. But now everything had turned out for the best in the best of all possible worlds: I’d finally gotten rid of her and could get on with enjoying missing her.

I thought the whole Big Xie Hill incident was over and done with—little did I know it was only just beginning. The next day, I hitched a ride to work on my roommate Hao Qiang’s moped. Hao Qiang was a local, a ladies’ man, liked his women almost as much as his moped. Dozens of them he’d ridden, without committing himself to a single one. The question is, could someone that promiscuous with his vehicles be counted a member of the motorized two-wheeler class? His favorite vehicle, according to acquaintances, was the moped, followed closely by young women, then by girls. He was always most popular on the journey home from work, when two-wheeling, nonmotorized colleagues fought among themselves to grab hold of one of his shoulders to give them a boost up the hill. That morning I sat behind him, hanging on to his waist, both of us with no more than half a buttock each on the moped seat. Cold air rushed down my neck once the moped got going, but I still felt all warm inside, because tucked in my jacket were all the savings I’d scraped together during my frugal bachelor existence and that I was planning to splurge on a three-gear mountain bike in the market west of the factory. I was like a man who’d just kicked out his wrinkly old wife and was running, tail wagging, into the open arms of a sweet young thing. When we were about to ride down the hill, Hao Qiang turned around: Don’t stick that thing of yours in my back, all right? he warned me. Or we’ll have an accident on our hands. After we’d gone just a little way down, I spotted over Hao Qiang’s shoulder a few people standing to one side of the road. Two of them I’d met the day before, the old man and the skinny guy wearing biker glasses; to the other side of the old man stood an even skinnier guy, quite tall, and dressed from head to foot in tight denim, so new I could almost hear it squeak. He was short on top, and more than half of what hair he did have had gone gray. There was one other man with them—tall, dark-skinned, dressed in a suit, hair slicked back, piercing eyes—talking into a flip-open mobile phone. He stood slightly back from the others, maintaining a certain distance from the three of them. They all stared straight ahead, their lines of vision projecting forward like perfectly spaced teeth on a comb, raking over the sea of bikes rolling before them. I shrank back: Bad news, I said to Hao Qiang, the guys who robbed me yesterday are standing over there. Hao Qiang reacted instantly, taking his foot off the accelerator and merging his moped into the mass of bikes immediately in front, then edging sedately toward the middle of the road. But Hao Qiang’s moped was still too conspicuous: the skinny guy with the motorbike glasses spotted me and yelled, Get off that moped! Take no notice, I whispered into Hao Qiang’s ear, keep going. We’re in the middle of the road, they’re at the side; they’ll never catch us through all these bikes.

So you can imagine my amazement when Hao Qiang’s moped did a funny little U-turn and stopped right in front of the four of them. Quick as he could, Hao Qiang plastered a smile all over his face and started sucking up to the guy in the suit: Aha-ha, Mr. Black, good to see you again, aha-ha-ha. Slimy little creep. So I didn’t have much choice but to effect an awkward dismount from his slimy creep of a moped. My crappy old bike I spotted leaning against a slim birch nearby, its weight bending the tree over backward. The man he called Mr. Black nodded slightly, flipped shut the mouthpiece on his phone, and pointed at me with the finger that had been wrapped around it: You know him? he barked. Hao Qiang glanced back at me, then replied, with touching reluctance, He’s, ah, a friend of mine, we, uh, room together. After staring at his big toe and muttering to himself for a while, Mr. Black looked up: Get lost, he told Hao Qiang, this is nothing to do with you, it’s your friend I’ve business with. Hao Qiang hesitated, casting anxious looks first at me, then at Mr. Black. I told you once, Mr. Black started to lose patience, Get lost, nothing’ll happen to him he hasn’t got coming, relax—and get lost. For some reason this reassured my roommate, who turned his moped workward: I’ll tell them you’re not coming in, he offered, with his back to me. Then he turned and made an odd, twisted face in my direction. His fine, pale face was even paler than usual, his lips two thin white lines across his jaw. It was only later that I learned, courtesy of Hao Qiang’s explanation, that this face was a warning to me not at any cost to rub Mr. Black the wrong way. Now although this was the first time I’d met Mr. Black in person, the name was already familiar to me. He ran a small restaurant near the 45000 Agricultural Market specializing in soy-braised meat, called Mr. Black’s Pot-Roast Goose. The goose meat served there was delicious: tender on the inside, crispy on the outside. But rumor had it that Mr. Black’s pot roasts were made from goose carrion. Every day the local livestock wholesaler ended up with a load of dead geese and ducks, which Mr. Black bought at a knockdown price, then pot-roasted. His restaurant was pretty small, but around here he was Mr. Big. If he walked up to a peasant trader, hands folded behind his back, and told him, that’s dead, that goose of yours, the peasant would have to sell it to Mr. Black for the price of a dead goose. If he had the balls to say to Mr. Black it looked perfectly alive to him, he could kiss any more business good-bye. But at Mr. Black’s pot-roast goose restaurant, any customer who complained he’d been given dead meat wasn’t too far from becoming it himself. Basically, what Mr. Black said, went around here: if he said a goose was dead, it was dead, and vice versa, and soon enough it occurred to him that life would be much simpler if he exercised the same powers of attorney over humans as well. Anyway, once Hao Qiang had disappeared in a cloud of exhaust smoke, Mr. Black took a step forward: You’ve brought the money, haven’t you? he said right in my face. Let’s see it. Soon as he said this, I just stood there, overcome by a paralyzing heartache. The skinny guy walked over, mouth full of smoke, and started searching me; within a few seconds he produced from the pocket of my cotton jacket the envelope that contained the sum total of my worldly wealth. He took the money out and counted it in front of everyone: 800 yuan. The old man went mad when he saw all that cash: You little shit! he roared at me, telling us you don’t have any money—where’s all this come from? Rob a bank, did you? This is money to buy a bike, I said. I can’t get to and from work every day without a bike, can I? Mr. Black looked sunk in deep thought, not angry in the slightest: That’s your bike over there, he told me, pointing behind him, we brought it along to return to you. So let’s not waste any more time: are you ready to be reasonable? ’Course I’m going to be reasonable, I said. Good, he said. My granddad’s shoulder here, it’s still hurting, been hurting all night. Now what d’you say we do about it? The old man quickly clutched at his left shoulder with his right hand and glared daggers at me. Like I said yesterday, I replied, let’s go get him checked out at a hospital, I’ll pay all the medical costs. Mr. Black immediately nodded: Fine, he said, let’s go. He took the envelope from the skinny guy and waved it under my nose: How about I look after this for now, he said, and we’ll settle up when we leave the hospital, whatever it costs, okay? Remember, there’s exactly 800 here, we won’t take a cent more than you owe us.

This was not an offer I could refuse.

