Mountain and Countryside
By the time they met again, it was truly autumn. The two of them approached each other through the hazy morning mist.
Zhuyu had a small woven bamboo basket hooked over her wrist. When neither of them knew what to say, she took a fuzzy little brown ball from the basket and handed it to Sizhao.
Seeing him simply hold it and stare without doing anything, she realized that Sizhao probably had no idea what it was.
She put on a pair of thick gloves, placed the little ball between her palms, and pressed down hard. The ball split open, revealing the pale yellow flesh inside, divided into several segments.
She ate one piece herself, then casually stuffed another into Sizhao's mouth. She was very practiced at doing things like this. The week they had spent apart had made the two of them somewhat unfamiliar with each other. But actions were different from words. They did not require so much thought, and working quickly and deftly was one of the things she was best at.
“How is it?” They sat together in the little courtyard in the early morning, waiting for the mist to clear so they could drive out.
It was a food he had never eaten before, and Sizhao's expression was very cautious, which made her find it a little amusing. He chewed very carefully, as though afraid he might be poisoned.
“Pretty crisp. The texture is refreshing, there's a lot of moisture, and it's sweet.” That was his assessment after personally conducting a little “poison test.”
“Guess what this is?”
“From the outside, it looks a little like a pine cone, but it definitely isn't.”
“It's a raw chestnut. The chestnuts we usually eat have already been removed from their shells and cooked. You've never seen one fallen from a tree, so it's perfectly normal that you don't recognize it.”
They sat together and chatted idly about little things, neither mentioning what had happened before nor talking about what would come after, as though whether raw chestnuts tasted more like fruit or nuts were the most interesting questions in the world.
“Have you decided where we're going today?” Sizhao asked before they got into that battered little car.
“I have. I'm going to make some deliveries. I'll deliver chestnuts to each house, one by one. Once we're done, wherever the car happens to take us, we'll stop there. Is that okay?” The large woven bamboo basket was packed full of raw chestnuts, filling the trunk and the back seat of the car.
Sizhao couldn't help laughing. “So basically, you called me here just to keep you company while you drive?”
“It is a date. But we can combine a date with making deliveries.” Zhuyu turned the key, and the little car started up. “Make efficient use of our time, kill two birds with one stone, right?”
“Besides, I'm going to be driving for a long stretch today. I'll be happy if someone keeps me company,” she muttered softly. This trip would take them almost all the way around Luzhen.
The chestnuts had to be delivered to more than a dozen customers. It was quite a project.
“Okay. I’m pretty curious where the car will end up stopping. We might even cross the provincial border and wind up in the neighboring province.”
Luzhen sits on the border between its own province and the neighboring province. Sometimes, if they drove far enough out, they would even receive a welcome text message from the neighboring province.
“I’m curious too. I’ve never driven this far on my own in Luzhen before, so I have no idea where we’ll end up stopping.”
Every year during the autumn harvest, mountain produce was usually sold to buyers, who then resold it. This year, after Zhuyu came back, she set up a small online shop and even made a WeChat group, asking her relatives to spread the word around the surrounding area. Anyone who wanted chestnuts could come directly to her. She offered home delivery, and they were the freshest large chestnuts from the mountains. Without middlemen taking a cut, selling directly meant she could earn a little more.
At first, she had been a little worried that there would be too many chestnuts and too few customers, and that she wouldn't be able to sell them all. Unexpectedly, business was very good. In just a few weeks, all the chestnuts had been reserved.
The customers also lived in very different places. Some were secluded from the world, standing all alone beside the highway. Some were hidden deep inside villages. There were three-story rural red-brick houses, as well as apartment complexes built only in recent years whose walls had already begun to fade.
“Countryside life is pretty strange, isn't it?”
They stared, fascinated, at the little chickens and ducks someone kept in their yard, all huddled together and chirping noisily as they pecked furiously at grains. Farther in, there was a pigsty built from piled stones, with a big black pig hiding inside a dark, shadowy opening.
They walked cautiously, looking down every now and then and carefully avoiding the chicken droppings on the ground, while they waited for the owner to carry a box of chestnuts into the house.
Sizhao used just one word to describe it: “Discovery.”
It was a documentary series devoted to explaining wildlife and the natural world.
This city dweller was really something. Zhuyu thought for a moment. “Let me tell you, when I was little, I lived in town. Once, I saw a huge white pig strolling leisurely down the road, with not a single person around it. After I grew up, every time I thought back to it, I wondered if I'd dreamed the whole thing.”
“What, you'd need to see someone walking it on a leash by themselves before you'd believe it wasn't a hallucination?”
“You think it really happened?”
“Of course it did. I've seen unusual things too. Ten years ago, I went down the mountain into town by myself. Back then, there were still people driving donkey carts through the streets. The donkey would trot along in front, pulling a flatbed cart, while the person sat on it, waving a whip.
“People driving animal-powered vehicles. Think about it. How many years has it been since the Industrial Revolution? And there were still donkey carts!”
They were silent for a long while before Zhuyu said, “It's more interesting than the city.”
“That it is,” Sizhao agreed.
They drove the old little car along the roads, making deliveries as they went. The chestnuts grew fewer and fewer until, in the end, only deep indentations remained on the back seat. All the goods had been delivered. And it was only three in the afternoon.
Along the way, they ate the mutton soup and soft flatbreads Zhuyu had brought with her. She had even brought chili sauce and a jar of salt, handing them to him so he could season his own food.
