Foreword
In this collection of non-fiction essays, Duanmu Zhi’s The Burning Crane, he incorporates his experiences in the medical and media industries into his own words, bringing a perspective closer to life and death, and examining the present he is experiencing. With the sharp expression of a scalpel, he gently dissects the soul at the abyss, facing the whispers of his hidden self, the sentiments and epiphanies of his inner and outer life.
1
The hospital is located in the West Lake industrial area, and the courtyard is a low grayish-white complex of buildings. They like to rest and defecate on the gray Nightingale stone statue, and the droppings dried up a little and turned into part of the stone statue. Near the hospital are mostly processing plants, logistics companies and hardware stores, which look gray, but there is a bar, which is a rare entertainment venue, the doors are always locked during the day, a loss of closed down.
When night falls, I imagine a small corner not far away, neon with the sound, hot dance and alcohol. The gasps of the crowded ears, a cocktail of magical colors, and the occasional indulgence are all expected.
This old town certainly has its share of decadence. Yet there are always things that defy the glitz and glamour that are destined to exist. For example, the wind and moon have no bounds, and the south tributary and the north main stream meet in the middle of the town. The Dongjiang River thus passes through the middle of the town, rightfully dividing the land. Because of the nourishment of the Dongjiang River, the town has a soul. Sometimes, I want to talk to the town.
In the early morning light, I often had to take a shuttle bus to cross the bridge and go to one of the wards of the old hospital.
So, I passed by a river countless times, how many times the mist shrouded, the light of the sky broken, I tried to open my eyes. The river was murky and heaving, and there was always a boat coming slowly in view, a rusty old freighter, full of the vicissitudes of water transportation in Shilong town.
I peered into the East River countless times, trying at different angles and times in a vain attempt to see the secrets of the river’s depths. Looking across the sky with the river, it seems very close and very far away. In front of the river, everything around me seems to be an accessory, the old town on the other side, the trees on the riverbank, and the recurring me, all so shallow and powerless. The river is wide, so time here has become unusually slow, so slow that all the things on the river are deep in time, bent, faded, silent.
Across the East River is the old town of Shillong, drive straight down, the old courtyard is not far away.
The old courtyard in front of the traffic, the metal sign reads “Taiping Street”, the street is mostly gray and white Republican buildings, two or three floors. The stores along the street are simply named “Taiping”, shoe stores or grocery stores. It is said that Taiping Street is old, the buildings on both sides are to be demolished. But who dares to easily break the stereotypes, these old houses seem to hide the old people of the Republic of China era, still following the old business, is slowly aging with the town.
April in the town drifted a lot of clouds and rain, but also a lot of broken souls and hearts. Pedestrians become panicky and anxious, and their hurried trajectory is full of evasive meanings. I sat alone on a stone bench and looked at Taiping Street. The rain was falling, and the buildings, plants and stores were all wet. The buildings, plants and shops were all soaked through. Not far away were the wooden carts with mountains of oranges reflecting their alluring glow.
Looking at the smell of grass and trees – Zhongshan Park is adjacent to the hospital, which is full of ancient trees. The old men and onlookers playing cards under the trees are gone, and the park is beginning to come back to life in the pattering rain. When it was empty, I was willing to go for a walk in the garden. I walked very slowly, was it because I was afraid of getting my shoes wet? But my shoes and socks were already wet, I still walked very lightly, I was afraid that my recklessness would disturb the soul of the inhabited. The warmth and coldness were intertwined and penetrated the lungs. The park is too small to contain so much of the hustle and bustle of the mortal world.
At this moment, the garden is sighing alone because of forgetfulness. I want to be a listener, but I don’t belong here, I’m just a nameless intruder. Spring and summer, the garden full of leaves drifting, scattered in the water pools, weeds, yellow mud and among the slabs, complicated and slender, laying a patchwork of light.
A gust of wind gently brushed by, the surroundings began to rustle, a trance of inhabited souls and I brushed by. Who else remembers those stories and the people in them? But at least there are still some old marks left, pointing to a certain direction by chance in the grinding wheel of time.
The refurbished lectern stood Zhou Enlai, dressed in fur during the Eastern Expedition; the crowd in the ruins and rubble was terrified, a passionate Principal Mo Gongbi had fallen; the yellow flowers bloomed through every year, and the flowers buried the brave and righteous Li Wenfu …… I know the garden has almost concentrated the modern history of the whole town.
Zhongshan Park fell into disrepair, the town must not return to its former prominence.
Only the vast East River guards the heart of the town, running day and night.
