Chapter 2

Chapter 3

My most urgent task was to keep Zhang Xiaotong quiet. If I couldn't even handle a girl who wasn't yet seven, I might as well die.

I waited for Zhang Xiaotong to return, then asked her directly in fluent hometown dialect, "Are you puzzled?"

Zhang Xiaotong nodded.

Looking into Zhang Xiaotong's eyes, I said bluntly, "If you don't tell the grown-ups what happened today, I'll tell you a hundred stories." Come on, of course I knew what my older cousin had liked as a child.

Zhang Xiaotong said nothing, so I continued, "I can tell you one first. If you like it, we'll pinky-swear not to break our promise for a hundred years."

Hearing that she could have a story right away, Zhang Xiaotong nodded like a chick pecking at grain.

I knew Zhang Xiaotong scared easily, so I deliberately chose a short horror story by Qu Xikeke. After all, I had spent years working at a consulting firm; surely I could manage the task of telling a little girl a story that was both scary and entertaining. When I finished, Zhang Xiaotong's eyes were wide and her breathing rapid. She looked adorably terrified.

"Well? Want another?"

Zhang Xiaotong shook her head, then nodded.

I smiled. Good thing there were short stories. Anyone who saw a three-year-old vividly telling stories to a seven-year-old girl would have had quite a fright.

Since Zhang Xiaotong already knew I could tell stories, I might as well make further use of her. I asked her to sneak me some books to read. The first one I asked her to bring was called "100,000 Whys for Primary School Students."

During the Spring Festival of either 2001 or 2002, when I was giving my girlfriend at the time a birthday present, she had asked me for a complete set of "100,000 Whys for Primary School Students." I had laughed at her then, but after flipping through the books I bought, I discovered to my embarrassment that I knew absolutely nothing about more than seventy percent of their contents, and another ten percent of what I thought I knew was wrong.

My girlfriend had told me, "After we grow up, we always think the things we learned are useless. They're not useless, though. You've learned so little that you can't even think of where to use what."

Although we had broken up, I always kept those words in mind.

Zhang Xiaotong's family was well-off. They had not only the 1980s edition of "100,000 Whys for Primary School Students," but a 1950s edition too. She brought me both sets over four trips. In exchange, I told him half of a detective story by Edogawa Ranpo. As for the other half, I borrowed a trick from traditional storytellers and declared, "To find out what happened next, tune in next time." The main reason was actually that I feared I remembered too few stories to keep this up. Perhaps one day, once I ran out, this little madam would sell me out.

After getting "100,000 Whys for Primary School Students," I discovered something even more astonishing.

Actually, I should have noticed it long before. Perhaps becoming a child had dulled my reactions too, because I hadn't realized that both stories I had told Zhang Xiaotong were almost word-for-word reproductions of the originals. Even the punctuation was clear in my mind.

-How could I possibly have a memory like this?

Holy shit... I raced through an entire set of "100,000 Whys" and discovered that not only could I remember everything I read, even my old, hazy memories had become sharp and clear.

Piling up the books, I stared blankly at the ceiling.

Was I even fucking human anymore?

Under the pretext of having Zhang Xiaotong teach me to read, I finished every book in her house. They included the "1984 Edition of the Encyclopedia of China," the "Classified Collection of Chinese Classical Literature," the "Twenty-Four Histories," the "Collection of Translations of World Classics," and so on. Taking advantage of my young age, I crawled all over the books Zhang Xiaotong brought every day, prompting everyone in the family to say that Zhou Ran was clearly cut out to be a scholar, playing with books every day already...

Then the old lady next door made her grand entrance and suggested renaming me Zhou Xingwen. The proposal passed a family vote.

There was only so much to read in the eighties, and there was no broadband or cable television. All I could do was read as much as I could get my hands on. Zhang Xiaotong benefited from her association with me. When she took the entrance exam for a prestigious primary school, the teachers adored her, and she got into the best primary school without the slightest effort.

I had to address Zhang Xiaotong's parents as my younger aunt and uncle. They spent years traveling around doing supply and sales work. During the day, they left Zhang Xiaotong at the old house where my eldest and second uncles also lived, and at night she went back to stay with her paternal grandmother. Now that Zhang Xiaotong had secured a place at the city's best primary school, the couple were overjoyed and treated the family to meals for several days. I couldn't help wondering: it was only the mid-eighties, so how were these two already so rich?

With a rich family's only daughter close at hand, getting books to read became much easier. After some time, Zhang Xiaotong began to trust me completely. After all, she had discovered that simply chatting with me meant hearing interesting stories, and her grades were making great strides toward prosperity too. The girl became increasingly inseparable from me. Apart from going to school and going home to sleep, she spent almost all her time around me. The adults often teased my aunt and uncle, "You might as well promise Xiaotong to Xingwen."

I had long since instructed Zhang Xiaotong to play dumb immediately whenever she heard anything like that.

