# Prequel: Ye Chen's Youth
Ye Chen was born on the day the whole village was still underwater.
It was a flood that came once in a hundred years. Days of relentless rain had pushed the creek over its banks until every paddy field disappeared, the whole landscape turning into a patchwork of ponds. Rice straw, plastic bags, and sandals from God knows where drifted across the surface. Several bridges had been swept away, rebar jutting out of the broken concrete like snapped bones.
No one could leave the village. No one could get in.
But one bridge held.
Just one. The one that happened to lead to the hospital.
Ye Chen's mother, belly swollen, got into a car and bumped her way across that bridge to the hospital. The day after the flood, Ye Chen was born.
The village elders said afterward that this child had a hard fate. Not even a hundred-year flood could stop him from coming into the world—Heaven had kept that one bridge open just for him.
Ye Chen didn't know whether his fate was hard or not. He only knew that for as long as he could remember, his world was those fields, that alley, that old house, and the two backs always walking ahead of him, always just out of reach—his two older brothers.
Ye Chen was the third child. Two older brothers above him, one younger sister below.
His place in the family was clear: he was the tagalong.
Wherever his oldest brother went, Ye Chen followed. Wherever his second brother ran, Ye Chen chased. His brothers found him annoying, but they never actually drove him away. That was just how it was in the countryside—kids stuck together in a cluster, like a string of rice dumplings, always moving as a pack.
Everything they played with, they made themselves.
A thick stand of bamboo grew along the edge of the paddy fields. Cut it down and you could make anything. Saw it into sections—narrow at one end, wider at the other—stuff a chopstick through the middle as a plunger, load a ping-pong ball inside, and you had a bamboo gun. One push of the plunger and the ball shot out with a hollow pop, hard enough to sting when it hit you.
Ye Chen got hit plenty of times. His oldest brother had the best aim—he'd crouch behind a wall, wait for Ye Chen to walk past, and pop him right in the back of the head. Ye Chen would squat on the ground rubbing the spot for a long time, eyes red when he finally stood up, but he never cried. Crying meant getting laughed at.
The thicker bamboo sections made water guns. Knock out the nodes, stuff in a cloth-wrapped rod as a piston, draw water, push—a jet of water shot out surprisingly far. On summer days the three brothers would spray each other in the courtyard until they were soaked through, puddles spreading across the ground. Their mother would lean out from the kitchen and scold: "I just washed those clothes!" Nobody listened.
Toys didn't need to be bought. If you wanted something, you made it. Whether it turned out well didn't matter—as long as it worked, that was enough.
That was Ye Chen's earliest experience with making things by hand. He didn't know to call it that at the time. He only knew that bamboo was useful, that knives required care, and that getting hit in the back of the head with a ping-pong ball really, truly hurt.
Ye Chen's family farmed.
Not a small plot for their own table. Several acres of land, the kind where you couldn't see the far edge. When the rice was planted, it spread out in a sheet of green, and when the wind moved through it, the whole field rolled like a green sea, wave after wave pushing toward the horizon.
Beautiful. But when summer vacation came and that green sea turned gold, Ye Chen knew: the hard days were here.
Harvest season. Cutting rice. Drying grain.
Those three phrases were the most dreaded words of his entire childhood.
The harvesting machine moved through the rows, pulling the stalks in, grain pouring out the chute in a rush, filling burlap sacks. The sacks were hauled one by one to the village square, emptied, spread flat, left to dry.
The square was large—the communal drying ground for the whole village. The concrete baked in the sun until it burned your bare feet if you stepped on it. The grain lay spread in a thin golden layer, glinting in the light.
Beautiful. But you couldn't just look at it.
Every hour, it had to be turned.
You took a wide wooden rake and worked the grain over, exposing the bottom layer to the sun. Push from one end to the other, then back again. The sun burned straight down, sweat ran into your eyes—salty, stinging. Your shirt soaked through, dried, soaked through again, until a white crust of salt formed across your back.
But the worst part wasn't the heat. It was the itch.
As the grain dried, it released a fine dust, nearly invisible, that worked its way through your clothes and into your pores. At first it was a faint crawling sensation, like ants moving across your skin. Then it built, until you wanted to peel yourself out of your own body. Arms, neck, back, even behind the ears—the more you scratched, the worse it got, skin going red and raw, still itching.
After every drying session, the first thing Ye Chen did was run for the water. Cold water pouring over his head, washing away the dust, the itch slowly fading. But the next day there was more grain to spread, more turning to do, more itching to endure.
Day after day. The same thing.
At dusk, when the sun dropped low, everything had to be gathered in. Rake the scattered grain into a pile at the center of the square, cover it with a tarp, weigh the edges down with stones against rain or wind. The next morning, when the sun came up, pull the tarp back, spread the grain out again, start over.
When it was dry enough, it went into sacks. Sack after sack, carried on your back into the storehouse and stacked. When the family needed rice, they'd bring a sack out and run it through the mill—the machine rumbling as rough grain went in one end and white rice came out the other, husks drifting from a side vent in another cloud of dust.
Some of the grain wasn't for eating. It was kept as seed. Those kernels had to be soaked in a chemical solution to disinfect and sprout them, ready for the next planting season.
Before planting came a whole other chain of tasks. Empty the seedling trays, spread soil, smooth it flat, scatter the seeds, cover with a thin layer of soil, stack the trays and store them somewhere cool, wait for germination.
Ye Chen had been doing these things since he was very small. Not because he wanted to—because the family needed hands. During harvest season, everyone worked, even his youngest sister, who was put to work fetching and carrying. Ye Chen was too small to haul full grain sacks, so he turned grain, swept, and passed tools. As he got older, he did everything.
