Chapter 57: The Benefits Brought Home

"I must have a word with your father—this is absolutely the wrong way to educate a child! You’d better go back now; as for the class monitor position, I’ll be assigning it to someone else!" Teacher Wang, worn down by Hong Tao’s mixture of obstinacy and nonchalance, had no choice but to wield the ultimate weapon in a teacher’s arsenal: a home visit.

"Teacher Wang, there’s one more thing. Perhaps you should consider replacing the sports monitor as well." Hong Tao paid no mind to the threat of a home visit; his father was at his wit’s end with him already, and a visit would do no good.

"...Get out! Get out!" Teacher Wang’s face changed color, and at last he could restrain himself no longer. He pointed to the door of the teachers’ office and bellowed at Hong Tao.

"Goodbye, Teacher!" Hong Tao left as if nothing had happened, not forgetting to bid farewell to the other teachers in the room before opening the door and walking out.

"Have you ever seen a child like this? He...he...!" Teacher Wang was so choked with exasperation that he could do nothing but complain to his colleagues.

"Calm down, Teacher Wang. As for Hong Tao, I met him on his very first day auditing classes. He spoke to Director Bai with the same attitude. He may lack a little in manners, but he’s not entirely wrong in what he says. You’d do best to minimize his interactions with the other students. I have no idea what learning methods he’s using, but they’re certainly not suitable for most children—he might just lead them astray. And from what I’ve observed, Hong Tao has several habits one usually only sees in adults. Just look at his pants and shirts—the style is peculiar, and I’ve heard he modifies them himself. But then again, as long as he studies well and doesn’t develop bad character, isn’t that our main goal as teachers? Since he’s able to manage himself, let’s interfere as little as possible. I doubt his parents can control him anyway. If you had a son like this, what could you do? I know I couldn’t manage him." Teacher Liu, whose temperament was similar to Director Bai’s but even more broad-minded, tried to soothe Teacher Wang.

At last, Hong Tao got what he wanted: his brief stints as class monitor and sports monitor—less than three days in total—were both ended. He was an ordinary student again. While that suited him, it made his father’s life much busier. Every few days, he was called in to the school for a talk with one teacher or another. Fortunately, the first-grade curriculum was still limited to mathematics, Chinese, physical education, music, ethics, and art. Of these, only the PE teacher had no complaints about Hong Tao; the music teacher tolerated him, and the art teacher didn’t care. The other three teachers had all discussed his upbringing with his father more than once.

It wasn’t just them. Director Bai would drop by Hong Tao’s home now and then, first to praise his academic performance, then to tactfully express her concerns. At first, Hong Tao’s father would get angry and scold him, but as these talks became frequent, he grew weary. After all, Hong Tao hadn’t done anything seriously wrong—his academic and moral record was spotless. He just had some habits and ways that were different from his teachers and classmates. But if he went easy on him, Hong Tao simply ignored him and carried on as before—sometimes even more so.

Luckily, his father no longer had to clock in at work, so he had plenty of time to absorb the teachers’ grievances on Hong Tao’s behalf. As a result, not only did Hong Tao become famous at school, his father became a regular fixture as well. He was often seen in the first-grade teachers’ lounge or the high school staff room, keeping teachers or Director Bai company during their talks.

The half semester passed quickly. After the midterm exams, the invitations from teachers to Hong Tao’s father noticeably dwindled—not because Hong Tao had become any more well-behaved, but because his test scores had sapped the teachers’ will to discipline him or lecture his father about child-rearing. Hong Tao scored perfect marks in all six subjects. The PE teacher even wanted him to apply to the Youth Sports School, but his father flatly refused. In those days, it was assumed that only academically weak students went into sports; no one wanted a promising child to take that path.

During the winter break, his father rewarded Hong Tao with a long trip: the whole family, including his maternal grandparents and uncle, went to his grandmother’s hometown, Zhuozhou, for half a month. At that time, Zhuozhou was not yet a city, just a small county seat with a single main street, less than a kilometer from south to north, lined with houses and a handful of shops.

His grandmother’s origins were far from privileged, as her bound feet attested. Not all girls had their feet bound before Liberation—especially in the countryside. Only daughters of wealthy families suffered that fate; poor girls needed to work, and bound feet would keep them from the fields.

Before Liberation, his grandmother’s family ran a grain shop in the county town, essentially making them wholesale grain merchants. After Liberation, all their assets were confiscated, and they were left with an old family house on the main street, a three-courtyard home now shared by his grandmother’s extended family.

