Graduation Trip

By Zhou Jianing, translated by Tse Hao Guang
From the "Sense of Place" issue of Pathlight

The night before the marathon, Xiaoyuan didn’t let Qing stay over. In her efforts to ease her sense of guilt, she ended up slighting him in a way that betrayed her true feelings. To her, that sort of cover-up was benevolent, her weakness; to everyone else, and to Qing himself, it was arrogant and heartless.

They would be setting off for the gathering point at the Bund at five the next morning, and staying over would have been the natural thing to do. Lately, “the natural thing to do” was never far from Qing’s lips, as if he were abiding by every social convention, constraint, and oversimplification, mobilizing a whole array of rules and regulations to smooth over certain things that simply wouldn’t go away.

In any case, more than half the night had passed. Qing had cycled over to make dinner, which took him three hours. With excessive patience, he laid pieces of arrowroot under streaky pork, simmering it all over low heat, stirring frequently. Such meticulousness made Xiaoyuan anxious, giving her no choice but to shut the kitchen door; yet couldn’t she still imagine Qing rinsing the leeks stalk by stalk, almost as if to prove his love or the beauty in the everyday, to arouse tenderness in her heart? It was nearly dark when Qing emerged from the kitchen, and reminded Xiaoyuan to stop working for a little while. He embraced her, describing to her the silhouettes of buildings against the setting sun, the reflections of the river. Xiaoyuan turned down the corners of her mouth, straining to keep from mocking him. These everyday acts pained her; she considered them signs of weakness, a waste of three hours. Yet Qing insisted that it was precisely these things that he (or they) lingered over every day. There was some hesitation in his claim; Xiaoyuan knew that material things gave Qing a deep sense of unease, and he didn’t truly understand the ins and outs of life. On nights when he wasn’t with Xiaoyuan (and recently these had been getting more and more common), Qing lived off of bread discounted after eight o’clock and five kilos of frozen noodles bought in bulk, and even reheated supermarket rice balls left him happy. Out of politeness, if nothing else, she shouldn’t have destroyed the efforts of such a person.

Xiaoyuan was often surprised at her own hardheartedness; either that, or she was simply unwilling to admit it, unable to face up to her own callousness. Letting Qing into her life was wrong; Qing’s existence itself was also a mistake. His was a willowy, duckweed-like existence, sighing long sighs as he drifted with the tide, and yet, inexplicably, he considered this beautiful, telling Xiaoyuan over and over again that something might shine through their endless shared weariness. Oh, beauty, what a meaningless thing! Whether willow or duckweed, Xiaoyuan had concluded, such drifting could only bring misfortune to his loved ones in real life, even though drifting could possess a kind of allure, and melodic sighs might move.

Before dinner, Xiaoyuan had gone downstairs alone to buy beer, and had saved the convenience store receipt, adopting a habit of Qing’s. The brand, type, and price of beer were written clearly on it. Xiaoyuan wasn’t sure why Qing saved them, and the explanation he had given was so vague it couldn’t be true. Keeping a diary? His coyness suggested yearning, a yearning to be further probed and finally understood, but Xiaoyuan never bothered. Occasionally she wondered whatever happened to those receipts, where they were stashed, how long they were valid for. And related thoughts: how did Qing spend those moments of solitude away from her? What was he doing?

At first, Qing didn’t drink, vigilant, disgusted at anything which made him lose self-control, but on account of Xiaoyuan, he harbored a vengeful fervor towards everything he didn’t understand. He joined her, gagging down almost every cup, laughing and chatting, observing her closely, trying to learn, to assume an easygoing air. The result was the complete opposite. To Xiaoyuan, drinking with Qing was punishment; she watched helplessly as he plastered over these cracks, and in so doing made concrete everything she couldn’t tolerate.

The temperature dropped, and finally the time for beer passed. Xiaoyuan thought, only one can today.

