by Yu Hua
Forty-one years ago, my birth mother boarded a train in the ninth month of a pregnancy. I was to be her third child, and she was heading back to her parental home to visit my ailing grandmother. As the train slowly approached a station ten hours into its journey, she felt a faint ache in her midriff. I was still three weeks away from my scheduled first appearance, and my older brother and sister had both been born strictly in keeping with the usual timetable, so my mother assumed I would follow a similar course. She simply felt that she needed to go to the toilet, and had no inkling that I was impatient to come out.
She rose from her sleeping berth and waddled down the aisle toward the toilet at the end of the railroad car. The train had just pulled into a station, and her passage to the toilet was made all the more difficult by the travelers who had crammed their way onto the train with bags over their shoulders. She carefully squeezed her way past the passengers and their big and small bags. As she entered the toilet, the train slowly began to move. Trains in those days had primitive facilities and squat-toilets only; if you looked down through the spacious round hole you saw an endless succession of railroad sleepers flash past below. With me in her belly hampering her movements, my mother was unable to squat down and had to kneel, trying to ignore the filth on the toilet floor. Pulling down her pants, she gave an effort and out I popped—and down into the round hole in the toilet floor. It took only a second for the speed of my slide and the speed of the train’s forward motion to break the cord that linked me to my mother, and immediately we were lost to each other.
My mother lay slumped on the floor in acute pain; it took a few moments for her to realize that her womb was now empty. After looking around for me in panic, she realized that I must have fallen out through the hole. With great effort she managed to prop herself up, and after opening the toilet door she cried out to a passenger waiting outside, “My baby, my baby—”
With that she collapsed in a heap, and there was a shout of “Somebody has fainted!”
First a female attendant rushed up, and then the conductor. The female attendant was the first to see blood between my mother’s legs, and she prompted the conductor to broadcast an appeal for medical personnel to proceed at once to carriage 11. Two doctors and a nurse rushed to the scene, to find my mother lying sprawled in the passageway, sobbing and begging for help in incoherent fragments of speech. Soon she fainted again and had to be lifted onto her sleeping berth. The three medical workers attended to her while the train trundled on.
By this time I was already in the cabin where the switchman lived. This young man—at twenty-one, now suddenly a father—looked at me in consternation. I was covered in purple-red blotches and crying fit to burst, my umbilical cord quivering in time with my crying and making him wonder if I had grown a tail. As my sobs grew weaker, it dawned on him that I must be hungry. It was late at night then and all the shops were shut, so he could find no infant formula for me. In his anxiety he remembered that the wife of a coworker of his named Hao Qiangsheng had given birth to a daughter three days earlier, so he wrapped me up in his cotton-padded overcoat and dashed toward Hao’s apartment.
Hao Qiangsheng was woken from sleep by a pounding on his door, and, opening up, he saw Yang was carrying something in his arms and crying desperately, “Milk! Milk!”
Still not fully awake, Hao rubbed his eyes. “What milk?” he asked.
Yang opened his coat to show him the wailing infant inside, then immediately passed me on to our host. Hao gave a start, accepting me as gingerly as he might a piping-hot roast sweet potato, and with a face of utter amazement carried me into the inner room. “It’s Yang Jinbiao’s,” he said to his wife, Li Yuezhen, who had also just woken up. From one look at me Li Yuezhen could tell that I was newborn, so she took me into her arms, and after she pulled up her shirt I quieted down and began to gulp down my first milk.
Yang sat with Hao in the outer room, mopping his brow, and explained what had happened. Only now did Hao get the full picture. He told my father how flabbergasted he had been to see he had suddenly acquired a child, when he didn’t even have a girlfriend. My father chuckled loudly at this, but soon shared with Hao his concern that I might be a freak, given that I had a tail—and one attached to the front of me.
Inside, Li Yuezhen overheard this exchange between the two new fathers, and after I had drunk my fill and dropped off to sleep she dressed me in a set of her daughter’s homemade baby clothes and went into the outer room with a wad of used fabric in her hand.
Li Yuezhen returned me to my father’s arms and instructed him on how to change diapers, showing him how to cut up old clothes to make diapers—the older the clothes the better, because the older the softer. Finally she pointed at the thing protruding from my navel. “That’s the umbilical cord,” she said. “Tomorrow you need to go to the station clinic and have the doctor cut it off. Don’t try to do it yourself—the baby might pick up an infection.”
I walked on, following the rails that looked like light beams, looking for that rickety cabin next to the railroad line that harbored so many stories from my early years. In front of me was rain and snow, and in front of the rain and snow were row upon row of tall buildings dotted with dark windows. They retreated as I walked toward them, and I realized that that world was gradually leaving me.
Faintly I could hear the sound of my father lamenting the ways of the world, a sound so far away and yet so intimate. In my ears his complaints began to stack up high, just like those tall buildings in the far distance, and they brought a smile to my lips.
For a long time Yang Jinbiao was convinced that my birth parents must have abandoned me on the railroad tracks because they intended me to be run over by a train, and for this reason he would often mutter to himself, “I could never have imagined there could be such heartless parents on this earth.”
