Another two weeks passed. The next time He Shaotang came to the Meng home, he had a key threaded onto a cord in the pocket of his military trousers. He hung it directly around Meng Xiaobei’s neck, picked up Xiaobei’s rolled bedding, and carried it away.
People were simpler and more trusting in those days. Child abduction was not something people worried much about, and everyone trusted one another. Meng Xiaobei moved into an apartment in Hongmiao, only two stops away from his grandmother’s home.
Shaotang said the apartment was his.
Under the planned economy of the 1970s and 1980s, housing was allocated by the state according to factors such as a person’s seniority, age, and marital status. Young unmarried people generally did not receive apartments. Otherwise, a home had to be property left behind by an older generation; there were no other real avenues for obtaining one.
Xiaobei asked, “Godfather, are you getting married? Did the army give you an apartment?”
Shaotang explained, “No. My mother left it to me.”
It was another old 1950s apartment with high ceilings. The interior was simple and clean: one large wardrobe, one desk, and one bed.
For the next several years, until his third aunt married and Meng Xiaobei moved back into his grandmother’s home, he lived there. Every morning, he rode three stops on the trolleybus to school. After class, he returned to Grandma’s to eat and do his homework, then went back to Shaotang’s apartment at night to sleep. Later, things became even more convenient when Shaotang got him a bicycle. A twenty-eight-inch bicycle was too tall; even sitting on the saddle, Xiaobei’s feet could not reach the pedals. So he rode a twenty-six-inch women’s bicycle instead, racing through shortcuts to school every day and arriving in ten minutes.
Just so Meng Xiaobei could have a place of his own to sleep, He Shaotang made a special trip to the General Staff compound to talk to his uncle and insist on getting the key to the apartment back.
He Cheng sat across the desk from him and said, “You can live in your unit’s compound. Why do you have to come demanding the key to the Hongmiao apartment from me?”
Shaotang said, “I need it. My eldest nephew is going to live there.”
He Cheng was extremely shrewd, and his work had given him certain professional reflexes. “Who is this eldest nephew of yours? How come I didn’t know my nephew had a nephew? Bring me his file and photographs. Do I know this person?”
Shaotang frowned. “What are you doing, conducting a political screening? My nephew is my son.”
He Cheng was speechless.
Even with He Cheng’s meticulous and shrewd mind, it took him a while to untangle the family relationship Shaotang had just described. Who on earth was this person supposed to be?
He Cheng’s first reaction was, “Shaotang, you still don’t have a girlfriend, do you? Did you get involved with somebody while you were in that Qishan valley?… If you do have someone and her political background is reliable, you don’t need to hide it. I can settle it for you right now and issue you a letter of introduction.”
Shaotang shook his head irritably and frowned in denial. Why did every single person twist this in the same damn direction? Why did everybody assume Meng Xiaobei was some kid he had fucked into existence with a sweetheart in the valley?! Did the two of them really look that much alike?
He Cheng rubbed the cigarette butt around the ashtray. “Shaotang, here’s the problem… I already arranged for some of my people to live in that apartment. They come and go frequently. Putting a child in there would be inconvenient.”
Shaotang said, “How is it inconvenient? Did you take over both rooms? My son only needs one bed.”
He Cheng said, “It’s inconvenient. They’re very important people.”
Shaotang’s expression darkened. He showed his uncle absolutely no politeness. “Whose apartment is it? Didn’t my mother leave it to me? I was only away in Xigou for a few years. Now I’m back, and I’m keeping that place for when I get married. What exactly are you telling me—that the apartment changed owners while I was gone, or that some state office confiscated it?”
He Cheng immediately raised both hands in surrender. He was hardly trying to cheat his nephew out of one lousy apartment. Fine, take it, take it!
Shaotang got the key and immediately turned to leave.
He Cheng shook his head. His mother had spoiled him rotten!
Shaotang shrugged. A faintly shameless, childish expression appeared at the corner of his mouth, the tiny black mole beside his lip clearly visible. Even Meng Xiaobei had never seen him make that face. He Shaotang behaved like this only around his own elders. In the end, no matter how old a person became, standing before an older family member could still bring out the child in them, including the occasional childish tantrum.
