A dilapidated temple with no scent of incense, or the sign of worshippers.
The lighting in the temple was heavy and hazy, its four corners completely wrecked. The body of the Buddha statue in the center was completely covered in dust and shattered, though it still looked dignified. A dilapidated templed like this couldn’t shield from the wind or rain, but destitute people frequently used it as a place to hide.
There was no fire burning within the temple, so it was a bit chilly.
On the side, a few people dressed in rags who resembled beggars hugged rolls of dry grass, claiming the warmest, driest places for themselves.
As for me.
I used my sleeve to wipe my face and spat once.
I scanned each corner of the area while undoing my waist band, squatting in the forest in front of the temple. Pretending to go to the bathroom, I waited until no one was looking before digging in te dirt…
To do such a thing at this time of day was a big risk, so I had to be quick and precise.
The old, long robe I was wearing didn’t fit my body at all. I knew this outfit made me look ridiculous… …this ash-green colored cloth robe was even stolen off a dead person.
I didn’t know what my name was.
An old beggar at the temple said I was delivered here by my mother on a windy, snowy day. She was a woman with a teardrop birthmark at the corner of her eye, a peerless youth whose beauty was unlike a mortal’s. Whenever the old smelly beggar got to this point, he’d look at me with a turbid eye and shake his head hopelessly. And then I’d know he say, you’re not even equal to one-tenth of your mother’s looks.
Pah!
This old beggar was already at death’s door, but still so lecherous.
Though I say this, he was my only protector within the rundown temple. Even when hunger struck, he never forgot to leave a mouthful of soup for this little beggar.
“During the chaotic years of war, when the soldiers mutinied and troops rebelled, families were inevitably wrenched apart and starving corpses displayed excessively.” These were the last words the old man left me before he died. I thought they were the most educated things he ever said, because I couldn’t understand a word.
But as a little beggar, I didn’t need things like inner meaning and self-cultivation. No matter how many words I learned, it couldn’t find me food.
For me to live on this crappy piece of land for five years without starving to death was nothing short of a miracle.
I once had a major illness whose fever muddled my head… …I had no idea how old I was exactly. Looking at myself, I appeared to be seven or eight, like a child, but I don’t think I was only that old, because I understood a lot of things. Maybe I just didn’t grow well.
Up until he died, the old beggar firmly believed I still had things to settle. He said back then, the temple wasn’t so rundown, and I wore very good clothes, as if I was the child of a rich family.
He told me I had a mother, and she’d definitely come back to pick me up.
But, none of what he said to me left an impression… …
This old beggar used to be a storyteller, who knew if all the things he used to tell me were just wild tales.
This was a place where a man-eat-man philosophy was forced to exist.
As for me, the only thing to do was to figure out how to keep living.
In the present, the reality before me was this: the only person who was good to me in the temple was dead. My future prospects were bleak, but luckily the old beggar left me some food before he died.
My tediously long sleeves were covered in dust from being dragged through the ground, my hands were already filthy with dirt in the fingernails. After digging through the moist earth, an oil-paper package appeared containing the remnants of half a mantou[1].
This year, there was very little food.
There were even people willing to eat white clay[2]…
Stealing, hiding, looting were all common techniques for survival.
But only by doing this could one keep living in these turbulent times.
Sneakily, furtively, I used the span of one or two seconds to open the oil-paper package and took a bite of the old mantou inside. I kept that bite in my mouth, reluctant to part with it. Lowering my head, my hand trembled as I rewrapped the food and took a very reluctant sniff of its scent, then reverently, carefully put it back in the hold. Immediately afterwards, I flattened myself against the ground, spreading out my sleeves to gather some dirt and bury the mantou, gathering some white clay at the same time to fill in my mouth… …chewing a bit, I couldn’t help but furrow my eyebrows. The taste wasn’t too good, but at least it filled my stomach.
“You dirty rascal, what are you sneakily eating here? You didn’t even pay respect to your elders.”
Startled, I grasped at the dirt like a dog paddling, wanting to cover all traces of my recent excavation.
“Looks like that old beggar must have left him some good food.” Suddenly, a force launched a surprise attack, and a foot kicked at my back. My body burned from the pain as I crawled forwards, trying in vain to suppress my tears… …choking, I had no time to swallow before I spat out the pieces of mantou mixed with mud… …
The white-colored clay mixed with the glutinous pieces of mantou.
What a waste.
“Get closer! He has mantou.”
A few pairs of dirty hands searched all until they finished fishing out the paper package in the dirt.
“It’s already a little rancid.”
“It’s still edible, leave me some.”
“His granny[3]… …stupid lowlife, you actually learned how to sneak off and eat by yourself, just watch me kick you to death, thief.”
A rain of fists fell upon my body.
Everything, even my organs, hurt… …this kind of burning sensation was more severe than stomach pains after a few days without food.
Either way, it was death… …
“All of you beggars bullying one of me–your mom, I’m going to beat you up!” I crawled atop a person and grabbed their leg, biting viciously onto that stinky, dirty trouser.
“That hurts, you b***ch’s spawn!”
Dust rose and blinded me for a second, before the fists fell like a storm of jade plates. My small and broken body was pushed forwards step by step, my hands trembled as they stretched forwards, picking up the mantou that fell on the ground. In a moment of wrenching away, I stuffed it in my mouth and starting chewing furiously… …the moist dirt carried the flavor of raw fish and mantou, it really was suffocating.
My eyes were damp.
This was called…
Even if I die, I can’t become a hungry ghost!
I think these strong bullies were pretty angered by my heroic deed. Every one of them poked me, and all they could do was grab me by my collar and shake.
Even while being shaken, do not spit out the bird!
The mantou was rancid, but it was still a mantou, a scarce commodity.
Just as I closed my eyes to prepare myself for another round of trampling, silence fell around the area. The strange atmosphere really made a person’s heart uneasy.
My body bent a few times and I crawled forwards, hand fumbling for that rancid mantou so I could prepare to take another bite. But then a pair of boots, so white they shouldn’t have,couldn’t have, appeared in a rundown temple like this, showed up before my eyes.
That pair of boots stepped precisely over my one piece of food, this kind of white… …it was even more snow white than my mantou.
I grew senseless.
A crescent-moon robe slowly draped itself on the ground, the clothes made from an unknown, high-quality material.
I don’t know what kind of thing that person tossed out, but the urchins who were beating me up broke up in a hubbub and started looting amongst themselves.
I was still stubbornly lying on the ground, unmoving, cradling that piece of rancid mantou.
“This stuff is still edible?” a voice rang out like the tinkling of jade yet filled with a continuous strength, the intonation gentle and refined like a clear spring of cold water pouring into my entire body. Even the pain wracking it had lessened.
“If I don’t eat, I’ll starve to death.”
“If you agree to come home with me, I’ll give you three meals a day and guarantee you eat until you’re full.”
A jade-like hand, beautiful and slender, gently reached over to prop me up, as if afraid to hurt me. The motion made me look up at this person, surprised. Even after many years and events had passed, I would never be able to accurately describe that moment, or the soul-stirring profundity of its beauty.
That year in early spring, was my fifth season at the dilapidated temple.