3 posts tagged with "Lao She Style"

Lao Zhang, Zhang Fushun, a man nearing fifty, had recently been feeling like there was a wall in front of him. Not made of brick, nor of cement, but rather as if condensed from the suffocating summer heat of a late evening – transparent, yet tangibly obstructing him, impossible to push through or circumvent.

Back in the day, Lao Zhang was a well-regarded figure in the hutong. Not because of any high office or vast wealth, but for his steadfastness. He'd worked diligently at the non-staple food store for the better part of his life, saving up 400,000 yuan. This 400,000 was the foundation for the latter half of his life, the capital his wife kept mentioning for a bigger refrigerator, for a washing machine with a dryer function, and his own dream of carrying a birdcage, drinking tea, and listening to opera after retirement. The Beijing sun, in his eyes, had once been warm and golden.

Wang Er'mangzi, ever since he was born, had a left eye that was black, and his right eye, well, it was light blue, like a cat’s eye in one of those foreign paintings. Here in Sand Ridge Town, where yellow sand filled the sky, his eyes were quite the "sight," not too big, not too small. The townsfolk were used to sandstorms, used to clods of earth; a sudden glance at Wang Er'mangzi's eyes always made them ponder a bit. Some said it was unlucky, others said it was a gift from Heaven, a pair of "divine eyes" that could see through sandstorms.

Beiping's dust, come Saturday, seemed to carry a hint of rest too, lazily tumbling under the sun. But the earth in Old Wang Tou's heart felt like it had been hardened by last night's wind, compacted, unable to breathe.

He huddled in his palm-sized little room in the South City. Old newspapers were pasted onto the window paper, printed with long-outdated foreign company ads, the words almost faded away. Inside, there was a whiff of stale cooking smoke, mixed with a faint scent of mildew. He just sat like that, facing the creaking wooden door, his gaze blank.