Other than the sounds coming from Wen Qian, the house was quiet. She moved the TV, which was covered in the room, onto the altar and turned it on. It still worked. The small color TV set was bought years ago and was still heavy.
The large satellite dishes that were originally used in the countryside could receive many TV stations, probably from other countries too.
Later, the state banned them and free small satellite dishes were installed in rural areas that could receive a few dozen domestic channels.
Wen Qian turned on the TV and found it was showing news, so there was no need to change the channel. She went to the corridor to wash her hair.
She still remembered when she was in primary school, her grandma told her that they used mulberry leaves to wash their hair. She had even picked mulberry leaves herself, added water and kneaded them. It made the leaves feel slippery.
Washing with them was also quite nice, though there would be some leaf dregs remaining in the hair. All natural and green. Wen Qian thought she should pick some mulberry leaves another day and try washing with them.
After washing her hair, Wen Qian stood at the front door drying her hair with a towel, occasionally looking up at the sky and getting shocked.
Oh my god! So many stars! She had lived in An City for too long, whenever she looked up, the only lights flashing in the sky were those of airplanes.
It was impossible to spot a few stars in the sky. Instead, there were too many unnecessary lights on the ground.
Now as she saw the starry sky with twinkling stars, she stared blankly for a moment. After a while, she went back to the room to take photos with her mobile phone, but realised that unlike the naked eye view, the phone couldn’t capture the starry sight at all.
Wen Qian then recalled that the sky in her hometown had always been like this, and such star-studded skies would continue to be here.
That night, Wen Qian went to the toilet around 8 pm. She then closed the main door and lay in bed playing on her phone in the dark. She fell asleep soon.
This was a rare sleeping hour for her in An City. Though she thought she wouldn't get used to the bed here after not coming back for so long, she fell asleep quickly probably because she was too tired that day.
Outside, the buzzing of cicadas, croaking of frogs and chirping of insects continued. Inside, the fan kept whirring.
Sleeping early meant waking up early too. Wen Qian got up at 5 am the next day.
The windows were large and had no blinds. As day broke, she woke up but was too lazy to get out of bed.
She played on her phone for a while then went back to sleep. When she woke up again, it was 7 am.
Wen Qian crawled out of bed, washed her face and brushed her teeth. Then she took out two buns from her storage space to eat. She had stored these in her space when she was in An City some day, so they were still hot when taken out now.
After spending a night at home, the only inconvenient thing was probably washing up and using the toilet.
She planned to ask the Chen family how much cement, sand, bricks etc she would need to build one herself—a tiled bathroom.
The floor of Wen Qian’s house used to be yellow earth, which was later coated with a layer of cement.
Her family worked in the fields every day with muddy feet, so the cemented floor made things much easier.
After people in the area built houses, they would only tile the second floor or bedrooms. Other places still had cement floors. Later, they paved the yard in the front as well.
This prevented it from getting muddy when it rained.
It was still cool in the morning. After breakfast, Wen Qian started a fire outside to boil some water before going out to collect firewood.
Holding a smooth bamboo stick in one hand with gloves on, she wore sneakers on her feet.
Two years ago there was a freak tornado in this area. Everywhere the tornado went, the treetops were shaved off. Many branches were snapped while some, though not broken, shed all leaves the next year, clearly signifying the death of those branches.
Many big trees around had bare branches sticking out in twisted shapes.
That year when she came back to check on her house, other than two trees fallen near her home, and some branches strewn around because of the winds, her single-storey house nestled in the valley had no tiles blown off at all.
She heard that in some villages, the makeshift iron sheet shelters built on top of second floors were entirely blown off by the winds, and many rooftop solar water heaters were damaged too.
Then came the big winds last year, blowing down more of the bare branches left since two years ago.
So when Wen Qian went out now she found firewood lying everywhere.
Today she hauled some back. In her free time later, she planned to gather all the fallen branches in this area.
With hardly anyone left in the village, there was firewood everywhere but no one to collect it.
Wen Qian didn’t go far. She just hauled some branches near the house back.
Once home, she pushed the water pump switch on to check if it still worked. She would turn it on and pump some water every time she came back over the years.
Hearing the water flowing sound from above, she turned off the pump. Holding a piece of cloth, she climbed up the small flat-roofed house to wash the water tank.
Wen Qian set up a ladder. Opening the stainless steel cover, she found half a tank of old water still inside. She tied a cloth to the bamboo pole and lowered it in to scrub inside, before letting the water out from the bottom instead of just draining to the ground. She had taken out some big buckets from her space below to collect the water.
There were several cracks on the flat roof. She had noticed signs of leakage downstairs too while cleaning yesterday. She needed to buy some asphalt from town to patch it up. Though it wouldn’t last very long, some mending had to be done since she was staying here.
Before that, Wen Qian tried not to splash water on the flat rooftop. After cleaning, she filled up the tank with water and threw in some disinfectant tablets.
She wouldn’t drink the first two tanks of pumped water, only using it for sanitary purposes. For now, the drinking water was the cheap bottled water she had panic-bought online.
After some time when the well water was nearly finished, she would take out the huge water tanks purchased earlier to fill them up with well water.
Seeing the weather getting hotter, Wen Qian dragged two bamboo beds that were in the stair gap to the rooftop platform. Propping up one side with a stool, the whole bed now slanted downwards to the balcony edge for easy water drainage later.
Just as Wen Qian was diligently scrubbing the bamboo beds, Auntie Chen shouted for her from downstairs. Looking down, she saw Auntie Chen holding a bamboo basket.
On the steps were a small winter melon topped with frost, two young pumpkins, a handful of greens and a few green and red peppers.
Wen Qian wasn’t very close to the Chen family before. Perhaps Auntie Chen felt sad seeing her living alone here with an empty house and no food, hence the thoughtful gifts.
Even if she wanted to buy vegetables from the Weekly Fair Market tomorrow, it would have to wait till the market opened. What could she eat today then?
The vegetables currently available in most kitchen gardens were limited. If they couldn’t finish them, they would feed pigs or sell the veggies in town without making much money. Giving some to Wen Qian cost them nothing when the alternative was letting them go to waste. Moreover, the girl also brought grapes when she came over for meals.
Hearing sounds from the room as she walked to the house side, Auntie Chen realised the TV was on but didn’t see anyone around. Only after noticing the water splashing sounds from above did she spot Wen Qian on the rooftop. Auntie Chen told her to come over to her home garden later to pick vegetables after finishing these, since timing mattered for some that had pesticides sprayed on them recently. She had to bring Wen Qian along for the picking.
As Wen Qian was still busy cleaning, Auntie Chen didn’t chat further and left after placing down the basket.
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