Chapter 16: The Convict’s Haircut!

"Dongzi, you finally decided to show yourself!"

Li Xiangdong’s guess was correct; the person at his door was indeed his childhood friend. The man speaking was short and had a dark complexion.

His name was Xiang Lin. He sported a buzz cut, and despite being an educated youth who had returned from the countryside, he looked exactly like a convict fresh out of a reformatory. This wasn't decades later; in these times, wearing a "convict cut" would invite plenty of mockery on the street.

"What are you dawdling about inside for? If you didn't come out soon, the sun would have melted both me and Linzi."

This was his other childhood friend, Zhang Sen, whom the group affectionately called "Sanmu" (Three Woods).

Li Xiangdong stood in the doorway, smiling at them. "Sanmu, you should learn from Linzi. Get your hair cut short; it’s much cooler that way."

Xiang Lin rolled his eyes and explained, "The neighborhood committee assigned me as an apprentice at the barbershop. The master barber saw that neither I nor the other guy knew anything, so he told us to practice on each other. This ghost of a haircut is the result."

Zhang Sen grinned, revealing a mouthful of white teeth. "Linzi, tell us about that other guy! Did he end up with a convict cut too?"

Xiang Lin chuckled mischievously, "The poor bastard ended up looking like a boiled egg."

"Hahahaha!"

Zhang Sen laughed so hard he was gasping for air, nearly collapsing.

After the three shared a few jokes, Li Xiangdong asked, "What's the plan for today?"

"Zhe is back," Xiang Lin replied. "We're going over to welcome him home."

At the mention of Zhe, the laughter vanished from Zhang Sen’s face. The truth was, their friend had suffered a tragic series of events over the past few years that left everyone sighing in pity.

Zhe’s full name was Shi Zhengzhe—a name that immediately suggested a family of intellectuals. His father was a university professor specializing in economics. Zhe’s mother and maternal grandfather had fled abroad before the humanitarian crisis began. Although his mother had left behind a letter severing their ties, it hadn’t made life any easier for him and his father.

Under such circumstances, keeping a low profile and staying out of the spotlight was the only way to potentially scrape through. And for a while, it worked; everything remained quiet, even until the year Li Xiangdong got married.

But not long after, Shi Zhengzhe’s father failed to keep his mouth shut and spoke words he shouldn't have. It wasn't that he was a gossip; like Zhao Gang from the television drama *Drawing Sword* that Li Xiangdong remembered from his previous life, he had spoken out in indignation after his ideals and beliefs were shattered.

Regardless of the reason, he said things that were forbidden, and the father and son were packed off to the southwest to live in a "small villa"—experiencing the idyllic, rural life that the laborers of the future would dream of, decades ahead of their time.

In his previous life, it was from Zhe that Li Xiangdong had learned about the recruitment drive in the railway system. The neighborhood committee had offered Zhe a spot, claiming that those who had been wronged deserved some consideration.

In the end, Zhe hadn't taken the job. Following the trajectory of his previous life, he hadn't stayed long after returning to the city before leaving to join his mother abroad. They didn't meet again until the millennium, when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.

"We should definitely go see Zhe, but it wouldn't be right to show up empty-handed, would it?" Li Xiangdong felt a bit troubled. He only had thirty cents and two packs of Da Qianmen cigarettes to his name.

"Don't worry, Dongzi," Zhang Sen said. "We’ve got it covered."

"Covered with what?" Li Xiangdong wondered. Neither of his friends was well-off. Xiang Lin was an apprentice at a barbershop, and Zhang Sen was assigned by the neighborhood committee to pedal a tricycle. Both were married with children, and simply making ends meet was a struggle.

Xiang Lin spoke up sheepishly, "It wasn't Sanmu or me who prepared it. Binzi used his connections in the state-run restaurant’s procurement department to reserve a pig’s head and a full set of offal."

Binzi—full name Qian Bin—was another of their childhood friends. After graduating middle school, he hadn't gone to the countryside; instead, he followed his father to work as a cook at the state-run restaurant.

Hearing this, Li Xiangdong urged, "A pig’s head? We’d better get moving, then; that takes quite a while to prepare. Tell you what—I’ll go get some loose liquor, and you two go buy some peanuts. Between the three of us, we’ll contribute something."

"Sounds good, Dongzi."

The three split up. Xiang Lin and Zhang Sen headed to the supply and marketing cooperative for peanuts, while Li Xiangdong went to the small tavern for liquor. He needed empty bottles, and since his own were kept in the main room, he avoided his mother’s nagging by grabbing two tea mugs from his own room to use as substitutes.

He spent his last thirty cents on two jin of Erguotou. Leaving the tavern, he carried the mugs steadily, one in each hand. Things in this era were built to be sturdy, durable, and large; a jin of liquor filled the mugs about seventy or eighty percent of the way, and with the lids on, not a drop spilled.

When Li Xiangdong walked into the courtyard of Qian Bin’s residence, he saw Xiang Lin, Zhang Sen, and two other men—one large, one small—squatting in the yard, using fire to singe the hair off a pig’s head. Several neighborhood children were gathered around to watch the spectacle.

Two large iron tubs sat nearby: one held singed pig trotters and tails, the other was soaking the pig offal.

Li Xiangdong set his mugs on a windowsill and greeted the middle-aged man holding a palm-leaf fan. "Hello, Uncle Qian. Sorry to trouble you on such a hot day."

Uncle Qian smiled, looking like a Maitreya Buddha. "Ah, Dongzi is here! It’s no trouble at all. I’m just doing the talking; you boys are doing all the hard work."

He stood up, hitched up his shirt to reveal his belly, and patted it twice, pointing the fan at the windowsill. "Why are you carrying two tea mugs when you go out?"