Bahuajian Hospital was at the top of the hill, a mere hop and a skip from where we were, but Mr. Black insisted on going to Nanhua Hospital, a good four bus stops away. They told the old man to sit on the back of my bike, told me to walk in front pushing him. Mr. Black, the skinny guy, and the even skinnier guy followed behind, swinging their arms as they walked. That old bastard on the back weighed at least half as much as an iron pylon, I reckoned, a dead weight he was, and forever shrugging his shoulders to stop his crappy cotton jacket from falling off. As I pushed it along, the bike took on a life of its own, winding forward in an S-shape, almost tipping over on every bend. I could feel every single particle of air being squeezed out of the back tire as the wheel frame scraped painfully along the ground. Just at that moment, I felt worse possibly even than my bike did, so bad I wanted to kick the thing right over. But, my bike said to me, what’d be the point in kicking me? You’re the one who’s dragged me into your own fine mess, I shouldn’t be having to suffer like this, not at my age. How can you say that? I said to her. Are you enjoying seeing me get skinned like a dead goose? Way you’re walking now, she answered back, you’re an insult to dead geese. After I’d staggered along for a while, smarting from the hurtfulness of this last remark, Mr. Black nipped forward and poked me in the chest with his index finger: I’ve been pretty easy on you so far, but you’re not exactly meeting me halfway. You better start putting your back into this pushing, because if the old man takes another fall thanks to you, there’ll be no more Mr. Nice Guy, got that? This thing’s no picnic to push, I said to him. Let’s take a bus, I’ll pay. Show us your money then, he said with a smirk. I haven’t got any money, I was forced to admit. Then cut the crap and get pushing! he replied. He might have had a suit and leather shoes on, but I could still smell the roast goose on him. Although he was all smiles on the outside, he was, I realized, hard as nails on the inside. I don’t like your attitude, I said. I’ve spent good money at your restaurant in the past and I might do so again. So I have really serious issues with your attitude. Mr. Black looked momentarily taken aback and I thought for a second my speech had really gotten to him—until he grounded me with a hefty kick around the back of the knee. The three of us—me, my bike, and the old man—collapsed in a heap.

The skinny guy and the even skinnier guy hurried over to pull up the old man, who was face down in the dust. Picking up the blue cotton jacket, they gave it a few pats and helped the old man put it back on. The old guy’s great moon face was swollen red, like it was pumped full of pig’s blood, like his head had grown a whole size bigger. After brushing the dirt off his rear, he brooded silently for a remarkably long time, glaring venomously at Mr. Black, who stood there, paused, head slightly tilted to one side. The old man spat noisily on the tarmac road: I’ll remember this, he finally said to Mr. Black. What’re you talking about? said Mr. Black irritably, with a dismissive wave of his hands. Look, Granddad, I didn’t do that on purpose. What d’you mean, not on purpose? the old man said. Ask your brothers, did he do it on purpose? The old man turned to the skinny guy and the even skinnier guy, but the pair of them were too busy looking blank and cross-eyed to say anything. Just then Mr. Black’s mobile phone rang; he looked at the number, then flipped it open to answer it. Meanwhile, back on the pavement, my right hand was stuck between two spokes of a wheel and my poor traumatized bike was still hanging on to the rest of me for dear life. After slowly extracting my hand, I placed both palms flat down on the ground, preparing to lever myself up. Looking for someone to vent his anger against the world on, the old man charged over like a mad bull and kicked me in the ribs. I collapsed back down again without a sound, clutching my stomach. A few passersby got off their bikes and gathered around to watch the fun. Mr. Black faced the street, talking on the phone and waving his hands at onlookers like a traffic policeman to shoo them away. Although clearly unwilling to abandon such an entertaining spectacle, one after another our audience got a handle on their curiosity and remounted their bikes. Soon as Mr. Black shut his mobile phone, he poked the old man in the chest with the antenna: Any more funny business and you’re on your own. I won’t lift a finger even if you get your head sliced off. See if I care, said the old man, standing his ground. I’m your granddad, where’s your respect? Just give us the money and go. The skinny guy and the even skinnier guy broke the two of them up, telling them to quit arguing and gesturing at the body they’d left lying on the ground. Mr. Black turned, walked over, and lifted my chin with his square-toed shoe. Get up, he said, like he didn’t want to hang around much longer.

In the end it was Mr. Black who pulled me up by the armpits, straightened my jacket for me, even gave the zipper a bit of a tug. I’ve been beaten up more times than I can remember, he told me, brushing the dust off my chest, had the shit kicked out of me, I’m not kidding you, really kicked out of me, till I genuinely couldn’t get up. Like my whole body’d been cut into bits and I couldn’t move any of them. My point being: I know what it’s like when you really can’t get up. So don’t try telling me you can’t now. You know, I really don’t want to have to hit you. Sincerity seeped out of the open pores that pitted his swarthy face. I began to feel the last few seconds had contained some valuable lessons for me. More crucially for my well-being in the immediate short term, my bike-pushing skills now dramatically improved. Once I’d gotten the hang of pushing the thing, the old man no longer weighed so heavily on the back seat. Peak rush hour had passed and the crowds on the street were slowly thinning out. As I silently pushed along in front, I began to feel like an old hand at the whole bike-wheeling game, able to derive satisfaction from a job well done. Wait up, Mr. Black shouted out from behind. I brought the bike to a halt. Got any cigarettes? he asked. I pointed at the left pocket of my jacket, rather embarrassed: They’re not very good, I told him. He groped out the yellow pack of Red Peach cigarettes. They’ll do, he said. He passed the pack to the skinny guy, who rubbed his hands, picked one out, licked one side of it with his tongue, and stuck it in his mouth. Mr. Black then passed the pack to the even skinnier guy, who waved his hands in refusal. Ignoring the way the old man sitting on the back of the bike followed the pack’s every move, Mr. Black then drew a cigarette out with his teeth. The skinny guy chose this moment to extend a hand, pull another one out, and pass it to the old man. Mr. Black, the skinny guy, and the old man each took out a lighter and each lit his own cigarette. Mr. Black stuffed the cigarette pack back in my pocket: Bit tricky smoking while pushing a bike, he said, so guess you won’t be wanting one? No, I said, I never smoke and walk at the same time.

