by Ken Liu
I started to run. But I was too old; I couldn’t catch my breath and I felt dizzy. I had to slow down and Heizi caught up to me.
“Do you really think it’s Qiqi?” he asked.
“Of course it is. Heizi, slap me! I want to be sure I’m not dreaming.”
Like a true friend, Heizi slapped me in the face, hard. I put my hand against my cheek, savoring the pain, and laughed.
“Don’t get too excited,” said Heizi. “Zhao Qi is your age, isn’t she? She’s not a pretty young lady anymore. It’s been decades since you’ve seen her. You might be disappointed.”
“That’s ridiculous. Look at all of us. We’re like candle stubs sputtering in our last moments of glory. Seeing her one more time before I die would be more than enough.”
Heizi chuckled. “You might be old, but you’re still in good health—I bet the parts of your body that matter still work pretty well. How about this? If you two are going to get married, I want to be the witness.”
I laughed and felt calmer. We chatted as we descended the mountain, and then my heart began to leap wildly again as I approached the Arts Academy.
18.
I didn’t recognize her.
She was Caucasian. Although her hair was turning white, I could tell it had once been blond. Blue eyes stared at me thoughtfully out of an angled, distinctive face. Although she was not young, she was still beautiful.
I was deeply disappointed. That foolish student hadn’t even clarified whether he was talking about a Chinese or a foreigner.
“Hello,” the woman said. Her Chinese was excellent. “Are you Mr. Xie Baosheng?”
“I am. May I ask your name?”
“I’m Anna Louise Strong, a writer.”
I recognized the name. She was a leftist American author who had lived in Beijing and written several books about the China of the Mao era. She was friends with both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Though I knew who she was, I had never met her. I heard she had moved back to the US around the time Shen Qian died. Why was she looking for me?
Anna looked uncomfortable, and I felt uneasy. She hesitated, and then said, “I have something important to tell you, but perhaps it’s best to speak in private.”
I led her to my cave. Anna retrieved a bundle from her suitcase, which she carefully unwrapped. Anxiously, I watched as she set a crude brown ceramic jar down on the table.
Solemnly, she said, “This holds the ashes of Miss Zhao Qi.”
I stared at the jar, unable to connect this strange artifact with the lovely, graceful Qiqi of my memory.
“What are you saying?” I asked. I simply could not make sense of what she was telling me.
“I’m sorry, but … she’s dead.”
The air in the cave seemed to solidify. I stood rooted in place, unable to speak.
“Are you all right?” Anna asked.
After a while, I nodded. “I’m fine. Oh, would you like a cup of water?” I was surprised I could think about such irrelevant details at that moment.
I had imagined the scene of our reunion countless times, and of course I had imagined the possibility that Qiqi was already dead. I always thought I would howl, scream, fall to the ground, or even faint. But I was wrong. I was amazed by how calmly I accepted the news. Maybe I had always known there would be no happily-ever-after in my life.
“When?” I asked.
“Three days ago, in Luochuan.”
Anna told me that Qiqi had been looking for me for years. Although I had some notoriety as a war criminal, because I was part of the Communist army and always on the march, it was impossible to locate me. Once war broke out with Japan, the Nationalists and the Communists both became American allies and it was no longer difficult to travel to China. Qiqi finally heard that I was in Yan’an and bought a ticket on the boat crossing the Pacific. On the voyage, she met Anna and the two became friends. On the long ride across the ocean, she told Anna our story.
Anna and Qiqi arrived in Hong Kong, but as most of eastern China had fallen to Japanese occupation, they had to get on another boat to Guangxi, from whence they passed through Guizhou and Sichuan, and then continued north through Shaanxi to arrive finally in Yan’an.
“But Zhao Qi was no longer a young woman,” Anna said, “and with her handicap, the journey was very tough on her. By the time she arrived in Xi’an, she fell ill, and yet she forced herself to go on so that she wouldn’t slow us down. In Luochuan, her condition deteriorated…. Because of the war, we couldn’t get the medicine she needed…. We tried everything, but we couldn’t save her.” Anna stopped, unable to continue.
“Don’t blame yourself. You did your best.” I tried to console her.
Anna looked at me strangely, as if unable to comprehend my calmness.
“Why don’t you tell me what her life in America was like following our separation?” I asked.
Anna told me that after I left, Qiqi continued her studies in the US, waiting for me. She wrote to me several times but never received any replies. Once she was awarded her Ph.D., she taught in college and then remarried. Ten years ago, after her husband died, she wanted to return to China, but the civil war put those plans on hold. Finally, only days from Yan’an, she died. Since they couldn’t carry her body through the mountains, they had to cremate her. Thus I was deprived of the chance to see her one last time—
“No,” I interrupted. I picked up the jar of ashes. “Qiqi and I are together now, and we’ll never be apart again. Thank you.”
I ignored Anna’s stare as I held the jar against my chest and muttered to myself. Tears flowed down my face, the tears of happiness.
CODA
The setting sun, red as blood, floated next to the ancient pagoda on Baota Mountain. It cast its remaining light over northern China, veiling everything in a golden-red hue. The Yan River sparkled in the distance, and I could see a few young soldiers, barely more than boys, playing in the water.
