Chapter 1

Foreword.

If every person’s life is a one-way road with no return trip, then on the road belonging to Li Zhuo, there were two forks.

The first fork was the day he was found by a family search show, after fourteen years living in a remote mountain village.

The second fork happened at a banquet, when he was being harshly scolded by his parents. An onlooking guest, who had been sitting upstairs watching for who knows how long, suddenly spoke up and asked:

“Don’t you want him anymore?”

He walked step by step to the nearly broken Li Zhuo, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and carefully wiped the mixture of cream and tears from his face. He said gently:

“They don’t want you. I want you.”

“Come, be my child.”

From that moment on, Li Zhuo’s path ahead was smooth and clear.

October 31, 2015

Li Zhuo will probably never forget that day. Never, ever forget it.

It was a deep autumn morning when those well-dressed city people, with cameras hoisted on their shoulders, lavalier mics clipped to their collars, found their way to Pingshan Village.

He wasn’t called Li Zhuo back then. His name was Yang Shun, and he was in the field out back, wobbling along with two buckets of water on a shoulder pole, concentrating fiercely as he walked a very narrow dirt path. He wanted to get to the other side to water the cabbage and other vegetables he’d planted.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want a closer plot, or a better path to walk. It was just that all the other land had owners. Even if a plot lay abandoned, they wouldn’t let him have it. The only land Yang Shun could use were the barren corners no one else wanted. Untended land no one fought over was mostly remote, awkward scraps.

And he was a polite kid. He never casually trampled through other people’s fields. So every time, he had to take those winding, difficult, zigzagging trails. The barren land was nowhere near a water source, so he had to go very far to fetch water each time. After several trips back and forth, his shoulders would always be left with clear red marks that hurt for a long time.

They called out to him five or six times then, maybe. He didn’t quite remember. In any case, he never responded.

He genuinely didn’t hear the first few calls. Later, he did hear them, but deep down, he never once considered that those Mandarin voices—devoid of any local accent—were calling for him.

After all, those city people were shouting for Li Zhuo.

Who was Li Zhuo? He didn’t know him.

The first person from the Family Search Program Crew to rush up was a young man with a bit of a temper.

His hair was neatly combed, and he wore a clean, crisp suit. He was the type you could tell at a glance didn’t belong in farmland.

But after just one stretch of mountain path, this pampered city kid was already panting for breath, his forehead covered in sweat, his leather shoes caked in mud. He aggressively grabbed hold of Yang Shun’s shoulder pole.

“Li Zhuo! You’re Li Zhuo, right? What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you answered after we’ve called you so many times? Didn’t you hear us? Are you freaking deaf?!”

Lagging a few steps behind this young man were two youths in black hats carrying black equipment and an uncle around forty years old.

Probably seeing the conflict ahead, that uncle started trying to dissuade him from a distance: “Don’t be impulsive…”

Further behind, three or four men and women were straggling far back. The mountain path was too difficult for them. They probably weren’t used to walking roads like this; they moved very slowly.

That uncle’s attitude was much better. Once he arrived, he first pulled the young man aside and politely apologized to Yang Shun. He explained the guy was still in university and was here for an internship.

After that, he quietly scolded the young man a few times. It was nothing more than ‘you follow my rules on my turf,’ and if he kept causing trouble, he could leave right now, and there’d be no chance of giving him any kind of credit.

As for the specifics of what else was said, he didn’t really listen at the time. He was too focused on the water in his buckets, now reduced by more than half. ‘What a pity. The water all got splashed onto someone else’s field. I carried that water from so far away, so laboriously. Now I’ll have to go and get more.’

At the same time, he thought with a bit of schadenfreude: this clueless city person was going to be in trouble. He actually stepped on someone else’s field!

If he remembered correctly, that was Old Man Liu’s plot, the one who lived at the village entrance. He grew green and red chili peppers there. They’d just been planted, and his little tender sprouts had been trampled and ruined. That loud-voiced old man was definitely going to scold him viciously.

Years ago, when Yang Shun was just a few years old, he’d accidentally stepped on them and got yelled at for days.

—However, the truth was, until this group of people left, they crossed through the fields more than once, trampling seedlings. Several times they did it right in front of the landowner, and not a single landowner came out to say a single word.

