The enormous hornet’s nest that had erupted into buzzing panic and frantic shouting earlier now discovered that no one had actually been killed or seriously injured. The villagers’ previous fear and unease vanished almost instantly. Sleeves were rolled up and whatever tools lay at hand were seized as the crowd plunged back into confrontation, looking as though they would not be satisfied unless blood was spilled three feet across the road leading out of Wuping Village in Huima Town today.
Yu Zhonghai stood unsteadily atop what remained of his half-collapsed courtyard wall, holding the red flag that still tottered above it. Against the dim sky, its color looked like dripping blood. He wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, guilty that he had nearly dragged his old neighbor into disaster, yet deep inside he also felt that he had been driven into a corner with nowhere left to retreat. For villagers who had spent their entire lives facing the yellow earth, a small two-story house like this represented practically everything they owned.
Mr. Yan climbed onto the wall in brotherly solidarity and crouched beside Uncle Yu’s feet, patiently talking him down for quite some time.
“I’m sorry about your mother.” Yu Zhonghai complained quietly to Yan Xiaodao. “The county only came to discuss compensation a month ago. A bureau director surnamed Tan came with them and said he was in charge of the development project. Talked up every kind of wonderful benefit until flowers practically bloomed from his mouth. Turns out it was all bullshit meant to fool uneducated people like us who can’t understand those documents! We haven’t seen a single cent, and they’re already cutting down trees and tearing down houses…”
Yan Xiaodao hurriedly reassured him. “Uncle, don’t worry. I’ve never even heard of this person in charge. I’ll find him later and have a talk.”
Uncle Yu had watched Yan Xiaodao grow up, and Yan in turn had watched Uncle Yu’s daughters grow up. As a teenager, he too had climbed these walls and thrown pebbles to flirt and fool around with the girls. Looking over nothing but broken walls and ruins now left him deeply upset.
He genuinely sympathized with Yu Zhonghai’s family. After all, Yan Xiaodao had substantial savings and property of his own. Whichever direction his life went from here, he had a secure retreat waiting somewhere. Keeping a little house in his hometown had been almost like keeping a private farmhouse retreat where he could occasionally vacation, enjoy the scenery, and forget his worries. Now that the old house in Huima Town had been demolished, he could simply turn around and move his adoptive mother into a luxurious villa in the city. If Yan and his mother went around lamenting how tragic and unlucky they were, it would sound embarrassingly insincere.
Mrs. Yan had been extraordinarily lucky. One moment of kindness years ago had brought her a lifetime of good fortune, leaving her with a son like Yan Xiaodao to rely on, as solid as stone.
Uncle Yu’s family had no sons, only two daughters. One was married in the neighboring county and rarely came home, while the younger one was still studying in the county seat.
Yu Zhonghai had always been particularly fond of Yan Xiaodao. In private, he had even fantasized about Xiaodao becoming his son-in-law and marrying his eldest daughter, who was around the same age. His daughter would only have to walk a hundred meters from her parents’ home to her husband’s, and the son-in-law could occasionally come over to help build something or handle heavy work. What a wonderful arrangement that would have been. Unfortunately, Yan Xiaodao’s identity had changed overnight. He became the godson of a wealthy boss and could no longer be compared with the lonely little stray who had once been taken into the village with nothing to his name. Uncle Yu’s beautiful dream died on the spot.
Without even one strong young man in the family, people assumed they deserved to be looked down on and humiliated, unable even to beat the local bullies in a fight. That was precisely why people could not be pushed completely into desperation. Once a group of penniless men with bare feet had almost nothing left to lose and no one left to rely on, brute strength and courage became the only things they possessed.
……
Yan Xiaodao finished patiently calming Uncle Yu. The moment he turned away, however, a layer of dark fury suddenly settled across his face. His house had still been demolished. He had swallowed an enormous loss, and this matter was nowhere near finished.
Yan Xiaodao strode past the two groups still shoving and grappling with each other and zeroed in on the shifty excavator operator hiding behind one of the machine’s wheels. He grabbed the man and slammed him against the rear tire, then lifted one leg to block his escape. “Tell me the truth and I won’t skin you alive today. Who the fuck ordered you to tear down my family’s house?!”
When Mr. Yan turned frightening, the blood vessels jumping in his eyes were intimidating enough that he did not even need to draw a blade. The man he was threatening promptly wet himself.