He didn't like harvest season. But he never said so.
Because saying so wouldn't change anything. The fields were there, the rice was there, the sun was there. Like it or not, the work had to be done.
But harvest season wasn't only hard.
About a month after the rice was cut, the fields lay turned and dry, the soil cracked into rough chunks. That was when it was time for the clay oven.
The clay oven was the thing country kids looked forward to most.
Find an open patch of ground, stack the dirt clods into a small dome like a miniature volcano. Leave a hole at the bottom, stuff in straw and firewood, light it. As the fire burned, the clods turned red-hot, the whole structure smoking, heat seeping through every crack.
When the clods were glowing, you pushed in sweet potatoes, corn, and eggs, then knocked the dome down and buried everything under the rubble. Then you waited.
The waiting was the hardest part. A group of kids crouched around the mound, staring at it like it held buried treasure. Someone would always try to dig in early and get stopped by everyone else: "It's not ready yet! Just a little longer!"
After about an hour, it was finally time to dig. Scrape back the dirt, and a wave of heat hit your face, the sweet smell of roasting potato rising from the earth—sweet and slightly charred. The skins came out blackened, and when you peeled them back, the inside was golden, soft as paste, too hot to hold, tossed back and forth between your hands.
Take a bite. Burning hot. But sweet. Sweet all the way down.
That was the best thing Ye Chen ever ate as a child. Not because sweet potatoes were anything special, but because of the waiting, the anticipation, the whole process of crouching in the field with his brothers and the neighborhood kids, waiting to dig up the treasure—that was what made those potatoes taste better than anything else.
Winter break was happier than summer break.
Because winter break had New Year.
New Year was the thing Ye Chen looked forward to most all year. Not because of the vacation—because of the red envelopes.
On the first day of the new year, dressed in new clothes, he'd follow his parents from house to house paying visits. At each relative's home, you walked in, called out a greeting, and a red envelope appeared. The envelope was fat in your hand, and no matter how much was inside, it felt like a fortune. By the end of the day, his pockets were stuffed, rustling softly with every step.
At night, fireworks. Not the big professional kind—the kind you bought yourself. Bottle rockets, butterfly crackers, sparklers. A bottle rocket planted in the ground, fuse lit, a whistle as it shot up, then a crack as it burst in the air, sparks raining down. The kids screamed and ran, then ran back, then lit another one.
And a little gambling. The adults played mahjong in the living room while the kids played cards nearby, betting with the coins from their red envelopes. Win and you were happy; lose and you were still happy, because it was New Year and everything was happy.
As long as you were still a student, New Year was the best time of year.
Because students had no worries. Worries were something that came with growing up.
In sixth grade, something happened that Ye Chen never saw coming.
Music class.
He had no particular feelings about music class. The teacher played the organ, the students sang along, and when it was over, class was over. He didn't think about whether he sang well or badly—everyone was singing, his voice mixed in with the rest, indistinguishable.
But the music teacher could distinguish it.
One day after class, she called Ye Chen aside and said, "You have a very good voice. Would you be interested in entering the singing competition?"
He blinked. He didn't know what "a very good voice" meant. He knew he didn't go off-key, but was that good?
The teacher explained that the school held a singing competition every year. Two students were selected from each class, and nearly twenty students from across the school competed. She thought he should try.
Ye Chen thought about it and said yes.
He didn't know why he said yes. Maybe because the teacher's tone was so serious, it made the thing feel worth trying. Or maybe because no one had ever told him before that he was good at something—and those words lit up a small place inside him.
He went home and started practicing.
Not with a teacher guiding him—alone in his room. He listened to the competition song over and over, sang along, rewound when he got it wrong, sang until his voice went hoarse, drank some water, kept going. His oldest brother passed his door, glanced in, said nothing, and walked on. His second brother was more direct: "What are you howling about in there?"
He ignored it and kept singing.
He practiced for nearly a month.
On the day of the competition, Ye Chen stood backstage, legs shaking.
He peered through a gap in the curtain—hundreds of people in the audience. The whole school, students and teachers, a dark mass of faces. His palms were soaked with sweat; he wiped them, they soaked through again.
One by one, the performers went up and came back down. When his turn came, his legs were shaking so badly he could barely stand.
He walked onto the stage.
Standing at the microphone, hundreds of pairs of eyes on him. He felt something close around his throat; his mouth opened but no sound came out.
Then he did something—he stopped looking at the audience.
He moved his gaze to the farthest point he could find, the back wall of the auditorium. Nothing on it. Just white. He fixed his eyes on that white space, drew a slow breath, and began to sing.
His voice came out trembling. The first few lines shook on every word. But as he kept going, he forgot the audience, forgot his shaking legs, forgot the sweat on his palms. He heard only his own voice, rising from his throat, passing through the microphone, becoming sound that moved through the auditorium.
He didn't know if he was singing well. He only knew he was going to make it to the end.
When the last note was done, he bowed and walked off the stage. His legs were still shaking—but differently now. Not the shaking of fear. The shaking of release. Like finishing a long run and finally stopping, every muscle going soft.
All the performers finished. The judges tallied scores at the front.
Ye Chen sat in the audience, already relaxed. He thought: making it up there and finishing was enough. The placement didn't matter. He started thinking about where he'd go after school—
"Third place—"
Not him.
"Second place—"
Also not him.
Ye Chen nodded to himself. Right. Of course not. That's fine. He started thinking about what to do after school—
"First place—"
He heard his own name.
Ye Chen.
He sat frozen in his seat. The classmate next to him shoved his arm: "That's you! Go up!"
