Old Wang felt he needed some noise, the deafening kind. Not the eternal hum of printers and keyboards weaving together in the office, nor the lukewarm background noise of his wife's chatter mixed with TV commercials at home. He needed the kind of colossal sound that could shake the soul from the body, a rock concert—the louder, the better.
South Town's mornings are damp. Especially in April, when the willows by the river have just sprouted tender, goose-yellow buds, the mist hangs like a thin veil on the treetops and drifts into the windows facing the river.
Old Wang felt like one of the old grandfather clocks he repaired, ticking away in the torrent of time towards an inevitable silence. His watch repair shop, hidden deep in a nearly forgotten alley in the South City, seemed separated from the outside world – a world frenzied over gold hitting 1039 yuan per gram – as if by a pane of dusty glass.
Our place here used to have a nickname, the "Unofficial Reserve Base for the World's Toy Factory." Later, officials thought it lacked elegance and changed it in documents to the "Red Star Industrial Demonstration Zone." But privately, especially when spitting foam at the dinner table while reminiscing about the glorious past, everyone still habitually called it "Rust Town." The name fits, carrying a sense of helplessness and滄桑 (vicissitudes/weathered look) like oxidized metal. Rust Town, well, as the name implies, now only rust remains. It wasn't always like this. Back then, the town was like a hyperactive spinning top, buzzing non-stop day and night, specializing in manufacturing happiness for those blond-haired, blue-eyed kids across the ocean – plastic ones, plush ones, battery-operated ones that could sing and dance, you name it.
Lao Ma felt this place was a bit like a huge, cold cement box. He hadn't thought that way when they first bought it. Back then, the sales lady's words were sweet as honey. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, shining on the exquisite little model houses on the sand table, bright and full of hope. One million one hundred ninety thousand yuan. It emptied half a lifetime's savings and saddled them with a thirty-year mortgage, but Lao Ma and his wife, Ma Sao, felt it was worth it! For their son's future schooling, for a stable nest for their old age, for putting down roots in this big city – this cement box was their "home," their tangible, heavy future.
Old Wang felt that the city's neon lights sometimes glowed like a death warrant. Especially that letter from the bank – black ink on white paper, politely worded, yet more chilling than the winter wind. If he didn't clear the three months of overdue mortgage payments, his pigeonhole of a home would soon have a foreclosure sign hung on it.
His territory was the entrance to a small alley, not bustling with prosperity, but thick with the smoke and life of the everyday. A greasy sign, bearing the five crooked characters "Old Wang's Braised Goose," served as his sole landmark in this vast metropolis. As dusk settled, the large pot, used for over a decade, would begin to bubble and steam. The rich aroma of the braising liquid, mingling star anise, cinnamon, and some undisclosed secret spice, was the most familiar comfort to the neighborhood folks and the workers returning late.
The city, a behemoth crouching beneath the grey expanse, its bones steel, its blood the crowded streets. But recently, an invisible plague, more suffocating than any visible calamity, swept through its massive form. This plague was the wind. Not the gentle caress of the fields, nor the majestic roar of the ocean, but a shriek from the depths of hell, a fury potent enough to tear souls, to shake existence itself.
The old library in the east end of the city had seen some years. Its dusty grey brick walls and tall windows exuded a quietness, but also a stubborn sense of being out of step with the times. Most people who came here were familiar faces: retired old gentlemen and ladies seeking a quiet spot to read the newspaper; students preparing for exams, hunkered down all day; and idlers like me, with nowhere else to go, who came here pretending to still be seeking knowledge, but really just killing time, staring blankly at the old locust tree outside the window.
K first noticed the fridge magnet on the partition of his colleague Wang's office cubicle. It was a brightly colored, slightly clumsy-looking cartoon character, grinning an overly brilliant smile, with a nonsensical motivational phrase printed beside it, something like "Keep it up today, duck!" or similar. K only glanced at it at the time, feeling rather indifferent, even thinking such things were childish. The office cubicle was already cramped; sticking something like this on it made it seem even more crowded, almost... desperate. A kind of futile desperation, trying to combat monotonous reality with cheap colors and slogans.
Beijing's early mornings always carried a hint of coal smoke and the sour tang of dòuzhī, seeping under the grey sky into every hutong. Zhang Ma, as the neighbors called her—what her actual name was, she herself had almost forgotten over time. Her day began with dressing her son, Ming'er.