A train track from the iron and steel works intersected the road around Xiejiadian. The front wheel of my bike got so stuck on the track I couldn’t budge it, however hard I tried. I turned around to look at the old man, but as he was focusing all his physical and mental energies on sucking the life out of his cigarette butt, he was taking no interest in my difficulties. I tried lunging forward, giving it a mighty push, but still it wouldn’t move. My left leg—the one that Mr. Black’s foot had introduced itself to—felt completely paralyzed, as if the tendons had been ripped to pieces. Hey Granddad, Mr. Black, who was bringing up the rear, called out, can’t you get off a second? What the hell would I want to get off for? the old man grunted. Tell him to push harder! When I tried to lift the handlebars, the bike suddenly reared up like a frightened horse, and we all watched helplessly as the old man slid off the back onto the ground like a piece of rubbish. After a good long pause, the skinny guy and the even skinnier guy finally remembered to haul the old man up, then helped me push the bike over the tracks. Once we were over, the old man started muttering to himself. He’d never wanted to go to the hospital, he said. Look, Mr. Black said, we’re going, we’ve already talked this through; anyway, you’re not going to get a needle stuck in you, so what’re you scared of? Come on, the skinny guy and the even skinnier guy said, no harm in getting a checkup. Waste of money, said the old man, I’ve lived this long without paying a penny to any hospital. It’s not your money anyhow, said the skinny guy, so what’s your beef? How’s about, said the old man, you take me home and take your mom to the hospital instead. Why the hell would we want to do that? Mr. Black asked. Your mom’s got lots wrong with her, the old man said, but she can’t afford to see a doctor. She’s the one who needs to go to the hospital, not me. It’s not a question of who needs to go most, Granddad, Mr. Black said. Can’t you get it into your thick skull? You’re the one who got run down, not Mom. Your mom was run over last year too, remember? the old man said. Her back’s still not right. Didn’t you say it got better, the skinny guy, or maybe the even skinnier guy, interjected, after she got that heat suction thing done? Fine sons you are, the old man said, you haven’t even noticed your mom’s still bent left! I always thought she bent right, Mr. Black said. What d’you mean, right? the old man said. It’s left! It’s left, he’s right, the skinny guy agreed. Personally I thought it was right, the even skinnier guy countered. Look, you fuckheads, the old man cut in. . . . And so it went on, with the old man still not wanting to go to the hospital, his last and final excuse being he couldn’t bear the smell of hospitals, it made his head ache. Doesn’t matter, Mr. Black said, long as your shoulder stops hurting, I don’t give a fuck about your head. They remained utterly oblivious to my presence throughout this entire conference, as if I was some ox or mule pulling a cart. Thinking about it, that’s how I often saw myself, too, either as an animal pulling or as an animal being pulled on a cart.

As I passed the main gate of the electrical factory, I started walking faster, afraid of bumping into one of my colleagues. Is the dance hall in your factory’s social club still open to people from outside? the skinny guy asked. Yup, I said. Is it still five yuan to get in? he asked. Dunno, I said, never been. Well, what do you do in the evenings then? the skinny guy asked. I didn’t know what to say to that. The old man made a big thing of twisting his head around to look at the new factory gate: Fuck, he said, they must be rolling in it, pissing money everywhere like that. At that moment, a bicycle stopped dead in front of me and rang its bell. When I looked to see who it was, I froze: it was Xiao Qi, the only woman on our team, just over thirty, recently divorced, with a seven-year-old son and a face like a sour pumpkin—well preserved, but a sour pumpkin all the same. Where’re you going? she asked, taking off her face mask. She must have been arriving for work, she was always late. Everyone in our workshop, from the team leader to the director, wanted to screw her, so she could arrive as late as she liked. She never even looked at men who wanted to screw her; she was only interested in leading on men who didn’t want to screw her, right up until the man did want to screw her, at which point she wouldn’t look at him anymore. But I should add that, as little as I knew of her, she was a pretty decent sort of person. I stammered out some kind of response, that I was taking this old gentleman to the hospital. What? she said, unflatteringly astonished, out of the goodness of your own heart? She then put on this great show of rolling her eyes heavenward. That’s right, Mr. Black quickly interrupted, absolutely. My granddad fainted, and he just happened to be passing by. I just stood there with nothing to say for myself, concentrating on looking appropriately bashful, like some idiot Samaritan doing a good turn he didn’t want other people to know about. Well, blow me down, she said, that’s beautiful—I’ll tell the boss where you are. She then put her mask back on, straddled the crossbar of her bike again, and rode off with a very straight back. I sighed with relief and moved on. Nice skin, the skinny guy sighed admiringly. What good’s nice skin, Mr. Black said, when she’s ugly as that! Face might be ugly, the skinny guy begged to differ, but her cunt won’t be. Bet she’s gone rusty down there by now, said Mr. Black. I couldn’t keep walking along, listening to them all slandering my colleague like this. I turned around: Look here, I said rather hesitantly, I don’t like what you’re saying. The skinny guy poked me in the chin: What don’t you like? he said, trying to goad me. Screwed her yourself, have you? I didn’t have anything to say to that, just shook my head and turned back the other way. Just then, Mr. Black called out to a taxi cruising by on the other side of the road to stop. I’ve got some business to sort out, he said to the skinny guys, I’ll meet you at the hospital entrance. Before getting into the car, he patted me meaningfully on the shoulder, a warning not to pull any funny business, I knew. The car turned in front of us and revved off in a cloud of dust. The old man gave a disgruntled kind of snort. When I got to the big Shicun roundabout, I thought back to what Xiao Qi had said: yes, I suddenly thought, damn right, I was doing a pretty damn good turn out of the goodness of my own bleeding heart. As I was starting to overheat quite seriously by this point, this new insight into the morning’s traumas washed soothingly over me, making me feel slightly better about the way things were turning out. Faster and faster I pushed, leaving the skinny guy and the even skinnier guy far behind. Slow down, the old man sitting on the back seat spat at my neck, what the hell’re you going so fast for? This isn’t an appointment with death, y’know.

When I reached the entrance to Nanhua Hospital, I scanned all around but couldn’t see Mr. Black anywhere. The skinny guy and the even skinnier guy looked even more exhausted than me. The even skinnier guy was in particularly bad shape, panting heavily and clutching at his spleen, with his jean jacket unbuttoned and sweaters rolled up. Four thick sweaters he was wearing—he must have been skin and bones underneath them all. The old man slipped off the back seat, slapping some life back into a leg that had gone numb from the ride. But even before he’d gotten his balance back, he was barking at the skinny guy: Well, where is he then? Eh? He’s inside looking for someone, the skinny guy said. Hold on a bit, he’ll be here. Soon enough, Mr. Black emerged together with a middle-aged doctor dressed in a long white coat. This latest addition to the party had a white hat scrunched up in his hand, wore glasses, and was pretty bald, apart from a few long hairs on the left combed flat over the vast, desolate firmament of his head like shooting stars. If you stared straight at his scalp, you found yourself unconsciously tilting leftward. I’ve got to go now, Mr. Black said to the old man, but just follow Dr. Wu and you’ll be all right, don’t worry about anything else. The old man was less than overjoyed: Off again! What’re you in such a hurry about? I’m a busy man, Granddad, Mr. Black said, not like you. He then called the skinny guy over to one side, where they turned their backs on us as he fished out from inside his jacket the envelope printed with the name of my factory. After taking a look inside the envelope, the skinny guy seemed to start arguing with him about something. His ears pricking up, the old man hustled over to see what was going on. But before he’d gotten anywhere near, the argument was over and the two of them spun back around again. Mr. Black waved a quick thanks and good-bye at the bald doctor. I thought he was going to turn and say something else to me, but he didn’t. He left without a single look back. The old man yanked on the skinny guy’s arm: How much he give you? he whispered. Maybe because I was there, the skinny guy turned away, refusing to respond. This enraged the old man, who wouldn’t let go of the skinny guy’s arm: Let me see! he kept pestering. Dr. Wu clapped his hands: Let’s not waste any more time, he said. Come on, the skinny guy said, taking this opportunity to prise the old man’s fingers off his arm. Just to make everything more fun, the old man started muttering to himself again that he wouldn’t set foot in that hospital dead or alive. Nothing the skinny guy or the even skinnier guy said made any difference. I actually started to find it funny, the way the old man was dragging his ass like a sulky kid. The more they yanked at him and his clothes—exposing his back like a blotchy red side of bacon—the more stubbornly terrified he got. In the end, it took some bedside manner from Dr. Wu to calm the old bastard down again. The old man seemed to find him even more reassuring when he covered up his bald spot with his grubby white hat.