He stood. His legs started shaking again. Walking to the stage, he felt like he was moving through a dream. The audience was clapping—loud—but it reached him muffled, as if through water.
He accepted the certificate and looked down at it. His name was printed there, and next to it: First Place.
Black ink on white paper. Not a dream.
He looked up and saw his music teacher in the audience, smiling. Her smile said: I knew it.
That was the first time Ye Chen understood that there were things in him that other people could see, even when he couldn't see them himself.
In middle school, Ye Chen met another person who would matter.
His homeroom teacher—he couldn't quite remember the name later, but the face, the hands, the way the man stood at the front of the classroom talking—those he never forgot.
The homeroom teacher was a middle-aged man, not tall, but with large hands. Not like a farmer's hands—a farmer's hands were rough and cracked, with dirt ground into the nail beds that never washed out. The teacher's hands were rough too, but differently rough: the roughness of sandpaper and wood. Calluses at the fingertips, a thin hard layer across the palm, but the fingers were nimble—when he held chalk, each stroke landed as if carved into the board.
Among the subjects the teacher taught was home economics.
In those days, middle school home economics wasn't just cooking and sewing on buttons. Some schools included woodworking. Ye Chen's school was one of them.
On the first day of woodworking class, the teacher carried out a pile of things from the storage room at the back—saws, chisels, a wooden mallet, sandpaper, several cut boards, and a hand plane. He arranged them on the lectern one by one, like setting out dishes for a meal.
Every boy in the class leaned forward, eyes bright. The girls were indifferent, but the boys were already reaching out to touch things.
"Don't touch." The teacher's voice wasn't loud, but the room went quiet.
He picked up the hand plane, pressed a board flat with his left hand, gripped the plane with his right, and pushed forward.
A thin curl of wood peeled away from the blade—a pale yellow ribbon that turned once in the air and settled softly on the surface of the board.
The smell reached the classroom instantly. Not perfume. Wood. Clean and faint, like the smell of a forest after rain.
Ye Chen sat in the third row. When that smell reached him, something shifted inside him. He couldn't name what it was—only that it felt the same as when his music teacher had said "you have a very good voice." A small place inside him lit up.
The teacher set down the plane and held up the wood curl for the class to see.
"Wood is alive," he said. "Work with the grain and it lets you plane it smooth. Work against it and it buckles, catches, splits. The first thing you learn in woodworking isn't how to use the tools. It's how to read the wood."
He turned the board over and pointed to the lines running through it.
"Look at these. Some are close together, some spread apart, some straight, some curved. Every piece of wood is different—like fingerprints. You have to understand it before you touch it."
Ye Chen stared at those lines and thought of water moving through a paddy field—directional, fast in some places, slow in others, bending where the land bent. He'd watched water his whole life. He hadn't expected to find the same thing in wood.
In the first hands-on session, the teacher had everyone make a small shelf.
Simple enough—two side panels, three shelves, joined with mortise and tenon. No nails, no glue.
"Mortise and tenon" was a phrase Ye Chen had never heard before.
The teacher drew a diagram on the board. One board's end was cut into a protruding shape—the tenon. The other board had a hole cut into it to receive the tenon—the mortise. Fit the tenon into the mortise and the two boards locked together without any fastener.
"Sounds easy, right?" the teacher said. "But if the tenon is too big, it won't go in. Too small, it'll be loose. Cut it crooked and the whole shelf will be crooked. One millimeter off is off."
He handed out boards and tools and told everyone to begin.
The room filled with noise immediately. Sawing, the knock of mallet on chisel, and the occasional yelp—someone had cut crooked, someone had chiseled too deep, someone had split their board clean through.
Ye Chen picked up the saw, lined it up with the mark the teacher had drawn, and started cutting.
His first stroke went crooked.
The saw slipped sideways about two millimeters off the line. He stopped and looked at the mark, frowning.
But he hadn't imagined that after middle school, what waited for him wasn't an easier life—it was a different kind of discipline.
Vocational school taught Ye Chen what "iron rules" actually meant.
He studied electrical engineering. The school had a long official name, but students privately called it one thing: "the military." Because the way the school was run was nearly indistinguishable from the actual military.
Every morning at six-thirty, the wake-up call sounded. Not an alarm clock—a real bugle call, blaring from the PA speakers, shaking the whole dormitory building. Within five minutes you had to be in uniform, room in order, and downstairs for assembly. Blankets folded into perfect squares, pillow squared up, shoes lined up under the bed in a straight row. Inspectors came through; anything out of order meant demerits.
The assembly ground was large enough to hold several thousand students. The whole school stood in formation by department, year, and class. During the flag-raising, the flag climbed the pole slowly while everyone stood at attention and saluted, motionless. If someone scratched an itch or let their knees buckle, the instructor's eyes swept over like a hawk's, and you knew you'd be called out afterward.
When Ye Chen first arrived, he couldn't adjust. He'd grown up in the countryside, used to doing as he pleased—sleeping when he wanted, going where he wanted. Being dropped into a place where everything had to be done by the book made him feel wrong all over, like a cat that had always run free suddenly locked in a cage.
But people adapt. After a month, his blanket was folded more precisely than anyone else's, his shoes lined up straighter than anyone else's. Not because he liked it—because he'd figured out that it was easier to do it right once than to be corrected every day. Same logic as harvest season. Like it or not, the work had to be done, so you might as well do it right and save yourself the trouble.
One of the most distinctive features of vocational school life was the duty rotation.
Every class took a turn as the duty week class—essentially the school's general labor pool for that week. Guard posts, traffic control, serving meals, odd jobs: anything the school needed that week fell to your class. Each year group rotated through once a year, and when your week came, the whole class stayed on edge, because any mistake went on everyone's record.
