When they met Liu Cuo Jin, it had only been a little over half a month since she arrived in this world. By the time she came to terms with the fact that she had fallen into an alternate world, that was also when she couldn’t come to terms with it and decided to end it all.
That night’s breakdown, though terrifying, wasn’t entirely a bad thing. At least Liu Cuo Jin crossed the trough of her emotions and her spirit had, for the most part, returned. She still spoke little, but when spoken to, she would answer.
Everyone had experienced confusion and pain when they first entered this world, so they could empathize with and cherish her. They didn’t rush or push her, letting her slowly recover at her own pace, sometimes offering comfort in their own ways.
Yu Muyang and Xia Qing treated her like a little sister and liked teasing her. Occasionally, Liu Cuo Jin would respond, the corners of her mouth curving into a faint smile.
Yan Baiyu took Liu Cuo Jin to feed the rabbits and the geese, and to ride the large water buffalo.
The methods of comfort Li Cunxin could think of always circled back to food.
In the vegetable garden out back, the sugarcane was growing taller and taller. Beneath the spreading, long green leaves, the greenish sugarcane stalks were coated in a layer of white bloom.
Li Cunxin called Yan Baiyu, Xu Yin, and Yu Muyang to harvest the sugarcane and refine sugar, so they could add one more seasoning to Yunxiu’s kitchen.
The sugarcane grew in clumps. They split up to chop them down. Li Cunxin instructed, “After you cut down the sugarcane, chop off the tops and leave them on the ground for me. I have a use for them. We’ll just carry the middle sections back.”
The stone sickles dulled after a few cuts. Xu Yin grabbed the sugarcane with both hands and, with a force that could uproot a weeping willow, yanked the stalks out of the ground along with clumps of soil.
Li Cunxin was right next to Xu Yin. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of him and remembered the way he had reacted during Liu Cuo Jin’s breakdown that night. Still in a daze, her lips just let loose before her brain could catch up. “Uncle Xu, are you married?”
Xu Yin, holding a stalk in each hand, looked at Li Cunxin, somewhat surprised. He turned and tossed the sugarcane into the furrow, then grabbed another stalk and pulled.
Li Cunxin realized what she had asked and turned her face away, smacking her own mouth.
Talk about putting your foot in it.
After pulling out the last two stalks from that clump, Xu Yin clapped his hands. “I am.”
Li Cunxin had thought Xu Yin was avoiding the topic and hadn’t intended to answer. Just as she was regretting her slip of the tongue, she heard his response and saw the very faint smile bloom on his face.
The hard angles and cold wrinkles on Xu Yin’s face seemed to soften.
She realized Xu Yin didn’t mind bringing up this matter—and that when he did, he felt happy.
So Li Cunxin confirmed her earlier guess. “Uncle Xu, you have a child, don’t you?”
“That’s right, a daughter. Let’s see, this year she’d be twenty, probably in her second year of college now.” Xu Yin became very cheerful when talking about his daughter.
Watching the light in his eyes, Li Cunxin felt an uncontrollable pang of sorrow. She turned her head away and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
So it wasn’t just outbursts like Liu Cuo Jin’s that could make her sad. Even the calm ones, those who accepted reality and strove to live well, when they showed glimpses of their longing, it made her unbearably sad too.
Xu Yin pointed to the sugarcane ahead and asked, “Is this enough, or should we cut down everything in front?”
“No need to cut them all. Twenty or thirty stalks is…” Li Cunxin followed his hand and looked ahead. Her body, bent over harvesting, suddenly straightened, and she dashed over in a rush. “Ah, oh no, oh no!”
She called out in that direction, “Baiyu! Yu Muyang! Don’t touch the sugarcane leaves—they’re covered in fine prickles!”
By now, it was obviously too late.
Xu Yin had unusually tough skin. Mainly, he didn’t make a sound, acting as if the prickles didn’t bother him at all. Li Cunxin had forgotten about this issue before they started, and during the harvest her mind had wandered—she’d subconsciously kept her own distance but now, seeing Yu Muyang scratching his face and ears, she remembered.
Li Cunxin looked at Yu Muyang. His face was already streaked with red scratches from all the rubbing. She glanced at Yan Baiyu, who wasn’t scratching her face but was instead rubbing her palm. “Don’t scratch with your fingernails. If you snap the prickles, they’ll be hard to pull out,” Li Cunxin advised.