After dinner they watched half an episode of a Japanese drama. There was this one koto-yumin character Qing couldn’t stop giggling at, a forty-year-old who lived with his mother and had never been employed or attached, though he did have some pretty good opinions about literature. That loafer kept referencing Dazai Osamu, Mishima Yukio, Kawabata Yasunari, and each time it happened Qing got really pleased with himself, laughing way too much while giving running commentary, trying to attract Xiaoyuan’s attention. This furtive mockery, this subconscious identification, the fawning whimpers: all suggesting that perhaps even this type of character might possess an element of nobility, that Xiaoyuan share an inner world with him. She resisted this untimely passion with a helpless, grim indifference. It was hard enough for Xiaoyuan to endure her own tedium in her plight, much less his blind vigor. During the commercial break she announced: let’s call it a night.

Xiaoyuan saw Qing off anyhow, doing the bare minimum required of a girlfriend once again. She watched as he unlocked the bicycle, got on, waved, and leapt lightly into the darkness before her eyes.

Xiaoyuan fingered the beer receipt in her pocket. She had forgotten to pass it to Qing. Whatever would he be up to for the rest of the night?

Perhaps the worst of times was over. In spring, Qing had said to Xiaoyuan, “Out of sympathy, if nothing else, you shouldn’t dump me.” Right after that, he went back to the Center for Continuing Education to teach Japanese. It was exhausting socializing with co-workers; students and parents alike were stuck-up; the pay not worth mentioning. Nonetheless, he finally managed to rent a small apartment in the adjacent housing estate with his own money, and stopped spending his mother’s. It’s hard to say that this was a result of self-reflection; it seemed more like violent protest. To Xiaoyuan, it was as though Qing simply saw his life at the moment as par for the course, and every disagreeable or mediocre part of it was temporarily accepted as background noise. He had passed Xiaoyuan money in dribs and drabs, to show that it had no meaning for him. Xiaoyuan rejected some of it, and accepted some of it. He had also started long-distance training again. That had been the easy period before the cruel summer; by this point, he had run a total of five hundred kilometers.

Xiaoyuan didn’t sleep well that night. She laid in bed until two in the morning, after which she dreamt a short, sad dream, waking before the alarm clock rang. The sky was pitch-black outside the window, and it was drizzling, a fine autumn rain. She ate a bun and a banana, slowly drained a half cup of coffee. She laced her running shoes twice according to Qing’s method, so her ankle was supported and the microchip securely fastened. When she had finished preparing, she called Qing, and he picked up only after a very long ring. Qing’s voice: it was as if a nightmare had just jolted him awake.

Xiaoyuan waited for Qing at the entrance of his estate. He emerged from the corridor pushing his bicycle; his navy quick-dry top concealed by a matching zippered jacket, wearing a pair of old fitted running shoes. Qing took great care of everything he owned, cleaning his own shoes, insisting on spreading a tablecloth over his desk. Even the Casio sports watch on his wrist was a relic from his college days, without GPS features, but good enough for daily training, for estimating speed. Each time Xiaoyuan brought him to the mall to buy necessities he would look extremely uneasy, approaching every brand new item fearfully. He was still using the race pack and towel from his first marathon five years ago.

Qing fished out a blackening banana from his pack; Xiaoyuan said she had eaten. Next he produced half a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil; Xiaoyuan stuffed it in her raincoat pouch. Then she stopped him from taking out the coffee in the thermos flask. But her cruel coldness could not dissipate this momentary camaraderie, and they got on their bicycles, pedalling towards the Bund.

This was Xiaoyuan’s first marathon and Qing’s second. Five years ago – a fiasco. Qing was a National Second Grade Athlete at the time, but even though he was physically an athlete, he had clearly failed, the standards too high, insurmountable. Nowadays he seldom mentioned the incident. Thanks to his running a decent first ten kilometers in thirty-five minutes, Qing’s initial target was three and a half hours. At the thirty kilometer mark, the old injury in his right knee flared up; any hope of three and a half hours was completely extinguished, the burning pain making even four hours go up in smoke, and he was tormented by hypothermia after. Although he finished before the race closed, his timing was two hours worse than predicted, and his knee wouldn’t recover for a long time. In other words, an attempt to fling open the gates of a new life had, instead, stopped his distance running short.