“What kind of bread is this?” It was thick and very soft. Torn into pieces and soaked in the hot soup for a while until it had absorbed the broth, it tasted delicious.
“Ah, I don't know what it's called. The mutton soup shop sells it as a side. The owner only opens the shop in autumn and winter and closes it during the other seasons, focusing on raising sheep. The mutton here is famous. They slaughter the sheep fresh and sell it right away, unlike in the cities, where the meat has to be refrigerated and transported.” She took a sip of the hot soup, feeling warm all over. “There might be someone selling freshly slaughtered mutton along the way later. I'll point it out to you.”
After delivering the chestnuts to the last customer, they had agreed to stop wherever they happened to end up. But Zhuyu especially wanted him to see what freshly slaughtered sheep looked like, so she drove the car farther ahead.
They really did find a roadside stall, set up beside a desolate main road.
A sheep's head lay on the chopping board. On the rack, the sheep's body had been cleaved open down the middle, the cavity split wide and standing there bloody and raw for customers to see whether it was fresh.
“Pretty scary, right?” Zhuyu pointed it out to Sizhao from inside the car. She was certain this would frighten him. For a city dweller, the scene was honestly a little too shocking.
Unexpectedly, Sizhao got out of the car and asked the owner how much the mutton cost per jin and whether it was fresh. In the end, he bought an entire sheep. Once the owner had packed it up, he stuffed it into the trunk.
“How much?” Zhuyu asked, turning around to look at him.
“About a thousand.”
“That’s pretty expensive! Can you cook it?”
“No.”
“Then why did you buy it?”
“You said the mutton in Luzhen was first-rate, famous for being good. It’s not often you get to see it. Wouldn’t it be a waste not to buy it?”
“Then who’s going to cook it for you?”
“I didn’t think that far when I bought it.”
“…Then what do we do?”
“How about I give it to your family? There are a lot of you, so it’ll be just enough to eat.”
“No, you can’t. You bought it! It cost so much money.”
“But I don’t know how to cook it. It’s fine, I’ll give it to you. Uncle Sheng sent me a lot of mountain produce in previous years.”
“From now on, whenever our family makes mutton soup or mutton hot pot, as long as you’re here, I’ll call you over to eat with us. How’s that?”
That was the compromise she came up with.
After driving for most of the day, Zhuyu was a little tired, so she handed the wheel over to Sizhao.
“Sure.” There was a note of pleasure in his clear voice.
There was no telling whether he had done it deliberately. Zhuyu, of course, knew. It was just that there was no road ahead for them to take, and as for turning back… for the moment, they couldn’t turn back, and she didn’t want to.
“You were trying to scare me just now, weren’t you?” Sizhao thought about it. “You figured I was a germaphobe, afraid of blood, afraid of dirt, afraid of skinned sheep.”
“…Yes.” Zhuyu calmly turned her gaze toward the window.
He laughed. “I’m not that delicate.”
“Okay…” Zhuyu suddenly sat up straight and said seriously, “I’m not afraid of dead sheep, but I’m afraid of live ones. If there were a live sheep standing there, waiting to be slaughtered, I wouldn’t want to buy it. I’d want to leave as quickly as possible.
“When I was little, I saw one. A snow-white little lamb was lying beside a raw meat stall, with a rope looped around its neck. Thinking that it might be the next one to be gutted and butchered, I was so frightened that my fingers went numb.”
“You’re not even afraid of lightning, and you’re not afraid of bloody sheep either, but you’re afraid of a lamb waiting to die.” His voice softened.
She repeated, “Yes, I am. Terribly afraid.”
“Why are you afraid?”
“Because you can sense it. Another life’s emotions. You know its fear, its sadness. Once you can feel those things, it’s very hard not to be sad yourself.”
The little car drove into a forest of blazing red leaves, going deeper and deeper. The autumn wind rose, and sometimes the red leaves on the ground flew up like red whirlwinds, striking against the car windows.
She watched Sizhao. Are you all right? Are you feeling any better?
She wanted so badly to ask those questions, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them.
“There’s no need to be afraid. Birth, aging, illness, and death are all part of the natural order…” Sizhao smiled. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Deep within the red-leaf forest, water appeared.
A lake suddenly unfurled before them like a long painting scroll. The setting sun cast a dusky yellow light, dyeing the surface of the water with golden ripples.
They gazed for a long time at the scenery farther ahead. A vast stretch of crimson bald cypress forest filled the lake, while mist gathered once more as the sun began to set. Crimson and brilliant gold intertwined, looking almost like a mirage from some distant place. It made one wonder if the forest in the lake was merely an illusion, temporarily preserved here for a moment, waiting for the mist to disperse and make the phantom disappear.
“Sizhao, my father is going to marry a woman soon and leave this place for good. I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay here. I spent a very long time thinking about the relationship between you and me, and now I think I’ve finally figured something out.
“In ancient times, when the feudal states were caught in chaotic eras, if they wanted to survive, they had to seek out allies. They performed sacrifices and entered blood oaths, becoming each other’s strongest support and assistance. That’s the kind of relationship I want to have with you. Here in these mountains, as long as you can see me and I can see you, we’ll use our own strength to support each other. Until the very end, until one of us leaves this place.
“If you’re willing, I’ll care about you and look out for you. If you need my strength, I’ll lend it to you without holding anything back. I hope you’ll treat me the same way.
“You and me, the two of us, forming an alliance, becoming each other’s allies. This is what I’ve figured out. This is the path we can take.”
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