The year was drawing to a close, and a thick snow was falling from the sky. Fang Li had just returned from town, his toes numb with cold. After knocking the snow and mud from his soles in the courtyard, he immediately slipped under the quilt. Despite wearing cotton shoes, the melted snow had already soaked right through.
Not long after he drifted off to sleep, the sound of a pickup truck pulling into the courtyard woke him. He slid his damp shoes back on and stepped outside. Qin Weidong had just returned from the mine.
Qin Weidong slammed the truck door shut and glanced at him, his eyes sharp as ice. “Where the hell were you?”
“Sent money to my mom. That damn woman lost everything playing cards again. Started pestering me first thing this morning, called eight or nine times. Couldn’t sleep through it…”
At that, Qin Weidong’s expression softened, just a fraction. But then he noticed Fang Li standing there barefoot inside his soaked shoes, and his face clouded over again. He strode over, scooped Fang Li up in his arms, and carried him back inside. “Can’t take my eyes off you for a second before you pull some reckless stunt.”
He deposited Fang Li on the bed and went to find him a dry pair of shoes. Fang Li yawned again and mumbled into the blanket, “He’s got a temper like he’s been force-fed gunpowder… barking like a rabid mutt…”
His shoes were soaked through and already stiffening with ice. Qin Weidong picked them up and placed them by the coal stove. Then he returned, peeled off his leather jacket, and wrapped it snugly around Fang Li’s cold feet. The inside of the coat still held his body heat, a comforting warmth.
Fang Li rubbed his feet together, enjoying the warmth. Without another word, Qin Weidong turned to leave.
“You’re not eating? Where are you headed?” Fang Li called out.
“To Uncle Peng’s. He’s selling a pair of mill rollers.”
“I’m going with you.” Fang Li kicked off the jacket and started to get out of bed. But before his feet could touch the floor, he saw Qin Weidong glancing back and wisely tucked his legs back under the covers.
“Qin Weidong, get over here. Bring me some shoes—the floor’s freezing.”
“Stay home.”
“I’m going!” They would pass the market on the way to Uncle Peng’s. With the New Year just around the corner, there would be plenty of vendors selling handmade sesame candy.
A few days prior, when the snow had fallen, Fang Li had played a bit too enthusiastically by the reservoir. His shoes had become waterlogged, and the glue was starting to give way. Eager for a taste of something sweet, he pointed at Qin Weidong’s work boots in the corner. “Come on, let me wear yours!”
The boots were far too large and heavy for him. Unable to walk comfortably, Fang Li sprang up, clung to Qin Weidong’s back, wrapped his arms around his neck, and urged him to carry him to the truck.
Qin Weidong set him down in the passenger seat. The window on that side was broken and hadn’t been repaired. It wouldn’t roll up, and the moment they set off, a biting wind whipped into the cab. Qin Weidong turned back, went inside, and returned with a thick fleece-lined hat, pulling it down over Fang Li’s head.
“It’s filthy! I’m not wearing that!” Fang Li protested, tearing it off. “It stinks! Worse than the smell from the gold-rinsing tanks out back…”
Qin Weidong started the engine, casting him a cold glance. The truck lurched forward, and the hat, still half on, slipped down again.Fang Li pouted in frustration. “Do you have any idea how far I walked to get to my mom’s this morning? How much secondhand smoke I inhaled? And now you won’t even let me tag along? All you ever do is scare me!”
“Why didn’t you come to the mine?”
That only fueled Fang Li’s anger. “Because that damn guard wouldn’t let me in! Like I could actually find you down there? With all that blasting, they might as well be blowing the mountain apart! I wanted to go down, but you won’t let me into the shafts!”
Last year, a similar incident had occurred. He’d urgently needed to find Qin Weidong and had ventured into the mine on his own. The access ramp sloped sharply downwards, at a forty or fifty-degree angle. He’d taken a wrong tunnel and ended up at a dead end.
Later, Qin Weidong had to search for him. When they returned home, he’d yanked Fang Li’s pants down and given him such a fierce beating that he’d cried like a baby. He hadn’t forgotten that to this day.
By the time they reached Uncle Peng’s, Fang Li was still sulking. In the truck, a few pieces of lotus-leaf candy, a local specialty from Chongsuo left behind by drivers, lay forgotten. The candy was coated in a mouth-puckering sour powder of unknown origin. Long-haul truckers relied on it to stay awake on overnight shifts.
Qin Weidong took one, rolled it around in his mouth until the sour coating dissolved, and then popped the remaining sweet malt center into Fang Li’s mouth. “It’s freezing. Stay in the truck and don’t get out.”
With the candy in his mouth, Fang Li’s mood softened. He nodded. “Hurry up, or the sesame candy guys will be gone.”
Uncle Peng had once been the town’s most skilled gold refiner. He could assess the quality of a full load of ore without unloading a single stone. But in recent years, his health had declined; even walking a few steps left him breathless. Qin Weidong glanced at the two cyanide leaching pools in the courtyard, the air thick with a bitter chill—that unmistakable scent of cyanide.
Peng Chao emerged from the house. “My father can no longer get out of bed,” he said. “He told me those two fifteen-ton ore crushers in the backyard are no longer of use. Set whatever price you deem fair—if you can transport them, take them.”
In Chongsi Town, virtually every household was involved in the extraction and processing of gold ore. Small workshops like the Peng family’s dotted the area, with the craft of ore selection and chemical refinement passed down through generations.
Fang Li leaned out of the truck window and called, “Peng Chao, why not come work for my father after the New Year? Help the master select ore. I’ll have Qin Weidong pay you a salary, and we’ll take care of your meals.”
