Up in the Mountains, Are You Still My Pal?

Nic Guo

A little past halfway, we stop to rest at a spring. From the rim of the basin I watch him wade in; I, submerged but for my head, he, dry from the waist up. As he moves, his torso cuts a grey swatch out of the sky — stretching and swelling until it has eaten up most of the blue. Because of the hasty nature of our trip, we haven’t planned a route, we just follow our senses and the people climbing with us. A few meters away an old couple rests on a boulder sharing crackers. The man finishes up, strips to his singlet, and plunges in. His wife leans her head onto a gingham rag she’s propped up against the boulder. Their presence has spoiled the perfect site for an airing of grievances. That they remain ignorant of the surge of resentment I feel towards them only irks me further — the water around my skin starts to form a hot, sulfurous membrane. Kernels of sediment and kelp feathers float beneath the water’s surface. The crickets are singing a throaty song, not to be outdone by the steady drone of summer cicadas. He begins to turn around to face me.

I was lying slovenly on the manilla-colored couch, breeze lofting the sheer curtains on high when the news came that a student had lit a pipe bomb at the base of the Nine Dragon Pillar. I looked to Tianhang, who looked over at Li Kui. Instantly we recognized the student as one of our own. He had those acne-scarred cheeks that served as resting beds for our nails, and spider limbs curling beneath his eyes, which we got from staying up all night and sleeping all day. We observed the news like naughty children at sermon, poking each other through the pews, bound by a mutual understanding that nothing very meaningful was at work. Shortly after, the student was apprehended in Shenzhen while trying to purchase an electric scooter with his mother’s credit card. Officially, he was branded a terrorist. To us, we gained an unlikely hero. To hell with the Nine Dragon Pillar, we thought. News anchors made a great show of the pillar’s everlasting quality. The bomb had dislodged several large chunks of cinder at the base, but the pillar itself remained unscathed. By the time Gao Tianhang and I decided to embark on a trip to Mount Lu in the city of Jiujiang, it seemed everyone in this god-forsaken generation was going mad. 

The root of our conflict was unremarkable — a classic tale involving two men and a woman — but we were young and felt nothing was real without dramatization. To the outside observer it would appear the timing of it was all wrong — why come to blows now, after Wang Yimin and I had already broken things off? A part of me thought he planned on luring me into the wilderness to kill me. It was an outcome I was willing to accept but not without first hearing why. I had begun to suspect that the love triangle was just a pretense, an excuse to smother any underlying problems between myself and Gao Tianhang. 

To be clear, pretense was not something we took issue with. If anything it was admirable. We befriended and made acquaintances of all manner of everyday actors: first, there was the Pharmaceutical King, Zheng Mao, who got chummy with housewives for the purpose of birthing a male heir. Then there was Su Wei, a lifelong classmate who lied about her age in order to win ornate stationery and silver butterfly clips from older men. Even the mangy tabbies and poodles were shameless in their mercenary obedience, all for something to eat and a place to sleep. Pretense was a way of getting things done, which had always been our mission and a seemingly impossible one at that. It was the question of what purpose this particular pretense served that troubled me. In no time at all, Gao Tianhang had cloaked himself in overlapping pretenses, each only tangentially related to the one before. My friend now resembled a staircase that had folded in on itself, but imperfectly, at odd intervals, so that only its corners are touching.

Here is the information I was privy to. By fall semester of his sophomore year, Gao Tianhang had fallen out of love with film. His school was in upstate New York, total red county where locals harangued him in the deli for his ratty sneakers, curly black hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He joined a Bible study. The pictures he watched felt increasingly starved for meaning. Spring came and he returned heartbroken, his vision of America in pieces. He volunteered on a millet farm in Hebei during harvest season and worked until his hair started thinning and he had gained twenty pounds of grain fat and muscle. How did I know all this when Tianhang hadn’t breathed a word of it to a soul, let alone his betrayer? His own mother, a portly angel in a mohair sweater, had called in the middle of Fables and Poetics, begging me to write her boy who she feared had lost his mind. 

