Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen Page A

of advice was offered free, with a smile.
    Gradually, Dad’s reputation spread, with villagers dropping by daily when they were in town to shop. They came here for a cup of hot tea, a puff on the water pipe, or just to rest their feet. If Dad wasn’t away ata reform camp, by eleven every morning the living room was always full of all sorts of personalities. Dad felt comfortable in the role and presided over the affairs of others like an unpaid civil servant. The only rule was that there was to be no spitting on the clean floor that Mom scrubbed daily.
    On this special day, all the friendly, familiar faces were crowded into our sun-drenched living room. In the corner was the mason. His son was a miner in the high mountains of Fujian; the illiterate mason depended on my father to write monthly letters to him. Next to him was Stone Knife, so named because of his shrewdness. He was one of those villagers who never went to school but who seemed to know everything. Dad was his idol. Stone Knife could play many traditional Chinese musical instruments and write prose, compose music, and direct plays like Dad, but he depended heavily on my father to get him his gigs.
    Then there was the sugarcane man, who was literally the king of sugarcane. Each morning in the early hours he presided over the sugarcane market and set the local daily price for fresh sugarcane. At the end of each day, he always dropped off the leftovers and grabbed a cup of tea with us before heading for his village. And there was the widow from a village ten miles away. She had brought her second son to wish Dad a happy New Year. He was visiting his mother from his navy base in another province. The young man beamed with pride and handed out cigarettes with filters, a rare commodity he had bought at the navy post. The crowd bubbled with excitement as they lit their good cigarettes.
    The young navy man gave me one also, which I sniffed with satisfaction and slipped into my coat pocket when Dad wasn’t looking. I sat there, as I had for many years, listening to Dad’s friends doing their New Year’s version of a daily chat for a little bit.
    But on New Year’s Day, I felt a need for something more festive and entertaining, only there wasn’t much I could do. I could just see my enemies, Han, Quei, and Wang, chomping cigarettes and lurking among the crowds, plotting their revenge against me. And I couldn’t fight today, it would be bad luck.
    Mom, wearing her new apron, called me back to the kitchen. I slipped out of the living room and had a large bowl of rice with some delicious meat and fish. I had never seen our kitchen so full of good food, but I knew it wouldn’t be there for long. The thought made mego for a second bowl of rice and two more chunks of Mom’s famous well-roasted pork knuckles.
    After lunch, when my brother Jin was out playing poker and my sisters had long since gone out giggling with their friends, doing whatever girls did, I told Mom I was heading out to a basketball game at school.
    “I didn’t hear about a game there,” Mom said.
    “Yeah, well it should be starting soon,” I lied, and streaked out the door. I walked cautiously along the small path meandering among the wheat and sugarcane fields, staying away from the crowded streets that were now filled to the brim with villagers who had flocked to town for the New Year. It was an event locally known as
Yu Chun
, or “Spring Outing.” They came in groups of boys and girls, nicely dressed in new and colorful outfits. They sang, laughed, flirted, and ogled each other. The spring, now ripening with flowers and blossoms, seemed to stir a nameless angst among the youngsters and to give an added luster to the world. I envied the simplicity of their lives. Why was mine so damned complicated?
    Soon I was alone, looking for a shortcut to the secret gambling pits somewhere among the tall sugarcane fields. Children my age whispered about them and raved over the heroism of some of the