Chapter One: Past and Present Lives

December 1979, the Beijing–Kunming Railway.

Heavy snow fell from the sky, and the wilderness outside Beijing stretched away in a vast white expanse.

A black dragon sped sinuously across the white canvas. Its gleaming body was draped in silver frost, while its weathered engine belched clouds of steam that melted the snow swirling through the air before rising slowly into the sky.

Clank, clank…

This was Express Train T62/1, running from Kunming in Yunnan to Beijing West Station.

In the dim corner near the front door of Carriage Eight, Cheng Kaiyan, wrapped in a green military overcoat, lay sprawled across the table and drifted into sleep. Every so often, he muttered in his dreams.

“Catch the spy! Catch the spy!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Wake up! You can’t die!”

He was having a nightmare. In it, a young woman dressed in a military uniform, her face impossible to make out, shook him frantically with an expression of panic.

Cheng Kaiyan slept deeply, as though he had fallen to the bottom of the sea and could no longer breathe. He even felt that he might never wake again.

“Comrade? Comrade! Wake up!”

The voice beside him grew louder and louder. Then the train suddenly jolted. Cheng Kaiyan gripped the table leg to steady himself and finally lifted his bleary eyes.

Beside him sat a rustic countrywoman in a patched, old-fashioned padded coat, her face pale and sallow from hunger. A little girl of one or two, her hair tied into two tiny bunches, sat on her lap. The woman was staring at him anxiously, her head leaning close.

Oh… it was Shang Cui, the countrywoman from the neighboring seat, who had boarded the train to Beijing in search of her husband, a former educated youth.

“Cough, cough… I’m fine. What time is it?”

Cheng Kaiyan asked breathlessly. After lunch, he had sprawled over the table for a nap, leaving his arms prickling painfully with numbness.

“Good, good. You were shaking terribly just now. Could it be malaria? The announcement said it was half past four. You slept for more than four hours.”

Seeing how deathly pale he looked, with fine beads of sweat glistening at his temples, Shang Cui handed him a handkerchief.

She and Cheng Kaiyan had boarded the train together in the southern frontier. During the journey, his military uniform had spared her and her daughter no small amount of trouble, so she had taken a particular interest in him.

“Thank you. It’s not malaria. I just had a nightmare.”

Cheng Kaiyan shook his head, accepted the handkerchief, and wiped the cold sweat from his face.

It was a white handkerchief embroidered with lotus blossoms. After one wipe, a large patch of it was soaked through.

In those days, almost everyone carried a handkerchief. People jokingly called it the Handkerchief Era.

He raised his eyes.

The carriage was packed with people hunched shivering in their seats, dressed in patched black, gray, blue, and green clothes. A railway attendant pushed a battered food cart down the aisle.

The passengers crowded together in the narrow carriage, filling it with the chattering complaints of sparrows, the cries of children, and the clatter of card games.

The smells of foul feet, bad breath, sweat, and sulfur mingled together. With the windows tightly shut, the carriage was as stuffy as an enormous tin of sardines. Anyone with a fastidious nature would have fainted on the spot.

Yes, he had transmigrated into another world. It had been nearly a month.

In his previous life, he had been an orphan. After growing up, he became a teacher. His daily routine consisted more or less of teaching classes, going home after work, and writing novels.

His life had been utterly ordinary—and utterly dull.

Yet who would have thought that after opening and closing his eyes…

When he opened them again, he was lying in an intensive-care bed in a field hospital.

The pungent smell of disinfectant filled his nostrils. Gunfire and artillery thundered in his ears. Before his eyes was a white sheet stained red with blood.

Only then did he understand: while on summer vacation, he had been hiding at home with the air conditioner running, watching videos of pretty girls, and had unexpectedly died of sudden cardiac arrest. He had transmigrated into the winter of 1979 and become a performing-arts soldier who had nearly died while capturing a spy.

If Heaven gave him another chance, he would never stay up late watching videos of pretty girls again…

He would watch them during the day instead!

And, of course, he would delete his browsing history first. Then he could die without regrets.

Perhaps it was an effect of quantum mechanics, but this young body shared his name. Both of them were called Cheng Kaiyan.

Their fates, however, could not have been more different.

Cheng Kaiyan was twenty years old. His ancestral home was Ice City, though he had been born in the capital.

His father, Cheng Kaifu, had graduated from the Harbin Institute of Technology and afterward had been transferred to the physics department of Peking University for research. During the years of upheaval, Cheng Kaifu had been sent, along with more than seven thousand teachers and students from Peking University, to the Carp Island Farm in Nanchang, Jiangxi, for labor reeducation. He later died of illness.

His mother, Xu Yuxiu, came from a family of scholars. She had read extensively since childhood and was accomplished in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. A few years earlier, she had been politically rehabilitated and allowed to return to the city, where she worked as a teacher.

Cheng Kaiyan was an only child, so unlike many other young people, he had not been sent to the countryside as an educated youth.

Instead, he had joined the army and been assigned to the southern frontier—the most dangerous and grueling posting of all. But because he could play the piano, he had entered an army performance troupe and become an artistic soldier.

