In 1992, in Tang County, Shanxi Province, at Laoniutou Hill.
Early in the morning, Yan Huanshan left the house and rode his bicycle across most of the county town, delivering gifts to seven or eight “relevant units” of both legitimate and illegitimate nature. He had set up a small coal mine in Guangxi, which was unqualified, incomplete in procedures, and seriously violated regulations. Without private bribes, it would be shut down in no time.
However, the national economy was starting to revive, and the revival was somewhat rapid. Regulations could not keep up, so everything relied on personal connections and relationships.
In one morning, Yan Huanshan gave away twenty or thirty thousand, but he wasn’t distressed at all. Instead, he was delighted: with connections made, the mine’s affairs would be handled smoothly, and his wife, Lin Xirou, was pregnant. They had an ultrasound done, and it was said to be a boy.
It’s a boy, a real heir! The Yan family has a successor!
With success in both his career and family, Yan Huanshan was delighted. On his way back to the mine, he pedaled his bicycle in a swaggering, crooked manner, humming Teresa Teng’s “Sweet Honey” as he went.
Even from a distance, Yan Huanshan saw Lin Xirou standing at the mine entrance, her belly slightly protruding. How could this be? Pregnant women shouldn’t be wandering around!Â
Panicked, Yan Huanshan didn’t even bother to prop up his bike; he simply tossed it aside and strode quickly toward her. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Lin Xirou, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, looked as gentle and pleasant as her name suggested. She lifted the insulated lunch box in her hand. “The food at the mine isn’t good. I made you some pork dumplings.”
Only then did Yan Huanshan realize it was almost lunchtime, and a wave of pride washed over him for having his wife by his side. The bachelors at the mine, or those with wives far away at home, couldn’t enjoy such a warm, loving meal.
He carefully supported Lin Xirou as they walked toward the mine office. “Come, come, walk carefully, slowly,” he said. Lin Xirou laughed, almost out of breath. “I’m barely even here yet, why are you so nervous?”
The office was a bit messy, with various awards like “Top Ten” and “Outstanding” plastered on the walls, all of which Yan Huanshan had earned through his efforts over the past two years.
Lin Xirou glanced at them briefly before averting her eyes. She didn’t particularly like these fake awards, but her friends always praised them, saying they showed a man’s cleverness, intelligence, and adaptability.
When the lunch box was opened, the scent of chives, fresh meat, and aged vinegar filled the air. Yan Huanshan took several deep sniffs, feeling extremely satisfied, and immediately began to eat.
Lin Xirou sat down across the table, took out knitting needles and a ball of yarn from her bag, and started knitting a sweater skillfully. She found something to talk about: “Still haven’t found that Li Ergou?”
Yan Huanshan was eating noisily and replied vaguely, “That bastard… stole the mine’s money and hid far away. Where could we find him?”
Li Ergou’s matter was the only troublesome issue Yan Huanshan had encountered recently.
But he took it lightly, thinking every mine and factory had such scoundrels. Lazy and unproductive, always spreading rumors about ghosts in the mine, severely affecting the workers’ morale. After being harshly reprimanded by Yan, Li Ergou became disgruntled, broke into the finance office at midnight, and made off with nearly ten thousand yuan.
Nearly ten thousand yuan, Yan Huanshan felt a pang just thinking about it.
Lin Xirou said, “Aren’t you going to report it to the police? Letting such a bad person get away is too lenient.”
Yan Huanshan’s reply was even more vague, “Report it? Better to avoid trouble.”
After all, there were too many shady dealings in his mine; he didn’t want to attract police attention. Lin Xirou didn’t say anything more, just lowered her head and knitted a few rows. Occasionally glancing up, she noticed Yan Huanshan had stopped gobbling his food. He was biting his chopsticks, staring out the window.
Following his gaze, she saw a group of workers gathered at the entrance of the pit. Lin Xirou checked the clock on the wall: it was half-past twelve, time for the miners to come up for lunch.
She started a new topic, “What’s the big meat dish at the mine today? Mutton?”
Yan Huanshan murmured, “No, something’s wrong.”
Lin Xirou was stunned and looked out the window again. This time, she noticed something unusual: normally, at mealtime, the workers would rush to the canteen faster than wolves, but now, they were blocking the entrance to the pit in small groups, excitedly shouting about something. If one paid attention, they could see the spit flying, glistening in the sunlight.