I sat under a tree; Qiqi sat next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.
The pendulum of life appeared to have returned to the origin. After all we had witnessed and endured, she and I had traversed countless moments, both bitter and sweet, and once again leaned against each other. It didn’t matter how much time had passed us by. It didn’t matter if we were alive or dead. It was enough that we were together.
“I’m not sure if you know this,” I said. “After your mother died during the Cultural Revolution, I helped to arrange her funeral. She had suffered some because of her relationship to you, but she died relatively peacefully. In her last moments, she asked me to tell you to stay away from China and try to live a good life. But I always knew you would return….
“Do you remember Heizi? He’s in Yan’an, too. Even at his age, he’s as goofy as when he was a boy. Last month, he told me that if you came back, we’d all go climb Baota Mountain together, just like when we were kids. Don’t worry, the mountain is not very high. I can carry you if you have trouble with your leg….
“It’s been twenty years since my mother’s death. There used to be two jade bracelets that had been in my family for generations. My mother planned to give one each to you and me. Later, she gave one to Shen Qian, but the Red Guards broke it because it was a feudal relic…. I hid the other, hoping to give it to you. Have a look. I hope you like it.”
I opened the bundle that had been on my back and took out a smooth jade bracelet. In the sun’s last rays, it glowed brightly.
“You want to know what else is in the bundle?” I chuckled. “Lots of good things. I’ve been carrying them around for years. It hasn’t been easy to keep them safe. Look.”
I took out the treasures of my memory one by one: the English letters Qiqi had written to me in high school; the New Concept English cassette tapes she gave me; the posters for Tokyo Love Story; a lock of hair I begged from her after we started dating; the purple hairclip she wore to Tiananmen Square; a few photographs of us taken in New York; the “revolutionese” letter she sent me during the Cultu
ral Revolution….
I examined each object carefully, remembering. It was like gazing through a time telescope at moments as far away as galaxies, or perhaps like diving into the sea of history in search of forgotten treasures in sunken ships. The distant years had settled deep into the strata of time, turning into indistinct fossils. But perhaps they were also like seeds that would germinate after years of quiescence and poke through the crust of our souls….
Finally, at the bottom of the bundle, I found the copy of Season of Bloom, Season of Rain. She left it in my home after visiting my family during middle school, but I hadn’t read it in years. More than fifty years later, the pages had turned yellow and brittle. I held it in my hand and caressed the cover wrap Qiqi had made, admiring her handwriting. The smooth texture of the poster paper felt strangely familiar, as though I was opening a tunnel into the past.
I opened the book, thinking I would read a few pages. But my hand felt something strange. I looked closely: there was something trapped between the poster paper wrap and the original cover of the book.
Carefully, I unwrapped the poster paper, but I had underestimated the fragility of the book. The cover was torn off, and a rectangular card fell out like a colorful butterfly. It fluttered to the ground after a brief dance in the sunlight.
I picked it up.
It was a high-definition photograph, probably taken with a digital camera. Fireworks exploded in the night sky, and in the distant background was a glowing screen on which you could make out the shape of some magnificent stadium. I recognized it: the Bird’s Nest. In the foreground were many people dressed in colorful clothes holding balloons and Chinese flags and cotton candy and popcorn. Everyone was laughing, pointing, strolling….
In the middle of the photograph were two children about four years old. One was a boy in a gray jacket, the other a girl in a pink dress. They stood together, holding hands. Illuminated by the fireworks exploding overhead, the smiles on their flushed faces were pure and innocent.
I stared at the photograph for a long time and then flipped it over. I saw a graceful line of handwritten characters:
Beauty is about to go home. Take care, my Grey Wolf. ☺
More than fifty years earlier, Qiqi had hidden this present to me in a book she had “forgotten.” I had never unwrapped it.
I remembered the last conversation I had with Anna.
“What did she say before she died?”
“She was delirious … but she said she would return to the past you two shared, to the place where she met you for the first time, and wait for you. I don’t know what she meant.”
“Maybe all of us will return there someday.”
“Where?”
“To the origin of the universe, of life, of time … To the time before the world began. Perhaps we could choose another direction and live another life.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t, either. Maybe our lives are lived in order to comprehend this mystery, and we’ll understand only at the end.”
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I asked Qiqi. “We’ll go back together. Would you like that?”
Qiqi said nothing.
I closed my eyes. The world dissolved around me. Layer after layer peeled back, and era after era emerged and returned to nothingness. Strings of shining names fell from the empyrean of history, as though they had never existed. We were thirty, twenty, fifteen, five … not just me and Qiqi, but also Shen Qian, Heizi, and everyone else. We returned to the origin of our lives, turned into babies, into fetuses. In the deepest abyss of the world, the beginning of consciousness stirred, ready to choose new worlds, new timelines, new possibilities….