She was the only girl in her branch of the family; the rest were cousins from her uncles. Hong Tao could never quite tell who was a great-uncle, who was a great-aunt, and even later in life, he never managed to sort it out. He simply called anyone about ten years older than himself uncle or aunt, and anyone older still, grandpa or grandma, omitting the formal titles—he rarely got it wrong that way.

This was the first time since moving to Beijing that his grandmother had brought her whole family back to her mother’s home—not for lack of desire, but because rural life in previous years had been too hard. Ever since Hong Tao could remember, relatives from his grandmother’s side would come to Beijing every year. Then she would take the porcelain bust of Chairman Mao from atop the family altar, retrieve a small handkerchief hidden in its base, and take out the ration and cloth coupons inside. She would use these to buy rice, flour, and fabric, and pack up any spare clothing, pants, and shoes for her relatives to take home.

These coupons were saved by his grandmother’s family through careful thrift. Though life in the city was better than in the countryside, they were far from wealthy. Only his grandfather and eldest uncle had salaries. His eldest aunt was married, and by tradition, could no longer send things back to her mother’s family. It was not until Hong Tao’s parents married that the household’s income increased again.

This year, his grandmother’s family returned home for the Spring Festival at the special invitation of their rural relatives. Life in the countryside had gradually improved; in some respects, it was now even better than in the city—at least, there was no shortage of meat during holidays. So his grandmother’s relatives wanted her family to come and enjoy some good country fare, repaying the kindness they’d received in leaner years.

Spring Festival in the countryside was livelier than in the city. Though the county town was small, there was no shortage of amusements: several opera troupes performed, there were dry boat dancers, yangge dancers, and one fair after another. But nothing attracted children more than the men selling firecrackers from wooden carts. The firecrackers were homemade, rolled from old books and newspapers, big and packed with powder, making for an exciting display.

Whether you bought any or not, the firecracker vendors would set off a batch every so often to demonstrate their quality to passersby. Hong Tao vaguely remembered coming here in a past life. Every day, he would run to the northern end of the street and listen to the free firecracker shows, then pick through the shredded paper for duds that hadn’t gone off, collecting them in his pockets.

In the evening, he would break these dud firecrackers in half to expose the powder, then lay the fuse of a good firecracker across them. Lighting it, the dud’s powder would burn first, then the intact firecracker would explode—a trick known among the children as "Spark-and-Boom Cannon."

This time, Hong Tao didn’t bother collecting dud firecrackers. He had money, could buy as many as he pleased, but no matter how many he set off, he couldn’t recapture the joy of playing with the Spark-and-Boom Cannon from his previous life. People say ignorance is bliss; in truth, the ignorant are far happier. The more one knows, the higher the threshold for happiness becomes, and the harder it is to feel joy.

The family stayed in Zhuozhou until the tenth day of the new year, then returned to Beijing, laden with local specialties his grandmother’s relatives had prepared, packed into several large bundles: one each for his father, mother, grandfather, and uncle—only his grandmother and Hong Tao had empty hands.

In those days, the train from Zhuozhou to Beijing’s Yongdingmen station took over two hours. Fortunately, the Spring Festival travel rush was yet unknown, so although there were no seats for those boarding halfway, elderly people and children could always squeeze in and didn’t suffer too much. The train crawled along, stopping frequently, sometimes at stations smaller than present-day bus stops—just a concrete platform and a signboard reading "XXX Station," with no ticket office or waiting room in sight. Boarding was as easy as getting on a bus; you’d buy your ticket after boarding.

Back in Beijing, Hong Tao set himself a new task: to visit every major post office in the city to buy monkey stamps. That was his greatest discovery during the trip to his grandmother’s hometown—for in the countryside, where people marked time by the lunar calendar, he’d heard repeatedly that this was the Year of the Monkey!

In his previous life, Hong Tao had dabbled in stamp collecting in junior high school, but quickly lost interest. He was intensely curious but lacked perseverance, dabbling in everything but mastering nothing. His collecting never went beyond running around to places like Hepingmen, Dongdan, Zhengyi Road, Wangfujing Main Store, and Yuetan, trading stamps aimlessly with others, album in hand.

Yet anyone who’s ever collected stamps knows the value of the 1980 Monkey Stamp. It was China’s first zodiac stamp, issued in limited quantities, and largely ignored at the time; most were used for mailing, so very few mint examples survived, making them extremely valuable. An unused 8-cent monkey stamp sold for over 2,000 yuan in the 1990s, and after the turn of the century, the price stabilized at around 3,000 yuan.

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