July 15, 1980. Tuesday. 11:30 a.m. Temperature 23°C. Humidity 85%. Cloudy turning clear, with brief showers.
He and Yi Ying stood at the Haigeng ferry landing of the Kunming Water Transport Company, waiting for the ferry from Zhuantang that would take them to Kunyang.
He was eighteen that year. Yi Ying nineteen.
Yi Ying had a small round face and short hair. She wore a pale red blouse and blue trousers. In her hands she carried a bag and a small basket.
He looked like a student—fair-skinned, dressed in a light imitation-linen shirt and trousers, with a canvas shoulder bag slung across his chest. Inside were a geology textbook and a small Shanghai-brand transistor radio.
His father had come to see them off. He stood by the edge of the canal beside the landing, lifting his head toward the north, looking in the direction of Daguan.
The air carried the earthy smell of the lake’s shallow water, the scent of wet reeds from the Haigeng marsh, the heavy dampness of Kunming in July, and the faint odor of water hyacinth drifting from the Daguan canal. Across the water, the peaks of the Western Hills were wrapped in thick cloud and mist.
It was the first summer vacation since he had entered university.
His school was in Beijing. The term had ended on July 11. He had spent three days on the train and arrived in Kunming only the day before.
Yi Ying was the daughter of a friend of his father. She too was returning to Kunyang today. She had not gone to university; she was going back to work in Kunyang on the south shore of the lake.
“The ferry’s here!” his father called.
He hurried back from the narrow wooden landing ramp to the embankment.
He and Yi Ying turned toward the north along the canal. In the distance a steel-hulled boat was approaching slowly down the channel.
There were several other passengers waiting. They wore felt hats and dark blue jackets, carrying bamboo baskets filled with vegetables. Some baskets held live chickens, their legs tied with thin string.
Soon the ferry reached the landing. It stopped to take passengers aboard. The diesel engine kept chugging steadily, and the air filled with the strong smell of fuel.
Before he boarded, his father gave him a few reminders about being careful on the journey.
“Dad, I’m not a middle-schooler anymore, I’ll take care of myself,” he replied in Mandarin, and, after a moment’s hesitation he gestured toward Yi Ying. “I’ll take care of her too.”
Since leaving for university the previous autumn, until seeing his father yesterday and Yi Ying again this morning, he had been speaking Mandarin. On the ferry he continued to do the same.
Why Yi Ying happened to be there that morning, returning to Kunyang with him, he could not quite say.
He knew that Yi Ying’s father and his father had been colleagues for many years. Starting in their final year of middle school, her father would occasionally visit their home and sometimes bring Yi Ying along.
His study desk stood in the outer room, always piled high with books.
When Yi Ying entered with her father, she would follow quietly behind him, passing beside the desk and walking toward the inner room. His eyes remained on his books, but he knew that when she passed by, her face would redden. Her eyes stayed lowered, never looking to either side. Her arms hung close to her body, slightly raised in front of her, as if by holding herself that way she could make herself smaller, less noticeable.
Why she walked that way, as if shrinking herself, he never understood.
They had not attended the same high school. The last time he had seen her was when they graduated from middle school.
Now he was a university student—Beijing Institute of Geology. He carried himself like a serious scholar, his face rarely smiling.
Yi Ying looked at him with a certain awe and did not dare speak much.
Standing beside him, she wore an awkward smile, and, as before, her body was slightly bent forward, as if trying not to draw attention to herself.
When the ferry left Haigeng and entered the open lake, the water was calm, almost without waves. Where the shoreline met the land, mist still lingered. The tall Western Hills appeared faint and indistinct.
Many passengers were aboard. Their baskets lay on the floor, chickens clucking occasionally but otherwise quiet. He and Yi Ying sat opposite each other.
The ferry had been underway for quite some time, yet they had scarcely spoken.
Yi Ying sat with her knees together, head lowered, looking at her shoes.
Sometime after noon, as the ferry passed Hui Bay, Yi Ying carefully opened her bag and took out an enamel mug with a lid. She set it on her knees and left it there for a long while without doing anything.
After a while she lifted the lid slightly, glanced at him timidly, and asked softly,
“I brought some bayberries… do you want some?”
The mug was nearly full of them—dark red Chinese bayberries that grew around the lake, so fresh they seemed still wet with dew.
In the past he would have found them irresistible.
But today, at that moment, he hesitated.
Only for an instant.
In the end his hand reached out and he took one from the mug.
Yi Ying noticed that brief hesitation. She lowered her eyes for a moment without speaking. Then she picked up a berry herself and bit into it absently.
Around two o’clock, as the ferry neared Guanyin Hill, something remarkable happened on the lake.
The breeze suddenly strengthened. Even inside the cabin one could feel it.
