Love on the Turquoise Land – CH 001

In 1992, in Tang County, southern Shaanxi, at Laoniutougang,

Yan Huanshan set off early in the morning, cycling across most of the county to deliver gifts to seven or eight “relevant units,” both legitimate and illegitimate. He had leased a small coal mine in Gangxi, but it lacked proper qualifications and complete permits, and was seriously in violation of regulations; without these bribes, it would be shut down in no time.

However, in those days, the national economy was just beginning to recover, and recovering rather rapidly, with regulations lagging behind. One had to rely on personal connections and relationships to get by.

In one morning, Yan Huanshan gave away twenty to thirty thousand yuan, but he wasn’t bothered at all; in fact, he was quite pleased: with the connections secured, things at the mine would be easier, and his wife, Lin Xirou, was pregnant. An ultrasound revealed it was a boy.

A boy! A boy! The Yan family would have an heir!

With success in both his career and family life, Yan Huanshan was extremely content. On his way back to the mine, he pedaled his bike erratically, humming Teresa Teng’s “Sweet Honey.”

***

From a distance, Yan Huanshan spotted Lin Xirou standing at the mine entrance, her belly slightly protruding.

This was unacceptable! How could a pregnant woman wander around like that?! In a panic, Yan Huanshan didn’t even bother to brace his bike; he simply tossed it aside and strode over to her: “What brings you here?”

Lin Xirou, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, lived up to her name, with a pleasing and gentle face. She held up a thermos lunchbox: “The food at the mine isn’t very good, so I made you some pork dumplings.”

Yan Huanshan realized it was almost lunchtime, and a sense of pride welled up inside him for having his wife by his side: the bachelors in the mine, or those with wives but far away in their hometowns, never got to eat this kind of hot, lovingly prepared meal.

He carefully helped Lin Xirou towards the mine office: “Come on, come on, walk carefully, slowly.”

Lin Xirou laughed so hard she almost choked: “I’m not even here yet; why are you so nervous?”

***

The office was a bit messy, with all sorts of “Top Ten” and “Advanced” certificates pasted on the walls, all collected by Yan Huanshan through his connections over the past two years.

Lin Xirou only glanced at them before looking away. She didn’t really like these fake awards, but her girlfriends all said that men like that were quick-witted, shrewd, and adaptable.

The lunchbox was opened, and the aroma of chives, fresh meat, and the sour smell of aged vinegar filled the air. Yan Huanshan took several satisfying sniffs and immediately started eating.

Lin Xirou sat down across the table, took out knitting needles and yarn from her bag, and skillfully began knitting a sweater while trying to start a conversation: “That Li Ergou still hasn’t been found?”

Yan Huanshan, munching on his food, answered vaguely, “That bastard… stole money from the mine, and he’s already far away? Where are we supposed to find him?”

Li Ergou’s affair was the only unpleasant thing Yan Huanshan had encountered recently.

However, he was quite philosophical about it. What mine or factory didn’t have such scoundrels? Not only was he lazy and gluttonous, always late and leaving early, but he also spread rumors that there were ghosts in the mine, seriously affecting the workers’ morale. After being severely reprimanded, he harbored resentment and broke into the finance office in the middle of the night, stealing nearly ten thousand yuan.

Ten thousand yuan—just thinking about it made his heart ache.

Lin Xirou said, “Aren’t you really going to call the police? That’s letting such a bad guy get away with it.”

Yan Huanshan’s answer was even more vague: “Call what? Better to avoid trouble.”

After all, he had too many dirty secrets at the mine, and he didn’t want to bring the police home.

Lin Xirou didn’t say anything more, lowered her head, and knitted a few rows. She glanced at him and noticed that Yan Huanshan had stopped wolfing down his food: he was biting the end of his chopsticks and looking out the window. Following his gaze, she saw a group of workers gathered at the entrance of the tunnel not far away. Lin Xirou glanced at the clock on the wall: it was 12:30; the miners should be coming up for lunch.

She started a new conversation: “What’s the main dish at the mine today? Lamb?”

Yan Huanshan muttered, “Wait a minute, something happened?”

Lin Xirou was startled and looked out the window again. This time, she noticed something was off: usually, at mealtimes, the workers would rush to the canteen faster than wolves, but now, they were gathered in groups of three or five at the entrance to the mine, excitedly shouting something. If you looked closely, you could see spittle flying from their mouths, glistening in the sunlight.

Could something really have happened?

