The Sheng Family
There were four siblings in the generation above in the Sheng family: three older sisters and one youngest son. In the Luzhen dialect, “lao” means the youngest. Sheng Zhuyu’s father, Sheng Wenbin, was the youngest son in the family, so Zhuyu had three maternal aunts.
The eldest cousin from her eldest aunt’s family went into a government department after leaving the military, following his discharge and reassignment. Later, his entire family moved to Nanshi, and they were city people now. The second cousin from her second aunt’s family had learned to do business under Sheng Wenbin many years ago, only to end up saddled with a pile of bad debts. He had stubbornly insisted that he hadn’t taken a single cent he shouldn’t have. But the news Zhuyu heard was that the amount he had embezzled was by no means small. In the end, he didn’t pay the money back, but fortunately, he didn’t end up behind bars either. After the turmoil, her second aunt harbored a tremendous grudge against her father, and the two families no longer had any contact.
The third cousin, Chen Jun, from her youngest aunt’s family, had worked under Sheng Wenbin alongside the second cousin back then. The third cousin quit early. Once he was in there, he couldn’t bring himself to “take” money against his conscience, but he couldn’t not “take” it either. He had become completely out of step with everyone else. He might as well go to the city and find work for himself. A few years ago, he opened a noodle shop, and business was doing very well. He and his wife both worked in the city, leaving their little daughter Chen Shiqi, who was always dragging her nose, to live with the youngest aunt.
The youngest aunt’s family also had another son and daughter, a pair of twins. Chen Yujing, who was a year older than Zhuyu, worked as a teacher at a kindergarten in town after graduating from a junior college. Her twin brother, Chen Kai, operated a crane at construction sites.
As for the youngest aunt herself, she used to run a small business at the town’s agricultural market, spending years setting up a stall to sell household goods like plastic clothes hangers and washbasins. After e-commerce took off in China, she stopped. No matter how much she relied on low margins and high volume, she couldn’t make any money, and there was simply no way to compete with e-commerce. Her husband, the third uncle by marriage, had originally been the director of the town’s garment factory. He was retired now. The two of them spent their days at home tending flowers and plants, with the added responsibility of making sure these little rascals had something to eat.
This family had always had a family atmosphere that was almost too lively. They had originally been a two-son, one-daughter arrangement, but after one son left, they became two daughters and one son, with elementary schooler Chen Shiqi taking her father Chen Jun’s place at the dinner table. After Zhuyu returned home, another pair of chopsticks was added, making it three girls and one boy. During this period, Zhuyu would be staying at her youngest aunt’s house, and no one in the family had any objections. There were already so many people that adding one more hardly made a difference.
Zhuyu’s grandparents were in poor health and lived permanently in a nursing home in the city, supported by the retirement savings their son had put away back when he was wealthy. Her father, meanwhile, was a dragon who showed his head but not his tail, with no money on him and debts to his name. He couldn’t take high-speed rail or fly, yet even so, his whereabouts were impossible to pin down, partly because he was avoiding creditors. Zhuyu could only guess whether her father had gone out that day by checking his WeChat step count. She figured the battered secondhand car might have been her father’s, and now he had given it to her. That meant she could only get around on an electric scooter.
After arriving at her youngest aunt’s house late at night, it wasn’t at all like Zhuyu had imagined. She had thought her arrival would disturb the family’s peace to some extent, but hardly anyone in the entire household was actually asleep.
Her youngest aunt was lying on the sofa, staying up late reading an e-novel. Chen Kai’s bedroom door was tightly shut as he played games. The third uncle by marriage was busy in the kitchen. There was a large bowl of fish soup left over from dinner, which was just right for making Zhuyu a bowl of noodles. The fish-soup noodles were loaded with ingredients: bean sprouts, oyster mushrooms, and tofu. She buried her head and slurped down the entire large bowl. When she went to wash the dishes, everyone in the house stopped her and told her to go wash up and get to bed early.
She didn’t actually go to bed early either. Zhuyu was temporarily sleeping in Chen Yujing’s room, the two sisters lying on the same bed. Chen Yujing had a sheet mask on her face and held her phone up, absorbed in short videos, ten-minute explanations of entire movies, the glow of the screen flashing nonstop.
