Whoever Confesses First Loses

The morning sun had yet to pierce the narrow corridor of the apartment block when it was shattered by his mother Wang Xiulan's nagging.

“Xiaoming! Get up already! Keep dawdling and you'll be late for the factory's morning shift again!”

Li Xiaoming rolled over and pulled the thin, patched quilt over his head.

Outside, the knife sharpener's calls, the tofu pudding seller's cries, and the rush of water from a neighbor's faucet all blended into a symphony he had heard for twenty years.

He stared at the yellowed map on the ceiling, where water had seeped through, and felt utterly defeated.

The factory gears, the cabbage in the canteen, the dreary dormitory: that was the whole of the life he could see ahead of him.

He couldn't accept it.

At the dining table, his father, Li Jianguo, bent over the newspaper, steam rising from the thin porridge in his enamel bowl.

His younger sister, Li Xiaoli, was secretly slipping the pickled vegetables she didn't like into his bowl.