That evening, Wen Qian was at home and used a charcoal stove to cook for the first time. She stir-fried a plate of pumpkin and a plate of greens, adding the braised pork and a small bowl of rice she had taken out from her personal space.
When one person is cooking and eating alone, it's a little bit at a time. Make too much and there will be leftovers, especially when cooking rice. Even using a slightly bigger rice cooker requires adding a little water to cover the bottom, and it still takes two meals to finish.
Now that she had space, Wen Qian cooked a bit more at one time and divided it into portions so she wouldn't have to cook every day.
However, now that she had returned to her hometown, she was quite looking forward to trying cooking rice and congee on an earthen stove, things she normally couldn't eat when away.
But the stainless steel sieve hadn't been washed yet, and she didn't plan on using the bamboo sieve if it couldn't be washed clean. The tools to serve rice weren't ready yet so it would have to wait.
Although the things stored in her space gave her peace of mind, Wen Qian tried to arrange more things for herself to do every day so she wouldn't sit idle.
Wen Qian was somewhat pessimistic. The space had appeared suddenly, so it might disappear just as suddenly. The most important thing was still to maintain her own survival skills.
As long as she learned how to survive, even if her space disappeared later she could still support her own life.
The space was a reassurance, her secret, while also an obstacle to opening her heart to others.
But Wen Qian had always been a bit of a loner. Most of the time she felt crowds were noisy.
In a disaster environment, people could survive together with reliable family and friends, which would increase the chance of survival.
But if there was someone among them with their own agenda, it would be even harder than surviving alone, having to worry about being stabbed in the back.
Wen Qian was more inclined to go it alone.
After dinner, Wen Qian went up to the flat roof of the house. She spread bedding on the cool bed, planning to sleep outside tonight.
She put up the mosquito net she had previously purchased. It was self-supporting. She lit a coil of mosquito repellant by the wall to keep the sleeping area protected, then went back downstairs to wash up.
From August onward, the weather reports had shown no drop in temperatures. Returning home, she hadn't seen rain either. Wen Qian wasn't worried about getting rained on while sleeping outside at night.
After washing, Wen Qian closed the doors and windows and went upstairs. She crawled under the mosquito netting and lay down. The flat roof was nice and cool.
Worried the light from her phone would attract insects, Wen Qian set an alarm. She played music on her phone.
Just like when she was little, looking up at the stars in the sky, connecting them and making shapes with her imagination.
Occasionally the wind would blow, and the trees both near and far would make a rustling sound.
Everything was back to the familiar nights of the past, when she hadn't been alone.
Rural areas had bigger differences between day and night temperatures. The nights were quite cold and there was a lot of dew.
So Wen Qian put a light quilt over herself and slept soundly until dawn.
At 6 am, her phone alarm rang. Today she was going to the village market so she had to set off early or else she'd have to walk if she missed the ride.
Wen Qian immediately got up and put away all her things from the cool bed, then took out some fairly clean bedding she had picked up in her school dormitory and hung it out to air.
Putting several mattresses on the cool bed meant the bedding would get sun while not damaging the bed. She also hung some barriers around the edges.
After a round of blazing sun the next day—she had picked up other people's things after all—Wen Qian wanted to sun them a few more times.
Later she would take them to the batting shop in town to be remade into nice thick quilts.
That was how her family's old cotton quilts were renewed, still soft as ever.
Batting cotton took skill. Wen Qian wanted to get the bedding and such prepared early so she wouldn't have to learn that herself later.
After getting this ready Wen Qian went downstairs, washed up, slung on a bag, and grabbed her phone, keys and wallet. She locked the door and went to Auntie Chen's.
Not wasting a second.
It was 6:30 when Wen Qian arrived. The light was on at Auntie Chen's place and the front door open.
Uncle Chen was on the porch, holding an eel basket and emptying eels. Traditional eel baskets were made of woven bamboo strips, though now there were simpler methods.
Take a large empty orange juice bottle, cut off the bottom, and sew on a conical base. The eels could go in but not out.
Puncture air holes near the bottle's cap, and a simple eel basket was made.
Every afternoon around four or five o’clock, put some worms in as bait and lower the basket into an irrigation ditch with water. Mark the spot and return to collect the next morning.
There were people in town buying these, and they paid well. Of course the price was even higher once they reached restaurant tables in the city.
Auntie Chen had just finished feeding the chickens and was cooking pig feed over the fire when Wen Qian arrived. She hung the pot and came out.
"I was just about to call you. You're right on time, let's go." She greeted her husband with a shout, picked up her basket, and headed out.
Wen Qian walked alongside Auntie Chen down the road. Clearly Auntie Chen had tidied herself up for the trip to town, looking neat and clean. Wen Qian’s grandmother used to do the same.
Auntie Chen asked what she was buying in town. Wen Qian said she needed quite a lot, even toilet paper.
"Sounds like you're going to buy up the whole town." Auntie Chen talked about her own shopping list. She planned to buy a big grass carp and some cookies and snacks. They were out of salt and spices at home too.
Locally, “family fish” mainly referred to silver carp, also the cheapest fish.
As they chatted, the two arrived at the threshing ground, formerly a public area for threshing in the village. No one used it anymore. The cement road passed through here while the rest was overgrown.
From home to here, Wen Qian’s shoes were covered in dew. The early morning was still a little cold so she wore a light jacket.
In the morning sunshine, Auntie Chen took a plastic bag out of her basket and started pulling grass that grew along the edge of the cement road.
"What's this?" Wen Qian had never noticed it growing all along the road before, trailing on the ground.
"No idea. Your Uncle Chen calls it curly grass. He saw someone collecting it where he sells medicine and said fresh is seven yuan a jin, dried over ten or twenty."
There were many unidentified plants in the countryside that people called whatever they wanted.
Wen Qian took out her phone to take pictures and do an image search. It turned out to be Lysimachia congestiflora, used in traditional medicine.
When Auntie Chen saw Wen Qian identify it from her phone she was quite curious and asked how it worked.
So Wen Qian downloaded an app for her. If they saw an unfamiliar plant they could take a photo and identify it. Most of the time it successfully gave a name.
Auntie Chen had a smartphone but all she knew how to use so far was making calls, sending texts, WeChat audio and the like.
After her son got her unlimited data she learned to watch videos, but similarly, many random junk apps had accumulated on her phone.
Wen Qian taught Auntie Chen how to use the app then kept deleting junkware to free up memory.
Wen Qian had heard colleagues complain that cleaning parents' phones was a huge chore. Now she understood what they meant.
Just as Wen Qian handed the phone back to Auntie Chen, their ride arrived.
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