The lake surface, which had held only scattered ripples, gradually turned into a world of white waves. The crests looked like freshly plowed fields—row after row—each long white line stretching from south to north across the whole of Dianchi.
Farther away, where water met the distant mountains, the air shimmered and danced, creating a mirage. The mountains around the lake seemed suddenly to rise and float in midair.
He noticed these changes and grew excited.
The young man who had been sitting quietly suddenly stood up.
“Yi Ying!” he tugged her sleeve. “Come on—let’s go up top!”
Before she had finished chewing her berries he was already leading her toward the ladder at the end of the cabin.
On the observation deck the wind was strong. Somehow the sun had come out.
The ferry was now in the middle of Dianchi. Looking around, one saw nothing but endless white waves flashing in the sunlight. Along the distant shores mountains layered one behind another in deep green. Turning back toward the Western Mountains they had passed earlier, the peaks now appeared sharp and close at hand.
“Yi Ying,” he said excitedly, raising his voice without noticing it. “We just studied this at school this semester. I know why Dianchi looks like this in the afternoon. Remember how this morning there was fog along the mountains? You couldn’t even see the Western Mountains, and the lake was calm. But now look!”
He swept his arm in a great circle over the lake.
Yi Ying stood beside him, eyes wide, watching him. His excitement infected her, and she too felt stirred. Yet there was confusion on her face.
A moment ago he had refused her yangmei because it seemed improper to eat in front of the other passengers. And now, suddenly, every word from his mouth had turned into the Kunyang dialect again. The Mandarin he had brought back from the capital was gone.
Whatever the reason, she felt only a quiet happiness rising in her chest, as if tears might come at any moment.
She liked listening to him talk. She liked the way he looked at her directly when he spoke her name.
They had been classmates from primary school through middle school. In third and fourth grade they had even shared the same desk.
His family background had once prevented him from joining the Young Pioneers. When he was finally admitted, the next day he should have worn the red scarf like everyone else. Instead he secretly took it from his schoolbag and unfolded it inside his desk, feeling it with his hands.
Those desks had no drawers, only open compartments on both sides.
She knew the hand hidden inside their desk was touching the red scarf. She knew he was hesitating, unable to gather the courage to tie it around his neck.
She pretended not to notice, so he would not feel embarrassed.
“Dianchi is shaped like a long narrow leaf,” he said, forming the outline of a leaf with his hands. “One end of the leaf is our hometown Kunyang, down on the south shore. The other end is Kunming, on the north shore. Before noon the lake is calm because the temperature of the water and the land are almost the same. After noon the land heats up faster. The lake stays cooler. The air moves—so the wind comes. That’s why Dianchi always gets a southwest wind in the afternoon. It never blows the other way.”
“So that’s it,” Yi Ying said. “All my life I’ve heard people in Kunyang say our town sits upwind and upstream—that all the dirty things get blown toward Kunming.”
“See those mountains along the shore?” he continued. “Don’t they look like they’re floating?”
Yi Ying turned slowly and looked.
“They really do!” She exclaimed.
“That’s because the lake surface warms up and the air above it starts moving. With sunlight bending through the air, your eyes see a kind of illusion—like the mountains are hanging in midair.”
As he spoke, several birds followed behind the ferry, crying loudly as they swooped and wheeled. The same gulls that could be seen in Kunming—at Green Lake, Desheng Bridge, and Daguan Pavilion.
The wind on the deck was strong and the sun came and went behind the monsoon clouds of July, so they eventually returned to the cabin.
“Where are those yangmei of yours?” he asked after sitting down. “Give me a few more.”
Haikou was the last stop before Kunyang.
After the ferry left Haikou, only a few passengers remained aboard.
He took the small Shanghai transistor radio from his shoulder bag and tried to tune in one of the stations he usually listened to, but the signals were weak. Only Yunnan Radio came through clearly.
It was the request-music hour.
He turned the radio on and let it play on his lap.
Before long the shoreline of Kunyang came into view.
He and Yi Ying stood and walked to the rail. They stood on the starboard side, facing west. Endless rice fields stretched toward the mountains. The slanting evening sun hung above the summit of Big Old Mountain.
“What are you planning to do this vacation?” Yi Ying asked.
“I feel like there are so many things I want to do,” he said after a moment. “But right now I’m not sure what.”
“If you’ve got time,” she said, “come visit our little factory.”
“All right, Yi Ying.”
Just then the radio began playing Little River Flows:
“The moon rises bright and clear…
Down the mountain the little river flows…”
What a pure, beautiful song.
“How come I’ve never heard this before?” he said, turning toward Yi Ying.
She was looking up at him, her eyes moist.
He looked at her for a long moment, then turned away again. In his heart he almost wanted to sing along with the broadcast:
The little river flows… softly, softly.
Just then they heard someone on shore calling out:
“The ferry’s here!”
Yego’s Chronicles 