桥
Old Ji is the only stall vendor in Summit Town unwilling to go to the sunny side of Canted Bridge. His used goods stall is in the lowest, most desolate nook, not far from the bridge shade. The greasy orange entrance curtain is raised, indicating he still has occasional customers. His son, Little Ji, is a manual laborer who sometimes lugs goods a fair distance, and at the start of today’s journey, Old Ji rushes out, bent at the waist, poking his finger in the shadow of Canted Bridge, nostrils flaring with anger.
“I climbed the bridge!” he shouts. “That’s a lot further than you’re going!”
The small town’s denizens look upon Old Ji with mockery, but this doesn’t bother him. He straightens his back and kicks the empty oil drum by his shop, as if to display his vigor. Not that this impresses anyone as to his bravery. All it provokes is laughter, amid which a neighboring vendor, Old Noodle, asks:
“You’ve really climbed up to Magna Luna? Level with me Old Ji. Are the rumors true? Is it all treasure up there?”
Old Ji looks up toward the crescent of light at the sky’s zenith, then glances at the long tower of the bridge at his side. He snorts, as if it’s beneath him to answer.
“Well then, why aren’t you rich?”
This is a sore spot for Old Ji. Stung, he glares resolutely at Old Noodle, who only grins and presses on:
“Old Ji, if you don’t get rich, you’ll never command that son of yours. I heard Little Ji tested over ninety. All four subject examiners gave him three ticks. How does that sit with you?”
“Pfft. Little bastard.” Old Ji spits indignantly. “Underhanded ways. Restless . . . he doesn’t learn. He never learns.”
“I heard that new toy is fast indeed.” Old Noodle gets closer and lowers his voice. “Old Ji, excuse me for saying so. In the old days you were a renowned bridge jumper, but a dozen days up there and you only come back with the one basket on your back . . . enough to provide for how many people? Isn’t it better to . . . ”
“Underhanded ways! He’ll never learn!”
Old Ji’s sudden vehemence and volume startles Old Noodle, whose head recoils on a shrinking neck, and he forgets what else he was going to say. Old Ji takes the opportunity to loom large, and snort again, and in his victor’s posture sweep his gaze about. In that pose, he seems like he might, at any moment, step across the vast gulf between Earth and Magna Luna and bid farewell to his current poverty.
Old Ji wasn’t so poverty-stricken when he was younger. As a first-rate bridge jumper in Summit Town, his prospects might even have been described as limitless. Back then, the Canted Bridge that led straight to Magna Luna was still making its circuits, every eighteen days sweeping over the mountaintop town standing aloof from worldly strife. On market days, when the bulky, craggy mass of the bridge approached, bustling peddlers and buyers would grow quiet and gather to watch, unable to look away. The optimal place for bridge jumpers was a strip of land about a hundred zhang long.
And one day, there was Old Ji—not so old then, waist bundled in white cloth, forehead bound in an orange scarf—and a dozen or more competing jumpers with their baskets strapped to their backs, standing majestically on the precipice, facing the direction they would fling themselves in the hopes of grabbing onto the bridge base. Magna Luna moved slowly overhead. At an altitude that long-winged falcons had difficulty ascending to, the bridge structure grew dimly visible in the thick fog and suddenly loomed. As it got closer, a mighty tide of wind, seemingly capable of moving heaven and earth, preceded it, rushing over the mountaintop, and leaving onlookers breathless. When the floating bridge base got close enough, people shrieked and scattered, but Old Ji stood his ground. The remaining competitors broke into runs, striving to keep up as the mass of the bridge moved by, looking for the right moment to jump, to get a handhold and start climbing.
But years of gale force winds had polished the rocky mass of the bridge to a smooth gloss. Bridge jumpers slid and scrabbled and fell, some of them en masse.
The ironlike bulk of the bridge approached a cool and detached Old Ji. A collision seemed imminent. He took several steps back with sudden force, ducked, and the bridge base cruised just over his head. Then his hands were out, reaching for a long-familiar cranny. He grabbed, held firm, brought both feet up, and then he was airborne. A dozen seconds later, the bridge base having streaked across the hundred-zhang running ground, Old Ji alone was flying away from the mountaintop and vanishing toward the horizon.