This stubborn conviction made him all the more devoted to me. From the time he plucked me up from between the rails, I was never out of his sight. At the beginning, I spent my days in a cotton sling. The first such sling was made by Li Yuezhen, out of blue cotton; the later ones, also blue, were made by my adoptive father himself. Every day when he left home to go to work, he would mix milk formula and pour it into a bottle, then stuff the bottle into his clothes, next to his beating heart, so that his own body heat could keep the bottle warm. Then he would lower me into the sling around his neck. Hanging by his side was an army-issue canteen, and on his back he carried two bundles, one stuffed full of clean diapers, the other one empty, ready to be stuffed with my dirty diapers.
He would walk back and forth when he had to change the switches at forks in the railroad line, and I would sway back and forth on his chest. Surely there could be no finer cradle, and the sleep I had as a baby was the sweetest I ever had. If it hadn’t been for hunger, I think I might never have woken up when in my father’s arms. When I burst out bawling, my father would know I was hungry and would feel for the bottle, then stuff the nipple into my mouth. I grew up day by day sucking on the bottle, in my father’s body heat. Later, when I woke up hungry, I no longer bawled but stretched out a hand to feel for the bottle. That action delighted him no end, and he ran to tell Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen how smart I was.
My father soon attuned himself perfectly to my needs, knowing when I was hungry and when I was thirsty. When I was thirsty, he would take a mouthful of water from his canteen and then slowly transfer it from his mouth to mine. He was able to distinguish—or so he told Li Yuezhen—the subtle difference between the sound I made when I was hungry and the sound I made when I was thirsty. Li Yuezhen wasn’t sure whether to believe him, for she depended on the time of day to determine whether her daughter was hungry or whether she was thirsty.
If my father caught a whiff of something smelly as he tramped along the railroad line, he knew he needed to change my diaper. He would squat down next to the tracks, lay me on the ground, and as trains trundled by he would wipe my bottom with grass paper and fasten a clean diaper around
me. Then with a lump of soil he would briskly wipe away most of the mess on my diapers, and then fold them up and place them in the other bag. After he got home at the end of the day, he would set me down on the bed and use soap and running water to wash the dirty diapers.
Our home was a little cabin some twenty yards from the railroad tracks. Outside the door, diapers were hung out to dry at various heights, like leaves hanging from a tree.
I grew up amid the sounds of trains rumbling by, in the shaking and trembling little house. When I was a bit bigger, the cotton sling on my father’s chest gave way to a cotton sling on his back, and that sling slowly got bigger too as I continued to grow.
My father had quick hands, and he soon taught himself how to tailor clothes and knit sweaters. During work hours, his coworkers couldn’t help laughing when they saw him, because he would knit a little sweater for me as he walked along the tracks, with fingerwork so expert that he didn’t need to look at what he was doing.
After I learned to walk, we would hold hands. On weekends my father would take me to the park to play. There, confident in the safety of our surroundings, he would let go of my hand and follow along behind as I ran around everywhere. We were very much attuned to each other’s needs, and if we were going down a little path I would sense at once, even without looking, when my father stretched out his arm, and would give him my little hand right away.
After we returned to the house next to the tracks, my father would be vigilant in protecting me from dangers, and when he was cooking inside and I wanted to play outside, he would attach us with a cord, one end tied to his foot and one end tied to mine, so that I grew up within the safety zone that he had defined. I could roam around near our front door, but if I saw a train approaching and couldn’t resist going closer to the tracks, I would hear the warning shout of my father from within the room: “Yang Fei, come back!”
The little house that I had been looking for appeared, just as the two rails were drifting off into the distance. A second earlier it had not been there, but the next second it was. I saw myself as a young child and my father as a young man, and also a young woman with her hair tied in a long braid. The three of us emerged from the house. My face looked vaguely familiar, my father’s face I remembered as though it were yesterday, but the girl’s face was indistinct.
As a little boy I was happy as a lark, utterly unaware that I was ruining my father’s life. My railside birth had narrowed his path dramatically. He had no girlfriend, and marriage was now only the remotest possibility. His best friends, Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen, introduced him to several prospects, informing them ahead of time about my foundling origins, so as to make clear that my father was a kindhearted and reliable man. But when those young women met him for the first time, if he wasn’t changing my diapers he’d be knitting a sweater for me, and the sight of him in full domestic mode, although making them smile, would also make them turn around and leave.
It was when I was four that I met the young woman with her hair in a braid. She was three years older than my father. She had missed the scenes of diaper changing and sweater knitting and saw simply a rather cute little boy. She reached out a hand to pet my hair and face, and after I addressed her as “Auntie,” she happily took me in her arms and dandled me on her knee. These friendly gestures settled my father’s nerves and gave him a glimpse of what happy married life could be.
They began to date, in encounters not involving me, I being left on such occasions with Hao Qiangsheng and Li Yuezhen. The dates took the form of evening strolls along the railroad line. My father was a bashful, introspective man, and he would escort his partner back and forth without saying a word. Typically it would be she who broke the silence with a remark or two, and only then would he say something, but often his words were drowned out by the roar of an approaching train.
