Chapter 67: Beiping Through Old Ma’s Eyes

When Zou Huofan hurried anxiously to the Writers’ Association guesthouse, Liu Yimin was squatting beside Old Ma, both sitting next to a pile of freshly made coal briquettes. Old Ma had a cigarette dangling from his lips, and with each puff he closed his eyes in pleasure, savoring the smoke as it traveled from his throat into his lungs, then leisurely exhaling it.

“Peony, you really have refined taste. This cigarette is excellent. I have to let it linger in my belly for a while, or it would be a waste of such good stuff!” Old Ma smacked his lips, savoring the aftertaste as he exhaled the smoke.

Liu Yimin chuckled and stuffed the cigarette pack into Old Ma’s pocket, saying, “I don’t smoke. This is especially for you. Please, keep it!”

“You’re thoughtful. Since you’ve brought such fine cigarettes for Old Ma, Old Ma has to give you some advice...”

But before Old Ma could finish, Zou Huofan’s voice cut in: “Young man, that’s not right! You’ve come all this way and didn’t even stop by the Poetry Journal office? What’s that about? Someone who didn’t know better might think you’d been wronged by us at the Poetry Journal!”

Zou Huofan’s words were mostly in jest, but there was a note of mock reproach in his tone.

“Comrade Zou, I just haven’t had the chance yet,” Liu Yimin replied with a frank smile as he stood up. Old Ma fished out a cigarette from his pocket and offered it to Zou Huofan, his fingers still blackened with coal dust that hadn’t quite washed off.

“I think you just didn’t want to go at all. Trying to imitate Xu Zhimo, are you? ‘I came quietly, just as I leave quietly’?” Zou Huofan pretended to be furious, as if Liu Yimin had committed some unforgivable crime. “I told you before you left: come by the Poetry Journal more often. The Poetry Journal is your home. Now look, it’s been nearly a month since term started, and you haven’t visited once! If you keep this up, I’ll have to go to your department and wait for you outside!”

Liu Yimin looked Zou Huofan in the eye, grinning. “I’m even more at ease at home than here. No one at home asks me for manuscripts!”

“Come on, how many poems did you bring this time?” Zou Huofan ignored Liu Yimin’s protest and went straight to the point. Old Ma stood to the side, watching the comedic scene with a broad smile. For him, moments like this were rare breaks from the monotony of tending the boiler.

“They’re ready, they’re ready!” Liu Yimin replied helplessly.

Hearing this, Zou Huofan’s face lit up with delight. He enthusiastically grabbed Liu Yimin’s arm. “Hey! Didn’t I say you’re a good man, honest and true! That’s what counts in life! Don’t leave tonight. I’ll have the canteen cook us a few special dishes. Old Ma, the three of us can have a little drink together. And don’t say you have to get back to school—I already called your counselor. Classes tomorrow? I checked—no classes!”

“All right, then I’m fine with it. I’ll go buy the drinks!”

“No need, don’t bother. I still have a few bottles in my room—gifts from old friends. Tonight, we’re not leaving till we’re drunk!”

Old Ma had the night off as well, since the boiler was broken and hadn’t been fixed for days.

That evening, in Zou Huofan’s room, two bottles of white spirits and several plates of food were set out on the table. Zou Huofan had asked the canteen to fry up some peanuts and spicy pickled cabbage, gone out to buy some meat for a plate of marinated beef, and prepared a dish of pork aspic. Liu Yimin had gone to the supply store and bought a good supply of roasted sunflower seeds, while Old Ma contributed a plate of pickles and a small bowl of soy sauce.

With both eyes on him, Old Ma demonstrated a special drinking trick: using chopsticks to dip in the soy sauce as a drinking snack. In the novel “Wolf Smoke over Beiping,” Wen San used a stone to dip into soy sauce; Old Ma used chopsticks, which he thought was much cleverer—chopsticks were far more convenient than a stone.

