If the college entrance examination had been restored just one year earlier, if Fei Ni had had any other chance to change her fate, she would never have married Fang Muyang.
Fei Ni was the third child in the family. She had been in poor health since childhood, and both her elder brother and second sister spoiled her. If the three siblings shared one apple, she alone would eat half of it.
After her elder brother graduated from high school, he answered the call and went to Inner Mongolia as a sent-down youth. Originally, he could have taken one of their parents’ places and entered the factory, but he could not bear to let his two younger sisters suffer. Their family had at most two factory-entry quotas, and he had to leave them for his sisters. Fei Ni’s second sister took their father’s place and entered the Second Textile Factory. Two years later, Fei Ni took their mother’s place and entered the hat factory to make hats.
After Fei Ni started working, apart from handing over money and grain coupons for household food expenses, she saved the rest of her monthly wages and grain coupons. Whenever an Inner Mongolia educated youth she knew returned home to visit relatives, she would take out the money and coupons she had saved, go to the shop to buy ordinary biscuits by the jin, and pack them separately—one jin per tin can. The tins would then be wrapped in new clothes she had made. She would exchange the remaining local grain coupons for national grain coupons and ask someone to bring them to her elder brother along with the biscuits and clothes. Thoughtfully, she also sent him a new towel and soap so he could wash his face. Every time her elder brother wrote home, he said he could eat enough and told her not to bring biscuits anymore. There were starving people all around him, and there would not be enough to share. He also told her not to send grain coupons; he had his own ways of getting food. And there was even less need to send clothes. He could not bathe more than a few times a year, so good clothes were a pure waste.
In the sixth year of her elder brother’s time as a sent-down youth, Fei Ni’s second sister got married, to a colleague from the Second Textile Factory. Their parents had no objections. Only Fei Ni disagreed. She was afraid her sister would suffer after marrying him. Her brother-in-law was the only son in his family. His father had died early, and he lived with his paralysed old mother in a tiny room in a workers’ dormitory building.
Her second sister said that as long as there was love, nothing else mattered. Fei Ni said that love was a matter of the spirit. Even if her sister did not marry him, she could still think of him forever. But her physical body could not live year after year in the same room as a paralysed old woman. Fei Ni’s theory of separating spirit and material life did not move her sister, who believed love was supreme. Like Columbus discovering a new continent, her second sister discovered the snobbishness hidden beneath her younger sister’s pure face.
In the end, her second sister still married the accountant. Fei Ni used the cloth coupons she had saved to buy a piece of fabric. It was a material she had long wanted to buy but had never been willing to spend on. This time, she hardened her heart and bought it, then used it together with buttons she had collected before to make a dress and a blouse as a wedding gift for her sister.
Originally, the family of five had been squeezed into a workers’ dormitory room of just over ten square metres. One room had been divided into two. After Fei Ni entered junior high, the family began separating rooms by gender: she, her second sister, and her mother slept in the inner room, while her father and elder brother slept in the outer room. After her elder brother went to the countryside and her second sister married, the home was finally not so crowded. Her parents pitied their youngest daughter and let her have the inner room to herself, while the old couple slept outside.
The kitchen and toilet were shared. Even when she went to the water room to wash clothes, there were crowds of people around. Among the masses, silence was a luxury. Fei Ni passively learned how to exchange pleasantries with others.
What she could not stand most was the mixed smell of rapeseed oil and lard. Every evening at dinner time, that smell would drift in from the corridor and burrow into her nose.
Only books gave her some comfort. The bookshop sold only a few kinds of books. From an old man who collected scrap, she found second-hand university textbooks. After she had worn them out from reading, she began memorising dictionaries. English dictionaries and Russian dictionaries—she could even find interest in the example sentences. Once, she actually discovered Shakespeare in a pile of scrap. Reading was her only pleasure. There was no “golden house” hidden in books. Even though she had never come second in exams from childhood onward, when it came to being recommended as a worker-peasant-soldier student at university, there was simply no place for her. Once dawn came, she still had to make the same style of hat day after day in the hat factory. Sometimes she thought she might as well have gone to the countryside as a sent-down youth. At least the countryside was vast, not so cramped.
The propaganda said: in the vast world, there is much to accomplish.
But it was only a thought. She had heard that the villagers did not welcome educated youths going to the countryside and competing with them for grain. Her elder brother could barely solve the problem of food and warmth there. He had already been sent down for seven years, with no hope at all of returning to the city. She wrote to him, telling him to work hard and try to obtain a recommendation quota to enter university as a worker-peasant-soldier student.
