Chapter 1: Rebirth

“Our youngest is just an incorrigible fool! The neighborhood committee arranged a job for him, but he refuses to go, spending his days lounging around the house, eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating.”

“Dongzi’s already a grown man and still doesn’t know how to behave. It’s so hard to get a job these days!”

“Exactly! Other families are fighting tooth and nail for work, but Dongzi has a job and won’t do it. I worry for you, honestly, what are you going to do?”

Li Xiangdong lay on the heated brick bed, half awake, listening to the chattering voices in the courtyard. He slowly opened his eyes in a daze.

He looked around. The furniture in the room, though all seemed new, was from an old era. The wave of familiarity hit him so hard he felt dizzy. Wasn’t this his home from decades ago?

The scolding voice just now was unmistakable—it was his mother!

Could one really be reborn just by falling asleep?

As memories flooded his mind, he felt no panic, only anticipation.

He grabbed the large underpants at his bedside, put them on, and stepped off the kang, his size 43 feet slipping into old cloth shoes on the floor. He hurried to the calendar hanging on the wall.

July 10th, 1979.

Then he walked over to the mirror with revolutionary motifs. Staring at his own youthful reflection, he saw the trendy short haircut, bright eyes, handsome face, and his tall frame of 180 centimeters. Anyone would praise him as a fine young man.

He could still hear his mother in the courtyard, chatting enthusiastically with the neighbors.

Li Xiangdong pushed open the door and stood at the threshold, saying nothing, just fixing his gaze on them.

“Dongzi’s awake?”

“Oh, it must be time to eat. We’ll head back now, Auntie Li.”

The two neighbor ladies felt uneasy under his stare and quickly made their exit.

Now only one middle-aged woman with short-cropped hair remained in the yard—Li Xiangdong’s mother.

She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him, her eyes sharp. “What’s wrong? Can’t even stand being told off a little? If you’ve got it in you, go report for work at the neighborhood committee!”

“We’ve been back in the city over a month, and you still won’t take the job they offered, just wandering around every day.”

“With all the educated youth returning to the city, you should be grateful to have work to support yourself! Who are you to be picky?”

In Li Xiangdong’s eyes, his mother transformed from a frail old woman leaning on a cane to this feisty figure, hands on hips, berating him.

At first, he felt a surge of emotion, but her nagging was relentless, her mouth rattling on incessantly, leaving his head spinning.

Thinking back to the job the committee had arranged, he retorted, “I’m not going to pop popcorn on the street! That’s a job for someone Dad’s age.”

Just returned to his youth, he didn’t want to argue with his mother over this. He turned, shut the door, and walked over to the kang, pulling on a white vest.

The vest had been awarded to his father’s unit, with “Outstanding Worker, Coal Store Award, Jianguomen Subdistrict, Beijing” printed on the front.

The Li family, after all, had been coal people for three generations.

His grandfather, Old Man Li, worked at a coal plant near the neighborhood committee even before Liberation. Back then, most of the coal for residents came as powder, which was processed into briquettes at the plant, much like rolling tangyuan. Old Man Li was known for making perfect coal balls.

After public-private joint management, private coal plants became state-run stores. As the districts were drawn up and staff grew scarce, Old Man Li managed to get his son—Li Xiangdong’s father—a job there as well. Father and son worked in the same coal store.

When Old Man Li retired, Li Xiangdong’s eldest brother took over his job. Fortunately, as honeycomb briquettes became common in Beijing, the labor wasn’t as grueling as before.

His second brother became a boiler operator at the neighborhood bathhouse, responsible for stoking the boilers.

Li Xiangdong, dressed now, exited the west wing and saw both his sisters-in-law leading their reluctant mother into the main house.

He quickly made his way to the rear house, closest to the main street’s water and sewage pipes. To save money when the pipes were laid, the family built their wash basin there.

He turned on the tap, splashed some water on himself, and wiped his face with a ragged old towel.

He cast a glance around the family courtyard—just as he remembered it.

Their siheyuan occupied more than 300 square meters, entrance in the southeast corner. Through the main gate, one faced the gable of the east wing, with a spirit screen at its base, carved with the character for “fortune.”

Turning left a few steps, one entered the main courtyard, paved with blue stone. On each side grew a tree—one jujube, one pomegranate.

In the northeast corner was a brackish well, covered by a bluestone slab, since there were many children in the family and they feared accidents.

“Old man really was something,” Li Xiangdong muttered.

The Li family wasn’t native to Beijing. Their urban household registration and city home were all thanks to his grandfather.

At the end of 1948, before Beijing was peacefully liberated, Old Man Li brought his wife and newly-grown son to the city with the army.

Unlike those fleeing the city, Old Man Li used the money from selling their land and house back home to buy, at a bargain price during the chaos, the main house of their current courtyard and its attached side rooms.

After Liberation, other neighbors moved in, some purchasing private property, others assigned housing by the committee or their work units.

As housing in the city grew ever scarcer, the side wings were divided into two rooms each, housing four families; the rear house held another two, and counting the Lis themselves, the courtyard housed seven families in all.

Over twenty years, through private deals, work unit assignments, and the “House Swap Meetings” where neighbors traded homes, the Li family gradually reclaimed the courtyard.

Now, they were the only family left.

Partitions had been rebuilt in the main house and side rooms, making three rooms: the central one served as the living room where the family ate.

Old Man Li and his wife lived in the east room, his parents in the west.

His two brothers each had a room in the east wing.

Li Xiangdong himself lived in the west wing, with the remaining west wing room housing his two young nieces.

The rear house, poorly lit, had once been filled with makeshift coal and storage sheds by previous neighbors. Old Man Li had since cleared these out, and now the honeycomb coal and household odds and ends were stored there.

In his previous life, after the Southern Tour speeches and the winds of reform swept the land, coupled with the craze for going abroad, the value of siheyuan homes soared.

The Li family faced a common dilemma—the bigger the tree, the more branches.

Li Xiangdong, after selling the courtyard, used his share to buy a commodity apartment of a little over a hundred square meters.

As for the rest, jealous of others making money in business, he tried his hand at trade, squandering it all in just a couple of years.

Others went public, but he lost his head…

“What are you standing around for? I’ve called you several times! Hurry up and eat!”

Lost in nostalgia, Li Xiangdong hadn’t noticed his mother approaching.

Her voice grew louder, her temper rising as she spoke.

Slap! Slap!

She smacked him hard on the back twice.

“Ow… Mom, do you have to hit so hard? I’m your own son!”

Li Xiangdong jumped from the pain.

“A mother hits her own son, who else!”

Seeing her hand ready to strike again, Li Xiangdong bolted.

“You start eating, I’m going to the bathroom!”