Could something have happened?
Miners feared accidents underground the most, and an incident underground was never simple. Yan Huanshan, feeling uneasy, put down his chopsticks, rushed to the door in a few strides, and shouted aggressively from several meters away, “What’s going on? What happened?”
This was his experience from years of dealing with such situations: no matter what happened, even if someone died, he couldn’t show fear or panic. He had to be fierce and assertive to control the situation.
Sure enough, his shout immediately reduced the noise. The team leader, Liu Sanqi, with his coal-black face pale underneath, stammered, “Boss, Boss, Er Gouzi wasn’t lying, there’s a ghost down there.”
No one had died. Yan Huanshan felt a huge weight lift from his heart, and he shouted even more aggressively, “Damn it.”
When Lin Xirou arrived, she heard Yan Huanshan giving a lecture on atheism to the group.
“The books clearly state that there are no ghosts in this world. Er Gouzi is illiterate, but aren’t you guys literate? Where’s the ghost? Bring it out and let me see!”
A young man who had just started working at the mine cautiously explained, “It can’t be summoned in broad daylight. I’ve heard that ghosts turn into water in the sun.”
Oh, now they’re considering the ghost’s comfort?
Yan Huanshan was furious, “You’ve all seen it? Fresh news, what does the ghost look like?”
To his surprise, someone answered.
Mao Wang: “It looked pale and disappeared in a flash.”
Sun Gui: “It made a sound, I heard it humming.”
Han Defu: “I brought down two melons, and both are gone!”
Yan Huanshan said sarcastically, “Even as a ghost, it still thinks about eating melons?”
Lin Xirou had a sudden thought. She tugged at Yan Huanshan’s sleeve and pulled him aside, “Could it be Li Ergou?”
Born in the 1960s, like Yan Huanshan, she had received a solid Marxist education and always scoffed at the idea of ghosts. Hearing about something strange happening in the mine, her first thought was always that it involved a person.
ââLi Ergou had fled in the middle of the night, leaving his clothes behind, reportedly wearing only a white tank top and black shorts. “Pale” could very well refer to the white tank top. In the pitch-black tunnel, the white shirt would be very noticeable.
ââThey hadn’t been able to find Li Ergou anywhere. Could he be hiding in the mine? “Both melons are gone,” with no food underground, he would have to steal.
Yan Huanshan immediately understood and slapped his thigh, “It’s him, no doubt!”
Now that he had a clue, he turned back, even more determined, “Alright, I’ll go down and meet this ‘ghost’ myself.”
Most miners were uneducated and rough, making it hard to explain materialism to them. The most effective way was to prove it by showing the “ghost” to everyone. Unfortunately, no one was willing to go down, even for a twenty-yuan reward. That was fine. Yan Huanshan thought it would be even more impressive to go down alone and drag Li Ergou out himself, showing these miners that the boss was not to be trifled withâestablishing his authority would make issuing orders easier in the future.
He cast a disdainful glance around, “None of you dare, right? Wait here, I’ll bring it out to see the sun.”
Comparisons were odious. Standing among the dejected miners, Yan Huanshan, already tall and imposing, looked even more majestic. Lin Xirou felt a surge of pride, thinking her man was truly impressive. It wasn’t until Yan Huanshan’s figure nearly disappeared at the mine entrance that she remembered to remind him, “Don’t be too heavy-handed.”
Yan Huanshan had once roamed the streets, tough and ruthless, capable of handling two or three strong men. Lin Xirou feared he might lose his temper and seriously injure Li Ergou.
Large and powerful coal mines have elevators for going up and down, and mine carts for moving between tunnels. Yan Huanshanâs mine was small and simplified. At the pit entrance, several sets of simple pulleys were set up, and everyone used bags hung from the pulleys to go up and down.
The so-called “monkey bags” were burlap sacks with two holes cut at the bottom. After sitting in it, a personâs legs would hang out from the holes, and they would be lowered to the bottom of the pit via the pulleys. Because of the low safety factor, one had to curl up and stay as still as possible the entire way down, looking like a silly monkey. Hence, even though it was a bag for carrying people, it was called a “monkey bag.”