Then one day Tianhang showed up back home. He started taking classes at Huashi U, not many — one or two — just to get back into the rhythm of things. His curly hair grew out again and he got a new pair of glasses. That was the last I heard from his mother. I suspect he caught wind of our talks and quickly snuffed them out. When I got back to Shanghai on summer break, Tianhang had dropped out again. This time the reason was less clear — by design, no doubt.

In the weeks that led up to our trip, I paced around my room thinking about giving Wang Yimin a call. Some days I studied the collected short fictions of Raymond Carver, took walks with my parents in Zhongshan Park and went for happy hour with Li Kui and Wu Haoxi, who were Gao Tianhang’s friends too (we had agreed to leave them in the dark for the sake of keeping matters simple). Some days were so stiflingly hot, it was all I could do to lie on the couch and doze off while keeping an eye on the laundry I had set out to dry. Then I would wake to the smell of burning rice and hurriedly wash another batch before my parents got home from work, setting aside the burnt portion for myself. 

As for Tianhang, I imagine he spent time at the municipal pool swimming laps. He was fooling around with a woman called Shi Jun who studied fine arts at Jiaotong U, though any activity would have to take place at her apartment. Like me, Tianhang still lived with his parents — there was another reason we had chosen not to disclose the specifics of our trip. For one, I didn’t know its purpose — how to describe it? Reconciliation, revenge, admonishment, understanding: all these struck me as possibilities. The other thing was that it was too much, verging on the point of fantasy, and a poor one at that: two grown men, jobless and still living with their parents, taking a high-speed train to a faraway mountain to settle old scores. 

Years ago, during the most fragile period of our friendship, we had gone to a karaoke bar on the western side of Changning District. In a private room full of friends and casual acquaintances, Wang Yimin and I attempted to make love with our eyes. Only Li Kui and two girls I didn’t know, one called Elaine, the other Xiao Mi, separated us from Tianhang. He’d partaken in every song except two, one of which was a love ballad. When Tianhang had a bit to drink, his cheeks rose up into his eyes, robbing him of his natural sweetness. Behind him was a screen on which cherry blossom petals were wrested by a southerly wind. The lyrics were written out in characters with phonics spelled out above; they made little sense to me when I was lucid and were totally hieroglyphic when drunk. Wedged around the corner sofa were the soldiers, chief among whom was my old friend Lu Ge, who had lost a tremendous amount of weight but remained puffy in the cheeks. Naturally, Lu Ge had to be chief because his service time doubled that of the others, and he had the epaulettes to prove it. Buckteeth bit into pink lips, over which he had tried to grow a mustache. His hair was unruly, having gone uncut since his last shave in the barracks. Then came another love ballad and this time Tianhang seized his opportunity, dragging along Li Kui, who couldn’t keep his eyes open or his ponytail from wrapping around his neck. Colorful spotlights hovered on the walls and fluttered from place to place. As I sipped on my drink, I felt increasingly put out by my friend with the grating voice. He really put on a show, the bastard, feigning feeling in his eyes, which were swollen without his trademark eyeglasses; he showed off those great lips of his, and that neck, flush with pimples. You need not worry, one of these days you’ll find someone who’s got eyes just for you…then Li Kui, playing the part of the somber lead, chimed in, that isn’t it, it’s me who can’t stand others, I always feel we can’t get along. 

Because Lu Ge had demanded we maintain a strict ratio of boys to girls, we had asked our female friends along to mollify the chief. Li Kui introduced two girls to us, first a local girl with whom he’d taken a pottery class, then a sous chef, how they met I don’t remember. It was odd that he’d elected to drink as much as he had; it made me think that Li Kui was the sort of fellow who lacked a need for pretense, because usually a man would restrain himself in the presence of so many eligible bachelorettes. Tianhang had brought a pharmacist who worked at the Portman. In the face of all these unfamiliars I felt I had lost the ability to make friends in unlikely places. It would never be me singing in envious stupor, then going out the next night to do the same with a different old friend, a different past lover. Streaks of grey ran down Tianhang’s shirt collar, you could see the pit on his throat and its marble quality, a plum pit, he was sweating like a madman, I felt his warmth on my skin when he popped back onto the sofa, sighing contentedly. I wanted no part in his hateful rapture. What made matters worse was that Tianhang made an oafish show of wishing us well — he was on his feet; he was on his knees; he took one hand from each of us like a greedy pastor. Whether he knelt from intoxication or to complete the gesture was anyone’s guess. I suspected both and didn’t listen to a word he said. I was only conscious of Wang Yimin’s little hand in his. 