The week Ye Chen's class was on duty was the one he remembered most clearly.
The school had a small bird garden.
Nothing large—a fenced enclosure next to the administration building, housing a few mandarin ducks, some guinea fowl, and two peacocks. Normally a dedicated staff member handled feeding and cleaning, but during duty week, those tasks fell to the students on rotation.
That day it was Ye Chen and two classmates assigned to feed the birds.
They carried the feed bucket to the bird garden gate. Ye Chen pulled open the wire mesh door and squeezed through sideways. The bucket was large; both hands were occupied. He thought: set the bucket down first, then come back and latch the door. Just a few seconds.
One of the guinea fowl—drawn by the smell of the feed, or maybe just wanting some air—trotted through the unlatched gate with a series of quick clucks before Ye Chen could turn around.
He looked back. It was out.
He dropped the bucket and ran. But the guinea fowl was faster than he'd expected—short legs pumping furiously, wings half-spread, cutting an S-shaped path across the ground like it was drunk.
"Cut it off! Cut it off!" Ye Chen shouted back at his classmates.
The two of them rushed forward. All three spread their arms to form a circle around the bird. But the guinea fowl didn't follow any predictable path—it made a sharp turn, slipped between Ye Chen's legs, and ran straight toward the assembly ground.
The assembly ground.
The enormous square that held several thousand students.
And at that moment, it was class time. The square itself was empty—but every classroom surrounding it was full.
The guinea fowl reached the center of the assembly ground, stopped, tilted its head left and right as if taking in the scenery, then shook its feathers and let out a loud, resonant call that echoed across the open space.
Students inside the classrooms heard it.
First the ones by the windows looked out. Then the whole row by the windows. Then the students away from the windows stood up and crowded over. One classroom, two classrooms, three classrooms—a ripple of commotion spreading from room to room like falling dominoes.
Ye Chen and his two classmates stood at the edge of the assembly ground, caught between options. Chase the bird—in full view of hundreds of people—and look completely ridiculous. Don't chase it, and if the bird escaped, all three of them would be written up.
"Go." Ye Chen gritted his teeth and ran.
It wasn't one classroom laughing. It was several classrooms erupting at once. People slapping desks, whistling, hanging over windowsills laughing so hard they couldn't straighten up. Even the teachers had stopped teaching and were standing at the windows, corners of their mouths pulling upward despite themselves.
Ye Chen's face burned. But he didn't stop.
After about five minutes—which felt like fifty—the guinea fowl finally ran out of energy. It stopped under a banyan tree in the corner of the assembly ground, neck tucked in, panting.
Ye Chen slowed down, bent at the waist, and moved toward it one step at a time, like approaching a bomb that might go off at any moment.
Closer. A little closer.
He lunged—both hands snapping shut. He had it.
The guinea fowl thrashed in his grip, wings beating against his arms, claws raking red lines across his skin. He held on with everything he had.
A cheer and a round of applause broke from the classrooms.
Walking back to the bird garden with the guinea fowl tucked against his chest, Ye Chen was soaked in sweat, arms scratched up, uniform smeared with feathers and dirt. He put the bird back inside, latched the gate, and checked it three times before he left.
That evening, the whole dormitory talked about nothing else. Wherever he went, someone called him "Chicken Chaser." Ye Chen couldn't quite laugh about it—he was just relieved the guinea fowl hadn't made it out the school gate, or he'd probably have been written up until graduation.
After that, every time his class was on duty rotation, the first thing Ye Chen did when he entered the bird garden was latch the gate behind him. It never happened again.
Of all his years at vocational school, the thing Ye Chen remembered most wasn't the duty rotation, and it wasn't chasing the guinea fowl.
It was the drum and bugle corps.
From the first day of enrollment, every student in the engineering program was assigned to the drum and bugle corps. Not optional—required. The business program students learned parade formations, recorders, and drum basics. The engineering students got brass and percussion: bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, and various brass instruments.
Everyone was assigned an instrument. Like being issued a rifle in the military, that instrument was yours from enrollment to graduation—you carried it to meals, kept it beside your bed at night, took it everywhere.
Ye Chen was assigned a trumpet.
Brass-colored, bright, heavy in the hand. The mouthpiece was small and cold against his lips, which instinctively pursed when it touched them.
The first time he tried to play, nothing came out.
He puffed his cheeks and blew hard, face going red, and the bell produced a dull, muffled sound like a deflating tire. The students around him weren't doing much better—someone produced a piercing squeal, someone else a low drone like a mosquito. The practice yard sounded like an out-of-tune zoo.
But the upperclassmen didn't give you time to ease into it.
Each new student was paired with an upperclassman for one-on-one instruction. Ye Chen's was a lean, dark-skinned third-year who didn't say much but held high standards. He taught Ye Chen how to set the mouthpiece—not wrapping your lips around it, but pressing the center of your lips lightly against it, like kissing someone. Then draw the corners of your mouth in, force the air through the small gap between your lips, make them vibrate, let the vibration travel into the mouthpiece and through the tubing until sound came out.
Simple to describe. Brutal to do.
Lips too tight, no sound. Too loose, the sound scattered. Not enough air, the tone went thin. Too much force, it cracked. Finding the exact right position meant blowing, adjusting, blowing again, over and over.
During the midday break, while others napped, Ye Chen and the other new students were taken to an open area behind the school near the back hill to practice. The sun baked the ground, cicadas screamed from the trees, and they stood there working through one note at a time.
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol—
Each note had to be steady, in tune, and approved by a nod from the upperclassman before moving to the next. Ye Chen's lips swelled from the effort; even the rim of a cup hurt when it touched them. But the next afternoon, practice continued.
