Chapter One
The Swallows Return After a Thousand Years (1)
The Shen family of Jiangnan had passed down its lineage for twenty-six generations. Having stood firm for hundreds of years, the family had always attracted considerable attention. Now, with Master Shen returning to his hometown for the ancestral rites for the first time in more than twenty years, numerous media outlets were naturally following close behind, turning what was essentially a family affair into quite a spectacle.
It was barely light when the ancestral rites began.
Everyone proceeded from the ancestral hall to the inner hall to offer incense, then made their way along the path to the ancestral tombs. Once they arrived before the graves, they began bowing and offering incense according to their seniority within the family.
Rows upon rows of white chrysanthemums lined the way. Whenever someone stepped forward, they would bend down and add another flower to the arrangement.
Shen Zhaozhao and her older sister, being among the younger generation, waited at the very end.
The two reporters behind them could not squeeze their way to the innermost area, so they simply put down their cameras and began gossiping in hushed voices.
"The one offering chrysanthemums now is Shen Qingqiu. He's running for finance minister in Mexico this year. Who would've thought his seniority in the family was so low?"
"That's how these big families work. Look at the boy standing in front of him. Judging by where he's standing, he's of a higher generation. He looks only fifteen or sixteen, doesn't he?"
...
Hearing this, she tried to peer toward the front of the line, but she couldn't see the boy. There were simply too many people.
It was nearly lunchtime by the time the ancestral rites finally came to an end. The Shen family arranged a meal for all the domestic and international media representatives. It was held at the old residence, where specially hired chefs prepared vegetarian dishes.
Several people who had lived in Taizhou for many years were responsible for hosting the guests from outside the family.
Their mother left the two sisters in the care of Master Shen's two grandsons, Shen Jiaming and Shen Jiaheng. Jiaming had met the little twins the previous night, so he introduced them to Jiaheng.
"They're both distant cousins. Qin Zhaozhao and Shen Zhaozhao, a pair of twins. Qin is the older sister, and Shen is the younger one."
It was their mother who belonged to the Shen family, which was why they were cousins.
"Wait, you've confused me," Shen Jiaheng said, looking utterly bewildered. "Twins? Why do they have different surnames?"
Shen Zhaozhao and her sister exchanged glances and laughed.
Since arriving the previous night, they had heard this question at least eight or ten times.
"The older sister takes their father's surname, and the younger sister takes their mother's."
"Then how do you tell them apart? Da Zhao and Xiao Zhao?"
"What's next, Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao..." Shen Jiaming whispered an explanation to his younger brother. "Their parents separated when they were young. Each parent took one of the sisters, so there's no need to worry about that."
Though his confusion had been cleared up, Shen Jiaheng continued staring at them, as if he still had another question.
"Are you going to ask why we don't look alike, too?" The older sister smiled sweetly at their distant cousin.
To be honest, there was a striking difference between the twins' appearances.
The older sister had a pointed chin, a high nose, deep-set eyes, and peach-blossom eyes. Her eyebrows were thick, but since she was young and had never deliberately shaped them, they were a little unruly and uneven. Shen Zhaozhao, by contrast, had an oval face and full cheeks, with almond-shaped eyes and naturally neat, gently arched eyebrows.
Their lips were the most different of all. Her older sister had thin lips, while hers were fuller and more rounded.
"One of us takes after our father, and the other takes after our mother." Shen Zhaozhao smiled at the two older boys as well.
They were fraternal twins.
That was what their parents had told them since childhood.
The two brothers had guests to attend to, so they arranged for someone to drive the sisters to see the Shen family's jade workshop.
Neither sister was interested. They asked someone for an umbrella instead and went out together for a stroll.
The Shen family had three residences here. One had been donated to the local government, another had been turned into a jade exhibition hall, and only this ancestral home, tucked away in a remote location, remained in the family's possession.
Because it was so secluded, there was no trace of commercialization. The area was made up entirely of ordinary households, one after another.
They took a long detour, passing two abandoned courtyards in succession. With their gray walls and withered trees, they looked particularly desolate in the rain. After discussing it, the sisters decided they might as well head back. From a distance, they spotted an open-fronted pastry shop with no signboard, though it looked like a place that sold food.
The alley was full of puddles. Her older sister was wearing white shoes and, afraid of getting them dirty, refused to go any farther.
Zhaozhao wasn't worried about that. She left the umbrella with her sister, shielded her head with one hand, and carefully skirted several drainage ditches before running to the shop. A sheet of paper was posted on the wall, listing the prices of various flower cakes.