On the next market day eighteen days later, Canted Bridge once more drew near Summit Town, and Old Ji leaped down to envious gazes. He was thin and unshaven. He carried a bundle on his back, and his orange headscarf fluttered half-loose in the wind, like a flame. With long strides he passed through the public square and entered the purchasing station. There he unbound himself from his white cloth bundle and emptied it on the counter. Chunks of crystalline ore, large and small, glimmered under the admiring gaze of a pooling crowd.
“First rate . . . two and half tael, one tael, seven-tenths of a tael,” said the station keeper, blinking through bifocal lenses. “Second rate . . . seven tael, four and six-tenths tael. Third rate . . . one and a half catty. Eh, worm-eaten and rat-nibbled, a bag of broken stones and shattered tiles. It’s as high as I’ll go.”
The spectators were immediately abuzz with excitement, shouting and cheering. The young, deferential shop assistant handed over a roll of banknotes. Old Ji took it between two fingers and, without counting it, stuffed it in a waist pocket. The assistant then proffered the remainder in coins, which Old Ji casually scattered over the heads of the crowd. The change came down like rain, tinkling on the floor. Amid the scrambling, riotous chaos that followed, Old Ji flung his bindle over his shoulder and strode out, head held high.
Using a skill passed down from his ancestors, he traveled between Summit Town and Magna Luna, making a nice profit over the years, enough to buy property and get married and create a well-off, influential, dignified small-town family. His only headache was his son. Although Little Ji was always looking up at Magna Luna with longing, he had no interest in the skill that was his birthright—never mind climbing the Canted Bridge himself.
“I think you’ve seen how everyone in town envies us,” Old Ji said once in the dead of night, intent on revealing the family secret. “Quiet now, we mustn’t wake your mother.”
“What is it?” Little Ji was at a curious age, always ready for a new mystery.
“The secret to successful bridge jumping. What else?” Old Ji opened the bottom of the chest and rummaged softly through the contents, finally extracting a piece of paper. “Your old man uses it to make serious money.”
“How do you make money, Dad?”
Old Ji began lecturing on bridge jumping, relating the defeats of other climbers and his own successes ascending the bridge, and finally the secret of that success:
“The sides are impossible to get a handhold on. You must change that thinking. You see, this is a topographical map of the bridge’s base. If you grab on here . . . and at this point here . . . and step up here, you’ll get yourself onto the bridge. No one else knows this.”
“I thought only big, grand places needed maps.” Little Ji couldn’t comprehend the misery of moving in the less than half a meter between bridge base and ground, and so felt a dozen zhang space didn’t merit a topographical map.
“No, not just big places.” Old Ji sensed his son’s pleasant surprise, then a feeling of disappointment, of loss, filled his heart, and he couldn’t help seizing the opportunity to ask:
“Well, then, someday . . . how about I teach you to bridge jump?”
“No fun. No thanks. I want to play with cars.”
Subjected to this and other unfilial attacks, Old Ji couldn’t avoid falling into dejection. As he aged, growing hunchbacked and feeble-legged, his skill flagging, his son lost to pleasure-seeking and lack of ambition, he couldn’t help feeling more depressed. At least his son wasn’t the only one. Many young people of Summit Town spent their days singing and galivanting. Not one was practicing to be a bridge jumper. Old Ji’s status was assured, at least for the moment. He didn’t have to worry about immediate pretenders to his throne.
The same year that Little Ji rejected the special skill of his ancestors, opting instead to be young and carefree, visitors came up the mountain.