So when Xiaoyuan picked up jogging, she refused to use the knee strap Qing gave her. Although she had never undergone proper training, her knees were fine no matter how she ran, ligament and muscle joined perfectly to patella. The muscles in the rest of her body were each in place and in tune, and one could only assume that her bones had to be just as beautiful. Even her spirit emitted a graceful glimmer because of her good health. She was naturally at ease, free from suffering but still unselfconscious – born lucky.

Fortunately, Xiaoyuan had gone along with Qing’s suggestion that she swap out her unsuitable old shoes. Though this wasn’t due to him repeatedly emphasizing their disadvantages, but because her toenail had dropped off after a twenty-kilometer run.

They cycled in single file, the first half of the street empty and bare, apart from the occasional runner emerging from the darkness. Qing was in high spirits, as if on a spring trip, scrutinizing the models of their running shoes, their number tags for the corresponding starting pens, trying to use his status as a fellow participant to attract attention. Xiaoyuan felt compelled to pedal furiously, finally putting two or three meters between them. In this manner they cycled along the embankment at a blistering pace, leaving them both gasping for breath.

Three or four streets from the gathering point, they found a bike parking shelter. Now a shaft of eggshell-blue finally pierced the pitch-black sky, but the drizzle showed no intention of stopping. Reflecting daylight, the wet ground itself seemed like another river. Xiaoyuan and Qing flowed with the crowd towards the Bund, and followed the signs to a storage vehicle. Before passing their packs to the volunteer, Xiaoyuan took out her rain jacket; Qing however wore only shorts and the quick-dry top. He drank all the coffee in his thermos flask to keep warm.

The path from the storage vehicle to the gathering point was teeming with people, and they had to force their way through the crowd to move forward. Xiaoyuan trailed Qing, noticing that the reflective patch on his running shoe cast a tiny yellow halo on the asphalt. Only then did she realize she was acutely nervous, unable to feel tired or cold. At the same time she felt blessed, as if in the midst of something large, momentous. This feeling persisted until the shot of the starting pistol, when the crowd jostled them five hundred meters past the starting line.

So, how did you start running?

I’ve been on the team since I was a child. And if I keep on going I’m sure to find a proper answer. You?

To ease my countless troubles? Xiaoyuan half-smiled.

This wasn’t really the case. Xiaoyuan never found happiness or freedom on her runs. In fact, she always felt depressed before setting off for one, as if she was about to be punished. In summer she had to wait until the ground had cooled. Whether in a stadium or a park, it was hard enough for her to tolerate monotonous running routes, never mind the physical pain. Stretching and walking around afterwards helped a little, especially on evenings when the streetlights hadn’t yet been lit, in parks where the smell of flowers, different every season, drifted through the slowly-blurring view. Now she longed again for the scent of wintersweet in chilly air, which evoked resolve. This wasn’t happiness or even contentment – at most, it was a long-awaited relief. Running was just monotonous exercise, endured like everything else was: the emptiness of daily living; another person’s existence and involvement in one’s life; persistent despair and disappointment.

And as for improvement… For a long time she hadn’t improved at all, remaining stuck at three-kilometer runs. Even worse than the discomfort in her lungs and heart was the boredom, the dryness, the indescribable, helpless isolation.

Her first ten-kilometer run had been at the stadium near closing time. Improvement had turned out not to be incremental or accumulative at all; instead, without warning, it befell her. At seven kilometers she had thought of giving up, but her body wasn’t in any real pain, the weariness still within limits of endurance. Then the floodlights were turned off one by one, as those on the pitch stopped dashing about in the darkness and sat on the sidelines, resting and chattering. That day, she ran twenty kilometers.

“As for us, like an icebreaker ship, we must go on…”

This thought sprung from Xiaoyuan’s mind, though from the tone it sounded like something Qing would say. Now she was ten kilometers in, along the interminable Xizang Road. They had gone at a steady six and a half kilometers per hour at first, but quickly separated after two kilometers. Qing was in good condition, he felt; perhaps he could aim for four hours. Xiaoyuan, however, followed the five-hour pacer throughout. The rain had stopped, the temperature was just right. Both nervousness and happiness vanished. Her breathing stabilized, heart rate close to target level, every muscle limber. Now all that was left was a continual sense of sovereign isolation, and, after waiting patiently for thirty kilometers before showing up, the unavoidable pain.