There were no lights on inside. A stove in the northwest corner was burning, its flames illuminating half the room.
Several wicker baskets stood empty in front of her, and the steamers inside them were empty, too. She peered farther in and finally spotted a row of freshly made flower cakes on a table to the right. A hand pulled open the dark blue curtain.
Someone was finally there.
"Hello, I'd like to buy some flower cakes," she called out brightly to the shopkeeper.
At her question, a teenage boy emerged from behind the curtain.
He looked about fifteen or sixteen and wore a well-fitting casual outfit. He was neat and clean, with nothing on him except a rose-gold watch on his wrist.
His face appeared beneath his short hair, suddenly illuminated by the firelight from the stove. She couldn't tell whether his complexion was fair or dark. Only when he stepped into the natural light did his features become clear. He had a slender face, a narrow, high-bridged nose, and eyes that slanted inward at the corners and swept outward at the edges, as though cut with a knife. His gaze was bright and sharp.
There was a fresh smear of blood across the bridge of his nose, as if he had only just knocked it hard enough to break the skin.
Shen Zhaozhao barely looked at him. She pulled the silver chain-strap bag slung across her back around to the front and undid the clasp.
Two sharp cracks burst from the stove as the firewood split in the heat.
Startled, she looked up.
This time, their eyes met directly.
Suddenly, she could no longer make out his eyes or his face. It was as though she couldn't breathe at all... an intensely uncomfortable feeling. The sense of oppression and distress lasted only a fleeting instant before quickly dissipating.
It must have been the low atmospheric pressure brought on by the rain. The air was too stuffy.
Shen Zhaozhao silently took a moment to steady herself, found some loose change, and looked at him with smiling eyes.
"I want the ones with a tiny bit of red on top. That flavor. Three of them, please."
She held the money out across the low counter, but he did not take it.
"The ones with red on top," she repeated.
He hesitated for a moment, then followed the little girl's gaze to the freshly made flower cakes in various colors.
"Say that again."
At last, he had spoken his first words.
"The red ones."
He still did not move. Instead, he continued asking, "Which ones, counting from the right?"
Shen Zhaozhao was taken aback. She had no idea what she had said wrong, but she answered according to his instructions anyway.
"The third, fourth, and fifth ones from the right."
Shen Ce did not reach for the pastries. Instead, he took a black wallet from his trouser pocket and called out to someone behind the curtain, telling them to pack up everything that had just been made, then add three flower cakes.
An elderly woman came out with a smile, apologizing profusely for keeping them waiting as she packed the pastries Zhaozhao wanted.
It was only when he settled the bill that she finally understood.
This person wasn't the one selling the pastries.
This was Shen Zhaozhao's first encounter with Shen Ce.
Half an hour later, her sister and she were taken by their mother to meet their maternal great-granduncle. They entered the main reception hall and saw him sitting in a chair to Master Shen's right, with their cousin Shen Jiaheng seated opposite him.
"The twins are here," Master Shen said with a smile.
Shen Zhaozhao's eyes widened as she stared at him in disbelief.
He watched her as she struggled to remain silent, stealing glances at him again and again. He seemed entirely unsurprised, as though he had known there would certainly be a second meeting. When he had seen her clothes and the jade pendant hanging around her neck in the back alley, he had already guessed that the girl belonged to the Shen family. Every child who had come to attend the ancestral rites had received a similar little trinket from Master Shen.
Shen Ce, a descendant of the Shen family from Macau.
She had heard her mother talk about the Macau branch twice before. The Shen family's ancestors had once suffered a great calamity that nearly wiped out the entire clan. As a result, the family split into two branches. One remained in Taizhou, while the other moved south, eventually settling in Macau after several changes of residence. However, the southern branch had also suffered a devastating blow before the fall of the Qing dynasty. Very few people remained, but whether male or female, every one of them was an exceptional individual. For this reason, she had always had a very good impression of the Shen family in Macau. Today, she had finally met one of them.
At first, she had thought this older brother was rather unusual. When he heard that her sister and she were twins, he had shown no surprise and had not even asked why they looked so different.
But when he heard that there were two people called "Zhaozhao," he suddenly raised his eyes and studied the two sisters intently for a little longer.
Shen Zhaozhao couldn't help laughing aloud.
Her older sister, meanwhile, deliberately let out a sigh.
Everyone turned to look at them.
"What is it? Have you taken a liking to this older brother already?" their maternal great-granduncle asked kindly.
She smiled and answered with an "Mm."
He would surely ask why there were two Zhaozhaos.
