Wen Di was born in Songtai County. Geographically, Songtai is bordered by Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai to the east, with Jiuhua Mountain to the west. It is separated from the country’s most prosperous economic belt by only one river, yet it only shed its poverty-stricken county status five years ago.
Every year when returning home, Wen Di first took the high-speed train from Beijing to the provincial capital, then transferred to the subway to reach the bus station, followed by a long-distance bus ride to Songtai County. After that, he transferred to two local buses to reach the village entrance, and finally dragged his suitcase while walking home.
Although the journey was long, each time he reached the faded, reddish-brown gate and heard his grandparents’ excited voices, all his fatigue vanished.
“Aiya!” An elderly lady with a head full of silver hair came out, “Ah Bao[footnote]‘Ah Bao’ (阿宝) – Basically means ‘baby’ or ‘precious one.’ I’m not sure whether to use Baby or keep it Ah Bao[/footnote] is back!”
Wen Di grimaced. He was already twenty-six, yet his grandmother still couldn’t stop calling him by the name she used when he was a child. It was fine when it was just family at home, but every time guests came over, it was awkward to call him ‘Ah Bao’ when he was already a grown up man.
He carried his suitcase and hadn’t even entered the door when his grandma pulled him into a bear hug, ruffling his hair into a mess.
“Aiya, why have you lost weight again,” his grandma looked him over from head to toe, “Is the studying too hard?”
“It’s not hard,” Wen Di protested, “I’ve obviously gained weight; you always subtract three kilos from me each time.”
“Is it because the food in Beijing is too expensive that you can’t afford to eat?” Grandma completely ignored his denial and said, “You should spend money, don’t always think about sending money home…”
“The cafeteria’s twenty yuan meal fills me up; I really haven’t lost weight!”
After standing at the door chatting for a while, his grandma pulled him inside. The house in his hometown was a long, rectangular flat with two rows, each row partitioned into three rooms with wooden boards. In the front, the room on the left was where his uncle’s family lived, the right was where their family lived, and the middle was the dining area. In the back, the left side was the bathroom, the middle was the kitchen, and the right side was his grandparents’ bedroom.
He dragged his suitcase to his own room. The ten-square-meter space had two beds crammed in, a desk, a wardrobe, and his suitcase could only be kicked under the bed.
He hadn’t even unzipped his backpack when his grandma walked in with a bowl of chicken soup. A chicken leg bone stood straight up, with two poached eggs underneath. Wen Di’s head started sweating; he was allergic to the chicken soup served during the New Year.
“Your grandpa slaughtered it fresh this morning,” his grandma placed the bowl on the table, “The vegetable-fed kind, it tastes different from city chickens.”
Wen Di held the bowl, gnawing on the farm chicken leg. Grandma sat by the bed, staring at him intently.
“How did the vegetables sell this year?” Wen Di asked.
“I don’t know what’s going on, they were dirt cheap!” Grandma slapped her thigh and said, “Your grandpa and I hauled a whole cart to the county, and it only sold for thirty yuan! Vegetables in Beijing are expensive, right?”
When Wen Di didn’t go to school on holidays, he would occasionally go to the nearby fresh food market to buy vegetables. He thought for a moment and said, “In winter, green vegetables are about five yuan a jin.”[footnote]approximately 0.5kg[/footnote]
His grandma’s eyes widened like brass bells: “That’s too much!” Then she started to ramble, “The peppers in the shed can’t be sold, and I don’t know how many have rotted in the market. I made two jars of chili sauce, take some with you when you leave…”
Wen Di nodded while tearing off the chicken leg meat. There wasn’t much he could talk about with his grandparents, so every time he came back, aside from vegetable prices, it was just the three daily meals.
After lamenting for a while about the extravagance of the big city, his grandma glanced at the clock in the dining room and muttered about why Wen Di’s parents weren’t back yet, saying they had planned to close the stall early today.
Wen Di’s parents used to sell breakfast in the county with a mobile cart. After saving money for over ten years, they finally managed to buy a commercial space in the county when Wen Di was in high school. The space was about twenty square meters, with two floors divided by a partition. They sold breakfast on the bottom floor and used the upper floor as a bedroom. Except for holidays, they usually slept at the shop.
“How’s business recently?” Wen Di asked.
