Reborn to Strive

J City local TV station1

    A thirty-something anchorwoman, dressed in a western style suit, read out the broadcast: “Our city’s famous entrepreneur Mr. Shi Zhen passed away in the hospital at 5am on the 12th of March. He was 46 years old.”

    The anchorwoman continued with a few facts about Shi Zhen: “Over the past two decades, Mr. Shi donated 170,000,000 to charity. Accordingly, his will dictates that the entirety of his assets after death are to be donated to charity . . .”

    The image on screen changed to show a memorial service.

    Shi Zhen was one of J City’s most influential industrialists, but his memorial was extremely simple — absolutely in keeping with his deep-rooted habit of thrift and diligence.

    Even so, this bare bones ceremony was jam packed with mourners.

    They came from all walks of life — the old and the young, men and women, the rich and the poor — and every single one of their faces bore a grief-stricken expression.

    Each of them had been recipients of Shi Zhen’s assistance in some form or another.

    Shi Zhen had never married nor had children. All aspects of his life were devoted to making money just so he could donate it all to charity.  This kind of bachelorhood had earned the true respect of all.

5am March 12th, 1994

Underneath J City’s newly constructed Wenhua Bridge

    Wenhua Bridge spanned J City’s major suburban river.

    In recent years J City had begun the process of new construction, the banks of this river were clad in terraced stonework to prevent erosion, while the massive bridge rose high above the river. Not only was it wide enough for bidirectional traffic, on either side of the bridge ran a pedestrian walkway.

    As the bridge itself was large, the area beneath was likewise spacious.

    Ever since the bridge was built, it had become the favorite place for children from the neighboring peasant households to play, whether on top of the bridge or beneath. It also was a spot where people panhandled. Under the bridge, someone had built a small shack and was living there.

    Shi Zhen was woken by the early morning chill.

    J City was situated on the Yangtze River delta. Summers were long, and winters short, but March was still the tail end of the cold season. Even though Shi Zhen was wearing a padded cotton jacket, and had a few snakeskin bags2 tucked beneath his clothes, it wasn’t enough to dispel the surrounding chilliness of the air. After all, he wasn’t living in a warm house, but under a bridge.

    After waking, he looked all around him. His only possessions were those snakeskin pouches hidden under his clothes. Rising with the aid of the rock standing beside where he’d slept, he eased himself into a seated position and sat motionless.

    Shi Zhen was exceedingly familiar with this location. When he was 18 years old, he had brought his older cousin on his father’s side, Shi Xinghuo, with him to leave their remote mountain hamlet where they had grown up. They had walked down the mountain for half the day, then hitched a ride on a tractor that lasted another half day, and then rode a bus for another day after that before finally arriving in J City. By then, they had already spent most of their cash.

    He didn’t want to waste money on staying in a hotel, and hadn’t thought they needed a room merely to sleep in at night. J City’s construction boom had just gotten underway, but there were still plenty of rural households at the outskirts, and they found the giant new bridge to live beneath.

    Living with Shi Xinghuo under the bridge, a month had quickly passed. Later, they had finally found jobs, and became construction workers.

    Shi Zhen was born on the Yangtze River delta. Since ancient times, Z province3 was seventy percent mountains, ten percent water, and twenty percent farmland. The coastal areas were prosperous and yet there were still a lot of undeveloped places.

    By the time he had died, Z province was already flourishing, and his hometown had been turned into a tourist trap. The villagers who left to make money through manual labor returned and opened a farm stay hostel, making enough money to live comfortably. But in the ‘90s, that backwards mountain village was still remote.

    Their road was unimproved and it was difficult for his family to travel outside, not to mention no one was interested in such travel. Year after year, they grew just enough to feed themselves, in such a manner each day passed much the same as the next.

    The only income source for the villagers was selling xianggu [shiitake mushrooms] — each household had inherited the method of raising xianggu from their ancestors. After picking the mature fungi, they sundried the mushrooms to make them easier to transport off the mountains and sell.

    For a long time Shi Zhen had thought that he would spend his whole life in the mountains raising mushrooms. His health was good and he was a diligent worker who could grow a lot of xianggu. He could definitely save up a lot of money from selling them. When he had saved enough money, then he could find a wife and get married. After that, they would have a son who looked like him and that son would also farm mushrooms.

    But then the ‘90s arrived. The world outside was changing, and its influence had begun to seep into his hamlet.

    He was the first person in the village to leave to find work.

    The prior year, his village had welcomed a twenty-something trainee teacher who had come from J City. After arriving in the village, this teacher was struck speechless by the poverty. The teacher had only been teaching in the village for a little over a month, eating pickled vegetables mixed with xianggu when they suddenly developed appendicitis.

