I rushed over to the door and swung it open.
And, sure enough, there was Ti, looking absolutely forlorn.
I don't know why, but seeing him there didn't surprise me in the least. It seemed as if I had been expecting him, even though this made no sense, since nobody knew where I was. Yet I had no idea how he had been able to find me.
When he saw me, he stared at my face, and after a few moments of hesitation, he heaved a sigh and came into the room.
He said, "Niuniu, is there anything wrong?"
"I'm fine," I said.
After staring at me again for a while, he shifted his gaze from my face and took in the rest of the room, his brows furrowed slightly.
"Niuniu, going off by yourself like this is dangerous. There are a lot of bad people out there."
The way he spoke made it sound like he was the kind of person there was no need to worry about.
"It's none of your concern," I answered coldly.
Apparently taking no note of what I had said, he continued, "Next time you want to go away for a holiday, I'll go with you. You mustn't go alone."
I continued my cold rejection of his concern. "What I do is none of your business."
"Niuniu, don't be like that. I set out this morning before dawn to look for you. I figured out where you were from the postmark on your letter. This is the second hotel I've come to. Do you have any idea how worried I've been?"
I made no answer, leaving him to do the talking. But his appearance and his sincerity were slowly weakening my resistance.
He was silent for a while, then said, "Niuniu, I miss you."
Feigning total indifference, I looked away from him, still not saying anything.
Standing there without having moved, without any encouragement, he continued, "I long for you every hour, every minute of the day. I don't know what to do…"
His words came slowly and heavily, as if they were great stones blocking the space between us, impeding him; not his usual crafted sentences.
"Niuniu, I don't want to hurt you in any way. I'm out of control. All I want to do is see you, be with you."
I noticed that he had picked up again on the key issue of our last conversation, which I had cut short. I also noticed that when he uttered my name, his voice shook.
The room fell silent as death.
He didn't come over and touch me. Some nameless force seemed to hold his feet frozen to the floor. I still didn't look at him directly, but I could glimpse his face and figure at the edge of my field of vision. He looked totally despondent. The gloom in his heart had completely sucked away the former brightness of his face. Even in the stillness and stifling heat of midday his cheeks looked as colorless and hopeless as a frozen wasteland. He was wearing a pair of military shorts, and his long, brown legs looked as powerful as those of a straining workhorse. Those silent legs had a strange power that drew my eyes.
I forced myself to turn my head away.
Then I turned my back on him and fixed my gaze on a huge spider-web on the wall. Like a delicate wing, the silk web trembled in a slight draft. Pointlessly, I continued to stare at it, as if it were some fascinating thing.
Then I heard movement behind me. I could hear each step as he drew nearer; I could even hear the sound of his breathing.
But the sounds stopped when he was still about a footstep away from me.
He took a breath and then said, "Niuniu, I want to take you somewhere to eat. You must have been terribly hungry over these last few days." As he spoke, he squeezed my arms. "Look, pretty soon you won't weigh any more than your photograph."
No sooner had he said this than my stomach began to growl with hunger.
And at last, I turned around to face him, and nodded my head in agreement.
Crowing with joy, Ti lifted me off the ground and swung me around with my feet in the air.
He shouldered my pack, paid my bill, called a taxi, and we were on our way.
It was the same road that I had arrived on, but now it seemed totally different. When I came, we bounced along depressingly, the pencil-straight road looming out of and disappearing into the encroaching gloom. The interminable road with its indistinctive background, like my own train of thought weighted down with cares, thought only of pushing onward.
But now the road was altogether different. Bordered with a rose haze, under the midday sun it glittered like undulating black silk. The depth and richness of the dark green of growing crops, the black of freshly turned loam, the mottled brown-and-white cows, the trailing shadows of sinuous trees captured the eyes. The roadside stone walls, the granaries, and the lush wild grasses embroidered the borders of this otherwise uninteresting road.
After a drive of two hours or so, we were back in the city center.
Ti said, "I'm going to take you to a new-style grotto restaurant for dinner. It's operated by a friend of mine from my army days. It has a style all its own."
Our taxi pulled up in front of a restaurant called Banpo Village on a main downtown street.
After we had wound our way downstairs and entered the reception room, I gave the place a cursory survey. The lighting was muted, and each of the grottoes had its own natural setting, with winding paths leading to sequestered nooks. Each one was thoughtfully decorated to fit a particular theme, with every detail accounted for, so that they were independent of one another, each with its own distinct flavor. It goes without saying that the place had its own special charm and appeal.
The owner came out to welcome us. After a spirited exchange of greetings with his old army buddy, Ti turned to me and said, "This is the village head, Mr. Zhao."
"Village head?" I queried.
Mr. Zhao said, "We've taken our ideas from the archaeological remains of the Banpo tribal village, and used Banpo culture as the theme of our restaurant. That's why we call it a village. So I'm the present village head, and you, my dear, are now one of our citizens."
Mr. Zhao then gave us a guided tour of the restaurant's six separate grottoes. We went into the bar first. A group of Qin dynasty terra-cotta warriors stood guard in one corner, and a number of niches for the display of a variety of bottled liquors had been cut into the walls. The bar itself was decorated with lengths of ancient, crude hempen rope, and in the cupboards behind it was a display of pottery bowls with the "face-and-fish" motifs, well buckets, colored ceramic jars, and records kept on knotted strings and wooden slips used by the original citizens of Banpo.
Zhao said, "We'll show you around first, and then you can decide where you'd like to eat."
We looked at the "Tribal Chieftain's Grotto" first. Ti said he was sure that the drawings on the walls depicted the story of Hou Yi, the monarch of the Xia dynasty state of Youqiong, shooting the sun with his bow, and agricultural and hunting scenes of the people of Banpo. There were already a number of diners enjoying a noisy meal there, so we looked into the "Fish Room." The walls were covered with ancient pictographic inscriptions. This "fish and worm" writing bespoke the incomparable satisfaction that goes with sipping fine wine as one softly hums a beautiful tune. Next, we went into the "Han Room," which was richly decorated with black dragon and white tiger designs taken from the ends of eaves tiles. A sculpture of a Han dynasty raconteur sat commandingly in the center of the grotto as if he were still telling tales of past and present glories.