FRAGMENT 84
Resonance Across 56 Years
Fragments: A Bloodline's Built-In Resistance Algorithm | Not Wanting to Disturb My Son's Dreams
Time & Location: Spring 2015 · Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital | Ritz-Carlton Almaty
A message arrived on WeChat.
Even during pregnancy, Sha Qingqing's voice retained the confidence and warmth of a professional broadcaster.
“The doctor just told me something.”
“Your son's due date is exactly the same as yours.”
“The Spring Equinox.”
“Are they sure?”
“The doctor confirmed it several times.”
“Amazing.”
The moment I heard it, every organ inside me seemed to break into celebration.
“There's something else.”
“Your son is breech.”
“If he doesn't turn before the due date, they'll have to perform a cesarean section.”
Both of us seemed to be avoiding a more fundamental reality.
Sha Qingqing was already forty-two years old.
“There's one more thing I need to tell you.”
“I've been diagnosed with preeclampsia.”
Her voice lost some of its usual brightness.
I froze.
“What did you say?”
“Preeclampsia?”
My own mother had died because of preeclampsia and complications caused by a breech delivery.
Could the curse of the paternal bloodline truly be unavoidable?
“You must listen to the doctors.”
“Your safety comes first.”
In other words, I was declaring that I would willingly give up the son I had long hoped for if that became necessary.
“All right.”
She ended the call.
For a very long time, my nervous system had ceased responding to ordinary human emotions.
I had become like a stone rolling through the world.
But three words—
Spring Equinox.
Breech.
Preeclampsia.
—struck me like three fires.
The stone began to glow.
I closed my hotel room door.
Standing before the mirror, I made ridiculous faces.
Then I spun around in circles like Teacher Su used to do.
Not because my son was about to be born.
But because of the symmetry of time.
The echo of fate.
My son and I would both enter the world on the Spring Equinox.
My mother and my son's mother had both suffered from preeclampsia.
I spun several more times.
Paying tribute to an even smaller statistical miracle.
Something that felt almost like a prophecy.
My daughter.
My son.
And I.
All three of us shared the same stubborn breech presentation—
a strange resistance algorithm embedded within the bloodline itself.
Meaningless numbers gathered together inside my mind.
Fifty-six years.
One Spring Equinox.
Two cases of preeclampsia.
Three breech births.
I lowered myself onto one knee.
Looked toward the sky.
And prayed for the protection of Eternal Heaven.
My son arrived forty days early.
Mother and child survived.
I drank myself drunk.
The baby was tiny.
Barely more than thirty centimeters long.
He had to spend two weeks inside an incubator.
When he slept in his mother's arms, his face wore a familiar expression.
His eyes squeezed tightly shut.
His brow furrowed with fierce concentration.
Exactly the way I must have looked more than fifty years earlier in the hills behind Tanzhe Temple—
when I closed my eyes and imagined flying to Mars.
I reached out and touched his tiny forehead.
Gently.
I did not want to disturb his dreams.
FRAGMENT 85
The Dampness and Hardness Within
Fragments: Lively, Exhilarating Notes | The Earth Is Trembling
Time & Location: Spring 2015 · Tengri Dream World, Almaty Region; Kazakh Steppe
On the Spring Equinox of 2015, the enormous wave-shaped structure modeled after a presidential signature finally shed its blue-and-yellow ribbons.
Through the mist rising from Lake Kapchagay, its golden body emerged into the sunlight.
A mottled crow darted among the falling streamers.
Rolling, banking, weaving.
As if it had flown all the way from a windowsill on Wanshou Road.
The five-star hotels of Tengri Dream World now stood completed.
There was a Conrad, a Grand Hyatt, and a Four Seasons.
The massive casinos were operated by gaming giants including MGM Resorts International, Las Vegas Sands, and Resorts World.
From a helicopter, I watched human beings pour into the palace below like ants.
In my ears, The Radetzky March thundered under the baton of Seiji Ozawa.
Its lively, exhilarating notes scattered across the ancient grasslands, drawing the endless Ili River and the distant Tian Shan Mountains into a grand dance beneath the darkness.
Yet all of it made me feel strangely isolated.
Even though the opening of the integrated resort had increased my personal wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even though the birth of my son seemed to promise a continuation of life itself.
Even though Sha Qingqing's voice remained unchanged by pregnancy and childbirth.
Click.
I heard Orchid place a stone.
No.
It was only the chirp of a WeChat message.
Congratulations, my hero.
At the same moment, an audio message arrived from Sha Qingqing.
My son was crying.
“In honor of today, give your son a name.”
“Let's call him Sha Dao.”
Dao, the Chinese word for island.
The call ended.
I gazed across Lake Kapchagay.
Inside, I remained quieter than the dark water before me.
Like a damp yet unyielding reef.
I crouched down and touched the dry, hardened sand around the roots of the grass.
Then I stood.
A strange human-shaped stalk of dead grass in the darkness between earth and sky.
Suddenly, I felt the ground trembling.
I shook my head.
My eardrums detected nothing.
I shook it again.
Harder.
Still nothing.
A red mist spread before my eyes.
Sticky drops of blood fell.
I could no longer hear Sha Qingqing's voice.
I could no longer set the world back in order.