But I had my troubles too. Because I was used to communicating with people using my old ways of thinking, Zhang Xiaotong grew more and more precocious under my tutelage. Within a few months, she had started reading about physiology and hygiene. As I watched her face slowly grow prettier, I kept feeling that she was becoming more and more like the little girl in "Interview with the Vampire," beginning, like me, to have an adult's mind inside a child's body. I didn't know whether what I was doing was right or wrong. I had changed her life.

In the end, all I could tell myself was, "At least it's better than learning her outlook on life from romance novels."

That year, the American space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing several people and setting American spaceflight back ten years; nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union and Ukraine suffered an explosion and a leak respectively, and the environmental hazards gradually began to emerge.

My relationship with Zhang Xiaotong, part teacher and student and part friends, had lasted over six months, and before we knew it, the Spring Festival had passed. Zhang Xiaotong began the second semester, coming first in her class on every test and becoming class monitor too. At family meals, she received more praise than anyone else. I gradually began teaching her practical writing and some middle-school mathematics. My reasoning, after all, was that the better her grades were, the more opportunities she would have to read extracurricular books, and the more knowledge I wanted I could acquire.

While helping Zhang Xiaotong study, I also made sure to instill some of my own views in her, such as my opinions on music and movies, or comparisons between novels and television programs... Zhang Xiaotong absorbed these things rather slowly. After all, however many characters she knew, developing her thinking still took time.

I used this time to start building up my foreign-language knowledge. We had an old dual-cassette radio at home, and I could listen to English-language radio stations quietly at night. Color televisions weren't yet widespread then, and there weren't many channels to watch. I could only practice listening by tuning in to foreign-language radio stations.

The extraordinary memory I had suddenly acquired proved enormously useful here. I could replay passages I had heard over and over in my head, continually working through spoken usage and standard English pronunciation. I already had some grounding in English; now I was merely strengthening it.

In May 1987, my third uncle transferred to the city's paper mill. This was a wonderful opportunity. I told Zhang Xiaotong to pester him into regularly sneaking her a few imported magazines and informational books from Hong Kong and Taiwan that were destined for the pulping machines. Zhang Xiaotong's parents counted as rich in our family, so naturally my third uncle was eager to curry favor with them. Before long, my room was full of foreign magazines Zhang Xiaotong had "forgotten" there. They covered current information, romance and leisure, and specialized knowledge, and I had a wonderful time reading them. By then, the official story was that Zhang Xiaotong was teaching me to read. When my parents saw that I could actually read Hong Kong magazines in traditional characters, they were even happier. After several rounds of praise, nobody cared what books I read anymore. Magazines featuring naked beauties were quite hard to find in the eighties, and I wasn't afraid of my parents scolding me either. Even if they saw one, saying I "didn't know any better" would be enough to brush it off.

Seeing how engrossed I was in foreign-language magazines every time, Zhang Xiaotong began pestering me to teach her English too. I felt the time was about right, so I began teaching her. English was unlike other kinds of knowledge; it could only be built up slowly through time and patience.

Once Zhang Xiaotong knew a little English, she began pestering my third uncle to take her to the paper mill to find books, which made things much easier for me. I told her about all the books I remembered that could be found in the eighties and had her pick up whichever ones she could find. That way, we wouldn't waste time on lots of useless books, and things became much more efficient.

Watching Zhang Xiaotong bring back piles of books every time left me feeling rather wistful. People probably spent nearly a tenth of their lives in a state of ignorance. What a shame it was that this time couldn't be put to use. Thinking of Shao Ke's words, I felt rather ridiculous again. If not for some strange twist of fate, how could I possibly be standing at a starting line so far ahead, reflecting on these things?

Perhaps letting nature take its course was the happiest way to live. I was already forcing things, so naturally I couldn't see what was right or wrong.

Bustling 1987 passed just like that, the year the world's population reached five billion. I kept enriching myself while helping Zhang Xiaotong improve too. By now, she had begun wondering why I knew so much, but that didn't worry me: I taught you everything you know. What could you possibly do to me? I explained that I didn't know why this knowledge was in my head either, then "seriously" discussed these questions with her from both scientific and superstitious perspectives. Zhang Xiaotong listened with only a hazy understanding, but at least she stopped asking about it altogether. I reckoned that even if she wanted to keep asking, there was nothing she could do. After all, if even I couldn't explain it, how could she possibly understand?

My enthusiasm for studying foreign languages on my own kept growing. Besides English, I began looking for opportunities to learn French. First, I told Zhang Xiaotong roughly what French letters looked like and asked her to help me find French-language books. We had developed a certain understanding in our collaboration, and she actually found me several illustrated French books on folk customs. Combined with my patchy memories from before, reading and writing this foreign language were no longer a problem.

Because I had unwittingly displayed knowledge beyond that of ordinary children, someone suggested sending me to preschool for an education. I wasn't happy about that. If I really went, I probably wouldn't learn anything. By kicking up an almighty fuss, I finally stopped my parents from pursuing the idea. But I also knew that I didn't have much time left to myself. I needed to make even better use of it.

The more books Zhang Xiaotong's family acquired, the more I read. I muddled along like this until late October 1988, when I had to attend preschool no matter what.