Summit Town wasn’t cut off from the outside world as such, but its high elevation, along with many generations of sloth, had long ago rendered most denizens uninterested in communication. Canted Bridge was like a great, precise pendulum, delineating everyone’s rhythm, habituating them to lives beginning and ending on the mountaintop, even making them forget there were people down the mountain just like them. However, when two strangers on cross-country four-wheelers came up the mountain, the rare novelty of it set Summit Town abuzz. The mayor, face wrinkled like a time-creased bellows, came forward to receive the guests, as if to reengrave the long-faded word “hospitality” on the human heart. When the feasting began, places of honor were accorded to Summit Town’s law clerk, who was in charge of all kinds of procedures, and the old blind couple who’d been teachers here for so long—and Old Ji, recruited to help entertain the guests.
They seemed to only want to talk about Magna Luna and Canted Bridge.
“Miraculous really,” said the bearded guest. “So close . . . almost a direct connection. Truly miraculous. Mayor, has anyone in your town here gone up to Magna Luna?”
The mayor assumed an air of self-satisfaction. He downed a cup of spirits, then lifted his chin, aiming it at Old Ji: “You’re at the right table. This one here is our town’s most renown bridge jumper. May I present Old Ji . . . ”
The visitor stared in amazement, making Old Ji a bit uneasy, but he managed a courteous nod and some modesty: “I’m old now. Can’t climb so well anymore.”
“Please excuse my lack of manners,” the bearded man said. “I’ve heard that there’s crystalline ore up there. Perhaps a lot of it? Or no?”
To Old Ji, this sounded like an inquiry into his family’s property and resources. He felt it prudent to neither confirm nor deny. “There’s some, there’s some.”
Fortunately, Whiskers didn’t pursue this line of questioning any further. He spoke with someone else in a low voice for a while. Old Ji heard “double star system,” “rarefied atmosphere,” “low gravity region,” and a few other things he didn’t understand. Something deep and indescribable in him recoiled, as if warm light had found its way into a dark ice cave through a small hole.
Half a year later, more four-wheelers made the ascent. The visitors established themselves as downland representatives in Summit Town, and the leader, as before, was Whiskers. They looked on as Old Ji gave them a bridge jumping demonstration, and they cheered loudly. Old Ji, flustered and panicked, nearly slipped from his purchase. When he returned to the mountaintop eighteen days later, he felt some indescribable change had taken place. His son was still running wild, but now apt to run toward Whiskers. The downland leader seemed all too welcoming of the town’s young people into his sphere, seemingly with an eye toward some advantage, something to do with his intentions in this remote place. One day he even fired up the largest four-wheeler and drove the town elites—the mayor and his family, and the old blind couple—for three circuits of the public square.
“Wow!” gasped an admiring Old Noodle, squatting on his heels at the front of the crowd.
Old Ji, farther back, couldn’t help craning his neck to see. The vehicle halted by lucky coincidence, and Whiskers spotted him.
“Old Ji! Come on. Come, come.”
He hadn’t expected this invitation. After a dumbfounded moment, he waved his hand in refusal. “Uh, no. Out of the question. No.”
Whiskers seemed to think this a mere pleasantry. He got out and pulled Old Ji toward the vehicle, then guided him into the passenger seat. Then the machine was off again, embarking on a figure eight. Dizzy, Old Ji watched the crowd on his side fall away, and he realized he was hurtling forward. The old mayor in the back seat stroked his mustache and laughed.
“Old Ji! This is amazing, isn’t it? Why don’t you give it a try?”
“Uh . . . ”
Old Ji recoiled in his seat, slack-jawed and nearly drooling, breathless. An enthusiastic Whiskers said, “Indeed, our vehicle here is easy to drive. I’m sure someone as brave and capable as yourself, Old Ji, won’t even need lessons. You’ll master it at a glance. Come on, give it a try!”
The vehicle had just completed a circuit. Whiskers helped the old mayor and the others out, then put a stupefied Old Ji in the driver’s seat. He taught Old Ji to grip the steering wheel, and then to pedal the gas, and the machine crept forward. Prideful Old Ji didn’t want people to see his timidity. He gripped the wheel with the firmness of a bridge jumper clinging to the base. But he hadn’t gone fifty meters when—the lively crowd again swinging into view with their multitudinous gazes and judgments—his arms cramped, and he panicked, and a lamppost loomed, and he crashed.
