He was a stalk of bamboo in the bamboo grove of Yincheng, transformed by the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. He called himself “Yulang Huang,” and was also known as “Emperor of the Bamboo.” From the end of the Shang dynasty to the Warring States period, he traveled across the Nine Provinces and the Four Seas. He witnessed the dark bird bring prosperity to Shang, the Battle of Muye, and the Qin people’s rise from raising horses on the western frontier to gazing hungrily at the whole world.
He had an excellent memory. He remembered Miss Bi’s dark-bird jade bi, the bamboo shoot planted by Feizi, Ying Renhao exchanging five sheepskins to bring Baili Xi back, Wei Yang saying, “If my flesh and blood can make Qin stronger, what is there to fear?” and the boy named Ying Zheng saying, “If the whole world were one country, perhaps we wouldn’t need so many systems of measurement or scripts.” He also had a terrible memory. He could never remember human etiquette, understand the boundaries between men and women, or learn the art of scheming.
He was searching for someone. He had been searching for nearly a thousand years, from seas turned to mulberry fields and back again.
But he had never searched very seriously. He taught Ying Quliang to write in Liyang, watched Ying Si sternly lecture his son in Xianyang, rescued Zhang Yi in Chu, and snatched Mi Bazi’s younger brother back from a prince of Chu. He named Mi Ruibin, made bamboo leaves fly for Ying Ji and Ying Dang, and fed golden beans to the peach trees outside Xianyang, making them bloom out of season.
To him, the splendor of a hundred generations was no more than bamboo shadows passing over a wall. He was a traveler, yet also one who had come home. The people he watched grow up, the ones who called him “Big Brother,” were the reason he stayed in the human world.
“If someone always remembers you, how can you be alone?”
At dawn, the first light shines on brocade bamboo shoots; the lone bamboo stays green beneath the moon all day.
Three thousand years pass like a white horse glimpsed through a crack; when will the old dreams of Nanke return?
