Blue-gray morning mist in the locker
As the construction team's electric picks shattered fine cracks in the concrete floor of the old waiting room, Mr. Wang was using a crowbar to pry open the metal locker numbered 7 in the corner. Rust flakes fell off like broken scales, revealing the blurred "1992" on the dark red base paint—a year from the time when this old building, soon to be converted into a subway station, was still handling green trains.
With a clang, the rusty hinge snapped open, and a canvas bag fell out of the locker. The dust, stirred up, condensed into a golden river in the slanting rays of the setting sun. The cotton thread peeking out from the worn corners of the bag had a peculiar bluish-gray hue, much like the morning mist Zhong Hua had seen at Namtso last year, when the lake was just beginning to freeze over, and the outline of the Nyainqêntanglha Mountains in the distance was still shrouded in mist.
“This bag looks a bit old.” Xiao Li reached out to take it, but Zhong Hua squatted down first. The canvas surface was pressed with a fine suitcase pattern, and the corners were sewn with faded maritime flag embroidery. The waves embroidered in indigo thread on the inner lining, with their rolling curves, suddenly reminded him of the coral reefs of Weizhou Island that had been polished by the tides. Last year, when he was diving, he had seen the same shape of staghorn coral cross-section underwater. The sunlight shone through the seawater, casting the coral’s patterns onto the sand like a breathing map.
The cool touch of the bag strap against his palm, the most worn part with knots of blue-gray cotton thread, perfectly mirroring the color of the thickest morning mist at Namtso Lake. He remembered that at four in the morning, Ayu, wrapped in a windbreaker, squatted by the lake, the morning mist dyeing her hair the same blue-gray, the distant sound of waterbirds flapping their wings—a strange resonance that now echoed the soft rustling of the canvas bag strap.
When the leather notebook slid out of the bag, the gold-embossed "Made in Shanghai" lettering on the cover had faded to a dark brown. Zhong Hua opened the first page; the yellowed paper had frayed edges, as if it had been stroked countless times by fingertips. The first line, written in fountain pen, read "Recipe for Highland Barley Wine," the characters rounded and full, with the characteristic smudging of old-fashioned ink at the pauses. He stared at the line, suddenly feeling a familiar grip on the pen, until he saw the final stroke of the character "浸" (jin, meaning soak) in the phrase "wash and soak the highland barley for three days"—the character was written exactly the same as in the recipe book his grandmother kept locked in the camphor wood chest.
His grandmother was the daughter of a herdsman by Qinghai Lake. She always brewed barley wine in late autumn. The steam from the copper pot, carrying the aroma of barley, permeated the mud-brick house. She used to write the recipe on parchment with the same fountain pen, the scratching sound of the pen gliding across the paper overlapping with the sound of pages turning in his notebook. Zhong Hua flipped through a few pages and indeed saw detailed steps: "The starter culture needs to be mixed with wildflower honey from the grasslands," "Fermentation requires a 15-degree temperature difference between day and night," even the detail that "the earthenware jar needs to be buried three inches under yak wool felt" was exactly the same. He remembered that a year before his grandmother passed away, she had given him the recipe, saying that when she met someone who could travel the Qinghai-Tibet Highway with her, she would try brewing it once.
At the bottom of the page was a small sun sketched in pencil, uncolored, with only short lines indicating the direction of its rays. Zhong Hua's heart skipped a beat the moment his fingers touched those lines—the angle of the sun's rays was exactly the same as the golden sunrise he had seen on the snow-capped mountains in Yubeng Village. He remembered that early morning when they climbed the glacial lake with flashlights; as the first ray of sunlight crossed Kawagebo Peak, the angle at which the light projected onto the snow-capped mountain was exactly the same angle as the small sun's rays, even the slight upward curve of the rightmost ray matched the contours of the snow-capped peak.
"Brother Zhong, look what this is!" Xiao Li pulled another oil paper package from his bag. Unfolding it revealed a dried barley cake, its edges crumbled into powder, yet still bearing the scorch marks from the baking process. The crumbs landed on the notebook, and Zhong Hua suddenly smelled a scent mixed with the aroma of wheat and dust, much like the dried rations his grandmother used to pack in sheepskin bags. The date written in fountain pen on the inside of the oil paper package—"1992.7.15"—had faded to a light gray ink, but it reminded him of the photograph A Yu had taken at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang; the fading of the ribbons on the flying apsaras in the murals was exactly the same as the color of this inscription.
There was also a hidden pocket sewn from canvas at the bottom of the bag. Zhong Hua pulled out a brass compass. The needle stopped in the northwest direction. The wave pattern engraved on the outer shell was a mirror image of the pattern embroidered on the inside of the bag. He remembered that on the basalt crater of Weizhou Island, which had been washed by the sea, there were similar wave-like patterns, only the waves on the compass were finer, as if the tides of the entire Beibu Gulf were locked into the copper shell.
“Number 7, 1992…” Mr. Wang squatted down and muttered, “That year I had just started working, and this waiting room was full of people rushing to catch the old green trains.” He pointed to the rusty area on the inside of the locker, “Look, there seem to be words on the back.”
Zhong Hua leaned closer and scraped away the surface rust with his fingernail, revealing two lines of writing carved with a knife. The top line read "Waiting for the wind to come," and the bottom line read "Go to Qinghai." The handwriting was childish, but the vertical hook of the character "青" (qing) showed the same pause in the stroke as in the notebook. He suddenly remembered what Ayu had said: her mother used to say she wanted to take a green train to Qinghai Lake to see migratory birds when she was young, but she later died of illness, leaving behind not even a decent photograph.
As the sun completely sank below the horizon, the construction crew packed up their tools, preparing to wrap up work. Zhong Hua clutched his canvas bag to his chest, the blue-gray strap brushing against his wrist, the touch reminiscent of the cool morning mist of Namtso Lake caressing his skin. He flipped to the last page of his notebook and found a faded train ticket pasted there. The ticket read "Shanghai—Xining," dated July 15, 1992. The words "Lin Lan," written in pencil under the passenger's name, suddenly reminded him of the same inscription on his grandmother's dowry chest—the name of his maternal grandmother, whom he had never met.
A night breeze blew in through the broken window of the waiting room, flipping the pages of the notebook. Zhong Hua looked at the small sun at the bottom of the page and suddenly felt that the rays were moving, like the sunlight in Yubeng Village flowing down the page. He remembered what Ayu had written in her travelogue: "All journeys are reunions; we are just picking up the clues we have lost in different times and spaces."
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