Bronze and Sunflower

by Cao Wenxuan

  Eventually Bronze stopped laughing. But instead of getting up, he stayed in the same crouching position. He was completely still. The snow was beginning to settle on him. The people across the road were worried.

  “Mute!” they called out, quietly. When there was no response, they raised their voices. “MUTE!” they shouted.

  Bronze must have fallen asleep, and their shouting startled him. As he looked up, a mountain of snow slid down his back. The people across the road waved in a friendly way. “Come inside and keep warm! You can keep an eye on your shoes from here.”

  Bronze waved back, but he preferred to stay outside with his shoes.

  The snow was falling heavily, and by midday the small flakes had become big white clumps. The people across the road shouted, “Go home, mute!”

  Bronze huddled deeper inside his clothes and stood there, expressionless.

  Then two people ran across the road, grabbed him by the arms and dragged him inside. They didn’t give him a chance to object. While he was warming up by the fire, he saw someone stop and look at his shoes. He ran out to seize his chance.

  The person looked for a while, then started walking away.

  “Perhaps he thought they were ducks!” said one of the people inside, and everyone fell about laughing.

  This time Bronze didn’t laugh. He desperately wanted to sell the last ten pairs of shoes, but the morning had gone and he hadn’t sold a single pair. He gazed up at the sky full of snow. “Come on! Come and buy my shoes! Come on! Come and buy my shoes!” he repeated over and over in his head.

  Eventually, it stopped snowing. Bronze took the shoes off the line one pair at a time, brushed the snow off them and hung them up again.

  A group of people appeared on the road. They didn’t look local; they were from one of the Cadre Schools, and were taking the steamboat back to the city for New Year. Some had big backpacks, and others were carrying bags, probably full of local produce. They were chatting and laughing as their feet crunched through the snow.

  Bronze didn’t think these city people would be interested in buying reed shoes. After all, city people had cotton-padded shoes or leather shoes. So he didn’t beckon them over.

  He was right. These city people didn’t wear reed shoes, but when they came past him, some of them stopped. The others wondered why, and stopped too. One or two of them must have been artists. They were enchanted by the ten pairs of fluffy reed shoes in the white light of the snow. The artists saw beauty – an extraordinary beauty – in these shoes. It was difficult to explain. One by one they stepped closer, and touched the shoes – and when they touched them, they liked them even more. Some of them held them up to their noses and sniffed, a whiff of straw, which was especially strong in the cold air around them.

  “They’d look so good on the wall at home,” one of them said.

  The others nodded and reached to grab a pair, afraid of missing out. There were nine in the group. They each took a pair, and one person took two. All ten were in their hands. Until they asked the price, Bronze wasn’t at all sure that they were really going to buy them. He told them his price – the price that never changed. So cheap! thought the city people, and they handed over their money. They were delighted with their purchases, which they would take back to the city, and took great pleasure in examining them as they walked on.

  Bronze stood there in the snow with a handful of cash. He’d done it! Then someone yelled from across the road, “Hey, mute, best get home now your shoes are sold! You’ll freeze to death out here!”

  Bronze stuffed the cash into his inside pocket, untied the rope from the trees and fastened it round his waist. He looked across the road. There was a crowd of people watching him. He waved to them, and started running off through the snow like a madman.

  The sky was clear and everything was bright. Bronze took the usual road home. He wanted to sing, to sing the song that Nainai sang when she was twisting rope. He couldn’t sing out loud, so he sang in his head:

  “Fishing for prawns in trees? Oh, put away your net!

  Looking for gold in mud? There’s only sand as yet!

  Oranges grow on the black locust tree

  Oh, when will we see the pe-o-ny?”

  Someone was following him.

  “Hey, shoe-boy, stop!”

  Bronze stopped and glanced around warily. He didn’t recognize the man and was suspicious. When the man caught up with Bronze, he said, “I saw them buying your shoes. Have you got any more? I’d like some too.”