The two sisters had been extremely close when they were little. After Sheng Wenbin made his fortune, he sent Zhuyu overseas to live the good life, and during the ten years in between, the two had gradually lost touch. They only crossed paths during holidays when they competed for red envelopes in the family group chat. Now that Zhuyu’s family had fallen into debt, the relationship between the two had drawn a little closer again.
“What are you going to do this time now that you’re back?” Yujing glanced twice at Zhuyu, who was lying beside her with both eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling beams.
“Help my dad out, I guess. Take care of the stuff up in the mountains. I don’t even know yet.” She was exhausted, but somehow her body simply refused to fall asleep.
Zhuyu rolled over, turning to face Yujing. “Hey, do you know how to write Sunzi Mountain? Could it really have something to do with the Sunzi from The Art of War?”
The mountain was located on the border between their province and the neighboring province. Its official name was Jieshan, literally, the mountain that marked the boundary. But the locals all called it Sunzi Mountain, which sounded a little strange, as if there ought to be a Laozi Mountain to go with it.
“Don’t make things up. It’s the sun (笋) in sunzi (笋子), the same sun (笋) as bamboo shoots. There’s a bamboo grove on the mountain, and shoots sprout in spring, so that’s why it’s called Sunzi Mountain.” Yujing pressed down on her face mask. It had been on for so long that it was starting to dry out.
That explanation didn’t sound particularly reliable either. In a couple of days, she would have to go to the town library and find some county gazetteers to look through. But verbally, Zhuyu responded with complete conviction: “Oh! So that’s why.”
“Oh, right. Did you know there’s a mountain god in the mountains…” Talking about ghosts and gods in the middle of the night was the most fun. Yujing put her phone aside and turned over to face her cousin. “There’s a mountain god on Sunzi Mountain too.”
Animism, a simple and ancient form of folk belief. Zhuyu blinked once but said nothing.
“Back then, before the mountain was leased to Uncle, it belonged to the previous owner. That person originally planned to open a mine in the mountains, saying there were underground resources there. They’d already put explosives down, but halfway through the mining, they stopped work. A lot of strange things happened inside.” Yujing lowered her voice, as though someone were lying under their bed, ears pricked up and secretly listening to them.
“And then?” Zhuyu asked obligingly. She knew that her father had bought the mountain from someone else ten years ago.
“There was a car accident. There were four people in the car. Three were seriously injured, and only the buyer, who was sitting in the back seat, died.” Yujing lowered her voice even further. “It was punishment from the mountain god, absolutely true. The car accident even made it into the newspaper.”
Zhuyu laughed at first. But as she laughed, she gradually stopped breathing. She didn’t make a sound for twenty seconds.
Seeing her expression turn serious, Yujing cautiously added, “We don’t have to worry about Uncle. He didn’t open a mine, after all. The mountain god won’t come after him.”
“That’s true. He didn’t manage to accomplish anything on the mountain. If anything comes after him, it definitely won’t be the mountain god. Probably the god of poverty.” Zhuyu covered her head with her pillow and let out a long sigh.
If there really was a mountain god, seeing Sheng Wenbin in this miserable state, he probably wouldn’t even want to collect whatever was owed to him.
Not only had this mountain never made him any profit, every year he still had to put two million yuan into it in rent, for the collectively owned agricultural land he had leased from the government. The total lease was for fifty years, and ten had already passed. As for the money he had poured into it, it had vanished without even making a sound.
“Uncle’s lucky, though. Even if he lost his money, at least he’s healthy.”
Chen Yujing’s thoughtlessness nearly made Zhuyu laugh. “So which would you rather have: wealth and a short life, or poverty and a long life?”
Once a person reached a certain state of mind, when faced with terrible things, they stopped becoming depressed and crying. Very likely, like Sheng Zhuyu, they became filled with a kind of wicked humor, even when the misfortune had happened to their own family.
Did she even have to ask??
Chen Yujing was embarrassed.
“Although I’d choose the first one, it’d be even better if I could have a little less money and not die young. Just moderately wealthy, moderately long-lived…”
Zhuyu laughed twice. “Haha! That’s quite a beautiful dream you’ve got there.”