2
The dormitory is only big enough to put down two bunk beds of iron. The windows are narrow, with old underwear hanging on them. The town in March is washed with water, clothing hanging for a long time also refused to dry, the room’s concrete floor like and thin mud. The fan at the end of the bed whirred, struggling to push away the wet air. The air flow kept hitting my face, and finally there was some far-fetched coolness.
It was twilight when I woke up. The train whistle passed not far from the wall, and the white geese in the lake outside the window began to chirp first, a sound that was repeated day and night. There were no lights on in the house, and it was dark again after a weary nap. The undulating sound of the sunset, such as the distant lying undulating mountains.
I was the only one left in the house, as Guangtian went to visit his friends at Chashan Hospital in the next town, and Buqing was probably playing pool with the boys from the forensic department. Lele came from the girls’ dormitory and knocked on the door looking for me to go to Jinshawan supermarket. Walking to the supermarket has become an important part of our spare time. We may not buy anything, just talk. There are also times when we are used to being silent with each other, simply going to our destination and returning the same way.
Jinshawan supermarket decoration is not prosperous, just big, not only the area is large, but also large to the shelves high merchandise pad feet can not reach. All the items are piled up like a small mountain, full of the most primitive materialistic desire. I loved looking at the neatly arranged jars of pickles. Sometimes I even lift the lid and take a good sniff. If I remember the complex smells, it’s as if I’ve stowed away everyone’s hometown. We are all somewhat nostalgic creatures.
I remember Tim Kwong saying that some of the sauces in the jar were exactly the same as the ones in his hometown of Meizhou. So every time he saw these pickles, he would stop, and I could see through his eyes as if he had a past. I would buy a whole carton of milk, Mengniu or Yili. Supermarkets confuse regional characteristics, it is easy to move part of everyone’s hometown in, one can miss seeing things. Here, it’s fair for everyone.
The vacant lot in front of Jinshawan is considered a small bus hub, with buses running to Shillong train station or the neighboring town. The more crowded it is, the more I keep quiet. All these years of traveling north and south have made me accustomed to living in a guarded posture.
The transition from one dialect to another has started a long period of aphasia for me. I mixed in with the crowd surging, like every working man, exuding a strong body odor. As long as I didn’t speak, no one knew where I was from.
I secretly thought, “How wonderful it would be if I were a factory-made radio, so that wherever I went, I could blend in with the local language and culture with my unique FM. Dongguan is the world’s factory, so there must be the largest radio processing factory in China.
It was late at night before I returned to the dormitory. Sometimes I would turn on the radio and fall asleep, trying to learn a little bit of rudimentary Cantonese. The access to the headphones was private. The late-night Cantonese radio stations were mostly commercials and conversations about sex, about curing diseases. The chaotic sounds in my ears gradually dappled and drifted further and further away, and behind the sound was a microcosm of the town. Light shuttles like a stream, people come and go, dense as ants.
3
In front of the hospital that day, I saw a mother directing her young son to catch a foraging gray pigeon for dinner, even if it was just a joke.
The hospital has a zoo, with huge cages scattered with peacocks, monkeys, goats, ostriches and other animals to soothe the hearts of the sick. But in the eyes of the Cantonese, they may all be mouth-watering ornamental meat. The kapok on the trees are heavy and bright, and make a muffled sound when they fall to the ground. I like to pick up the kapok and feed it to the monkeys. Other than that, I spent most of my time in the company of some fowl.
The chickens, ducks and geese in the courtyard were kept together in captivity, fat and lovely. I like to see them in harmony with the world. There was a lot of bamboo growing near the barbed wire fence, and the bamboo was burrowing out of the holes in the fence in tufts.
In the short afternoons, I would break bamboo branches from high places to feed the geese. The white geese would come from afar in flocks, shaking their bodies awkwardly and scrambling to be the first to pull down the bamboo leaves with their beaks. The white geese stretched their necks and swallowed with great force. The bamboo leaves are very hard, doesn’t it hurt to swallow them like this? It reminds me of the crispness of goose intestines when shabu-shabu shabu.
The chickens would sometimes get behind the white geese and occasionally a scattered bamboo leaf would fall to the ground and they would excitedly come closer to take a look and then be pushed away by the white geese. These chickens do not know how to fly, they just like to see from a height. The chickens that jump up the tree are high and proud, sometimes they suddenly look beyond the red world and jump outside the wire fence all by themselves.
The world outside is very exciting. A chicken escaped from the cage and gave us an opportunity to take advantage of it.
