Choking Smoke

Old Wang, full name Wang Fugui, though that name was probably the most unreliable inheritance his parents could have given him. In this steel-jungle city, he was more like a malnourished old tree, barely putting down roots in a cramped rental apartment. Today was Qingming Festival. The traffic outside remained noisy, but Old Wang's room was filled with a unique smoky aroma—not cooking fumes from the kitchen, but the incense of ancestor veneration.

On the old, chipped square table, he had placed two apples, a small dish of peanuts, and a bottle of cheap white liquor, opened but barely touched. In the center of the table sat a faded black-and-white photograph of his parents. Old Wang lit three incense sticks and inserted them into a pop can serving as an censer, the can stuffed full of leftover rice from the night before. Smoke curled upwards, carrying the pungent smell of cheap spices, swirling as if trying hard to escape the small-windowed room towards that distant, unknown world.

Old Wang knelt on the cool mat-covered floor, but his heart wasn't as devout as the smoke. He was thinking about next month's rent, the upstairs neighbor who always seemed to be moving furniture late at night, the half-dead spider plant on the balcony, and the frustration of being one number off in yesterday's lottery ticket. Burning incense for the ancestors? Bah, it was just for peace of mind, or perhaps, an inherited ritualistic obligation he felt compelled to perform. He even suspected that if his parents' spirits were watching, they'd probably be more concerned about whether he had enough to eat than about these few wisps of choking smoke.

He kowtowed three times, muttering, "Dad, Mom, bless me with... uh... good health, and may everything go smoothly, I guess." The words were pitifully meager; even he felt they were perfunctory. Perhaps it was the smoke, or perhaps a touch of unease in his heart, but his eyes began to sting.

Just as he was about to get up, a thick cloud of smoke, as if deliberately targeting him, rushed straight into his mouth and nose. Not a gentle, poetic wisp, but a crude, forceful invasion. Caught off guard, Old Wang erupted, "Cough... cough cough cough..." He coughed violently, earth-shatteringly, as if trying to expel his internal organs. Tears and snot streamed down his face. Clutching his chest, he scrambled backward, desperate to get away from the relentless source of smoke.

He stumbled back to the corner, gasping for air, his lungs burning. This damn incense, such terrible quality! he thought angrily. Next year, I'm definitely switching brands, or maybe just... Just then, with a tremendous "BOOM!", accompanied by a shower of dust and debris, the ceiling directly above where he had just been kneeling collapsed without warning!

Plasterboard, chunks of cement, and tangled wires rained down onto the exact spot where he had kowtowed moments before, instantly forming a small mound. The old table was smashed to pieces, apples rolled everywhere, peanuts scattered across the floor, and the bottle of white liquor met a spectacular end, its contents mixing with the dust to emit a strange, tragic odor. Only the pop-can censer, filled with rice, miraculously lay tilted to the side, the incense sticks still stubbornly burning, releasing one last thin trail of smoke.

Old Wang stared, dumbfounded, at the scene, his face still streaked with the messy traces of his coughing fit. If he had gotten up even three seconds later, or rather, if he hadn't been forced to move by that damned mouthful of smoke... He didn't dare think further. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

The choking smoke had turned into life-saving smoke.

He sat stunned for a good ten minutes, until the sounds of alarmed footsteps and questioning voices echoed from the hallway. Only then, like a marionette whose strings were pulled, did he shakily stand up and pat the dust off his clothes. He walked to the edge of the rubble, carefully picked up his parents' photograph, slightly dusty but undamaged, and wiped it clean with his sleeve.

In the photo, his young parents smiled simply. They probably never imagined that decades later, their somewhat disappointing son, on such a destitute Qingming Festival, due to a half-hearted offering to them and a mouthful of low-quality incense smoke, would brush past death in such an absurd manner.

What was this? Ancestral spirits intervening? Or just pure, shitty luck? Old Wang didn't know. He only knew that in that moment, the reality of being alive suddenly felt incredibly, unprecedentedly heavy.

He looked at the photo, then at the wisp of smoke about to extinguish, and suddenly whispered, "Dad, Mom, thanks... even though that smoke was really damn choking."

With that, he cracked a grin, a smile uglier than tears. Sunlight slanted through the lingering dust, casting mottled patterns on the debris, like some unspeakable, enormous joke played by fate. And Old Wang, insignificant Old Wang in this vast city, on this Qingming afternoon, had been choked into a reverence for life, and choked into a helpless, bitter laugh at this absurd world. Next month's rent was still nowhere in sight, he thought, but right now, all he wanted was to find a place to catch his breath properly, to inhale air that didn't smell of incense or plaster dust—truly free air.