FRAGMENT 04
Cloth Buttons
Fragment: An Obviously Fake Tremor in the Voice | The Sound of Cloth Buttons Slipping Free
Time & Location: Autumn 1969 · Pocket alley, Houhai, Beijing
"Oh my. The leader's home."
Grandma Yang's voice seeped out from the room on the eastern side like a damp snake.
She was the only neighbor in our new home.
Not long before, she had moved into the two eastern rooms.
She had been chosen by Gao Yong's father.
The same man who, during the early years of the Cultural Revolution, had stirred up zealots to remove my father from his position as vice minister.
This residence, and this neighbor, had both been arranged by him.
Grandma Yang was not yet sixty.
There was not a trace of revolutionary spirit about her.
Instead, she carried a thick scent of powder and perfume.
Her dark-gray blouse fit tightly.
A row of cloth frog-buttons ran diagonally across her chest toward her left armpit.
In those years, Zhongshan suits filled the streets. I had grown accustomed to women appearing flat-chested.
She was not.
Her breasts were full. They swayed when she moved.
And I often found myself wanting to sneak a look at the large hips that twisted from side to side.
Not long after we moved in, the skinny old man who played the erhu near the alley entrance quietly told me:
"Kid, that old woman used to be a famous prostitute.
Know what that means?
Hahaha."
I was only ten.
I did not know what a prostitute was.
But I could hear something.
Whenever she swayed her waist, those cloth buttons rubbed against the fabric.
They produced an extremely faint sound.
A tiny rhythm.
Zzz—pop.
Zzz—pop.
"Leader, the coal stove isn't hot enough.
How about your little sister here gives it a poke?"
The tremor in her voice was obviously fake.
Father struck another match.
Scratch—
hiss.
The match head flared violently, as if it too were in a temper.
I crouched in my room against the wall.
Using the White Crow's hearing, I listened to the sound patterns beyond it.
Grandma Yang was undoing those cloth buttons.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
The sound of cloth buttons slipping free from their loops was soft.
Muted.
I lay down and turned from side to side.
The image of those heavy hips would not leave my eyes.
FRAGMENT 05
The Hanging Ghost
Fragment: The Tiny Tremors Brought by Insects | A Bohemian Melody
Time & Place: Summer 1970 · Pocket Alley, Houhai, Beijing | Summer 1982 · Volleyball Court, Renmin University of China
I wanted to avoid that woman.
I would rather play with the "Hanging Ghosts."
Whenever Dad was away, she wandered in and out completely naked. Two sacks of flesh hung from her chest, lifeless and unattractive. But when she turned around, the view was something else entirely.
With a dry cough, the naked figure emerged, swaying gently.
I hurried outside and crouched in a shallow pit beneath the old locust tree. Picking through the half-dried leaves, I buried myself among them.
As dusk approached, the world turned white.
I put on my dark glasses and continued my game.
Ssssss—
That was the sound of a Hanging Ghost descending.
These pale green caterpillars released transparent threads and lowered themselves one by one from the dense canopy overhead.
To most people they were disgusting.
To me, each carried its own frequency.
Plop.
Plop.
Plop.
They landed everywhere.
In the pit.
On my body.
On my sunglasses.
I closed my eyes and quietly assigned them numbers.
Number 17 was chewing through a leaf vein on my left.
Number 42 was attempting to crawl across my toes.
I arranged and rearranged their tiny movements, turning them into arithmetic problems inside my head.
The minute vibrations created by the insects lulled me toward sleep.
The endless stream of numbers inside my mind woke me again.
Then came the strange cry of an erhu.
A villain's aria from one of the Revolutionary Model Operas.
The horsehair bow scraping against steel strings sounded almost demonic, accompanied by the faint noises of a dry throat swallowing phlegm.
Disgusting.
The Hanging Ghosts, however, remained indifferent and carried on with their business.
That afternoon, shortly after soldiers had taken my father away, a sticky voice arrived with perfect timing.
"Come here, young man. Grandma will scratch your back for you."
Her pale hand toyed with the row of cloth buttons across her blouse.
The movement carried traces of cold cream and an old bodily scent.
