That weekend, the flag-lowering ceremony was held a little earlier because the teachers had to take the children who stayed with Principal Yu home afterwards. Principal Yu had insisted that Zhang Yingcai should stay and look after the school, as he was unfamiliar with the mountain tracks. But Yingcai decided to be clever, and secretly shadowed Sun Sihai's group. He caught up with them after a couple of kilometres and called out. Surprised to see him, Sun Sihai said nothing and walked on steadily, holding Li Zi's hand. He was asking her questions to do with her lessons. When she stopped to gather some hawthorn he stood guard. There were six children in his group and they walked for nearly five kilometres before they reached the first house.
Hot from the exertion, Yingcai took off his top so he was just in his vest.
"Five kilometres up a mountain is worse than ten downhill," Yingcai said.
"The difficult part is still to come," Sun Sihai replied.
And the path did indeed get harder. Yingcai noticed snakes among the grass. Sun Sihai took a plastic bag from his pocket and gathered all the snake skins he could find. Yingcai mustered up the courage to pick up a rough, milk-white snake skin, but as soon as he touched it his heart seemed to burst out of his chest.
"Teacher Zhang is scared of snakes!" Li Zi cried.
Sun Sihai stroked her hair, lightened by malnutrition. The plastic bag was soon filled with snake skins, so Sun Sihai told the children to stop collecting them and to get going. As they crossed the ridge and descended into the valley it became harder to see the path underfoot, though it was still long until dusk.
One after the other the children were dropped off at their homes until only Li Zi was left.
At last, they reached her house. Wang Xiaolan was by the door; it seemed she had been waiting for a while. Sun Sihai handed her the bag of snake skins, and she handed him a bag in return. Only then did he speak.
"Li Zi has had a cough the past few days. And this is Teacher Zhang. He's new."
Unsure how to address her, Yingcai nodded in greeting.
Wang Xiaolan gave him a deep nod, almost a bow, in reply. "Will you come in and rest a while?" she asked.
"We can't stop." Sun Sihai sounded sad.
Wang Xiaolan struck Yingcai as a haunted, cold beauty.
A man called out from inside the house. "Is Li Zi home?"
Sun Sihai immediately said, "We'd best be off."
After a few steps, Yingcai turned round. Wang Xiaolan was still standing at the door. They walked on and when they reached the top of the mountain, they saw some lights that Yingcai thought might be from the school—it turned out that they were.
Surprised, Yingcai asked, "Didn't Li Zi just walk over five kilometres to get home?"
"We went a longer way round so we could pick some herbs. If she went the more direct route, the other children would have to walk longer."
Yingcai felt bold enough to say, "Li Zi's mother shouldn't have married that man."
Sun Sihai didn't know how to respond at first. "She comes from a poor family. Li Zhiwu had a good job. And he loved her. Her parents told her she couldn't refuse. Once the farming quota system was relaxed in the early 1980s, he would go up into the mountains to pick herbs to supplement their income. Who knew he would fall and break his back."
Yingcai felt even braver. "Why didn't you marry her instead?"
Sun Sihai sighed. "I am an outsider, an orphan. I came to Jieling after a destitute, nomadic life. When I became a community teacher, even the old village head, who had always looked out for me, warned me against marrying her. He was afraid that there would be trouble and it might stop me becoming a state teacher. Now I think to myself: if only I'd known how things would turn out, I wish I'd done things differently."
