The Weight of an Egg

The southern sky was damp, humid like a freshly wrung towel hanging overhead. At the street corner, the old camphor tree, its leaves a dark green, stood silently. Old Zhou, carrying a chipped bamboo basket, ambled to the little shop at the mouth of the alley.

The shop belonged to Wang Saozi and had been open for some years. A faded blue cloth curtain covered half the doorway. When the wind blew, the curtain fluttered limply, revealing the soy sauce bottles, vinegar jars, and a basket of bright yellow eggs arranged inside.

"Saozi, ten eggs, please." Old Zhou's voice was quiet, a little hoarse, like the bottom of a pot long blackened by kitchen smoke.

Wang Saozi was at her chopping block, cutting pickled vegetables. She looked up at the sound of his voice, a smile spreading across her round face. "Old Zhou, you're here? Eggs are quite dear today."

"Oh?" Old Zhou put down his basket, leaned closer. "How so?"

"The papers, the TV, they're all saying... that... what is it... barrier," Wang Saozi gestured, as if the 'barrier' was a solid wall. "And that... tax, they added it. They say over there, across the ocean, eggs are scarce too." She paused, lowering her voice. "So it's affecting us here too, the price has gone up a little."

Old Zhou grunted, asking no more. He didn't understand much about barriers or taxes; he only knew whether the money in his pocket was enough for what he needed to buy. He'd been through a lot when he was young – grain coupons, cloth coupons, you needed coupons for everything. Eggs were truly precious then, saved for holidays. Life was better now, you could buy them whenever you felt like it; he wasn't quite used to them suddenly being 'dear'.

He looked at the basket of eggs. Plumply round, with earthy yellow shells, some still speckled with bits of dried straw. They looked solid, real. One even had a tiny smudge of chicken dropping, which Wang Saozi hadn't wiped away; leaving it somehow made them seem fresher.

"How much did they go up?"

"One mao more, per egg." Wang Saozi seemed a little embarrassed. "It's not that I'm being greedy; my cost price is higher now."

One mao. Not a lot, but not insignificant either. Ten eggs meant one yuan. Enough for a small bunch of greens, or half a jin of tofu. Old Zhou calculated inwardly. His pension wasn't much; he lived frugally day-to-day, always comparing prices before buying vegetables.

He thought of his grandson, Little Tiger. Little Tiger was growing fast and needed a boiled egg every morning. His wife had passed away a couple of years ago, leaving the task of boiling eggs to him. He always placed the egg carefully into the small pot, watched the time, cooking it until it was perfectly tender, the yolk just set but still runny – the way Little Tiger loved it most.

"Well... I'll take ten anyway," Old Zhou said. Times might be tight, but the boy had to eat well.

Wang Saozi quickly picked out ten eggs, tied them carefully with a piece of straw string, and placed them in Old Zhou's basket. "Go carefully now, Old Zhou."

Old Zhou carried his basket, walking slowly home. His steps felt heavier than when he arrived. It wasn't the weight of the eggs – how much could ten eggs weigh? It was something inside him, a kind of pressure in his chest.

That 'barrier,' that 'tax' – they were so far away, across mountains and seas. How had they found their way to his doorstep, onto these small eggs? He couldn't understand it. Just as he couldn't understand in his youth why fertile fields sometimes yielded nothing, or why peaceful life could suddenly face turmoil.

He passed a teahouse where men were loudly discussing the 'trade war,' voices raised, spitting opinions as if they were generals commanding armies. Old Zhou didn't enter; he disliked the clamor. Life, he felt, was for living, not for shouting about. Like these eggs: the price had risen, but they still had to be bought, still had to be eaten. Life had to continue.

Back home, the room was quiet. His wife's photograph sat on the table, smiling at him. He carefully placed the eggs in the cupboard. He counted the remaining ones: three. Added to the ten he just bought, there were enough for Little Tiger for almost half a month.

For dinner, he stir-fried a plate of greens for himself and fried an egg to go with it. Not much oil, not much salt – simple fare. He poked the yolk with his chopsticks; the golden liquid oozed out, mixing with the rice. It was fragrant. He ate slowly, carefully, as if tasting something rare.

After finishing his meal, he sat by the window as dusk settled. The faint sound of a neighbor's television drifted in, still talking about those 'major affairs.' Old Zhou didn't turn on the light, sitting there quietly in the dimness.

He remembered many years ago, on an evening much like this one, returning from the fields. His wife had handed him a warm boiled egg. "I saved this for days," she'd said. "For your strength." At that moment, the egg had tasted better than any rare delicacy.

Now, eggs were easy to come by, yet that heavy feeling inside him had returned. It was vague, hard to define, like a thin layer of fog settling over his heart.

An egg, how much can it really weigh? Old Zhou wondered. It might be light, as light as a feather. Or it might be heavy, as heavy as an ordinary person's entire yearning for a peaceful life.

Outside the window, the camphor tree dissolved into a huge ink-black silhouette in the night. The wind rustled the leaves, a low whisper sharing secrets that no one could quite understand, yet somehow everyone knew. Life went on, unhurriedly, steadily forward. The eggs, whether their price had risen or not, lay equally round in their basket, waiting to be eaten, or perhaps, to be forgotten.