Frog

There have been significant changes in my hometown over the past couple of years. The new Party secretary is a young man in his late thirties with an American PhD, bold vision, and lofty goals. We’ve been told that he plans to develop the area on both sides of the Jiao River, and to that end, construction equipment has begun rumbling into the area. Within a few years, you won’t be able to recognise the place, with all its changes. Much of what you saw when you were here will be gone. Whether these coming changes will work to the area’s advantage or disadvantage is impossible to say.

I will include the third portion of material about my aunt with this letter — I’m embarrassed to call it a letter. I will, of course, keep writing. Your praise is all the encouragement I need.

Let me repeat our heartfelt invitation for you to visit us again at your convenience — maybe we should welcome you with the sort of treatment reserved for old and dear friends.

One more thing. My wife and I will soon retire and move back to our hometown. In Beijing we have always felt like outsiders. Not long ago, near the People’s Theatre, we were pilloried for two hours by a pair of women who, we were told, had grown up in a Beijing lane, one of its famous hutongs, which cemented our desire to return to our roots. We don’t expect the people back home to mistreat us like the people in big cities do. And maybe I’ll be closer to literature there.

Tadpole

New Year’s Day, 2004

Beijing

1

After dealing with Renmei’s funeral and putting things in order at home, I rushed back to my unit. A month later I received a telegram informing me that Mother had died. I took the telegram to my superior and asked for more leave. At the same time I handed him a request to transfer to civilian life.

On the night of Mother’s funeral, the yard was bathed in silvery moonlight. My daughter was sleeping on a rush mat laid out beneath the pear tree. Father was fanning her to keep the mosquitoes away. Katydids chirping on the bean trellis added to the sound of water flowing in the river.

You should find someone, Father said with a sigh. With no women in the family, this doesn’t seem like a home.

I’ve sent in a request to return to civilian life, I said. So let’s wait till I come back home.

Everything was going along fine, he said with another sigh, and look how it’s turned out. I don’t even know who to blame.

You can’t blame Gugu, I said. She didn’t do anything wrong.

I wasn’t blaming her, he said. It was just our fate.

Without dedicated people like Gugu, I said, government policy would be impossible to implement.

What you say makes sense, but why did it have to be her? It broke my heart to see her get stabbed in the leg and bleed like that. She is, after all, my cousin.

Nothing we can do about that, I said.

2

According to Father, after my mother-in-law stabbed Gugu, the wound became infected and Gugu spiked a high fever that stubbornly hung on. Yet that did not stop her from leading a team to search for and arrest Wang Dan. The term sounds unduly harsh, but that’s what they used.