This neighbour is not mine. He is, or rather was, Lina’s. Lina is one of my teenage students. The story she related about this neighbour of hers struck me.
First of all, here is some background info about Lina. Her family live in a suburban district of the city. A suburb of a city in the West might conjure up positive images — cleaner air, less congested roads and the quiet. The suburbs of most Chinese cities, however, do not put such rosy pictures in people’s minds. Most wealthy people and the middle class in China still prefer to live downtown. A suburb of a Chinese city is sometimes referred to in the Chinese press as “rural-urban junction”, where public amenities are lacking and most residents make a living by doing manual labour. Some are vendors of vegetables. Some are scavengers. Some work at construction sites; some in workshops or factories.
Lina was a lively and outgoing girl as a freshman. As high school progressed, she seemed to get caught in the grip of a demanding existence. Heaps of work and fierce competition among the students dragged her down. For a time, she talked very little and kept her head bowed in class. I got a bit worried about the teen. Luckily things have been looking up since the beginning of this term. She started to talk more, and smiles are brightening her once-downcast face.
This is what Lina scribbled in her journal of her neighbour.
Shengliver, this week I’ll share with you what befell my neighbour. He was extraordinary.
Before my family moved to the neighbourhood from Yunxian, his family, who were natives of the community, had been there. According to my mother, very handsome as a young man, the neighbour made a fortune by running a successful business. In fact, he was popular among a lot of girls then. So many lassies were courting him that it was hard for him to choose.
He ended up with one of his admirers. They got spliced in time and later a son came to the couple. It sounded very much like a fairytale match, didn’t it? They were expected to live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, things started to change for the worse a few years after the union. For some reason, the man shut down his business, and every day he did nothing but idle his time away in the neighbourhood. He probably gambled at teahouses.
Quarrels eventually erupted between man and wife. Their squabbles became more and more frequent. The relationship got to a point where they would not tolerate each other under the same roof. The family hence had to break up, and divorce became inevitable. The son went away to live with the mother, leaving the man all alone in their old family bungalow.
After the split-up, he took no job, and without a stable income, life became harder. He owned a traditional house, some rooms of which he rented to migrant workers. The house badly maintained, his rent was low, though. The earnings went for food and daily necessaries.
Some years ago, when I went back home one weekend, Mother told me that the man had gone insane. He started talking to himself all of a sudden, and life became a mess. Dressed in tatters, he wandered here and there, with trouble making ends meet. Hair unkempt and filthy, he was often found in squalid conditions.
Then one weekend last term, while chatting with Mother over dinner, I learned that the neighbour had died. This is how he perished, Shengliver.
Unable to afford gas for cooking, the neighbour went up alone to a wood in the mountains way behind the village to fetch firewood. He left the village and did not come back for some consecutive days. No one cared, though, and he had no relatives around, anyway.
Days later, someone in the locality went up to the wood in the mountains, where my neighbour’s body was found. It was hung upside down from a tree, with the arms dangling in the air. It being summer, the corpse was already decomposing. Insects and maggots were eating away his flesh.
It was speculated that the death had not been suicidal but accidental, judging by his posture in the tree. Probably he had been up there tearing some branches off when he lost his balance and got stuck. He might have cried for help, but there was no other soul nearby. Nobody heard him. He expired either from hunger or from pain.
Poor neighbour, you died a wretched death. As much loathed as you were by most adults in the street, you were popular among us children. When I was younger, we kids enjoyed playing games with you, and you never failed to come up with something fun to entertain us.
At his burial, no one shed a tear. His only son attended his funeral, but there was no trace of grief whatsoever on his face. Instead, the lad was rather happy about the father’s demise.
Shengliver Studio 