People of the Old Alley

In the late 1980s, in Yangxin, southern Hubei, in the old alley of Xiamaishi. Moss stained the blue stone slabs, and an ancient locust tree watched over the alley from dawn to dusk. Two figures left a deep mark on the childhood of a boy named Tong Chuan.

Uncle Chen ran a popcorn stall at the alley entrance. Flames blazed in his stove, and with a thunderous bang, its sweet aroma spread through the whole street. He was lively and warmhearted, filling children's mouths with sweetness, yet deep in his heart lay a long wait for the family he had lost. Beneath the eaves, Grandpa Li sat alone in the shadows, gently tapping a diamond drill with his riveting hammer as he silently mended broken porcelain. He had endured half a lifetime of calamity and been separated from his wife and daughter. He could repair countless cracks in objects, but not the battered fate that was his own.

One was noisy, the other quiet; one warm, the other cold. These two humble craftsmen each found their own way to help others and weather the world. The years rolled on. Cheap new products swept through the countryside, and the tide of migrant labor carried the young men away from the alley. The old crafts slowly withered, and one by one, familiar faces disappeared. The boy left home for a factory line in the south, drifting among crowds of strangers. Even in the middle of the night, when he woke from dreams, he could still hear the thunder of popcorn and the soft tap of the riveting hammer.

Twenty-five years passed. Now middle-aged, Tong Chuan returned to his hometown. Nine out of ten houses in the old alley stood empty, and everything had changed. The plum-blossom rivets on the old pot were still intact, but the people he had known were long gone. This book has no melodramatic feuds or grudges. With restrained, unadorned prose, it tells of the joys, sorrows, rises, and falls of ordinary people amid changing times. The vanishing crafts will eventually disappear, but the simple, quiet kindness of those impoverished years will echo through the world, year after year.