It was the skinny guy who accompanied the old man in to his checkup, telling me and the even skinnier guy to wait at the main entrance. I was quite happy to comply, as I had no great love of hospitals myself. If the smell of hospitals gave the old man a headache, then it made me sneeze everywhere. Undignified and exhausting, I know, but I couldn’t help myself, and once it started, it’d go on for two weeks. Clearly less than ecstatic to be spending this quality time with me, the even skinnier guy ambled across to the other side of the entrance and squatted down on the ground. I wheeled my bike over to lean against the back of the phone booth by the entrance, then sat down on a short pillar on the pavement. I took off my right shoe, pulled off the sock, and examined the sole of my foot. As I’m flat-footed, the long walk I’d just been on had left me with two big blisters. A bicycle-bound specimen such as myself lives and evolves by the wheel—set me back on my own two feet and I’m done for. As there was a nip in the air, I couldn’t spend too long mourning the state of my sole. But while I was putting my sock and shoe back on, a disconcerting image suddenly flashed through my head: when that old man pulled at the skinny guy’s shoulder a minute ago, he’d used his left hand. And given it a good old yank—there wasn’t anything wrong with his left arm. I’d suspected this all along, but I still felt outraged to have it confirmed. I replaced my shoe, stood up, and hurried straight over to the even skinnier guy. He was staring off into space, so by the time he noticed me, I was already parked in front of him. Struggling to lever himself up, he almost fell over backward in his eagerness to reestablish some distance between the two of us. Squatting back down again, he propped his hands on the ground and finally got himself upright by bouncing up and down a few times like a long-legged locust. What the fuck you playing at? he warbled, a little nervously. I tried facing him down for thirty seconds, until the absurdity of the whole situation overcame me. I gulped down a mouthful of saliva (I’ve tasted better) and groped for something random to ask him: Why’re they taking so long? The even skinnier guy relaxed: They’ll be ages yet, he said. He looked like a malnourished, overworked old peasant, nothing like a big city mafioso type. Is the old gentleman your grandfather? I asked. He nodded. Are you three brothers? I then asked. He nodded again, but slightly reluctantly, as if he wasn’t keen on answering any more of my questions. But still I plowed on: Is Mr. Black the eldest? I wanted to know. The even skinnier guy didn’t nod. What’s it to you? he said after a pause. Nothing, I said, just making conversation. The even skinnier guy eyed me suspiciously, then mumbled, like he had a steamed bun in his mouth, I’m the eldest. He then ambled back to the other side of the entrance and sat down on the concrete pillar (the purpose of whose existence remained unclear) that I’d just been parked on.

Finally, at around eleven a.m., the skinny guy reemerged from the hospital with the other two. I was about to faint with hunger, as I hadn’t had breakfast that morning—I would have gotten a bowl of noodles or something at a snack stall nearby while I was waiting, but I didn’t have a cent on me. The skinny guy handed two big plastic bags containing all sorts of medicines to the even skinnier guy to hold, then walked over to me, clutching a great handful of receipts. Suddenly he stopped and swiveled back again, beckoning at me to follow him. He walked over to a fruit stall, borrowed a calculator from the one-legged stall holder, and passed it to me: Add it up for yourself, he said. Then he ceremoniously presented the receipts one by one to me: X-ray, CT scan, liver function, blood type. . . . What the fuck, I couldn’t stop myself saying, your granddad applying to be an astronaut or something? Taking no notice, the skinny guy then set about declaiming his list of drugs: Precious Kidney, Yellow Bile Essence, ginseng, Golden Brain. . . . I forced out a laugh: My mistake—it’s immortality, not space travel your granddad’s into. I handed the calculator back to the skinny guy, declining to do any more calculations. Any case, he told me, comes to the same whether you count it or not. I’ve added it all up, 781 yuan and 56 cents. We’ll keep the change, as we’ve got to come back for the result of the checkup tomorrow and we’ll need it for the bus fare. Go on, add it all up, why not? No thanks, I said to him, but you’ll let me go now, right? The skinny guy grinned at me: Hey, don’t put it like that, makes it sound like we forced you into this. Cheer up, this is for you. He stuffed the receipts in my face, pretending to look all sympathetic. I pushed his hand away: What the hell’re you giving me these for? I said. They’re receipts, the skinny guy said. This is where I really lost it. I screwed up my courage and yelled (with heroic defiance, I thought): Fuck your receipts! at him. Once I’d gotten this out of my system, I headed straight for my bike. After standing there stunned for a moment or two, the skinny guy started after me. Let it go, the even skinnier guy pulled him back. Come on, it’s getting late.

