Drinking Wine (V)
I built my home among the people, yet heard no clamor of carriages and horses. You ask how this could be? With a distant heart, even the place you live feels remote. I picked chrysanthemums beneath the eastern fence and calmly gazed toward South Mountain. The mountain air was lovely at dusk, and birds returned in flocks. There is a true meaning here, but when I try to explain it, I forget the words.
The life Tao Yuanming described had some similarities to Liu Chang'an's. He might once have lived exactly the same life and shared the same state of mind, only with more ease. After all, Liu Chang'an had never cared about whether he was successful or not.
The place where he lived now was the kind of environment that made many people sigh and lament, yet Liu Chang'an slept until he naturally woke and still felt happy in body and mind.
After getting up, Liu Chang'an swept up the plane tree leaves as usual, then drank a bag of soy milk.
Soy products were an excellent source of the protein the body needed. For Liu Chang'an, who lived in poverty, they were a wonderful food.
Liu Chang'an was certain that soybeans originated in China. Before modern times, he had never seen records of them being cultivated on a large scale anywhere outside East Asia.
"The earliest soybeans weren't called soybeans. They were called shu, written with the grass radical over the character for 'uncle.' The character for 'bean' referred to a bronze vessel. Look at it: the horizontal stroke at the top is the lid, the square in the middle is the pot, and doesn't the bottom look like a fire? But people later often used those vessels to hold cooked shu, so 'bean' replaced shu and became the name of the plant." Liu Chang'an sipped his soy milk as he explained to the little girl who had brought it to him. "More than a hundred years before Confucius was born, the Shanrong tribes invaded the State of Yan from the south. I persuaded Duke Huan of Qi, the hegemon, to send troops to help. We fought all the way into the depths of the Yanshan Mountains, the Shanrong tribes' stronghold. I brought back the finest seeds I found in the mountains to the Central Plains, and that was when soybeans became a staple crop. People back then couldn't drink soy milk, though. That had to wait until stone mills became widespread..."
"Big Brother Chang'an, you never study. All you do is read weird books!" The little girl was clearly uninterested.
"Who says that?"
"My mom!"
With that, the little girl pattered off.
Liu Chang'an went out for a run, as usual avoiding the area around Baolong Center. Afterward, he went to the market and bought some beans. They were a little old but hadn't gone bad. The small market had no way of getting genetically modified soybeans, which were used to make oil and as raw materials for other industries.
The vendor was a little annoyed. She had only that one bag of beans, and this young man had been picking through them for ages. Did he think he'd find gold in there?
"Scatter beans and summon soldiers!"
Liu Chang'an tossed a handful of beans by the wall. Of course, he couldn't actually summon soldiers by scattering beans. He just hoped that the beans he tossed might take root and sprout into a patch of seedlings. Bean seedlings could be eaten, and once they produced green soybeans, he could pick and boil them for a fine drinking snack: edamame.
This kind of hope usually came to nothing. Maybe he would forget about it after a while, but Liu Chang'an often did things like this.
When he got to school, Liu Chang'an habitually sat in his old seat. Gao Dewei and An Nuan watched him.
"Let's part ways and meet again someday." Liu Chang'an stood up, ready to return to his own seat.
"I need to talk to you at lunch," An Nuan said seriously.
Liu Chang'an nodded without asking what it was about. Just then, Miao Yingying and Lin Xinhuai arrived together. Liu Chang'an gave Miao Yingying her seat back. Gao Dewei shifted his heavy frame uneasily, trying to sit as far out of the way as possible. He glanced back at Lin Xinhuai, then lowered his head and went back to his exercises. Why waste the limited time he had to study on dating? An Nuan had told Gao Dewei that morning that Miao Yingying and Lin Xinhuai were dating.
Miao Yingying sat down with an awkward smile. She felt a little embarrassed, as if Huang Shan had used her as a pair of scissors to cut the red thread between people. Now that she was dating someone herself, she understood all the more how awful it was to be forced apart and not be able to sit together. Miao Yingying wanted to switch seats with An Nuan, whose seat was across the aisle from Lin Xinhuai.