The collision thoroughly undid Old Ji’s bridge jumper prestige. Thereafter the townsfolk spoke of him with ridicule, proclaiming his stature vanished into thin air. After a few days, people noticed he was looking older and thinner. He stopped acknowledging Old Noodle’s greetings. All he seemed to do was bend at the waist and berate Little Ji:
“Running around all day like mad! I don’t even have the words! As . . . ” He paused to cough. “ . . . as long as you’re under my roof, you’re forbidden to behave in such unruly ways!”
“But . . . ” Little Ji said, aggrieved and defensive.
Serenity gradually returned to Summit Town. Whiskers, perhaps feeling sorry for Old Ji, led his downlanders in a regretful departure from town. The day they left, everybody but Old Ji saw them off. The vehicles crawled in procession down the mountainside, slowly getting farther away, until they were submerged downland and gone.
Time flew and more than ten years passed. Summit Town, as always, was bustling and peaceful as an anthill. If the fated change of scene hadn’t come, the town might have gone on as before, tranquil until a critical mass of human-made boredom had accrued and forced change.
One night, a violent quaking woke everyone. Panic spread through the town, but no one knew what was going on. The shaking seemed to come from underground depths and continued for a long time. There was no daylight the next morning. The town was enveloped in inky blackness, as on the eve of an approaching tempest. Another four days passed, and the dense dust cloud continued to blot out sky and sun. Windblown grit stung people’s faces. Most hid in their houses and didn’t dare emerge, but the obstinate and blind old teacher ventured out, tapping and listening his way along as he always had. After he’d been gone a while, his wife opened the door and wailed into the murk. Several daring fellows, noses and mouths covered in burlap masks, organized a fumbling search. It was some time before they returned with the limp, half-dead form of the teacher.
“There was a ghost!” he said when he woke. “It crashed into me! It crashed into me!”
These words brought fear to many townsfolk. Another half-month passed, and the windblown dust began to abate. Some visibility returned. People discovered, to their shock, that Magna Luna’s Canted Bridge was in the process of coming to rest over Summit Town. It was still half a meter above the ground, but no longer sweeping past on its fixed route. Instead, it swayed in the vicinity, sometimes colliding with the mountaintop, ploughing soil then turning to go—sometimes seeming to stop short, hesitating, hovering, then returning, pushing its way through township land, caving in unlucky walls. Obviously, the old teacher had been knocked down by Canted Bridge that night.
The townsfolk had no choice but to set aside a big plot of land for Canted Bridge’s havoc-wreaking. They had no other plan apart from this. But matters soon evolved beyond anyone’s expectations, when a dozen or so iron birds—bigger than long-winged falcons—came soaring toward the mountain. They drew near and began circling the bridge.
“What are they doing?” Old Noodle wondered, squinting upward. “Looking to nest?”
“Those are flying vehicles.” The law clerk had listened to more downland rumors than most. “I don’t know for sure, but there might be people in them.”
Old Ji gazed with astonishment at Canted Bridge, which had, once upon a time, been his livelihood. It seemed to him that everyone wanted to halt the bridge and seize his bridge jumper title. As he tried to calculate what the new circumstances meant to the bridge jumping profession in terms of difficulty, he glanced about, seeking potential rivals, but no one seemed to be taking things seriously.
The aircraft lingered in the sky for days, more and more of them ascending to higher elevations and out of sight. The mass of the bridge gradually slowed amid the dust haze. Occasionally it seemed to bend, exhibiting a faint curve, like a willow branch caught in a quagmire. The people of Summit Town were surprised beyond words. Could it be that Canted Bridge, climbed for so many years, was actually soft? Pliable? Even more unexpected was the next two months of aircraft slowly bringing the massive bridge to a fixed position over the mountaintop, then very slowly easing it down.
It finally touched the ground one evening, raising a small cloud of dust.
Old Ji watched, dumbfounded, facial tics alive. Suddenly it was like he’d been deserted. His deep-set eyes moistened. He lifted his head, rubbed his nose, and gave a hateful snort.
