Lillian (Quan) Zhou is a student at Beijing No. 4 High School. She began learning English at a young age, and has a passion for prose.
Once More Back Home
I spent nine years – my childhood years – with my grandmother in an old Chinese house in the countryside. I developed a deep-seated aversion to caterpillars from their ubiquitous presence, and had to wear long-sleeved shirts in the garden, since my grandmother hated using pesticides on her organic herbs and naturally nourished sakura trees. But apart from that, my grandma’s house and the countryside became my idea of heaven. From then on, I never thought there was any place in the world like that tranquil haven. Those years and my childhood were exquisite. My memory is filled with tender chartreuse springs, fiery cerulean summers, autumns with a mixture of amber and crimson hues, and frosted winters with a pleasant smell of home-made cherry pie. I have since become a city dweller, but sometimes there are days when the restlessness of urban traffic, the gnaw of loneliness, and the incessant crowds make me wish for the peace of the countryside. Two months ago, this feeling grew so strong that I bought myself a long-sleeved shirt and returned to my grandmother’s house for a week’s rest away from the urban heat, planning to revisit my old haunts.
On the journey back to that familiar landscape, I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique and almost sacred spot — the blossoms and the forests, the woods that the sun set into, the quaint house and yard in front of it. It’s strange how vividly you can recall a usually blurred piece of memory like that, once you allow your mind to return into the groove that led back to that countryside, back home. You recall one scene, and it suddenly immerses you into another one. I guess what I remembered most clearly were the cozy middays, when the sun was casting its leisurely heat and light; I remembered how Grandma’s cherry pie smelled of the blossoms it once took the shape of, and of the mellow wheat whose scent permeates through the field a mile away from the house.
My memories are just as lively as the actuality: again, I was exposed to that pleasantly warm sunshine as my senses captured a wonderful and familiar mixture of smells. As I settled into the house (the dusting kept me busy for a while) and the kind of tranquility I had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before — I knew it, smearing oil on the fissured wooden pillars, sleeping until middays on weekends, and inhaling the satisfyingly blended aromas of the field and home-made pastries from the neighborhood. I began to sustain the illusion that no time has passed, and thus that I was the nine-year-old me. I would be in the middle of a simple act – wandering in the field of mingled green and yellow, or deliberating over whether to have salmon and beef for lunch – and suddenly it would not be me but a carefree child who was making these gestures, saying these words. It was not an entirely new feeling, but it grew much stronger and more compelling during this visit, after six years away. I seemed to be living backwards through time.
On the second day, I went to the sakura forest, my weariness having ebbed after the first day’s midday nap. A faint but familiar sense of melancholy fell upon me as I trod lightly on the moist earth, which was covered in a pale-pink veil woven from fallen petals. An early, rose-toned light shed on the maroon twigs. I saw a butterfly alight on one of them after hovering a few inches above me. It was the arrival of this creature that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been. The years were only a mirage; there had been no years. The flowers were just the same, blooming fully under beams of golden sunshine, petals drifting to the ground as a breeze ruffled the leaves. The sun was the sun from six years ago, coloring the trees with the same gradation of muted shades that move from pink to rose to scarlet and to a glistening gold. I stared silently at the tip of the twig, at the butterfly that had seemingly traveled six years to approach me. I deliberately made the branch quiver, dislodging the butterfly. It flitted five inches away, paused, flitted five inches back, and came to rest again on another twig a little farther above. There had been no years between this butterfly and the other one — the one that was part of my memory.
The countryside, the summertime, the indelible pattern of life, the fade-proof woods, the ineffaceable house, the meadow of four-leaf clovers and daisies forever and ever, summer without end; this was the life away from the coiled urban mess. It seemed to me, as I remembered all this, that those times had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity, calm, and goodness.
The ride to shuttle back and forth through the field had been big business in itself: on the bumpy paths my bike tires crunched the gravel, sometimes with a hollow rush of wind generated by a thrilled acceleration. I would catch the first glimpse of smiling neighbors from the other cottages, and at the end of the last long street, the first view of Grandma’s house, reaping the assuring feeling of home after an exhausting day. Sometimes, in a hurry, I would cross the field, prickly crops making the skin around my ankles itch, and speed up to form a blurred profile when an angry farmer tried to recognize the mischievous saboteur. Traveling is far less exciting nowadays. You get into your car and let GPS choose one of the flattest cement roads. You intentionally seek a smile from a neighbor through the car window. In ten minutes, the trip through the field would be over with no fuss. No itchy, thrilling, wonderful fuss.