“Anyway, no matter what, people can’t fail to show proper respect to Heaven and Earth…” After her bashfulness passed, Yujing turned serious. “You’re lucky. You can go back and live the good life whenever you want. The people the mountain god really has his eye on can’t escape it for three generations.”
“Does the mountain god come down the mountain himself to collect debts? What does he look like?” Zhuyu fluffed up her pillow, propped it behind her back, and sat up.
“Shh!” Yujing stopped her cousin’s nonsense. “Don’t talk rubbish.”
Zhuyu shrugged, meaning: You started it, and now you won’t let me ask questions?
“The mountain god is the mountain god. He is the mountain itself, so how could he come down the mountain? Only General Zizhu manifests himself. Have you heard of acting as Heaven’s inspector? Legend has it that more than a thousand years ago, there was a general who fought the enemy army fiercely for several days before dying of his wounds in Luzhen. His men had no way to bring the general’s body back to his hometown for burial, so they could only build him a grave in Luzhen, using the purple bamboo from Sunzi Mountain. After his death, the general was grateful to the mountain god for granting him the bamboo, so he transformed into a general guarding Sunzi Mountain, taking the title General Zizhu…”
Yujing’s improvised myth had gone on for too long. Zhuyu finally felt sleep coming over her, and after a day and night of traveling, she sank into a sweet, rotten dream.
Before falling asleep, Zhuyu’s last mumble was, “Is the little Western-style house still there? The one we used to sneak into all the time when we were kids… the little Western-style house.”
In her dream, she returned to ten years ago. A very, very long time ago, there had been a very wealthy family who built a beautiful little Western-style house on Sunzi Mountain. It looked exactly like something out of a foreign TV drama, with white walls and a red roof, four carved white pillars supporting the entrance, and a ring of iron fencing topped with spikes surrounding the little house.
She had gone inside too. Back then, she went there every week. It was so big. There were four balconies on the second floor alone. But what she could never forget most was a little attic room. Above the attic was an opening glass window. Whenever the weather was clear, sunlight streamed in, making the whole room brilliantly bright. If you slept in there on a rainy day, you could watch the raindrops falling right before your eyes. At night, needless to say, you would surely be able to see the stars.
Back then, she had wanted a little attic like that so badly.
Before Sheng Wenbin had made his fortune, Zhuyu’s grandmother had been in excellent health. She planted crops in spring, worked the fields in summer, and found odd jobs to do even during the farming off-season. As it happened, the owner of the little house on the mountain had asked someone in town to find a person to work for them, going there every week to clean the place. Zhuyu’s grandmother accepted the job without a second thought, sometimes bringing her granddaughters along.
“It’s still there, but it isn’t pretty at all anymore. It looks like a haunted house.” Yujing peeled off her face mask and pulled the quilt over herself. “The owner’s dead. Who would still pay someone to go clean it?”
It was nearly noon when three black sedans finally arrived at the convenience store by the roadside. When Secretary Liu Ruiming brought the freshly brewed hot coffee to his boss, he found him already sitting on the bench outside the convenience store, calmly drinking.
“Instant coffee. Not too bad. I couldn’t buy any before…” Liu Sizhao took another sip. “Someone gave me some.”
Then why did you drive here at night, only to have to rest by the roadside to conserve your energy? Why not sleep and come during the day?
Those words stayed firmly in the secretary’s thoughts. His professionalism kept him politely silent. Besides, all the people beneath him had gone to sleep. He was the only one who hadn’t.
After a round of reports, summaries, and planning, the secretary and the others stood to one side and waited for him to make a decision. Perhaps he was dazed from sleeping too little, or perhaps the boss simply hadn’t been listening at all. He had been lost in thought the entire time.
After what seemed like a period of contemplation, Liu Sizhao finally spoke. “After I go up the mountain, I’ll still stay in the old house I used to live in. But I can’t stay there for the time being. I’ll have to find someone to clean it up first.”
There were no proper housekeeping companies here, and naturally, there were no hourly cleaners to come by either. Some of the furniture and appliances were probably broken too, so repairmen would have to be found. The secretary had originally planned to bring people over from the city.
“The mountains aren’t that backward either. My dad had an old friend here who used to look after the old house for us. In terms of seniority, I should call him Uncle. I got in touch with him before. He said he’d take care of these little things.”