On the way home I paused every few steps to corner Wang Yimin against a streetlamp or a brick terrace. By a telephone box I made a fool of myself, pretending to dial an old friend and then singing Wang Yimin’s praise — something I had seen in a film. She played along the first few times then, rather seriously, said that we wouldn’t make it home until four in the morning if we continued at this pace, and so from then we only stopped at every other intersection.

We met at Hongqiao Railway Station an hour before departure. As I was leaving home, I peeked into my parents’ bedroom to find the Governess by her bedside window with the curtains drawn. She spoke into a creamy white receiver, cradling it as one would a conch shell. Her freshly-done nails were like little bumps on the shell’s surface. I had already come up with a lie if she should ask where I was going. Actually, I’d come up with three or four. But she was preoccupied and my hard work was for nothing. 

Whereas Tianhang had packed a medium-sized suitcase, my duffel was loosely composed of four sets of clothes (in case of rain), some sleazy detective novels, a knapsack for the mountain, a tin of mints and a stowable chess set. When the PA announced our train had arrived on the eighth track Tianhang was still asleep. From across the aisle, I appraised the pebbled vinyl suitcase between his legs. A small padlock was affixed to its zipper. The central terminal swelled with the raucous sounds of kids horsing around and the solemn worries of adults alike. A row of windows faced the platform below. I watched as people boarded. The granite platform shone brightly, the sun painting the curved metal exterior of the train white, turning the floor to tundra. It looked like the moment before a magnificent explosion, like the birth of a supernova. Then I looked back at my sleeping companion and wondered if he was still my pal.

Pulling into the darkened platform, we could only make out a few trees whose tops glowed orange with lamplight. I had slept well, shedding off my unease along the way. Together Tianhang and I lifted our baggage from the overhead bins, hailed a cab to the apartment Tianhang’s friend had graciously loaned us, watched some television and were asleep within the hour. 

At six-thirty Tianhang was nowhere to be found. We’d agreed to leave for the mountain at seven. The morning light, fresh and nubile, sliced through chambray curtains. Water roaches leaked out of invisible cracks and from underneath cheap furniture, some falling from the ceiling like drops of condensation. The bathroom had a squat toilet and a spigot in the corner but no shower — I had to splash myself with water from the sink. A porthole carved into the wall let some light in. When I had rinsed off, I looked into the mirror and projected my best rendering of Wang Yimin which, I reasoned, was not delusion because I had sought her out intentionally. Then I went into the kitchen. 

In the refrigerator I found a steamed bun that had probably been there for weeks and ate it on the veranda, the only place free of roaches. From there I spotted Tianhang down in the courtyard, kicking a ratty old ball with some kid sporting Barcelona colors. I could tell they’d already been at it for a while by the way they matched the pace of the other’s ball, anticipating the curves and grooves of the pavement. The ball scudded back and forth making harsh noises like flame struck on the side of a matchbox. Each time the kid’s foot touched the ball, he’d cry out, Fuck you! Tianhang didn’t hold back either, winding up before every strike, sometimes whiffing entirely and then hurrying off to retrieve it. 

I ate and watched like this for some time, how long I can’t be sure, long enough for a fleet of fast-moving clouds to pass by. They took turns hiding the sun, those heavy-set palanquin bearers. I thought to myself that things couldn’t be going well with Shi Jun, the fine arts student — or else Tianhang wouldn’t have taken two days to seek vengeance in a third-tier mountain town. To derive satisfaction from the knowledge that my old pal was suffering a few stories down was a cruel if natural act. 