The excavator operator was merely one hired laborer among the demolition crew. He clumsily dodged a furious kick from Kuanzi. Ordinary people in poor, remote places were still a long way from the old ideal that only when the granaries were full would people learn propriety. They had spent too long being trampled and humiliated, accustomed to lives treated like weeds, until they could become frighteningly careless not only with other people’s lives but even with their own. These workers too were simply following orders, struggling for one bowl of rice in the cracks at the bottom of a harsh society, fighting over and sucking up whatever scraps of benefit remained after layer upon layer had skimmed off everything above them. Words like dignity, conscience, and personal integrity had long since become luxuries.
Elio’s Notes: “When the granaries are full, people know propriety” is a classical Chinese saying expressing the idea that basic material security comes before social refinement or moral expectations.
The driver stammered, “W-we demolished the wrong one.”
Yan Xiaodao froze. “The wrong one?”
The driver had lost all his earlier recklessness. One look at Mr. Yan’s clothes, the men behind him, and the local authority he plainly carried was enough to tell him he had angered someone dangerous. “W-we really demolished the wrong one! At first they told me to knock down Courtyard No. 18. After I’d already flattened your house, they suddenly told me it was supposed to be No. 19, not No. 18! I-I swear, this wasn’t my decision. I don’t know anything…”
Blood surged straight into Yan Xiaodao’s head. “You fucking demolished the wrong house?!”
He stared at the trembling lackey and lowered his voice. “Who’s the boss behind this? Who ordered the demolition?”
The driver shook his head miserably. “I don’t know. I-I was just hired by the demolition crew…”
……
When Yan Xiaodao finally strode back out of the crowd, one sweep of his arm carried all the authority of a leader, or at the very least the boss of a gang. “Enough. Forget that pile of broken bricks for now. We’re leaving. Everyone get out of here.”
Fuck. Demolished the wrong house?
Yan Xiaodao did not believe those words for a second. Something else was behind this. If somebody really had been crushed to death today and blood had soaked the village entrance, the people ultimately sitting in police detention and bearing criminal responsibility would be these clueless little fish and shrimp. The world had never lacked petty men willing to commit evil for a miserable handful of money. Peeling the shells off these tiny shrimp would accomplish nothing. There was no meat underneath.
He would settle today’s matter separately, but Huima Town was absolutely not safe enough to remain in right now. The demolished house conveniently gave him an excuse to move his adoptive mother into his residence in Linwan. Only by keeping the people closest to him within reach could he feel secure.
Mrs. Yan still could not bear to leave. Her thoughts remained trapped inside the clean, bright home she had spent so many years tending. “We still have so many things in the house. We can’t just abandon everything! The clothes you wore when you were little, and all those old photographs of you…”
“Mom…” Yan Xiaodao could hardly bear listening.
Quick-witted Mr. Ling smoothly inserted himself into the conversation. “Mr. Yan himself is standing right here. From now on you can see the real person every day. Why would you still need photographs?”
Mrs. Yan thought about it and decided this made sense. Then she remembered something else. “And all those things I made…”
For the rest of the way, Mrs. Yan lamented the hand-embroidered and handwoven pillow towels, quilt covers, tablecloths, sofa covers, television covers, storage-chest covers, lampshades, electric-fan covers, radiator covers, range-hood covers…
Yan Xiaodao’s head began to hurt from the endless parade of covers.
He turned and signaled Fengfeng with his eyes. “Go, go. Take two men back into the ruins and dig around. Find a few things that are still intact so Mom has something to remember the place by. Leave all the other junk. We don’t need it.”
Mrs. Yan still had one worry buried in her heart. She did not dare ask her son and instead seemed to trust Ling He even more. Quietly, she asked him, “That godfather of his… he doesn’t live with Xiaodao?”
Ling He shook his head and smiled frankly. “Don’t worry. They don’t live together. Otherwise I wouldn’t dare show my face, and I certainly wouldn’t have dared get my legs healed!”
……
The old locust tree at the village entrance silently watched the unexpected farce unfold, while also observing the city-wall foxes and shrine rats hiding among the cracks in the earth and rubble with malicious intentions. Only the tree seemed to know everything, and it said nothing.