Small hairpins glimmered among her neatly arranged hair.
I shuffled toward her.
The sound of her fingertips brushing against skin was softer than an insect crawling across a leaf.
Heat rushed through me.
Then she suddenly turned away and returned to embroidering the red bird she seemed destined to stitch forever.
Behind her delicate reading glasses, she worked one stitch at a time, so slowly that time itself appeared to solidify.
Later, whenever Father was absent, she would sit upon that large bed layered with quilts.
And those silken physiological noises would tighten themselves around my adolescence, thread by thread.
FRAGMENT 06
I'd Rather Sleep in a Pigsty
Fragment: The Sound of Fingertips Brushing Skin | A Hoe Striking a Child's Back
Time & Place: Winter 1970 · Pocket Alley, Houhai, Beijing | Summer 1982 · Behind Tanzhe Temple, Beijing
Father never came home.
One day, his bodyguard woke me before dawn and put me into a military jeep.
The road was rough.
When I opened my eyes again, we were parked in front of Tanzhe Temple.
Its gates were locked.
The monks had been driven away by the revolutionaries.
The Buddha statues, incense burners, and great bell were all dead.
I followed two soldiers along mountain paths for what felt like hours.
At last we arrived at a small village.
They handed me over to a group of men who had once worked under my father.
They had already lived there for quite some time, undergoing what was called "re-education."
Back then, people usually found me adorable.
Perhaps because I did not look entirely Han Chinese.
My round eyes sat deep in their sockets.
My unusually large ears tilted backward.
My cheeks were full.
My curly white hair made me look like a doll.
But in a mountain village made entirely of stone houses, that sort of cuteness quickly became a target.
I shared a crumbling side room with them.
Twelve people slept on a single kang, the heated brick bed common in northern China.
I was small enough to curl up in a corner with my hands over my ears.
I did not interfere with anyone's sleep.
But I increasingly interfered with their food.
I could eat more than most grown men.
For that, I was often beaten and cursed.
Once, I climbed up and raided a swallow's nest.
One of the uncles summoned a villager.
The man swung a hoe at me.
The blade split the skin across my back.
I have long forgotten the pain.
But I never forgot the sound.
Pa—shhh.
In front of other people, I never cried.
I hated human voices.
I often wandered into the ravines outside the village, searching for wild fruit and edible plants.
I preferred talking to insects, birds, and squirrels.
Playing games with them.
The only thing missing was crows.
I had not seen a single one.
The Chinese junipers on the hillsides kept me company.
Their cold, pungent scent became part of me.
When I returned to the village, I would rather sleep in the pigsty.
A small fly might land on my face.
I would let it stay.
I listened to the faint brushing sounds made by its tiny legs as it walked across my skin.
The smell was awful.
Yet somehow we felt like companions.
When winter winds howled through the mountain gullies, my ears would begin to itch.
I would lie flat upon the frozen earth and let the deep vibrations beneath the ground fill my ears.
They were thick.
Sticky.
Tinged with rust.
Above the mountains hung a reddish star.
FRAGMENT 07
“WORK”
Fragment: A Nearly Imperceptible Low-Frequency Tremor | A Hiss Like a Snake Testing the Air
Time & Place: Spring 1972 · Pocket Alley, Houhai, Beijing
I spent three years in that mountain village before being sent back to Pocket Alley.
The Spring Equinox.
My thirteenth birthday.
A humid morning so oppressive it made me nauseous.
I dreamed of the ribbonfish Dad used to grill for me.
I had just put a piece into my mouth when a loudspeaker exploded somewhere outside.
I woke with a strange dampness between my legs.
My mind filled with white sacks of flesh, the pounding of an old woman's heart, and the low growls of a trapped beast rolling through the darkness.
The sticky stain startled the White Crow awake.
Its despairing resonance flooded my ears—a shrill scream of humiliation.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside the courtyard.
Leather shoes grinding against gravel.
Cha. Cha. Cha.
I stumbled out of bed, straightened the blanket in panic, and rushed outside.
His arm was held by two soldiers.
His clothes were covered in dust.
There were tears in the fabric.
A scab had formed on one of his hands.
He looked up at me.