  Bronze shook his head, and felt a bit sorry for him. The man wrung his hands, and sighed in disappointment. Bronze looked at him, and wished he could do something. The man turned and headed towards the pier, and Bronze turned and headed for home.

  After a while Bronze slowed down. He saw the reed shoes on his feet. He heard the snow crunch beneath them. He stopped walking, looked up at the sky, then down at the snow and, finally, at the reed shoes, which felt warm and snug on his feet. Nainai’s song warbled through his mind. After a moment or two, he pulled his right foot out of his shoe and put it down on the snow. The cold jabbed like a needle. He did the same with his left. Immediately, the cold shot through his bones. He bent forward, picked up the shoes and held them up to inspect them. They’d only been worn once in the snow, and there were no dirty marks on them. They looked like new.

  Bronze smiled, then turned and ran after the man. His bare feet sent snow spraying as they hit the ground.

  The man was stepping down to the pier to catch the steamboat when Bronze appeared in front of him, holding up the pair of reed shoes. The man couldn’t believe his luck, and reached out to take them. He wanted to pay Bronze extra, but Bronze would only take his usual price.

  Bronze waved at his last customer, then headed for home. He ran all the way, without once looking back. His feet were washed clean by the snow, but were frozen red. Bright, bright red.

  Golden Thatch

  Bronze liked to sit beside Sunflower when she was doing her homework. As she concentrated on writing her characters and doing her maths, his eyes were full of envy and hope. When Sunflower discovered this, she had an idea: she would teach him to read. It came to her like a flash of lightning, and took her completely by surprise. She was so excited and wished she’d thought of it earlier.

  She used the money Mama had given her for buying ribbon to buy a pencil for Bronze.

  “Starting today, I’m going to teach you how to read.”

  Bronze looked at her as though he hadn’t heard properly. But Nainai, Baba and Mama had, and stopped what they were doing. Sunflower put the sharpened pencil and a little notebook in front of him and repeated, “Starting today, I’m going to teach you how to read.”

  Bronze was stunned. He was excited, but also a little embarrassed and unsure. He looked at Sunflower, then at the adults and finally back at Sunflower. It was a bolt out of the blue, and for a while no one said a word.

  Sunflower picked up the pencil and notebook. Bronze shot out of the door. Sunflower ran after him. “Bronze…!” she shouted. But he ran and ran. “Bronze!” she cried, chasing him.

  This time he looked back, but his hands and eyes said, “No! No! I can’t! I won’t be able to.”

  “But you will! You will!”

  He carried on running, and Sunflower chased after him. But her foot caught on a tree root sticking out of the mud and she tumbled onto the riverbank and went rolling down. Noticing he could no longer hear Sunflower’s footsteps, Bronze looked round and saw her on the shore. He raced over, leapt down and helped her to her feet. She was covered in mud and bits of grass, but she had held on tight to the pencil and notebook as she rolled, and the notebook still looked new. As Bronze brushed the mud and grass off her, she repeated, “Starting today, I’m going to teach you how to read.”

  Bronze felt his eyes well up with tears, which rolled down his nose. He bent his knees so she could climb onto his back, then slowly carried her up the bank. They sat together under a big tree,
the setting sun staining the river a bright orange. Sunflower pointed to the glowing ball in the sky, then found a stick and wrote two characters in the earth:

  She read them out loud: “Tai yang … the sun.” She retraced the strokes of the characters over and over again, naming each of the brushstrokes as she wrote. “Heng (a horizontal line), bie (descending to the left), ca (descending to the right) and finally dian (a dot). That’s tai…”

  She found a stick for Bronze and made him copy what she had written. Bronze concentrated. He was used to being the older one, and it felt strange being taught by Sunflower.

  Slowly, the sun was setting. Slowly, a leaf fell from the tree. Sunflower pointed to the fluttering leaf, and as she watched it, she said, “Luo … falling, luo xia qu … falling down.” It settled on the grass like a butterfly. Sunflower wrote three more characters after the first two:

  She read them out loud: “Tai yang luo xia qu … the sun is setting.”