Xiaoyuan’s final timing was five hours and twenty minutes, Qing’s four hours five. They linked up at the lawn next to the storage vehicle and passed through the rest area to receive their finisher’s medals. Despite not finishing under four hours, Qing seemed very happy babbling away: “But I didn’t see any blimps at all! The sponsors would fly these blimps at other races…” Because of his good timing (if his knee hadn’t acted up in the final five kilometers, finishing under four wouldn’t have been a problem at all) he displayed a rare ease and arrogance, recalling that race five years ago with relish, saying this year’s free face towels weren’t as nice, and don’t even get him started on the disposable thermal blankets, all crumpled and strewn about the ground. In the past they had given out durable bath towels.

Xiaoyuan sipped and sipped water in silence. She hadn’t felt any real pleasure at all. Finishing before the race closed was just as she’d expected; originally believing she would make it under five, the final ten kilometers turned out to be a real hell on earth, so she hadn’t achieved anything worth talking about. The muscles below her waist were stiff, her shoulders and wrists ached, an intense, no-nonsense reminder of existence. After this, it might be a very long time before she’d want to run again.

They had no strength left to cycle home, so they left the bikes and spent ages waiting for a taxi. Qing said they should have a celebratory feast that night, and Xiaoyuan couldn’t think of a reason to disagree, so she decided to take a nap at Qing’s first.

A small stretch of river separated Xiaoyuan and Qing’s housing estates, the narrowest stretch of the Suzhou River. Qing made tea while Xiaoyuan sat next to his desk. In order to make more space for it, Qing had pushed his bed up against an unused wardrobe, his few pieces of clothing left at the head of the bed, folded, arranged by color and material. A deep blue tablecloth was spread over the desk, and on it, besides the computer, there were two or three Kawabata Yasunari novels, a Japanese dictionary, and a small piece of wood for a paperweight. The wood had been re-sanded from scrap (leftovers from making furniture); soon after he had first met Xiaoyuan, Qing discovered it at a minimart, bought two pieces, and insisted on giving her one. Where was that piece now? Xiaoyuan caressed the paperweight. It was a much deeper color than she remembered, and gave off a faint luster.

Out of the window facing the desk, thirty-three floors up, was a stretch of arid blue.

Soon after moving in, Qing had invited Xiaoyuan over to watch the sunset. He threw away the curtains the landlord had installed, and looking out from this height, there was a truly unobstructed view of the entire sky, of planes leaving trails of white, other portions of sky smudged with pinks and purples. Yet Xiaoyuan had never returned since then.

They had wanted to wait for the kettle to come to a boil, but exhaustion soon overcame them and they fell asleep on the bed.

When Xiaoyuan woke, Qing was still sleeping. She felt she had rested only two or three hours, but the sky was dark, the apartments on the opposite bank lit up. Not wanting to disturb Qing, she moved carefully, but her muscles felt like they had lost all connection to her body, trembling gently, uncontrollably. Her weariness hadn’t faded; instead, like waves, it surged. Qing jolted awake.

“I dreamt of you,” Qing said, almost gleeful. “We were back last spring. Don’t worry, it was a happy one.”

“Oh.”

“It was so cold. You were sitting in the bookstore while me and Zhou went out walking along the hillside, under the sparse shadows of trees, towards the fitness center high on the hilltop. It was as if Zhou were young again, and I was, too, our steps lively and unburdened. Suddenly, the chill subsided; we had reached the flat, open summit. We were solemn as the sun shone on our skin; in the dream the air was so fresh that as we breathed in it became a kind of force, pure and unblemished. We were like two brothers on spring break, walking all the way to the tennis courts, where just outside there were a few sets of horizontal bars. A youthful mood welled up, clear in my heart; I took off my coat, jumped up to the bar, my body full of energy. I tried to pull off a series of flips I remembered having enjoyed at practice, and of course I executed them smoothly. Zhou laughed as I did it again, taking pictures of me hanging off the bar with his phone.”