    The same night Shi Zhen discovered this, he brought the teacher down from the mountain and delivered them to the county seat hospital for surgery. Afterwards, the teacher kept urging him to leave the village and find work outside.

    Shi Zhen was never a person to be satisfied with the status quo. Even when he was young and impoverished, he already had big dreams, so he immediately decided to venture out.

    He had no money, however, so he spent another year growing xianggu to save up. After toiling the whole year, he had then brought his elder cousin Shi Xinghuo along with him.

    Thank goodness, he had just turned 18 this year.

Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo were shocked by what they saw of the outside world when they arrived in J City.

Everywhere they were surrounded by five and six story buildings, and occasionally even taller ones. There were cars all around, and everyone was dressed in new and brightly colored clothing. Shi Zhen had felt a fire ignite within, intensely pouring out from the bottom of his heart. He decided right then and there that he must make money so he could buy a car and live a wealthy life! 

For a long time afterwards, he was constantly focused on his goal, always advancing toward it.

    Shi Zhen let out a looooooong sigh, his breath condensing into a white cloud in the early dawn light.

    At this moment, a rustling noise came from beside him.

    In this space underneath the bridge, there lived not just Shi Zhen and his cousin, but also an elderly woman. That old lady was a beggar and used a bamboo stick, plastic sheet, and other similar items to make her shelter. During the day she took her bag and went to the nearby neighborhoods to beg, only returning at night to sleep.

    This elderly lady was a little afraid of Shi Zhen and his cousin. Even though the two of them were poor, their situation was different from this old woman. Additionally, they spoke a different dialect and it was hard to communicate with her. In his previous life, he had lived under the bridge for a month and never exchanged more than a sentence or two.

    That’s right. His previous life.

    Presently, everything seemed all too real. If he wasn’t mistaken, he ought to have returned to the period more than 20 years ago, when he was 18 years old.

    Shi Zhen took a deep breath.

    The air was a bit cool, rushing into his lungs. The corners of his mouth hooked up as he suddenly smiled, but no laugh was forthcoming.

    The old woman next door had used brick fragments outside of her shelter to make a cookstove, carefully filling the gaps with mud. Right now she was cooking porridge on the stove.

    Shi Zhen watched her for a bit then stood up. He began to clear the bits of masonry debris left over from the bridge construction.

    There was a lot of this type of junk laying around. Shi Zhen previously didn’t pay it any mind, but today wanted to clean it all up, and heap it in a pile in the corner.

    He easily tidied up a few still usable broken bricks, and stacked them neatly next to the old woman’s shelter.

    His movements awakened Shi Xinghuo who lay in a daze before slowly getting up and asking: “A-Zhen, what are you doing?”

    Shi Zhen replied: “Cleaning up a little. Lend me a hand.”

    Shi Xinghuo said: “Ok!”

    After responding, Shi Xinghuo began to assist Shi Zhen, asking again and again: “Do you want this one?” and “Should I put this one here?”

    Shi Zhen answered his queries with the same simple reply: “Yep!”

    Shi Xinghuo was four years older than Shi Zhen. His mother had caught hepatitis A when she was pregnant with him, and took a lot of medication. It wasn’t clear if that was the cause, but he was born with cognitive impairment. After six years of primary school, he was still only able to recognize ten hanzi [chinese characters, i.e. kanji] and could only do arithmetic while relying on his own ten fingers to calculate.

    Therefore, although he was older than Shi Zhen, he listened to whatever Shi Zhen told him to do.

    Shi Zhen had brought him along for two reasons: one was that Shi Xinghuo would listen to him and behave, and the other was that Shi Xinghuo’s parents had asked him to.

    It was well known in their hamlet and all the surrounding ones that Shi Xinghuo had cognitive impairment. Who didn’t know that when he took tests at school, he just drew circles on the test paper?

    Their family didn’t have any money, so Shi Xinghuo was destined to remain unmarried. His mother and father thought he might as well go out and try to earn some money through manual labor. If he could earn around a thousand, perhaps they could find a woman willing to marry him.

    In 1994 in J City the average monthly wage of ordinary workers was 200-300 RMB.4 But in the tiny mountain hamlet, even to earn 10 RMB was extremely difficult. A thousand RMB was needed for a groom to give to the bride’s family when getting married.

    Previously, Shi Zhen had saved up little by little, so when he came out of the village he had a bit more than 100 with him. Shi Xinghuo’s parents also gave him 20 RMB. After paying for the bus and tractor rides, he now had on hand 89 yuan and 50 cents. 