  Bronze had a good memory, and once he had grasped the names of the strokes, and knew that they had to be written in a particular order, it was astonishing how quickly he learned.

  By now the sun had sunk low and it was getting more and more difficult to see the characters in the earth.

  “It’s time to go home,” said Sunflower.

  But Bronze shook his head and carried on writing with the stick. As the moon rose, it shone a different kind of light – a pure, soft light – over the ground.

  Bronze pointed to the moon.

  “We’ve finished for today,” said Sunflower.

  Bronze kept pointing at the moon until she taught him how to write yue liang … the moon; yue liang sheng shang lai … the moon is rising.

  It was getting late, and Mama was calling them.

  All the way home, Bronze was remembering and writing in his mind, tai yang luo xia qu … yue liang sheng shang lai.

  Bronze was hungry to learn and gobbled up every character Sunflower knew, writing them out on the ground and in his notebook. The two of them never stopped. Wherever they went, whatever they saw, Bronze wanted to know what the characters were. He learned how to write the characters for buffalo and sheep. He also learned how to put characters together to build sentences.

  niu buffalo

  niu chi cao the buffalo’s eating grass

  yang sheep

  yang da jia the rams are fighting

  And so it went on:

  tian sky

  di earth

  feng wind

  yu rain

  yazi duck

  gezi pigeon

  da yazi big duck

  xiao yazi little duck

  bai gezi white pigeon

  hei gezi black pigeon

  Bronze saw the beautiful world around him transform into the magical world of characters. The sun became more gorgeous, more vivid, more enticing than ever. Likewise, the moon, the sky, the earth, the wind, the rain … everything took on a new life. And Bronze, who was used to careering around the fields whatever the weather, was changing too. He was calmer than he used to be.

  Sunflower devised her own special ways of teaching Bronze. These clever little tricks engraved the characters so deeply into his memory that he would never forget them. His characters were a bit wonky, rough and ready compared with Sunflower’s nice neat ones, but they had a flavour all of their own.

  No one in Damaidi knew anything about it.

  One quiet afternoon, when Bronze was taking the buffalo to graze, he passed one of the teachers writing a slogan on someone’s wall in whitewash. He tethered the buffalo to a tree and went to watch.

  “Come here,” said the teacher, holding the dripping brush in his hand, “I’ll teach you a character.”

  Bronze shook his head.

  “You’ll have to learn a few characters one day, you know.”

  A small crowd gathered and began to comment. “That mute, he stands there, watching as though he can write too.”

  “Hey, mute, come and show us what you can write.”

  Bronze waved his hand at them, and backed away.

  “Then what are you watching for? Go and graze your buffalo, you stupid mute.”

  Bronze turned round and walked towards the buffalo. As he was untying the rope, he heard raucous laughter break out behind him. He leant close to the buffalo, taking his time, then stood and walked back over to them. The teacher was busy writing and didn’t notice him approaching – until Bronze snatched the brush from his hand. Everyone went quiet. Bronze grabbed the bucket of whitewash with his other hand and wrote on the wall in huge characters:

  Wo shi Damaidi de Qingtong

  I am Bronze from Damaidi

  The silence was deafening. Bronze looked at them, put down the bucket, threw the brush to one side and walked off. He didn’t look back.

  The characters were a bit higgledy-piggledy, but every single one of them was written correctly. The crowd could barely believe their eyes. The news spread throughout Damaidi, and by the end of the day all the villagers knew that something strange was going on. They remembered all kinds of mysterious stories about Bronze and came to the conclusion, as they had in the past, that there was something extraordinary about this mute boy.

  Sunflower was happy with her new family. She had been pale when she arrived, but the fresh air and fresh food had given her a healthy glow. With her cotton shoes, her hair in plaits, her trousers worn short and her jacket fastened tightly around her waist, she could have been a local. The villagers soon forgot how she had arrived in Damaidi. The family talked about “our Sunflower” as though she had always been one of them.

  And the family had such fun! At night, after the lights were turned out, they talked and talked, and the sound of laughter flew out of the window of their little thatched house and into the night. Anyone passing by would wonder what on earth could be so funny.