Elio’s Notes: “City-wall foxes and shrine rats” is an old idiom for corrupt or wicked people who are difficult to remove because they shelter behind powerful institutions or protectors.
Beneath the locust tree, several men sat inside a vehicle watching the shocking upheaval. They mocked the villagers scrambling desperately through the ruins, treating those humble lives like ants beneath their shoes. Ironically, they themselves were little more than lowborn hounds and claws serving others, incapable of establishing anything on their own yet exceptionally skilled at helping a tiger do evil.
Yan Xiaodao’s sudden appearance had thrown the group into whispered astonishment. The man they obeyed sat in the boss’s seat of a large van, wearing an unbearably gaudy plaid suit, an enormous gold chain around his neck weighing roughly a hundred and fifty grams, and smoking an expensive cigar.
The suit radiated the aura of a small-town tycoon. The weight and style of the gold chain looked better suited to grave goods than to anything a living person would willingly wear.
Lackey A whispered in shock, “Yan Xiao can still run a hundred-meter sprint like that. Does he look fucking crippled to you?”
The man with the giant gold chain cursed, “There’s nothing wrong with Yan Xiao’s feet! Who the fuck falsely reported that both his feet had been hacked apart and he was permanently crippled? He’s walking perfectly fine. Worthless idiots!”
Lackey B was already losing his appetite for battle. “Boss Bin, maybe we got something wrong. We should probably leave it today. Yan Xiao is difficult to deal with. We can’t beat him.”
“What’s so impressive about Yan Xiao? It’s not like I haven’t dealt with him before.” The gold-chained man sneered arrogantly. “Whatever. His family home has already been flattened. Consider it a warning.”
Lackey A reminded him, “Boss Bin, should we report upward? That ‘long-haired one’ who ran into the ruins to save somebody looks a lot like the big fish they’ve been searching for. He slipped away back then and disappeared, but now he’s finally surfaced…”
The big gold-chained man wore sunglasses over a coarse, aggressive face. He seemed to have shaved his head recently, dark stubble showing across his scalp, and carried the jianghu swagger of somebody who feared neither heaven nor earth, gods nor Buddhas. How much actual ability he possessed remained unknown. His posture alone was certainly impressive.
……
Over the rest of the day, Yan Xiaodao gradually tasted the strange logic of it all and realized that having his family home inexplicably demolished did contain the flavor of a blessing in disguise. For one thing, his adoptive mother had finally been forced, however reluctantly, to agree to move into his villa in Linwan’s New District. For another, once their two groups merged and drove toward the bay together, all the previous accusations and hostile complaints mysteriously disappeared. The younger men around him had all gone quiet, heads lowered, banners furled. Not one dared throw more dirty water at Mr. Ling.
Judging from those guilty, downcast expressions, every bucket of dirty water they had thrown before would have to be swallowed back tonight.
Yan Xiaodao figured that even the perpetually calculating Mr. Ling probably was not capable of predicting the precise force and angle with which an excavator’s giant steel claw would come crashing down.
For a man who carried enormous plans in his heart and calculated everything meticulously to nevertheless risk his own body without calculation at all, allowing genuine emotion to burst through just once, was extraordinarily moving.
Mr. Yan had predicted in advance that after disappearing from home for months, the moment he stepped across his own threshold he would receive an enthusiastic baptism of saliva.
Reality proved even more intense than his imagination. The instant the courtyard gate opened, two enormous gray-and-white beasts charged from the house in perfect formation and launched themselves directly into his arms. The impact sent a familiar ache through Yan Xiaodao’s old rib injuries. These aging bones truly could not endure much more.
The two broad-backed “beloved concubines” were promptly intercepted by the considerate Mr. Ling. Lord Bear and Sanniang, reunited with the beautiful young man they practically worshiped as a deity, were overcome with joy. They wrapped themselves around Ling He’s legs, rolling and bouncing while their barking sounded suspiciously like elaborate demands for affection: “Meat buns, woof woof~~~ Beef strips, woof woof~~~ Cookies, woof woof~~~ Belly rubs, woof woof~~~”
If dogs could cry and blow their noses, Lord Bear and Sanniang would probably have produced several shining trails of tears into the wind now that their people had finally returned home. At least these two creatures had preserved perfectly innocent loyalty. No grudges, no misunderstandings. Their intimacy with Ling He remained exactly as before, which was wonderfully reassuring.