In the end, they just bullied him. —Following the rules has different interpretations in different fields. If this trait belonged to a high official, it would be a blessing for common people. If it belonged to someone struggling to survive at the bottom rung of society, it became a tragedy.

After learning that these completely out-of-place city people were here specifically for him, Yang Shun simply didn’t believe it.

“What did you just say?”

Yang Shun looked at their attire, then at his own tattered old clothes, the coarse calluses on his palms, the overlapping old and new mottled scars visible everywhere on his exposed skin, and those promotional discount sandals so loose they were about to fall apart. They were literally from two different worlds.

“I’m not Li Zhuo. You’ve got the wrong person.”

Yang Shun repeated this sentence three times. Each time, his voice was louder, each time more panicked.

“My name is Yang Shun… I’m not Li Zhuo. I… I need to go water the field. I was busy with odd jobs yesterday and didn’t water. I have to do it today. Move aside…”

How others would handle a sudden turn of events, Yang Shun didn’t know. All he knew was that his own mind was a complete mess.

An indescribable, complex emotion swelled, swelled, and swelled again in his chest. It rampaged through his limbs and bones like a monster.

He felt dizzy and lightheaded, his throat tight, the air around him suddenly thin…

In that moment, he couldn’t breathe.

Stubbornly, Yang Shun lifted his shoulder pole and walked step by step along the familiar winding path, steady and fast. When he reached his spot, he mechanically scooped water as usual, using his wrist strength to expertly sprinkle the water evenly into the soil.

He went about his business, as if he couldn’t hear the chattering voices behind him.

“Hello, we’re really not scammers. Here’s the thing, we’re from a TV station. This is my work ID, you can take a look…”

“My surname is Guan. I’m directing a family-search documentary. Before we came looking for you, we already figured everything out…”

Yang Shun poured the last ladle of water from his bucket into the parched soil. Just a little less than half of it was still dry.

“Hey hey, what are you doing?! Stop for a moment and listen to me. Even though you might not be able to accept this right now, or believe it, you really are the Li Zhuo we’re looking for…”

Yang Shun picked up his empty buckets and went back to fetch more water.

He’d walked this path countless times. He was far too familiar with it. The program crew members were different. Unfamiliar with the roads, they walked slowly. Especially that young man who had rushed up first—even though he was already so brazenly trampling on someone else’s field, he actually managed to fall down. After getting up, he left in a huff!

Were all city people this clumsy?

He might have thought that way at the time.

The men and women lagging behind were called back by that uncle. He said he could handle it here and told them to go back to the cars and watch the equipment.

The middle-aged man who called himself the director was clearly walking more steadily than the young man who’d left, but he was still several steps behind Yang Shun. Yang Shun had already refilled his water by the time the director slowly caught up.

Reaching Yang Shun, Director Guan deliberately lifted one of the water buckets, exclaiming: “Whoa, pretty heavy.”

Yang Shun didn’t speak. He just buried his head in his work, making trip after trip to water the newly sown field, pulling out his small hidden basket from under a cover of dead branches and fallen leaves, picking a ripe cabbage from another small plot, and then squatting by the roadside to earnestly pinch off a few handfuls of wild greens.

He was immersed in his own world, completely cut off from the incessant narration behind him.

“Fourteen years ago, in 2001, when you had just turned one, a nanny surnamed Chen from your family took you out to play and lost you. The nanny went home and told your parents she just went to the bathroom, and when she turned around, you were gone…”

“Your parents immediately called the police. Surveillance cameras weren’t widely installed back then. It took a long time to find the last footage of you on camera, where you were being carried by a strange man wearing a mask and a knit cap into a minivan…”

“Because the minivan’s license plate was obscured, your parents searched for a very long time. When they finally found the owner, he said the van had been stolen three months prior. They tried to find clues about the thief, but the owner lived in a remote area with no cameras. The only usable main road surveillance footage had already been overwritten because the retention period had expired. The trail went cold there again…”

“Until last year’s Spring Festival, when the Qilian City police and Lin’an City police jointly arrested several trafficking rings. One member, hoping for a reduced sentence, voluntarily confessed many criminal facts while in detention, including what he knew about other cases. Yours was among them…”

“It was only then your parents learned that you hadn’t simply wandered off and been abducted back then, but had been sold by Nanny Chen for 1,500 yuan. The reason was simply that your mother had deducted 500 yuan from her wages due to a work mistake. She harbored a grudge and wanted revenge, so she did it deliberately…”

“Because so much time has passed, and you were transferred between several people in the middle, we’ve been searching for you since last year. It wasn’t until last month that we finally learned you were here…”

“The person who bought you, his surname is Yang, right?”