After a week, he could play a complete melody. Still cracking notes here and there, but recognizable as a song.
After two weeks, he began playing with the other instruments. The snare drum kept the beat, the bass drum anchored the downbeats, the cymbals crashed at the right moments, and the trumpet carried the melody. The first time they played together, it was chaos—everyone in their own rhythm, like a pot of overcooked porridge.
But they kept practicing, and slowly the sounds began to align.
The snare drum's steady pulse held the foundation, the bass drum's deep beat pushed like a heartbeat, the cymbals arrived exactly when they were supposed to, and then the trumpet's voice rose above everything else—bright, cutting, like a beam of light breaking through clouds.
In that moment, Ye Chen's whole body broke out in goosebumps.
He had never known that sound made by a group of people together could carry that kind of force. Not one person's strength—everyone's strength combined into something larger than any individual.
The morning assembly was when the drum and bugle corps performed.
Several thousand students standing in formation on the assembly ground, each class's corps playing in turn to lead their class in. This wasn't just going through the motions—it was a matter of pride. Which class's brass sounded best, whose formations were sharpest, whose presence commanded the most attention—the whole school was watching and judging.
Classes competed. Not officially, but everyone kept score.
"Third-year Class Two sounded good today." "We were better. Didn't you hear our trumpets?" "Please—your bass drum was off the whole time. Don't even start."
That kind of talk happened every day. So everyone practiced hard. Midday, after school, sometimes on weekends. Not because they were forced to—because they wanted to. Because standing on that assembly ground with thousands of people watching, playing your trumpet loud and clean and right—
Pride.
Not personal pride. The pride of your class. The pride of a group of people who had practiced together for a long time and were finally showing it to everyone.
Ye Chen kept getting better. From cracking notes constantly to holding the main melody steady, it took him about two months. The last time his upperclassman worked with him, the older student clapped him on the shoulder and said: "You're good."
Two words. But Ye Chen understood—that was his upperclassman's way, the same as the middle school teacher's nod.
Later, Ye Chen became an upperclassman himself and took on a new student. He taught the younger student to set the mouthpiece exactly the way he'd been taught: "Like kissing someone." The younger student turned red. Ye Chen smiled and said, "Just play. You'll get it."
One class passing it to the next. Upperclassmen teaching younger students, younger students becoming upperclassmen, teaching the class after that. The instrument stayed the same, the mouthpiece stayed the same, but the players changed year after year. Ye Chen thought there was something remarkable about that—after he left, his trumpet would go to the next person, who would press the same mouthpiece to their lips, push the same air through, and play the same melody. The sound wouldn't stop. It would just move to a different mouth.
Besides the drum and bugle corps, the school had many other clubs. The corps was mandatory—everyone participated—but in the remaining time, you could choose based on your own interests.
Ye Chen couldn't quite remember which clubs he'd joined. But the one that left the deepest impression on him—the one he never forgot—was the dragon dance team.
He hadn't joined it. But he'd watched them perform.
It was a school anniversary celebration. Every club performed in turn: the drum and bugle corps, the honor guard, the recorder ensemble, the dragon dance team, one after another. After Ye Chen finished his part with the corps, he stood at the side of the ground and watched the dragon dance team take the field.
The dragon was long—about a dozen students holding it up. The head was the heaviest; the student carrying it had arms as thick as most people's calves, and those arms couldn't come down for the entire performance. The body undulated with the drumbeats, each section rippling in sequence, as if the dragon were actually swimming.
The drums sped up, and the dragon moved faster. The head rose and fell, the body twisted, coiled, and wove through itself, a dozen students moving in perfect unison—like a real dragon flying across the ground. The final move: the head lifted high, the body coiled into a circle, every student freezing in place at the same instant—
The whole crowd went silent for one second.
Then the applause broke.
Ye Chen stood at the side, clapping until his hands went numb. He thought: how long did these people practice to turn twelve people's movements into one dragon's movements?
He found out later that the dragon dance team practiced two hours every day after school, and on weekends too. The best teams were invited to perform outside the school—temple festivals, civic celebrations, events at other schools. Wearing the school uniform, carrying the school's dragon, performing in front of people from outside—that was the whole school's honor.
Vocational school was far from home, so Ye Chen didn't live in the dormitory—he lived with relatives.
His relatives' home was on an old street near the school, about a fifteen-minute walk. The house wasn't large, but there was a spare room with a bed, a desk, and a small electric fan. That was his space. His relatives treated him well—meals were included, laundry was done together—and the only rule was to be back by eleven at night, when the door would be locked.
But there was a lot you could do before eleven.
Less than a minute's walk from his relatives' house was a pool hall.
Not the upscale kind with air conditioning. A corrugated metal shed with six tables inside, fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling casting yellowish light that made every ball glow. The felt on some tables had worn thin in patches, and there were small burn marks at the edges from cigarettes. To Ye Chen, it was paradise.
After school, drop the bag, change into sandals, and walk over.
At first he didn't know what he was doing. His grip was wrong, his stroke hand shook, and the cue ball went left or right no matter what he intended. Sometimes he'd miscue—the tip sliding over the top of the cue ball, sending it bouncing off the table with a thud while everyone nearby turned to look.
Embarrassing. But fun.
He started studying how to aim, how to control force, how to leave the cue ball where he wanted it after contact. Nobody taught him any of this—he played, watched, and figured it out on his own. Occasionally an older regular would offer a word: "Your bridge hand is too high—bring it down." "Keep your elbow still on the stroke. Only the forearm moves."
He listened, tried it, adjusted, played again.
