chapter 1

In 1993, I was twenty-two.

I had good news that day: my girlfriend, Li Fang, was pregnant.

I invited a few of my buddies out, planning to ask them for a loan so I could visit Li Fang’s family and formally propose.

I took them to a roadside barbecue stand. My plan was to wait until everyone had nearly finished eating, then bring up the money.

But a drunk from the next table wandered over to ours.

He looked Li Fang up and down, then started harassing her.

I was young and hotheaded. My buddies and I pinned him to the ground and beat him.

When the police arrived, the others ran. I was the only one still hitting him, so they caught me on the spot.

Li Fang was frantic. She tried her hardest to explain why I had attacked him, but the fact remained that I had hurt someone. The police still had to take me away.

I told her not to worry and to go home and rest. She stood beside the road and watched them put me into the police car.

At the station, I assumed it was an ordinary brawl. I figured they would take my statement and let me go.

I waited in the holding cell for an entire day. Instead of news of my release, a police officer came with a sentence that changed my life.

“You ruptured one of that man’s kidneys. His family intends to press charges. You could spend several years in prison.”

I went numb.

Later I heard that the man would agree not to press charges if I paid him three thousand yuan.

Back in 1993, two yuan could buy a laying hen. Three thousand yuan was the price of fifteen hundred hens.

My father had died young, and my mother had remarried. With no one to look after me, I had grown into a street punk. Where could I possibly find that kind of money?

The other side refused to discuss anything without payment.

In the end, there was no miracle.

I was convicted of intentional injury and sentenced to four years in prison.

For the first two months, Li Fang came to see me from time to time. Then she stopped coming for a while. When she finally returned, she looked pale and sick, and her belly was flat.

That was how I learned her family had discovered the pregnancy. Once they found out the child was mine and that I was in prison, every one of them urged her to have an abortion.

She refused, but they told her, “You’re not married. How are you supposed to get a birth permit? Even if you insist on having the baby, how will you register the child? Wait until that man finishes his four-year sentence? The child will be three by then. Have you thought about how you’ll survive those three years?”

Eventually they persuaded her. They took her to have the pregnancy terminated.

She had slipped away from her family to make this visit, all because she wanted to tell me she was sorry.

The regret tore me apart. I slapped myself and called myself every kind of bastard. If only I had known when to stop that night—or if I had run when the others did.

Then I would not have gone to prison, and Li Fang’s family would not have taken her for an abortion.

When she told me she would wait for my release, I pressed myself against the glass and shook with sobs.

In my heart, I swore I would give her a good life someday. I did not yet know how short our “someday” would be.

Four years later, in 1997, I completed my sentence and was released.

I found a job washing dishes at a restaurant.

I cleaned myself up and used the money I had earned folding cardboard boxes in prison to buy a case of Want Want milk and a Want Want gift hamper. Then I carried them to Li Fang’s home.

Li Fang opened the door, her face lighting up when she saw me.

Her father was watching television in the living room. He asked who it was, turned, saw me, and gave a cold snort before returning his attention to the screen.

Her mother came out of the kitchen to see who had arrived. The moment she spotted me, she turned around and went straight back in.

I lowered my head, ashamed.

“They’re just busy,” Li Fang said. “Come inside.”

She took the gifts from me and put them on the coffee table, closed the door, found me a pair of slippers that fit, and led me to the sofa.

Her father occupied the middle of the long sofa. I sat on the smaller one, with Li Fang between us.

The moment I tried to speak to him, he turned off the television with the remote, called toward the kitchen, “Don’t bother calling me for dinner,” and went to his room.

I had known before coming that he would not welcome me. I simply had not expected his dislike to run so deep.

The thought that my presence would make him skip dinner left me restless. After a while, I decided it would be better to leave.

I stood up.

“I—I may have come at a bad time. I’ll visit another day.”

There was nothing Li Fang could do.

“I’ll walk you out.”

Before she could move, her mother came out of the kitchen.

“You’re leaving? Then we won’t keep you. Li Fang, come give me a hand.”

I understood. Her mother meant for her to stay.

Li Fang had no choice but to nod.

I left and started back toward my forty-square-meter rental room.

There were few streetlights in those days, only one dim yellow lamp every few dozen meters.

The world before me alternated between light and darkness. What did my future hold?

I could not see it clearly.