The next morning, when Shao Wu woke, daylight was already flooding the room. The bed opposite his was empty. The window had been pushed open a narrow crack, and the curtains were drawn back. Through it, the sky was a flawless, freshly washed blue. A beautifully clear day.
Shao Wu glanced at his phone. It was already past nine.
Seven minutes earlier, Yang Shuyi had sent a WeChat message: I’m going to buy a phone. I’ll be back soon.
Shao Wu rubbed his brow, still feeling dazed. He really had come to Yingxiu.
He got up to wash. He was brushing his teeth with a stiff, coarse disposable toothbrush when Yang Shuyi opened the door and came in. Yang Shuyi was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, with a paper bag in his hand.
When Shao Wu emerged from the bathroom, Yang Shuyi said, “Put this on. It’ll be warmer.”
Inside the bag was a khaki jacket with a fleece lining. The price tag was still attached.
Heat crept into Shao Wu’s face. He clutched the jacket, a little embarrassed. “Thanks…” Perhaps he ought to ask how much it cost, but with things as they were between them now, the question seemed too distant.
Not that he could have said what kind of relationship they actually had.
They had long since stopped being simply friends. They had embraced and held hands, yet neither of them had explicitly said they were “together.” And even if they were together now, what difference would it make? Yang Shuyi was still married. Nothing was clear or aboveboard. It was still a hopeless mess.
Shao Wu put on the jacket Yang Shuyi had bought him. It fit perfectly. He turned to slip his phone and wallet into the pockets, giving himself a rueful smile.
Downstairs, the proprietor was sitting in the courtyard shelling peanuts. “Off to get something to eat?” he asked warmly.
“Mm.” Yang Shuyi smiled at him. “Where would you recommend?”
“Go right and you’ll find a place selling chaoshou wontons. They’re fantastic.”
They thanked him and followed his directions to a breakfast shop, where each ordered a bowl of green-peppercorn chaoshou. Perhaps because Yingxiu lay beside the Min River, the wind felt cooler here than in Shuimo, and the sunshine was stronger. After eating, Yang Shuyi asked, “Shall we go see the ruins?”
“Sure,” said Shao Wu.
The proprietress was wiping down a table nearby. Hearing them, she said, “Hey, remember to get a guide. It’s a hundred yuan a tour… Some work units come here in groups and hire guides. You can listen along with them.”
“All right. Thank you,” Shao Wu said.
The woman smiled. “You’re welcome.”
A moment later her smile faded. “There isn’t much here for tourists to do. Some people come, look at the ruins, and complain there’s nothing interesting about them. They’ve come here just to make themselves miserable… But what can we do?” She shook her head, then smiled again. “Our cherries are really good, though. Remember to bargain when you buy some.”
Yingxiu was a tiny town. Less than ten minutes after leaving the breakfast shop, they reached the ruins of Xuankou Middle School.
On a white wall, thick black characters announced: RUINS OF XUANKOU MIDDLE SCHOOL, GREAT WENCHUAN EARTHQUAKE, SICHUAN.
An oppressive feeling struck them immediately.
But as they drew closer, Shao Wu noticed another sign standing to the right of the entrance, also black on white. It read, Xuankou Middle School, Wenchuan County. The letters were slender, almost elegant. Shao Wu thought that anyone who saw only this sign would take it for an ordinary middle school.
It had once been an ordinary middle school.
Their guide explained that the ruins of Xuankou Middle School had been preserved precisely because the school had suffered comparatively light damage. Yingxiu Primary School, by contrast, had been almost leveled, with far heavier casualties. After the earthquake, Dongguan City in Guangdong was paired with Yingxiu to provide reconstruction assistance and funded the rebuilding of its primary school. The new Yingxiu Primary School stood beside the Min River, in what was considered the safest part of town.
For the first time, Shao Wu saw with his own eyes the huge, broken clock face he had seen over and over on the news. A railing kept visitors at a distance, but they could still see the hands clearly: they pointed to 2:28 p.m.
The guide said that clock had belonged to Senior Two, Class Three.
Farther in stood a low dormitory building. “You can see only three stories now,” the guide explained. “The building didn’t collapse, but its first two floors sank straight into the ground during the earthquake. It was originally five stories tall.” After a pause, the guide went on. “Classes were in session when the earthquake struck. One boy had taken sick leave and was resting in the dormitory. His body was never found. We believe he went underground with those floors… According to our records, eleven bodies still lie within these ruins. With their families’ consent, we decided to let them rest here in peace.”