After a few months, his accuracy improved. He could send balls cleanly into pockets, and occasionally he'd pull off a combination—cue ball hitting the first ball, that ball hitting another, both rolling into separate pockets. Pop, thud, thud. Three sounds in sequence, clean and crisp.
The people nearby would let out a low "oh." That sound was better than any certificate.
A little farther away, about ten minutes by bike, was a bowling alley.
More impressive than the pool hall—air conditioning, electronic scoring screens, lanes waxed to a shine, pins standing at the far end like a row of small white soldiers.
The first time Ye Chen went, he figured he'd be fine. He was strong, his hands were steady, he'd gotten decent at pool—bowling couldn't be that different.
His first ball rolled straight into the gutter.
So did the second.
The third stayed on the lane but knocked down only one pin. That single pin lay in the corner looking, he felt, like it was laughing at him.
He refused to accept it and played game after game. But bowling wasn't like pool. Pool was about precision and control. Bowling was about rhythm and coordination—hands, feet, and body movement all working together to send the ball on a clean arc. Ye Chen's hands were steady, but his footwork was off. The balls he threw were either too straight or too wide, and while he occasionally got a strike, more often he left splits he couldn't convert.
He liked playing. But he quickly realized: this wasn't his thing.
Pool he could keep improving at, because it relied on touch and patience—the same as woodworking. But bowling required something he didn't have: a natural sense of physical rhythm. His body was too stiff, his movements too forced. Every ball felt like he was throwing it with brute strength rather than letting his body's momentum carry it.
He accepted this. Not everything suited him. Knowing what you weren't good at was its own kind of skill.
But he still went. Not to get better—because going with friends was fun. After bowling, a group of them would ride back together, wind in their faces, talking about who'd thrown a gutter ball and who'd gotten a strike, laughter trailing off into the night air.
That kind of happiness was the same as crouching in the field as a kid, waiting to dig up the clay oven. It wasn't about the thing itself—it was about having people around.
Vocational school life looked like a military camp from the outside—strict, regimented, everything by the book. But in the gaps between all those rules, unexpected things took root. The drum and bugle corps taught Ye Chen what it meant to be part of something larger than yourself. Chasing the guinea fowl taught him that you had to own your mistakes even when it was humiliating. The morning assemblies taught him what it meant to do what needed to be done as well as it could be done.
At the time, none of it felt like much.
Years later, looking back, he understood: those years at vocational school had been laying a foundation. A foundation for being able to hold on, no matter what came.
There was one more thing about vocational school that couldn't be avoided: mixers.
Engineering students almost never saw women. Classrooms full of men, dormitories full of men, even the drum and bugle corps full of men. Occasionally a group of business program girls would pass in the hallway, and a whole row of boys' heads would turn in unison like sunflowers, then swivel back as if nothing had happened.
So mixers were basically a holiday.
Sometimes the other group was from the school's own business program; sometimes it was students from another school entirely. Word usually came through whoever had the widest social network: "Hey, there's a group of girls from such-and-such school looking to meet people—you in?"
Yes. Obviously yes. The whole room scrambled to sign up.
Every time Ye Chen heard about a mixer, he felt a strange combination of things—anticipation, but also nerves. Anticipation because he genuinely wanted to meet people. Nerves because he knew himself: he was too quiet.
He wasn't the type to start conversations. In a group, he was usually the one sitting to the side, listening to everyone else talk. Other guys could say three sentences and have a girl laughing; Ye Chen would think for a long time, finally come up with something to say, and find that the conversation had already moved somewhere else.
It wasn't that he didn't want to talk. He just didn't know what to say. He had plenty of thoughts, but between his mind and his mouth there seemed to be a wall. By the time he climbed over it, the moment was gone.
After every mixer, his classmates would talk excitedly: "That girl in the white top was something." "Did you get her number?" "We talked forever—she said we could hang out again."
Ye Chen listened and smiled, feeling a small flicker of envy, but mostly a calm acceptance: this is just how I am. He knew he wasn't built for mixers—the same way he wasn't built for bowling. Some things couldn't be changed with effort. Personality was something that lived in your bones.
But he still went every time.
If he didn't go, there'd be even less chance. And even if he didn't say much, watching everyone else be loud and lively was its own kind of enjoyment.
One mixer almost ended in disaster.
That day, they'd arranged a barbecue with girls from another school. The location was an outdoor barbecue area outside the city, and someone had to go to the market first to buy supplies. Ye Chen rode with Ah-Guo, the classmate organizing everything, on one motorcycle.
Ah-Guo drove, Ye Chen on the back. They left from the relatives' house and had gone maybe ten or fifteen meters—not even a minute.
At an intersection, Ah-Guo turned left.
At the exact moment they turned, a car came from the other direction.
Ye Chen saw only light—headlights, white and blinding, coming straight at them. Then a crash, metal on metal, sharp and piercing, like someone swinging an iron rod next to his ear.
He felt himself go airborne.
Not a figure of speech. He actually left the seat, tumbled through the air some number of times, and hit the asphalt hard. His back landed first, then the back of his head struck the ground with a crack, and everything went white. His ears rang with a continuous tone that drowned out everything else.
He lay on the road, unable to move.
Not unwilling—unable. He tried to lift his hand; it came up, but shaking badly. He turned his head and saw Ah-Guo face-down a few meters away, also moving, but slowly, like a film in slow motion.
The motorcycle lay in the middle of the road, front wheel still spinning with a thin whine. The car had stopped nearby, hood crumpled, engine cover bent upward, white smoke rising from it.
After a few seconds—maybe longer, he couldn't tell—Ye Chen slowly sat up.