“Alright, we’ve cut enough sugarcane for today,” Li Cunxin said.
Xu Yin came over, and the four split the load to carry the sugarcane back to the front.
Once back, Li Cunxin took four smooth, thin wood strips from Xia Qing’s lumber pile, giving two to Yu Muyang and two to Yan Baiyu, telling them to use the strips to grip and pull out the prickles.
Outside, the sunlight was strong. The two stood outside, turning their palms toward the sun so that in the intense light, the fine prickles—whitish, nearly transparent stems still protruding from the skin—became visible.
Li Cunxin apologized, “I’m sorry. I forgot to warn you about the prickles on the sugarcane leaves.”
“It’s fine.” Yan Baiyu’s voice was soft as she divided her attention from searching for prickles to glance at her. “We knew the moment we touched the leaves and got pricked. After that, we tried to avoid them but still got pricked. Even if you’d warned us, it was inevitable. The good thing is they don’t hurt too much.”
“They don’t hurt much, but they’re uncomfortable,” Li Cunxin said. Seeing Yan Baiyu pinching at one spot repeatedly with the strips, she offered, “Let me help you.”
Li Cunxin took Yan Baiyu’s wood strips. Beside them, Yu Muyang’s expression turned pitiful. “Village Chief, what about me? What about me?”
Cradling Yan Baiyu’s hand in one palm, Li Cunxin glanced into the main hall. Xia Qing and Zhao Penglai had gone to pick osmanthus flowers. Yunxiu was in the kitchen with Liu Cuo Jin, washing the wok and cleaning the oil press. Only Xu Yin was relatively free. “Want Uncle Xu to help you?”
Yu Muyang’s shoulders drooped. “I’ll just do it myself.”
Li Cunxin led Yan Baiyu under the parasol tree in front of the house, standing in the shade to avoid direct sun. Half her body stood in the green shade, half in the light, as she held Yan Baiyu’s hand toward the light.
Leaf shadows fell on Yan Baiyu’s wrist like a lace pattern.
Li Cunxin held the two thin wood strips like chopsticks, aligning the ends to use them as tweezers. Prickles like these were hard to remove even with fine tweezers, let alone with such crude ‘tweezers.’ It was tedious work.
After standing for a while, Li Cunxin shifted her stance, putting her weight on her left foot.
She lifted Yan Baiyu’s hand higher into the light to see the prickles more clearly, her lips pressed together, brows furrowed in a look that said she was locked in a fight to the death with these prickles.
“These prickles are just like the tiny ones on cacti—so fine and small, and once they’re in, they prickle and itch.”
Yan Baiyu chuckled softly. “From what you say, it sounds like you’ve not only been pricked by sugarcane but also by cactus.”
“Before, I heard that you could just break off a piece of a cactus and plant it in soil to grow a new pot. So I ran to my uncle’s potted plant and broke off a piece with my bare hands. I thought I was careful to avoid the spines, but the more I tried to dodge, the more I ended up pricked. I still remember. It was already dark, and I didn’t think to use tweezers. My fingers prickled and itched, and scratching didn’t help at all. I tried soaking them in hot water, squeezing the flesh around the prickle, even biting at the spot. I tossed and turned, wishing I could just chop off my hand. By the next day, my hand was swollen,” Li Cunxin said with an amused tone, as she finally pulled a prickle from the pad of Yan Baiyu’s ring finger.
The shadows of the parasol leaves swayed above Li Cunxin’s head. Sunlight shone on her ear—thin and translucent, it turned into a red piece of jade, its shape very adorable.
The leaves rustled in the breeze. Yan Baiyu’s gaze lingered there. The prickling, itching sensation didn’t seem to be in her fingertip anymore, but in her heart.
“All done.” Li Cunxin pulled out the last one. Afraid she might have missed any, she felt along the flesh of Yan Baiyu’s palm, asking, “Is there any spot that still feels uncomfortable?”
Yan Baiyu withdrew her hand a bit abruptly. “It’s fine now. Sorry to trouble you.”
Li Cunxin felt her tone was a little subdued and thought it strange, but she still smiled. “That was nothing.”
The two of them returned to the front of the house. Yu Muyang had already given up, tossing the thin wood strips onto the table and just enduring the discomfort in his hands.