    In this era, that amount of money was nothing to sniff at. The main reason they had stayed under the bridge was because he feared they would run out of money before they found work, and would starve, so he didn’t dare to recklessly spend. He was always cautious.

    Shi Zhen had an impressive reputation within his hamlet as the most capable worker. And although Shi Xinghuo had an intellectual disability, his body was robust. The two of them hadn’t previously cleaned up the space beneath the bridge, but now that they started on the task, it only took them an hour to finish tidying it all up. The formerly cluttered space now looked pretty good.

    After tidying the space, Shi Zhen turned to tidying his own belongings.

    He and his cousin’s entire possessions didn’t amount to much. He had snakeskin bags tucked inside his clothing and shoes. He pulled out a package of fried rice noodles along with a preserved hare’s leg, and handed them to the old lady who had already begun to eat her boiled porridge. 

    Shi Zhen had brought a lot of food with him. He had caught and preserved the hare’s leg himself. The fried rice noodles were made from husked rice that was fried crisp and then ground into flour before adding water to form a dough and then shaped. You only needed to pour boiling water on them and then they could be eaten. The past few days, Shi Zhen and his cousin had prepared their meals thusly.

    The old lady was startled by Shi Zhen’s action.

    Shi Zhen packed away the snakeskin bags and said to Shi Xinghuo: “Let’s go!”

    “Ok!”

    Shi Zhen and his cousin walked away. The white haired and stooped backed old lady saw that the space that had previously been cluttered with stones and bricks that threatened to catch her up and trip her was now clean and tidy. She was struck speechless. 

    Shi Zhen didn’t have a wristwatch, and didn’t know exactly what time it was, but the sun was already up. It was probably already past 7am. 

    Shi Xinghuo felt a bit put out: “A-Zhen, I want to eat hare’s leg.”

    Shi Zhen told him: “Hare’s leg isn’t that tasty. I’ll buy you a steamed meat baozi.”

    Shi Xinghuo elatedly agreed: “Ok!”

    Shi Zhen led his cousin in the direction of a bus station.

    Beside J City’s newly built bus depot was an equally new hospital. Although the surrounding neighborhoods were still fairly quiet this time in the morning, they were growing lively. Several breakfast stalls were open for business.

    Xiaolongbao were ¥1.50 for a basket, [¥ means yuan] while large meat baozi were three for ¥1. Shi Zhen looked at the options and bought ¥4 worth of meat baozi. 

    Meat baozi were roughly the same size as mantou.5 The average person would be full after eating three. But for Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo that wouldn’t be enough. Shi Zhen alone could eat five or six.

    Shi Zhen handed Shi Xinghuo six meat baozi.

    Shi Xinghuo used both hands to hold the baozi and started chowing down. While eating, he spoke: “The baozi here are really delicious, I’ve never tasted such delicious ones before.”

    Their hamlet didn’t grow wheat so no one could make wheat noodles or bread. Shi Xinghuo used to go to a local market with his parents and had eaten baozi there only a few times, so it was no wonder that ordinary meat bao could make him so happy. 

    Shi Zhen ate about three baozi before resuming their walk to the bus station. At the ticket window, he used the J City dialect to ask: “Do you have tickets to Changxi District?”

    “Yes, a bus leaves in half an hour at 8am.”

    “I’ll buy two tickets.” Shi Zhen took out ten bills and bought a pair of tickets.

    J City was a prefecture-level city, while Changxi District was a level below and a county-level city.  Here on the Yangtze River Delta many of the top 100 counties were located, and Changxi District was one of them. Actually, in She Zhen’s previous life, Changxi District was the main place that had fostered his rise. His fortune building ventures had begun at a town within Changxi District.

    It was called Anshan Town, and that place was where his beloved lived.

Chapter Notes:

1 – J City – This is a prefecture level city, which is one step below the provincial government. In this novel, it may be a bit confusing to see that lower level cities come under the jurisdiction of upper level cities, so here are a few links about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefecture-level_city
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_China#Ambiguity_of_the_word_%22city%22_in_China

2 – Snakeskin bag – woven polypropylene bags, also known as red-white-blue bags in some places
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BC%96%E7%BB%87%E8%A2%8B/3207309

3 – Z Province – the author is referring to Zhejiang province. Modern Chinese authors often don’t directly name the cities and provinces they’re talking about, and either make up fake places, or just use abbreviated names, knowing that readers will understand where they’re writing about.

4 – RMB – renminbi, the standard currency of the People’s Republic of China. Can be used interchangeably with yuan – ¥, and sometimes kuai, which is kinda the Chinese equivalent of ‘bucks’

5 – Mantou – my best guess on this, since a few characters of this phrase were censored. I don’t know why.