Evening Stars Chapter 42 (Part 1)
Translated by Q the Panda (ko-fi)
Chapter 42.1
Xu Nanheng started his return journey on the same route.
Passing through Golmud, he turned off National Highway 109 onto the Beijing-Tibet Expressway. When he'd first driven this stretch, it had been wrapped in thick fog, forcing him to drive slowly with the fog lights and hazard lights on. Tonight, as he left, the sky was clear. The khatag was placed on the passenger seat. To keep it from fluttering around, he tied it to the headrest.
On this journey out of Tibet, Xu Nanheng's earlier troubles had all faded away. He was grateful that the lottery for volunteer teaching posts had assigned him to Tibet. Back at the volunteer teaching conference, several teachers had looked at him with sympathetic eyes.
On the map of China, every provincial capital lies more than a thousand kilometers from Lhasa. For anyone outside Tibet, Lhasa was far away. Because it was distant, people longed for it. Because it was distant, one needed courage to set out. And because it was so very distant, some might never step foot there in their lifetime.
People were bound by life, family, and work. The changing of seasons was not about wind, flowers, snow, and moonlight, but about quarterly reports. Xu Nanheng's family ran a company, so he knew that far too many people kept a pre-written resignation letter in the work-specific folder on their computers.
Yet resigning required not just courage but also a solid foundation. The prosperous city that never slept, with its neon lights shining brilliantly all night long, were both intoxicating and merciless.
After passing the Chaka Service Area, Xu Nanheng exited the highway and found a place to stay for the night. When he reached the inn, he sent Fang Shiyou a message on WeChat. Fang Shiyou didn't reply, presumably because he was busy, so Xu Nanheng switched off WeChat, took a shower, scrolled through a few short videos, and then went to sleep.
The last video he saw before falling asleep had a comment with tens of thousands of likes:
[Friends, if this gets over 100,000 likes, I'll quit my job and go to Lhasa!]
Attached was a photo taken from a high-rise office window, looking down at the city nightscape. The timestamp read 23:33. That poor soul was still working overtime.
Xu Nanheng continued his journey. He passed Chaka, then Xining, Yinchuan, Shuozhou, and Laiyuan. By the fourth day, the southern 6th Ring Road of Beijing was already in sight.
Throughout the trip, Fang Shiyou kept reminding him to drive safely. When Xu Nanheng entered Beijing, he sent him a location pin.
In the evening, he received a reply on WeChat from Fang Shiyou, who said he had just finished a surgery and asked if he had made it home.
The family's siheyuan in Dongcheng District covered over six hundred square meters, with vermilion-painted gates and two courtyards. The side courtyard had been turned into a storage room, where his childhood bicycle with training wheels was still kept. Beyond the moon gate was a courtyard of about ninety square meters, planted with flowers and vegetables.
That night, his eldest aunt and her husband joined them for dinner, along with his second uncle. His aunt and uncle came with his cousin, who was holding a baby in her arms. He hadn't been home for a year. Even the family's cat, Pangpang, had grown chubbier, and the koi in the pond had also gotten fatter. After sharing a drink with his grandfather in the main hall, Xu Nanheng said he'd eaten too much and went out to sit in the yard for a while.
As he stepped out, Pangpang turned its head and followed him.
The stone platform of their siheyuan was quite high, just the right height to sit on. There weren't many stars in the Beijing night sky. After coming home, Xu Nanheng had felt light-headed from the altitude change, so he'd gone straight to bed and slept all afternoon. After sleeping all afternoon and finishing dinner, he was now sitting here and felt quite awake and clear-headed.
The light from the main hall streamed through the latticed windows, illuminating the happy family. His cousin's one-year-old child was quite amusing, and the family was enjoying playing with the baby.
But Xu Nanheng felt a touch of emptiness.
“Hey, hey,” he said, pushing away Pangpang's paw. “That's mine. What are you scratching at?”