Eventually I skipped down the stairwell with my knapsack and two bottles of water for myself and Tianhang, who was already sopping wet when I handed him his share. His plump lips rose and fell as he caught his breath, whisker fields trembling under his nose. Taking a long draw of water, Tianhang passed the bottle to the kid who finished it. Kid, I said, what position do you play? I’m not bad myself you know, dribbling the ball and catching it in the crook of my ankle. When he didn’t answer I turned to Tianhang and said I would wait if he needed to go upstairs to wash off.

Tianhang and I had met while attending an English-speaking school. If he was a recluse then I was a hermit, having only just moved to Shanghai and wanting to reinvent myself from the shameless loudmouth I had been as a boy. The first two years of secondary school, Tianhang and I kept our distance. In truth, I thought he was a little too Chinese in the way that he answered the teacher in broken English, happily mixing and matching prepositions. I scoffed at his myopic but absolute outlook regarding world events (I, in turn, was hopelessly apolitical, but attributed my lack of knowledge to a lack of caring and in that way, was able to stomach my ignorance).

My only friends were Lu Ge, who I’d gone to summer camp with years before, who spent all his time feverishly checking the stock market and bickering with his Taiwanese mother, and Fan Zhesi, a duck-faced boy from Santa Barbara who had yet to grow into his oversized body, and whose greatest passion was sending me pictures he’d taken of the girls in our year with their pale fledgling bodies, captioned suggestively.

In the third year of secondary school, I grew three inches, Zhesi moved back to California and I ditched Lu Ge ruthlessly. Meanwhile, Tianhang had been named captain of the swim team, though it hardly made him any more popular (and by popular I mean sociable, likely to be found among others—of admirers, he had plenty), and improved his 200m freestyle to the point where university scouts began to take notice. As a result, the school saw fit to reserve a special lane for Tianhang to practice.

During swim unit I would often spy Tianhang by the side of the pool, chest heaving, having completed a set of the butterfly (his specialty). I admired his seeming indifference towards being perceived. Our class was in the midst of the backstroke, a devilish stroke for graceless individuals. I wound up choking down so much water that our teacher had me sit in the corner and watch Tianhang from whom, he said, I could learn a thing or two. In his wet and shockingly hairy paws shone the cover of a book, bent out of shape, having the texture of an old teabag. How he could even decipher characters or separate the pages enough to turn them I didn’t know.  

Crouched over wet tile, cadaverous ribs on display, I struck up a conversation. From then on we were pals. It is difficult to say what stuck, or what we even had in common. All I know is that from then on, swim unit became tolerable, even pleasurable. Like me, Tianhang thought family was important, though neither of us could say why. My best guess was that whereas Li Kui was perpetually locking horns with his architect parents, who would have been pleased for their boy to pursue a life in the arts, Tianhang and I saw our parents as so vastly different from our own image that we felt compelled to bridge the gap or at least reason with it. During swim unit I would join my pal in the lane specially reserved for his training, where we would share intimate family details under the guise of backstroke. My teacher was none the wiser — unable to object to what essentially amounted to a private lesson. And when that was finished, then we moved on to speak of the future and the nuances of the butterfly stroke.

At the foot of the mountain lay a hamlet. Tianhang and I stopped to have a meal at its only restaurant, which was fortressed by a pagoda, a western-facing moongate, and a length of sugi trees. The hostess looked to be in her early thirties. Because, I supposed, of the early hour and lack of customers, she sat down with us. Soon our table was populated by steamed fish, spareribs, lotus root, morning glory, and tea. Loose strands of hair fluttered in and out of the hostess’s face. Tianhang seized the opportunity to start yapping. Occasionally a stout lady would call from the kitchen and the hostess would excuse herself, returning only after whatever had to be dealt with had been dealt with. In between appearances, we sipped on the house-brewed fermented rice drink. Though it was nearly impossible to get drunk off, we found ourselves drawn in by its rich fragrance, and our hearts began to ache for understanding. The hostess went first: It’s always been my dream to open shop and watch the expressions of worldly travelers as they eat my food, she told us. As the meal progressed, Tianhang recounted a few stories from secondary school, which always seemed to cheer him up. Then he moved on to the present day. How he could shift so seamlessly from one time to another without experiencing some sort of internal dissociation amazed me; I regarded Tianhang fondly as the historian of our little band of second-generation wealth. Chinese girls all have such unbelievable English names, he announced through a stalk of morning glory. Tianhang then proceeded to rattle off a laundry list of girls he had fucked: there was S Jie, Garbage, Wolf, Football, Clean, Dirty, Kinky Hell, and so on. It was with great regret that the hostess admitted she had no English name. 

