Chapter 111 – Side Story: The Last Words of Love – Song Maozhi’s Perspective

My name is Song Maozhi.

I am my parents’ third child.

Before me, there was an older sister, Song Liuzhi, and an older brother, Song Caizhi.

The three of our names were all chosen by our father.

They came from the opening poem of the Book of Songs, “Guan Ju¹.”

…

Watercress grows unevenly, to the left and right she seeks it;

…

Watercress grows unevenly, to the left and right she gathers it;

…

Watercress grows unevenly, to the left and right she plucks it.

It was plain to see how deeply Father felt for Mother.

Mother, however, would laugh and say Father had chosen an allusion that was far too plain and obvious.

Father never argued back. He always accepted it with a smile.

Now and then, he would sigh and poke fun at himself. “I’m just a pitiful man who never went to school. How could I possibly compare to Educator Madam Song?”

When Mother heard that, she never got annoyed. She acknowledged it openly and generously.

The title of educator was not merely something my parents teased each other with in private.

It was an honor officially recognized by the educational world, a title for which the state had even awarded her a medal.

From the very first school that taught workers literacy and machine operation to the university of science and engineering that later became a pillar of the nation, every brick and tile bore Mother’s mark, and every footprint was soaked with her effort.

Once, in a public speech, a national leader praised Madam Song Xuange for carrying out worker reform and promoting education, laying a solid foundation for industrial development and training generation after generation of technical talent. He also praised Madam Lu Zhu, saying she had spared the nation’s industrialization process at least thirty years of detours.

Those two lines later became the official citation when Mother and Aunt Lu received their Medal of Contribution.

Aunt Lu was only slightly younger than Mother. By the time she received her medal, she was already well into her seventies.

But she never admitted to being old. In spirit, she had far more vigor than we younger generations did.

After hearing that citation, Aunt Lu started shouting the very next day that she was going to change her name, and demanded that all her old friends call her “Lu Thirty.”

For a time, it became a running joke.

Their story sounds full of youthful spirit, and when people tell it, it overflows with laughter.

But how could anything ever have been that easy?

I was born in the 1930s of the last century. At the time, the country was already battered by storms and on the verge of breaking apart.

I was still too young to remember clearly, but I vaguely recall one day when the house suddenly descended into chaos, everyone saying, “The war’s begun.”

After that, my next impression is of traveling a very long way by car and by boat.

I spent my childhood in Spring City².

Aside from eating, sleeping, and playing, the thing I learned before reading and writing was how to run for air raid alarms³.

At the time, I did not feel especially frightened. I only thought it was fun.

Though I also felt a little lonely.

Because of their work, Mother and Aunt Lu had to move west with the school. I was still little, so I went with Mother.

My eldest sister had always been clever. Though she was still underage then, she had already finished her studies early and begun helping Father with his work.

My second brother also wanted to stay in Shanghai, but after Father sternly forbade it, he was forced to retreat inland with what Father called the “women and children.”

My second brother was much older than I was, and with all the resentment in his heart, he did not play with me.

So I played by myself, or wandered into whatever classroom happened to be nearby to listen to lectures.

The professors all knew me, and since I was short, it was easy for me to slip along the wall unnoticed.

Whenever I entered a classroom, they would at most lift their eyes and glance at me, but they never drove me out. Because of that, I ended up learning a great deal of miscellaneous and impractical knowledge in no systematic way at all.

Back then, I was carefree.

It was only later, when I grew older and listened to my family talk about those years, that I learned what things had truly been like at home.

There was no need to mention my second brother’s resentment.

After Shanghai fell, many of Fenglong’s factories were seized by the invaders.

And yet Father and my eldest sister were still out there, hurrying from place to place, gathering food and clothing to send to the front lines.

With the family scattered apart, Mother’s heart hung in suspense every single day.

My second brother told me later that back then, just like Mother, he waited every day for letters and telegrams, yet was also afraid to receive them.

By the time I was old enough to understand that sentence, the situation had already settled down.