They continued past an isolated connecting walkway and the leaning classroom buildings and library. Shao Wu noticed that every sign and gate erected after the earthquake was black and white. Only two things brought color to the ruins: the luxuriant weeds and the red paint on the remains of the teaching building. Who would have believed it? Even between huge fallen stones, bright green grass had sprouted and now swayed in the sun and wind. Victims still lay here, yet life had already spread irrepressibly across the rubble. When the wind blew, fluorescent light tubes swung back and forth inside the classrooms. Suddenly Shao Wu felt that here, even this thriving life was part of heaven and earth’s indifference.
Throughout the tour, Yang Shuyi did not say a word.
The guide said that to this day, many victims whose bodies were never found remained officially classified as “missing,” including the boy in the dormitory.
Shao Wu wondered if the boy’s family sometimes dreamed that he had come back alive. He was missing. If there was no body to see, then surely he couldn’t count as dead. Maybe that afternoon he had lied about feeling ill and had actually climbed the school wall to go out and play. How cruel and how beautiful that possibility was: the blade would never quite fall. Missing. A boy from Yingxiu, speaking Sichuan dialect, probably still wearing his school uniform. He wasn’t dead; he had only gone somewhere far away. If anyone met him, please tell him to come home.
They made a circuit of the site and returned to the clock face. On the other side of the sign proclaiming the Wenchuan Earthquake Ruins of Xuankou Middle School were the words: In Deep Mourning for Our Compatriots Who Perished in the Great Wenchuan Earthquake, Sichuan.
Leaving the school ruins, Yang Shuyi bought several bottles of mineral water, and together they headed toward the Earthquake Epicenter Memorial Hall.
The memorial hall stood on a hillside beside National Highway 213. Halfway up the same hill was a cemetery for earthquake victims. They walked uphill through the grass-covered cemetery, occasionally passing a tablet dedicated to Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva. By the time they had toured the memorial hall carefully, it was past one in the afternoon.
Yang Shuyi still barely spoke, asking at most, “Want some water?” There was little expression on his face. He simply walked quietly at Shao Wu’s side.
On the way down, as they passed the cemetery, Yang Shuyi suddenly said, “Wait for me.”
Shao Wu watched him take a stick of incense from his backpack and light it. Yang Shuyi walked to the monument honoring the China Railway 13th Bureau’s victims of the Wenchuan earthquake, halfway down the hill. Facing the cemetery, he knelt and slowly bowed his head to the ground. Unobstructed sunlight fell over him, gilding his black outdoor jacket a brilliant yellow. He looked almost like a statue. He remained kneeling for about half a minute.
Then he set the incense into a tiny makeshift altar someone had left before the monument.
Flowers of mourning lay scattered all around it.
Yang Shuyi rose, brushed the dirt from his knees, and said, “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”
He was still composed. Worried, Shao Wu caught at his hand. “Shuyi.” He didn’t know what that sudden kneeling had meant, only that Yang Shuyi had come prepared. He had planned to kneel there long before they arrived.
Yang Shuyi gave a small smile and said softly, “I don’t know where my dad and Auntie Xiaojuan really are… I’ll just think of them as being buried here too.” After a pause, he added, “I apologized to them.”
Shao Wu’s heart clenched. He remembered when Longlong was still in primary school and the boy who shared her desk had bullied her, saying, Your dad only went to Yingxiu because of you and your mom! Yet later Yang Shuyi had told Longlong, It’s all Brother’s fault.
Eight years had passed, and Yang Shuyi still couldn’t forgive the boy he himself had once been. That boy, like the boy in Xuankou Middle School’s dormitory, had gone missing in the earthquake.
Shao Wu tightened his grip on Yang Shuyi’s hand. Yang Shuyi put an arm around him and, in this place where death and new life had become inseparable, rested his forehead on Shao Wu’s shoulder. “I apologized to my dad just now,” he said. “I was too young and didn’t know any better. I shouldn’t have fought with him.”
“Shuyi.” Shao Wu’s nose stung.
“And there’s something else,” Yang Shuyi said, word by word. “I told him I’m going to divorce Zou Xin. I won’t have children, and I won’t have a wife. I’ll have to lie to Grandma until she dies, and I’ll… be together with a man. Every year on the anniversary of his death and Auntie Xiaojuan’s, I’ll remember them… But I’m going to celebrate your birthday with you.”