Tell the truth, inside I was still pretty afraid my outburst would bring me new trouble. I pushed my bike out from behind the telephone booth, but it was only when I saw the three of them walking over to the opposite side of the road that I relaxed. Thank fuck, the whole thing was at an end. Just then, though, I heard the fruit stall holder shout at the three of them as they walked off. He’d gotten so worked up about something that he was trying to lever himself wobbily out of the wheelchair using his walking stick. Turning around to look, the skinny guy remembered he was still holding the stall holder’s calculator, so he went back to return it to him. The stall holder must have said something back to him, because the two of them started arguing. I couldn’t catch what they were actually arguing about, but after a few exchanges, the skinny guy grabbed a huge Tangshan pear from the stall and hurled it at the ground. The stall holder sat up straight in his wheelchair and suddenly jabbed his walking stick out from beneath the stall in a well-concealed maneuver that got the skinny guy right between the legs. He collapsed forward, grabbing at his crotch. Not sure what had happened, the even skinnier guy ran over there with the plastic bags, yelping, What’s going on? Speech was still beyond the skinny guy. So the even skinnier guy transferred both plastic bags to his left hand and gripped the stall holder by the scruff of his neck with his right. What’s going on? he demanded. Without further warning, a blade suddenly flicked up out of the stall holder’s fist. Next thing I saw was him somehow manage to leap unsupported out of his chair and take a slice at the neck of the even skinnier guy, who didn’t quite dodge back in time, and swipe at his ear. Now badly overstretched, the stall holder toppled right over, bringing the stall down with him, apples, pears, melons, kiwis, all rolling around together on the ground. Seeing the way things were going, the old man shrugged his jacket off, charged over, picked up the stall holder’s crutch, and smashed it down onto his left shoulder, knocking the knife out of his left hand. The one-legged stall holder screamed, rolled onto the road, and started crawling desperately away like a stung lizard, all hope of climbing back into his wheelchair way beyond him. Now the skinny guy was back up on his feet, the three of them had the stall holder surrounded and launched into a frenzy of kicks that soon had their victim howling in agony. The even skinnier guy concentrated his efforts on the stall holder’s face, transforming it, in no time at all, into a fleshy, bloody blur. On and on the even skinnier guy went, while his own lacerated left ear—holding together only at the very base of the lobe—flapped backward and forward with every one of his movements, spouting blood all over his neck and left shoulder. Despite the massive kicking he was getting, the stall holder managed initially to keep shouting abuse back at his aggressors, but soon all he could do was beg for mercy. The old man and the skinny guy were the first to leave off, but the even skinnier guy wouldn’t stop, ignoring the stall holder’s yelps and wails. In the end, the skinny guy had to pull his elder brother, now completely out of control, away. Kneel three times to our granddad here, the skinny guy offered the stall holder, and we’ll let you live—today. The stall holder covered his head with both hands, muttering something to himself. Y’hear? the skinny guy stepped forward to direct another kick at the stall holder’s belly. Nervously relaxing his arms from around his head, the stall holder edged himself up to a sitting position with his back against a fruit box, looked at the three men standing opposite him, shifted his one decent leg over, tilted his body forward, propped both hands on the ground, and knelt three times to them. Fucking useless, the skinny guy snapped, keep your back straight! Once the stall holder released his hands off the ground, his body slid over to one side. You’re fucking useless, the skinny guy repeated, do it again! Some old woman keeping a surreptitious eye on proceedings picked up a big apple and popped it into a wide-necked Thermos, followed, in a short while, by a kiwi and, another little while later, by a handful of lychees, before she finally stepped forward and tugged at the skinny guy’s clothes: Give him a break, she said, how can he kneel, with one leg? But the skinny guy took no notice. The stall holder tried once more, and fell over once more. Still clutching his ear, the even skinnier guy darted forward again and delivered another savage volley of kicks: Stop playing dead, you fucking cripple! he screamed. Kneel! Kneel! Kneel!

I’d seen more than enough, so pushed my bike unsteadily over the road, got on, and pedaled desperately away, not stopping until I was back in my room. That was the quickest I’d ever made it up Big Xie Hill in my entire life, quicker even than I’d ever ridden down it. Once back in my room, I curled up into a ball and crammed packet after packet of instant noodles into my mouth until, by evening, I’d finally calmed down. Hao Qiang came back around eleven o’clock, with a girl in tow who, despite the heavy lipstick slapped onto her baby face, I guessed wasn’t yet out of high school. This would usually be my cue to make myself scarce, to give him some personal space, but that day I just sat there, refusing to move. Hao Qiang had no choice but to take the girl elsewhere. He was back within the half hour, looking as if he’d managed to solve his little difficulty somehow, and now he was no longer waiting for anything, he was much more tractable. His hands’d been tied this morning, he said, no one around here wanted to pick a fight with Mr. Black and his family, not because they were afraid, but because it just wasn’t worth it; who in their right mind messed with cinder scavengers? This term, “cinder scavengers,” I’d heard plenty of times but had never bothered inquiring into, so I asked him what it meant. Hao Qiang said that quite a lot of the people from around here had moved from nearby Subei before the Communists took over in ’49, scavenging coal cinders along the railway tracks. After a while, they reckoned they could scrape by here, so they stayed. Now, of course, there were no coal cinders to be scavenged, but they had other ways and means of picking up bits of money—everyone has to get by somehow, right? Long as you give them money they won’t give you any grief, they didn’t treat you like that fruit seller cripple, stabbing them for no good reason like that, you’re all right, aren’t you? They didn’t touch a hair on your head. Now I’m from Subei myself, so listening to what Hao Qiang had to say didn’t make me feel too great, but I kept my feelings to myself. When I told him about the business with the fruit stall holder, shivers still ran down my spine. Forget about it, Hao Qiang told me, ten to one the stall holder was a cinder scavenger himself, only cinder scavengers pick fights with other cinder scavengers, you can’t stop a dog-eats-dog fight, don’t think about it, go to sleep. But I tossed and turned, unable to sleep: those 800 yuan still stuck in my throat. I was up and down all night, either for a drink of water or for a piss, annoying the hell out of my roommate: You still thinking about that 800 yuan? he eventually asked from out of the darkness. Who me? No way, I immediately replied, furious that he’d asked me something like that. And, that he’d hit the nail on the head. I thought back over my own path in life, how I’d left Subei behind, chugging along the railway line to study in Nanjing, not all that different from cinder scavengers. Fuck, I was a cinder scavenger myself.

However much Hao Qiang insisted this unfortunate incident was all behind me, I had a premonition there was more to come. Just to be on the safe side, I avoided Big Xie Hill over the next few days, and took a detour around by the district Party Committee building. I also used a side gate into the electrical factory, instead of the main entrance. As a result of all these detours, the proprietor of Mr. Black’s Pot-Roast Goose made a personal visit to my room one evening a week later. As soon as Hao Qiang opened the door, he made this panicked yelping sound and just stood there, petrified. I was sitting on my bed reading at the time, wrapped in my quilt, and assumed it was some big cheese from the factory. In fact, Mr. Black looked and acted more convincingly like the factory management than the genuine article did, what with the document folder tucked under his arm and the circuit he paced around the room as soon as he came in. Out you go, he told Hao Qiang. Hao Qiang, who’d been frozen to the spot all this while, finally came to, scooped up his jacket, and slipped out the door quick as he could. Wait a second, Mr. Black called him back. That thing I gave you, you still got it here? Yes, it’s here, Hao Qiang whispered back, afraid I’d hear. Mr. Black muttered something to himself, then said, Let’s see it. Deeply embarrassed, Hao Qiang walked over to his bed, lay down on his front, and hauled a cardboard box out from under the bed. He then took out a battered old pair of rust-speckled scissors used for cutting goose guts and waved them in Mr. Black’s direction. Mr. Black nodded his head: Off you go then, he said. I was observing all this with quizzical surprise, but Hao Qiang headed out the door, eyes down and without a single look in my direction, carefully shutting the door behind him. Inside the quilt, my legs had started trembling uncontrollably. It occurred to me that huddling on the bed was too passive a stance, and I started making movements to throw open the quilt. Mr. Black gestured at me to stop, walked over, covered me up again, then sat down on the side of the bed. He tapped his knees with his document folder: Got any cigarettes? he asked. Just smoked my last one, I said. After rummaging around for ages in the inner pocket of his suit, he produced a cigarette and lit it. I got the feeling Mr. Black didn’t want me to know what brand of cigarette he smoked; from the first puff he exhaled I could smell it was the most inferior kind of blended tobacco. Mr. Black cleared his throat: So then, my granddad’s got the results of his checkup back, there’s a black spot about so big in his stomach, near the bowel. The doctor’s afraid it’s a tumor, he’ll need to do another examination before he can say for sure, but Granddad won’t agree, says there’s no way he’s going back into the hospital; you know what he’s like. Is his shoulder all right? I interrupted nervously. Mr. Black closed his eyes, took two deep draws on his cigarette, and ignored me. He opened his folder and spread it out in front of me: Have a look at the diagnosis for yourself, expect you’ll make more sense of it than me. I flipped through, then looked up: How come there’s no X-ray of his shoulder? Why d’you keep going on about his shoulder? Mr. Black asked, glaring at me. We’re talking about a tumor here. In the stomach. You’d best get your granddad checked out, I said to him, let’s hope it’s not malignant. Mr. Black bowed his head and looked tragic. After a pause, he shook his head and sighed: We don’t need a doctor to tell us the score. Last few days, my granddad’s wasted away to nothing, like his face’s been ironed flat, he can’t keep anything down. Well, what’re you waiting for then? I said. Get him into the hospital right away. Mr. Black nodded his head: That’s all very well, he said, but where’s the money going to come from? There’s no state health care, we’ve no medical insurance, granddad doesn’t have a cent to his name, how’re we going to pay for a doctor? At this point, Mr. Black gave me a good, hard, direct look. Of course I understood what he meant. I had a think, leaned back, and pointed around at the room. Look, I began, this is everything I own—Cut the crap! Mr. Black interrupted, don’t try getting out of this, now it’s gotten this serious. If you hadn’t run into Granddad, he would never’ve gone to the hospital; if he hadn’t gone to the hospital, he wouldn’t be in this mess now. These are my terms: give us 3,000 yuan and the whole thing’s out of your hands, whether Granddad lives or dies. Soon as I heard the words “3,000 yuan,” I knew a brief moment of madness. Now you be reasonable! I screamed, banging my head against the wall like a lunatic. Did I ask you to be reasonable today? he said. I don’t think so. So stop changing the subject.