Grandma shook her head, waving her hands: “Not good, the baked sesame cakes aren’t selling out…”
Then she started rambling again, saying that Wen Di’s grandaunt’s house had been demolished, and they got several apartments and even a compensation of over a hundred thousand yuan! But there had been no movement in their village. In order to increase the demolition area, the neighbors built up their yards yet there was still no news.
Wen Di didn’t know what to say. The location of this village was too bad; it was not worth demolishing at all.
As they continued chatting about family matters, suddenly, the front door was banged on loudly. When they opened it, it was Grandma Zhang from next door, carrying a basket of fresh eggs, covered with a layer of daikon radishes, saying that they were just dug from the field. Grandma brought out two small buckets of chili sauce—the buckets were from a family-sized pack of Xu Fu Ji candy[footnote]basically bucket like this?
[/footnote]—and handed them over. Grandma Zhang glanced at Wen Di, and with an ‘Aiyo’, she patted his arm: “Is this your eldest grandson, the one who got into that university in Beijing?”
Grandma straightened her back and instantly appeared several centimeters taller than usual: “Yes! He’s even doing his PhD now!”
“That’s amazing,” Grandma Zhang said, “He’ll be making big money in the future. You’re really blessed!”
Grandma beamed with pride.
“The one in our family didn’t do well in school. When he gets back, we’ll have him come over and learn from your grandson,” Grandma Zhang sighed, “Your family’s feng shui is great! No one in the village has ever gotten into such a good university. When he becomes a high-ranking official in the future, you’ll have to treat us to a meal and let us share in the blessings..”
Wen Di’s heart trembled when he heard this. What’s the point of making a lot of money and becoming a high-ranking official? —he only earned just 5,400 yuan a month, and when he eventually got into academia, it would still be low pay and high pressure. Grandma, this kind of fortune is not what I want!
After glancing at him with admiration, Grandma Zhang left, and Aunt Li came again. Aunt Li’s family had dug a fish pond and brought over a basket of crucian carp.
Another two buckets of chili sauce were gone.
“Aiya, a top student from T University!” said Aunt Li, who had been to school for two years and had a richer vocabulary. “You’ll be an industry elite in the future, making millions annually!”
In the middle of winter, Wen Di started to wipe his sweat.
After chatting with Zhang, and being praised by Li, Wen Di was now covered in labels like ‘top student’ and ‘wealthy person’. In Wudaokou, you could throw a stone and hit three students from the top two universities. But Songtai had not yet felt the winds of academic inflation, and the older generation still treasured him like a rare gem.
Wen Di felt deep regret. If he had known earlier, he would not have allowed his family to set off firecrackers at the entrance of the village when he was admitted to T University. Now, wherever he went, he didn’t want to mention that he was from T University, fearing it would bring praise, expectations, and—worst of all—assumptions. Assumptions were the scariest.
There was both meat and vegetables for dinner. Grandma was in the kitchen, lighting the stove and frying the fish until it smelled delicious. Wen Di squatted in the yard, tossing vegetable leaves to the chickens in the bamboo pen. He watched them stretch their necks, strutting around proudly.
The phone was vibrating in his trouser pocket. Wen Di took it out and saw the new message notification on the top. After hesitating for a while, he finally clicked it.
Bian Cheng had sent him a photo. When he opened it, it was a picture of the Spring Festival couplets.
Dead Neighbor: [I put it up.]
Wen Di squatted for a long time and suddenly felt his legs go numb. He stood up, kicked his legs a bit, and took a walk around the chicken pen with the rooster for a while, and then replied in a cool tone: [Oh.]
The ‘The other party is typing…’ indicator appeared for a long time, and even though he couldn’t see the person, Wen Di could imagine Bian Cheng’s conflicted expression. A few seconds later, the dead neighbor slowly typed out: [I also got you a New Year’s gift.]
Wen Di remained aloof: [Oh.]
Dead Neighbor: [Give me an address and I’ll send it to you.]
so that’s what this was all about: [Wait for me to go back after the New Year then give it to me.]
Dead Neighbor: [Then it won’t be a New Year’s gift.]
What’s with this obsession over definitions? Obsessive compulsive disorder!
Dead Neighbor: [You’re definitely going to like it.]
Wen Di bit his fingernail. Could this zero-emotional-intelligence person really know what he’d like? [What is it?]
Dead Neighbor: [You’ll know when you see it. Just give me your address.]
Curiosity is human nature. Wen Di struggled for a moment, then sent the address of his parents’ shop. There wasn’t a delivery point in the village, but across from his parents’ breakfast shop, there was one, and Wen Di usually had packages sent there.