Old Master Yan rubbed his fragile ribs and mocked himself. “Why the hell didn’t I raise two corgis or Chihuahuas instead?”
Ling He laughed, radiant and handsome, then bent down to rub noses affectionately with Lord Bear and his wife. “Your old master has changed his heart and doesn’t want you anymore. Follow me from now on. I’ll raise you…”
The Yan villa had never been this lively. Months of resentment and emptiness vanished at once. Anyone still giving somebody else a hostile face now would simply be tactless. Yan Xiaodao abruptly realized that the two large sectional sofas facing each other in his living room were not enough to seat everyone. Each group took one sofa, leaving many men forced to pile together on the floor. Apparently he had bought too small a house. It could no longer contain this flourishing, overpopulated extended family.
Ling He had never seen anything like it either. At first, he simply stood silently near the entryway and watched for a long time without taking another step inside.
His eyes were not accustomed to this noisy, prosperous portrait of ordinary family life, overflowing with the smoke and fire of human existence. Ling He had plenty of experience dealing with narrow, dark lives and had always been full of rebellious instincts and the urge to fight. But stepping suddenly into a broad, bright human world filled with warmth left him completely unfamiliar with how to behave.
Entering Xiaodao’s home this time felt worlds apart from the last, when he had hidden malicious intentions while depending on someone else’s hospitality.
Also, the Yan villa’s decor was unbearably vulgar and tasteless. Of course a pack of uncultured rough men would decorate like this. Why was nothing gray or white? Warm colors flooded both floors of the house. Even the air itself felt warm, forcing a cold-blooded creature like Ling He to urgently adjust the temperature of the blood flowing through his veins before he could endure the heat spreading across his skin.
Captain Mao immediately turned guest into host and began organizing both groups into card games. Everyone sat cross-legged in a harmonious circle between the sofas.
Ling He finally stepped elegantly into the living room, shedding dry yellow dirt with every movement and leaving a perfectly visible trail of sand behind him. He forced himself through the forest of people standing around and gestured to Xiaodao. “I’m filthy. I’m going upstairs to shower.”
Mrs. Yan’s affectionate gaze followed Mr. Ling and the crumbs of earth falling everywhere behind him. He looked as though he had just crawled directly out of Pit No. 1 of the Terracotta Army. Mrs. Yan could not bear it and immediately started after him. “Child, I’ll help you wash up.”
Yan Xiaodao promptly pulled his mother back.
Then he sent a certain person a look: Wait for me. I’ll wash you.
A subtle expression appeared at the corner of Ling He’s mouth. He ignored Yan entirely and headed upstairs with effortless elegance, glancing back once with a particularly beautiful smile before walking familiarly toward the upstairs bathroom.
Yan Xiaodao lowered his head and rubbed the tip of his nose, ulterior motives blooming in his heart. He led Mrs. Yan into the kitchen and began “assigning” her work. “Mom, don’t bother with everything else. There are too many people here, so don’t cook for them! I’ll send Fengfeng and Kuanzi to buy takeout. You just…”
Hardworking, capable Mrs. Yan could never sit idle. She answered sincerely, “Having everybody eat takeout in your own home doesn’t seem right, does it?”
Yan Xiaodao raised one finger and pointed upstairs. “Mom, that handsome boy upstairs whom you especially like… he’s fond of candied hawthorn.”
The important intelligence delighted Mrs. Yan immediately, her fine brows lifting. “He likes candied hawthorn?”
Yan Xiaodao rarely looked this ingratiating and guilty in front of his mother. Embarrassed, he admitted, “I don’t really know how to make it.”
“What can you make?” Mrs. Yan understood perfectly. “Fine, I know. It’s only candied hawthorn.”
“Don’t worry about all those rough bastards first.” Yan Xiaodao knew perfectly well that selfish motives had corrupted him. He massaged his mother’s arms and shoulders with extraordinary attentiveness, nearly dropping down to knead her feet. “He likes the fancy kind stuffed with sweet red-bean paste, mandarin segments, and black-sesame candy. It has to be colorful and complicated inside. He’s basically a kid. Kids like things that look exciting.”
Mrs. Yan waved him away, laughing. “Don’t worry about it. Go deal with your own business… Tomorrow morning, I’ll make sure he gets the most authentic big candied-hawthorn skewer Huima Town has to offer!”