Usually I would chime in with some thought of my own, but since I felt nothing had been resolved, I only laughed politely and sipped my drink. Before we left, the waitress offered to fill our canteens with sweet wine. Mine was still full of water so I excused myself. Outside a hut with some coolers set out on the steps, a young pigtailed girl eyed me as I surveyed her wares. I turned to check on Tianhang, who had yet to move from the table. Through the moongate fronting the restaurant, I spied on my friend and the hostess. Delicate umbels littered the pagoda and the path leading down to where I stood. Wind rustled through the trees like a thin net through running water, seeming to dislodge individual petals and leaves without disturbing the trees at large. Tianhang let the waitress fill his canteen to the brim, burbling as it pooled over the edge. 

We started up the mountain. There was hardly any foot traffic — summer break had yet to begin. As we ascended it became clear that Tianhang had become bloated with food and drink so I set off on my own, ten or fifteen paces ahead. When I reached the stone pagoda in a clearing about four-hundred meters from the start, I allowed myself to stop and rest by its shade. Some university students were posing for photos by the edge of the cliff in the reeds and the clouds. They had set their camera on a pagoda bench on a timer so one had to continuously scurry back and forth, first to start the timer, then to make it into the picture frame, a task he failed more than once, much to the delight of his cohorts. Outside the pagoda, overlooking the countless valleys of Mount Lu, squatted a Zhuang Chinese woman who looked to be in her sixties, though she could have easily been twenty years younger. She wore a pink gingham apron, flats, and something resembling a nursing cap to keep her hair back, though a few strands found their way down her forehead in spite of it. At her feet lay a wicker basket with towels and beverages. I took a seat beside her while waiting for my friend. I bought two hand towels for three yuan apiece, poured some water on one, wiped my brow, then took a step towards the edge of the cliff. Peering down I saw pert little fountains spurting out of the faraway mist at odd intervals, like streams of bathwater jetting down a titan’s calf. Reeds swooned at my knees. At the peak opposite me I could see the leaves of gingko trees parachuted over a thick haze.

After Tianhang had caught up with me, we rested for almost an hour just panting and waiting. Tianhang bought a towel of his own though I would have happily parted ways with one of mine. I watched my friend the way you would a sick puppy, trying to diagnose him. He had spoken to the waitress so vigorously, yet had no words for me.

A memory: by the time Li Kui and Wu Haoxi met up with us, the streets were thickening with midday traffic. We took the subway to a dive bar in Jing’an where we could either wait for a table or share one with a party of four. Li Kui asked the doorman to point out the party in question. As it turned out, they were all guys around our age so we left— even if they’d been girls we’d have left, unless they were extraordinarily pretty. Li Kui grumbled that Jing’an was getting too crowded and that we ought to have gone somewhere more discreet like Bell’s or Habibi but we reminded him that those too were overrun by foreigners and more importantly, they cost money, money that we didn’t have— or did but preferred not to spend on alcohol which was potent no matter the source. Outside we warded off the beggars who pestered Li Kui — his mixed blood ran a little differently than ours (ours was blue, his pure gold!). A man with no teeth and an indigo cloak tried to put his parakeet on Li Kui’s shoulder. I was laughing and telling Li Kui to go on and accept his gift while he implored me to get it off him. The toothless man must have already begun to smell his next meal because he kept egging on that parakeet with whistles and frantic gestures of the hand, leaning in so close that I was going to retch and then I was no longer laughing, his demented smile was scarily close-up, and — amazing! — he really did not have a single tooth to his name, plus he stunk of piss and ash. Then Haoxi yelled at us to come the fuck on, he had succeeded in hailing a cab, so me and Tianhang pooled our efforts, pulled Li Kui into the cab, and we shut the door on the toothless man’s fingers and then quickly opened and closed the door again before we even heard him scream, this time cleanly. 