When she was not working, apart from reading, Fei Ni spent her time pedalling the sewing machine and making clothes for others. With the money she earned and the cloth coupons she exchanged for, she made her mother and second sister each a dacron shirt, bought her father two pairs of nylon socks, and even made a bragi-style dress for her elder brother to take back and give to the village Party secretary’s daughter, to increase his chances of being recommended for university. She saved the shampoo, vanishing cream, and soap for her brother to use as gifts, while she washed her own hair with laundry soap.
The factory leaders had a talk with her, saying she had a chance to be transferred to the factory office. Later, there was no news. Someone did transfer to the factory office: the daughter of the Finance Section chief, a person who pronounced “chengche” as “dengzhe.” Some time later, the section chief’s daughter was recommended to university. Fei Ni continued making hats in the hat factory.
Ever since the college entrance examination had been abolished, many semi-illiterate people with only a primary school level of education had appeared in universities, Fei Ni thought indignantly. But if she could become university classmates with those semi-illiterates, she would be more than willing.
No one gave her that opportunity.
Although she knew two foreign languages, English and Russian, could recite Shakespeare’s sonnets, and had taught herself calculus, no one recommended her for university. And if others found out she was reading Shakespeare, they would instead make her an example of a backward element.
She read in the newspaper about a girl who had spent two years persistently caring for a young worker in the same factory who had been disabled in an accident, all while continuing her own work. The girl was named an advanced worker in the factory and gained the qualification to be recommended for university.
Fei Ni was not a noble person, but if it meant she could go to university, she too was willing to wholeheartedly care for a stranger at her own expense.
She was tired of making hats every day. That was not the life she wanted.
Fei Ni thought of Fang Muyang. He, too, had been named an advanced worker. She decided to go to the hospital to visit her old classmate.
During the time she and Fang Muyang had been classmates, Fei Ni had not liked him. Among that group of privileged children, he was actually the one with the strongest sense of equality. When the other privileged children mocked the children from workers’ families for being ignorant and told Fang Muyang not to mix with them, he would retort directly, saying, “My great-grandfather used to collect scrap. He was the purest proletarian. Who exactly are you looking down on?” He spent all day claiming to be the great-grandson of a scrap collector, making people forget his parents’ occupations, that his maternal grandfather had once been a major capitalist, that his paternal grandfather was a great Confucian scholar, and that if you traced back five generations, they were all famous, named people who could appear in textbooks.
He believed everyone was the same, but in truth, they were not the same. Although Fang Muyang’s clothes often had holes in them and were far less clean and tidy than Fei Ni’s, and although his parents, in order to let him experience life, even gave him less pocket money than Fei Ni had, he could study painting with one of the best painters in the country. The person who taught him violin was the principal player of an orchestra. He could watch restricted internal films, read internal magazines and all kinds of banned foreign books, and go shopping at the Friendship Store, which was open only to a small number of people.
This special treatment lasted only until Fang Muyang graduated from primary school. His parents were labelled rightists, and he became the child of rightists. No one classified him as proletarian just because his great-grandfather had once worked as a scrap collector.
Fang Muyang no longer emphasised that he came from an ordinary family. An ordinary family became something far beyond his reach.
Like Fei Ni, Fang Muyang also had an elder brother and an elder sister. His siblings were luckier than him and were not greatly affected. His brother worked at a nuclear research institute and was considered a scarce talent. His sister had already been studying at university before the college entrance examination was abolished. But Fang Muyang’s class background was bad. He could not go to university, could not join the army, could not enter a factory, and before he had even graduated from junior high, he was sent to the countryside.
The turning point came half a year earlier. Fang Muyang had been on home leave, but because he had no relatives to visit, he had temporarily stayed at another educated youth’s home. It happened to coincide with torrential rain. Many small single-storey houses collapsed. In the heavy rain, he saved several people but was injured by falling debris himself.
Because he had saved people, he became an advanced worker and was even featured in the newspaper.
Fei Ni had gone once with former classmates to visit him. There were too many people visiting, and with several layers of people between them, she had not even seen his face clearly.
This time, when Fei Ni went to the hospital, she bought peach pastries as a gift. She had originally wanted to cut a few flowers and bring them, but she was afraid people would accuse her of indulging in bourgeois sentiment.
The ward was much quieter than she had imagined.
This city produced heroes every moment; it was impossible for everyone to remember each one. The hospital ward he had originally been in was too scarce a resource, so last month he had been transferred to this small hospital, where he had a room to himself.
