E ⋆ Chapter 39

After arriving in Sanwen, Yu Zhinian first checked into the guest house, then went to visit his aunt, whom he hadn’t seen in years. His cousin had started university and hadn’t begun summer break yet. Yu Zhinian had lunch at his aunt’s place and spent time chatting with her.

Perhaps the ten years spent in Ning City and He City had consumed too much of his emotional capacity. When his aunt mentioned things from Yu Zhinian’s childhood, he felt as though he were looking back across a vast distance. His aunt repeatedly asked about his romantic life, and Yu Zhinian deflected each time with vague answers.

The next day, Yu Zhinian took an introduction letter his advisor had arranged for him and went to the cultural center in Sanwen. As it happened, the cultural center had convened its subordinate units that very day for a second-half-of-the-year propaganda meeting. Sanwen had originally been a county-level city, but a few years ago administrative reorganization had elevated it to a prefecture-level city, with three counties and two districts under its jurisdiction.

The cultural center itself had only been established in recent years. The vice director who liaised with Yu Zhinian had a background in sociology and enthusiastically invited him to sit in on the meeting, saying it would help him understand the cultural characteristics of each county and district.

Before the meeting began, as Yu Zhinian was reading the Sanwen Yearbook the vice director had given him, a young man about his age wearing glasses approached him and tentatively asked, “Excuse me, are you Yu Zhinian?”

Yu Zhinian looked at him and found him familiar. A name surfaced in his mind: “Mei Qi?”

“It really is you?” Mei Qi said with delight. “I was afraid I’d gotten it wrong.”

“We haven’t seen each other since you left after middle school, right?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Yu Zhinian briefly explained his reasons for coming. Mei Qi told him that after graduating from university, he had passed the civil service exam and joined the Xiping County government, where he now worked at the cultural office.

Although Xiping was just a county, due to poor transportation links and inconvenient access, it had only recently been connected by road. Its folk customs and traditions were well preserved and quite distinct from Sanwen’s.

After Mei Qi’s brief introduction, Yu Zhinian found himself very interested.

Someone had already conducted an ethnographic study of Sanwen, but no one had done one for Xiping. He asked Mei Qi more questions and began to conceive the idea of conducting an ethnographic study in Xiping.

During the meeting, as Yu Zhinian listened to people from each cultural office present their plans, he felt eager and excited. He and Mei Qi exchanged contact information, and that evening he called his advisor.

His advisor was very supportive of the idea. After hanging up, Yu Zhinian eagerly began planning right away, drafting a simple research proposal. He wrote with such absorption that it was past ten at night when he received a call from Yang Ke.

Yang Ke briefly told him about the lawsuit situation and asked how things were going in Sanwen.

With his new and more interesting plan taking shape, Yu Zhinian was in high spirits. He shared with Yang Ke his experiences at the cultural center that day and the local customs and traditions of Xiping County as described by Mei Qi.

Yang Ke was very encouraging that day, and without realizing it, Yu Zhinian happily recounted the entire day’s events before noticing he had perhaps said too much.

He fell quiet. Yang Ke didn’t notice the shift and asked, “How long are you planning to work on this project?”

“About half a year,” Yu Zhinian said. “But the specifics will depend on what I find once I get there.”

Yang Ke made a sound of acknowledgment. Yu Zhinian asked what was wrong, and Yang Ke said it was nothing.

Because Xiping had poor telecommunications and the official archival storage was not very standardized, with a lack of historical written materials, Yu Zhinian planned to do his preliminary preparation in Sanwen and head to Xiping in mid-July. He gathered some paper materials to read in advance, wrote a new research proposal, and also applied for some funding.

While in Sanwen, he ran into several former classmates and received a great deal of help. His days were full and meaningful.

Yang Ke called to check on him morning and evening. Because Yang Ke didn’t say much but seemed unwilling to hang up, it always ended up being Yu Zhinian who did most of the talking.

Time passed slowly. Yu Zhinian didn’t know how to define his relationship with Yang Ke anymore, but somehow he felt much more at ease.