Before Shaotang left, He Cheng asked meaningfully, “That child—is he really that important to you?”
Shaotang nodded. “Mm.”
They had grown so close that Xiaobei truly felt like family.
He Cheng said, “You spoil him that much?”
Shaotang said, “Yeah. I like him. Though I’ve spoiled him so badly he’s almost impossible now!”
Shaotang’s apartment had two rooms as well. Meng Xiaobei occupied the larger one, while over the years several young “uncles” in their twenties and thirties successively lived in the smaller room. They all had similarly ordinary-looking faces and wore the plain gray-blue uniforms of ordinary government-office clerks. They came and went in a hurry and were gentle and friendly toward Xiaobei, yet they never chatted much or revealed their identities. These uncles frequently traveled and were away for long stretches, locking their room whenever they left. Sometimes Meng Xiaobei became curious and secretly tried to pick the lock, but astonishingly, he could not get it open. Then he tried climbing from his own window toward the one next door, only to discover that their window was tightly shut and locked from inside as well. In the end, he had no choice but to give up.
Those were among the rare occasions in Young Master Xiaobei’s childhood when he tried to do something naughty and somehow failed!
Of course, after he grew older, his godfather vaguely revealed those uncles’ true identities. Supposedly they were all soldiers who never wore military uniforms and worked on the covert front, a group of “agent uncles” serving under his godfather’s uncle. No wonder foolish little Xiaobei had tried to pick their locks back then and failed!
But that came later.
＊
As for Meng Xiaobei’s schooling in Beijing, although he had effectively “immigrated” to the imperial capital, his household registration could not be transferred with him. That one household-registration system blocked the futures and prospects of countless capable people in those years, and Meng Jianmin’s family of four was no exception. When they had originally been collectively assigned from Beijing to the Qishan ordnance factory, the entire family’s household registration had been transferred to Shaanxi along with them. Meng Xiaobei therefore attended school in Beijing as a non-local transfer student.
Elio’s Notes: Hukou (户口) is China’s household-registration system, which ties a person to a registered locality and historically had major consequences for access to schooling, housing, employment, and other services. A 借读生 was a student permitted to attend a school outside their registered locality, usually subject to additional arrangements and fees.
He transferred into second grade at Balizhuang Primary School. His family paid eighty yuan every year in non-local attendance fees: fifty yuan to the school and thirty yuan to the district education bureau.
It began at eighty yuan, then rose sharply year after year. By the 1980s, the amount had already climbed into the hundreds.
At the time, many educated youths sent their children back to Beijing or Shanghai for schooling, so schools tried to control the number of non-local students they admitted. Eighty yuan was no small amount. Back in Xigou, Meng Jianmin scrimped and saved all year to put aside Xiaobei’s non-local attendance fees, tuition, and living expenses, then mailed the money to Beijing. When Shaotang found out, he said they would split the cost, half each.
The moment Xiaobei’s grandparents heard that, they refused. How could they allow such a thing? Xiaobei was the eldest grandson of their senior male line, and they had a responsibility to support him. No matter what, they could not let an outsider pay his school fees.
Shaotang told Grandma Meng, “If you treat me like an outsider, then I won’t come visit you anymore! I’d be terribly embarrassed walking into your home when I’m just some outsider.”
Grandma Meng adored the handsome, carefree Shaotang and immediately became anxious. “It isn’t easy saving your army allowance! Keep it for when you get married—buy a refrigerator, a sewing machine, and a big wardrobe!”
Shaotang grinned, showing his white teeth. “What wife? I haven’t fucking seen so much as her shadow yet. I eat and sleep at the unit every day and hardly have anywhere to spend my money. If I don’t spend it on Xiaobei, I’ll just spend it somewhere else!”
“Meng Jianmin is his biological father. I’m his godfather. I can’t let the kid call me Dad for nothing.”
“Besides, when Xiaobei grows up, makes something of himself, and gets rich, he can be filial to me and pay it all back. That way he won’t even be able to pretend he forgot about me!”
That was what Shaotang said at the time.