He was holding the wool felt figure that Fang Shiyou had made for him. Pangpang wanted to play with it.
Under the light, Xu Nanheng looked at the wool felt, then at Pangpang. He said, “Pang'er, this isn't for you. Your sister-in-law gave it to me.”
Pang'er stared back at him with round, gleaming eyes, showing nine parts of confusion and one part of nonchalance.
Xu Nanheng couldn't help laughing as he looked at the cat. “Sister-in-law…… sounds kind of strange, huh.”
Then he lifted the wool felt beside Pangpang's head, snapped a photo of the two together, and sent it to Fang Shiyou. He also posted it on his Moments.
The room was full of laughter, and it wouldn't do for him to stay outside too long. After sitting for a bit, he went back in.
That night, Fang Shiyou called him, but there was no answer. He figured Xu Nanheng had fallen asleep. Coming down from high altitude to the plains often left people dizzy and drowsy due to oxygen intoxication, and Xu Nanheng had indeed gone to bed early.
He lay on his own oversized bed, which was two meters seventy across, surrounded by the clean scent of high-quality cotton sheets. He could stretch and roll freely without falling off. His fingers brushed against something soft, fluffy, and warm…… Hmm? With his eyes still closed, Xu Nanheng rubbed it again. That wasn't right. This was Beijing, his home, his own room. Why on earth was he touching Fang Shiyou's Doraemon blanket?
He suddenly opened his eyes. Could he have accidentally packed it while organizing his luggage? Then how was Fang Shiyou supposed to sleep?
But once his eyes adjusted, he realized that what he was touching was Pangpang, who was sprawled out on his bed like a cat pancake.
Xu Nanheng looked at Pangpang with quiet resignation and scratched its chin. “You must be over fifteen pounds by now, right?”
Pangpang squinted its eyes and purred, “Prrrrr.”
For a few days at home, Xu Nanheng didn't step outside at all. With two live-in housekeepers, he didn't even have to walk to the main gate to get takeout. When Teacher Tan and the others invited him out for a meal, he politely declined, saying he wanted to rest and clear his head at home. Teacher Dai teased him, “Are you trying to soak up the imperial aura of the Forbidden City?”
When it was time for the faculty meeting, he finally had to go out. He tidied himself up, left an hour early, and stopped by a salon for a quick trim.
That same day, Fang Shiyou's aid team in Tibet was holding their final medical service. The village was deep in a valley near the southern border of Tibet, and there might not be any signal. Fang Shiyou had told him in advance not to worry.
The meeting ended around six in the evening. In Beijing, the sky was still bright, the moon thin, and no stars to be seen. Standing at the subway entrance, Xu Nanheng looked up. He used to think Beijing was enormous. Haidian and Chaoyang felt like a long-distance relationship. On Chaoyang North Road alone, there were nearly twenty traffic lights, and when the traffic got bad, his dad would start complaining that his back was breaking before they'd even made it out of the 3rd Ring Road.
He still thought Beijing was large, but it felt too crowded, squeezing the sky until only a tiny patch remained.
One of them was at the border line, with wild winds blowing at five thousand meters above sea level, while the other was on Line 4, waiting for the train heading to Anheqiao North.
The wind from the rushing subway train lifted Xu Nanheng's bangs. It had only been a few days, and he was already starting to miss the grasslands. In that sudden rush of wind, he understood the person in the video who had commented, ‘100k likes and I'll quit my job to go to Lhasa.’
Right then, he desperately wanted to hear the sound of the wind on the Southern Tibetan Plateau. So as the wind from the oncoming train surged past, he stayed where he was instead of boarding with the crowd. He made a call, even though the signal on the other end was poor. Fang Shiyou might not even receive it.
The waiting tone lagged for several seconds before it finally connected. Fang Shiyou's voice was a little hoarse, but it brightened with joy the moment the call went through. “Teacher Xu!”
Xu Nanheng answered, “Yeah, Dr. Fang.”