The Wutong Tree

The streetlights blazed like a dragon, and the moonlight poured down like water.

"On the night of the twelfth day of the tenth month in the sixth year of Yuanfeng, I took off my clothes and was about to sleep when moonlight entered my room. Delighted, I got up and went out. Thinking there was no one to share the pleasure with, I went to Chengtian Temple to find Zhang Huaimin. Huaimin was still awake, too, so together we walked through the courtyard. The ground beneath the courtyard was bright and clear like a pool of water, with algae and water plants crisscrossing beneath its surface. Those were the shadows of bamboo and cypress trees. What night has no moon? Where is there no bamboo and cypress? It is only rare to find idle people like the two of us."

After leaving the KTV, Liu Chang'an spotted Bai Hui standing beneath a streetlamp in the distance, her shadow stretching long behind her. Qian Ning and Lu Yuan stood nearby, at a loss for what to do, saying something to comfort Bai Hui.

With his hands in his pockets, Liu Chang'an smiled, lifted his head to look at the moon, and walked home.

Before computers and mobile phones were invented, entertainment in ancient and modern times seemed much the same: drinking and visiting courtesans, wrestling and playing chess or cards, camping and traveling, reading and admiring flowers, watching spring, summer, autumn, and winter—each season had its own pleasures.

Turning off the lights to save oil and making babies.

But thinking about it carefully, people long ago seemed to place more importance on connecting through matters of the spirit, rather than simply gathering for amusement. Like Su Shi, who saw the beautiful moon and got dressed to go find Zhang Huaimin. What mattered was drinking together beneath the moon and talking at length.

Su Shi was a poet who often wrote about the moon. He wrote not only of the heavenly moon in "Prelude to Water Melody," but also of the earthly moon in "Night Tour of Chengtian Temple." Both were equally cool and luminous, clear and bright.

Walking beneath the moonlight, Liu Chang'an still thought that phones and computers were a lot of fun, so he picked up his phone and saw a WeChat message.

"The moon is lovely tonight. I'm out walking with my mom, and we're talking about Zhu Ziqing's 'Moonlight over the Lotus Pond.'"

"Perfect timing. I was just thinking of Su Shi's 'Night Tour of Chengtian Temple.' But you're both together, discussing a night scene Zhu Ziqing admired alone, while I'm by myself, reading about the moon shared by Su Shi and Zhang Huaimin."

"Hehe, there's a lotus pond right downstairs. Mom says that people who still look up to admire the moon these days are either lonely or strong-minded. They still know how to find calm amid all the glitz and return to simplicity. Which kind are you?"

"A lonely person."

"How could that be? You seem articulate and well-informed. Someone like you should have lots of friends, and lots of girls who like you. How could you be lonely?"

"Since your mother understands these things, which kind is she?"

"She... she says she's a lonely person."

"..."

"..."

When Liu Chang'an got home, he felt a little hungry. Baijiu, Erguotou, and fish tails had only served to satisfy his taste buds; to fill his stomach, he needed to eat something else.

There were still some taro at home, given to him by Old Lady Liu. The last time they played cards, she had owed him five yuan. Later, she brought over some taro she had grown herself, saying he could have it, but never mentioned paying back the five yuan. Liu Chang'an understood, of course. They were old neighbors, after all.

Taro could be used in soups and other dishes, or processed into starch as a substitute for grain. In ancient times, armies often stocked up on taro for provisions, or cooked it into porridge to feed disaster victims during famines. Liu Chang'an simmered the taro until soft, then cooked it with tender cabbage hearts and a little soy sauce. It tasted sweet and was filling, too.

He had gotten back much later than usual that day. Carrying his bowl, Liu Chang'an stopped by the mahjong parlor. Only one last table of old men and women was still going. He watched for a while, then took a hand for his namesake, Old Lady Liu. He still didn't win, and they soon chased him away.

Passing the box truck, Liu Chang'an hesitated, took out his key, and climbed into the cargo compartment again. He gently set his bowl on top of the coffin lid and stared blankly at the coffin that had caught his attention.

There were very few people and things that could hold Liu Chang'an's interest. Yet in the depths of the night, with only a distant, unidentifiable howl breaking the quiet outside the truck, the pitch-black coffin before him seemed deep and hazy, shimmering with shifting colors. Its vivid patterns seemed to come alive, like images cast by a projector. The bizarre scene seized his gaze and unsettled him. He picked up his bowl and left the compartment.

That hazy feeling vanished in an instant. When he looked back, the coffin seemed to be nothing more than a lifeless object, no different from those lying in museums, with nothing left but the aura of history.

He had the day off tomorrow. He would go to the museum for a look. Liu Chang'an washed his bowl and chopsticks and did some housework. There was no way he was going to study during the holiday. He could only lie around reading or go out for a stroll, so as not to waste the point of having a day off.

Before falling asleep, Liu Chang'an took one last look at the moon in the west. The space before his house was bright and clear like a pool of water, with algae and water plants crisscrossing beneath its surface. These were not the shadows of bamboo and cypress, but those of the enormous wutong tree. At some point, though summer had not yet arrived, one section of its branches had become bare. Their shadows fell across the ground in a tangled weave.

When he woke in the morning, Liu Chang'an scraped the rice crust from the pressure cooker. It had spent all night baking over the stove's leftover heat. He fried the paper-thin crust in a little oil, added some sugar, and called it breakfast. In Jinling, this was known as white cloud slices.

Liu Chang'an hadn't made it with much finesse, but it tasted good. He picked up a bag of soy milk left by the door and drank it, watching the elderly residents who had gotten up early for a walk gather beneath the wutong tree, chattering away.

The wutong tree had lost even more leaves overnight. Old Lady Liu scientifically concluded that it was sick and needed an injection. She had seen trees like this on the streets of Beijing when she spent the Lunar New Year at her son's home.

Old Man Qian disagreed. It wasn't the Lunar New Year, and this wasn't the middle of winter. It was summer; the wutong tree was simply shedding its leaves.

Everyone offered their own opinion. In the end, they turned to Liu Chang'an, since he was studying and learning modern knowledge, and ought to be able to give them a more scientific explanation.

"Maybe there's some treasure buried beneath the wutong tree that can absorb vital energy, and it's drawing in the essence of all living things." Liu Chang'an thought for a moment, then said with great conviction. "It was recorded in one of Li Daoren's notes on tomb-raiding... Hmm, the book was called Chronicles of Artifacts."

Liu Chang'an's explanation wasn't scientific at all, but it sparked another round of lively discussion. No one called for a modern explanation anymore. They were far more excited to debate this superstitious theory, while Liu Chang'an drank his soy milk and chimed in with detailed accounts drawn from all sorts of strange tales and novels.

"Before Liberation, this place was a burial ground. The last time I planted vegetables, I even dug up a bone."

"That was a pig's skull! Grandma!"

"You youngsters haven't heard about the earth dragon sucking up water and spitting out a pearl on Huangfeng Plain, have you? It happened in nineteen... nineteen sixty-six. The pearl the earth dragon spat out landed here... Yes, I remember exactly where. It was right beneath this wutong tree."

After chatting for quite a while, the old folks were each called home by their spouses for breakfast. Liu Chang'an glanced back at the truck, then changed into a pair of long pants and a shirt. In clean, flat-soled cloth shoes, he walked toward the museum looking neat and tidy, like a young student from thirty or forty years ago.