The Phoenix Tree

The streetlights stretched like dragons, and the moonlight above flowed like water.

"On the twelfth night of the tenth month of the sixth year of Yuanfeng, I took off my clothes and prepared for bed. The moonlight spilled into my room, and I rose, filled with joy. Thinking there was no one to share this pleasure with, I went to the Night Tour of Chengtian Temple to find Zhang Huaimin. Zhang Huaimin had not yet slept, so we walked together in the courtyard. The water beneath the courtyard was clear and bright, and the crisscrossing shadows of water plants were actually the shadows of bamboo and cypress trees. What night is without moonlight? Where is there no bamboo or cypress? It is only that there are few idle people like the two of us."

Liu Chang'an left the KTV and saw Bai Hui standing under a streetlamp from afar. Her shadow was cast long, while Qian Ning and Lu Yuan stood helplessly to the side, whispering words of comfort to her.

Liu Chang'an shoved his hands into his pockets and chuckled, then looked up at the moon in the sky as he walked home.

Before the invention of computers and mobile phones, entertainment in ancient and modern times did not seem to differ much: drinking and visiting courtesans, wrestling and playing cards, camping and traveling, reading and appreciating flowers, watching the spring, the summer, the autumn, and the winter—each season had its own specific pleasures.

Extinguishing lamps to save oil and making babies.

Yet, if one thinks carefully about the days of long ago, people seemed to place more importance on spiritual communion rather than merely gathering for amusement. Just as Su Shi, upon seeing a beautiful moon, put on his clothes to find Zhang Huaimin; what mattered was drinking and talking under the moonlight.

Su Shi was a man who knew how to chant the moon well. He could write of the celestial moon in Prelude to Water Melody, and he could also write of the human moon in Night Tour of Chengtian Temple. Both were equally clear, cold, and bright, empty and transparent.

Liu Chang'an stepped through the moonlight, still finding phones and computers quite entertaining, and picked up his phone to see a WeChat message.

"The moonlight tonight is beautiful. I am taking a walk with my mother, and we are discussing Moonlight over the Lotus Pond by Zhu Ziqing."

"What a coincidence, I was just thinking of Night Tour of Chengtian Temple by Su Shi. It is just that you are two people discussing the night scene that Zhu Ziqing enjoyed alone, while I am only one person, reading of the bright moon shared by Su Shi and Zhang Huaimin."

"Haha, that is because there is a lotus pond right downstairs. My mother says that people who still look up to admire the moon today are either lonely people or people with strong hearts, who still know how to settle down in a flashy world and return to simplicity. Which kind are you?"

"A lonely person."

"How could that be? I feel like you are eloquent and knowledgeable; a person like that should have many friends and many girls who like him. How could you be lonely?"

"Since your mother understands this, what kind of person is she?"

"She... she says she is a lonely person."

"..."

"..."

Liu Chang'an returned home feeling a bit hungry. The white liquor, Erguotou, and fish tails were merely enough to satisfy a craving, but to truly fill his stomach, he needed something more.

There were still some taros at home, given by Old Lady Liu. During a card game, Old Lady Liu had owed Liu Chang'an five yuan. Later, she brought over some taros she had grown herself, saying they were a gift, while never mentioning the five yuan. Liu Chang'an naturally understood; they were old neighbors, after all.

Taro can be made into soup or used as a substitute for grain to make starch. In ancient times, armies often prepared taro as rations, or it was used to boil porridge to help disaster victims. Liu Chang'an simmered the taro until soft, added tender cabbage hearts, and a dash of soy sauce. The taste was sweet and filling.

Having returned much later than usual, Liu Chang'an carried his bowl to the mahjong parlor for a quick look. Only the last table of old men and women remained. Liu Chang'an watched for a moment, took a turn for Old Lady Liu, failed to win, and was shooed away.

Passing the box truck, Liu Chang'an hesitated, took out his key, and entered the cargo hold once more. He gently placed his bowl on top of the coffin lid and stared blankly at the unsettling object.

There were very few people or things that could capture Liu Chang'an's attention, but in the depth of this night, with nothing but the faint, distant, unidentifiable cries outside the truck, the pitch-black hue of the coffin before him seemed to shimmer with a deep, flickering, and elusive brilliance. The vivid, painted patterns seemed to come alive like projections, the bizarre and grotesque images soul-stirring upon his retinas. Liu Chang'an felt a sudden restlessness, so he picked up his bowl and left the truck.

That sense of trance vanished in an instant. Looking back, the coffin seemed like nothing more than a dead object, no different from those lying in a museum, possessing only the magnetic field of history.

Tomorrow was a holiday, so he would go to the museum. Liu Chang'an washed the dishes and did some chores. Reviewing during a holiday was impossible; one could only lie down and read, or go out for a stroll, so as not to waste the meaning of the holiday.

Before falling asleep, Liu Chang'an took one last look at the moon in the west. The ground in front of the house seemed clear and bright like water, with crisscrossing shadows of water plants. They were not the shadows of bamboo or cypress, but the giant parasol tree. For some reason, in this season before early summer had truly arrived, a portion of its branches and leaves had gone bare, casting a woven, interlaced shadow upon the ground.

Waking up in the morning, Liu Chang'an scraped the white rice crust, which had been toasted all night by the embers of the stove, out of the pressure cooker. The paper-thin crust was fried in oil and sprinkled with sugar for breakfast; in Jinling, this was called "White Cloud Flakes."

Liu Chang'an did not make it with much finesse, but the texture was good. He drank a bag of soy milk left at his door and saw the early-rising elderly gathering under the parasol tree, discussing something heatedly.

The parasol tree had shed even more leaves than last night. Old Lady Liu scientifically concluded that the tree was sick and needed an injection; when she spent the New Year at her son's place in Beijing, she had seen the trees on the capital's streets looking just like this.

Old Man Qian expressed his opposition, arguing that it was not New Year's—that was the dead of winter, and now it was summer; the tree was simply shedding its leaves.

Everyone voiced their opinions, and finally, they turned to Liu Chang'an, as he was a student of modern knowledge and could provide a more scientific explanation.

"Perhaps some treasure that absorbs essence is buried beneath the tree, drawing in the vitality of heaven and earth," Liu Chang'an thought for a moment and said with certainty. "It is recorded in a volume of tomb-raiding notes by Li Daoren... yes, the book is called Chronicles of Artifacts."

Liu Chang'an's explanation was highly unscientific, but it sparked a new peak of discussion. No one asked for a modern perspective anymore; the debate over this feudal superstition became even more intense. Liu Chang'an drank his soy milk while listening and offering detailed insights he had gleaned from various strange tales and novels.

"Before the liberation, this place was a graveyard. Last time I was planting vegetables, I even dug up a bone."

"That was from a pig's head, you old woman!"

"You are all too young; you haven't heard of the time the dragon of Huangfeng Plain spat out a pearl, have you? That was in... 1966. The pearl the dragon spat out landed right here... yes, I remember the location clearly, it was right under this parasol tree."

After chatting for a long while, the elderly were called back by their spouses for breakfast. Liu Chang'an glanced back at the truck, then changed into long trousers and a shirt, put on clean, flat-soled cloth shoes, and walked toward the museum, looking as neat and tidy as a young student from thirty or forty years ago.