  Winter passed, and New Year, and soon it was March. There was no place better than Damaidi in the springtime. Dazzling spring flowers appeared at the edges of the fields, by the ponds and at the riverside, their colours brightening the landscape. Everywhere was green, a rich lush hue. Big blue magpies and their smaller azure-winged relatives and all kinds of other birds with different names and some with no names flew about the fields and villages, crying out. The river had been quiet during the winter, and now boats with white and brown sails were beginning to pass by again. March was a busy month, full of activity, and the sound of people singing while they worked, of dogs barking and of girls cheerfully collecting mulberries infused the land with new life.

  But the buffalo was restless. It had been restless for a few days. There was fresh grass everywhere, but it didn’t seem to be interested. It would take a couple of mouthfuls, then look up at the sky – in the daytime at the sun, at night the moon. Every now and then it would give a deep bellow that rumbled so much it rustled the leaves on the trees.

  Then, one evening, it refused to go into its pen. It pulled the rope from Bronze’s hand but didn’t go far, just circled round and round the house. Eventually Bronze and Baba managed to get it into the pen. There was a light breeze that evening, and the moonlight was as soft as water – it was a quiet and peaceful spring evening. But deep in the night, when the villagers were fast asleep, the weather changed, and in no time at all, a wild wind hurtled in from the horizon, swirling and thrashing like an army of screaming black demons, their mouths gaping, their tongues flicking. It crashed over the land, stripping branches and leaves from the trees. It swept along the ground, whipping sand and dust into the air. It was like demons let loose in the night. It ripped the planks from the wooden bridge and hurled them into the river, crashed little boats into the bank, snapped the reed stalks, knocked over the crops, tore down the electricity cables, blew the birds’ nests out of the trees and the birds to the ground … and changed the world beyond recognition.

  Sunflower woke with a start. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t sure where she was. She looked up to see the black sky of n
ight and the stars shining brightly, yet there were four walls around her.

  Mama came rushing over. “Sunflower, Sunflower! Get up! Quick!” she said, pulling her out of bed and hurriedly pushing her arms and legs into some clothes. In the darkness they heard Baba shout, “Bronze, help Nainai out of the house. Quick!”

  Then Nainai’s trembling voice. “Where’s Sunflower? Where is she?”

  “She’s here with me!” shouted Mama.

  Sunflower didn’t know what was happening. As Mama dressed her, she looked up at the sky: all those branches and leaves flying around.

  “The wind’s blown the roof off,” said Mama.

  Was that even possible? Sunflower wondered, then, when she realized what Mama was saying was true, she burst into tears.

  “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” said Mama, hugging her tight.

  The gale stormed across the sky, spreading debris and dust in its wake. The buffalo had long since crashed its way out of the pen and was quietly waiting for them by the door. The five of them helped each other out of the house, struggling against the raging wind.

  Once outside, they could hear faint sounds over the howling wind: the shouts and cries of the villagers of Damaidi.

  The wind was growing stronger and stronger, and it had started to rain.

  “Head for the school!” yelled Baba. The school was a brick building with a tiled roof, the strongest building in Damaidi. Lightning cracked through the sky, and when the family looked back, they saw the four walls of their house had collapsed. They hurried to the school. Other people were gathering there too. The wind gradually began to subside, but the rain fell harder and harder. At one point it seemed that the sky was a river, and it was leaking. The villagers crowded into the classrooms and, helpless and heavy-hearted, watched as rain ruled the sky. No one said a word.

  At dawn it was still raining, but not so heavily. The fields and the crops were flooded, and although the village was still recognizable as Damaidi, a lot of houses had fallen down. The first people to venture into the fields were Gayu and his parents, looking for their ducks. They walked along, calling and searching. The wind had carried off the fencing of the duck pen and the ducks had got out. The people who had sought shelter at the school heard Gayu’s parents’ shouts and thought about their own chickens, ducks, pigs and sheep, and their belongings at home. They headed out in the rain, many to homes that were in ruins.