Pain. Everywhere. But he moved his hands and feet. Nothing broken. His knee had a large patch of skin scraped away, blood seeping through his pant leg; his elbow was raw and beading red. But the bones were intact. He could stand.
He got up and limped over to Ah-Guo. Ah-Guo was pulling himself upright too—one side of his face scraped, lip split, blood running from the corner of his mouth, but alert. When he saw Ye Chen, he said: "God, that hurts."
The driver of the car got out.
Ye Chen looked up. A middle-aged man, large, with a hard face—brow furrowed, mouth pressed into a line. Under the streetlight, that face looked like something out of a movie about gangsters.
Ye Chen's heart sank. Great. Not only injured—now probably about to get yelled at too.
But the man didn't explode. He walked over, looked at both of them, and asked: "Can you walk? Do you need an ambulance?"
His voice was unexpectedly calm. Nothing like that face.
Ye Chen said he could walk. The relatives' house was right there, just a few meters away.
He and Ah-Guo leaned on each other and limped back. When his relative opened the door and saw two blood-covered teenagers standing there, he went pale.
"What happened?"
"Car accident."
The relative grabbed his keys without another word and headed out. He stepped outside and came face to face with the driver, who was still standing by the road. The two men looked at each other.
The driver saw a man in his fifties, face tight with anger, walking toward him quickly—and his expression shifted. Not fear exactly. More like: oh no, the parent is here.
The relative stopped in front of him and looked him over.
"You hit them?"
The man nodded.
The relative didn't yell. Didn't argue. He said one thing: "We deal with the kids' injuries first. We'll talk about the rest later."
His tone was heavy, but steady. The driver didn't push back. He nodded and left his contact information.
The relative drove Ye Chen and Ah-Guo to the hospital. The doctor checked them over—no fractures, no internal injuries, just surface wounds. Antiseptic, bandaging, gauze taped everywhere. They walked out looking like half-wrapped mummies.
Ye Chen sat on a bench outside the hospital entrance, looking down at his bandaged knee and elbow, thinking: the barbecue is probably ruined.
He turned to look at Ah-Guo.
Ah-Guo was also looking at his injuries. A piece of gauze on his lip, the scraped side of his face painted yellow with antiseptic. He looked like he'd been in a fight.
They looked at each other.
"…Still going?" Ah-Guo asked.
"Going where?"
"The mixer. We haven't bought the food yet."
Ye Chen stared at Ah-Guo's gauze-covered face and thought: this person isn't brave. He's insane.
But he thought about it for three seconds and said: "Yeah. Let's go."
He didn't know why he said it. Maybe because they'd already committed, the food wasn't bought, the barbecue area was reserved, and the girls were waiting. Standing them up would be worse than the accident.
Or maybe because—after getting banged up like this, not going would mean the injuries were for nothing.
Ah-Guo called two other classmates to come over on their bikes. Four of them split across two motorcycles, went to the market, bought meat, vegetables, charcoal, and barbecue sauce, and loaded everything to the site.
The girls were already there.
When they saw Ye Chen and Ah-Guo, everyone froze.
"What happened to you two?"
"Minor accident," Ah-Guo said, smiling, as casually as if he were commenting on the weather.
"And you still came?!"
"We already bought everything. Waste not to grill it."
The girls were somewhere between alarmed and amused. Some ran over to help carry things; others asked if they were okay, if they needed to go to the hospital. Ye Chen said they'd already been, it was fine, just surface wounds.
That evening, Ye Chen grilled with everything he had. He crouched by the grill, one hand turning the meat, one hand fanning the smoke, the gauze on his knee warm and aching from the heat of the coals. He didn't care. Smoke stung his eyes until they watered; he squinted and kept going, grilling every piece until it was charred and fragrant, brushing on sauce, lifting it onto plates and passing them over.
He still didn't know what to say. But he discovered—he didn't need to.
At the grill, he was just the person who kept the fire going. When girls came over for food, he handed it to them. When someone said "this is so good," he smiled and kept grilling. No need to compete for airtime, no need to tell jokes, no need to perform. He just had to grill the meat well. That was enough.
When it was over, one of the girls came up to him and said: "Yours was the best. Thank you."
Just that one sentence. But Ye Chen remembered it for a long time.
On the ride back, Ah-Guo drove—much more slowly this time, stopping at every intersection and checking three times before crossing.
"Hey," Ah-Guo said suddenly. "Are we crazy?"
Ye Chen thought about it. "Probably."
They both laughed. Laughed until their injuries hurt.
That night, lying in bed at his relatives' house, aching all over, the wounds under the gauze stinging faintly, Ye Chen stared at the ceiling and thought about the day—the accident, the hospital, the bandages, the barbecue, that sentence: yours was the best.
He thought: this is probably what my youth looks like.
Not the dramatic kind from TV dramas. The kind where you fall down, get up, brush yourself off, and keep going. Nothing remarkable about it. But looking back, you can't help smiling.
His program was electrical engineering. Circuit boards, soldering, wiring—nothing like wood. His hands learned to hold a soldering iron, strip wire, turn screws, and slowly forgot the weight of a saw, the angle of a hand plane, the feel of sandpaper moving from coarse to fine.
He had finished the shelf over several class sessions.
Most of his classmates had lost patience by the second session. Crooked cuts, split wood, joints that wobbled—some had given up entirely and were using their boards as rulers, tapping them on the desks.
Ye Chen didn't give up.
He worked slowly. He measured every cut twice, sanded every tenon again and again, tested it in the mortise, sanded a little more if it was too tight. If it was too loose—there was no fixing too loose. He'd have to start the tenon over. He remade two of them because he'd sanded past the mark both times.