In response to the call of duty, the performance troupe stationed in the southern frontier had traveled to the battlefront to entertain and encourage the troops. Cheng Kaiyan had led fourteen female performers all the way to the Laoshan front line.

One night, Cheng Kaiyan discovered someone stealing classified information. He immediately gave chase. During the desperate struggle that followed, he was shot in the chest and arm, while the thief was struck in the thigh and shoulder and captured.

Thus, Cheng Kaiyan had taken part in the arrest, earned a second-class merit citation, and honorably left the army in November.

Since he was already here, he had long since accepted everything that belonged to his predecessor.

“Beware of thieves and pickpockets. Take care of your belongings. Beware of highway robbers and keep your windows shut.”

“Sunflower seeds, beer, soda, boxed meals—anyone want some?”

“Ma’am, move your feet in a little…”

The railway attendant, a woman in a dark blue-black uniform, called out without enthusiasm as she pushed the food cart through the cramped aisle. The cart was old and yellowed, made of either aluminum or iron. It was narrow and rectangular, with four small wheels underneath and a black handle at the back.

Rattle, rattle…

“Sister, give me two boxed meals.”

At once, Cheng Kaiyan called out to the attendant.

She looked over and saw a handsome young man with red lips and white teeth. Delighted, she smiled and spoke in Mandarin colored by a northeastern accent.

“What’ll it be, comrade?

“We’ve got sliced pork with potatoes, shrimp with eggplant, pork skin with chives, stir-fried fish fillets, and roast chicken…

“Which one do you want? The meatless dishes are twenty cents, the meat dishes twenty-five, and the roast chicken is three and a half yuan.”

In those days, trains still had dining cars, and the food was not prepackaged. Every boxed meal was cooked fresh on board by a professional chef.

But it was already half past four in the afternoon, with less than an hour remaining before the terminus, Beijing West Station. No one would be foolish enough to spend twenty cents on a boxed meal at that hour. As for the three-and-a-half-yuan roast chicken, no one bought that at all.

“Two servings of sliced pork with potatoes!”

Cheng Kaiyan knew perfectly well how things stood, but he was starving. He reached into his pocket, counted out fifty cents, and handed over the bills.

When he had boarded in Kunming, he had carried twenty yuan in spending money—an entire month’s wages for an ordinary worker. But when traveling, it was always wise to have money in reserve.

He also had fifteen hundred yuan in discharge pay. A female comrade had helped him sew it into the inner pocket of his military overcoat, stitching it securely between two layers of cloth. It represented all his savings from several years of service, together with his discharge payment.

“Right away! But our portions are huge, you know. Two may be a bit much.”

The attendant instinctively tried to dissuade him when she heard he wanted two portions. Then she took a closer look and thought, Good heavens…

His face was practically turning green from hunger.

Who knew how long this handsome young man had gone without eating?

After taking his money, she hurriedly fetched two boxes and a pair of chopsticks and urged him to eat.

Cheng Kaiyan did not go to the dining car. He simply lifted the lids. The fragrant aroma of potatoes and pork rushed toward him, and he felt so ravenous he could have cried.

He had no idea why, but ever since his rebirth, his appetite had multiplied several times over, as if he had suddenly entered a second stage of growth.

The boxed meals on the train were prepared and sold fresh on board by restaurant chefs. The stoves burned coal, giving the dishes a rich, smoky flavor, and everything was remarkably fresh.

He had heard that each railway division prepared local specialties, so a single train journey could offer passengers the chance to taste the flavors of many different regions.

In Sichuan, for example, one might find dry-pot rabbit; in Hunan, stinky tofu; in the Northeast, pickled cabbage with vermicelli, and so on. The meals offered travelers a rich and varied selection of food.

Moreover, in an era when buying food generally required ration coupons, meals on the train could be purchased without coupons. All one needed was a few coins, and the kitchen would prepare the food to order.

Many people began saving several weeks in advance just to buy a generous boxed meal on the train. The portions were large and the meat plentiful, making them a luxurious treat for ordinary families.

The steaming potatoes, the pork slices glistening with oil, and the young man eating with such gusto all made the passengers around them secretly swallow. In their hearts, they cursed him as a wastrel.

They were nearly home, after all. Who would eat two meals at once?

These people had eaten their fill of boxed meals at noon and planned to go hungry rather than eat again in the afternoon.

Cheng Kaiyan could not be bothered to care what they thought. He wolfed down his food while sorting through his own jumbled and disordered memories.

Just as he was eating with relish, he suddenly choked, his face flushing red.

The woman beside him, who wore a flowered headscarf and held a child in her arms, hurriedly handed him a large enamel bowl streaked with rust. Cheng Kaiyan snatched it up and gulped down the water.

“Thanks, sister!”

He wiped his mouth carelessly. The water tasted slightly sweet, and he realized that rock sugar had been added. Clearly, it was meant to help keep the child fed during the journey.

Although the boxed meals on the train were generous, twenty cents was enough to buy more than a pound of rice. Not everyone could afford one. This countrywoman from the remote southern frontier obviously could not.