Xia Qing and Zhao Penglai had returned from picking osmanthus and were now spreading the flowers out to dry in the sun.
Everyone carried the sugarcane to the pond to scrub it clean, then chopped it into small sections and placed them on the press to be crushed.
Xia Qing had only just finished making that press a few days earlier. Its shape was like a cross between a bench and a tiger-head guillotine. You placed the chopped sugarcane into the groove and pressed down on the lever to squeeze; the juice flowed from the spout at the front of the bench into a container.
Xu Yin worked the lever. With brute force, he pressed down until the sugarcane became flattened, dry pulp, and a thin, clear green rivulet of sweet fragrance streamed into the water jar.
Yu Muyang was chewing on a small piece of sugarcane, his entire face contorting with the effort. He mumbled through the fibers, “This sugarcane is so tough to bite. If your teeth aren’t good, you can’t eat it at all.”
Li Cunxin said, “The green-skinned variety is harder; it’s indeed tough to chew.”
After Xu Yin had pressed for a while, Zhao Penglai took over from him. When the water jar was over half full of sugarcane juice, Zhao Penglai saw Yu Muyang still chewing and gave him a light kick. “All you do is satisfy your cravings. Come press the sugarcane.”
Yu Muyang spat out the fibrous residue and swapped in for Zhao Penglai. Pressing sugarcane was also hard labor, and Yu Muyang pressed until both arms were sore and aching.
It took the combined efforts of three men to fill the water jar.
Li Cunxin brought out bowls, scooping half a bowl for each person. “Come, everyone have a taste.”
Everyone took a bowl and sipped carefully.
“Super sweet,” Xia Qing said with a scrunched-up grin. “But it’s delicious.”
The sweet taste carried the unique grassy fragrance of the fruit. Though it was very sweet, it didn’t have a bitter aftertaste.
Everyone savored it slowly, sip by sip. Here, just having enough to eat and stay warm was hard-won; snacks and treats were nonexistent. As for things like beer, soft drinks, bubble tea, or coffee from their old world—forget about even thinking of them.
These half bowls of sugarcane juice, they themselves felt, might be considered a luxury compared to those fellow countrymen who might still be wandering somewhere in this world.
The sugarcane juice in the jar went into the pot first. While that side started boiling it down into syrup, they continued pressing more juice on the other side.
The pale green liquid turned yellow after simmering for a short while. Yunxiu skimmed off the foam on top and stirred the liquid. Boiling the sugar took several hours, and though the iron wok was occupied, it didn’t delay their meal.
A large black fish was being purged of sand, left soaking in a basin of clear water.
Last night, they had already planned it: tonight’s dinner would be fish fillet congee. Black fish had fewer bones than crucian carp or common carp, and its meat was firm and tasty. If it weren’t for the pickled cabbage still fermenting and the fact they hadn’t found any chili yet, she so badly wanted to make her hometown dish, Pickled Vegetable Fish, for everyone to try.
After boiling for several hours, the water evaporated. The liquid grew thicker and darker until it reduced to the consistency of syrup. Only then did Yunxiu ladle it into molds.
Two slabs of syrup—one sprinkled with osmanthus, the other left plain. When the syrup cooled and solidified, it turned a reddish-brown color, with a crisp, brittle texture that could be broken off chunks by hand.
Yunxiu used a knife to cut it into square blocks, storing the osmanthus and plain ones in separate jars. One type would be for tea, the other for caramelizing.
Everyone who had been busy all day moved wooden stools out into the yard to enjoy the cool evening air, sipping the brown sugar water with satisfaction, heaving a collective sigh of contentment.
Listening to the insects chirping and gazing up at the star-filled night sky, Xu Yin murmured, “Haven’t seen a starry sky like this in so many years.”
Year in, year out, they had been worked like livestock—no spare time to travel. Every day was a nonstop cycle of company and home. Occasionally they’d look up past the high-rises to a sky half-lit by neon lights, with not a single star.
A moment of sorrow, then numbness.
Now they had time to look at the stars and the moon. No endless social obligations, no soul-crushing, life-or-death agony of getting up for work. But life was hard.
Truly, you couldn’t have both fish and bear’s paws.
Li Cunxin stared at the stars and muttered, “It’s almost time to harvest the cotton and the rice.”
