The watch only rings twice.

At 19 years old my cousin was in his second year of junior high school. Certain policies kept him in hiding from a young age, growing up in this environment, you can’t imagine his strong frame in front of you, he seemed to be strong everywhere. He was good at hiding in any corner.

He was also a great eater, my mum would make a lot of rice every time and invariably ate it all. It was a pleasure to watch him eat, he was never flustered and never used chopsticks, the soy sauce cooked button meat was dark, he elegantly cuspidate many slices of pork, covered in rice, poked the meat with a spoon and stirred it together with the rice. Oil stars floated on every grain of rice, and he scooped up a large spoonful of rice and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly and closing his eyes in ecstasy.

Mum said, I was 13 years old, the same as him, not much less, is to eat too fast, spit and swallow, just from the pot of food will be sent to the mouth, I love eating hot rice, hot rice can often mask the taste of the ingredients, spices and burning stimulation will be amplified more. Two cold bottles of Saintyear’s milk were also to be brought to my mouth immediately after the meal.

Every summer holiday, my cousin and his sister (aka my cousin) would come to my house for a month or two.

Every time we had enough to eat, we would stay at the dining table to watch my brother slowly put the meal into his mouth, and it was not a pleasure to watch.

Every lunchtime, the room on the ground floor was always reserved for the siblings to lie down and lie on their stomachs. Their two burly bodies open parallel to each side of the bed, and the cacophony of Korean songs and King of Glory beatings are always confusing. I slept in the morning on the loveseat in the living room, in a wide-open position.

I sometimes hand my sister an iced bottle of diet coke and gesture for her to go out and have a smoke with me, she likes to smoke my stubby cigarettes, and we joke and laugh and talk now and then about the good times we had as kids when we played together. She had one leg on the white wall in the backyard and tilted her head back to exhale smoke rings. The summer was always hot, and the sunlight stamped second-hand smoke on both of our T-shirts. I twisted the butt of my cigarette against the wall and she threw it to the ground.

I opened the rest of her coke and tilted my head back, the sun blinding me for a moment, I closed my eyes and couldn’t help but burp.

‘You know, I’m much whiter than you.’

‘You’ve been horribly white since you were a kid, of course I know you’re much whiter than me, you can’t see a single pimple on your face now that you’re pubescent.’ I exclaimed.

‘My brother looks like a long labourer who works with the sun every day, it’s his complexion that makes him look like a proper Asian’

I didn’t really want to reply to the illogical words, and the cicadas were annoying, and the sun was so vicious that I tugged up the corners of my shirt to sniff my T-shirt, glanced at the white walls covered in shoe prints, and twisted my head to push my way back into the living room to spread out on the loveseat and watch a TV show.

All three members of my family love to travel, and in the hot, dry, long summers, we always take a few trips together a week, to the source of clear springs in the mountain valleys, to the grasslands of Zhangjiakou, to the Loess Plateau adjacent to the border with Shanxi, and to the seemingly endless variety of landscapes in Hebei. Summer is even more dizzying.

That year it was the intention to go to Beidaihe, where major conferences are held every year and which is also the imperial summer resort for officials. We had to turn around and head north towards Shanhaiguan.

On the way we passed a wild waterfall, from the roadside farmers bought half a pull of watermelon, I asked my brother to empty plastic box filled with water, put the watermelon in the ice, my cousin slowly moved, absentmindedly placed in the boot, the water bitch us all over the face. Somehow, the half-drawn watermelon rolled in the box and floated up. My sister suddenly complained loudly that there is a scenic spot called Anaya in Beidaihe, it’s a shame not to go there, it’s nice to take pictures there.

My brother and sister are not people who like to wander around, they always sit in the back row with their heads down playing games. These two pieces of meat sandbags squeezed my mum in the middle, and my dad and I took shifts in the front to drive. My sister would always play Korean songs loudly in the car on her bluetooth, which I didn’t object to, and I loved listening to that songstress, with her sexy bum and just the right size breasts.

It was just getting dark when we arrived at a wild beach in Huludao, which was crowded at night, and we had to pass through a bustling marketplace to get to the beach. I was in a trance from the hot breath of people, colourful swimming costumes, pet geese sold in cages and Changsha stinky tofu, which Chairman Mao loves. Before I could see the sea, there was a puff of smoke and I had to rub my eyes to see the fireworks bursting like a spider’s web, and the waves looked helpless.

In the evening everyone set off fireworks except the locals and those who didn’t buy them, and on my birthday that day I was cheering up the beach, so lively that no one cared about the rubbish all over the place. My mum bought me a lot of fireworks a while later and we set them off for a while!

I had a beer in my left hand, not bothering to cover my ears, and ran off into the distance, when suddenly I was bumped by a burly body, knocking over half my beer. I turned my head and there was my brother, head down, I couldn’t tell what he looked like in the colourful light.

