Beijing, this massive crucible that consumes dreams while forging others, often stages real stories stranger than fiction, seemingly out of the blue. Lin Wei is one of the seemingly glamorous characters in this play.
My ass, no, my entire existence, is welded to this supposedly ergonomic chair. Dante described Hell, but he clearly never saw upstairs and downstairs neighbors waging class warfare. If he had, he would've created a special circle of torment just for the 7th and 8th floors, and I, Old Wang on the 9th, would be the innocent prisoner with a millstone around my neck, eternally damned. This war has been going on for three years, not much shorter than the damn Anti-Japanese War, but far more intense, only the battlefield is the floor slab, and the weapons have changed from planes and cannons to hammers, high heels, and a high-tech gadget called a "ceiling shaker."
It started with a lukewarm beer and a WeChat message from my college roommate. On Friday night, as usual, I bought a canned beer and a bag of peanuts from the convenience store, preparing to while away the start of another weekend alone. The screen lit up. It was Xiaoyun. She sent a screenshot with a message: "Meiling, when did you become an actress? And in such a hit drama!"
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 Wang stood at the entrance of the "Good Neighbor" supermarket, staring at the huge red characters "Clearance Sale" pasted on the glass door. He felt like a sodden wad of old cotton stuffed in his chest, heavy and suffocating. This supermarket, which he had run for fifteen years, ultimately couldn't withstand the impact of the flashy, 24-hour new-style chain convenience store across the street. Like a leaking old boat, it was gurgling its way to the bottom.
Old Wang, full name Wang Jianguo, a name bearing the mark of an era, was now just a man sweeping fallen leaves and dust in an inconspicuous hutong in the East District. He was sixty-three, slightly stooped, like the weather-beaten old locust tree in the hutong, silently watching the sun rise and set. The bustling traffic seemed like the clamor of another world. His world consisted of this hundred-meter-long flagstone path and the meager monthly pension, barely enough to get by, plus feeding a few stray cats at the hutong entrance.
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.
The news came on the radio while I was cooking pasta. Not any special kind of pasta, just the most ordinary type, with canned tomato sauce from the supermarket, sprinkled with some powdered cheese. Outside, a light but steady rain was falling. April rain, carrying a sticky feeling that washes everything yet washes nothing away. The announcer, in a well-trained, emotionless tone, reported: "Gold prices plummeted sharply again today..." followed by a string of numbers and analysis, sounding like signals from a distant planet, utterly unrelated to the steaming pasta in my pot.
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.