The regiment He Shaotang belonged to was transferred into Beijing, but instead of being assigned to one of the military region’s field units, it was reorganized into several newly formed guard companies responsible for important security duties inside the city. Their unit’s training and barracks compound was in Hujialou, and their regular duties involved guarding nearby municipal Party Committee offices. He Cheng said, “This way you’re close enough for me to keep an eye on you.”
Even though he was nearby, a soldier could not ask for leave every day just to go home and see a child. Meng Xiaobei generally saw his godfather about once a month. Sometimes Shaotang managed to come back for an afternoon to play with him, find out what had been going on in his head lately, or spend one night at the apartment.
Meng Xiaobei started school. Even as an outsider and non-local student, he needed no godfather hovering over him to protect him. He fit in perfectly well on his own.
From the first day he had ever walked through a school gate, he had never been an academically outstanding student. But school did not intimidate him either.
By then, Meng Xiaobei already showed the beginnings of the handsome man he would become. His face tapered to a narrow point, his arms and legs were slender without being weak, thin without looking frail, and the harder, more masculine lines of his body were starting to emerge. His long, narrow eyes, when half closed, had an appeal entirely different from the thick brows and large eyes favored by traditional standards of male beauty. And so Meng Xiaobei, arriving at school speaking Mandarin with a strong Shaanxi flavor, immediately became one of the more noticeable boys in his grade.
One football game with his classmates on the athletic field and a few occasions pooling coins at the school gate to buy ice pops were enough for him to become familiar with all the boys. At that age, boys cared mostly about playing and had little concept of regional cliques. If someone was fun, they liked him. Meng Xiaobei had always been popular among his peers.
“Meng Xiaobei, take that necklace off your neck! What do you think you’re wearing to school?!…”
Their homeroom teacher was a sharp-tongued middle-aged woman in her forties.
Meng Xiaobei lowered his head and felt the hard shell casing beneath his clothes. “It isn’t a necklace.”
The homeroom teacher said, “It’s tied to a red cord. If that isn’t a necklace, what is it? School rules prohibit jewelry.”
Meng Xiaobei’s eyes rolled. “It’s my protective talisman. It was consecrated at a temple… Wearing it brings me good luck.”
His protective brass shell casing remained tucked beneath his clothes year-round, resting directly against his skin. Around his neck he also wore the red scarf of the Young Pioneers, though his scarf was always crooked and never properly tied!
Elio’s Notes: The red scarf is the identifying symbol worn by members of the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth organization for schoolchildren. In the school discipline described here, having the scarf taken away serves as a public punishment and temporary loss of that badge of good standing.
That red scarf was constantly being put on, stripped off, and put back on again! Whenever he got into trouble and the teacher disciplined him, the routine was always the same: confiscate the red scarf, put his name on the little blackboard blacklist for everyone to see, write a thousand-character self-criticism, stand outside the classroom as punishment… Meng Xiaobei had personally sampled all seventy-two varieties of Chinese-style primary-school discipline. He knew the routine inside and out!
According to his homeroom teacher, Meng Xiaobei absolutely had hyperactivity disorder!
“Meng Xiaobei, what are you doing under your desk?”
“Meng Xiaobei, what little private meeting are you having with Sun Yuanyuan behind you? What are you two talking about?”
“Meng Xiaobei, were you the one who tied Wu Weili’s braid to her chair?!”
“What are all these things falling out of your desk and clattering all over the floor?!!!”
…
It would have been impossible for teachers to feel absolutely no prejudice or dislike toward transfer students from elsewhere.
“Why are students who come from other places so different from the local children? Why are you so wild, like some untamed horse?”
“Your parents aren’t in Beijing, are they? Just because your parents aren’t here, nobody disciplines you, so everything gets pushed onto the school. What kind of arrangement is that?”
“You can tell what kind of education a child gets at home simply by watching how he behaves at school. We teachers can see everything! Look at Sun Yuanyuan. Her father is an intellectual—a professor at Beijing Normal University! Meng Xiaobei, what does your father do? Why don’t you tell everybody?”
Meng Xiaobei said nothing. He lowered his head and stared at the waistband of his trousers, his expression half stubbornness and half complete indifference.
