Chapter 39

New Year's Eve came round again. The Ji villa was lit from end to end, and the smell of the New Year dinner went out through the gaps in the door along with the laughing and the talking, and mixed into a bitter winter wind, and met the fireworks and the crackers. It is not often that lively.

Gi Changning's father, a professional, and Gou Jiawen, a gifted amateur, had taken the kitchen. Ji Xuejun, who can only learn a household dish off an app on the spot, could not get into a contest at that level, and peeled garlic and studied the masters at work.

Three men make a whole show. On one side Gi Changning's father tossed a wok one-handed with the flames going up, and stir-fries and plain fries and braises and sweet and sour came to his hand without his looking. Pots and pans, chicken, duck, fish and meat, all of it handled and nothing in disorder however many dishes there were. On the other side Gou Jiawen built beautiful cold plates, the seasonings and the colours proportioned to the last gram, and every movement had the exactness of a research scientist about it. And the third man could barely go near the stove. The chairman of the Ji group had been reduced to prep and watching the steamer, and he was perfectly pleased about it, because the steamer held the steamed fish and the eight-treasure rice, which matter on New Year's Eve.

On the stairs, Gi Changning's uncle was tapping away with a small hammer, with a small tail behind him who got in nobody's way and was not shy. Up one step, and the tail went up one step. The uncle shook the banister, and the tail reached out and shook it too, which made him laugh.

The tail had his chin in both hands and a very sweet mouth. "Uncle, you're so good at this."

At his age, anybody's child looks better than your own. "Good at what?"

Liang Shuo pointed at the hammer. "You got the nail in with a couple of goes. I can't even hit it."

The banister at the Jis' is wooden, and a nail had worked out somehow and caught Liang Shuo as he came down. Ji Xuejun was going to call somebody in, and the uncle, who was new to Jinhua Gardens and uneasy with nothing to do, thought calling a man out on New Year's Eve was a great deal of bother, and asked for a toolbox and went over the stairs from top to bottom.

He put the tools away and shut the box. "It's nothing. I used to mend the lorry as well, when I was on haulage."

"Wow." Liang Shuo was a wonderful audience. "Have you been lots of places?"

The uncle was modest. "Not many. Haulage, and all of it inside the province."

"That's still brilliant." Liang Shuo came pattering down the stairs after him. "I can only drive a go-kart."

Gi Zhao, now a shade darker still, had finally got the equipment working, and sat cross-legged on the carpet and looked round. "Shuo. Want a race?"

Liang Shuo ran over, grabbed a controller delightedly, picked his favourite car and issued a challenge to a man more than ten years his senior. "I'll give you a three second start."

Gi Zhao had nothing to say.

"Don't be too proud, young man. Let me show you the hands of an agricultural scientist."

The door of the ground floor rest room opened, and Gi Changning's mother put her tape measure away and folded a sheet of paper and said to the people behind her, "It's been years since I cut a qipao. Don't laugh if it goes wrong."

Liang Cheng rubbed her own waist. "I'm more worried about making your qipao look bad."

"Not a chance." The uncle's wife, who had been a little stiff with it all, laughed. "You've got me to come last."

Before the new year Gi Changning's mother had her hair permed again, every wave of it immaculate. The hardship has gone out of her life by degrees, and loving her work and looking forward to things, and a year of wanting to know more, have fed her like good soil, and the change in her is complete.

She put her hands on her hips. "What I'm afraid of is that two busy women like you will never find anywhere to wear them."

The Four Seasons convenience food was moving along, and the uncle and his wife had accepted his brother's invitation. The two of them went back to the contacts they had built up in haulage and in vegetable wholesale, looking for a source of raw materials with guaranteed quality that would deal with them long-term. They wanted one more go at it, to satisfy an ambition they had had when they were young.

The three of them sat on the sofa and went from qipao to work and from work to their children, and Liang Cheng told them about a patient, half sighing over it. "A girl a few years out of university, and her health is in a shocking state."

Up in the attic, Ji Changfeng and his two sisters were looking for a camera stand.

Gi Changning blew the dust out of the air in front of her, blocked her nose with a sleeve and coughed. "What's the matter with you? You kept the camera beautifully and then threw the stand anywhere."

Ji Changfeng carries the blame at all times. "I kept the camera to remember it by. They stopped making that model. If I'd known the two of you would want this, I'd have bought another set."

"Another set wouldn't be the same." Gi Changning went looking for an ally. "Ranran, am I right?"

"You are." Ji Ran drew it out. "Seeing as Changfeng took the first photograph of his life on that camera."

Ji Ran had it printed, and it stands in Gi Changning's room.