There were only the two of them in the ward. His girlfriend was not there. Fei Ni was finally able to see Fang Muyang’s face up close. She had originally intended to give the peach pastries to his girlfriend to eat, but after she had been there for half an hour, she saw no sign of her. She had heard people say that Fang Muyang’s girlfriend was a worker-peasant-soldier university student, and that Fang Muyang had given up that recommendation quota to her.
Fei Ni did not believe this. She did not believe that someone of Fang Muyang’s background would have been recommended for university before he saved those people.
Fei Ni asked the nurse whether anyone had often come to visit Fang Muyang recently.
The nurse said no.
She then asked about Fang Muyang’s girlfriend. The nurse said she had never heard that he had a girlfriend.
Fei Ni guessed that they had probably broken up. If there were real feelings between them, even if she was busy on workdays, she should still come to see him on weekends.
Clearly, during this recent period, the nurses had also been neglecting him. His hair and nails were too long, and his beard needed shaving.
She thought of the girl who had been named advanced and gone to university.
The next day, when Fei Ni came to see Fang Muyang again, she brought two pairs of scissors, one large and one small, to cut his hair and nails. She used her father’s razor to shave his beard. She also brought Seagull-brand shampoo and used the hospital washbasin to wash his hair. When water accidentally splashed into his eyes, she noticed that his eyelashes were very long. After doing all this, she soaked a towel in soapy water and wiped his face. He became good-looking again, although in this era, a man being good-looking was of no use at all. She told the nurse that the reason she had come here was because she had been inspired by Fang Muyang’s heroic deeds, and that she was willing to do everything in her power to help him wake up.
From then on, Fei Ni went to the hospital every day after work to do good deeds, and she went on weekends too. She desperately wanted to make progress. She desperately wanted to become an advanced worker. She desperately wanted to go to university.
In order to appear progressive and thoroughly draw a clear line between herself and petty-bourgeois tendencies, she had not made herself a single skirt in the past few years, and had even cut her hair short.
No one hoped more than she did that Fang Muyang would wake up.
She heard that people in a vegetative state also needed communication, so every time Fei Ni went, she read to him. The books were all very progressive. She transplanted the flowers she had grown into small flowerpots and transported them over by bicycle. The windowsill of the ward was covered with flowers she had grown: kalanchoes of every colour.
Gradually, all the nurses in the hospital came to know her. When people from the Educated Youth Office came to visit Fang Muyang, Fei Ni was reading to him. The hospital leaders introduced Fei Ni’s touching deeds to the people from the office, and everyone was very moved. But her care had not produced any substantial results, so she still did not qualify to be named an advanced worker.
Not many people came to visit Fang Muyang. Two beautiful women left a deep impression on her.
One was his elder sister. Before leaving, she took out two hundred yuan and gave it to Fei Ni. Fei Ni said she did not want it; being able to care for a hero like Fang Muyang was already her greatest happiness. She said it very sincerely, and the other woman believed her. After a long while, she said to Fei Ni, “He’s so lucky to have you.”
Fei Ni felt that Fang Muyang, lying there as he was, was not lucky at all.
The other was his girlfriend. Perhaps calling her his ex-girlfriend was not entirely accurate. Maybe once Fang Muyang woke up, they would be able to make up and return to how they had been. She was shrouded in sorrow as she stood by the window, looking very much like a figure in a painting by an unknown French artist that Fei Ni had once seen. Fei Ni asked this ex-girlfriend what books and music Fang Muyang had liked before. The books she had been reading to him had produced no effect, so perhaps she should read him something he liked to hear. She received no answer at all. Only then did she realise she had asked the wrong question. The things he liked were probably all poisonous weeds; saying them aloud would be the same as confessing to a crime.
After seeing the girlfriend off, Fei Ni began cutting Fang Muyang’s nails. If she did not cut them for two days, they grew out again. His hands were thin and long, probably roughened a great deal by years of farm work in the countryside. As she trimmed his nails, she told him that this winter was far too cold. The ice at the entrance was very thick, and before coming to see him today, she had slipped and fallen, scraping off a large patch of skin. But even so, she still had to come and see him. She truly wanted to make progress too badly. She was about to turn twenty-two. If she was not recommended to university, then even at fifty-two, she would still be making hats in the hat factory.
Making hats was honourable too, but she was not suited to making hats at all. She wanted to go to school.
As she spoke, one of her tears fell into Fang Muyang’s eye. Fei Ni reached out to wipe it away and touched his long eyelashes.
She said to him, “Wake up soon, or your girlfriend will run away.”
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