Inside the bus, a variety of sounds emanated and subsided: agitated murmuring, indignant calling. Somebody shrewd suggested loudly, ‘We should report a bus like this, and make the company give us half our money back!’ Other passengers excitedly echoed this sentiment, but then a more resigned voice spoke up mildly, ‘This is Maqiao, not Beijing or Guangzhou, you know. If you report something like this, they’ll think you’re mental.’
Then someone in the know about certain particulars of the long-distance bus company’s ownership said, ‘If you want to report it, then you should go straight to Fatcat: that’s Huang Jian. Didn’t you know that he’s the contractor on this line?’
Amidst the general uproar, the bus doors began to clatter. They carried on clattering for quite a while, then suddenly they threw themselves half open. Somebody nearly tumbled down, but it was a young man with good reflexes and he managed to catch the railing, though his luggage got jammed in the crack. The young man had a quick temper and he began to swear. ‘Motherf***er! Why the hell did you only open the door halfway? My bag’s stuck now; hurry up and open it!’ But the driver was in a foul mood himself and retorted, ‘Grandmotherf***er! You think it was easy to get the door open this far? This old dinosaur should have been sold for scrap ages ago. It’s no use swearing at me. If you’re such a bigshot, why don’t you give Fatcat’s old mum a screw?’ The passengers were all anxious to get off the bus, and those at the back didn’t have time to join in the recriminations or bother to help the young man out. They lifted their legs one by one to step over the obstructive duffel bag, pushing violently at one another to squeeze through the narrow space offered by the half-open door.
The station’s PA system operator had wandered off, so the loudspeakers didn’t announce the arrival of the bus. Instead, the gay melody of March Of The Athletes poured out of it. The eagle-eyed members of the crowd waiting for the bus’s arrival spotted the commotion and said to each other, ‘I bet that’s the bus, but how come it’s stopped by Memorial Arch?’ They became restless, and some of them strode quickly towards the bus.
‘You’re late!’ they said, and those disembarking said, ‘Well, yeah, and no wonder. The bus is no good, the roads are no good and they couldn’t even get the door open! It would have been a miracle if we weren’t late!’
It was already the evening of the Little New Year,6 and everyone who was coming home for the holidays had done so already. Since Bao Qing refused to join in the rush for the exit, he was the last one off the bus. He carried his suitcase to the bus doors, and outside he glimpsed his primary school classmate Li Renzheng in wellingtons, gripping a long brush in his left hand and hauling a rubber hose with his right. Bao Qing quickly turned his face away and, swivelling his body sideways to fit through the door, stepped off the bus.
Bao Qing was a classic example of what people in Maqiao meant when they spat out the word ‘intellectual’. Intellectuals lacked warmth. Rather than exchanging conventional greetings, they often made the cowardly choice of pretending not to have seen you. This is precisely what Bao Qing did now. Like a thief, he crept around the bus and started walking west. Immediately, Renzheng’s voice called after him, ‘Bao Qing! Bao Qing! You’re back?’ Bao Qing couldn’t very well continue to feign deafness and so, much against his will, he turned around to face Renzheng.
Uncharacteristically, Renzheng was sporting a red baseball cap, and above the brim was an eye-catching line of white letters: ‘Singapore — Malaysia — Thailand. Eight-Day Tour’. Bao Qing chuckled, and asked, ‘What are you wearing that cap for? I didn’t even recognize you. Have you been travelling abroad?’
Renzheng stretched his hand up to touch his hat, and said, ‘I should be so lucky. No, someone gave it to me. My hair is, well, I’ll tell you later.’
Bao Qing did not try to leave, as he could tell from Renzheng’s expression that there was something more he wanted to say. He had assumed it was going to be an explanation about his hair, but this turned out to be quite wrong. Instead, raising his voice, Renzheng suddenly said, ‘Fatcat is inviting you to have a drink with him. He’s told me many times to let him know if you came back, because he wants to treat you to a drink.’
Bao Qing, said, ‘Who? Fatcat? You mean Huang Jian?’ Renzheng was now spraying water from the hose onto the glass of the bus’s rear windows, and said, ‘Of course, Fatcat. Don’t you remember Fatcat?’
Bao Qing was speechless for a while, and in the end he murmured, ‘How could I forget him? A drink, then. I suppose.’
So it was that Bao Qing returned from his distant Beijing home to celebrate the New Year. Going home was just as much trouble as not going home. For Bao Qing, the tradition of returning home for the New Year had become a ceremonial burden. A few years ago, when his mother had still been hale and hearty, she had come to the station to wait for him. It seemed a cruel ordeal to put her through, so he had withheld the exact date of his return from her. Even so, she had waited at the station for two days before Little New Year, a puny, emaciated form, standing in the wind underneath the archway. It made Bao Qing sick at heart to think about it, but he couldn’t refuse to come home, and so his visits became pilgrimages of filial piety. Only the thought of his mother made him return to Maqiao; and since his wife was sure he had no ulterior motives, she had no objections. Thus every New Year, he and his wife set off in different directions. His mother, too, understood the situation, so she hadn’t complained about the absence of her daughter-in-law in recent years. She spoke candidly on the phone: ‘I won’t live much longer. You have a few more years of filial responsibility before you, and after that you can go with your wife to spend New Year in Guangdong. It’s lively there at New Year, and the weather is warm. Just one sweater is warm enough.’
As he walked over the New People’s Bridge, Bao Qing saw his brother-in-law coming towards him from the direction of the meat-processing factory, pushing his bike. He was running and Bao Qing’s elder sister trailed behind him. Evidently, they were late and were now hurrying to make up for it. He could see that his sister was telling her husband off. She was still wearing her white uniform. Bao Qing disliked it when his family made a big fuss over him, so he knitted his eyebrows and stood motionless on the bridge. Just then, a woman in a purple leather overcoat was leading her dog up onto the bridge. At first, Bao Qing didn’t notice her, but then the short, curly-haired dog began sniffing at his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers. Simultaneously, he picked up the same perfume which in summer suffused Beijing’s big department stores, and when he turned his head, Bao Qing found himself looking at Cheng Shaohong. She had assumed a flirtatious pose and gave him a sidelong look. Though he recognized her straight away, he couldn’t recall her name. The boys in town had all known her as Morning Glory. Shaohong took the initiative and pulled the dog towards her and then up onto its hind legs, commanding the curly-haired pooch, ‘Jubilee, bow to the professor.’
Even after all these many years, Bao Qing was flustered to see Shaohong. As a matter of habit, he extended his hand, but seeing that she was not going to take it, he took it back and stared at a button on her overcoat. He said, ‘It’s been many years since we last saw one another. Are you still at the fruit company?’