As he was starting out the door, Mr. Black restated his terms to me: I’ll give you a week, all right, get 3,000 yuan to my restaurant, not a cent less, or I’ll personally pot-roast you. Soon as he was gone, Hao Qiang tiptoed back in. After giving me a quick once-over, he opened the quilt, felt my legs, and stuck his hand in my crotch: That’s funny, he said to himself, all present and correct. He was trying to get a laugh out of me, but I told him to fuck off and leave me alone. What’s your problem? he shouted back at me, feeling rather aggrieved by his frosty reception. Bet you didn’t tell him to fuck off, did you? We’d never fallen out, not in years of sharing a room, but right then I must admit I felt an overpowering urge to rip his head off. How come Mr. Black knows where I live? I wanted to know. Hao Qiang shook his head at me and refused to give an answer, apart from a click of the tongue. After a while, he walked over to his own bed, bent down, took out that pair of scissors from the cardboard box, and threw it onto the concrete floor in front of me. See for yourself, he said. I took another look, but they still looked like a pretty unexceptional pair of battered old scissors. But once Hao Qiang had told me the history behind them, I started to see them in a rather different light. The year before, Hao Qiang (who was, remember, quite a ladies’ man) had gotten very heavily involved with a married woman called Chen Xiaoyun. They were always off dancing together, and even went on vacation to Yellow Mountain. He actually introduced us and asked what I thought of her: Great, I said, though her ass is a bit flat. Time and again their trysts drove me out of house and home, had me wandering through the streets like a destitute. Since Chen Xiaoyun’s husband couldn’t control Chen Xiaoyun himself, he had no choice but to pay Mr. Black to scare Hao Qiang. First of all, Mr. Black beat him up pretty seriously; then he delivered this pair of scissors with the message, Any more funny business with Chen Xiaoyun and you’d best cut your dick off yourself; leave the job to me and I’ll have your balls too. I can bear witness to the fact that Hao Qiang made a totally clean break with Chen Xiaoyun; it was as if they’d been snipped apart by those scissors. I couldn’t understand it at the time: Where’s that Xiaoyun, the one with the flat ass, gone? I think is how I delicately put it to my roommate. Hao Qiang angrily kicked the scissors over into a corner. And the worst of it, he said, is I don’t even dare throw the scissors away, because Mr. Black warned me, I have to keep a close eye on them, and if I don’t produce them whenever we meet, he’ll personally pot-roast me. I smiled at Hao Qiang: People destined for pot-roast should look out for each other, I said. To my surprise, Hao Qiang turned deeply serious: What’re you smirking about? Everyone around here’s terrified of Mr. Black! He’s not joking, you know. Why d’you think his pot roasts taste so good? It’s no accident!

I started to feel a little unwell, because that very evening I’d had half a pot-roasted goose for my dinner. After asking me for details, Hao Qiang reckoned the old man’s tumor was probably made up, just another money-making scam. But he still urged me to pay, even if I destroyed myself financially in the process; it was, after all, only 3,000 yuan. I leaped up and told him straight: I’d given boiler servicing some of the best years of my life and never even got near having so much money. He frowned: What does money matter, he argued, long as you live to fight another day? That time last year, before Mr. Black actually did anything to me, he told me, I’ll accept money, you know: I mean, sure, he said, you’re going to get a beating today, but I’ll give you the choice, d’you want to be dead or alive at the end of it? Alive, of course, I said. Well then, Mr. Black said, cough up 2,000. I only had a few hundred on me, but I whipped off my necklace and watch and gave them to him as well. You saw the results for yourself: a few surface wounds, sure, but I was fine once I’d slapped on a bit of mercurochrome. Your family’s loaded, I said to Hao Qiang, 2,000 yuan’s nothing to them. I don’t have that kind of money. You’ve got the wrong attitude, he said, it’s not about money. You’re too fucking stubborn, that’s your problem, you need to get a bit of perspective. Take me, for example: sure, I was 2,000 yuan down by the end of it, but I must have screwed Chen Xiaoyun at least 200 times, which works out on average only 10 yuan a time. Cheap at the price, I figure. So get a grip. What do you mean, get a grip? I said to him. I haven’t screwed that old bastard with the tumor. He stamped his foot in irritation: You’re so fucking unimaginative! All right, he suggested, how about we call it your 3,000-yuan donation to Help the Aged?

