Chen Fugui

Qianmen, east of the Archery Tower.

The tea stall had barely changed. There were still twelve people, and the flow of customers was as heavy as ever, but lately Huang Zhanying had been weighed down with worries.

A newspaper article had made the stall a hit, sending its earnings soaring. At its peak, it sold more than 3,000 bowls a day.

It was popular and profitable, so others had followed suit. Not long ago, another cooperative had openly set up a tea stall on the west side of the Archery Tower, and they had twenty people!

The new stall had drawn away quite a few customers. Huang Zhanying had kept count: sales had been falling every day lately, down to a little over 2,000 bowls.

"The weather's getting hotter and hotter... Say, will you still sell tea in the summer?"

"We'll let it cool in the summer. It'll quench your thirst."

"Oh, that works too, but I'd rather have an ice pop or something. That's what really cools you down."

"We'll have those! Once it gets hot, we'll stock ice pops too. Come back then!"

Huang Zhanying saw the customer off and bent over to wipe the tables, no longer quite so worried. As the saying went, a plan left behind could pacify Liaodong: a certain fellow had already made arrangements and even found a supplier.

"Warm me a bowl of wine and bring me a plate of fennel beans!"

A light, unhurried voice reached Huang Zhanying's ears. Without looking up, Zhanying said, "Sorry, comrade, this is a tea stall. If you want wine, go to a tavern. There's one over there."

"No culture! Personal refinement is part of the revolutionary struggle too!"

Huh?

Huang Zhanying looked up to see that fellow holding his familiar 28-inch bicycle, smiling.

"Ah!"

"Comrade Chen Qi!"

"Comrade Zhanying! We've finally joined forces in the Jinggang Mountains!"

The two shook hands firmly.

"Chen Qi's back!"

"Everyone, come quick! Chen Qi's back!"

"Have you finished your screenplay? How did it go? Can they film it?"

"Does that mean we'll be able to see your work at the cinema?"

His friends crowded around him. Chen Qi shook hands with each of them, saying hard-to-understand things like "the literary and artistic front is in dire straits" and "making good films serves the people." Everyone burst out laughing, and the air inside and outside Qianmen was filled with merriment.

After a spell of joking and commotion, everyone went back to work.

Huang Zhanying pulled him behind the tea stall. They no longer had to sit on the ground; they had little stools now.

"A few days after you left, the district leaders came. They showed up suddenly, without any notice, so I didn't tell you. They praised us and said they were very supportive and all that, but I haven't seen them actually do anything.

"Afterward, they said the city leaders would come too, but the date hadn't been settled. I thought I'd come find you once it was confirmed."

"That's fine. You handled it right."

Chen Qi nodded. There was no need for him to receive district leaders himself; it had to be city leaders at the very least. When Brother Jiayin met a provincial dignitary, that was merely a meeting too...

"How's business been lately?"

"Not so good. Another tea stall opened to the west, and I hear there's one in Temple of Heaven Park too. Tea stalls are really popular now."

"Have the sandals arrived?"

"Five hundred pairs have. They're being kept at the subdistrict office."

"How could five hundred pairs be enough? Even fifty thousand wouldn't be too many!"

"You really dare to dream. Where would the No. 2 Plastics Factory get fifty thousand pairs of sandals for us?"

After a short chat, Chen Qi got up, clapped his hands and called everyone over. "Comrades, thank you for your hard work lately. I'm ashamed, but I wasn't a deserter. I merely went off to the battlefield of the literary and artistic front.

"You know I went to revise the screenplay. It's been approved now.

"I wanted to celebrate with everyone, but I don't have any ration coupons on hand. So, let me say this: pool together however many coupons you can get. I'll pay, and treat everyone to a meal out!"

Everyone broke into applause and laughed. "Writing a screenplay really does make you different. You sound just like a leader."

"Haha, should we call you Director Chen from now on?"

"You know, Director Chen has a nice ring to it!"

"I want meat! Fried pork that hasn't had the oil cooked out of it!"

After spending a little while there, Chen Qi wheeled his bicycle away.