Old Ji rose late the next day. When he opened the door, he saw a crowd gathered outside his shop, which had long been closed for business. At the center of the crowd was that downland visitor, Whiskers, his hair whiter than before, his voice louder:
“Yes, very lucky, most auspicious. A real heaven-sent opportunity. Who could’ve imagined Canted Bridge would come to a halt? We thought it was an earthquake at first, but after a few days we saw several meteorites had crashed down. Meteorites . . . do you all understand? Down below, our observation station discovered them. And so I spoke with my leaders, and we saw a great opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. The leadership dispatched me, and now Canted Bridge has come down. From now on, you will all climb up there. All of you!”
Old Ji listened to the rumors coming from the crowd: Whiskers was the government-appointed chief of the arrested Canted Bridge. The townsfolk nodded to each other, watching him with admiration and respect. The law clerk was organizing a celebratory feast, while another group was setting to work at the bridge base, pouring a foundation and driving the piles that would fix the bridge permanently. Old Ji stood in his doorway, reckoning the cost of the feast would fall to Summit Town’s households. If he didn’t go and eat his fill, it would amount to a big loss. But he couldn’t seem to put one foot in front of the other. Little Ji, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to venture into the crowd. He was a young man now. Old Ji called after him to no avail.
He’d grown up rather thin, yet strong. Normally he did manual labor at his father’s shop, the heavy lifting, and like his contemporaries he had a rebellious streak. For instance, he was always secretly turning on a light to read by at night, provoking complaints from Old Ji about the cost of electricity:
“Earning money isn’t easy, boy. You have to save if you can save. You must behave with integrity and play the hand you’re dealt. Running wild all day . . . what? Are you up to some master plan? I order you not to waste your time, but you just won’t listen. Dammit, if before you had just . . . ”
Old Ji sighed at his greatly diminished authority. He half-heartedly watched Whiskers inciting the crowd. Since Canted Bridge had halted, many people were climbing it. Even Old Noodle had ascended, in grandiose style, to enjoy the scenery. Old Ji hated Old Noodle’s unprofessional climbing from the bottom of his heart, but he said nothing.
“Dad, I want to study to be driver,” Little Ji said, returning to the shop.
“What?” This was no trivial matter. Old Ji doubted his ears. “Drive vehicles, son? You?”
“I really want to.” Little Ji’s eyes were bright, stubborn, unyielding. “Our financial circumstances are getting worse year by year. I can’t grow old here eating free meals. What’s wrong with learning a new trade?”
“A trade like running wild?” Old Ji wanted to strike something, but nothing was on hand. “Work for me and behave yourself. I can’t permit anything else!”
Thus, via conflict, ended father and son’s first exchange on future prospects, but Little Ji’s behavior didn’t improve. Instead, he became even more “unfilial.” After the reinforcement of Canted Bridge was complete, material began to arrive from the base of the mountain: tall, slender, sparkling things allegedly called “rail tracks.” Amid the clanging racket of excavation, Little Ji and some other young people watched a group of safety-helmeted workers use simple cranes to get the rails erect and placed on Canted Bridge.
“The track will eventually go all the way up,” Whiskers explained to Little Ji and others, pointing at a partially dust-obscured Magna Luna. “All that good stuff up there can be freighted down. A round trip will only take two or three days. Maybe even just one day.”
“Freighted?” Little Ji asked in amazement. “By what?”
“Freight cars, of course, drawn by electric engines. You folks don’t understand that yet.” Whiskers seemed to recall something. “Hey, after the rail is completed, Canted Bridge will need drivers. It’ll be just like driving a car. Little Ji, I seem to recall you enrolled . . . ”
“My old man won’t allow it.” Little Ji was a bit anxious. He straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “But you know what, it doesn’t matter.”
