When Baldy Li was three, his grandmother left her daughter and grandson and returned to her hometown. By this point, Baldy Li had learned to walk but was still very thin, even thinner than he had been as a baby. Li Lan s migraines had their good and bad days, but she had developed a slight stoop from walking around with a perpetually bowed head. After his grandmother left, Baldy Li started having the opportunity to walk in broad daylight. When Li Lan went to the market, she would take him along. She walked quickly with her head lowered, and Baldy Li would stumble along behind her, holding on to the hem of her clothes. By that time no one pointed them out anymore — in fact, no one even looked at them — yet Li Lan still felt the public s gaze like daggers in her back.
Every other month Baldy Li's frail mother went to the rice store to buy forty jin of rice. These would be Baldy Li's happiest times, because when she hoisted the forty-jin sack of rice on her back, he no longer needed to hurry and stumble after her. She panted as she walked with her sack of rice — by that point even her breath began to sound like the grinding of her teeth. She would walk and pause, walk and pause, and Baldy Li would have time to take a look around.
One autumn day around noon, the tall Song Fanping walked up to them, and just as Li Lan lowered the sack down to wipe the sweat from her face, she saw a strong hand suddenly lift the sack of rice from the ground. Startled, she looked up to see this man smiling at her, and saying, "Let me carry this home for you."
Song Fanping carried the forty-jin sack as easily as if he were carrying an empty basket. With his left hand he scooped up Baldy Li and hoisted him onto his shoulders, telling the boy to hold on to his forehead. Baldy Li had never seen the world from this height. He was always lifting his head to look up — this was the first time he had ever been able to look down at the passersby in the street. He couldn't stop giggling as he sat on Song Fanping's shoulders.
This well-built man carried Li Lan's rice sack with her son on his shoulders and spoke in a ringing voice as they walked down the street. Li Lan walked alongside him, her head lowered, pale and drenched in cold sweat. She felt that everyone was laughing and staring at her, and she wished she could simply disappear into a crack in the ground. Song Fanping asked questions as they walked, but Li Lan would merely nod or shake her head, her teeth still making that grinding sound.
They finally arrived at her front door. Song Fanping placed Baldy Li on the ground and emptied the cloth sack into the rice barrel. He glanced at the bed, made up with the same coverlet and sheets that he had seen three years earlier. The Double Happiness character on them had faded, its embroidery frayed. As he was about to leave, the man told Li Lan his name was Song Fanping and he was a teacher at the middle school, adding that if they ever needed help with anything, she should let him know. After he left, Li Lan let her son play outside by himself for the first time and locked herself in her room, doing who knows what. She didn't open the door again until after dark, by which time Baldy Li had fallen asleep leaning against the door.
Baldy Li remembered how, when he was five, Song Fanpings wife died of an illness. After Li Lan heard the news, she stood at the window for a long time, her teeth chattering, until the sun had set and the moon had risen. Then she took her son by the hand, and together they walked silently under the night moon to Song Fanpings house. Li Lan didn't dare enter his home; instead she stood behind a tree watching as people sat and walked around under the dim light inside. A coffin sat in the middle of the room. Baldy Li held on to the hem of his mother's clothes and listened to her chattering teeth. When he lifted his head to look at the moon and stars, he saw that his mother was crying and wiping away her tears with her hand. He asked her, "Mama, are you crying?"
Li Lan nodded and told her son that someone in their savior's family had died. Li Lan stood there a little longer, then took Baldy Li by the hand again and walked silently home.
When Li Lan came home from the silk factory the next evening, she sat at the table making paper coins. She made a great pile of paper coins and paper ingots, stringing them onto two strands of white thread. Baldy Li sat by and watched with great interest as his mother first cut the paper into squares and then folded the paper ingots one by one. She wrote GOLD on some of them and SILVER on the others. She took a "gold" ingot and explained to Baldy Li that at one time this would have been enough to buy a mansion. Baldy Li pointed at a "silver" ingot and asked her what you could buy with this. Li Lan replied that you could also buy a mansion, but perhaps a smaller one. Baldy Li looked out at the "gold" and "silver" ingots piled up on the table and calculated how many mansions you could buy with all of them. Having just learned his numbers, he counted the ingots one by one; but he knew how to count to only ten, so every time he reached ten, he would have to go back to one again. As the pile of ingots on the table grew he worked up a headful of sweat but still couldn't come up with a total. Nevertheless, he continued struggling until his counting even brought a smile to his mothers face.
Once Li Lan had a huge pile of paper ingots, she started making paper coins. First she cut circles out of the paper, then cut little holes out of the centers. Finally, she carefully drew lines on the paper circles and wrote a line of characters on each. Baldy Li felt that making a paper coin was much harder than making a paper ingot, so he wondered how many houses you could buy with a paper coin? Could you buy an entire row of houses? His mother dangled a long string threaded with paper coins and said, "You could probably buy only a piece of clothing with this." Baldy Li fretted over this until he had worked up another headful of sweat trying to figure out how clothing could cost more than a mansion. Li Lan explained that even ten strands of coins would not come close to equaling one ingot. Hearing this, Baldy Li was confounded yet again. If ten strands of coins couldn't equal one ingot, then why was his mother going to such efforts to make coins? Li Lan said that this money was not to be spent in this world but, rather, in the next; it was travel money for the deceased. Baldy Li shuddered at the word deceased, and shuddered again when he glanced at the darkness outside. He asked his mother which dead person this money was for. Li Lan put down what she was working on and replied, "It's for our savior's family."
On the day Song Fanping's wife was to be buried, Li Lan placed the strands of paper money and ingots into a basket. Then, holding the basket in one hand and Baldy Li's hand in the other, she stood waiting on the street. That morning was the first time Baldy Li could remember his mother lifting her head in public. As she stood there waiting for the funeral procession, some of her acquaintances passed by and peered into her basket. One of them even lifted out the strands of ingots and coins and complimented her on her craftsmanship, then asked, "Did someone else in your family die?"
Li Lan bowed her head and softly answered, "No, not in my family…"
There were only a dozen or so mourners in the funeral procession. The coffin had been placed on a cart, which creaked and rattled over the cobblestone road. Baldy Li observed that the dozen or so men and women in the procession all had white cloths tied around their heads and waists, and they wept as they walked by. The only person he recognized was Song Fanping, from whose shoulders he had once looked down at the whole world.