“Look at our class’s Meng Xiaobei and this mathematics score!… Thanks to these two transfer students, our class average is once again near the bottom of the entire grade! With those two here, their exam scores are like iron weights on a scale, dragging the whole class average straight down!”
The teacher said all of this from the front of the classroom, in front of every student, without the slightest consideration for a boy’s pride.
In that era—and even much later, in many schools and classrooms—teachers sometimes behaved as though underage students possessed no face or dignity that needed protecting, leaving adults free to make cutting remarks, mock them, and pass judgment on their families and private circumstances.
“You can talk about me all you want. Why are you talking about my dad? What did my dad do?!”
The joking expression abruptly vanished from Meng Xiaobei’s face as he looked at the teacher.
The homeroom teacher was already furious and had been tormented so thoroughly by this rotten child that her menopause seemed ready to arrive ahead of schedule. “Did I say anything wrong? You’re the most unruly child in this entire class!”
Whenever he was scolded, Meng Xiaobei coolly turned his face toward the window and stared at the athletic field beneath the blue sky and white clouds, resisting in silence, his thoughts seemingly somewhere in another world…
The homeroom teacher was driven nearly mad by him. Put Meng Xiaobei in a front seat and he would turn around to chat endlessly with everyone behind him and perform for the entire class. Put him in the back and he would play with the girls’ braids in front of him. He was close to practically every classmate, constantly entertaining everyone during lessons, and especially popular with the girls.
Eventually, the teacher had no choice but to move Meng Xiaobei’s desk beside the right side of the lectern, completely separate from every other student, with nobody in front, behind, left, or right within reach. His very own designated seat!
Receiving identical treatment was his childhood friend Shen Dawei, whose desk was placed on the left side of the lectern. With the two little disasters flanking the teacher, one on either side, the entire class jokingly called them Second Grade Class One’s “Heng-Ha Generals.”
Elio’s Notes: The Heng-Ha Generals (哼哈二将) are a famous pair of guardian figures in Chinese folk tradition, commonly depicted standing on opposite sides of an entrance. Xiaobei and Shen Dawei earn the nickname because their punishment desks flank the teacher’s lectern like the paired guardians.
The homeroom teacher turned around to write on the blackboard.
Meng Xiaobei seized the opportunity, peered around the lectern, and silently mouthed an order: “Shen Dawei! Give me the glue!”
A football suddenly flew in from the athletic field and sailed straight through the open classroom window!
Meng Xiaobei reacted instantly. He jumped up and neatly caught it. The teacher spun around with a cry of surprise just in time to see Meng Xiaobei toss the ball upward, kick it cleanly, and send it straight back out through the window. Cheers erupted from the athletic field below. “Thanks, upstairs!”
The homeroom teacher glared at him. “Did you ask permission?!”
The students below, however, were all looking admiringly and delightedly at the back of Meng Xiaobei’s head. They loved this kid who could make their teacher explode.
The homeroom teacher reached for her lesson notes. “Hey… my notes… why can’t I pick them up?”
“Who glued my lesson notes to the lectern?!”
“…”
“MENG XIAOBEI!!!!!!!”
“Bring your parents here tomorrow! If a parent doesn’t come, then don’t bother coming to school!”
The homeroom teacher had finally lost her temper.
Meng Xiaobei answered truthfully, “My dad and mom are both in Shaanxi. They can’t come.”
The homeroom teacher pointed her teaching pointer at him. “Then bring your grandparents! Who in your family can actually control you? Who exactly is responsible for you?!”
When Xiaobei returned to his grandmother’s home after school, he looked unusually subdued and said nothing about being told to bring a guardian. He was afraid Grandma would take the broom to him again.
That evening, when he returned to the Hongmiao apartment, somebody was home!