Suddenly, the woman’s stomach growled. She immediately lowered her head, afraid to look at him, her face flushing as she took back the enamel bowl.

“It’s nothing.”

“Go ahead and eat it, if you don’t mind.”

Cheng Kaiyan put down his chopsticks, furrowed his brow, and handed Shang Cui the remaining half bowl of food. He himself had only taken a bite or two.

“No, no. You’ve taken such good care of the two of us these past few days. We don’t even know how to thank you. How could we eat your food? I should be the one treating you, comrade.”

The woman waved her hands hurriedly, embarrassed. She had not given him the water in order to obtain food. She, too, had received an education.

“But Mommy, Niu Niu’s hungry…”

The little girl beside her watched with drool running down her chin. Her dark, bright eyes were fixed on the food as she spoke plaintively in childish Mandarin tinged with the accent of the southern frontier.

“Go on and eat,” Cheng Kaiyan urged again.

People always said the best years were the 1980s and 1990s, when opportunities were plentiful and social classes had yet to harden. Keyboard warriors liked to imagine that if they had lived in that era, they would certainly have made something of themselves.

But the lack of clothing and food, the inability to eat one’s fill—those were deadly problems. Most people lived barely above the subsistence line.

He did not think this era was wonderful at all. At that moment, he missed more than anything the golden age in which he could lie at home with the air conditioner blowing, drink cola, and watch videos of pretty girls.

When the granaries are full, people understand propriety. When they have enough clothing and food, they understand honor and shame.

A timeless classic.

“Thank you, Comrade Cheng. Once I find our Old Song in the capital, I’ll pay you back for sure. Dongdong, hurry and thank your uncle.”

Shang Cui gritted her teeth and accepted the food. She was not too proud to take it. For one thing, she and her daughter had been hungry for nearly a day, and the only thing the girl had consumed was a little sugar water.

Shang Cui herself had eaten nothing and was now scarcely better off than Cheng Kaiyan had been moments before.

For another, Cheng Kaiyan was a handsome young man.

So Shang Cui simply accepted his kindness.

“Tank oo, Uncle!”

The child’s soft, lisping voice was utterly adorable.

Cheng Kaiyan patted the girl on the head and thought, Just wait until you grow up. In your time, no one will starve to death.

The mother and daughter were truly pitiful. One woman had brought her child all the way from a rural village in the southern frontier to the frozen north in search of a husband who had fled back to the city. She had even boarded the train without a ticket.

Cheng Kaiyan did not hold out much hope that the older sister would find her former educated-youth husband. After all, the song “Little Fragrant” had made that perfectly clear…

Heh. It was only because rural people could not freely enter the cities. They needed letters of introduction, money, and ration coupons—and even after reaching the city, they had to worry about inspections of their temporary residence permits.

Within minutes, the mother and daughter had eaten the half portion of boxed meal down to the last grain. Cheng Kaiyan rose and returned the two containers to the railway attendant.

After eating, he decided to take a walk and clear his head. The carriage was too noisy, though he did not dare leave his bag unattended.

He carried it into the passageway and stood just outside the carriage. As expected, the air was cold, drafts blowing in from everywhere.

Looking out the window, he saw a lake to the east, its surface frozen solid, and a dense forest to the west.

Through the fogged glass, he could vaguely make out a city dozens of miles away, shrouded in snow and ice. Brilliant ice lanterns gleamed throughout that frozen world, making it look like a fairyland from myth.

“The northern weather may be harsh, but the scenery really is beautiful—almost dreamlike.”

Cheng Kaiyan gazed placidly through the window, his left hand resting against the glass as he felt the faint chill seep into his fingertips.

The gunshot wound in his chest still throbbed faintly, as though a vine had taken root in his flesh and bones and was spreading through him.

When he pressed his palm against the bandaged wound, waves of stabbing pain surged through him, giving him a tangible sense of reality.

Then he suddenly remembered that he apparently had an arranged marriage waiting for him.

His father, Cheng Kaifu, had arranged it with an old classmate from the Harbin Institute of Technology shortly after Cheng Kaiyan was born. The girl’s name seemed to be Liu Xiaoli.

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not recall her clearly.

One year, a letter had arrived from Ice City saying that the girl had apparently been accepted into some opera theater at the age of eleven to study dance.

He had been astonished at the time. It was exceedingly rare in those days for an eleven-year-old girl to travel so far from home to attend school.

As someone from a later era, he found the idea of a marriage arranged in infancy rather novel.

But then he remembered that no letters had come from Ice City for many years. They had probably lost contact, and this marriage…

Naturally, it had come to nothing.

That was simply how the era was. Sometimes, one never knew whether a meeting would be the last.

A changed address or a different means of contact could make it impossible to see someone again.

Just then, the train began clanking forward once more.

Watching the scenery slide backward and the majestic capital ahead draw nearer, Cheng Kaiyan cast that ridiculous childhood engagement out of his mind. A surge of heroic ambition rose within his chest.

“Beijing in 1979—I’ve arrived!”