Peng Chao shook his head. “We’ll see. My father doesn’t want me in this line of work anymore. My aunt found me a potential job at a distillery in the county. I’ll go check after the holidays and see what they’re offering.”
Unlike Fang Li, he hadn’t been so fortunate. A few years prior, Fang Li’s father had taken over an abandoned mine. By sheer luck, the first blast had revealed high-grade ore—poverty and wealth separated by a single explosion, enough to live on for five or six years.
The two massive ore crushers couldn’t be transported whole; they needed to be disassembled. Qin Weidong arranged for several workers from the mine to come cut them down the next day and took Fang Li into town to buy candy.
“Is Uncle Peng’s illness serious?”
Qin Weidong gave a nod. “His lungs are failing. A lung lavage costs twenty thousand. He went to the hospital but came home again.”
Chongsi Town lay at the edge of the Baishan Ridge. Decades ago, high-quality ore was often exposed directly on the surface. The people of Chongsi lived off the mountain all their lives—and in the end, the mountain became a part of them, settling in their bodies and wearing them down. Fang Li gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment.
By the time they arrived at the market, dusk was falling. Fang Li was still nagging Qin Weidong to buy him sweets. Though the mine technically belonged to his father, and he was the heir, all the money was in Qin Weidong’s hands. “Well, are you going to buy it or not…”
Qin Weidong first took him to a gold shop they frequented. He pulled a small piece of gold wrapped in velvet from his coat pocket—barely seven or eight grams.
The shopkeeper rubbed it against a touchstone, then compared the mark using several bamboo sticks, judging the gold’s quality—green at seven, yellow at eight, and a rich red at nine-point-five. These old methods in town were sometimes even more precise than formal testing in the city.
Once the gold was sold and the money secured, Fang Li ran after him, whining, “Qin Weidong, come on! Let’s go to the stall up ahead. That lady gives me more…”
When they reached the sesame candy stand, Fang Li looked up with puppy eyes. “Auntie, can you pack some of the crumbs in too…?”
The candy vendor, seeing the hungry look on his face, chuckled and scooped a generous spoonful of crushed candy bits from the bottom of the big basket for him.
Fang Li grinned. “Qin Weidong, look how nice the lady is. Let’s buy a bit more—maybe we can make it last until the fifteenth or sixteenth.”
No matter how sweetly he pleaded, Qin Weidong still only bought him half a jin of sesame candy. Fang Li had no self-control when it came to sweets, capable of finishing a full bag in a single day, a habit Qin Weidong wanted to curb.
Upset, Fang Li sulked the whole way back without uttering a word. When they arrived at the gate, he jumped off the truck and saw that his grandmother had returned.
The old woman called out the moment she saw him, “Xiao Wu, Xiao Wu’s home!”
“I’m back,” Fang Li replied. “I brought sesame candy, Grandma. It’s almost New Year, and it’s cold—don’t go up the mountain these next few days.”
His grandmother beamed. “Good, good—Happy New Year. When your father comes home, I’ll ask him to make a little wooden sword for our Xiao Wu, so he can go chase away the little ghosts…”
But the “Xiao Wu” she mentioned wasn’t Fang Li’s nickname. In fact, Fang Li wasn’t “Xiao Wu” at all. That was the name of her first grandson, born to Fang Li’s father and his first wife—her darling, whom she had raised herself.
Years ago, when Fang Hui was around five or six, the old woman had been busy mixing medicine and hadn’t kept a close eye on him. The boy drowned while playing near the reservoir. After that, her mind would sometimes drift into confusion.
The first time Fang Li returned to their hometown with his father, the old woman had taken one look at him and called him Xiao Wu. His father, a dutiful son, couldn’t bear to see his mother driven half-mad by grief for her lost grandson, so he left Fang Li with her to raise.
In winter, night fell early. After dinner, most households bolted their doors. Qin Weidong was outside washing dishes at the water basin.
Fang Li, full and lying in bed, was licking a stick of sesame candy. When he saw Qin Weidong come in after finishing up, he shoved his feet into his arms. “So cold—warm them for me…”
His feet slipped under Qin Weidong’s shirt, his pale toes pressing against his burning-hot abs, wriggling their way in deeper to find more warmth. His toes curled and nudged playfully as he burrowed in.
“What’s wrong, mad at me? Is it ‘cause I went to see my mom without telling you?” Fang Li pouted. “Qin Weidong, don’t push it, okay? Don’t forget who saved your life. I already let it slide that you don’t listen to me all the time, but who gave you the right to boss me around like this?”
Qin Weidong didn’t even glance at him. He grabbed Fang Li’s misbehaving foot from under his clothes and yanked it out, then went to the corner and picked up the double-barreled shotgun. He also snatched the sesame candy from the table.
Fang Li panicked. “Okay, okay! Fine, you’re in charge! Be in charge all you want! If you’re not embarrassed acting like an old nag, then go ahead and nag! It’s the 28th already—can’t you just sleep peacefully for once? It’s freezing in bed all by myself!”
Qin Weidong ignored him. “It’s almost New Year. A lot of thieves come to steal ore at night. Uncle Pan and the others are keeping watch up top—I need to be there too.”
Though Fang Li was unwilling, he gave in. Everyone relied on that pile of rock in the tunnel to put food on the table. And it was New Year’s—everyone wanted to celebrate, even those damn ore thieves.
“Then come back early, okay?”
“Just go to sleep.”
Qin Weidong locked the door from the outside and took the shotgun and sesame candy with him. Then he drove the old pickup truck up the mountain.
Axolotl Translations 
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