magnanimously undo her blouse and nurture my body and enrich my soul with her sweet milk. But the Wise Monk's eyes remain shut and the hairs in his ears twitch, a sure sign that he's concentrating on my tale—
After I finished my carp soup and polished off the shark's fin dumplings on that memorable evening, Jiaojiao whined that she was sleepy. Time for Lao Lan to get up from the table and say his goodbyes. Father and Mother jumped to their feet—Father was cradling Jiaojiao in his arms and patting her bottom with practised clumsiness—to see the village's most eminent individual to the door.
Huang Bao—his timing perfect, as always—came into the room to drape Lao Lan's overcoat over his shoulders, and then glided over to open the door for his superior's exit. But Lao Lan was in no hurry to leave. There was apparently something more that he had to say to my parents. He turned first to Father and then looked down into the face of my sister, tucked into the crook of Father's arm.
‘She looks like she came out of the same mould,’ he said emotionally.
These words of praise, whose deeper meaning was unclear, immediately dampened the mood. Mother coughed drily, a sign of how ill at ease Lao Lan's comment had made her, while Father twisted his head into an awkward angle to look at his daughter's face.
‘Jiaojiao,’ he said, ‘thank the good man.’
Lao Lan took a red envelope out of his overcoat pocket and tucked it between Father and Jiaojiao: ‘That's a good luck gift on our first meeting.’
Flustered, Father reached down for it: ‘We can't accept this.’
‘Why not? It's for her, not you.’
‘That doesn't matter…’ Poor Father was reduced to mumbling.
Then Lao Lan took out a second red envelope and handed it to me: ‘You'll give a little face to an old friend, won't you?’ he said with a sly wink.
I took it without a second's hesitation.
‘Xiaotong…’ Mother's voice was full of anguish.
‘I know what you're thinking,’ Lao Lan said as he stuck his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat. ‘I'm telling you, money's no damned good. You aren't born with it and you can't take it with you when you die.’
His words were as heavy as lead weights thudding to the floor. Mother and Father were dumbstruck and incomprehension filled their eyes as they struggled in vain with the mystery Lao Lan had just revealed to them.
‘Yang Yuzhen, there's more to life than the pursuit of money,’ Lao Lan said from the doorway. ‘The children need an education.’
I was clutching my red envelope; Father had tucked Jiaojiao's down between them. Having accepted them we could not, under any circumstance, refuse to keep them. Complex emotions clouded our minds as we saw him to the door. Light from both the lantern and the candles burst through the opening and spread across the yard and shone on Mother's tractor and the little mortar I hadn't yet moved into the house. A yellow canvas tarp covered the tube, making it look like a doughty warrior in disguise, lying in the grass and waiting for the call from its commander to attack. I thought back to a few days earlier, when I'd vowed to fire at Lao Lan's house, an unsettling thought at this moment. What was I thinking? There's nothing wrong with Lao Lan. Hell, he's a good man, a role model, and I wondered about the source of my loathing for him. Since my thoughts were beginning to confuse me, I cast them out. Perhaps it was all just a strange dream—dream dream dream—the opposite of the opposite—that's what Mother used to say to break the spell of her bad dreams, and did the same for mine. Tomorrow, no, as soon as Lao Lan leaves, I'll move it into the storeroom. ‘Put weapons into a storeroom, turn horses loose on South Mountain,’ that is how peace will reign on earth.
Lao Lan walked briskly but with a bit of a wobble. Who knows, perhaps it wasn't Lao Lan who was wobbling but me. This was my first time with alcohol, also my first time keeping company with adults, and not just any adults but the eminent Mr Lao Lan—a distinct honour. I felt like I'd made my entry into the world of grown-ups, and left behind Fengshou, Pingdu and Pidou, ignorant children who'd looked down on me, still stuck in childhood.
Huang Bao had opened our gate. His vigilant demeanour, his vigorous strides and his nimble, precise