After sending the address, Wen Di went back to admire the Spring Festival couplets photo. He thought to himself, this guy really had the guts to put it up. After staring at it for a while, he suddenly noticed something strange—the horizontal scroll looked a bit off.
Wen Di, puzzled, sent another message: [Why are there so many flowers and plants on the horizontal scroll?]
Dead Neighbor: [Oh, Jiang Yu thought the characters looked too ugly, so he added a decorative border.]
Wen Di was silent for a moment, then exited WeChat, regretting asking the question just now. He shouldn’t have taken the initiative to talk to him, and he definitely shouldn’t have given his address! What good things could this guy give him? It’d be a miracle if he didn’t drive Wen Di crazy.
He stared at his phone amid the clucking of hens, gritting his teeth, when he suddenly saw a new message pop up in his QQ group. It was from his junior high school class group.
[Is everyone coming back for the Spring Festival? It’s the tenth anniversary of graduation! Why don’t we get together?]
[Gather, gather, gather. If you can come, give a shout.]
The group filled with a chorus of the shout. Wen Di studied in the No. 1 Middle School in the county. It was the best middle school in the area, but the rate of admission to key universities was very low. After graduation, most of the classmates stayed in the local area, so it was convenient to get together.
Probably noticing he was online, one of his friends from middle school @ mentioned him: [God Wen, are you coming?]
Wen Di smiled wryly at the nickname from the past: [I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go]
The group immediately erupted with:
[Whoa, the big shot is here, everyone make way.]
[Open the door for the big shot.]
[Mop the floor for the big shot.]
[Light a cigarette for the big shot.]
Wen Di, feeling embarrassed, ignored the ‘big shot’ title and asked: [Where are we meeting?]
Someone suggested: [There’s a new hot pot place on Renmin Road, right next to RT-Mart. I’ve tried it, not bad.]
Everyone agreed, so the location was set. They argued about the time for a while, and finally decided on the night of New Year’s Eve.
Since high school, Wen Di had become disconnected from Songtai, only returning during the New Year. The friends he used to hang out with had also gone years without seeing each other.
It had been ten years, and he was curious about how everyone had turned out. But with that curiosity came a bit of worry—what if they were all doing better than him?
The more he thought about it, the more he felt that it was very likely. He had looked at WeChat Moment before and saw a classmate who graduated from a second-tier university with a degree in electronics. He was now working as an engineer in the provincial capital with an annual salary close to 300,000 yuan. No matter how you looked at it, his future was brighter than his own.
He suddenly regretted it; he should have pretended not to see the group message or found some excuse not to go.
But he had already agreed.
What would they think when they realized that the so-called xueba who had once been admired and held in high regard, was now just getting by like everyone else?
Would embellishing his doctoral life make him feel better?
As he struggled to decide whether it would be easier to desert the battlefield or to tell a lie, he felt ashamed of the lingering vanity within himself.
Among his friends, Yu Jingyi probably understood his current mood the best—after graduating from T University, she had been hailed as a linguistics genius and got accepted into Cambridge. However, she had taken a leave of absence midway through and never returned, now working at a study abroad agency, teaching students who constantly criticized their teachers’ appearances. Wen Di knew that she was also spending the New Year in her hometown, so he opened WeChat and sent her a message: [The older I get, the darker my mind becomes.]
The other party quickly replied: [What do you mean?]
Wen Di: [When I read novels before, I always stood on the side of the protagonist. You know, they were just like us; they’re not from a rich family but incredibly hardworking and have great grades. They’d get into a top university—hey, basically all of them got into T University—and then either become top executives or start their own businesses, eventually reaching the pinnacle of life. I used to love these stories of overcoming adversity and not underestimating the youth in poverty. But now, it’s different. Now I hope they fail.]
The other side was silent for a moment before replying: [I get it.]
Wen Di smiled: [I don’t know whether to be glad or feel unlucky, but there are still so many people in my hometown who believe that’s true. They think getting into a good university means a bright future, and that I’m living the good life in the big city.]
After a few seconds, another message popped up: [Big cities are never a place to realize dreams.]
[The big city is a place to keep others from noticing you haven’t realized your dreams.]
T/N: Title is from The Merchant of Venice – Act 2, scene 7.
Btw, the physical book is here! You can check this weibo post
I’m gonna start looking for one because I love that there are standee and postcard that include everyone! This is the standee!