Ji Ran looked up, took two steps back, narrowed her eyes and called him over, and pointed at something long on top of a cupboard. "You're tall. See if that's it. I can't reach."

The box room in the attic is large and the three of them had a section each. At that, Gi Changning came over too, and watched him take the long object down, and he paid no attention to the dust all over his hands. "That's it. It's been up there a long time and it needs oiling. We'll find the toolbox downstairs and try some oil on it."

And if that failed, they could force it open and make do, and buy a new tripod another time.

Job done, the three of them went to their rooms and showered the dust off, and by the time they came down the all-capable agricultural scientist Gi Zhao had got the tripod standing by some means of his own, and was playing a fighting game against a primary school child.

On the festival this country cares about most, two girls had drawn four households together, and they were under one roof like old friends or relatives of many years. Whatever had been between them seemed to have been shaken apart by one string of crackers after another, or perhaps blown away by the steam off one dish after another. They sat round one big round table and raised their glasses and wished each other well.

The uncle, who never drinks because of the haulage, sipped carefully at a small glass of Moutai.

Gou Jiawen was driving, and his work requires it, so he kept a pot of Da Hong Pao to himself and enjoyed it.

The chairman, who firmly believes drink ruins business and never touches it at a working dinner, was slightly drunk.

Gi Changning's father, who has not had a drink except cooking wine since the accident, touched glasses with his wife.

The uncle's wife tried the red wine and quietly changed to juice.

Liang Cheng's professional instincts got the better of her and she gave the other two a lecture on what red wine does and does not do for you.

Gi Changning's mother likes the taste of red wine, and drank with her husband, and most of a bottle turned into a designer's ideas.

As for those under age, there was nothing for it but soft drinks.

Liang Shuo is genuinely dreadful when he is dreadful and genuinely good when he is good. He peeled an oil-fried prawn for each of his sisters, and got a new can of cola out of it.

A year of intensive training had taken Gi Changning further still, and there is a strange rhythm in the way she moves now, except that none of it is visible when Ning is rolling about getting her own way. "Ranran. I want a chicken wing."

Ji Ran is very good-natured and put a wing on the plate in front of her, and a few seconds later received a wobbling sea cucumber and a face waiting to be praised.

The only two reliable adults present, Ji Changfeng and Gi Zhao, looked at each other and stood up, one to pour tea and the other to pour hot water.

With the Spring Festival Gala on in the background, Gi Changning said quietly, "It's lively today."

Ji Ran understood what she meant. "Next year. The year after. Every year, perhaps."

Every year? How good.

Just before the dinner ended, Gi Changning announced loudly that they were taking a family photograph, and Ji Ran added that nobody was to be left out.

Liang Shuo was so delighted at the word photograph that he bounced about the room, and the adults sobered up at once and straightened their clothes and their faces.

Ji Changfeng went up for the camera.

His father washed his face and finally remembered what he had forgotten, and went over to the uncle and said it in the tone of a man passing on gossip. "Hongguang. I hear your part of town is going to be renamed Minghua Gardens."

It took the uncle a moment. He looked at the amusement in Ji Xuejun's eyes and his breath stopped, and it was not until he got two pats on the shoulder that the size of it came over him.

Ji Xuejun does not say things for nothing. Which meant that the demolition they had waited more than ten years for was finally coming.

Ji Changfeng set the camera on the tripod.

They found a place in the living room and stood in two rows, the adults behind and the younger ones in front.

The husbands and wives either laced their fingers together or put an arm round a shoulder or a waist.

Ji Xuejun held the photograph of Liang Zhi in the red dress in one hand and the photograph of his mother in the park in the other, and wiped a fingerprint he had left on the glass carefully with his sleeve, with a smile on his face very like his mother's.

Gi Changning poked him, and while he was still working out what was happening, reached over and took his mother's photograph off him.

Standing beside her, Ji Ran saw it, and without a word took hold of a corner of the frame and carried half its weight with her.

Ji Changfeng tried the timer, found it working, told everybody not to move, set the delay and walked over to stand beside his father, where a place had been kept for him. He stood quietly, and did what Ji Ran had done, and took hold of a corner of his mother's photograph.

And there it stopped.

After the new year Gi Changning put the printed family photograph away against her body and went off with Meng Lai to the exams. Ji Ran put hers in the innermost pocket of her school bag and began the last push for the university exams.

Light snow came down and covered the branches, and spring broke quietly out from under the ice and put up small green shoots.

A sparrow on its own stood on a tabby cat's lazy tail. Two swallows chased each other and a twig they were carrying fell and woke the sleeping cat, so the sparrow went up startled and cut through the wind, and the dust in the cracks of the ground scattered, and wild flowers came up through the soil.

The world had woken.

Then go.

Go on towards what is coming.