"Son, why is your face so yellow?"
His voice was soft.
There was none of the authority of a senior official.
None of the authority of a father.
Instead, there was a faint low-frequency tremor beneath it.
Almost impossible to detect.
I could hear it clearly.
For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for him.
I had not felt sorry for him when he came home exhausted and still cooked for me.
I had not felt sorry for him when he was released and immediately sat beside me to help with my homework.
I had not felt sorry for him when he secretly wiped tears away while looking at Mother's photograph.
But now I did.
I could hear the disorder in his heartbeat.
The restraint.
The helplessness.
I lowered my head.
Rubbed my hands together.
Stepped back twice.
Afraid he might smell the scent clinging to me.
"Come inside."
Father gently touched the top of my head.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted to call him Dad.
For the first time, I heard something inside the voice of that iron-hard man.
A frequency called tenderness.
Like a fine needle piercing through all that sticky filth and shame, lighting a fire somewhere deep inside me.
While Father was there, I did not cry.
But the moment he disappeared from sight, tears burst out of me.
I bit down on my lips.
My whole body trembled.
A laugh drifted from the eastern room.
Soft.
Like a snake testing the air with its tongue.
Then came a deliberate cough.
That evening she brought me a plate of freshly cooked dumplings.
The scent from her fingertips came with them.
"Grandma came to celebrate your birthday."
"Go away!"
I shoved her toward the door.
She froze for a moment.
Then quietly left.
I swallowed the dumplings.
And the tears.
Together.
FRAGMENT 08
A Classified File
Fragment: A Clear Metallic Resonance | An Unusual Tenderness at the Corner of Her Eyes
Time & Place: Spring 1972 · Pocket Alley, Houhai, Beijing | Autumn 1945 · Yan'an, Shaanxi
The barber's large iron tweezers rang out again from outside the courtyard.
Weng—
Weng——
Back then, almost every month, a barber would come to tend Grandma Yang's hair.
Before the man himself appeared, the instrument known as a huantou—a large iron tweezer struck against a nail—would announce his arrival with a bright metallic vibration.
Weng—
Weng——
The barber washed her hair.
Combed it.
Dyed it.
He also performed what people called "threading."
Taking two strands of cotton thread, moistening them with his lips from time to time, he twisted away every fine hair along her temples and forehead.
Even her eyebrows were trimmed into perfect order.
When that was finished, the activity moved indoors.
The barber began massaging Grandma Yang's back.
I liked watching.
Grandma Yang touched my cheek.
At the corner of her eyes hung a tenderness I rarely saw.
"Good boy. Go play outside."
After quite some time, the iron tweezers sounded again.
Weng—Weng——
The Hanging Ghosts around me scattered in fright.
Many years later, I came across a file stamped:
TOP SECRET.
The final update was dated October 1945.
It recorded the first half of Grandma Yang's life.
Inside was an old photograph.
Brown with age.
Carefully preserved.
Almost untouched by wear.
It showed Grandma Yang as a young woman.
She wore the uniform of the Eighth Route Army.
There was a heroic confidence in her face.
Compared with the woman I had known in old age, her eyes were astonishingly pure.
Like a pair of stars.
Her full lips curved like a crescent moon.
Only one thing had not changed:
the faint dimple in her cheek.
The file contained more than a dozen documents.
Yet the essential information occupied only a few lines.
Name: Yang Zihe
Date of Birth: March 1922
Place of Origin: Mizhi County, Shaanxi
Family Background: Major Landowning Family
Party Membership: October 1938
Sponsor: Deputy Director Luan, Border Region Security Department, Yan'an
Education: Anti-Japanese Military and Political University, Class of 1939
Occupation: Shaanbei Folk Singer, Anti-Japanese University Song and Dance Troupe
Organizational Affiliation: Second Bureau of the Central Military Commission
Codename: Red Sparrow
One document contained only four lines.
Beiping.
Shaanxi Alley.
Shanglin House, Qingyin Performance Class.
Public Name: Nalan Qianhe.
The woman described in those files felt entirely mechanical.
But Grandma Yang of Pocket Alley—
though long dead—
still seemed to breathe from time to time inside my world.
