My name is Zhang Hanqin. I grew up on Xiangjiang Road in Shishi, where my family runs a hardware store.
My dad said I had only two options in life: inherit the shop, piled high with expansion bolts and angle valves, or get lost and go work on an assembly line at an electronics factory. I chose a third path: riding a beat-up electric scooter along the eight-kilometer coastal road between Xiangjiang Road and Xiangzhi to chase after Cai Huanhuan.
Cai Huanhuan also sold hardware, over in Xiangzhi. Her family's shop was by the fishing harbor. I first saw her at the Shishi Hardware Wholesale Market, crouched in front of a stall, carefully writing down model numbers in a notebook. Her hair was tied back with the cheapest kind of black elastic, and the sea breeze had blown a few loose strands across her face. When she looked up, I froze for a moment. If she'd been born into a rich family, boys chasing her would have lined up from Shiguang Middle School all the way to Dehui Plaza. But she had been born in Xiangzhi, the eldest of three children. Her dad's fishing boat had long since been mortgaged, and her mom was the one stubbornly keeping the hardware store afloat.
“What are you staring at?” she snapped, her Minnan dialect mixed with Mandarin, fierce as a feral cat guarding its food.
I grinned. What kind of scene hadn't a guy from Xiangjiang Road seen? I crouched beside her and pulled a handful of stainless-steel screws from my pocket. “Hey, beautiful, how much do you pay for your stock? My family's prices are five cents lower than theirs.”
That's how poor people fell in love: no flowers or chocolates, no dates at milk-tea shops, just hardware quotes and testing each other out.
Only later did I find out just how poor she was. The soles of her canvas shoes were worn smooth, so she slipped whenever it rained. She'd used the same backpack from sixth grade through ninth grade, and when its zipper broke, she fastened it with a safety pin. At lunch in the school cafeteria, she always got just one serving of vegetables and ate the steamed bun she'd brought from home, all while keeping her eyes on her textbook. I knew that look: it was the look of someone who refused to accept her lot.
I was that kind of person too.
What could two poor students who refused to accept their lot do in a little city full of factories and fishing harbors? All we could do was become each other's light.
She was the first person who made me want to take my studies seriously. Not because she got good grades, but because of something she said to me. One evening, I was giving her a ride past Xiangzhi Fishing Harbor. The salty sea breeze carried the smell of diesel, and the fishing boats' engines chugged in the distance. Sitting behind me, she called out, her voice scattering in the wind: “Zhang Hanqin, I want to get into Quanzhou No. 5 High School. I don't want to sell hardware for the rest of my life.”
I didn't say anything, but I remembered.
After that, I got up at six every morning to study English. At night, after finishing my homework, I'd do two more practice tests. My dad thought I'd lost my mind and tapped me on the head with a wrench. “Are you running a fever?” I ignored him and kept working through quadratic functions. Cai Huanhuan messaged me to ask about a physics problem. I spent half an hour figuring it out before replying, then added, “I'll bring you breakfast tomorrow. Stop eating steamed buns.”
She sent back an eye-roll emoji.
But I really did bring her breakfast the next day: two meat buns and a cup of soy milk, which I tucked into her desk. She froze when she saw them, then lowered her head, the tips of her ears turning red. That day at lunch, for the first time ever, she got an extra dish and sat across from me. As she ate, she said softly, “When I'm rich someday, I'll treat you to steak.”
I said, “Deal.”
That was during the first semester of ninth grade.
Then everything changed. It wasn't us who changed. The world had never been kind to the poor. News that her dad had been in an accident at sea came in November. A gale was blowing through Shishi that day, and the billboards on Xiangjiang Road rattled loudly in the wind. I rode to Xiangzhi as fast as I could. The door of her family's hardware store was shut, and inside, her mom was wailing in agony. Cai Huanhuan was crouched outside, not a tear on her face. Her eyes were as empty as the flats after the tide had gone out.
When she saw me, her lips moved. “Zhang Hanqin, I can't go to Quanzhou No. 5 High School anymore.”
I crouched down and reached out to hug her, but she pulled away.
“Go home,” she said.
I didn't leave. I sat outside her house all night. The sea wind chilled me to the bone, but I stayed. A little after four in the morning, she came out. Her eyes were swollen and red; she'd clearly been crying. She sat beside me, leaned her head on my shoulder, and said hoarsely, “Zhang Hanqin, are you an idiot?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you're even more of an idiot.”
Theme: True Love
