Back in the Passionate Years, I Welded a Stove in Siheyuan

I transmigrated into an orphan in a quadrangle courtyard during a famine, with 12 yuan and 30 cents in my pocket, bought with my parents' lives.

The ladle of the Silly Zhu next door, Xu Damao's knife in the workshop, the Qin Huairu widow's tears in the courtyard: they all made my eyes sting.

When Xu Damao reached for the money Qin Huairu needed to survive, I flipped open the Labor Insurance Regulations. "Projectionist Xu, Article 7, Clause 2: you're looking at a minimum of ten years!"

In the scrap heap at the steel mill, I hammered out a double-chamber, recirculating stove. The cafeteria's slop bucket was soon empty.

Silly Zhu kicked down my door. "Kid! That stove is even crazier than my wok!"

Through ten years of storms, I welded my sister Qin's husband's English notes into a cooling tower.

When Xu Damao brought people to tear Lou Xiao'e's qipao to shreds, that "Safety Production Manual" was propping up the bottom of Silly Zhu's pot.

The thunder of reform rang out, and I got He Yuzhu, the eighth-grade chef, to join me in opening the Red Star Kitchen in a rear room.

Beneath the neon lights, a blond foreigner slurped Kung Pao chicken and asked for the recipe.

Xu Damao's video parlor screened Romance on Lushan Mountain, filling the air with sour envy.

Beneath the locust tree, Qin Huairu put peeled melon seeds into Silly Zhu's palm. "Zhu, the stove Dongzi redesigned... The coal it saves is enough to get Banggeng a wife."

Silly Zhu hefted his ancestral iron wok and laughed. "Pah! That brat could weld eight hundred stoves and still never match the wok hei in my pot!"

I wiped my greasy hands and watched neon spill over the mouth of the alley. This life, tempered in fire, had finally cooked up a piping-hot new flavor.