by Cao Wenxuan
Eventually the three of them arrived at the school. The school head and the teachers hurried outside to meet them. Nainai gripped the headteacher’s hand. “Please let my granddaughter take the test again.” She explained what had happened.
When they heard that Sunflower had failed deliberately, and that she had done it to help Nainai, they were shocked.
“Please let her take the test again,” Nainai implored the headteacher. She tried to kneel in the snow.
“Nainai, Nainai,” the headteacher repeated again and again, hurrying to hold her steady. “Yes, yes. Of course she may retake the test. Of course she may.”
That was the last time Nainai appeared in the village.
Baba and Mama had been trying to scrape together the money to take Nainai to hospital. When she could barely walk any more, they carried her on their backs. She was getting weaker and weaker. She wasn’t in any pain, but she was getting thinner by the day. She was barely eating now. In time, it became an effort even to raise her eyelids, and she was sleeping most of the time. Her breathing was softer than that of a baby. She lay in her bed, barely moving. Bronze and Sunflower couldn’t stand seeing her like this. Baba and Mama rushed around all day, visiting relatives and neighbours, going into the village and the town, to wherever they thought they might be able to borrow money or apply for support to get medical treatment.
Nainai said what she always said. “I’m not ill. I’m just old. There’s no point rushing around like this.”
Every day, come rain or shine, Bronze went into town to sell reed shoes. Sunflower felt useless; she was the only one who wasn’t doing anything to help. All day long she thought about how she could earn some money to help Nainai go to hospital. She wasn’t a little girl any more; she should be sharing some of the load, some of the worry. But where could she get the money?
She suddenly remembered a conversation she had overheard while doing her homework at Cuihuan’s. It had gone something like this:
For many years, people from the area had been hiring boats in Youmadi and going to Jiangnan to pick white ginkgo nuts, which they could then sell. Jiangnan was filled with mile after mile of ginkgo trees, and although the people of Jiangnan picked the nuts, they didn’t have enough hands to pick all of them, so there were always plenty left on the trees. If you just collected the ones that were on the ground, you could gather a lot. Hardly anyone in Damaidi grew ginkgo nuts, but lots of people liked to eat them, or take them for their health. The children liked to dye them different colours and stuff them in their pockets or keep them in a box, partly because they were pretty and partly to play games with.
So, towards the end of every year, people often travelled to Jiangnan to pick ginkgo nuts. The people of Jiangnan weren’t too bothered about getting a good price, because the nuts would be left to rot on the trees otherwise. Sometimes they’d strike a deal: for every 100 jin that was picked, the owner would receive a tenth, maybe as much as a fifth. That way, both sides stood to gain. It was business, but it was friendly. Adults and teenagers went to pick the ginkgo nuts, teenagers always with an adult.
For a few days, Sunflower thought about nothing else. Like her brother, once she had an idea in her head, she couldn’t get rid of it, no matter what. She did not care about anything else until she’d seen it through. Even if the idea was a mistake, she still had to do it.
One morning, soon after Bronze set out with his reed shoes on his back, Sunflower also set out for Youmadi. She went straight to the river, where all the boats were moored, and went from boat to boat asking if anyone was going to pick ginkgo nuts in Jiangnan. Eventually someone pointed to a big boat. “You see that one over there? It’s filling up fast. I think I heard people saying they were going to Jiangnan to pick ginkgo nuts.”
Sunflower ran to the boat. She could see that there were already lots of people on board, mostly women, but also some children, including two or three girls who were about her age, chatting and giggling. She could hear that they were going to Jiangnan to pick ginkgo nuts, that they were from the villages around Youmadi, and that someone was negotiating the price of hiring the boat with the owner. It didn’t seem to be going very smoothly. The owner was complaining that the money wasn’t enough, and the other man didn’t want to pay any more. The boat owner wouldn’t agree, but said, “We can wait a bit longer, and if a few more people come, then you can pay a bit extra, can’t you?”
Slowly, things began to settle down on board. Everyone was looking towards the riverbank, hoping that more people would come along. It was a big boat, and could easily take another ten to twenty people.
Sunflower’s plan had been to come and look at boats today and travel another day. She hadn’t made any preparations; she had no money and no bag to collect ginkgo nuts. But now she was here, she wanted to get on board and go to Jiangnan. Today!
Listening to the people on the boat, she heard that the ginkgo picking started in late autumn and early winter, and that they’d probably be the last group going there this season. She thought about Nainai, tucked up in bed and barely moving. Her heart was racing. This boat would be leaving today, and it could set off at any moment.
Sunflower hadn’t said anything about her idea at home; she knew they’d never let her go. She had planned to leave a note for Bronze before she set out, telling him she was going away without saying where. But she hadn’t written it yet. She ran to the riverbank and asked a woman in a shop for a piece of rough paper, the kind they used to wrap rock salt and rock sugar, and borrowed a pen. Then she leant against the counter and wrote a note to Bronze:
Bronze,
I’m going away. There’s something very, very important that I have to do. I’ll be back in a few days. Tell Nainai, Baba and Mama not to worry about me. I can look after myself. In a few more days, Nainai can go to hospital. We’ll have enough money. Don’t stay out too late today – don’t wait till you’ve sold all the shoes before you go home.
