‘
I was just a young boy then, having just passed my eighteenth spring. I was teaching the village children to
play football right here when a young girl I had never seen before made her way staggering towards us, tripping
every few steps.’
The old man’s expression hardened and his voice trembled a little as he continued with his story.
‘
She was about my age, but with clothes tattered and torn, hair unkempt and face smeared with dirt and
blood. She appeared dishevelled, so weak and fragile as if she hadn’t eaten for days.
‘
When she reached us, her knees buckled underneath her and she fell into my arms, panting so hard she
could barely speak. Yet, she hadn’t needed words; her eyes were wide in terror and consternation, and I
understood. Somehow, I knew from the very first sight that she was special. And so I took her in and nursed her
back to health.’
‘
Wait,’ I interrupted. ‘So you just let a stranger you barely even knew stay with you?’
‘
Times were different, dear. People were different,’ he shook his head a little. ‘Besides, the Red Guards
were dominating most of the more civilised cities at that time, throwing most areas of China into chaos.
Refugees were not uncommon, and our village here in a remote part on the mountainside would have made a
convenient hideout.’
‘
But why did she have to run away? She’s just a young girl after all – surely there was no reason for the Red
Guards to hurt her.’
‘
She wasn’t just a young girl. Her parents were professors at the Tsinghua University. The Red Guards got
hold of them as they were making preparations to send her away to secluded rural districts, and were executed
for treason. She was left battered and forlorn – no family or friend of hers survived the purge. It was a tragic
experience for her, although it had – in some way – brought about our meeting one another. Some might
consider it arbitrary, but I’d prefer to call it fate.’
He stopped, closing his eyes and smiling softly in reminiscence.
‘
We would sneak out in the middle of the night, climb up the Wall and sit on the battlements, and just talk.
Occasionally, I would play the erhu while she sang. Her voice was sweet as a nightingale’s, and we could have
gone on forever if not for the rising sun that would eventually appear in the far distance every morning. Only
until then would we reluctantly part ways.
‘
But sadly, good times never last for long.’
His smile faltered, and he took a deep breath before resuming.
‘
I was ploughing the fields one afternoon when she came over to me, asking me to meet her at the bottom of
the Wall where she had set up a picnic. It wasn’t a surprise; we had always had picnics from time to time. What
did come as a surprise, however, was that when I reached our usual spot under the Great Wall, over a hundred
feet of it suddenly collapsed.
‘
And she was nowhere to be seen.’
There was a moment of silence as his gaze wandered into the far distance, and I anxiously fiddled with the
grass.
‘
They found her body a few days later, buried four feet underneath the rubble.’
‘
I’m sorry,’ I muttered, almost inaudibly. ‘But- why would-?’
‘
That winter, a mining company began the construction of an underground network of mines just a few
hundred feet away from our section of the Great Wall. It was jeopardising the structure’s stability, and cracks
were starting to appear.
‘
Furthermore, our part of the Great Wall wasn’t a tourist attraction, so they never bothered to provide it with
any maintenance.’
He lowered his head, struggling hard not to shed any tears.
‘
We had been engaged to be married that following spring.’
I looked up and met his pensive and doleful eyes that bore right into my soul. I felt tears prickling my own
ones, and quickly averted my gaze.
‘
This is why I said it was sort of an elegy,’ he shrugged nonchalantly, attempting in vain to grin and cheer
me up. ‘I was not playing to praise the Great Wall; I am playing to reminisce about all the lives lost because of
the Great Wall.’
After a moment of silence, he picked up his erhu and started playing once more. I spent the rest of the
afternoon by his side, listening to his music echoing in the mountains. Then the time came for me to leave.
‘
I’ll see you soon,’ I promised, more to myself than to him, before turning away.
But I never saw him again.
* * *