Father would laugh at me and say I was a fool with good fortune.

My second brother’s resentment did not last forever.

One year, my eldest sister came to Spring City and brought me all sorts of things.

I was overjoyed.

She spoke with my second brother.

Seeing that I was still little, she did not even bother to avoid speaking in front of me.

My eldest sister told my second brother that helping Father did not necessarily mean staying by his side. Fenglong had factories in the southwest region as well, and at the time those factories were operating well.

From then on, besides studying, my second brother started visiting the factories and apprenticing in our family’s own plants.

Within just a couple of years, the managers at those factories stopped calling him “Second Young Master” and began calling him “Young Boss.”

And I was still the “Third Miss” who got stuffed with candy every time she met one of the managers.

The “Young Boss,” who “had his father’s style,” did not lose himself in all the praise. Instead, he became even more cautious in the way he handled things.

Under his management, not only did those factories avoid a wartime decline in output, their production actually increased.

They not only provided jobs for many people, but also served as rear support for Father and my eldest sister.

Even Father, when he saw him, was full of praise and excitement.

But I once heard my second brother say that whenever he thought of how, at the height of Fenglong Industrial’s prosperity, our parents had chosen not to expand the output of their existing factories, but instead used cash flow to build plants inland when no one thought it was a good idea, he could not summon even the slightest sense of pride in himself.

He said he had merely stood on our parents’ shoulders, while their vision and breadth of mind were beyond anything he could match.

Now, those people who once mocked Fenglong for building factories inland have all regretted it bitterly.

And the few who followed suit may even have been able to rise again because of those very factories.

That was proof enough of how important my parents’ decision had been.

I did not agree with my second brother’s excessive modesty.

Did he really not know how capable he was?

Once, during an evening of fireside talk, Father praised my eldest sister for her intelligence and compassion, judged my second brother to be decisive and cunning, and when it came to me, he only patted my head and said that I had been wronged.

I had not lived through the best years of our family.

Everyone in the family was good to me in every way they could, especially my eldest sister and my second brother.

It was just that they did not have much time to spend with me either.

After the founding of the nation, my eldest sister threw herself into politics and rose smoothly all the way upward. Before retiring, she had served as the Vice President of the country.

My second brother took over the operations of Fenglong Industries, and during the civil war, the Nationalist government demanded that every family donate supplies to fund the military.

Because Fenglong Industries had many factories inland, it managed to preserve more of its assets than most during the War of Resistance.

After receiving the government order, we donated a sum in the millions as well.

But the person in charge was not satisfied. Both openly and behind the scenes, he repeatedly hinted that Father should make a “second donation” and a “third donation.”

And he kept making trouble for Fenglong Industries.

Father appeared patient and deferential on the surface, but in truth he was thoroughly fed up.

Not long after that, my second brother was kidnapped.

The police classified the case as “the work of roaming bandits,” but in reality, everyone knew it had been done by the secret police⁴.

That kind of behavior was chilling.

They thought they could force Father into submission that way, but what happened instead?

Father directly sent a very large shipment of valuables to Yan’an⁵.

People on the Yan’an side arranged for the matter to be resolved.

My second brother suffered a bit, but fortunately, when he returned, he was still whole and unharmed.

Only after that, he became even harsher and more ruthless.

I did not know much, only that almost none of the people involved in that case met a good end.

It was also then that I learned where my family’s true political leanings lay. I also learned that over the years, we had given the other side a great deal of economic convenience and support.

After the founding of the nation, Fenglong took the initiative to cooperate with the restructuring of private enterprise, transforming Fenglong Industries into a public-private joint enterprise⁶, and eventually into a state-owned one.

My second brother personally took part in and led all of this.

To use Aunt Lu’s words,

this was the trend of the times, and following that trend was the right path.

The Song Family had always walked the road of moving with the current.

After the factories became state-owned, my second brother still did not slow down, and continued to take part in management.

As for my eldest sister, she was even busier.

In those years, everyone in the country was busy.