Ruthlessness and wandering in the hospital of a small southern town
Tim went out like a samurai, but this samurai didn’t carry a sword, he carried a clothesline and waved it around imperviously. Tim and I drove the chickens to an unoccupied corner and adopted the tactic of splitting up the siege and narrowing the encirclement. The old hen had extraordinary foot strength, speed, and flexibility, but little guts, and when there was nowhere to run it ran straight into the wall, and was eventually caught by me with one hand.
The hen was in my hands at once like a fixation, did not dare to struggle, and did not speak, eyes dead in one direction not dare to move. What a docile and kind animal.
Guangtian suddenly trembled and I said, I stole a chicken, this is the first time in life.
I said I was also the first time, but not scattered to run.
On the way to escape, I repeatedly pondered the word “steal”. I said no, I can’t let this chicken discredit my life, this chicken is clearly throwing itself into the net, no one can blame the other.
Back at the dorm, Tim and I hid the chicken in a cardboard box and pressed the top with a thick book on internal medicine.
After Bu Qing returned to the house, I took out the box and said to him mysteriously, “Guess what we caught?
When Bu Qing took a look at the carton, his little eyes lit up. He jumped up excitedly and fluttered both hands.
He said, “Chicken! What should we do?
I gestured and said, “Kill! It’s a mess when it’s not done.
We quickly left the hospital through the back door, clutching the carton with the chicken in it. The farmer’s market smelled like blood and burning when there were warm feathers scattered about. At the market that day, I gave the chicken killer three dollars. The chicken killer said in Cantonese as he cut open the belly of the chicken, “Your chicken is a grain eater. I believe that the chicken that grew up eating grain must be the noble of chickens, and today we are going to take it.
I gave the stall owner fifteen dollars processing fee, plus onions and ginger and other auxiliary ingredients, the chicken achieved a good pot of soup. In order to drink this pot of soup, we ordered a table of good food and celebrated with wine. The feast began with the division of the spoils – soup and meat. The chicken meat was unusually strong because of its slow growth. I said, even if the meat is difficult to chew, we have to eat it. Because the hospital has always rationed meals to employees according to their rank, and the intern’s was the lowest grade. I was sure that this was the chicken raised by the cafeteria for the doctors in the specialist clinic, and this time we enjoyed the treatment of the specialists.
4
When I was an intern at the hospital medical examination center, I often had to hand out urine test cups to a group of women in a dignified manner. The cups were clear, light, and numbered with a marker. They would receive the cups and leave lightly, like a cloud. Most of them were wonderful girls, but their faces and development seemed to be beyond their real age.
At the end of the hallway was the women’s restroom, somewhat dark and closed, and they could always walk in laughing and joking. Some of the girls had to wait in line, and I secretly thought the picture inside the cubicles must be a mess. In my eyes, these young girls were at high risk of pregnancy, and the consequence of pregnancy was disqualification from work.
The factory didn’t need pregnant women workers, and we were making common cause with the factory owners. The cups were arranged in rows with more or less liquid inside. A little was actually enough, and the faint smell of urine rising from the rows of cups was nothing to be ashamed of. I tore open the wrapper and threw the innocent pregnancy test down one by one, waiting for their private lives to be infiltrated with the naked truth.
Where there are women, there must be men. The female interns don’t like to give the men in the factory a physical examination, which is really just a simple auscultation and palpation, there is no way to avoid a small amount of skin-to-skin contact. During the examination, most of the men are a little slow in taking off their shoes, as opposed to being swift in putting them on. Their exposed socks are mostly nylon socks, a few dollars a dozen, blue, black and gray is not clear, slippery does not absorb sweat, and some have even broken to reveal the toes.
Men curled knees lying flat on the inspection bed, those randomly matched cheap clothes were lifted, dense sweat and body odor mixed, fermenting the smell of the bottom. Between a few breaths, the heart begins to race, the abdominal muscles tighten, and the person being examined is always more nervous than one might expect. Phew – I’d like them to leave sooner too, maybe the factory makes them feel more at home than here.
Medical checkup centers often have to solicit business themselves, and even send doctors to do exams at home. We had a super cool white minibus that sometimes had to go out to factories or schools, and the driver was a doctor in the department, self-sufficient and top-notch. The hospital is near all kinds of factories, and sometimes the car is not even close to pulling out of the gate and arriving around a few corners. Putting together tables from the cafeteria and laying sheets is the examination bed.
In the empty and dimly lit factory, we were still the screening barrier, ruthlessly rejecting all non-healthy people.