Liu Chang'an returned to his seat and lifted his leg, avoiding the foot Lu Yuan had casually stuck out into the aisle.
Someone had drawn a toad on his desk with a fountain pen.
Bai Hui glanced at Liu Chang'an. She knew it had been Lu Yuan and Qian Ning who did it, and she wasn't about to interfere. She was curious to see how Liu Chang'an would react.
So Bai Hui picked up her Chinese textbook and used it to hide half her face. She propped one hand against her forehead and secretly peered over from an angle Liu Chang'an wouldn't notice.
"This toad is so ugly."
Liu Chang'an muttered to himself. Bai Hui sneered. At least he knew what he looked like.
Liu Chang'an put down his schoolbag, took out a pen, and drew some pots and jars beside the toad. Bai Hui was puzzled, but had to admit he was very good at drawing. She could draw too, and knew how much skill it took to make even simple objects look good with a few casual strokes.
But what was he doing? When people were insulted like that, weren't they supposed to fly into a rage? Bai Hui was sure that if it had been Qian Ning or Lu Yuan, one of them would have already slapped the desk and shouted, "Who did this?"
After drawing the pots and jars, Liu Chang'an added knives and forks. Then he drew a big fire in front of the toad, with a grill above it. On the grill lay a swan that hadn't even been plucked!
It was only recognizable as a swan because it still had its feathers. If it had been plucked, who could tell whether the toad was grilling a chicken, a duck, or some other stupid bird?
Bai Hui pressed her lips together. The more she watched Liu Chang'an, the more annoyed she became. He was dead set on eating swan meat, even if he had to admit he was a toad!
Liu Chang'an suddenly glanced at Bai Hui. She quickly sat up straight, thinking he probably hadn't noticed her peeking. Her side bangs covered her eyes.
But Bai Hui couldn't help sneaking another look. Liu Chang'an had written the character "Bai" on the swan he was roasting.
Bai? Did he mean Bai Hui or a white swan? Bai Hui couldn't tell, and found herself staring intently at the tip of Liu Chang'an's pen.
Liu Chang'an didn't write another stroke for a long time. Bai Hui was about to urge him on when she looked up and saw him watching her with a faint, infuriating smile.
Bai Hui's face grew hot. She glared at Liu Chang'an without changing expression, then lifted her head slightly and spoke as if casually to Lu Yuan, who was also watching from not far away. "Did you like the candy I gave you?"
"It was good," Lu Yuan replied after a moment's hesitation. Bai Hui had a cousin who worked in Taiwan and had recently returned to Junsha with a huge pile of snacks for her. Bai Hui had complained that her cousin treated her like a little kid, when what she really wanted was makeup.
Bai Hui said no more and turned around naturally. From the corner of her eye, she kept watch. That damned Liu Chang'an had left her hanging by writing only one character, "Bai," then pulled out a copy of Notes on the Sea Miscellany and started reading. The page he opened to showed a sea snake. Bai Hui shuddered in disgust. She had been terrified of those soft, slippery, writhing, ugly creatures since childhood.
Liu Chang'an was a bastard. Bai Hui clenched her fist and slammed it against the desk. She had never wanted the college entrance exams to come so badly, just so her days as Liu Chang'an's deskmate would be over.
"Pit vipers can mate for six to twenty-four hours. People say snakes are lustful by nature, yet they also believe eating snake meat helps you last longer... There used to be many sea snakes, too. These days there are fewer. Years ago, along the coasts of Nanyue and Fujian, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of sea snakes would surface to mate, writhing and winding together in a spectacular sight. Now, people who want to last longer by eating sea snakes have nearly eaten them all..." Liu Chang'an lamented to himself. When he read, he always liked to draw connections and elaborate.
Bai Hui couldn't help picturing the countless sea snakes mating the way Liu Chang'an had described. Combined with the greasy breakfast she'd eaten, the thought made her nauseous, and she rushed out of the classroom.
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