Chapter 43

New Year's Eve in the capital was lit up end to end. Ji Ran said goodbye to her colleagues and went to drive home.

Halfway there, Gi Changning rang.

There was a great deal of noise at her end, and after a moment it dropped away. She had evidently found somewhere quiet.

Ji Ran had her earphones in, and laughed. "What's this? Our Ning, who comes second only to the sky. Are you telling me you're nervous?"

"Who's nervous?" Her voice came straight up. "Two years ago I performed to a theatre of tens of thousands. At the curtain call people were so excited they threw flowers onto the stage. I waved a sleeve at them and walked off without turning a hair. And today is one little Gala."

It was New Year's Eve, and that evening Gi Changning was giving a piece on the Spring Festival Gala that she had choreographed and was leading herself.

She turned it round. "What about you? Why are you at work on New Year's Eve?"

"I'm not at work. Something came up." Ji Ran explained. "A patient has been transferred in from out of province with burns over most of the body. Our head of department has proposed a new surgical plan, and it happens to touch on what I researched for my doctorate. He knew I was in the capital and hadn't gone home, so he called me in and asked what I thought while he was at it."

"When's the operation? Will you be in on it?"

"I will, but there's no rush. We'll watch him for a few days and operate on the sixth, for luck." Ji Ran was waiting at a red light. She thought of the hopeful faces of the family. "They've applied to the Ningran Burns Recovery Foundation for help."

In ten years the foundation has helped more families than anybody has counted, and the banners of thanks it has been sent will no longer fit on one wall. Gi Changning has given to it regularly since she started working, and Ji Ran uses her own contacts to put the families who apply in touch with specialists in burns surgery.

Last time Gi Changning was back in Pingchuan she made a point of going to look in, and found they had had to give the banners a room of their own. She photographed it for Ji Ran.

Listening to the steady breathing at the other end, Ji Ran said, with meaning, "Not nervous any more?"

"I told you I wasn't nervous." She came back at once, and then said quietly, "Neither of us can get back to Pingchuan this year, and we haven't booked New Year dinner at a hotel. Have you decided what you want to eat?"

Ji Ran turned up the corner of her mouth and held down a laugh. "Nothing for it. You'll have to make do with me, and I don't know whether my cooking is good enough for Ning."

"You're laughing at me again." That time she really was not nervous. She was in a quiet corner of a corridor with the noise of backstage behind her, where reporters were interviewing the performers. She said into the phone, "Ranran. Do you think Mum and Dad will be proud when they see me on the Gala?"

The way they are proud of you.

Both households are fairly traditional. Neither really understands the difference between one kind of dance and another, or between one theatre and another. But the Gala is something the whole country watches, and Gi Changning wanted them to be able to say, look, that is my daughter performing.

She had been through rehearsal after rehearsal, and every position and every movement was in her bones, and she had argued with the gallery more than once about the lighting and the camera framing, wanting it right down to the last thing.

"Of course they will," Ji Ran said, certain about it. "What time will you be finished? We'll wait at home and have dinner with you."

Gi Changning did not hear what was inside the word we. "My piece is at about nine. I'll be home before ten."

"Good. We'll wait."

---

It was six in the evening when Ji Ran got home, and before she had the door open she could smell something through the gap.

Her father, stewing soup, as expected.

She opened it onto a flat lit up like daylight. She showed not the least surprise, and changed her shoes in the hall. "I'm back."

Both households had gathered in the capital for New Year's Eve, and a living room that had always looked rather empty was wrapped in warmth and cooking smells, and was actually crowded.

Gi Changning's mother looked up from her phone and smiled. "Ranran's back. I was about to ring and ask where you'd got to."

"There was a case conference." Ji Ran took her coat off, and saw somebody resting on the sofa. Ji Changfeng is all arms and legs and looked thoroughly hard done by lying on it. She dropped her voice without thinking. "Why isn't Changfeng in the spare room?"

Her mother sighed. "The flat's got three girls living in it. He was afraid of walking into a room he shouldn't, so he said he'd make do on the sofa."

Gi Changning and Meng Lai had taken the flat originally, and once Ji Ran arrived in the capital she took on a share of the rent and the three of them live there together.

"What time did you get here? Why didn't you ring me?"

"About four. You'd have been in a meeting and couldn't have answered." Her mother thought about it. "There were no train tickets. Thank goodness for Changfeng, who drove us up from Pingchuan."

Ji Ran shook his shoulder gently. "Changfeng. Changfeng."