Yan Huanshan greeted the guard at the pit entrance and descended in a monkey bag. This mine was taken over from the previous owner, second-hand. Whatever state it was in when the previous owner dug it, thatâs how Yan Huanshan received it. If there was anything special about it, it was its depth, it was particularly deep. And it was precisely because it was so deep that this mine had more ghost stories circulating about it than others. For example, Li Ergou spread rumors that this mine was the entrance to the eighteenth level of hell, and even claimed to have seen green-faced, sharp-toothed ghosts.Â
What nonsense! If it were the entrance to hell, why would Yan Huanshan open a mine here? He could sell tickets as a tourist attraction instead. With 1.1 billion people in China, he guaranteed that everyone would come to see it.
Reaching the bottom of the pit, Yan Huanshan saw a pile of equipment nearby. He picked up a pickaxe, grabbed a miner’s lamp, and entered the spiderweb-like maze of tunnels. He wasnât very familiar with the tunnels below, which was unavoidable. Small coal mines didnât bother with drawing tunnel maps, and the randomness of manual mining was too great. Sometimes, if they felt something was wrong and it might collapse, they would just prop it up with a wooden stick and start digging in another direction. Over time, it became a mess that was hard to remember.
Yan Huanshan shouted all the way, “Ergou, come out yourself, and you might get leniency.”
The tunnels were particularly dark. The light from the miner’s lamp swayed left and right, illuminating only a small table-sized area each time, but Yan Huanshan wasnât afraid at all. Firstly, he was naturally brave, and secondly, what was there to fear from people? As for ghosts, there were no such things in this world.
He walked for about a quarter of an hour, his throat hoarse from shouting, but still didnât see Li Ergou appear and confess. He was annoyed and was about to head to another tunnel when he suddenly stepped on something. The thing was slippery and made it hard to keep his footing. Caught off guard, Yan Huanshan slipped several steps forward, then fell flat on his back, hitting the ground hard enough to see stars. The glass cover of the miner’s lamp cracked in several places.
It took Yan Huanshan a full five seconds to recover. He picked up the miner’s lamp and shone it around, quickly identifying the culprit: it was the section near the stem of a melon, no wonder it was so slippery.
Damn it, which bastard threw this here!
Yan Huanshan cursed as he was about to get up when he suddenly froze.
Not far away, at the edge of the light, in the dim and blurry darkness, was a pair of feetâslim and fair, clearly not a manâs feet.
No way, could there be a woman down here? Yan Huanshan instinctively raised the miner’s lamp higher.
He saw a dark figure, and it was indeed a woman, nude, curled up in a corner. Her hair was thick and dense, covering her face and most of her body. Her eyes, hidden beneath the messy hair, were staring intently at him.
Strangely enough, apart from being brighter, more beautiful, and more profound than ordinary eyes, there was nothing particularly unusual about them. Yet the first word that popped into Yan Huanshanâs mind had nothing to do with brightness, beauty, or profundity.
The word that came to his mind was “new.”
Brand new eyes, unused, like a babyâs, freshly created.
Yan Huanshan stared at those eyes. He found himself unable to move. The woman started crawling towards him.
September 16, 1992 / Wednesday / Sunny turning to overcast and heavy rain
It’s 10:30, and Dashan hasnât come back yet. Itâs raining so heavily outside, and Iâm alone at home, feeling a bit scared.
At noon, I brought dumplings to Dashan and encountered something funny: the workers were making a fuss, saying there was a ghost in the mine. How could there be a ghost? I guess itâs probably Li Ergou.
Dashan went down alone to “catch the ghost,” and I was looking forward to it. But then I thought, he might not catch him: Li Ergou has done something shady, how could he dare let Dashan find him? He must have hidden as soon as he heard the noise.
Sure enough, I was right. Dashan came back up and said there was nothing down there.
It’s 10:45 now.
The mine is really busy, and Dashan is working so hard. I hope our son is born soon and grows up quickly, so Dashan can have a capable helper. Lately, Iâve been thinking of names for our son. I love flipping through the dictionary and have taken a liking to a word: “development.” Development, development, it sounds so nice. It means creating new worlds, expanding new paths, and daring to change the world.
Yan Kai, Yan Tuo, both sound good. I like them both and canât decide.
Forget it, let Dashan choose.
Thereâs a sound outside, it must be Dashan coming back. Iâll stop writing here.
â [Excerpts from Lin Xirouâs Diary]
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