The third time, he was smarter about it. He sanded to almost right, then worked in small increments—a little more, then test. If it didn't go in, sand a little more. When it went in but still felt slightly snug, he tapped it home with the mallet.
A soft click.
The tenon sliding into the mortise made a small, brief sound, but Ye Chen heard it clearly. That sound meant: exactly right. Not too much, not too little. Exactly right.
He finished all five joints and assembled the shelf. It stood on the desk without wobbling. He pushed it with his hand. It didn't move.
The teacher came over. This time he didn't just nod.
He crouched down to eye level with the shelf and examined the joints from the side. Then he reached out and ran his fingertip along the seam where tenon met mortise.
"Here," he said, pointing to the joint. "You can barely see the gap."
He stood and looked at Ye Chen.
"Your hands are steady," he said. "And you have patience. The most important thing in woodworking isn't strength—it's patience. Most people cut crooked on the first stroke and panic. The more they panic, the worse it gets. You don't do that. You stop, look clearly, then move."
He put a hand on Ye Chen's shoulder.
"Good material."
Ye Chen wasn't sure whether "good material" referred to the wood or to him. But he saw the light in the teacher's eyes—the same light the music teacher had when she looked at him. The light that said: I see you.
After that, Ye Chen's relationship with woodworking class changed.
Before, he'd treated every class the same—show up, leave when the bell rang, pass the tests. But woodworking was different. He'd arrive early and lay out the tools; when the bell rang at the end of class, he'd still be sanding, and he'd keep going until the teacher said "time to go" before putting things away.
The teacher noticed.
One afternoon after school, the teacher called Ye Chen to the workshop. Just the two of them. The setting sun turned the whole room orange, wood shavings drifting in the light like golden dust.
The teacher took something from a cabinet—a wooden box.
Not large, about the size of a book. The lid had a flower carved into it, the petals flowing in smooth curves, each one shaped with a gouge rather than cut in straight lines. The four corners were dovetail joints, fitted so precisely that from the outside you could barely find the seams.
"I made this when I was young," the teacher said. "It took three weeks."
He handed the box to Ye Chen.
Ye Chen took it in both hands. It was lighter than he expected, but it felt heavy—not with weight, but with time. He could tell it had been handled many times; the surface of the wood had a warm, deep luster, as if it had been brought out by years of human touch.
He opened the lid. The fit between lid and body was exactly right—a slight resistance when opening, but no catching. It came free with a soft pop. Inside was empty, but the smell of the wood rose from it, faint, like something that had been sealed away for years and was only now being released.
"Woodworking," the teacher said, "isn't something that pays off right away. It's not like math, where you learn it and can balance accounts. Not like English, where you learn it and can talk to foreigners. You learn woodworking and in the short term, you can't see what it's for."
He paused.
"But it stays in your hands. Your hands remember how to grip a saw, how to push a plane, how to feel the grain of the wood. Those things don't go away. Maybe ten, twenty years from now, there'll be a day when you suddenly need them. When that day comes, your hands will remember."
Ye Chen listened, half understanding. He was thirteen. He didn't know where he'd be in ten years or what he'd be doing. He only knew that he liked the smell of wood, liked the sound the tenon made sliding into the mortise, liked the way a rough board became smooth under his hands, little by little.
The teacher put the box back in the cabinet.
"You don't have to go down this path," he said. "But if you ever want to—remember: wood doesn't lie. Put your heart into it and it gives back. Go through the motions and it shows, every time."
Ye Chen nodded.
When he walked out of the workshop that evening, the sun had already dropped below the roofline, the sky a deep burning orange. He walked home, his thumb moving unconsciously against the pad of his index finger—there was a small callus there from the sandpaper, rough to the touch.
He rubbed it the whole way home.
Over three years of middle school, Ye Chen made many things in woodworking class. A shelf, a pencil holder, a small stool, a lopsided picture frame. None of them were perfect, but each one was a little better than the last.
The teacher never told him "good job." He only pointed out what could be improved—"clean up that corner a little more," "sand with the grain, not across it," "look at this joint—there's still a gap, think about how to fix it."
Ye Chen didn't experience this as criticism. He understood it as the teacher telling him: you can do better. And "you can do better" made him want to keep going far more than "you're already good" ever would have.
At graduation, the teacher didn't give him anything special. He just came over at the end of the last class and said one thing:
"Whatever you do from here—don't let your hands go still."
Ye Chen held onto those words.
But he hadn't imagined that after leaving middle school, his hands would do exactly that.
He enrolled in a technical college and studied electrical engineering. Circuit boards, soldering, wiring—nothing like wood at all. His hands gradually learned to hold a soldering iron, strip wire, drive screws, and slowly forgot the weight of a saw, the angle of a plane, the feel of sandpaper working from coarse to fine.
Not on purpose. Life had pushed him down a different road, and that road had no wood on it.
But his homeroom teacher had been right—the hands remember.
Many years later, when Ye Chen walked into a woodworking shop and picked up a hand plane, his hands knew exactly how to grip it. Not because his brain told them to. Because his hands remembered on their own.
In that moment he thought of his teacher. He thought of that classroom dyed orange-red by the setting sun, the wood shavings drifting through the light, and the smell that rose from the wooden box when it opened—a smell that had been sealed away for years.
He thought: *So that's what you meant by "keep your hands moving."*
*It was only later that he came to understand—* *all along the way, there had always been someone who gave him a push at just the right moment.* *Not a hard push. A gentle one, perfectly timed, enough to carry him one step further.* *His elementary school music teacher, who let him know he could be seen.* *His middle school homeroom teacher, who gave his hands something they would never forget.* *Those people—he came to call them his guardian angels.*