I patted him and shouted in his ear.

‘You light it twice! Light it twice!’

They didn’t listen to me, so I slapped him hard on the shoulder and leaned into his ear again.

‘Light it twice!’

I pushed the biggest box of fireworks I hadn’t set off into his arms, and

The fireworks became more numerous and the beach raised smoke, scraping it across our faces, my brother coughed and I patted him and he laughed.

‘Bang!’ a jarring double kick exploded from a step away and my hairs exploded in fear.

‘Good job! That’s it!’ I hugged him.

We found a Manchurian restaurant late in the evening, and we ordered a sumptuous table of Manchu-style sauerkraut pots and vinegared mushu for the Han Chinese……. When I was a kid, my tablemate was a Manchu, and when we were in class, he would always talk about pickling sauerkraut to braising all kinds of ingredients together, and I’d listen to him half the time, mesmerised.

The shopkeeper served me a bowl of noodles in a clear broth with a poached egg lying on top, and the atmosphere came up, I was the first to applaud, and we all clapped and laughed happily.

‘Drip, drip, drip, drip ….’

The room went quiet, and I started to think the air conditioning was malfunctioning, only to look around and realise that my brother’s spreadsheet kept going off. The black cheap electronic watch, long time sweat stains and sunshine make it yellow.

We all quieted down, ‘drip, drip’ staccato sound for dozens of seconds, he kept his head down, suddenly pressed the electronic watch, the noise disappeared. Again, he unhurriedly complexes the shredded pork in Beijing sauce into the thin skin of beans on his dinner plate until the meat has collapsed downwards, and he picks up a few slices of shredded spring onion, wraps them up, and slowly shoves them into his mouth.

‘Make a silent wish without cake and candles!’

My sister broke the silence.

That night I had a reason to be drunk, back to the guest house, my brother and I live in a room, I showered, down to earth in the bed by the window, I did not pull the curtains, squinting towards the window, it was early in the morning, the beach was still setting off fireworks, the heat and gunpowder of the late summer winds hazed the arc of the fireworks spread out, I beautifully closed my eyes and fell asleep.

In my dream it seemed that I was still on that wild beach, with fireworks of all colours poofing upwards in every direction, none of them duds, and I strolled onwards, remembering many good things. I seemed to be walking too slowly and suddenly came to pee, I saw a huge firework tube near my feet that kept spewing flames upwards, at that moment I had bad thoughts, I peed on it with a splash of piss and my dick felt the uninterrupted flow of heat from the fireworks.

‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,’

I was suddenly woken up by a cheap electronic sound, I rolled over and I saw my brother’s watch, which I had never taken off even when I was asleep.

I got up with the intention of slowly switching it off .

He suddenly got up, squared his shoulders, and pressed pause, all in one go.

I got a little angry and twisted my head to press two pillows to either side of my ears as I struggled to try and fall asleep.

I had just closed my eyes for about ten minutes when the ‘drip, drip, drip’ came on again. I turned my head and saw my brother still sitting on the edge of the bed, head down. It rang for a long time.

I don’t know how long it took, but he pressed pause. I was a little dumbfounded at the sight and turned a little angry

‘Can you turn that damn watch off!’

He looked up suddenly, startled. I gave him a vicious stare and turned my head. That night coupled with a hangover was not a good night’s sleep at all.

We were on our way home, it was pouring rain, the music was playing loudly, and as my sister and I were getting lost in the song, I heard ‘Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.

‘Turn off the watch!’

I don’t know how my ears got so sharp.

‘What are you talking about!?’ There’s some discrepancy in my sister’s

I jerked the stereo to mute

‘Turn the watch off!’

I turn round, my brother looks down at his watch and

‘Watch the road!’ Mum shouted. I hastily turned my head back.

It wasn’t long before I turned back again and the watch was still going off.

My sister touched my brother, who slowly raised his head and turned the watch off.

I changed to a saved song and turned it up to the max, but could no longer concentrate.

What a wonderful birthday! There were beautiful fireworks, and the sea, watermelon, Manchurian food, and beer. I think of this beautiful memory every year from time to time!

This year I am 24 years old, New Year’s Day as usual, we are many brothers and sisters, are reunited in Shijiazhuang, I drink at the table half-drunk, and I am closer to my uncle’s family cousins and cousins to pull me out of the door, handing me a lit hand-held scampering monkeys, ‘Bang, times, bang, times …..’ Nitrous smoke in the cold winter wrapped in cool air sucked into my nostrils.

‘Too cold, I go back and drink two more cups!’

Between pushes of glasses.

‘Brother, do you remember that dirty beach we went to that year?’ I don’t know why I popped in.

‘I’m a grown-up and don’t wear a spreadsheet!’ My brother picked up his glass of wine and downed the white dry in one gulp.

Yeah, ‘I’m a grown-up and don’t wear a spreadsheet.’

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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