Old Events

In Gao Yan’s first year of high school, Gao Cheng and Yan Yuhua got divorced. The reason was the same as always: Gao Cheng brought a mistress home.

This was not the first time. Since Gao Yan could remember, Gao Cheng never stopped meeting women outside. The difference was that some women knew their place, while others were greedy.

Gao Lan, Gao Yan’s older sister, grew up in an environment like this and was proficient in carrying out investigations like a detective. She would pretend to buy milk and deliver newspapers to chat with the neighbors. She would talk to people who knew the mistress well and ask about some gossip. She would also bribe Gao Cheng’s drivers for information…

Any woman in F City who was having an affair with Gao Cheng was known by Gao Lan. All information about her would be found out by Gao Lan within a month.

But what was the use of it? Yan Yuhua didn’t care at all.

Before Yan Yuhua was diagnosed with cancer, she was a powerful woman with no weaknesses at all. As long as Gao Cheng didn’t cause trouble for her in business, she didn’t care if there were women outside or how many there were.

As long as the mistress didn’t provoke her by visiting her, she could still calmly smile at other people.

Gao Cheng complained about Yan Yuhua countless times when he was drunk, saying that she was just an empty pillow that looked beautiful and soft outside, but actually didn’t give him any warmth at all.

Whenever this happened, Yan Yuhua sneered, “Your mistresses are so nice, so why don’t you go find them?”

Gao Cheng would suddenly stop speaking.

Yes, unlike what others thought, it was Yan Yuhua who has always wanted a divorce from the Gao family, while it was Gao Cheng who was against it.

There were many mistresses outside, but Gao Cheng never considered divorce. It seemed like as long as Yan Yuhua was there, he would be a successful man in both career and family. Meanwhile, the mistresses could change to different ones.

Between these two, one focused on business without distractions, and the other spent ten years indulging in sowing his oats.

Did Gao Yan sometimes doubt that they had really loved each other once?

Without loving each other, how did they survive those difficult times and support each other for the business?

If they fell in love, how did it develop into a situation where they were contemptuous of each other, fed up with each other, and mock each other while under the same roof?

In short, home was not a warm place, school was okay, and holidays were simply a disastrous period of time.

Gao Lan had to come back home then.

She would nicely discuss the incompatibility between their parents. As a sister, she needed to give him more warmth—but truthfully she had learned to slaughter dragons1. She suffered from an extremely filial husband. Even if she had her own family to take care of, she made the extra effort to still investigate Gao Cheng’s mistresses and took the chance to share the results with him.

When Gao Lan came, Chen Yilin must follow.

He grew up in a strong family of women. He learned to be very cute, and was polite and sensible like a girl.

However, his shortcomings were also being cute, charming, and timid in everything he did. He totally lacked the toughness of being a boy. In addition, he also inherited his mother’s gossiping tendencies, and liked to stick to people—Gao Yan would feel tired every time he was around him.

In addition to Gao Lan and Chen Yilin, the grandparents also came. They would talk about how crucial high school was. Thhey were afraid that Gao Yan might be going through a difficult time, which would then affect his college entrance exams.

During this period of time, there would be more fights between Gao Cheng and Yan Yuhua. It could also be a fight about Gao Cheng’s mistress visiting often.

The level of dog blood was almost comparable to a TV drama. Just thinking about it was enough to give anyone a headache.

During the holidays, if Gao Yan could stay with a friend, he would. If he could not, he used studying as an excuse to hide in school and he would enjoy the peace and quiet.

There was a lotus pond outside the school library, and a pavilion next to it. It was a pretty quiet place hidden from view under the lush green plants in summer.

One day, Gao Yan watched another big drama unfold at home and he fled to school out of annoyance. Seeing no one around the pavilion, he laid there and slept all afternoon.

When he woke up, he heard someone studying by the lake.

That person was Yu Huan.

Gao Yan had seen her at the math teacher’s office. She was a thin and weak girl, but she was particularly good at math. Sometimes the math teacher had a brain fart and couldn’t solve the problem, so he would ask Yu Huan to do it first.

Gao Yan had also seen her help the math teacher grade homework. The math teacher kept nagging her to work harder because the school scholarship was only awarded to the top eight students in the grade. Yu Huan was unfortunately in ninth place.

Perhaps it was her misfortune that left a deep impression on him. He stood at the door and immediately remembered her name.

When Gao Yan came across Yu Huan by the lotus pond, she was sitting on a stone beside the pond, holding a sheet of English articles in her hand.

The teacher said that her poor English was the reason for not getting a scholarship. She struggled with English.

Her English pronunciation was slightly not correct and her accent was also strong, but she was fully immersed in studying.

Gao Yan sat in the pavilion with a curious presence. He silently listened to her read a few articles. He didn’t feel uncomfortable, but felt an unexplainable sense of joy.

It was like listening to a comedy sketch.

The things that bothered him also temporarily disappeared from his mind.

Gao Yan later liked to go to the pavilion when he had nothing to do.

Yu Huan’s English was stiff and awkward from the beginning, and completely funny. Later, with her intentional corrections, she had a standard accent and was fluent.

Regardless of that, it made him temporarily forget his anxieties and worries.

He had listened to her so much that he gradually took a liking to her. It was like she was a friend he had known for a long time.

Especially after the rainstorm when he sent her home. He learned from the math teacher that she was staying with her uncle, who had two children.

He also found someone who stayed at school every weekend like him.

But he never took the initiative to talk to her.

What would they talk about? Despite certain things that overlapped, they were essentially different types of people. Their goals were different, their worries were different.

If he told her about his worries, she might say that he was a full man who doesn’t know the hunger of a hungry man2.

He never thought about crossing the line until the love letter.

The love letter was not signed, but he recognized her handwriting.

He was sure she had written it. It wasn’t just because of her handwriting, he had seen her write it by the pond.

She used a Borges poem.

What can I hold you with?

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

…

Compared to her slightly funny English, her Chinese characters were perfect and flowed with her clear tone. It had a magical power, as if she could instantly bring a person into a certain mood.

On that day, he listened to her read countless love poems and cliches with passion.

Just when he was curious about how someone like her suddenly became smitten with someone—curious about which boy was so amazing that she was using everything to express her love

He received her love letter.

Full poem

What can I hold you with?

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have

honoured in bronze: my father’s father killed in the frontier of

Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead,

wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’s

grandfather—just twentyfour—heading a charge of three hundred

men in Peru, now ghosts on vanished horses.

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness or humour my life.

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams, and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

it means her investigation skills are useless skills she spent a lot of time learning

饱汉不知饿汉饥(bǎo hàn bùzhī è hàn jī) – proverb about how a person in a good situation doesn’t understand the difficult situation of others

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