Yang Shuyi raised his head and fixed Shao Wu with a gaze sharp as an arrow. “Shao Wu, I’m divorcing her tomorrow. Do you still want to be with me?”
The shock was so overwhelming that Shao Wu had no idea how to respond. He had fallen for Yang Shuyi in 2007, nine years ago. Countless times he had imagined Yang Shuyi accepting him; countless times he had imagined finally forgetting him. Nine years. Yet now that this moment had truly arrived, Shao Wu’s mind went completely blank.
“It’s all right,” Yang Shuyi said. “Take your time to think about it.”
They descended the hill, Shao Wu following Yang Shuyi, a thousand feelings and thoughts churning through his mind. Last night, as Yang Shuyi slept only an arm’s length away, he had even wondered: What if things stayed exactly like this for the rest of my life? Yang Shuyi could shield him from falling rocks, but couldn’t spend his life with him. Perhaps this was what it meant to stand together in hardship but not in happiness. Shao Wu himself had rushed to Yang Shuyi’s side whenever life became difficult. But Yang Shuyi couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stay with him for life. That was all right. They would remain like two peculiar magnets, moving among other people while secretly sensing each other’s presence.
If the rest of his life were like that, Shao Wu thought he could accept it. They would both be alive and well, however many regrets and disappointments remained, even if, as Zou Xin had said, they lived like ants—
They walked beside the Min River. Its water was a profound blue, spreading wide as it rushed ceaselessly onward, the sound of its current echoing through the valley.
He had already accepted it the moment Yang Shuyi shielded him from the falling rocks. Not everyone could give love and receive love in equal measure throughout their lives. So even if their lives really were like those of ants—
“Shao Wu,” Yang Shuyi suddenly stopped. “Is that Yingxiu Primary School?”
Yes. Beside the Min River, children’s voices rang out from Yingxiu Primary School’s new classroom buildings. White, orange, and pink mingled across the outer walls, their colors all the more vivid against the distant green mountains.
Nearly three quarters of Yingxiu Primary School’s teachers and students had died in the Wenchuan earthquake.
Cast across the new school building were seven large characters:
EVERY LIFE IS WONDERFUL
Shao Wu watched tears stream from Yang Shuyi’s eyes. Since the Wenchuan earthquake, he had seen Yang Shuyi cry only twice. Once was the day they erected a cenotaph for Yang Long and Xiaojuan. A friend of Yang Long’s had pressed thirty thousand yuan into Yang Shuyi’s hands and told him, Your dad would want to see you go to university, even from heaven. The other was the night before the wedding, when Yang Shuyi had gotten drunk and said to him, Love.
He had never seen Yang Shuyi in such agony. He was sobbing outright, bent over a heavy stone bollard by the Min River, his two shoulder blades jutting up and rising and falling with each wrenching sob. His quiet weeping grew into open, uncontrollable crying. It was as though a soul imprisoned for years had finally let out a hoarse cry.
So what if he lived like an ant? So what if he carried regrets his whole life? So what if the earthquake had battered his existence beyond recognition? He too was one of its survivors. Some had lost limbs, some had been paralyzed, and some had lost those dearest to them. After the survivors had been celebrated again and again, those looking on from outside had no idea what it meant to live the rest of their lives.
But Shao Wu knew. The rest of their lives would be spent fighting those scenes of hell that could never be erased. Once you had crossed over to the far side of life, there was no returning to the side you knew before. You fool. You endure, you sacrifice, you turn violence against yourself, you hurt the people who truly love you, you nearly reduce yourself to an ant. You never, ever escaped that earthquake—
But it was all right.
If you had ever come to Yingxiu, you would understand.
Every life is wonderful.
At last, at long last, Shao Wu came back to himself.
He went forward and wrapped his arms tightly around Yang Shuyi’s waist, pressing his cheek against Yang Shuyi’s shaking back. He had held himself back for a full seventy days, believing he could forget him the way someone gave up cigarettes.
But he couldn’t. Every day of restraint was like another wound cut into his body by slow execution. What came after the seventieth day? Nothing more than the seventy-first.
“I want to be with you. Of course I do,” Shao Wu said.
He wasn’t going to hold back anymore.
Elio’s Notes: Ksitigarbha is a bodhisattva associated with helping the dead and those suffering in the realms of rebirth; memorial tablets bearing his name are often placed at burial grounds.