“We’ve already asked around the village and found out clearly. He was blind in one eye, his family was poor, and he couldn’t get a wife. At the time, he bought you from the traffickers for 3,000 yuan…”

“Li Zhuo. You really are Li Zhuo…”

After finishing his work in the fields, Yang Shun carried his basket back to his little broken-down house. Still following behind him were the young man with the camera on his shoulder and the middle-aged man with a work ID hanging on his chest and an earpiece clipped to his collar.

They were quite strange. No matter what Yang Shun did, that young man in the hat always aimed that black machine at him and filmed.

Filmed when he took out leftover food he hadn’t finished eating from the well in the yard. Filmed when he fed the chickens. Filmed when he chopped vegetables. Even when he split firewood and kindled the earthen stove, the camera was pointed at the crackling firewood in the stove’s mouth.

Yang Shun’s meal was simple. He quickly rinsed the cabbage he’d brought back from the field, cut it in half, and chopped one half into fine mince to feed the chickens. The other half he cut into chunks, mixing it with a mushy leftover slop from who-knows-how-many meals ago, and stir-fried it until soft enough to eat.

When it was almost time to steam the rice, he hesitated for a moment. Finally, he silently walked to his worn-out little cupboard and pulled out a woven bamboo basket from the very back. He lifted the blue floral cloth covering it. First, he took out one egg. He thought for a moment, glanced back at the number of people, and then pulled out the entire basket.

The chicks raised outside were ones he’d gotten last autumn harvest. He’d worked for several days helping a family from the neighboring production team just to trade for a few.

He remembered they were scrawny and tiny when he first got them. He’d raised them carefully. He usually couldn’t bear to eat the eggs they laid; he saved them up to sell. This was the best thing he could bring out to treat guests.

While waiting for the food to cook, Yang Shun, who had been spinning like a top all morning, finally had a moment of rest.

He sat on the stone steps by the door. He looked up at the blue sky and white clouds, as unchanging as ever. Then he looked at the group of unfamiliar men and women in his yard, and at a few fellow villagers nearby craning their necks to observe the situation.

It was only then that he finally stopped treating the production crew as invisible air and answered directly: “Is it true?”

“What’s true?” Director Guan was baffled by this sentence without context.

“You said earlier that they’ve missed me all these years, that they’ve been looking for me all these years. Is that true?” Yang Shun’s face remained as wooden as before. He pursed his dry, cracked lips and tilted his head up slightly, as if watching a bird that had just flown by in the distance. “Those words… are they all true?”

Director Guan, overjoyed, quickly answered:

“Of course they’re true!”

Seeing that he was finally willing to communicate, the whole program crew swarmed around him. Some showed him video photos of his parents, some showed him pictures of himself as a baby. They all spoke at once, creating a lively scene.

“Once we had definite news about you, we immediately drove over here. Your parents even prepared a welcome-back banquet for you. They…”

The boy didn’t respond, but he looked quite expectantly toward the few cars parked outside the house.

The staff member’s voice grew quieter and quieter. Director Guan immediately added: “Your parents… uh… they… they were busy with work, so they couldn’t make the trip this time. You’ll know once you get back. They miss you very much too…”

Immediately, the others chimed in agreement:

“Yeah, yeah…”

“You’re the son they’ve been missing for over a decade. How could they not miss you?”

“Thank goodness we found you, and it’s not too late…”

Amidst the scattered exclamations, Director Guan cautiously asked how his previous adoptive father treated him.

There was no joy of being praised on Yang Shun’s face, nor any other emotion. He looked completely dazed, as if he hadn’t yet woken up from being smashed over the head by this massive, sudden surprise from the sky.

He drooped his eyelids, avoiding the black machine pointed straight at him as much as possible.

“It was okay. Just average.”