The sun had fallen beneath the horizon in the east, and the long day was about to end. But tomorrow, the sun would rise in the west again, bathing the world in a kinder light. On the terraced fields along the slope of the mountain, millions of poppy flowers trembled, blooming, burning incomparably bright in the last light of dusk.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many interesting works have been written about the arrow of time. This one is perhaps a bit distinct: while each person lives their life forward, the sociopolitical conditions regress backward.
This absurd story has a fairly realist origin. One time, on an Internet discussion board, someone made the comment that if a certain prominent figure in contemporary Chinese politics came to power, the Cultural Revolution would happen again. I didn’t agree with him at the time, but I did think: What would it be like if my generation has to experience the conditions of the Cultural Revolution again in our forties or fifties? More broadly, I wondered what life would be like if society moved backward in history.
The frame of this story might be seen as a reversed arrow of time, but strictly speaking, what has been reversed isn’t time, only the trends of history.
This story was written as a work of entertainment, and so it should not be read as some kind of political manifesto. If one must attribute a political message to it, it is simply this: I hope that all the historical tragedies our nation has experienced will not repeat in the future.
6 English translation courtesy of Anatoly Belilovsky, © 2014. Used here with permission.
7 In our timeline, Jin Yong, Gu Long, and Liang Yusheng are three of the acknowledged masters of wuxia fantasy, and most of their best works were written before 1980. Huang Yi’s works rose to prominence later, in the 1990s.
8 This is a bit of an inside joke for Chinese SF fans. In our timeline, Yao Haijun is the executive editor for Science Fiction World, China’s (and the world’s) biggest sci-fi magazine by circulation. Baoshu, the author of this story, began his career as a fanfic author in the universe of Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body” series.
9 In our timeline, “workers’ Mao Zedong Thought propaganda teams” were a unique creation of the Cultural Revolution. They consisted of teams of ordinary workers installed at colleges and high schools to take over the administrative functions and to put a stop to the bloody Red Guard factional wars. For the most part, they stabilized the chaos introduced by the early stages of the Cultural Revolution.
HAO JINGFANG
Hao Jingfang is the author of several novels (including Vagabond, to be published in English in 2019), a book of travel essays, and numerous short stories published in a variety of venues such as Science Fiction World, Mengya, New Science Fiction, and ZUI Found. Hao does not limit herself to “genre” writing. Her novel Born in 1984, for instance, would be considered a literary novel. Her fiction has won the Yinhe Award and the Xingyun Award.
She majored in physics at Tsinghua University as an undergraduate, and conducted graduate studies at the Center for Astrophysics at Tsinghua afterward. Later, Hao obtained her Ph.D. in Economics and Management from Tsinghua and currently works as a macroeconomics analyst for a think tank advising China’s State Council.
Hao has always been deeply concerned with the negative impact of China’s uneven development, especially on those most powerless to change their own circumstances. In 2016, Hao Jingfang won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette with “Folding Beijing” (included in Invisible Planets), a story that focuses on how social stratification can be reinforced with productivity gains from technology. Drawing on the public attention brought by the award, she founded a social enterprise project, WePlan, to promote education for children in rural, extremely poor regions of China.
“The New Year Train” was commissioned by ELLE China, reflecting in some measure the rising cultural influence of science fiction even on mainstream readers. For more on this phenomenon, see Fei Dao’s essay “Embarrassing No More” at the end of this book.
THE NEW YEAR TRAIN
[An office. A reporter faces the camera.]
Reporter: This is a special live report jointly conducted by Old China News Agency, Chinese Peripheral TV, and the People’s Network. We’re in the thick of the Spring Festival travel season—the greatest annual human migration on Earth—when hundreds of millions trek by plan
e, train, and bus to visit their loved ones. The unprecedented mass disappearance of all passengers on the experimental train Homeward Bound has captured the attention of the whole nation. A single name, Li Dapang, creator of Homeward Bound and its operating CEO, is at the eye of the storm. Your correspondent has secured an exclusive interview with Mr. Li.
Welcome, Mr. Li. Let’s get down to it. Your train has vanished, and more than fifteen hundred passengers are missing. What do you have to say to our viewers?
Li: They’re not missing. The train is being repaired.
Reporter: You’ve heard from them?
Li: No. But my monitoring equipment shows that the train is perfectly fine. This break in communications is only temporary.
Reporter: Can you explain Homeward Bound’s basic principles of operation?
Li: Let’s start from the beginning. I had a dream, a simple but beautiful dream, of giving everyone the chance to visit their loved ones on Chinese New Year, without long lines, without waiting in the cold, without being packed in like sardines—
Reporter: Please, Mr. Li, can you get to the point?
Li [Taking out a piece of paper and drawing for the camera]: This is our space-time continuum. To go from one point in space-time to another point, we usually follow a brachistochrone curve, also known as a line of fastest descent. Like this, all right? But if we can use miniature black holes to change the local gravitational field, it would be possible to start from one point and reach the other point by following a completely different space-time curve. Best of all, we could depart from point A and arrive at point B—that is, at the same time and in the same place—by following multiple, different curves. Thus, by adding more possible paths to the continuum, we can double, triple, quadruple, even centuple the carrying capacity of any method of transportation. Do you see?