In the end, probably thanks to Whiskers’ prestige on the ground, Little Ji’s vehicular education launched smoothly. As the track was laid higher and higher, the iron birds came and went more frequently, and Whiskers often rode them into the sky, sometimes not touching ground for days at a time. And suddenly, bafflingly, there was more work to do in the shop. Little Ji had no choice but to work through the night, until his back ached, and still find energy for his studies. Fortunately, after three days, the workload returned to normal. Little Ji stole glances at his father, who always remained cool and composed.
Little Ji passed the final test of his driver’s curriculum and concealed it from his father, and he actually did quite well. The news spread through town. The examiners were pleased with Little Ji’s skills, and his opportunity to eat government grain was just around the corner. Old Ji’s expression was obvious to everyone watching in excitement and anticipation, waiting for father and son’s final blowout. It only took the slightest noise from within Old Ji’s shop for ears to perk up.
Old Ji’s shop business had been in steady decline for years. Half a year before, he’d been strapped enough to move from his decent original property to the remote nook. It didn’t help that Old Noodle, whom he’d always disdained, was now his neighbor—and he grew even more sullen. He wondered apprehensively how his son had become so unfilial, how the world had become so unrecognizable so fast, and how, in this motionless bridge era, he had no prospects.
“Old Ji!”
It was dusk, long after Little Ji had finished his course, and Whiskers was loudly calling at the shop entrance. Old Ji poked his head out, startled. Whiskers was covered head to toe in rock fragments and dust, but he looked full of vigor. It seemed he was just back from above, once again.
“I won’t come in and sit,” Whiskers said. “I just wanted to let you know that the work above is just about complete. I’ve received notice that next month the railway will be open to traffic. There’s to be a ceremony. Will you come? Little Ji is one of the driving masters, so congratulations are in order! Everyone will be there, Old Ji. Everyone!”
“What?”
For the second time in his life, Old Ji was surprised beyond words. Whiskers, having delivered his message, felt free to go. Old Ji came to his senses and rushed several steps out of his shop, meaning to pull Whiskers to a halt, but his hand didn’t reach.
“This, this . . . ”
“What now?”
“For something like this . . . I mean, poor folks like us aren’t suitable, are we?”
“Poor folks? Old Ji, your thinking is all wrong. Why do you think we’ve repaired the road if not to get rich? You know how resource-rich Magna Luna is. You saw it all when you were younger, in grand style. Let me tell you, Little Ji is very clever. He can do anything he sets his mind to. You really are blessed.”
“Clever? Even compared with downland driving masters?”
“It’s cost effective, Old Ji, and localization, adapting to a local environment, also creates employment. You wouldn’t understand.” Whiskers seemed unwilling to explain more. He glanced sidelong at the house, inside which Little Ji was listening. “You must come to the ceremony.”
After Whiskers had gone, Old Ji limped weakly back to his shop. Little Ji was shouldering two sacks of lime plaster out the door. His thin torso glistened with sweat in the light of sunset. Old Ji’s brow furrowed as he unconsciously shook his head and heaved a quiet sigh.
Opening day for the railway comes in the blink of an eye. Early in the morning, Old Ji listens to the sounds of Little Ji getting dressed in the neighboring room. The lad leaves without eating breakfast. Silence descends on the shop. Old Ji lies in bed staring, wide-eyed. He tosses and turns, but it’s useless trying to sleep after waking in the morning, so he gets up. Outside, the street is full of bustling activity, people squeezing by, all headed for Canted Bridge.
That afternoon, Old Ji partially raises his shop curtain and prepares to receive customers, but pedestrians spare him no more than glances. Nobody stops. Old Ji gives up on business for the day, closes the curtain, and gropes about in the gloom of the shop. He paces, growing unhappy and hungry, and finally limps out through the side entrance.