At first their dates were of short duration; they would end after just one or two turns along the tracks, and then my father would come to collect me. Later, the pair would take five or six turns and keep walking until after midnight, by which time I would be sound asleep alongside little Hao Xia, who was three days older than me. Hao Qiangsheng himself, unable to keep his eyes open, would have lain down in bed and begun to snore. Only Li Yuezhen would be sitting patiently in the outside room waiting for my father to arrive. She would briefly inquire about the progress of the relationship before she let my father carry me off. In those days I would often fall asleep in the evening on the bed in Hao Qiangsheng’s apartment and wake up in bed in my own house.
This situation continued for two months or so, after which Li Yuezhen felt that my father and the young woman were not making any real progress but simply spending more time on their walks. After she questioned my father closely about the nature of their exchanges, she discovered where the problem lay. By the end of the evening, after all their walking, the girl would be tired. She would come to a stop and say “Good night.” My father, not knowing quite what to say, would simply nod, then turn around and head off quickly to Hao Qiangsheng’s apartment to collect me.
“Why don’t you walk her home?” Li Yuezhen asked my father.
“She already said good night,” my father replied.
Li Yuezhen shook her head and sighed. When the girl said good night, she told my father, what she was really hoping was that he would see her home. Seeing his confusion, Li Yuezhen took a firm line. “Tomorrow night,” she instructed, “make sure you walk her home.”
My father was enormously grateful to Li Yuezhen and her husband, for ever since I was born they had never stopped helping the two of us. He followed her advice, silently walking the young woman back to her home after she said good night. Outside her door, in the moonlight, she said good night a second time, and this time she looked radiant.
Their relationship leapt ahead, and now they did not wait until after dark for a surreptitious date but strolled confidently side by side into the park on Sundays. They were now formally in love, and passionately so. They began to meet in the little house that swayed and shook when trains passed, and they probably hugged and kissed, but I suspect they went no further than that.
From dating to full-blown love affair, I was absent from all the proceedings. This reflected Li Yuezhen’s view that for me to join the fun would hinder the normal development of the romance, and my appearance should be delayed until the waters had settled in their course. She believed that so long as this girl truly loved my father, she would naturally accept my existence. During this period I was practically living in Li Yuezhen’s apartment. I liked this family: I had a close bond with Hao Xia, and Li Yuezhen was like a mother to me.
When things got to the point where my father and the young woman were ready to discuss marriage, they had to bring me into the conversation. Earlier, when they were courting so avidly, I hardly figured in their thinking at all. Now my father began to talk about me in detail, starting with how he’d heard my wailing and picked me up off the tracks, and sharing the highlights of my development these past four years. He spoke as a happy father, and a proud one, relating a wealth of anecdotes that revealed how clever I was, for he thought me the smartest child in the whole world.
Never before had he talked for so long, or so volubly. After an hour or so, his intended said to him coolly: “You shouldn’t have adopted this kid—you should have left him with an orphanage.”
My father was speechless. The cheerful glow that lit up his features gave way at once to a stiff, pained expression, and that look of distress, rather than passing quickly, settled on his face for some time. His emotions were in turmoil, for he was now deeply in love with the girl, while loving me, of course, too. These were two different kinds of love, and he needed to choose one and abandon the other.
Actually, the young woman wasn’t really rejecting me out of hand—she was simply being pragmatic. She was twenty-eight, which in those days counted as very late to be single, and it meant she didn’t have many choices of men. In her eyes my father was strong
in all departments—his only drawback was that he had adopted a foundling. She pictured how in the future they would have children of their own, and it seemed to her that fitting me into the family would be an awkward proposition. So that’s why she said what she did: if they didn’t have me to worry about, things would go more smoothly. She wasn’t wrong to think that way: they might well have more than two children, and to have a foundling to care for too would impose a heavy burden on a couple with a limited income. Even so, she still accepted my existence—she just felt that my father should have left me with an orphanage at the outset. She was just saying.
My father tended to have a one-track mind, and if an idea that he was set on found obstacles in its way, he would be unable to think of an alternative. And so the idea got fixed in his head that she would never go along with a package deal. Perhaps he was right, for even if she could have brought herself to accept me, in the long run I would have been a flash point for conflict and strife. My father was like a wet towel dripping with emotions: she and I had seized opposite ends of the towel and were wringing it with all our might, and his heart was in torment.
I had no inkling of his struggle and no awareness that now, when my father looked at me, it was with pity and not with joy. If anything, during these days he seemed to be all the more devoted to me. Although I was now steady on my feet, my father would carry me in his arms as though I couldn’t walk properly, and he would put his face close to mine. Always a bit of a penny-pincher, now every day he would buy me two candies, one of which he would slip into my mouth, the other of which he would pop into one of my pockets.
Much as he found it difficult to part from me emotionally, in his mind he was steadily moving in a different direction. Now twenty-five, one way or another my father needed a woman in his life. He loved me, but he needed a woman’s love even more. After much agonizing, he chose her and abandoned me.