Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Sensation
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In the early morning, Xu Chengjun crouched in front of a wooden crate, sifting through letters.
The one on top was in a brown envelope, with a red stamp in the upper right corner that read "Provincial Academy of Social Sciences." When he opened it, flakes of paper fell from the letter inside.
The words were the same as what Editor Chen had said to him in person: someone was accusing him of being too liberal, of all sorts of things—
Was any of this new?
Yet his grip on the letter tightened all the same.
At the start of the year, there were twenty million unemployed people nationwide. Sixteen million in the cities, seven million rusticated youths sent to the countryside, 3.2 million staying behind in the cities...
Professor Li and the others spoke so lightly, but next to Xu Chengjun lay a whole stack of letters from readers.
Editor Zhai had said there would be more to come.
Their content was heartwarming.
A worker wrote, “Old Zhou made my father want to set up a stall in the county.”
A rusticated youth wrote, “Your articles have illuminated our path.”
But it was precisely these heartwarming words that seared his chest, making it tighten unbearably.
What unsettled him wasn’t coming to this era, or the absence of cell phones, takeout, computers, refrigerators, or color TVs...
He had worked as a party secretary in the poorest village in the southwest for two years right after graduating!
He’d endured hardship.
Material deprivation was something he could long since tolerate.
What made his heart feel as though it was being clenched in a fist—
Was his own inner conflict.
He knew the future would be bright. He understood that life was already getting better, day by day.
And so—
He felt wronged, even a bit stifled.
Honestly,
Maybe he was even a little angry.
-----------------
The figure in the tin mirror wavered.
Xu Chengjun’s hand slipped half an inch as he held the razor blade, and a bead of blood instantly appeared on his chin.
“Hiss—”
He clicked his tongue but ignored it.
He scraped the blade along the rim of the enamel mug, rust mixing with the blood and spreading in crooked red clouds through the water.
“Chengjun, what’s wrong with you?”
Qian Ming sat on the threshold, gnawing on a corn cake.
He stared at the cut on Xu Chengjun’s chin. “Got your soul stolen?”
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Xu Chengjun didn’t turn around, just wiped his fingers across the mirror.
“Nothing,” he said, his voice muffled as he brought the blade back to his face. “Maybe I’m just a little worked up.”
“Worked up?”
Qian Ming mumbled around his corn cake, “Who got you riled? The newspaper folks?”
“No one.”
Xu Chengjun tossed the blade back into the mug. Water splashed all over the mirror.
He remembered fumbling through his food coupons in the dark last night.
Three national grain coupons, two feet of cloth coupons—enough to exchange for a palm-sized piece of Dacron cloth.
Yet his younger sister’s floral shirt was so washed out it was nearly see-through, and the frayed cuffs were more glaring than a razor’s edge.
The cloth coupons their eldest brother sent home from the army—she always said, “Second brother needs them more.”
A flare of heat rose from some inexplicable place in his gut.
In the winds of 1979,
His sister wore ragged clothes herself, hoarding her coupons and counting the days to make him a new shirt,
A “Dacron” shirt,
And everyone praised her as a “good girl.”
When he first came to Hefei to revise manuscripts,
The kerosene lamp stung his eyes,
The pen tip hovered over a single story, revising again and again.
Comrade Liu said his writing was good, “concealed edge,”
Zhou Ming said it didn’t read like a 20-year-old’s—“steady.”
That edge had been hidden all the way from his previous life till now.
He wondered how much sharpness he had left.
The heat rolled up his throat.
To write an article,
He had to wrap it in sugar first.
“This sugar coating is damn hard on the teeth,” he cursed at the mirror.
Qian Ming jumped in fright, nearly dropping his corn cake. “Chengjun, why are you swearing all the time?”
Xu Chengjun ignored him.
Suddenly, he recalled Ma Shengli’s interview.
Ma Shengli had asked, “Are private entrepreneurs considered capitalists?”
He’d answered, “It’s labor.”
Some things he never said aloud...
...
He thought of the supermarket in 2024, shelves stacked to the ceiling.
He thought of the breakfast stall outside his apartment, where the owner dared to write “extra egg, extra sausage” on the sign.
He thought of when he was writing web novels—even if they flopped, he could still curse, “The editor has no taste.”
“Damn.”
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Xu Chengjun swore with a half-laugh.
He slammed a fist into the mirror, making the tin sheet clang loudly.
Qian Ming jumped up in fright. “Chengjun! What is it? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not crazy,” Xu Chengjun took a deep breath and suddenly smiled. “I just suddenly feel... a bit stifled.”
He splashed water on his face, the blood and water running into his mouth—salty, metallic.
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
Xu Chengjun grabbed Qian Ming and headed outside.
The picket fence behind the Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Guesthouse toppled as they left, and Aunt Wang’s booming voice chased after them for a long way: “Comrade Xu! You haven’t handed in your food coupons yet!”
He didn’t look back.
On the blue flagstones of Huaihe Road, bicycle bells chimed in waves.
A woman in a blue work shirt carried a bamboo basket, the tin can inside swaying—a can of corn porridge kept warm for her husband’s street stall.
The porridge was thin enough to see a reflection in it, but her smile outshone anyone’s.
Xu Chengjun suddenly slowed his steps.
He remembered the story he’d written about “Old Zhou gluing a shop sign with pumpkin pulp”—back then, he thought it was clever, a writer’s trick. Only now did he understand.
That was ordinary people forcing new shoots through the cracks in their lives.
-----------------
Unconsciously, they’d walked to the department store.
Behind the glass counter, Dacron fabric hung like a rainbow.
A clerk in a blue jacket was holding a piece of floral cloth in front of the mirror, pinching the edge and pressing it to her side, her eyes bright as a child tasting sugar for the first time.
Someone came in; the clerk startled, released the cloth in a panic, and it slid back onto the shelf. She turned around in a hurry, her blush brighter than the flowers on the fabric.
Standing at the threshold, Xu Chengjun found his anger had vanished.
He touched his chin—the wound had already scabbed over.
“Qian Ming,” he said suddenly, grinning, “what do you think of this? If I wrote a story about someone who works as a shop clerk by day, and at night secretly tries on the customers’ new clothes—wouldn’t that be interesting?”
Qian Ming scratched his head. “What do you mean? She’s stealing?”
“Not stealing,”
Xu Chengjun gazed at the clerk, sneaking glances at the fabric behind the counter, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“It’s... her body hasn’t changed, but her soul has already put on new clothes.”
A breeze drifted through the glass doors of the department store, carrying the grassy scent of fabric.
Xu Chengjun turned to head back, his steps lighter.
He knew the fire inside hadn’t gone out—it had just shifted.
Now it burned in his heart, at his fingertips, in the words he had yet to write.
One day, he’d let everything hidden, everything tucked away in shame, stand tall in the sunlight.
Just like the piece of floral cloth in the department store, secretly stroked by the clerk—one day, it would be worn proudly for all to see.
He had to give this era a little more flavor.