It’s chilly and sunny outside. The clamor of gongs and drums emanates from the direction of Canted Bridge, spreading rumor of the ceremony, drawing layer upon layer of crowd. Old Ji doesn’t want to be seen heading in that direction, so he detours, taking a roundabout approach. The bridge’s sun-exposed face gradually comes into view. Several lines shine bright and silver on the impossibly long mass of the bridge, plunging straight into the zenith of the sky. At some point, objects known as “carriages” have been hung on the silvery rails. Each is adorned with a red silk ribbon like a burning flame. Several important-looking personages sit on a platform before the carriages, and Whiskers stands off to one side. The resonant sound of speech comes to Old Ji on the wind. He doesn’t get closer to hear what’s being said, but he casts his gaze about. He spots a row of young people wearing red flowers on their chests, his son among them. Old Ji smiles, surprising himself—and still smiling, he can’t help feeling some resentment.
The long-winded speech isn’t over until dusk. Then a group representing the townsfolk raises an inscribed stone stele. The law clerk has been racking his brains for months to come up with the prose poem to be engraved. Now he faces the stele and recites and sings, punctuating the performance with traditional syllable-breaks. This time Old Ji understands a little. The lyrics look back at the construction history, but also seem to gaze into the future. Canted Bridge will be a vital link between the ground and Magna Luna. There will be plenty of work in transport and immigration both.
Is it possible a driver has good prospects? Old Ji wonders, scratching his head.
The dim light of evening gradually prevails. The platform lights come on, contrasting sharply with the outer dark. When the traditional chant is complete, the law clerk and Whiskers exit stage left and right, and someone pulls one end of a silk ribbon. Applause wells up, but soon there is silence again. Someone else goes to center stage and stands there for several seconds, and the silk ribbon snaps and floats down toward either side.
Old Ji takes this for a bad omen, but the audience cheers.
Little Ji and the other young people walk onto stage. The head of the procession speaks briefly and thankfully, then each opens and gets into a rail carriage. Their headlights come on, piercing the dark night sky. Flashing red lights appear along both sides of the railway, like stars in military formation leading to the heavens. When Little Ji threw his hat in the ring, Old Ji peevishly avoided looking at the bridge or looking up. But now he can’t help himself. This is a spectacle like none he’s ever seen. He can’t take his eyes off it. A muffled roar of awe comes from the crowd. The carriages tremble lightly, then begin to slowly rise. People watch in amazement, eyes wide and mouths agape, their admiring expressions like those that once greeted an honored bridge jumper.
Suddenly, one of the carriages halts only three or four meters off the ground, the screeching of the rails stabbing Old Ji’s eardrums like iron. Alarmed, he immediately runs for the bridge. He’s only gone a hundred meters when he sees one of the distant carriages open and Little Ji’s head emerge. The young driving master makes a simple gesture at Whiskers, then shuts the door. The carriage begins once more to slowly rise, then accelerate, soaring higher and higher.
“Little bastard,” Old Ji mutters, panting. “You almost made your old man sprain an ankle.”
He takes the opportunity to turn and limp off in a different direction. He makes his sluggish way to a cliff near the edge of town and squats. Feeling wronged and impetuous, he has his back to Canted Bridge, but he can still hear the cheering, the unceasing acclaim. He can’t help turning his head and looking up. The red rail lights are like a heavenly path hanging down from Magna Luna, spanning the vast night sky. His son’s carriage and the others are like a string of sparkling meteors, slowly climbing toward that high, remote place.
“All grown up, are you? Ready to spread your wings and fly? Not a second thought for your dad? No matter how disobedient, aren’t you still my son?”
Although Old Ji feels depressed, he realizes his son is, in the end, climbing to Magna Luna. He is following in his father’s footsteps. This brings Old Ji a gradual sense of relief. He turns back around, gazes down upon the night-shrouded lowlands. Distant lights sparkle here and there, like lanterns floating on an underworld river.
It’s getting late, and the air is turning cold. Old Ji shivers. People are dispersing from the bridge, so he prepares to depart. He has just stood when he recalls something. He fishes a piece of paper from his pocket. He tears it into pieces, sighs, and releases them to scatter on the wind like so many white butterflies. Soon they have all floated away into the night sky.
First Prize: 7th Lightyear Award for Best Micro-Fiction (2018).
Originally published in Chinese in Tadpole Stave, February 18th, 2019.