Miners are most afraid of accidents underground, and accidents underground are definitely not as simple as a scratch or scrape. Yan Huanshan panicked, put down his bowl and chopsticks, and rushed out the door. From a few meters away, he shouted aggressively, “What happened? What happened?”

This was his experience from years of working in the mine: no matter what happened, even if someone died, you couldn’t be timid, panicked, or chaotic. You had to be fierce and speak loudly to control the situation.

The shout had an immediate effect; the commotion subsided considerably. Team leader Liu Sanchi, his face a gaunt, coal-black hue, cried out, “Boss, Er Gouzi wasn’t lying! Down there, down there’s a ghost!”

No one was dead! A huge weight lifted from Yan Huanshan’s heart, and his shout grew even more forceful: “Damn it!”

***

When Lin Xirou arrived, she overheard Yan Huanshan giving a lecture on atheism to the group.

“The books clearly state that there are no ghosts in this world. Er Gouzi is illiterate, and none of you can read? Where are the ghosts? Call it out so I can see!”

The young man, Chang Xi, who had only been in the mine for two days, cautiously explained, “We can’t call it out. It’s too sunny. I heard that ghosts turn to water when exposed to the sun.”

Oh, so considerate of ghosts now?

Yan Huanshan was furious: “You’re all grinning like that. You’ve all seen it? How interesting! What does a ghost look like?”

Surprisingly, someone actually answered.

Mao Wang: “He looked so fair-skinned; I didn’t get a good look. He just vanished in a flash.”

Sun Gui: “He made a sound; I heard a humming sound.”

Han Defu: “I took two melons down there, and both are gone!”

Yan Huanshan said sarcastically: “Even as a ghost, you’re still thinking about melons?”

Lin Xirou’s heart skipped a beat. She tugged at Yan Huanshan’s sleeve and pulled him aside: “Could it be Li Ergou?”

She was born in the 1960s, and like Yan Huanshan, she received a solid Marxist-Leninist education. She always scoffed at talk of ghosts and gods, and when she heard something strange happening in the mine, her first thought was always about people.

—Li Ergou ran away in the middle of the night, without any clothes. It was said he was only wearing a white undershirt and black shorts. “He looked so fair-skinned.” Could it be the white undershirt? The tunnel was pitch black, and the white of the shirt was quite conspicuous.

—We couldn’t find Li Ergou anywhere, so could he have hidden in the mine? “Both melons are gone.” There’s no food in the mine, so of course he’d steal them.

Yan Huanshan understood immediately, slapping his thigh: “It’s him; there’s no one else like him!”

He had his answer in mind, turned around, and said with even more conviction: “Here’s the deal: I’ll go down with you guys and confront this bastard.”

Most of the miners were illiterate and roughnecks, difficult to explain materialism to; the most effective way was to see it for yourself, to expose this “bastard” in front of everyone.

Unfortunately, no one was willing to go down, not even for a twenty-yuan reward.

But that was fine, Yan Huanshan thought, realizing that going down alone and dragging Li Ergou out would be even more impressive, showing these miners that a mine owner wasn’t just a figurehead—establishing his authority would make issuing orders much easier in the future.

He rolled his eyes at everyone. “You don’t dare, huh? Just you wait until your brother Yan brings it out to bask in the sun.” Comparison is the thief of joy. Standing next to the dejected miners, the already handsome Yan Huanshan appeared even taller and more imposing. Lin Xirou felt a surge of pride, thinking her man was truly impressive. It wasn’t until Yan Huanshan’s figure was almost gone from the mine entrance that she remembered to add, “Don’t be too rough.”

Yan Huanshan had spent some time on the streets in his younger days; he was tough and ruthless, easily taking on two or three strong men. Lin Xirou was afraid he might get angry and, in a fit of rage, cripple Li Ergou.

***

Large, well-equipped coal mines have elevators and mine carts for going up and down the tunnels. Yan Huanshan’s mine was small, so everything was simple. A few simple pulleys were set up at the entrance, and everyone used monkey bags attached to the pulleys to go up and down.

The so-called “monkey bag” is a burlap sack with two openings at the bottom. A person sits inside, their legs dangling out through the openings, and then they are lowered to the bottom of the pit via pulleys. Because of the low safety factor, one has to curl up and try to stay as still as possible the whole time, looking like a silly monkey. Therefore, although it’s a bag to carry people, it’s called a “monkey bag.”

Yan Huanshan greeted the person on duty at the pit entrance and went down into the pit in the monkey bag.