Haoxi, being the tallest, sat in the front. It was rare for him to come out these days, though none of us knew why. Gao Tianhang suggested Haoxi wasn’t up to anything. One of us had probably said something insensitive or looked at him the wrong way, and he was now self-isolating to exact a measure of revenge. The most obvious explanations were often the truest, said Li Kui, therefore it was clear Haoxi had gotten himself a girl. 

The cabbie asked us where we were heading and nobody said a thing. Halfheartedly, I suggested a pool hall in Minhang. Too far, said Haoxi. The others agreed. If you boys don’t come up with something soon, I’m calling the cops, said the cabbie. Then Li Kui suggested a new dance club right in central Jing’an whose owner he knew. The music was good, he promised, and the crowd was alternative if a little punk for our tastes. Not only are you boys unable to give me an address, the cabbie said, and I’ve been driving for nearly twenty minutes now (it had been five, ten at most), but I can tell you’re also degenerates, second-generation wealth, and I’m not moving from here until you get out of my cab. Behind us a fleet of vehicles had already begun to screech and blare. What’s the matter with you? asked Tianhang, knocking on the plastic divider. Give him the address, he said. The driver still wasn’t having any of it — we had to put down half the fare and promise an extra fifty upon arrival just to get him to shift the car into drive. For some time, we sat in silence, not wanting to provoke. I jabbed quietly at Li Kui and Tianhang who were crowding me when I’d already resigned myself to the middle seat, those jerks. When he pulled onto the side of the road where Li Kui directed him, the cabbie surprised us by apologizing for having spoken rashly. Maybe he thought we weren’t going to pay him. I leaned forward to get a better look at him. His face was covered in liver spots and his nails were longer than the Devil’s. The face on his license didn’t match his own, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. In reality he had nothing to fear, we were writers and filmmakers and not insurgents. We left him the money he was due, bid him a good evening and that was that.

Outside the dance club we came upon Stray Cat and Pebble Dong, the ex-poetess, sharing a smoke. Of the two I was closer with Stray Cat since I liked his songs, the ones about his dead mother, the ones about his neurotic dad, the ones without any particular meaning. As we greeted them, Tianhang and Li Kui accepted Pebble’s cigarettes and struck up a conversation — I went to claim mine and Pebble snatched the pack away, even though there were three or four in plain view. 

I did my best not to make a fool of myself, grateful for the darkness and for my friends. Only Tianhang could dance without thinking, seeming to relish the attention. Magenta lashed at his cheek — it rolled down his face and revealed beads of sweat — then slithered down his torso and legs. At intervals, when the light caught his expression, I could swear that Tianhang was crying. The skin between his eyebrows was all knotted up. He still had his glasses on. And when the light looked elsewhere, he turned back into a devil. I turned my back on him. The music was decent, some Russian techno that could not pierce my skin but which I enjoyed nonetheless. Stray Cat kept on swaying his hips behind me and touching my chest, like he always did when he was drunk. I strained my eyes trying to find the others but it was too dark and the silhouettes of dancers were indistinguishable, merging into an amorphous, toxic sludge. I called Stray Cat’s name but he didn’t hear me or pretended not to, so I ducked my way through the crowd of bodies and undulating waves of sound until I found an exit. I spotted some familiar faces belonging to Pebble and her friend whose name I had already forgotten. They were with a man who looked twice our age with long silver hair and sunglasses. I approached them with a dumb smile. Come on, I said to Pebble, taking her by the arm, let's go find our friends. They're not here, she said, so you can let go of me. I know; that's why we have to go and find them. No, she said, I mean they've left. Li Kui got drunk so they called him a car almost half an hour ago — a silver Peugeot. For some reason I could hear her perfectly clearly through all the sounds of the mob. I don't believe you, I said, but I let go of her arm all the same.