However hard Hao Qiang tried to persuade me, I just couldn’t cross this 3,000-yuan threshold. I was already in agonies after the tragic loss of 800—another 3,000 would break my heart. The next few days passed as follows: during each sleepless night spent bathed in cold sweat, things would start to look a bit clearer. An egg has no good reason to run into a stone, a head has no business being split open like a watermelon. Money is just an external, let it go. So every tormented night I’d decide to go and borrow the money the next day, deliver it to Mr. Black, and get myself half a pot-roasted goose while I was at it. But every morning as the sun rose, I’d get some fire in my belly, from God knows where: fucking hell (I’d think), he was just a pot roaster, right? What’s so scary about that? Screw the lot of them, a life lived in fear, et cetera, et cetera. Then, as the day dragged by, my brain would go into shock mode, able only to perform a few mechanical tasks (but as my work had never made anything but mechanical demands on me, the daily routine could continue entirely as normal). On the evening of the sixth day, Hao Qiang told me he was going back home to toast his baby nephew’s hundredth day tomorrow, that he wouldn’t be back that night. He took out 1,000 yuan from inside his leather jacket and threw it down on the table. This is a loan, from me to you, he said. I don’t care whether you repay me, but you’ll have to find the rest yourself. I found this all deeply moving: I’d always thought I only had a 500-yuan friendship with Hao Qiang; now it turned out I was worth a thousand to him. But I stuffed the money back in his pocket and told him I’d decided not to pay up. You mad? he asked. Don’t you give a fuck about yourself—aren’t you worth 3,000 yuan? That’s another question altogether, I said. But I can’t keep taking shit like this, it’s bad for my sense of masculinity. It’s a self-respect thing. Bollocks to masculinity, he said, I’m still leaving the money. Let’s see how your self-respect’s doing once your face’s been ripped to shreds. I deliberately kept him arguing a good long time, to nail my own resolve. After finishing work on the seventh day, I had dinner in the cafeteria, had a wash in the factory baths, then cycled back home. Problems, I decided, were like pigeon shit: if they’ve decided to fall on your head, they’ll fall on your head anyway, it’s no good trying to dodge them, best get them over and done with as soon as possible. I stashed the 1,000 yuan Hao Qiang had left in a shoe I found under his bed, then opened the window and put both shoes out on the windowsill. In order to prevent the wind blowing them off, I weighed them down with a dumbbell. The iciness of the dumbbell against my hand woke me up, suddenly made me think: might Mr. Black put the other dumbbell to use on my skull? Considering this less than ideal, I took the other dumbbell, placed it on the windowsill, then shut the window tight and closed the curtains, which normally only got drawn when activities of a sexual nature were ongoing.

Eleven o’clock that evening: still no sign of Mr. Black. I was tensing up at every movement along the corridor; it was like being in love for the first time all over again—the physical, mental exhaustion of anticipation. But Mr. Black stood me up. The funny thing is, I had no problems falling asleep that night, I slept like a log, maybe because I was so tired. Early the next morning, Hao Qiang rushed back over, expecting to go shroud shopping, but ended up just waking me for work. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Hao Qiang, eyes bloodshot, hair like a bird’s nest. You’d have thought he was the one in the shit, not me. Anyway, a whole week went by, but still Mr. Black didn’t show—it looked like I was in the clear. Hold the celebrations, Hao Qiang said, let’s wait another week. Another week passed, and still no Mr. Black. As I gradually got used to all this waiting, the whole process became far more relaxed. What the hell’s going on? Hao Qiang wondered. Maybe Mr. Black’s got a sense of humor, after all. It’s not a question of humor, I told him, it’s a question of right standing up to wrong. If you don’t play ball with him, nothing he can do.

A few days after this, a Wednesday it was, I remember, I was pedaling asthmatically up Big Xie Hill as usual on my way home from work. My work unit happened to have distributed toilet paper that day, forty rolls per employee, as if we ate the stuff three times a day. Twenty of them I stuffed into my tool locker, the other twenty I organized into two bundles of ten each, stuck one on the back seat, the other on my handlebars, and set off back home with them. I took in the view as I cycled along, analogizing away: Big Xie Hill was a river of two-wheeled vehicles flowing upstream, crowned by a foaming crest of Pure Refinement Toilet Paper (the brand favored by my factory), with a few eccentrically shaped pebbles washed up on one side of the bank. And that’s where I choked on my analogy. The skinny guy, the even skinnier guy, and Mr. Black were all lined up by the noodle restaurant, dressed unusually somberly, with black mourning bands tied around their right arms. The even skinnier guy stood in the middle, the tallest, with white gauze wrapped around his head, like a soul-summoning prayer flag mounted on a pole. Though they were all facing the road, they didn’t seem to be focused on anything except introspection. None of the pedestrians who passed by them failed to be affected by their air of solemnity. Seized by a sudden desire to put this whole business behind me, I hurriedly dismounted, catching my leg on the toilet paper and almost toppling right over with the bike as I did so. Without any real consciousness of what I was doing, I pushed the bike over to where they were and stopped. None of them said anything, as if they hadn’t noticed my presence. After a good long pause, a red-eyed Mr. Black sniffed and bowed his head, still without a word. I sensed the even skinnier guy finally looking at me, the distracted expression in his eyes slowly gaining focus, like two blunt nails being sharpened. Eventually, I lost my nerve and broke eye contact. Your days are numbered, he pronounced. Once our mourning period’s over, you’re pot roast. Don’t forget: seven times seven, forty-nine days you’ve got, we’ve done four already, another forty-five to go. Enjoy. The three of them then headed down the hill. After a few steps, the skinny guy turned back and heaved ten toilet paper rolls off my bike: You won’t be needing all these, he said.

Five nights I didn’t sleep, just stared up at the ceiling contemplating the nightmare I’d woken up into. Hao Qiang didn’t mince his words: I told you way back, but you wouldn’t listen! Now what’re you going to do? You’re just too fucking stubborn, that’s your problem. Hao Qiang, who normally never had any trouble dropping off, joined me in my sleeplessness, tormented by sharing a room with the living dead. His own terror alleviated my own a bit, as the need to comfort him gave me something to do: Don’t panic, I said, maybe things aren’t as bad as all that. When we were relatively compos mentis, we’d discuss ways of dealing with the situation. Plan A: go public, ask our work unit or the police for help. Hao Qiang was immediately down on this idea; the authorities were never much use around here, he said, they might be able to help you once, but they couldn’t help you your whole life. Anyway, it would just make everything worse, because Mr. Black hated the Public Security Bureau. Plan B: fight fire with fire, get a triad boss on our side. Although Mr. Black was pretty powerful around here, he still wasn’t quite the hardest tiger in the concrete jungle. Get someone even harder than him to mediate, like Princess from Yangzhuang, or Old Pimple from the phosphate factory. This plan, of course, required money. But it was a double-edged sword: anyone who’d had dealings with the triads would never be able to shake them off. Plan C: submit completely. Give Mr. Black the money quick as you can and grovel like there’s no tomorrow. Plan D, go into hiding for a while or leave the area for good. But you can’t go, Hao Qiang grabbed my hand, if you go I’ll be stuck. When I reassured him I wasn’t going anywhere, Hao Qiang produced the 1,000 yuan I’d returned to him a few weeks ago. Totally done for by this point, I followed his suggestion to the letter. Swallowing my pride and scribbling IOUs as I went, I borrowed money from six of my less objectionable colleagues, cobbling together a round 2,000. Then, in accordance with local custom, I wrapped the 3,000 in red paper, bought a set of quilt covers as a funeral gift, and together with Hao Qiang, went looking for Mr. Black. But halfway there, I started to have second thoughts: I might as well keep the money and die, because if I handed it over, it meant I wasn’t worth 3,000 fucking yuan anyway. After a violent argument, Hao Qiang ended up having to grab the money and quilt covers off me and go on alone. About nine o’clock that evening he despondently came home, threw the red packet on the table, then sat numbly down on the bed, weeping with his head in his hands. I’m not in tears yet, I shouted at him, so what business have you got crying? Mr. Black took the covers, Hao Qiang said, but he threw the money onto the road, said it’s not about the money anymore, said he’d made a vow to his granddad’s spirit tablet. . . .