He frowned and did not hurry to open his eyes, and pushed himself upright first. "Ranran?"

"It's me. Let me put you in the spare room."

"It's all right." He tried his eyes, let them adjust to the light, pushed his sleeve back and looked at his watch. "It's that late already."

Their father had been watching from the kitchen for a while, and waited until he was properly awake. "Oh, you know it's late. We've been chopping vegetables and cleaving pig's trotters out here and it still didn't wake you."

"The boy's tired." Gi Changning's father put his head round the kitchen door. "You've retired and left the whole company on Changfeng's shoulders. Don't listen to your father, Changfeng."

He laughed, and the last of the fog went out of his head.

When he reached retiring age, Ji Ran's father let go without hesitating. He studies cooking at home, and when he has nothing on he grows flowers and digs. The back garden at the villa, which had been left to go wild for years, has become a small garden under his hands, and on a free afternoon he has his old friends over to play chess and look at it, perfectly happy.

"Didn't I stew that soup specially for him?" he grumbled. "With wolfberries and danshen in it. Lovely, it is."

After retiring he had a serious think about it. On cooking proper he will probably never catch Gi Changning's father, so he found his own way round and specialised in soups and stews, and by degrees he has come up from a kitchen hand who peeled garlic and fetched and watched the steamer to something like an equal, holding half the kitchen as his own patch.

Gi Changning's mother came out to keep the peace. "Changfeng, go and wash your face and have something to line your stomach. We'll eat properly when Ningning's home."

Ji Ran put the television on. "Ningning says her piece is at about nine."

Gi Changning's father worked out the timings. "We'll make the dumplings now and leave the stir-fries."

Ji Ran's father looked in on his soup and asked her, "Ranran. What are you going to do after this?"

"Stay in the capital for now." She is very clear about her own plans. "Ningning's in the capital anyway, so stop worrying."

It may be his age. Since retiring he has grown steadily more settled and steadily fonder of nagging. "You've got a nerve. You and Ningning. One of you lives in a hospital and the other flies all over the world. Never mind never coming home, you don't eat properly either. How are we supposed not to worry?"

"Da, what year's almanac are you reading?" Ji Ran put a hand to her forehead. "Since the pandemic Ningning has hardly left the capital, and she stands over me while I eat and makes me exercise, every single meal. I swear it."

Gi Changning is a well known choreographer now, and still a dancer. She and Meng Lai run a studio together, and a piece starts at six figures with no ceiling on it. She used to be happy flying about and buying the local speciality wherever she landed to post home. Since the pandemic her work has been largely inside the capital, and when people abroad want a piece from her it has to be done over a video link. Even so, there is more work than she can take.

The Gala had invited Meng Lai too, but the theme was classical dance, which she is very bad at, and her sister was home this year for once. She did not have to think about it. She declined politely, packed a bag and went home to meet her sister.

Gi Changning's mother put one finger on Ji Ran's forehead. "There's no managing either of you."

When the pandemic broke out, Ji Ran went to help, and Liang Cheng was on a relief flight at the same time, and the two households were counting out supplies. In that stretch of time they would gladly have prayed to every buddha in the sky and every god and angel going. And both of them came home safely.

Ji Ran took her mother's hand. "Mum. I'm a doctor."

It is the road she chose without once looking back. She has never forgotten something her teacher said to her. Burns surgery may not get much respect, but what we do makes people new.

---

After the evening news, the Gala went live.

Pingchuan. Minghua Gardens.

The uncle's family were together. The city village has become a villa district like Jinhua Gardens next door, and the two of them are known together as the Twin Hua Gardens.

Gi Changning's parents have bought a flat in Minghua Gardens too. The Four Seasons brand has gone out properly in the world. It began with self-heating food and moved on to convenience food including part-prepared dishes, generous with the ingredients, good to eat and good value, and it does very well abroad as well.

Their mother has founded her own label, Shanqing, and keeps up a good working relationship with Anzhi.

Two years ago Gi Zhao married. His other half does poverty relief work as he does, and the pair of them are each rougher than the other, and they come home once a year at New Year and sometimes cannot even manage that. When they do get back, it upsets the uncle and his wife thoroughly.

The uncle's wife sat cross-legged on the carpet with her hands going, and had a plate of melon seeds shelled in no time, and pushed them into her daughter-in-law's hands. "Qing says Ningning's piece is at about nine."