“It sounds so real.”

“As l was flipping, it felt like life itself had flipped right-side up again. Though my actions were clumsy, I felt like this might be, more or less, the spot from which I could make a fresh start. Even if it was a dream, I felt all the kindness of the world. I can still feel it now.”

“Blame me then. I weaken those kindly feelings, I guess.”

“Don’t say that. That’s life, it’s nothing more than following each day like a river’s bank, if you want to run it then run, but if not, slow down.”

“I don’t like rivers or walking along them.”

“I get it. Let me tell you a parable then. I’ll invite you to enter my inner world, whoa, at first glace the scenery’s not bad, it’s vast, there’s something sparkling off in the distance, and you think maybe I’ll go there and take a look. After setting off, you discover that the road is hard, the landscape gets more and more monotonous, and, one by one, out pop these annoying monsters that have to be fought off. You’ll have to go through swamps, through so much that is dark and dirty. At this point you want to leave, of course, to sever all connection with this world – I can’t let all these bad things enter my world – you must be thinking this in your heart. Listen, why do I keep putting up with this, not breaking up? And with someone like you, I’ve had to put up with a lot. I love you, for sure, but I wish our love were much more than romance. When I compare our feelings for each other, I worry that all your assessments of me are right. But so what if they are? I can’t actually say what they are, and I bet you can’t, either.”

“Enough parables. I really hate them.”

“Okay, no more, I’ll tell you something meaningful then! Since I just dreamt of Zhou.”

“Sigh. That stuck-up guy.”

“In high school we were always competing against each other, clashing at close quarters – we were two completely different people who grew close, surprisingly. Of course, this sort of friendship was detached from reality, only briefly existing. Because of the distance, we hadn’t kept in touch at all in our four years at college, but after graduation we both chose to return to our hometown. He got an office job, and my parents found me work, too. It was a very small town, and our housing estates were separated by a park, not more than twenty minutes away by foot.”

“Isn’t yours the estate by the big lake, where your mom grew lettuce in the vegetable garden downstairs?”

“That garden has been abandoned for a long time. But yes, we’ve been to the park before! Eventually, Zhou and I agreed to meet there. It so happened that we were both in our high school exercise jackets, and both a little embarrassed for some reason. But we sat on the park bench and spoke for ages. Afterwards, he walked me home, and we kept strolling round the estate until it got dark.”

“Ah, I remember that park, there was a little hill, and if you climbed it you would see half the lake.”

“Yes. We met a group of elderly people picking pagoda flowers there, once.”

“We picked a bagful of them too, remember? It was such a long time ago.”

“I mean even earlier… ten years ago? I had just taken my first steps in this big wide world, I had some money, but I felt so ashamed, I felt betrayed for no reason at all, I couldn’t face any of my friends. Looking back, Zhou probably felt the same. So we both quit our jobs and tried to begin learning all over again, with our own understanding of the world. We formulated learning and exercise programs. I moved in with Zhou. We would start reading at nine in the morning and made lunch at noon, tomato and egg vermicelli almost every day. In the afternoon, it was back to reading, and at around four we went running at the lake. We would wait for the weather to get warm before swimming.”

“We saw lots of old folks swimming then. At the top of the hill, we would see swimming caps of different colors dotting the lake.”

“Oh yes. But you didn’t know that they swam all through the winter.”

“What sort of books did you guys read, I mean you, what did you read?”

“I read Records of the Grand Historian closely, and The Book of Songs I read alongside several commentaries. I picked up Japanese again, and went through quite a few Murakami novels. It didn’t matter whether it was I, or Zhou; it was as if we possessed an almost remorseful courage trying to scale the invisible wall of fate. I wonder what would be different today had we persevered? You know, nothing beats routine, day after day.”

“Why bother with what ifs? What would be different anyhow?”

