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.
The autumn wind in Beiping was chilly, carrying a hint of heartlessness. Dusk had just fallen. The streetlights were beginning to flicker on, not yet fully lit, casting sparse halos of light onto the damp, glistening flagstone path. Old Li's braised delicacies stall stood right there at the mouth of the hutong. A single, dim, yellow incandescent bulb barely illuminated his small patch of the world. Beneath the bulb was his face, etched with deep lines like ravines, and a pot of old braising liquid bubbling away.
Old Ma, whose proper name was Ma Desheng, felt he'd lived a rather "failed" life. His parents gave him the name for good luck, hoping he'd amount to something. But those characters "Desheng," meaning "victorious," felt somewhat ironic attached to Old Ma. He'd been drifting along for nearly thirty years in a half-dead neighborhood factory in the north of the city. The factory's fortunes were waning year by year. And him? Just a gatekeeper, handling mail on the side, earning a pittance each month – enough to keep him from starving but never full.
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.
Old Ma first heard the word "tariff" from the old radio in the street corner. A hoarse male voice, like sandpaper, scraped against the dull afternoon air, speaking words he didn't quite understand: barriers, countermeasures, lists... To him, these terms were far less real than the grain of the century-old elm wood in his hands. Old Ma was a carpenter, a craftsman nearly forgotten by this era. His world was this small, street-facing shop, filled with the fresh scent of wood shavings and the atmosphere of bygone days.
Section Chief Wang had grown somewhat gaunt lately, his eyes sunken, as if something were gnawing at his spirit day and night. Those familiar with him merely assumed he was "busy with official duties, toiling for the nation." When occasional inquiries about his well-being were made, he would just wave a hand, revealing a smile that was both bitter and seemingly profound. No one knew that what truly robbed him of sleep and appetite wasn't the mountain of files piled on his office desk, but a silent, crouching "beast" in the basement of his old apartment building.
Old Ma felt quite content. A man in his fifties, finding a gig at a respectable place like 'Sam's Club', handing out small pieces of freshly grilled steak or tiny cups of new-squeezed orange juice to the 'members' coming and going, wearing just the right amount of warmth on his face—this job, compared to pedaling a tricycle at the alley entrance or hauling sandbags at a construction site, was worlds apart. He mulled it over himself: 'food sampler', what a novel title!
Old Wang's life after retirement was like a gentle pastoral poem. He tended to flowers and plants every day and played with his granddaughter. His life was uneventful. Until that day, he saw the alluring blueberry advertisement online – "Freshly picked, plump, eight boxes for only XX yuan."