Compared to when he was working on the floating population project in Ning City, the sense of drifting without anchor and the feeling of struggle had lessened, while the genuine feeling of conducting research had grown stronger. He was more focused now, and he no longer dreaded waiting for Yang Ke’s calls, because he was no longer waiting in vain.

One evening in early July, Yu Zhinian had dinner with Mei Qi, who was in Sanwen on business, along with two other cultural center staff members.

They sat in a small roadside restaurant and cracked open several cans of beer.

Mei Qi brought up things from Yu Zhinian’s middle school days, saying that Yu Zhinian had been a star at school, good-looking and a strong student. As they chatted, they started teasing him, asking whether he had dated many girlfriends.

Yu Zhinian was embarrassed by their teasing when his phone suddenly rang. Yang Ke was calling.

That morning, Yang Ke had uncharacteristically not contacted him at all. Yu Zhinian had assumed Yang Ke was busy with something and had sent him a message asking about it.

When he picked up, he heard that the background noise on Yang Ke’s end was unusually loud, so loud it didn’t sound like a place Yang Ke would normally be.

“Yu Zhinian,” Yang Ke said on the other end, “you never told me Sanwen’s train station had so many people.”

Yu Zhinian’s heart raced. He froze on the spot, and the beer can in his hand nearly dropped onto the table. After a few seconds, he asked Yang Ke, “Where are you?”

“…” Yang Ke asked back, without any irritation, “Where do you think I am?”

Yu Zhinian hurriedly said goodbye to Mei Qi and the others and hailed a taxi to the station.

Sanwen’s city center was small. It took only about ten minutes to get there. Yu Zhinian got out of the car and saw many people streaming out of the passageway.

It was the season when Sanwen residents held their ancestor worship festival, so there were an unusually large number of people returning home. Yu Zhinian stood by the exit and looked around for Yang Ke’s figure. It was already dark, and the lighting at the exit wasn’t bright enough. He could only see crowds of people with large and small bags pouring out, unable to make out any faces clearly.

He had no choice but to call Yang Ke. Just as he was raising the phone to his ear, his wrist was suddenly grabbed, and someone embraced him from behind, saying “dummy.”

The call connected, and the phone of the person embracing him rang. Yang Ke, holding his wrist, hung up the call.

Yu Zhinian turned around. Yang Ke was wearing an ordinary T-shirt and pants, no backpack. His hair was cut a little shorter, making him look like a fresh graduate, or like how he had looked when they first met not long ago.

Yu Zhinian stood there staring at him without moving. Yang Ke raised his hand and gave Yu Zhinian’s face a light, unhurried touch, saying, “What are you spacing out for?”

“You said it was a small county town,” he remarked. “It’s quite lively.”

Yu Zhinian explained about Sanwen’s festival and asked Yang Ke, “You didn’t bring anything with you?”

“I had my assistant take it to the hotel first,” Yang Ke told him.

They walked toward the taxi stand. Yu Zhinian asked why he hadn’t said he was coming. Yang Ke said, “I canceled a schedule. Booked it this morning on short notice.”

“I’m staying just one night before I leave,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to go into Xiping on the fourteenth?”

The two of them stood in line at the taxi stand, unsure where to go next.

Yang Ke apparently spotted a new superhero film poster on the wall and asked Yu Zhinian if he wanted to see a movie. They went to the largest cinema in the city center. Yang Ke bought tickets, getting couple seats in the very last row.

The cinema was very crowded, with children making noise here and there, but not long after the film started, Yang Ke fell asleep leaning against Yu Zhinian.

Yang Ke slept deeply, his head pressing heavily on Yu Zhinian’s shoulder. He had no perfume on him, only a faint smell of laundry detergent and incense.

Yu Zhinian’s right shoulder rested against the soft back of the couple seat, while his left shoulder was being pressed down and starting to ache. He felt that although he was here to work on a doctoral research project, this felt exactly like going on a date back in high school.