“Maybe I’d be a swimming champion? Hah. Later on Zhou got an opportunity to set up a business in Beijing, and after eight months our plans were cut short. I haven’t got to the best part yet: since this was graduation, we had to take a graduation trip. I can’t recall whose idea it first was, but when it was proposed we felt that there would be nothing better than – crossing the lake!”

“That’s awesome! You swam?”

“Mm! This was the plan: we’d set off at five in the morning and reach the hill by the township at six, and then we’d inflate the rubber dinghy at the lakeside, and replenish our equipment. At seven sharp we’d set off, past two small islands, and then land on the opposite hillside. It’s only about a few hundred meters from shore to first island, and when we’d reached it we’d warm up, assess the condition of the boat, and then Zhou would jump in and swim, I’d row, and by the time we’d reached the second island it would be past noon, and we’d rest awhile. Then, I’d swim and he’d row. Relay style, we’d cross Lake Tai. We bought the boat online, a small light green one; it came with an awning attached, with aluminum oars, and a foot-powered air pump.”

“All of this sounds like an unfinishable short story – now who was it that wrote it…”

“Truly, we suffered a crushing defeat, worse than anything we had anticipated. There were huge storms that we couldn’t see from shore at all. And maybe those storms were really nothing much and happened all the time on Lake Tai, but they sunk us completely. After an hour, we clambered up a fisherman’s boat in a sorry state; they basically had to rescue us. And what’s more, we weren’t even five hundred meters from shore. I was in the dinghy the whole time, and didn’t even get a chance to go in the water.”

Hahahaha! Xiaoyuan and Qing laughed loudly, heartily, until the pain in their muscles got in the way of their heaving.

“Hungry?”

“Yes, yes, I’m starving.”

“What do you want?”

“Hot and spicy soup with peanut and garlic sauce, and two slices of luncheon meat, sprinkled with white spring onions.”

“I want to drink fresh draft beer that’s been cooled just right.”

At this, Xiaoyuan licked her lips, as if licking the ice-cold foam. No one moved in the dark. The sky was still; no sounds came from out the window. The river, the metro, the streets, they were all so very far away, the affairs of the world so far away as to be completely unfathomable.

“Hey, don’t tell me you’re asleep.”

“No, I’m reminiscing about the big lake. It was cold when we lived there, but you’d keep opening all the windows. The water was murky and the waves were huge. Tell me again about the big lake.”

“Well, spring isn’t when the lake is most beautiful, but there’s fog in spring, coming from the faraway mountains to envelop the lake. In summer it’s different, the summer lake is a delicate olive green, and sometimes under the light it becomes forest green or amber. There are woods nearby that no one visits, they sparkle brightly, it’s impossible to imagine. I’ll remember that day forever. It was a lush morning, full of life, the air so fresh. The sun wasn’t yet up, Zhou and me left the house carrying the dinghy, and we stuffed it in the back seat of our rented Santana. It was as if the whole world began, right there.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“So beautiful.”

“But tell me, what in the world was on the other side, and how exactly did you guys know about it?”

“We didn’t! If the sky was clear we could see the second island, but beyond that, although Zhou and I often discussed it, we hadn’t really given it much proper thought. Because one day we would see it with our own eyes, of course, we always assumed. Though even if there’s nothing at all, that’s totally fine. What do you think?”

Zhou Jianing (周嘉宁) is a writer and translator of English literature. Her works include the novels Abandoned City and In the Deep Forest, and the short story collection How I Destroyed My Life One Step at a Time. Her most recent publication is the short story collection Basic Beauty. She has also translated books by authors including Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates. Her short story Let Us Talk About Something Else was published in the Summer 2014 issue of Pathlight.

Tse Hao Guang (谢皓光) is the author of The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association (Tinfish Press, 2022) and Deeds of Light (Math Paper Press, 2015), the latter shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. He is a 2016 fellow of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and the 2018 National Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University. His poems have been featured in Poem-a-Day, Tammy, New Delta Review, Pain, Minarets, Big Other, Hotel, Asian American Writers' Workshop, Entropy and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Singapore, where he continues to live and work.