When I decided to adopt Plan E, I still had a whole month to go before the day of my death: 30 days—720 hours. Plan E was, in short, to wait for death. Though I’d made this decision, I was in no great hurry to return the 3,000 yuan, as I still had vague hopes of using the money to get me out of trouble. Hao Qiang insisted I use it to approach Princess from Yangzhuang. Princess was, in fact, a man: fine-featured, quite feminine in appearance, and not particularly tall, but utterly ruthless. People said he’d made his pile peddling flour; now he threw his money all over the place—Yangzhuang’s biggest, most impressive building, Haitian Hotel, belonged to him. Someone from outside Yangzhuang bringing him a piffling 3,000, he might not even bother to meet. Anyway, my heart wasn’t in it. So we started arguing and ended up having a falling out. I’m staying out of this now, Hao Qiang said. If you’re in the shit, learn to swim. I just gave the 1,000 yuan back to him without another word. A few days later, Hao Qiang moved back in with his parents, while I headed off to work every day and kept up an outward show of normality. Except for my new habit of heading to the bathhouse after work and soaking for several hours. The plan was to soothe my nerves, but all I ended up with was a droopy scrotum. Even if I lived to 100, I thought, things would go on just the same. Going to work, coming home from work, retiring when I can’t work anymore—the sooner this kind of a life finishes, the better. One afternoon, when Xiao Qi and I were left alone together in the staff room, she suddenly asked, What’s on your mind? I glanced at her: Nothing, I said. What d’you mean, nothing, I’ve been watching you for days now, you look like you’ve been dragged out of the morgue. Come on, what’s up? Nothing, I repeated. Once Xiao Qi’s curiosity about something was up, she was unstoppable. As Hao Qiang sometimes observed, no wonder she got divorced. There was no escape for me now, so I tried fobbing her off: Nothing—nothing—I’m just in love, that’s all. All this did was stir her up even more. Who is it? She was completely out of control now. Go on, tell me, who is it? She kept on shaking my arm, would have stuck her hand down my gullet to dig it out of me if she hadn’t been holding a wrench. I masterfully controlled my intense irritation: Why you, of course, I told her. Staring, dumbstruck, at me, she took her hand off my arm: Think you’re funny, don’t you? she said, turning furiously away. It’s no joke, I said to her, it’s true. By this point, I’d amazed even myself. She gave me another long, hard stare: No way, absolutely no way. She shook her head. I’m much older than you, and divorced, and I’ve got a kid, while you, you’ve got a degree, a—None of that matters, I interrupted her, as if possessed by the devil himself. Sitting down numbly on the chair opposite me, she bent over and bit her nails. A dead quiet fell over the staff room. After a while, she lifted her head and looked straight at me, her eyes moistening as soon as she began to speak. If you’re joking, she said, you deserve to rot in hell. This brought me back to my senses almost immediately, but by then I’d maneuverd myself into a corner. I did the only thing I could: nod.

Things between me and Xiao Qi developed at breakneck speed, too fast for anyone to slow them down. The news bubbled away all over the factory. Xiao Qi was totally transformed, radiant and energized, that sour pumpkin face of hers no longer so sour. And because of her, my relations with colleagues, especially with colleagues of around forty, underwent a subtle change. Once Xiao Qi, her son, and I took to strolling around the old Confucian temple of a Sunday, I realized I really had no idea how to finish the thing. Feeling I had to do something, I remembered I hadn’t used this year’s vacation allowance up yet and immediately arranged for home leave. Xiao Qi sensed something was up, but didn’t do anything to stop me. When are you leaving? she asked me. First thing tomorrow, I said. D’you want me to see you off? she offered. Don’t worry, I said, you’ve got a kid to look after, your life’s difficult enough already. After a brief pause, she asked, D’you want me to buy anything to take back for your parents? No, no, I quickly said, thanks, but no. She fell silent, as if a cloud had settled over her, as if something had been spelled out loud and clear. I returned the 2,000 yuan I’d borrowed, ripped up the IOUs, and left work. But instead of going to the bus station, I headed for the wholesale market, where I bought an entire box of instant noodles, then went into hiding in my room. I only got one home leave a year, so these brief periods when I wasn’t obliged to labor up the hill to work every day were very precious to me—I never wasted them. As I was due 21 days’ leave, it struck me as rather a shame I only had 13 days to live. I chewed on my instant noodles as slowly as possible, keeping absolutely still, leaving the light off until evening, waiting for my colleagues to go to work before venturing out to the washroom or going downstairs for a Thermos of hot water. Most of the time I spent lying on my bed; I used my foot basin to piss in. I wasn’t drinking much water, but I pissed a lot. At the beginning, I found time every day to go empty it, but that stopped after a while. The room must reek, I thought, but as I was inside all the time, I couldn’t smell anything. One night, at three or four in the morning I woke up, turned on the newspaper-covered lamp by my bed, and sat up, gazing at that basin full of urine, at its mirrorlike surface, gleaming under the radiant orange glow of the lamp like a river at sunset. Time, I felt, had stood still. I suddenly wondered whether I ought to go back home for a few days to see my parents. The idea flashed across my mind only briefly, but long enough to fill my eyes with burning tears.

Soon only three days remained. I had long lost the ability to distinguish between the taste of instant noodles and the smell of piss; all I knew was that a combination of the two flavored the air I breathed every day. At noon, I went downstairs and had a big feed at a little restaurant near the dormitory compound, then went for a long bike ride. After so many days spent inside, my skin prickled to feel the sun’s rays on it again. When I passed by a building site, I stopped, found a piece of steel pipe half a yard long, and wedged it under the back seat of my bike. I cycled straight through the 45000 Agricultural Market toward Mr. Black’s Pot-Roast Goose. There was no one there except a fat old woman wrapped in an apron, standing in front of the chopping board peeling something; three or four customers hovered in the doorway. I threw my bike down on the ground, grabbed the steel pipe with both hands, rushed in, and began wildly smashing around with both eyes shut. All I heard was a succession of crashes and terrified screams. When I opened my eyes, I found nothing much left to destroy: the floor was covered in shards of broken glass and cold stewed meat, and the fat old woman had disappeared somewhere. Blood was pouring down the steel pipe from a deep cut between my right thumb and index finger. I sighed deeply, kicked in the glass in the door, then sat down. A growing crowd of spectators was gathering, the ones at the back trying to jostle forward, the ones at the front pushing backward, unwilling to get too close to me. I looked down at my trembling hands to avoid making eye contact with any of them. I kept the pipe to hand, ready to knock senseless anyone who made a false move at me, waiting to get knocked out myself.