By the year of nationalization, my eldest sister had already become the deputy mayor of a directly governed municipality.

Father and Mother each had their own things to do as well.

In the whole family, I was the only one with any real leisure.

I drifted through my days at university.

Those studies were not difficult for me.

So I found myself a side occupation.

Dating.

The person I dated was Aunt Lu’s child.

Her and Uncle Yuan Zhong’s youngest son.

Yuan Lang.

Influenced by Aunt Lu, Yuan Lang liked machinery.

He did not like to talk, but he could make all kinds of little toys to amuse me.

I did not like talking either.

Probably because we had played together since childhood, I preferred writing.

When I wrote, he would sit beside me making his little gadgets.

Neither of us found it boring. It was very nice.

I published a few stories, and the response was excellent.

So I kept writing.

Aunt Lu greatly admired my writing, but she told me not to write stories, essays, or poetry anymore.

If I did write them, then I was to hide them away in a trunk, not let anyone see them, and certainly not publish them.

Father and Mother both told me to listen to Aunt Lu.

I am someone who takes advice easily.

I never stopped writing, but I had no readers.

I wanted to show my work to Yuan Lang.

But not long after we married, that fellow was conscripted.

He vanished without a single word.

I held my newly rounded belly and sighed.

My child had no better luck than I did. From the very beginning, they would have to face life with their parents apart.

Everyone looked at me with sympathy. Aunt Lu… oh, by then I should have been calling her Mother. Mother vaguely mentioned a few things to me, truly vaguely, and she spoke with extreme secrecy.

I scratched my belly and thought about it for several days. Putting my writer’s imagination fully to use, I guessed that he had probably entered some kind of secret research project.

Fine, then.

He could do his research, and I would do mine.

I stayed on at a university to teach and carried out some historical research.

Writing of that sort could always be published.

Mother was always right. Not long after I hid away my real work, one wave of writers after another fell.

In writings like historical research, there were always fewer “mistakes” one could make.

Doing research and raising a child made the days pass quickly.

It was only three years after Yuan Lang left home that he came back for the first time.

Very good. The moment he came through the door, I tossed him a child with the surname He.

Yes, He.

One parent had the surname Song, and the other had the surname Yuan, yet the child had the surname He. That did seem a little strange.

But this was one small wish of Mother’s.

Originally, among the three siblings, one of us should have carried the surname He as well.

According to the agreement between Father and my maternal grandfather, my parents’ first child, whether boy or girl, had to take the surname Song, while any children after that could take the surname He.

But when it came time to name my second brother and me, Father felt that if the two of us had the surname He, our names would not match neatly with our eldest sister’s.

So in the end, all the children took the surname Song.

Father said his surname had never brought him any honor, and there was no need for him to carry it on.

But Mother’s thought was different. She wanted to find someone in the family who shared his surname, to give him a little closeness.

I could understand Mother’s thinking.

My eldest sister devoted herself to her career and never married.

So there was no need to mention children.

My second brother did get married, but he probably did not know Mother’s wish, so all his children were surnamed Song.

When it came to me, there was finally a chance.

By the time the child’s father met the child for the first time, the child was already over two years old. He had neither the chance nor the standing to object.

Mother and Father both agreed as well.

Mother especially. For some reason, when she heard I was going to give the child the surname He, she was thrilled.

“My grandson has the same surname as He Dusheng…”

Father’s face darkened on the spot.

That really did sound ambiguous, but Mother had one of these odd episodes every so often, and the family was used to it.

Father only darkened his face. He did not object.

He never objected to anything Mother said.

Yuan Lang did not object either.

He was already a man of few words, and he had inherited his father’s fine tradition.

After coming home, aside from scrambling to do chores and look after the child, the sentence he repeated most was: Whatever you decide is fine, I have no objections.

That was not bad either.

Before the child started elementary school, Yuan Lang and I spent more time apart than together.

Life was hard, but not unbearable.

Looking back now, all I can vaguely remember is a world washed in dull gray.