Unexpectedly, Shen Ce stared at the sisters for a long while before simply praising them: "Good names."
"By seniority, you're not that far down the line," Master Shen said. "It's quite a dilemma figuring out what these twins should call you."
"Just call me gege," Shen Ce said.
Before they had come, his father had reminded him that the two branches had separated more than a dozen generations ago, and there was no longer any blood relationship between them. On this visit, he did not need to follow the generational hierarchy observed by the Taizhou branch. They could be more casual and address one another according to age.
After the elders arranged for the two sisters to formally greet this older brother, who was so distantly related to them that he might as well have been a hundred thousand li away, someone escorted them to another courtyard.
By the time the rain stopped, the courtyard had already been thoroughly cleaned.
The courtyard lights and decorative wooden lanterns had all been lit. Lights illuminated the artificial rockery and the lake as well, all of them lit to ensure the children could enjoy themselves to the fullest.
The ancestral rites had ended that day, and everyone would begin leaving the following day. No one knew whether they would ever meet again, so the adults had arranged for the Shen family's children to gather here for one last get-together. The children of just a few years old were taken to watch the revolving lanterns, while the older ones played pai gow together. Since they had grown up in different environments, the courtyard was filled with a jumble of accents and languages. English, French, and Spanish were the most common, mixed with Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Sichuanese.
Add to that the soft, lilting Wu dialect, and all the voices blended into one lively, bustling scene.
Her older sister played pai gow with the others, while Shen Zhaozhao listened to their conversations from the sidelines.
After nightfall, someone began spraying mosquito repellent among the flower beds. Several pots of night-blooming jasmine were moved beside the pond to keep the mosquitoes away. It was the first time Shen Zhaozhao had seen night-blooming jasmine. She crouched in front of a flowerpot, examining the lemon-yellow blossoms, then leaned closer to smell them. The fragrance was so strong.
A hand pulled her to her feet.
"Smelling that fragrance too much isn't good for you."
The person reminding her was Shen Jiaheng, and Shen Ce was walking behind him.
This made it their third encounter of the day.
Nearby, a child of four or five was playing with a revolving lantern. The light spun rapidly, and streaks of shadow swept across his face. Unlike in the main reception hall, where he had pretended not to recognize her, Shen Ce smiled when he saw her this time.
Shen Zhaozhao clasped her hands behind her back and deliberately refrained from greeting him. Instead, she began asking her cousin Shen Jiaheng detailed questions about night-blooming jasmine.
Jiaheng had always liked this beautiful distant cousin of his, so he explained everything carefully. Shen Ce listened to their idle conversation with interest but did not interrupt. Both of them acted as though the unexpected encounter that afternoon had never happened.
"I can't see very clearly at night," her older sister suddenly said, handing the dominoes in her hand to a girl sitting beside her. "You take over."
It was an excuse. Her sister had won too many times that evening and felt embarrassed about winning again.
The girl who took over her hand won soon afterward.
Amid everyone's laughter, someone suddenly asked her older sister, "Why can't you see clearly at night?"
It was Shen Ce, who had spent the past half hour listening to conversations about night-blooming jasmine and mosquito-repellent plants without joining in. At last, he seemed interested in participating.
"Night blindness." Her older sister had not expected him to ask.
She had not gone to the pastry shop that afternoon, so she had never interacted with Shen Ce. Their only encounter had been in the front hall, when she had called him "gege" To her, Shen Ce was nothing more than a complete stranger.
That was why their conversation came so abruptly.
Shen Jiaheng, however, was concerned about his cousin and followed up with a question of his own. "Haven't you seen a doctor? What did the doctor say?"
"I have. It's much better now," her older sister answered vaguely. "Sometimes it's still a problem. I can't see well when the light is dim."
Shen Zhaozhao could barely contain her laughter.
It was Shen Zhaozhao, not her older sister, who had suffered from night blindness since childhood. When they were little and living in China, her playmates often teased her about it. Because of this, her older sister knew she was unwilling to admit it and would often take the blame on her younger sister's behalf, claiming the condition as her own.
As they grew older, Shen Zhaozhao's night blindness improved. Her older sister, on the other hand, grew fond of using this "excuse" to deflect all sorts of questions.
Even their parents had been thoroughly fooled by her sister. They would even remark on whether it might be hereditary in the family, since the younger daughter had recovered while the older daughter had developed the problem instead.
Later that night, Shen Zhaozhao noticed Shen Ce looking in her direction twice. At first, she was too embarrassed to meet his gaze. Eventually, she realized that he was looking at the sister beside her.
No comments:
Post a Comment