During the call, that Uncle was just as warm and enthusiastic as he had been ten years ago, his Mandarin still carrying the same local accent, and he addressed Liu Sizhao exactly as he had in the past.
“Just come, and don’t worry about anything else! In Uncle’s heart, Sizhao is no different from my own nephew. I’ll definitely take care of everything properly for you. All these years… Brother Liu left us so early. Uncle has always been thinking about my nephew. I didn’t know whether you were doing well on your own. Whenever I thought about it, it broke my heart. Uncle wanted to do something for you, but the mountains are so far away, and there was only so much I could do. Now that we finally have the chance, all you have to do is come. Don’t mention money to Uncle! Don’t mention it, don’t mention it, don’t mention it… What’s the point of talking about money among family? This time when you go up the mountain, come to Uncle’s place. That’s the same as coming home. Really, you don’t need to worry about anything…”
In his memories, this Uncle Sheng had originally started from a humble position. After getting connected with his father, he followed his father all the way, working tirelessly at his side and doing everything he could for him. As expected, he eventually made his fortune. Unfortunately, he encountered setbacks over the years and fell back to where he had started.
Over the course of twenty-eight years, Liu Sizhao had suffered two serious illnesses. After circling the gates of death several times, he no longer looked at people by judging them from above as he once had. This Uncle’s warmth and concern had remained unchanged for ten years. After his father died, he still mailed him local mountain products and specialties every year. Regardless of whether he was rich or poor, he had always treated him extremely well. He remembered all of this.
When the sun was already high in the sky, Sheng Zhuyu finally received a call from her father. As expected, it was nothing but reminders and instructions, telling her that no one at her youngest aunt’s house would mistreat her. But she also needed to have some awareness and do whatever housework she could. Once his situation improved, he would definitely be able to buy a house back, and then the father and daughter could live together.
“I’ve been extremely busy lately, extremely busy. Busy getting in touch with people, inviting them up the mountain to take a look. Once I find someone to take over, your dad will be free.
“There used to be a little Western-style house. Do you remember it? Your grandma used to take you and Yujing inside to clean. That was Old Liu’s house. You definitely don’t remember. That old bastard Old Liu, I did so much work for him, took care of so many things, and he actually tricked me into buying the mountain. All the rotten things he did… It turned out like that later on, so maybe it was karma. I’ve lost this much money now. Who knows, maybe the feng shui here is bad. If it weren’t for him, maybe I wouldn’t have…”
Zhuyu had been listening to her father ramble with her eyes closed, half-asleep, but the words “feng shui” were a sore spot for her. The moment she heard them, anger flared in her chest. She immediately opened her eyes and sat up.
“Dad, you go years and years without working or doing anything. The construction team was doing so well overseas before, and you just quit because you felt like it. You spend all day at home believing in feng shui masters, changing your name, changing your bazi, trying to improve your fortune, wasting your time on all this superstitious nonsense. Tell me, exactly how much money did you throw into all of that? Did any of it work? If you had just done your job properly, would things have ended up like this?”
Her father knew he was in the wrong, and his voice gradually grew quieter. “That’s all in the past. Let’s not bring it up anymore, okay? Oh, right. Old Liu’s son is coming. He says he’s coming to the mountains to recuperate. The Yusheng Group is in his hands now. This mountain originally came to me from their family, so he definitely won’t want to take it back. But I was thinking, if we can warm up the relationship, one more connection means one more way forward. Maybe he’ll be able to help us with something in the future, right? His father’s dead, but all these years I’ve been thinking that we can’t let this connection break. I’ve sent him things every holiday. He still calls me Uncle now. It’ll be the same this time. If we treat him well, he’ll definitely remember the favor.”
All these expectations were nothing but castles in the air. Zhuyu had already lain back down and wasn’t particularly interested in listening to her father draw pictures of imaginary futures.
“Okay, okay, okay. When he comes, we’ll definitely treat him well. If you need anything, contact me. I’m staying up on the mountain specifically to take care of things for you.”
Hearing this, Sheng Wenbin was relieved. “Remember this, okay? His full name is Liu Sizhao. He’s three years older than you, so he should be twenty-eight this year. You saw him when you were little. You even used to call him Brother Xiao Zhao. You just don’t remember.”
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