He made a point of going to look at the west side of the Archery Tower. Sure enough, there was another tea stall, with about twenty people. It was lively and bustling, full of energy. The two stalls were a little over a hundred meters apart; when people shouted on one side, they could be heard on the other.

According to Huang Zhanying, although these people had set up a tea stall, they hadn't caused trouble or provoked anyone. They were doing business honestly.

The subdistrict office couldn't very well object, since both were cooperatives.

Big-bowl tea wasn't a monopoly.

"Twenty people isn't a small number. If we can bring them in, let's do it. They'd strengthen our ranks and make a force of their own."

Chen Qi got on his bicycle and rode away at a leisurely pace, wondering whether he should stage an exciting 1979 business war.

"Old Chen's boy is back!"

"Oh, he's back? Did his script get rejected?"

"I wish! But it went and got approved. My kid graduated from high school and spent two hours shut in a room only to squeeze out five characters. Where's the justice in that?"

"The boy has talent, that's what. Talent doesn't play fair!"

When Chen Qi returned to the compound, he was once again surrounded by people staring at him as if he were a monkey.

They worked at Xinhua Bookstore. However humdrum their daily lives, they at least knew more characters; knowing more characters meant they read more, and reading more meant they thought more. Every one of them considered themselves an angel with broken wings, with a little bourgeois streak in their bones.

Books and films were the two great pillars of spiritual life in the compound.

And now you were telling them that their colleague's perfectly ordinary son had whipped out a screenplay, just like that, and it had fucking been approved? What, had he launched Genshin Impact?

The envy, the jealousy-their eyes were as red as if he'd dug out the foundations of capitalism...

There were seven inner courtyards and over a hundred people in the compound, and they had nearly worn down the Chens' threshold. Of every ten visitors, three came for the spectacle, three came to make snide remarks, and the rest came to propose matches.

"Xiuli, take it from me, your boy's nineteen. Hurry up and settle his marriage, and you'll have one less thing to worry about. My niece works at a garment factory and earns forty yuan a month. She's pretty and tall, just a tiny flaw on her face."

"Don't listen to her nonsense. That mole on her niece's face is bigger than a pot lid!"

"I have a niece who's a real catch. She looks just like Liu Xiaoqing..."

Chen Qi sat quietly in a corner, keeping a polite smile on his face and offering no opinion whatsoever. Chen Jianjun smiled and occasionally chimed in, because this was Yu Xiuli's stage.

Yu Xiuli had long since thrown herself into the occasion, maneuvering in every direction in the twenty-square-meter room. In more than forty years of life, she had never enjoyed herself so much.

It was even better than her wedding day!

To grow rich and honored without returning home was like walking at night in fine clothes. Chen Qi hadn't kept anything hidden; he had come back openly, and once the neighbors had left one after another, he just as openly told his parents how much he'd been paid for the screenplay.

If his family were all awful relatives, there was no harm in keeping a thing or two from them. If they were good to him, there was no need. Besides, it was only eight hundred yuan. Honestly, he could earn it whenever he wanted.

But it came as a tremendous shock to his parents.

"Y-you, you got paid that much for the script?"

"Beijing Film Studio didn't make a mistake, did they?"

His parents stared blankly at the passbook, with its red-and-yellow cover. "Demand Deposit Savings Passbook" was written on the front, with "People's Bank of China" underneath.

The passbook was made of kraft paper, its coarse fibers clearly visible. At present, the three major banks-the Agricultural Bank, the Construction Bank and the Bank of China-were gradually being restored. The Industrial and Commercial Bank would then be established in 1984.

"Here's what I'm thinking. We've only got a radio at home right now. We should get another big-ticket item."

"Let's buy a television and a tape recorder, so we can listen to some songs too. Then we can buy another bicycle. That way we'll have two, enough to use even when we go separate ways. Ow..."

"Are you fucking planning to stop living?"

Smack! Yu Xiuli slapped him and scolded, "A big nine-inch black-and-white TV costs four hundred yuan! A foreign-brand tape recorder costs over two hundred. You only earned eight hundred altogether, and you want to spend it all at once? You spendthrift!"