After resting with our hand towels, now chilled and clinging to our necks, we went on climbing. A woman hauling wooden crates filled with hawthorn passed us on her way down the mountain. After her, we didn’t pass another soul. The trees started to thin out. The verdant tunnel they had once banded together to form became mostly blankness. It was not desolate or hopeless, just placid. The only identifiable landmark was a red pagoda that appeared to be floating below. Reaching another peak, we took a seat on a boulder that had split down the middle. Over the years the chasm in between had filled in with shrubbery and reeds like those we had encountered on the way up, only these were taller, sparser and had an air of nobility. The sun had all but disappeared, diving behind a cliff into its nest beneath the earth. I was vaguely aware we were experiencing the last of its warmth. 

Do you remember my letters to you? asked Tianhang.

Of course, I said, I wrote back didn’t I? There was a defensive edge to my voice, as if I wasn’t entirely sure I had. Truthfully, Tianhang had a way of writing that both charmed and vexed. Try as I might, I could never match his earnestness. From the farm he had written me twice, and each letter had brought me equally to tears and fits of shame. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts. I thought it was my gift to play with words and coerce new meanings from them. Tearfully, on the mountaintop, my thoughts drifted to a poem tacked up on a wall in Tianhang’s home. From the scrawl and colored pencil illustrations you could tell it had been conceived by a child. The poem described a stray cat that Tianhang’s mother had encountered while gardening. Nobody came to claim him and over time, the cat became their pet Rocket, named for his wiry tail that shot up in the air. Feeling as though the altitude was getting to me, I struggled to remember the ending to Tianhang’s poem. The wind had started whipping the clouds in odd directions. I could no longer see the floating pagoda, though the ridge that led down to it remained in place. Tianhang, I heard myself say, you’re my good friend. Let us try to speak plainly. Catching speed, the clouds whisked around us until I could see nothing but a small patch of rock where I sat. I clutched my arms which prickled with goose pimples, taking hold of my wrists. Then, swallowing my fear, I stuck an arm out until my fingers disappeared into fog, then my wrist and forearm with it. I shut my eyes. Catching hold of something soft, I yanked it, hoping to pull something into a space where I could see things and name them. In came Tianhang’s sweater. His hand grabbed mine, a cavernous, sweaty thing. I was grateful for its warmth if nothing else. I was still talking but my mouth was dry, and because the sound of the wind drowned out my words I couldn’t even be sure they were coming out.

Dear Ziqin,

How are you? How’s university and everything? I think of my experience here like school in a way. I got a single room, everything is strange to me and I have to make friends all over again.

I met some really nice people in my first few days here capturing fish. This one fellow who is in charge of the pond walks his German Shephard dog everyday in the morning. Dog is called 贝贝 (bei bei). One morning I caught him trying to give the dog a bath by full-blasting the water hydrant. The dog wouldn’t go near the water and the fellow was in shock asking me if his dog was dumb. He also has two other dogs, Wolf and Blacky, the first being a six-month-old typical stray. The other is still a puppy that just started walking. 

Last night was my first time having Mid-Autumn Festival dinner without my family. The farmer’s son sat by my side and even served me beer to go with my hairy crab. He couldn’t have been older than nine. I tried to help him with his homework, but I don’t think I’m much use at all. Some days, I think that my days spent here are meaningful. Like when we fished in the sea with these big nets. Or the other day, when I ran 10k in the fields, passing all sorts of melons and vegetables. Other times I think it’s sort of pathetic. 

September was a pain, simply adjusting to waking up so early, poor living conditions, bad food and sanitary issues. But the worst is probably loneliness and homesickness. I missed my home so much. I still do. Not just the house and food but Mom and Dad. Just seeing them again would probably make me break down and leave the farm with them. I’m still such a kid.