After that period, an elder made a major decision, and the world began changing with each passing day.

My second brother was reinstated, and his former leader received him personally.

He instructed him to establish a trust and investment enterprise, to send out a signal of opening up to the outside world, and to lead the tide of reform.

By then, Second Brother was past fifty.

Both our parents were still alive, already well into their eighties.

Father was deeply moved. He had never expected the Song enterprise to have a chance to rise again.

After nearly half a century, the Song Family appeared before the world once more.

Now that the company was being reestablished, it naturally could no longer use Fenglong as its name. That belonged to the old capital, even if that capital had helped lift up a new era.

In the end, the newly founded company was given no flashy name at all. It was simply called Huaxun.

The Songs had been like a boat, once riding the tides of the age aboard a giant ship, then vanishing into those same tides.

At last, with a new face, it set sail again.

From then on, Huaxun flourished everywhere.

The manuscripts I had kept boxed away for years were sorted out and published one after another.

Those writings, marked so strongly by their era, together with my background and identity, made them warmly received.

Through the Song Family line, our descendants were not especially numerous.

But fortunately, there were no wastrels among them. Each had their own strengths.

Even if they lacked the legendary ability of the older generation, they still had skills of their own. Even without the family legacy, they could have supported themselves.

At fifty-five, I finished a long novel modeled on the Song Family, Mama Lu Zhu, and Dad Yuan Zhong.

At sixty, that novel was adapted into a television drama.

Because of certain access privileges, our family was allowed to preview it before it aired.

By then, Mother and Father were both very old. Still, they were in good spirits and perfectly clear-headed.

That day, the whole family was together for once, gathered around to watch the drama.

The first episode was about Father running the streets, while Mother was still a sheltered young lady who knew nothing of the world.

At the end, Father went to the Song Family to become an apprentice, met Mother, and fell in love at first sight.

Then Mother laughed, and kept laughing.

Father could only smile helplessly.

I didn’t understand what Mother found so funny. The two actors had both the looks and the skill for their roles, and did nothing to diminish the elegance our parents had possessed in their youth.

Only after she finished laughing did Mother wipe the tears from her eyes and say, “It’s only their first meeting, and the way that actor playing Dusheng looks at me is way too obvious, isn’t it? Your father never looked at me like that back then. He would only hide his feelings carefully and then quietly do things for me. Besides, how is that actor anywhere near as handsome as your father was when he was young?”

Father was laughing too hard to hold it back. He took Mother’s wrinkled hand in his and said, “Xiange, that’s what I wanted to say too. How is that actress anywhere near as beautiful as you were when you were young? Even in a qipao, she only has thirty percent of your charm.”

Mama Lu Zhu strongly agreed with that.

Of course, those words could not be said to the production team.

After finishing the preview, all I said was that everything was fine.

Father and Mother only watched that first episode and did not watch any more after that.

Even though they had watched it just for fun, the show became very popular when it aired.

But the two of them cared nothing for that.

In their nineties, they suddenly had the idea of going back to see their old house.

As a former residence, Song Mansion had long since been converted into a museum.

Even the family members had to buy tickets to go in.

In truth, aside from the general layout of the rooms, the inside no longer looked as it had back then. Many of the furnishings had been added later.

The two old people insisted on going, and they did not alert anyone else. The younger generation in the family simply accompanied them.

Unexpectedly, though, the museum had an age restriction for visitors. The two of them were stopped at the entrance.

There was no helping it. We had to find someone.

In the end, it still caused a stir.

Several leaders, of unclear department and title, came over and personally supported them through the tour.

I went along as well.

I do not have many memories of that house.

But Father and Mother missed it greatly, and the flowers and plants in the courtyard were still there.

Of course, they had been replanted according to Father’s memoir.

In the courtyard, the big tree that had once held the swing still stood there, over a hundred years old and still lush and full.

The swing was still there too. One look at the material and color made it obvious that it was newly made.

It was there for tourists to take pictures with.

Father stood in front of the swing.