Meng Xiaobei put the key hanging around his neck into the lock. It turned only halfway before the door opened. His mood instantly soared. He shot inside, threw every depressing thought and annoyance out of his mind for the moment, flung down his schoolbag, and launched himself straight into his godfather’s arms…
“Godfather!!!… Mm… Shaotang…”
Every time they saw each other now, there was an urgency and excitement to the reunion that had not existed when they could cling to each other every day. Finally seeing each other again felt like being reunited with family. To Meng Xiaobei, even the fabric of Shaotang’s uniform jacket smelled wonderful—the heavy scent of wool mixed with Shaotang’s own smell. Xiaobei buried his nose in it and could not get enough. It was unmistakably the scent of those happy days from before…
And Meng Xiaobei was slowly growing up.
Boys shot up quickly. If you saw one every day, you hardly noticed. Leave for two months and the difference became obvious.
He Shaotang pulled the head out of his arms and inspected him. “Rotten kid, what happened to your hair? You’ve got yourself a side part now?”
“You got taller again? When you first arrived, you didn’t even need a ticket on the trolleybus… now the top of your head already reaches my chest.”
Meng Xiaobei rolled his eyes upward and smiled handsomely. The times were gradually opening up. Before, everybody had worn the same old-fashioned educated-youth haircut or military crew cut, while a side part was dismissed as the hairstyle of a traitor from old movies. Meng Xiaobei had already begun wearing his hair in a neat four-six side part, letting the fringe hide the scar on his forehead. With his thin, lively eyes, he grew cooler-looking by the year. In later language, he was beginning to have the air of a real heartbreaker at school.
His godfather had brought back a thermos container. Astonishingly, it contained ice cream, though half of it had already melted into soup.
Shaotang said, “I brought it especially for you from our unit. Beibingyang ice cream. Hurry up and eat it. If you wait any longer, it’ll completely melt away!”
The two shared one spoon, heads pressed close together as they drank melted ice-cream soup. It was another small, peaceful kind of happiness.
Meng Xiaobei had not told his grandfather, grandmother, third aunt, or youngest aunt about the teacher demanding a guardian. Ultimately, he simply was not close enough to them.
No matter how indifferent he pretended to be, a boy still had pride, and Meng Xiaobei was no exception. Being criticized at school was one thing, but having his father dragged into the humiliation with him made him furious. He refused to accept it. The word “Dad” occupied an extraordinarily important place in a boy’s heart. He would not tolerate anyone looking down on or mocking his father; it hurt him. Meng Xiaobei had entered an awkward stage of emotional growth, and the more conflicted he felt inside, the more determined he became to rebel against every rule the school tried to impose.
That night, Shaotang crawled facedown beneath the quilt, supporting his lower back with one hand. After stretching there for a moment, he crooked a finger. “Son, my back hurts. Give it a rub.”
Meng Xiaobei immediately scrambled over with suspiciously eager enthusiasm, climbed astride Shaotang’s thighs, and began rubbing his shoulders and pounding his backside. His expression was so blatantly ingratiating that anyone could tell he was up to something.
Shaotang tugged his waistband slightly lower, exposing a strip of his lower back and its lean, firm muscle. Meng Xiaobei lifted his godfather’s fitted undershirt and began kneading from the hollow beside the spine down toward the tailbone. He had no technique and little strength, yet somehow his godfather still found it comfortable and enjoyable.
Meng Xiaobei cautiously tested the waters. “Godfather… feels good, right?”
Shaotang narrowed his eyes. “Mm…”
Meng Xiaobei said, “I’m really good to you, aren’t I? We’re really close, right?”
A satisfied smile curved Shaotang’s mouth. “Of course. Good son.”
Meng Xiaobei said, “You’re my dad too. You’re wise and mighty, the number-one hero of Xigou!”
Shaotang said, “…Heh.”
Meng Xiaobei said, “Greetings, Dad! Greetings, Commander!!!”
This time Shaotang turned his handsome face sideways, narrowed his eyes, and gave a cold snort. “You want something.”
Meng Xiaobei grinned. “Dad, even when you show your authority, you’re so handsome!”
Shaotang said, “I can tell what kind of shit you’re about to pull the moment you stick your ass out. Out with it!”
Meng Xiaobei rattled everything off in one breath. “Dad, could you go to school tomorrow for a little parent-teacher meeting because our homeroom teacher would like to invite you to her office for a cup of tea and a chat?”
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