One day, a friend called out to me to come over. She said excitedly, “Come and listen, it’s a blowing murmur! I pressed the stethoscope to her chest, and what a different sound came from the whirring inside. It was as if her heart was not beating, but spinning. The ceiling fan overhead was also spinning, and I saw tears in the young woman’s eyes in the spinning light and darkness, and I was sure her tears were followed by a sob story, but I was afraid she would die on the cold assembly line. I didn’t know where she would go after she lost her job.
Once, we had to go to a sports school in town to give students a physical examination. I thought of a corner of Zhongshan Park, where there is a sculpture of a weightlifter, rough stone is carved and polished into a man, looks muscular, full of strength, the base is written on the words “the home of weightlifting”. I thought I would see a mountain of flesh, but I never expected to meet a group of children who had not yet developed. They were both male and female, of different heights. Because of our arrival, they were able to temporarily put down their textbooks and push each other out of the classroom.
The gymnasium is a boarding school with exceptionally strict management. Away from the isolated countryside and fields, they have to learn to be independent from an early age, constantly battling with their own bodies, transforming and reborn. They are little monsters, bright and shining like the sun, flourishing like wheat. I don’t know in what way I should make a happy-go-lucky child understand that his blood pressure is a little high. Maybe it doesn’t even matter.
5
Guangtian insisted on going to the Yongcheng herbal tea store one more time. The store is located near the train station, the furnishings look old and worn, and all the colors tend to be in timeless harmony in wear and tear. The house is full of tables and chairs, not complete sets of each other, diners sit down inevitably have to back to back. We had a lot of fun sweating over a bowl of beef brisket noodles and a cup of sago dew.
The store is extremely secluded, so the rent is low, but it just proves the simplicity of the road. Unlike the business model of constantly expanding stores and then opening branches, these old stores prefer to stay in a corner and be exclusive. Perhaps when I am old, the store is still there as a matter of course. “Business is booming” sign is still hanging in place, passed down from generation to generation.
From the herbal tea store out, not far from Sha Tau Kok.
In Shilong, who have strolled Sha Tau Kok. Sha Tau Kok is mostly connected to the small stores, selling clothes, shoes or small accessories, mostly cottage goods, you can bargain. Compared to Humen wholesale clothes by the pound and Guangzhou Baima garment city clothing hit goods, here is obviously the bottom line is not enough. In Shenzhen, the eponymous Shatoujiao bordering Hong Kong, is a frontier trade town less than two miles square. Shilong’s Shatoujiao is obviously transplanted, an imperfect replica.
During the day, there are always young men in the market who seem to have nothing better to do than to weave in and out of the stores. Some young men are keen to grow long hair and dye it, or simply shave it into a green skin. There are tattoos on the arms or chest, some totems of unrelated beliefs, dragons or scorpions, showing an uneven and fine blue color. Clothes must be open wide, or simply bare shoulders, the skin to a uniform bronze color. There is no girl who does not like it. Or, sixteen or seventeen years old to work girls, always attracted by these inexplicable gangster breath, and then and these men to complete some of the metamorphosis of a girl to a woman, if accidentally pregnant, born and a boy, then get married. The money in your pocket is used to get through the day just fine, as long as the body is strong, there are endless factories that close down, and the town is full of people who can make a living.
There are people everywhere who make a living, and wandering is just a thing of the past. If you want to leave, the train is a good choice. Although the Shilong train station is inconspicuous, there are trains and high-speed trains stopping every half hour to Guangzhou or Shenzhen. Because of the automatic ticket machines, passengers rarely have to wait in line.
Perhaps for many people, Shilong is just a stopping place. I thought about the fate of the individual, and how the town will really be involved with each other? In the comfort of the town, there are some people who stay, some who leave, and some who are going to carry on and will ripple through our lives.
Just like the obstetrics and gynecology department of the hospital, in addition to women with large bellies waiting to give birth, there are two types of people hospitalized, one is a woman desperately trying to keep the baby and the other is a young girl waiting for an abortion.
The last night before I left Shilong, I brought freshly baked green bean cakes to visit the hospital. The corridor was dark as ink, and I changed into my white coat and sat in the brightly lit office as usual, occasionally hearing the cries of babies outside the window. Ms. Xu from the obstetrics and gynecology department ordered takeaway brown sugar and ginger water and shared it with me. The sugar water was sweet and slightly spicy, and I was a little uncomfortable drinking it, but I didn’t want to say anything about it. So I had to swallow in small bites, while carefully eliminating those very fine ginger shreds.
The teacher said, in the future, when you have a girlfriend, you should know how to be nice to her.
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