He murmured to Mother, “The young fellow who tied this up doesn’t know what he’s doing. This knot is wrong. If someone swings too high with it tied like this, it’ll come apart easily. How could I possibly have let you use something so unsafe?”

Of course, they thought they were murmuring. At their age, neither of them had very good hearing anymore, so they always spoke loudly.

Naturally, no one would be so tactless as to point that out.

As for the leaders who had come to accompany us, they were already wiping sweat from their foreheads after hearing that.

After leaving the museum, the two old people refused to ride in the car and insisted on taking a walk hand in hand.

Two stooped figures, shuffling along on six legs⁷, moved down a street they had once measured with their footsteps countless times.

It was April then.

The plane trees along both sides of the street were covered in fresh new buds.

They walked from one end of the street to the other, crossing through an entire era.

Not long after that, on an ordinary morning, Father came out of the room and told us in a flat tone that Mother had passed away in her sleep.

We had been mentally prepared, but the force of that grief still struck us senseless.

Before we could let the tears pour out, we were more worried about Father.

When we went into the bedroom to look, Mother’s body had already been cleaned, and she had been dressed in the qipao prepared in advance.

Her hair was neat, and she had even had her brows drawn and lipstick applied.

I do not know how Father managed to do all of that by himself.

After notifying everyone, he showed no visible grief and looked no different from usual. He even washed up and ate breakfast as normal.

What he ate was the Gorgon Fruit Cake Mother had whimsically directed the children and grandchildren to make the day before.

All her life, that was the only thing Mother knew how to make.

Father and Eldest Sister loved it very much.

Second Brother and I did not actually like it, but we always ate some with them anyway.

Gorgon Fruit Cake was hard to digest, so Mother normally allowed Father only a small piece to satisfy the taste.

Today, Father sat alone at the dining table and slowly finished one whole cake.

Then, just as usual, he went to tease the birds and water the flowers Mother had grown.

When the coffin was brought into the house, he only watched from a distance as Mother was laid inside. He did not go near.

The children and grandchildren all rushed back. Father looked at each one in turn, patting heads and shoulders, but said very little.

He kept that smile on his face the whole time.

The entire room was filled with sobbing. Eldest Sister cried out loud and dropped to her knees in front of him. “Dad, don’t scare me.”

Father’s expression did not change.

Still smiling, he reached out and stroked Eldest Sister’s head, as though he were soothing a baby in swaddling clothes.

“Cry if you need to. But after this, no more crying. Xian’ge and I want you to be happy.”

“Dad, I’m here. You still have me. You still have all of us.”

Father once again reached out and stroked the heads of the three of us siblings. Then he urged us, “Go on, get busy. There are probably a lot of people coming up front.”

No one moved.

Supporting himself with his cane, Father stood up.

“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep for a while.”

Father went back to his room.

A while later, I quietly went to check on him.

The room wasn’t locked.

Father lay quietly on the bed.

With just one look, tears rolled from my dried-up eyes again before I could stop them.

Father was wearing a frost-white long robe, without a single wrinkle on it.

It was Mother’s favorite color and style. She had said more than once that Father looked best in that outfit.

That was why, in the TV dramas, the male lead’s costumes were most often frost-white long robes in all kinds of fabrics and styles.

When Second Brother saw that I wasn’t coming out for a long time, he came in and walked to the bedside. I could feel how tense he was.

He did what I didn’t dare do.

He checked Father’s breathing and pulse.

Then he dropped to his knees.

Two glistening lines fell soundlessly and struck the floorboards.

Father was gone.

He had gone to follow Mother.

Less than twenty-four hours after she left.

He left behind only two sentences.

They were written on the note by his bedside.

And in truth, those two lines were not really meant to be left for us.

They were the last love words he wrote to Mother.

[To leave after you has always been my final wish. That way, you would not have to bear all that panic and grief.]

[But I can’t leave too slowly either. You’re going alone to an unfamiliar place, and I can’t stop worrying about you.]

—-End—–

Translator’s Notes