Your sister, Sunflower
She was so excited, and so pleased with herself. She was going to earn a fortune! She took the note and rushed to the riverside. Another six or seven people were boarding the boat. She knew it would be leaving soon. How could she get the letter to Bronze? She was getting anxious.
Then a boy appeared, selling paper windmills. She ran up to him. “Please could you give this letter to the boy who sells reed shoes?” she asked. “He’s my brother. He’s called Bronze.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“Please could you give it to him?”
He nodded and took the letter.
When she turned around, she saw the men pulling the gangplank onto the boat.
“Wait!” she yelled, and ran as fast as she could. The boat was just beginning to pull away from the bank. Sunflower stretched her hands out in front of her. The people on board thought she must be the child of one of the passengers, accidentally left behind. Two of the men reached over the front of the boat until their hands met Sunflower’s. They gave her a big pull and lifted her on board.
The boat had to be turned to face the right direction, then the sail went up, and off they sailed, proudly, majestically, down the river.
The boy selling paper windmills walked on along the riverbank. He stopped and sold one to a little girl, and when he set off again, a boy selling reed shoes came into view. Assuming that he must be the same one that Sunflower had mentioned, he went up to him, handed him the note and said, “Your sister asked me to give this to you.”
The boy took the note and looked puzzled.
Two girls asked him how much the windmills cost, and the windmill seller’s mind turned back to business. The girls walked away – perhaps they thought the windmills were too expensive, or were only looking. The boy went after them, wanting a sale, and all thought of Sunflower’s letter vanished into thin air.
It wasn’t until much later that the boy selling reed shoes opened out the piece of paper and started to read it. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. He
read it a few times, then laughed and put it back in his pocket. Then he moved off to sell his shoes somewhere else.
Bronze returned home very late that day. As soon as he walked in the door, Nainai called from the other room, “Have you seen Sunflower?”
Bronze ran in and gestured with his hands that he hadn’t seen her.
“Quickly, go and find her. Your baba and mama are out looking for her. It’s so late. The child should have been home ages ago.”
Bronze ran outside. Baba and Mama had looked everywhere and were on their way home.
“Have you seen Sunflower?” Mama called from the distance. Bronze shook his head. “Sunflower, come home! It’s suppertime,” she called out.
She shouted again and again, but there was no answer.
The sky was so dark.
Baba, Mama and Bronze looked everywhere. Their voices rang out in the dark, “Have you seen our Sunflower?”
The answer was always the same.
Bronze went home, lit a paper lantern and went out to the sunflower fields. In the winter, there was nothing but dead sunflower stalks, leaning awkwardly this way and that. He walked around the fields with his paper lantern and then went back to the village.
Baba and Mama were still out in the street, asking if people had seen Sunflower. And the answer was still the same.
None of them felt like eating that night, and they carried on searching.
Nainai was lying in bed, all alone. She lacked the strength to do anything. She lay there worrying, all by herself.
Lots of people came to help look for Sunflower. They split up, then regrouped. There were all kinds of suggestions.
“Could she have gone to her other grandmother’s?”
But someone had already checked there.
“Could she have gone to Miss Jin’s?” Miss Jin was a teacher who lived outside the village, and who had a soft spot for Sunflower.
“Good idea. Could someone go and see?”
A big man called Daguo volunteered to go.
“Thank you, Daguo,” said Baba.
“No need for thanks,” said Daguo as he set off, clomping along the road.
“Let’s think. Where else could she have gone?”
They thought of a few more places, and people went to look. You could hear the pounding of their footsteps on the roads.
By now everyone was exhausted, so they went back to the house and waited for news. Bronze stayed out, searching the fields, the riverside and the schoolyard with his paper lantern. He’d been standing selling shoes all day in Youmadi and hadn’t eaten, and he could feel his legs trembling. But he carried on walking, tears glistening in his eyes.
It was almost dawn by the time the different groups reported back at the house. Sunflower was nowhere to be found. They were all worn out, and needed to go home to sleep. But the family couldn’t sleep, their minds were racing and every noise startled them.
A new day dawned. Slowly, they began to pick up a lead. First, Cuihuan told them something important. She said Sunflower had told her two days earlier that she wanted to go and earn some money, a lot of money, so that Nainai could go to hospital. As Nainai, Baba and Mama heard this, tears rolled down their faces.
“That silly girl. How could she be so silly?” wailed Mama. How did Sunflower even know of anywhere she could earn money?
Then there was another lead. The day she disappeared, someone had seen her in Youmadi. Mama stayed home to look after Nainai while Baba and Bronze went to look for her there. They asked lots of people, and some said they’d seen her but didn’t know where she had gone. When night fell, Bronze and Baba went home.
In the night, Bronze suddenly woke up. The wind was blowing outside and the branches were creaking and groaning. If Sunflower was on her way home right now, she’d be terrified out there all on her own. Quietly, he got out of bed and took the paper lantern. He went into the kitchen, found a match, lit the candle in the lantern and set off again for Youmadi. If that was where she’d disappeared, that was probably where she’d return.