The uncle grabbed a happy handful of seeds and came up with nothing but husks. He coughed, threw the husks in the bin, pushed his glasses up and held his phone ready to film it for his feed. "Nearly, nearly."

Gi Zhao quietly photographed his parents craning at the screen and put it in the family group with a caption. On the self-cultivation of an audience.

Ji Ran photographed her own father and mother and brother stretching their necks at the television. Same world, same audience.

Then the uncle's wife cried out. "I heard the title. It's coming, it's coming."

Gi Zhao dropped his phone and leaned in beside his wife, and neither of them took their eyes off the screen.

---

Pingchuan. Liang Cheng's flat.

Liang Cheng hooked a finger in her son's collar and hauled him off the front of the television onto the sofa. "You're at university now. How are you still this silly?"

Liang Shuo is at university in the capital. He chose his mother's profession and will be a doctor himself. "The signal went funny. I'll go and check it."

"Your father can check it. We don't need you." The signal really was poor. "Jiawen. Work."

Gou Jiawen dried his hands and sighed. "Neither of you ever thinks of me when it's something nice."

Liang Cheng had just finished peeling a pomelo, and put a piece in his mouth. "Better? Go on, before you miss Ningning's piece."

He chewed the pomelo, smiling, and went resignedly off to check it.

Liang Cheng lit incense and set it in the burner, and said quietly, "Can you see this, sister?"

A thin thread of smoke went up, as if it were answering her.

Gou Jiawen clapped his hands. "Fixed. Come on, Cheng."

"Coming."

---

The capital.

The Gala was running on the television the way it always does, and Ji Ran sat with her family and waited.

After a long string of introductions from the hosts, they came at last to Gi Changning's piece.

Gi Changning spent a while studying classical dance, originally because Liang Zhi danced it and she wanted to understand it. And now, at a moment that mattered enormously, she was putting her own understanding of it on a far bigger stage.

Five thousand years of China, and Gi Changning took the famous dances of its history in order of time and fused them into one piece inside the minutes she had. Every bit of what she can do with choreography went into it. In the sweep of the water sleeves and the light touch of the drums you could see the weight of all that history, like a magnificent dream.

And Gi Changning was the one dreaming it. She moved among the dancers, drawing the long river of history with her body. A sweep of the sleeve and there is Zhao Feiyan. A turn of the head and it is Yang Yuhuan. She used herself to join the present to the past, and showed how classical dance has changed and grown.

When the lights went down the audience came out of it as if waking, and gave the warmest applause they had in them.

---

Gi Changning had no time for the interviews backstage. She changed as fast as she could, with no time even to take her make-up off, and drove home.

Because of the Gala, Ji Ran could have gone back to Pingchuan for New Year and had stayed to keep her company instead. Gi Changning felt badly about it, and was moved by how thoughtful Ji Ran has always been with her.

What nobody knows is that Gi Changning has always looked up to Ji Ran. To her, Ji Ran is a light you can get close to, and only close up do you find that what is burning is herself.

So Gi Changning wanted to be that sort of person too. She cannot treat anybody or save a life. She can do it with dancing instead.

She was downstairs already.

The light in the stairwell gathered behind Ji Ran, who stood there quietly, like a flag.

Gi Changning got out of the car and ran the few steps to her. "How was I?"

The same as the year of the swap, when she battled somebody in the square and asked Ji Ran the same thing. How was I?

Ji Ran smiled slightly. "Good to watch."

Then she sketched a few movements, small ones. "The arrangement here and here was the best to watch."

"Those two bits took me ages." Gi Changning was delighted. "And I've made a piece about doctors. I'll dance it for you at midnight. It's your New Year present."

"Good." The lift arrived. Ji Ran said it mysteriously. "I've got a surprise for you as well."

"What?"

Before she had finished, Ji Ran pushed the door open, and there stood Gi Changning's father and mother, Ji Ran's father and Ji Changfeng. "Happy New Year."

Gi Changning stopped dead where she was.

A smell she knew came from the dining room, and her family were all smiling at her.

She turned and grabbed Ji Ran in both arms. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Ji Ran shrugged helplessly. "It wouldn't be a surprise if I'd told you."

Gi Changning turned on the rest of them. "And none of you told me either."

Ji Ran's father redirected the blame without hesitating. "Ranran wouldn't let us."

Ji Ran had nothing to say.

That is a father for you.

The New Year dinner was on the table, and after the midnight bell Gi Changning danced the piece about doctors, as promised.

That year, Ji Ran and Gi Changning turned twenty-eight.