How Many Times Did It Bloom

For fifty-three years Qiuyu had lived in one place: No. 18 of Lane 701. The lane had been a maze of a hundred homes, each no larger than three hundred square feet, but among the clusters was also a main path, that led to the two gates. The front one, a double-swing of rusty iron bars, opened to the four-lane Mingda Road, where one could find a cinema with only one big showing room, a three-story textile mart that'd been crowded in Qiuyu's younger days, a pier; while the back gate, a single-swing encrusted with more rust, was squeezed between two tiny rooms and an attic overhead, and it peeped out to the one-way Haimen Street. On Haimen, the plane trees on the sides arched and touched at the top. In the shade were a bus stop, a noodle place with five greasy tables, other dingier shops, and two public bathhouses.

People in the lane had used the two gates equally often, but Qiuyu had only used the front one. The first time he, at six, left the countryside with his mom and came, in a postal ship, to see his uncle in the lane, in this big city Shanghai, he wandered among the houses and, at the back gate, a huge black dog chased him and bit his wrist. The next time he came he was sixteen. He was a tailor's apprentice, and he came to live in his uncle's place, who'd passed away. Though he had forgotten the dog the tunnel-like gate depressed him, so he avoided it ever since.

Now he was seventy. It was one year after he moved out of the lane. In the past year he heard that Lane 701 was demolished, that a new subway station would be built there; also, his wife was diagnosed with stomach cancer, had a surgery and recovered from it, before the cancer came back and killed her. When she was ill he could go nowhere. If he lingered but twenty minutes at the groceries, she'd say, "Can't you wait until I die to get away?" Then she would follow him to the kitchen timidly, as if her words had scared herself, till she was too weak and had to lie down. So he stayed by her side, and only visited what he called their "old land" after she died. He came on an early spring day, by taking three buses for two hours. He got off at the old bus stop under the arching trees on Haimen, and out of habit, he walked toward Mingda.

Qiuyu had no business on Mingda that day. His plan was to have a bowl of zhajiang noodle, with an extra slice of suji, at the five-table noodle place; next he'd drop by the hardware shop across the street, for the forty-year-old owner knew a lot about cellphones and would do quick fixes for five yuan—his cellphone had failed to ring the last time his granddaughter called him, the granddaughter who, he was proud to tell anyone, had just entered college in Beijing and would call him every week; last, he'd take a hot bath at the six-yuan bathhouse, not the three-yuan cheap one that was always under-heated, but not the nonsense eighteen-yuan on Mingda either. All three destinations were on Haimen, and if he wished to take a farewell look at the rubbles, from the wide front gate he always preferred, he had little hope of it now: as soon as he was off the bus he saw the whole lot of where Lane 701 used to be was walled in by blue plastic sheets, and the sheets were taller than he.

But still he walked toward Mingda, all the while keeping close to the dirty, shiny sheets, perhaps hoping to chance upon a rip and take a peek. Imagine how surprised he was, when turning around the corner, he saw the sheets vanished, and twenty more steps ahead, the front gate came into view...