Suddenly, another meteor flashed across the sky, its tail trailing behind it as it flew northward. Just then, a dark cloud drifted over from somewhere and conveniently blocked out the Purple Micro Emperor Star. Cha Wenbins brow furrowed slightly as an idea formed in his mind: Could it be...

  About ten minutes later, I felt the stone I was sleeping on shake slightly. I thought it was just a dream and turned over to continue sleeping. But soon after, an even bigger shock threw me off the stone, my hands supported on the ground feeling the earth shaking, and the tiles on the roof of the house covered with slate tiles "rattled" down.

  "Earthquake!" It was a term I had seen in books, but only heard of.

  Its said that on that night, in a certain place in China, an entire city was completely flattened overnight, with tens of thousands dead or injured. Of course, this is hindsight - we were hiding on the mountain and didnt know any of these things.

  After that, Cha Wenbin came out to watch the stars every night, and sometimes he would even set up stones for calculations. I asked him what he had figured out. He said that something big was going to happen on this land, and soon.

  Astronomical phenomena and human affairs often have surprising coincidences. It is said that in 1947, in Zhidan County, Shaanxi Province, one afternoon, a large fireball fell from the northwest sky to the southwest. At that time, the old folks in northern Shaanxi all said: "Chiang Kai-shek is about to be finished." Sure enough, more than two years later, the Chiang regime collapsed.

  Since the beginning of spring in 1976, two revolutionary forerunners, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, have passed away one after another. A massive earthquake occurred in Tangshan. Chairman Mao was bedridden with a serious illness. Is there any hidden implication in all this? I dont know, perhaps he had the answer in his heart long ago.

  In September that year, Chairman Mao passed away, and the whole country was plunged into mourning. We were on the mountain, but Cha Wenbin had already told me the day before: The purple emperor star is gone.

  Another month passed, autumn, the Gang of Four was formally overthrown, and various unjust cases across the country were successively redressed. When I saw the chimney of my home emitting smoke for the first time, I knew that I could go back home.

  Home, I left for a whole year, but I still have a home. The next time was the rehabilitation and endless investigation, because I was an escaped youth, my household registration was still in Northeast China, and I couldnt get a grain ticket or work points here. Fortunately, everyone knew about my fathers unjust case at that time, and the organization didnt make things difficult for me, they just took me and Cha Wenbin to the county town to make a record, registered on file, this was the last time I saw him, it was December 1976. Before the New Year, I received a photo from the north, a group photo of me, Pangzi, Yuan Xiaobai and Cha Wenbin, I dont know if they three have received their own copies.

  In the Spring Festival of 1977, I went to Wulipu, but there was no one in the Cha family. The villagers said that Cha Wenbin had left with his crazy master a month ago. It was also my first time seeing his house, two earth houses with a yard surrounded by a fence, and a jujube tree in the yard. During the festival, every household pasted red couplets, but only this family wrote a white-based black character mourning couplet on the door frame.

  In 1978, I was in Hongcun when my fathers case was basically investigated and cleared up. He was wrongly accused, and my mother was also innocent. However, after going through this ordeal, both of them had aged greatly, with their hair suddenly turning white. Due to being locked up for years in a dark and damp place, my father developed severe arthritis, which made it impossible for him to walk again. My mother also fell ill, her waist severely injured from being beaten by those people with thick wooden sticks as big as bowls, because she refused to accuse my father of being a spy.

  In 1979, I was already an adult and our familys fortunes were declining. In the countryside, losing labor power meant losing everything. Our home was left with only half a sweet potato, which my father gave to my mother to eat, but she said she wasnt hungry, and in the end, no one could bear to eat it, so they fed it to the mice. That year, I took over the familys burdens, also because of medical expenses and living costs, we owed more than 600 yuan in debt, which was an astronomical figure for a family like mine at that time.

  In May 1979, having no other choice, I decided to take a risk and sold the familys pig to gather enough money for the fare and boarded the southbound train with many others.

  Shenzhen was still a small fishing village at that time, and my destination was Guangzhou. This place is unfamiliar to me, I dont understand the language there, nor can I get used to the food there, but every day, countless people like me come here to make a living, and I am starting my life as a vagrant on the streets.

