“Enough already! Stop annoying me,” Zhuang roared as he pounded the sofa. “Are you giving me advice or handing me a rope to hang myself?”
Niu Yueqing was stunned into silence. She and Liu Yue went into the kitchen to make spicy ramen, her husband’s favorite.
. . .
An aspiring young writer had recently made his appearance in Xiliu Lane near the city’s north gate. Looking old for his age, he worked in a factory electrical room. His shift gave him a day off every three days, enough time to run a small business had he wanted to. But he wanted only to write. Few people in Xijing outside Xiliu Lane had heard of him, however, since he had published very little, even though he had used more than a dozen pennames, for all of which he’d had seals carved from Lantian jade by artisans. When his neighbors walked by his window and saw him writing, coughing from his low-quality cigarettes, they mocked him as a typical writer. A few years earlier, he had visited Zhuang, who had recommended his work to the editor at the city paper, an acquaintance of Zhuang’s. Two of the young man’s short stories were published. He went to see Zhuang every couple of weeks, either to pay his respects or to talk, but he was embarrassed to keep going after nothing more of his was published. Over the past two years, a bookseller had been asking him to write something with plenty of sex and violence, and he had written two stories purely for money, the payment for which totaled several hundred yuan. Feeling that he had shamefully compromised himself, he felt even less worthy to pay Zhuang a visit. Later, a relative came in from the countryside to look for work in the city, and spent the night at the writer’s house. Once there, he rode a three-wheeler to Jixiang Village on the south side, where he bought a load of fresh vegetables from a wholesaler and hawked them in the city. He earned at least thirty yuan a day. Seeing how tough life was for the writer, he tried to get the young man to join in, but the writer begged off. After making enough money and several friends, the relative moved into a house on North Ring Road. He continued to sell his goods in the daytime and played cards and drank with his friends at night; soon he had enough money to bring his family in from the countryside. The writer’s wife was so envious of their lifestyle that she constantly berated her husband for his lack of prospects. One day the relative came to see the writer while his wife was haranguing him. The visitor mentioned a government-owned steamed bun shop on North Ring Road; it had been contracted out to someone who had just quit and left the spot vacant. He asked whether the writer was interested. “If you are, I’ll have my wife help you out, and we can consider it a partnership. It looks to be a profitable enterprise. The previous proprietor steamed fifteen hundred catties of buns a day, but we won’t do that much. We can steam between eight hundred and a thousand, enough for us each to net about a thousand a month.”
“I’ll do it,” the writer said. “She nags me so much I can’t write anything at home anyway, but I’ve never steamed a bun before.”
“The place already has a license, and this sort of business requires no connections at government offices. We’ll just sell the buns until we run out. You can continue your shifts at the factory every other night, and my wife and I will steam the buns; you don’t need to know how to do the work. All you have to do is be there.”
So the writer took his bedding to the shop to make it easier to travel between there and the factory, which meant he could stay away from home for ten days in a row.
His change of heart elated his wife, who eagerly hoped he would give up writing so they could have a normal marriage. To her surprise, he came home on the eleventh day riding a three-wheeler loaded with his bedding and four sacks filled with steamed buns.
“We lost money,” he said.
“How is that possible?” she asked. “Everyone else does fine, why can’t we?”
“When you’re born to do something, you can’t change your destiny. You complained when I wrote, but look what we got for five hundred yuan — four bags of steamed buns after ten days of hard work.”
He hadn’t known until he arrived at North Ring Road that his relative had rented a place in a horse-and-wagon shop compound. Vegetable vendors and colliers from the countryside occupied the row of dilapidated buildings; the steamed bun shop was located across from the horse-and-wagon shop. On the day they opened, they used eight hundred catties of flour to steam the buns, which turned out yellow and too hard, because they had used too much baking soda. The vendors refused to buy them, as did the neighborhood residents. When they tried again, using only five hundred catties of flour, they ended up with buns that were still not white enough and were hard as rocks. Why did the same kind and amount of flour produce white, spongy buns at other shops? They went to ask a cook, who revealed the many secrets behind steaming buns, which included adding yeast, powdered laundry detergent, and chemical fertilizer, after which the buns were smoked with sulfur. But he refused to say how much of the extra ingredients to add, and how and for how long to smoke the buns. Though the writer sneaked over to other shops to watch how it was done, when he returned to try a third time, his relative’s wife complained that they would have to sell off what they had already produced in four days or they would lose their investment. Besides, who could be sure that the third time would work? So they went around hawking the buns, but with minimal results. Only the colliers and vegetable vendors bought their buns, and they could only consume so many. The writer suggested that they sell them to a pig farm at twenty fen a cattie, but the relative’s wife could not bear to do that. “If that’s what you want to do, count me out,” she said tearfully. “We’ll split them. I’ll take my share back to the countryside to dry them in the sun and eat over time.” So the young man put in a second five hundred yuan and received four sacks of steamed buns in return. Naturally, that subjected him to another tongue-lashing from his wife, but in the end, they still had to deal with the buns.
“The buns taste all right, even though they don’t look so good,” she said. “It would be a shame to sell them to a pig farm, but how will the three of us finish them on our own? Why don’t we give them to friends and family in exchange for some goodwill? You have your mentors and friends, like Mr. Pang at the city paper and that Zhuang Zhidie.”
“You want me to give these worthless things to Mr. Zhuang?” he grumbled, but he was reminded of Ruan Zhifei, who, as he knew, was having a dormitory renovated for his band. He could sell the buns cheaply to the migrant workers at the job site. So he went off to see Ruan, but to his disappointment, the construction was finished and the workers had left. Feeling sorry for the man, Ruan called up some people he knew to see if the kitchens at their workplaces could buy some. At one point, he reached Niu Yueqing at work. She had been trying to find a way to cheer her husband up when the call came. Feeling genuinely sorry for Zhuang’s mentee, she said to Ruan, “All those people who dream about becoming a writer can’t live a normal life. Tell him to come see me this afternoon. I’m afraid our kitchen won’t buy the buns, but I’ll take them all. You don’t have to say what I’d do with them; just tell him our kitchen bought them.”
“You put me to shame with your compassion and generosity,” Ruan said.
“You don’t have to do anything for him, since he’s just an acquaintance. But Zhidie has been his mentor.”
“What has Zhidie been writing lately? He hardly leaves home, as if he’s on a spiritual quest. When will he consider stopping? Won’t you let him come enjoy the entertainment here? I have a favor to ask him.”
“Sure. Come over and invite him to the show. He’s been in a bad mood lately, and nothing pleases him at home. Some entertainment with an old friend might cheer him up.”