Happiness and goodness and calm . The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound – an unfamiliar nervous sound from the shopping mall . This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. Among the extensive stretch of farmlands and scattered cottages, the mall had previously been a market – the only place where crowds had gathered. In the old days, it had been busy in a cordial way. The noise of hawkers bargaining with buyers was a comfort, an ingredient of countryside gusto. The fun part about wandering through the market was the conversations. There were polite reciprocations and rowdy squabbles. Some were appraisals of summer clothing between housewives, and some were vendors’ concessions to a ten cent discount, but they all cast a comforting and intriguing sound across the landscape. Plastic bags rustled and swished, and footsteps pattered and pattered. That was a heartening sound as well. But now, the crowded market had been transformed into a modern shopping mall. The sounds of peddlers selling home-grown vegetables and craftsmen showing off their wares were overwhelmed by the stiffly sweet sound of welcome from the trained salesgirls. After years of faking this affected, urban style, I loathed its bourgeois overtones. Other teenage girls loved the mall, and coveted the outfits on display. They soon learned the trick of befriending the salesgirls, who would let them wear expensive skin-tight sundresses for a day. Watching them, I remembered the things you could do in the old crowded market, where a pleasant chat could be everything. I remembered how you could grow attached to a place if you got really close to the heart of it. Old-style markets in those days didn’t attract stylish young consumers. They sold basic necessities and fresh food, not high-end commodities associated with fads and fashions. However, frequent visitors to the market were captivated its charms. You could have frequent interactions with neighboring cottagers, or with tired travelers who always carried a heap of weirdly compelling stories in their dusty backpacks. Sometimes you would be lucky enough to spot a workshop selling the sort of fine, hand-made gadgets that my grandmother loved. In the early morning the market was always quiet. Swept by a refreshing breeze , it was difficult not to slow down and stop worrying about trivial things.
Now, listening to the canned pop music in the shopping mall, for a moment I missed the market terribly – the hawkers, the shoppers, the backpackers and its crowded serenity. It gave me a menacing feeling.
I had a good week in the countryside. The flowers smelled sweet and the sun shone endlessly, day after day. When I grew tired at night, I would lie down in the heat of the little bedroom after a long hot day. The breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside, the smell of the field and swamp drifting in through the open windows. Sleep would come easily, and in the morning a mockingbird would be on the windowsill, tapping out his morning routine. Lying in bed until midday, I sorted through my memories— the pink bicycle with a wicker front basket woven by my grandmother, and how proudly I rode it in front of other girls. The older boys playing their guitars and the girls watching them as we sat around a bonfire, and how sweet the music was across the field under shining moonlight. What it had felt like to ride a bright pink bike and let the breeze waft the faint smell of my perfume to the boys. After lunch I would quietly explore the streams running by the fields, where groups of tadpoles quickly spread out in all directions when they detected minor man-made tremors. I wanted to see a turtle and pretend it was the one that my grandma let go years ago, after a boy gave it to me as a gift. Everywhere I went I had trouble telling whether those years had genuinely passed, or whether I was still the unworldly girl who spent hours waiting for a turtle.
One afternoon while I was watering the cherry trees a postman arrived. It was like the revival of an old tradition that I had seen long ago with childish delight. My first instinct was to run to the gate and greet the smiling middle-aged man. This was a daily necessity, and is still a daily necessity. The whole thing was so familiar: the first feeling of curiosity for news, the excitement to hear fresh countryside anecdotes, and the one moment among all tranquilities that is close to drama. I heard him stuffing newspapers and mail through the crack of the door.
When I opened the gate the postman couldn’t hide his astonishment at encountering a girl in an old abandoned house. A letter in his right hand, he stood still for five full seconds. Then he greeted me in a warm, professional tone, and I took the mail from him. Wincing slightly, I watched his figure disappear over the horizon, and suddenly my heart began to ache. It ached from the sudden collapse of my illusion – the sudden recollection of my grandmother’s death six years before.