It was nine in the morning, and people were selling vegetables, rock melons, and freshly picked apples and pears. Streets in county towns like this one aren’t wide, so mule carts, horse carts and trucks were all jammed together, with drivers cracking their whips and honking their horns. Dust filling the air, dirty water tossed out beside vegetable stalls, melon rinds all over the ground, squawking hens flapping in the hands of their buyers: these were sights that made us feel close to the town.
It all felt so different from the time when we were graduates sent to work in the countryside. Now we were just visitors passing through, tourists, and the complicated relationships between the people here had nothing to do with us. Inevitably, this made us city dwellers feel somewhat superior. Fangfang clutched my arm tightly and I leaned close to her, and we could sense people’s eyes on us. But we didn’t belong to this town; we were from another world. We walked right past them, but they didn’t gossip about us; they only gossiped about the people they knew.
Eventually, there were no more vegetable stalls and very few people. We had left the bustle and din of the market behind. I saw from my watch that it had taken us only half an hour to walk the length of the main road from the railway station. It was still early. It would be an anticlimax just to return to the station and wait for the next train, and Fangfang was already thinking about spending the night here!
She didn’t say so, but I could see her disappointment. A man was heading towards us, ostentatiously swinging his arms as he walked. He was probably a party bureaucrat.
“Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the local hostel?” I asked.
He looked at Fangfang and me for a moment, then enthusiastically pointed it out to us. “Go that way,” he told us, “then head left. The red three-storey brick building is the local hostel.” He asked whom we were looking for, and seemed to want to take us there himself. We explained that we were tourists passing through and asked if there were any sights worth seeing. He patted his head: this, it seemed, was a problem.
After giving the matter some thought, he said, “There actually aren’t any scenic spots in this county. But there’s a big temple up on the hill to the west of town, if you want to go there. You’ll have to climb the hill though, and it’s steep!”
“That’s not a problem. We’ve come here to do some hiking,” I said.
Fangfang hastened to add, “That’s right. We’re not afraid of climbing a hill.”
At this, the man led us to the corner of the street. The hill was now directly in front of us, and at the top was the old temple, its glazed tiles sparkling in the sun.
But then the man glanced at the high-heeled shoes Fangfang was wearing and said, “You’ll have to wade across a river.”
“Is the water deep?” I asked.
“Above the knees.”
I looked at Fangfang.
“That’s nothing. I’ll manage.” She didn’t want to let me down.
We thanked him and began walking in the direction he had indicated. When we turned onto the dusty dirt road, I couldn’t help but feel bad as I looked at the new high-heeled shoes with thin straps that Fangfang had on. Still, she charged ahead.
“You really are a crazy little thing,” I said, catching up with her.
“As long as I’m with you.” Do you remember, Fangfang? You said this as you nestled against me.
We followed a path down to the riverbank. On both sides corn grew straight, taller than a man, and we walked through the green gauze canopy, with no-one in sight either ahead or behind. Taking Fangfang in my arms, I gently kissed her. What’s wrong with that? She doesn’t want me to talk about that. So let’s go back to the Temple of Perfect Benevolence. It was on the other side of the river, at the top of the hill. We could see tufts of weeds growing between the glistening yellow tiles.
The river was clear and cool. I held Fangfang’s shoes and my leather sandals in one hand and Fangfang’s hand in the other, while she scooped up her skirt with her free hand. Barefoot, we felt our way across. It had been a long time since I’d walked barefoot, so my feet were sensitive even to the smooth stones on the riverbed.
“Is it hurting your feet?” I asked Fangfang.
“I like it,” you replied softly. On our honeymoon, even having sore feet was a happy sensation. All the misfortunes of the world seemed to flow away with the river water, and we returned for a moment to our youth. We frolicked in the water like mischievous children.
As I steadied her with one hand Fangfang leaped from rock to rock, and from time to time she hummed a song. Once across the river, we started to run up the hill, laughing and shouting. Then Fangfang cut her foot and I was very upset, but she comforted me, saying that it was all right, it would be nothing as soon as she put on her shoes. I said that it was my fault, but she replied that she’d do anything to make me happy, even let her feet get cut. All right, all right, I won’t go on about it. But because you are the friends we value most, who have shared our anxieties with us, we should also share our happiness with you.
It was in this manner that we finally climbed to the top of the hill and arrived at the front gate of the temple. Within the collapsed courtyard wall was a gutter with clear water from the pump running through it. In what had been the courtyard someone had planted a patch of vegetables, and next to that was a manure pit. We recalled the years we had spent shovelling manure with our production units in the countryside. Those difficult times had trickled away like water, leaving some sadness but sweet memories as well. And there was our love, too. In the glorious sunlight, no-one could interfere with this secure love of ours. No-one would be able to harm us again.
Near the big temple was an iron incense burner. It was probably too heavy to move and too thick to break apart, so it continued to keep the old temple company, standing guard in front of the main door. The door was padlocked. Boards had been nailed over the rotten wooden lattice windows, but they too had rotted. The place was probably now being used as a storehouse for the local production unit.
No-one else was around, and it was very peaceful. We could hear the mountain wind moaning in the ancient pines in front of the temple, and as no-one was there to disturb us, we lay down on the grass in the shade of the trees. Fangfang rested her head on my arm, and we looked up at a thread of cloud about to disappear into the blue sky. Ours was an indescribable happiness, a true contentment.
Intoxicated by this tranquillity, we would have gone on lying there, but we heard heavy footsteps on the flagstones. Fangfang sat up and I got to my feet to have a look. A man was walking along the stone path from the gate towards the temple. He was a big fellow, with a mass of tangled hair on his head and an untrimmed beard covering his cheeks. He was scowling. From beneath bushy eyebrows, his stern eyes surveyed us. The wind had turned cool. Probably noticing our curious looks, the man raised his head slightly in the direction of the temple. Then, squinting, he studied the weeds swaying among the shiny tiles.
He stopped in front of the incense burner and, striking it with one hand, made it ring. His fingers, gnarled and rough, looked as if they too were made of cast iron. In his other hand he held a tattered black cotton bag. He didn’t seem to be someone from the commune who had come to tend the vegetables. He was sizing us up again, looking at Fangfang’s high-heeled shoes and our backpacks in the grass. Fangfang immediately put her shoes back on. Then, unexpectedly, he addressed us.
“Are you from out of town? Are you enjoying yourselves here?”
I