This mine was taken over from the previous owner; it was secondhand. Whatever the previous owner had done, that’s what it is now. If there’s anything special about it, it’s its depth—it’s incredibly deep.

And precisely because it’s deep, there are far more mysterious and ghostly tales circulating in this mine than in other mines. For example, Li Ergou spread rumors that this mine is the entrance to the eighteen levels of hell and even claimed to have seen blue-faced, fanged ghosts—what nonsense! If it were really the entrance to hell, why would Yan Huanshan be running a mine? He could just sell tourist attractions; with 1.1 billion Chinese people, everyone would come to see the spectacle.

Reaching the bottom of the tunnel, there was a pile of equipment nearby. Yan Huanshan picked up a pickaxe, grabbed his headlamp, and entered the intricate, spiderweb-like mine tunnels.

He wasn’t very familiar with the tunnels below, which was understandable: small coal mines didn’t bother with drawing tunnel maps, and manual mining was too random. Sometimes, while digging, he’d sense something was wrong, that a collapse might occur, so he’d just prop it up with a stick, change direction, and start digging again. Over time, he’d become a mess, digging like a dog scratching or a pig gnawing, beyond recognition and memory.

Yan Huanshan shouted all the way, “Er Gouzi, come out yourself, and we’ll try to get lenient treatment!”

The tunnel was extremely dark, the headlamp’s light flickering left and right, illuminating only a small area the size of a small table each time. But Yan Huanshan wasn’t afraid at all. Firstly, he was naturally bold, and secondly, what was there to be afraid of? As for ghosts, where in this world are there ghosts?

After walking for about fifteen minutes, Yan Huanshan’s voice became hoarse from shouting, but Li Ergou still hadn’t appeared to confess. He was getting annoyed and was about to head to another tunnel when he suddenly stepped on something.

The thing was slippery, making it hard to keep one’s footing. Caught off guard, Yan Huanshan cried out and slid several steps away before falling flat on his back. The fall was so hard that his vision blurred, and the glass cover of his headlamp cracked in several places. It took Yan Huanshan a full five seconds to recover. He picked up his headlamp and shone it around, quickly locating the culprit: it was the part of the melon near the stem. No wonder it was so slippery.

“Damn it, which bastard threw this!”

Yan Huanshan cursed, and as he was about to get up, he suddenly froze.

Not far away, at the end of the lamplight, in the dim and blurry darkness, there was a pair of feet, slender and white, clearly not men’s feet.

“No way, there can be women underground?”

Yan Huanshan instinctively raised his headlamp higher.

He saw a dark mass, a woman, a naked woman curled up in a corner, her thick, bushy hair obscuring her face and most of her body, her eyes hidden beneath the tangled hair staring intently at him. Strangely enough, these eyes, aside from being brighter, more beautiful, and deeper than most people’s, were otherwise unremarkable. But the first adjective that popped into Yan Huanshan’s mind had nothing to do with bright, beautiful, or deep.

The word that came to his mind was “new.”

Clusters of new eyes, unused, like those of a newborn baby, just created.

Yan Huanshan stared at these eyes.

He found himself unable to move.

The woman crawled over.

***

September 16, 1992 / Wednesday / Sunny turning cloudy turning heavy rain.

It was 10:30, and Da Shan still hadn’t returned. It was raining so hard outside, and I was home alone; I was a little scared.

At noon, I brought Da Shan dumplings and encountered something funny: the workers were making a ruckus, saying there were ghosts in the mine.

Where did that ghost come from? I bet it’s Li Ergou.

I was quite looking forward to Da Shan going down alone to “catch the ghost,” but then I thought, he might not succeed: Li Ergou has done something wrong; how could he dare let Da Shan find him? He would have hidden himself at the first sound.

Sure enough, I guessed right. Da Shan went down for nothing and came back saying there was nothing inside.

It’s 10:45.

Things at the mine are really busy. Da Shan is working so hard. I hope my son is born soon and grows up quickly so Dashan can have another capable helper.

I’ve been thinking of a name for my son lately. I love flipping through the dictionary. I like a word, “Kaituo” (拓).

Kaituo, Kaituo, it sounds so nice, opening up new worlds, expanding new paths, daring to change the world.

Yan Kai, Yan Tuo—they all sound good. I like them all and can’t choose.

Oh well, let Da Shan choose.

There’s a sound outside; Da Shan must be back. I’ll stop here.

—[Excerpt from Lin Xirou’s Diary]