ACOUSTIC METADATA

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• TIMESTAMP: Winter, 1987

• LOCATION: Editorial Office / Maternity Ward, Beijing

• ACOUSTIC DATA: Knee-joint clicking (Thermal contraction), Rhythmic radiator wheeze

• FATALITY LOG: Breech birth (Self & Daughter), Forceps trauma

 

 

The early winter wind in Beijing was bone-chilling. My knees made a clicking sound from the thermal expansion and contraction. I leaned against the radiator, listless, like a crow huddling for warmth. 

 

In three days, my wife would give birth.

 

Xiao Chang from the Youth League called: "Bai, Old Song wants you for the chorus. He wants you as the lead.” Old Song, a Major General. When he led inspection tours, he enjoyed singing with me. 

 

I had no interest. The ancestors of the Mongols only sang for themselves—standing before a yurt, no audience, no sycophancy. However, a "political task" is impossible to refuse.

 

On December 12, at nine in the morning, my daughter was born. 

 

Before this, we had exhausted every effort to correct the fetus’s "breech position.” Yet, the fetus stubbornly refused to turn downward, eventually forcing a cesarean. Eerily, when I was born, I was also in this "breech position." After I was clamped out with forceps, my mother, suffering from eclampsia, passed away.

 

A flash of horror toward fate flickered through my heart.