Hai Ning Ng Translation
Mingliang’s Sorrow
By Liang Hong, translated by Hai Ning Ng
It was right then, at 3 a.m., that Haihong received a text from Mingliang:
T: I can’t go on. My head is all wrong, I haven’t slept in almost a month. I don’t want to live anymore. Don’t be sad for me; I am a heartless person, and I don’t worry about you guys at all. Goodbye, T. Mingliang.
Haihong turned off her phone. She told herself: this is the middle of the night, I did not see this text. Haihong rolled over and fell back asleep.
Haihong began dreaming. It seemed like she had to go teach at a particular school, but for what? She wasn’t sure, knowing only that the school was her destination. She was running on an open road, an old-fashioned dirt road that had been swept clean by the autumn wind; the road was lined on both sides by tall, pencil-straight white poplars just like the roadside trees of her childhood hometown, their scent familiar to her. She kept running forward, but couldn’t ever seem to find where she was supposed to go. She was hungry, and really needed the toilet, so she turned beside a village. A man was standing guard there, watching her with a faint smile, as though he’d long known she would need to go at that moment. He pointed at the high courtyard wall and the outhouse next to the road, saying those belonged to him. His steady expression seemed to be telling her, what was his was hers; she could stop running now.
Gazing out at the clean, undulating road and the white poplars that stretched out toward the distant horizon, Haihong understood she had been separated from them forever.
In the dream, Haihong saw her eighteen-year-old self, stumbling on, being thrown into that great wide world.
T: I’ve already reported to White Poplar Hill High School. This place is like a ghost, perched all alone on this big hill. It’s called White Poplar Hill, but there isn’t a single white poplar, only a few old and ugly scholar trees with their crooked, hanging trunks. The house I live in is right under the biggest one. If you come visit, you’ll find me when you see that tree.
These students don’t look very interested in learning, they just loaf around campus all day. Some of them are even older than me, and taller than me. They’re not scared of me at all. I’m not scared of them either.
If anyone disrespects me, I’ll punch them in the face. They better not fucking try to show off to me, or fucking think they can get anything from me.
A great wind blows and disperses all the clouds…
Mingliang
Eighteen-year-old Haihong rubbed the letter in her hands, looking up at the mottled, wooden window; right outside were several white poplar trees, of which only their thick round trunks and the school field shrouded by sandy yellow dust could be seen. A few chickens were in the corner of the school field, pecking away in the dust, but suddenly, as though spooked by some disturbance, began to fly noisily about, leaving a mass of chicken feathers. This small school was surrounded by a ring of tall, dense white poplars, and by wild grasses and trees that grew rampantly and brashly everywhere. And beyond the school field and the perimeter wall, were boundless crop fields extending farther than the eye could see. Even the nearest village was still half a kilometre from the school. The corn stalks, taller than a person, squeezed in close together, their shade a deep, brooding green. At night, they whispered secretively to one another outside her dormitory window, like ghosts that had crawled out of the earth to forage.
Where White Poplar Hill was, she didn’t know. Rang County Teachers’ College taught trainee teachers from some neighbouring counties, and after graduation, they basically all returned to their respective counties. However, which specific town or village within that county was not within their control. Haihong was assigned to teach in a village primary school forty kilometres from Wu Town, yet Mingliang, who was from another town altogether, was sent to White Poplar Hill High School in Wu Town. And their other classmates, apart from the few who stayed in Rang County town, had been scattered across other “White Poplar Hills” in the middle of nowhere.
She was encircled by wilderness, isolated from life. But, on the whole, Haihong did not find this unbearably difficult; she did not know what else life could look like, and so she had no expectations in particular.
On the contrary, she sort of liked this wilderness, a good place to meditate. After autumn rainstorms, standing barefoot in the middle of the fields, the wind whipping through her hair and clothes, gazing out at the clouds racing across the western sky—in turns fiery red, grey, and blue—watching the sun beam golden rays of light from behind dark clouds, she felt as if she were standing in the middle of time itself.
She wondered where Mingliang had gotten his immense sense of grief and indignation and fighting spirit. He had fashioned that “White Poplar Hill High School” into his personal battleground. She could imagine a scene, him clutching his copy of “Ancient Chinese” (the bane of his self-study examination in university, which he took two years in a row and still failed), studying diligently in front of the dormitory. That figure, resolute yet isolated, carried an angry sort of determination, as though telling everyone: no one can fucking disturb my studies. No one.
Mingliang liked her, Haihong had always felt. When he looked at her, his eyes would be so soulful, his expression so serious, his countenance so sorrowful, that it couldn’t have been an act. But, Haihong also knew, those three years in the teachers’ college, he had been quietly pursuing a classmate who shared his hometown. He would pour his heart out to that girl, receive some ambiguous reply in return, and then go back to Haihong’s side, sprawl on the desk next to her, looking at Haihong so sorrowfully and soulfully.
Later, Mingliang simply swapped places with Haihong’s deskmate, sitting next to Haihong. He would place a large teapot on the floor on either side of the desk; they were like two big, dim-witted but sturdy guardians, never leaving his side. On the desk would be a large, dark brown plastic cup, filled to the brim with all kinds of medicinal herbs. Mingliang would grab the cup and gulp its contents down, his Adam’s apple bobbing steadily, swallowing the bitter medicine, and then pour more boiled water over the mixture, steeping it again. He had to drink four kettles of this medicine a day. Mingliang said he was ill, but what illness it was, no one knew, and he himself never said.
“You have to protect yourself well; you can’t just let others tell you who you are and how you are. That way, you’ll be bullied. You have to think about why they’re saying that to you, and once you have a clear understanding, then you won’t fall into their trap, or do as they say.”
Mingliang gestured forcefully with both hands, giving Haihong his oration, his voice low and grave. He gave Haihong the rundown on every person in their class, analysing the class officers’ rivalries, schemes, and traps.
For Haihong, who had heretofore been immersed in poetic and sentimental emotions, it was as though she had suddenly been transported to a different world, understanding that this world was very complicated, and that interpersonal relationships were full of suspicion, betrayal, and taking advantage of one another. “Hell is other people”: many years later, when Haihong came across this quote, Mingliang’s image was the one that surfaced in her mind.