  Guangzhou is a real and cruel place, I wander around the streets every day just to make ends meet. I dont have much culture or social experience, Ive carried sandbags and mixed cement on construction sites, my physical strength is not as good as that of people in their 20s and 30s, but eventually I managed to get a job as a rickshaw driver in Guangzhou.

  Guangzhou, as one of the earliest open cities, everything here is beyond my imagination as a country bumpkin. The people here are clever. For example, they import electronic products from Hong Kong and process them locally. A digital watch costs only 2 yuan to produce, but when sold in batches, it can reach 10 yuan. Soon after, I learned from the businessmen sitting in my car that if this watch is taken to the north, its price will double again.

  Such profits were built on the information asymmetry and resource scarcity of the sellers market in that era, after a decade of social demand being suppressed by the Cultural Revolution, a pirated cassette tape would be snatched up as soon as it arrived in the north. Half a year later, I also joined this army: scalper!

  The first batch of goods I peddled was 50 pairs of bell-bottom jeans, which I had accumulated by pulling a rickshaw in Guangzhou for half a year. I boarded the northbound train once again. In Shanghai, as soon as I walked out of the train station, I opened my package and set up a stall on the spot. Within five minutes, this batch of goods was snatched away by people. Overjoyed, I booked a return ticket that day, and thus began my career as a peddler.

  Clothes, electronics, audio products, daily necessities, hardware components... in short, whatever makes money and is easy to carry, Ill take it. For about half the time, I spent on trains, and the cities I went to were simply wherever I could catch the fastest northbound train, regardless of where it ended up.

  I maintained this lifestyle for over half a year, during which I had both gains and losses. Most of the losses were due to being deceived, after all, I was still young. As for the gains, they were all sent back home. After half a year passed, I myself remained penniless and without a fixed abode.

  The last time I saw Fatso was in Xian, when he brought a big box of Teresa Teng cassette tapes, the best-selling goods on the market. Under the old city gate tower in Xian, I slowly opened the zipper bag while eating a sheeps meat baozi, and placed those cassette tapes one by one on a blue cloth.

  "Brother, how much is this card?"

  "One book for five yuan, three books for ten yuan, how many do you want?"

  That man said: "Its so expensive, I think one book is at most 50 cents, how about it? For 50 cents, Ill take them all!"

  "Get lost, get lost, get lost!" Im so annoyed with this troublemaker. I notice that the pair of feet in front of me are still rooted to the spot, and a chubby hand is reaching out towards my cassette tape.

  "Huh, you, I said its not for sale!" I looked up to see a face the size of a basin with a deep blue Lei Feng hat staring at me, grinning from ear to ear. That big hand picked up a handful of cards and weighed them a few times, saying: "Just 50 cents, sell or not?"

  "Get out of here!" I stood up and punched him, he was still so sturdy.

  There was a dumpling restaurant called "De Fa Chang" on the Zhonggu Tower Square, and in front of me and Paozi were each placed a jar of Xinghua Village wine. Im not good at drinking, but I still remember that we also drank two years ago when we parted ways.

  Getting drunk was mandatory, we spent the whole afternoon drinking.

  Pangzi returned to Chengdu two months after detouring through Taiyuan, and found out about his familys situation through friends who were acquaintances of his father. His father was an honest man, he hanged himself in prison using strips of cloth torn from his pants on the bed frame, and his mother followed soon after. After the couple died, their bodies were thrown onto the square on Peoples South Road, and for seven days no one dared to collect them, until a few former subordinates of his father secretly used two wheelbarrows to take them away in the middle of the night.

  The big house of the fat boys family also became the office of the Revolutionary Committee, and he had nowhere to go. Before leaving, the fat boy sneaked into the car company at midnight and stole a box of gasoline, then snuck back into the courtyard. He was too familiar with that place, having grown up there since childhood, and even the wolf dog guarding the yard used to eat from the same bowl as him. He poured gasoline all over the house that originally belonged to his family, lit it on fire, and started running away. Until now, he is still a black household, and does not dare return home, can only drift around Xian.