“You two want to try it?” Old Ma looked at them with a proud grin, as if showing off his unique drinking ritual.

Liu Yimin dipped his chopsticks in soy sauce, but they picked up only a scant bit—just enough to give his taste buds the faintest tingle. Then a shot of Erguotou followed, its spicy bite instantly overpowering the soy sauce. In this respect, Wen San was smarter; a stone could hold more soy sauce.

Liu Yimin quickly took a few bites of food. His reaction made Old Ma tease, “Can’t handle it, can you?”

“In the old days, when I pulled a rickshaw, some days I made just enough to fill my belly, and on bad days, I went hungry. The worst was passing by restaurants and the Eight Lanes—so close, yet so far. The smell of meat from the restaurants made my mouth water as I squatted outside, waiting for fares. We always wondered if the serving trays at Quanjude were infused with the aroma of roast duck.

At the Eight Lanes, listening to the sweet, coquettish voices of the courtesans inside, my heart felt like it was being clawed by a cat. But those were the places where the rich gathered, so we had no choice but to go. We might have looked like we were just squatting outside, but our hearts were inside… heh, heh…”

Old Ma trailed off, a little embarrassed at his own candor, feeling his story a bit crude in front of such educated company.

“There were plenty of hard-luck souls in the Eight Lanes, too,” Zou Huofan sighed.

“Yes, but so were we. They looked down on us, of course. I wanted to help their business, but I couldn’t afford to. Still, maybe it wasn’t all so bad. At least we didn’t starve. Plenty of rickshaw pullers never made it back home, struck down by illness or disaster. I’m still alive. Sometimes, life seems meaningless, but in the end, here I am—alive—while those who longed to live are gone.

There was one rickshaw puller everyone called ‘Big Toe’ because he always wore through the toes of his shoes. In the end, he just wore straw sandals or went barefoot. After Liberation, his son, who he hadn’t seen in years, came back to the city with the army. He thought life was finally going to get better, but he died just a few days later.”

“At the time, I thought, if I died, I wouldn’t have lost out—I’d lived a few days longer than him, so I’d come out ahead. Never imagined those few extra days would turn into two or three decades!”

Old Ma was in high spirits as the drink flowed, and by the time he was thoroughly drunk, the other two helped him back to his little room beside the boiler house.

“Old Ma has quite a sense of humor!” Liu Yimin remarked.

“It’s not him who’s humorous—it’s life,” Zou Huofan replied.

Liu Yimin was getting ready to sleep in the next room when Zou Huofan grabbed him, asking if he’d forgotten something.

“Comrade Zou?” Liu Yimin hiccupped, a strong whiff of Erguotou wafting over and forcing Zou Huofan several steps back.

“Your poems!”

“I’ll give them to you tomorrow—let me sleep first!”

Back in his room, Liu Yimin patted his head, feeling much clearer. Old Ma’s stories were still fresh in his mind; he pulled out a pen and began jotting down details of old Beiping while his memory was still sharp.

He focused on the key points: what the people of old Beiping loved to eat, what the rich ate, what the common folk ate; the wealthy dined at Quanjude, Guangheju, Donglaishun, Xilaishun, and those with real power at the Six Nations Hotel. Ordinary people ate baked flatbread from street vendors, while the rich enjoyed oven-roasted versions.

Favorite haunts included Liulichang, Tianqiao—Old Ma especially liked Tianqiao, with its opera singers, street performers, tea drinkers, bird fanciers, crosstalk, drum storytelling, spinning tops, wrestling, martial arts, sanxian storytelling, comic dialogues, horse shows, stilt walkers, lotus song troupes, bamboo clappers, and the medicine peddlers’ shows—always lively.

Of course, what he most longed for was to visit the Eight Lanes.

Once he’d noted down all he could remember, Liu Yimin patted his head and began composing a poem for Old Zou, scrawling two crooked characters on the manuscript paper: “Ideal.”