Preface
I turned twenty-three this year, and have already spent twenty years in this hall. Tihu Hall was built by my great-grandfather in the first year of the Republic. At first it was a private school. Later, when my great-grandfather grew too old to keep teaching, he dismissed the other tutors and spent his days reading and writing in the courtyard, or now and then traveling through the countryside of Jinzhong with his descendants for company. He loved telling stories even more than hearing them, and was especially fond of writing down the odd tales told by village women, peddlers, and wandering laborers. It is said that the Unwaking Court behind the hall was once piled high with his notebooks. Sadly, after the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, only a few scraps remained.
When I was little, the elders all said that my brows and features resembled my great-grandfather’s. I too loved stories and thread-bound books from an early age. The few notebooks of his that still survive in the family today were pieced together by me from odds and ends I found in the woodshed, the garden, and other forgotten corners. Perhaps I truly did inherit something from him across the generations.
This winter there has been an unusual abundance of snow, a dim and endless whitening that never seems to stop. All day long I sit biting the end of my pen, staring blankly at the boundless black rooftops of Jinzhong, and now and then writing down some experience of my own or some story I once heard. The writing may be crude and the plots may be wildly improbable, yet perhaps within them there remain a few of the plainest truths, the very truths we so often overlook.
Cellphone
There was a student in our class, surnamed Li, who kept to himself and studied with great diligence. He often did not return to the dormitory until the teaching building had already closed. One summer night last year, he went as usual to evening self-study. By the time he had finished two mock exam papers with his head bent low, lights-out was close at hand. There were only a few people left in the classroom. In the very front row there still sat a girl with long hair falling over her shoulders and a graceful back. She seemed to be fiddling with her cellphone the whole time, the clicking of its keys so irritating that Li shot her an annoyed glance before lowering his head again to check his papers.
After a while Li lifted his wrist to check the time, stood up, and began gathering his things to leave. Suddenly he noticed that the girl’s schoolbag and water cup were gone. She had clearly already left, yet on the desk there remained, placed squarely in the center, a dark red cellphone. Li was delighted. “Heaven has not treated me too poorly. Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, and at last it is my turn to pick up a bargain.” Seeing no one around, he darted over, snatched the phone into his hand, and, as if rehearsed a thousand times in his heart, pressed the power button hard, switched it off, and slipped it into his pocket.
He had only just stepped out of the classroom when the girl came hurrying back. Li was about to dodge into the washroom to one side, but the girl rushed up, grabbed his jacket, and dropped to her knees with a thud. Startled, Li reached out at once to help her up, only to see that her face was covered in blood. She screamed, “Big brother, keep the phone if you want it, just please let me go!” Terrified, Li flung off her hand and ran all the way to the dormitory building before daring to stop. When he took out the phone and looked at it, the screen was cracked, and the crevices were full of specks of dried blood. He sighed and threw it beneath a roadside tree. After two steps, unwilling to let it go, he turned back, picked it up again, pulled out the SIM card, inserted it into his own phone, and dialed 1861 to see how much balance was left. Once the call connected, however, all he heard was a shrill female voice crying, “Please let me go!”
Li told me this story with his own mouth. I do vaguely remember that in that same summer there really was news of a girl who had been robbed by criminals, gravely injured, and died of her wounds. Still, I suspect Li made the story up to warn me. That day I had been bragging to my roommates about my good luck in finding a water card. Li pulled me aside and told me the whole thing. When he finished, he said only: “Never be greedy for petty gain.” From then on, I kept my eyes straight when walking the road, and whenever a greedy thought rose up in me, I used Li’s words to remind myself. Today I pass them on to the reader as well.
An Online Game Dream
In the dormitory next door there used to be a fellow townsman named Zhai Feng. He spent his time soaking in internet cafes playing online games, day and night without pause, often staying away from the dorm for three or four days at a stretch. People said that in the game world he ranged under heaven, peerless in martial skill. Yet his studies were excellent too, never once neglected, and from time to time he even managed to win scholarships. There was another classmate, surnamed Hu, who was also one of the online-gaming tribe. He too played through the night and clear into the day, never stopping, and in the game he was likewise a man of great following, a local tyrant in his own right. But his studies were bad from start to finish, every subject marked in red, and I heard he might even have to leave school without graduating.
I was very curious, so I asked Zhai Feng how he managed to study. He said, “I do not have any special method. I study as one ought to study. It is true that I love playing, but I treat it purely as rest, like having a dream. No matter how lively the game may be, once you wake up you must return to reality. Only after I have done what I ought to do in real life do I go and play a little. Otherwise I do not feel at ease.” I asked him why Hu’s studies were so poor. He said, “He can no longer tell which is the dream and which is reality.”
Study is study, play is play. Only by telling them apart can one do either well. Even if in the game one holds high rank and power, or wealth enough to rival a kingdom, once one returns to real life one is still only an ordinary person. If one cannot even be that ordinary person properly, I fear there will soon be no game left to play either. In truth, how can the things one ought to do in real life ever be completely finished? To manage as much as Zhai Feng did was already admirable enough.
From here on I will publish Tihu Hall Notes from time to time. These are all short modern tales of the uncanny, offered in tribute to Ji Yun’s Random Notes from the Thatched Abode of Close Scrutiny. The old notebook tales may have had coarse plots and heavy superstitious coloring, yet the truths they contained about how one ought to conduct oneself are truths many modern people still fail to live up to.