That wintery night, the paper lantern moved through the fields as if it was the soul of night itself. Bronze didn’t walk fast. He was half walking, half waiting. He reached Youmadi in the early hours of the morning. As he walked with his lantern down the long street, his footsteps on the stone slabs were the only sound. He went to the bridge and looked out over the vast river. He saw the boats moored along the banks. If Sunflower had taken a boat, she would come back by boat. If the boat came back during the day, that was fine, she could walk home by herself. But if the boat came back at night, she’d be scared. How would she get back to Damaidi on her own? Bronze changed the candle in the paper lantern, and kept watch on the bridge. After that, he went to Youmadi every night.
In the town a man got up in the night to go to the toilet and spotted the paper lantern on the bridge. He saw it again the next night, and the next. He thought it was odd, but didn’t think too much about it. Then one night he went to the bridge and found Bronze holding his lantern.
“Who are you waiting for?” he asked. Bronze didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. The man went a bit closer and recognized him as the mute who sold reed shoes.
Word spread, until almost everyone in Youmadi knew the story – that the mute boy Bronze had a sister called Sunflower who’d wanted to earn money so her grandmother could go to hospital, and had set out from Youmadi, but nobody knew where she’d gone, and that was why Bronze was waiting with his lantern on the bridge every night.
The boy who sold paper windmills wasn’t from Youmadi, and the next time he came to town, he heard the story and was reminded of the little girl who had asked him to pass a letter to her brother who sold reed shoes.
“I know where she went,” he said, and told them his story.
“What happened to the letter?” someone asked.
“I must’ve given it to the wrong person. To another boy who was selling reed shoes.”
They were about to set off and look for the other boy when he came walking down the road.
“That’s him!” said the windmill boy. “Do you still have the letter I gave you? It wasn’t meant for you. I was supposed to give it to somebody else.”
By chance the boy had kept the letter – perhaps he was intrigued by it, or thought it might be important – and was able to pull it out of his pocket. One of the adults read it and quickly told Bronze what it said.
Bronze took the letter. When he recognized Sunflower’s handwriting, tears streamed down his face. Some adults followed up the new lead, and traced it to the big boat that had gone to Jiangnan. Sunflower must have gone with them to pick ginkgo nuts. The family was so relieved to hear this news, and began the anxious wait for her return. Baba wanted to go to Jiangnan and look for her, but they managed to dissuade him. Jiangnan was so big – how would he find her? Instead, they arranged that Baba and Bronze would keep watch in Youmadi: Baba during the day and Bronze at night. The paper lantern lit up the road, and the river, and the hearts of the people of Youmadi.
The big boat was on its way back to Youmadi. It had been a long trip and Sunflower had missed her family so much. She thought about them all the time.
When the people on the boat had realized she was on her own without an adult to look after her, they had been shocked. They wanted the owner to pull into the shore and send her home. But she clung to the mast with tears streaming down her face and refused to budge. When they asked why she was going to pick ginkgo nuts, she told them she wanted to earn money so Nainai could go to hospital. They were moved. They also laughed at her. “There’s not much money in it. You’ll barely make enough for one tablet of Chinese medicine.”
But she didn’t believe them. She was determined to go and pick as many nuts as she could.
“Does your family know where you are?” they asked.
“My brother knows.”
Seeing how upset she was, someone stepped in and said, “OK, let her come with us. At least her family know
s where she is.”
Sunflower calmed down and let go of the mast.
The people on the boat loved this little girl, and were happy to look after her. She hadn’t brought any food or bedding, so when they ate they shared their food with her. And when they went to bed, the women let her sleep under their covers. They tucked her in tightly, worried that she might slip out and get cold. As the boat rocked and the water slip-slapped, Sunflower slept snugly. When the women woke in the night, they would check that her arms and legs weren’t sticking out. When she rolled over onto her side, she would wrap her arm around one of their necks and snuggle up. And the women would whisper, “Isn’t she sweet!”
Sunflower hadn’t brought a bag for collecting ginkgo nuts, either, so they gave her one. They shared everything with her. The only things she could share with them were the songs that Nainai had taught her. In the evenings, when the cabin was filled with people lying down to sleep and the wind and water rocked the boat like a cradle, the sound of Sunflower singing filled the cold and lonely night with warmth and joy. They were glad that they had let her stay on the boat.
When they reached Jiangnan, they hurried anxiously from one place to the next. It was late in the season and there weren’t many ginkgo nuts left, either on the trees or on the ground. They had to keep moving. Sunflower went with them. When she lagged behind, one of the women or another girl would stop and wait for her to catch up. One by one, she collected ginkgo nuts, each one a tiny bit of hope. The adults tried to help her, and pointed out places where there were lots.
“Sunflower, look over here!” they’d say. She was slow at first, but after a couple of days, her eyes were sharp and her hands were fast, and the adults were saying, “Hey, Sunflower, leave some for us!”
Sunflower wasn’t trying to outdo them. She blushed and slowed down, until the women laughed. “Don’t be so silly! Hurry up and pick as many as you can! There’s plenty for all of us.”