Little Bao was barely eleven months old, a little ball of meat in open-crotch pants just learning to toddle, when her father died.
His end was brutal—a car accident. Walking home from the night shift in the dark, he’d decided to cut across the motorway on his bicycle. A truck hit him, throwing him several meters.
Man and machine were flattened together, never to rise again.
Wei Qian and his family were once again reduced to orphans and widows. It wasn’t a unique tragedy; the world was full of such families, like Pocky’s, who sold doughnuts every morning. Others wiped their tears, straightened their spines, and lived on.
But Wei Qian soon discovered, to his horror, that his beautiful, affectionate mother had transformed into a vicious harpy overnight.
Grief had convinced her that her life was more bitter than cauliflower, and she no longer wanted to live. She threw herself into the pursuit of death with a terrifying dedication.
Wei Qian lived on edge—he had school, he had to find money, he had to care for a sister who couldn’t yet speak, and he had to defend himself against a woman who could explode at any moment.
In the later days, Wei Qian didn't even dare to leave Little Bao alone at home. Every day, he’d send her upstairs to Fatty San’s or to the Pocky family, who ran a small restaurant, entrusting her to their mothers for the day before picking her up after school.
Wei Qian was utterly exhausted. The weight of a life that even adults struggle to carry was crushing him, and yet he was still just a child.
There was a period when Wei Qian secretly hid a knife. Every night, he’d sleep with the knife in one hand and hold Little Bao with the other. Looking at the knife, he wanted to rush out and kill his mother; looking at Little Bao, he had to collect himself, lie back down, and gently pat his sister’s back, humming until the little one drifted back to sleep.
He had a little sister—a living, breathing human being, just as miserable as he was. Born into such a family, and being the eldest, he had to raise her.
Hamlet wrestled with the question, "To be or not to be." Wei Qian spent his childhood wrestling with an even longer one: "To kill my mother, or not to kill her?"
He lived like a dog yet found himself dwelling on such philosophical issues. Perhaps he was destined for greatness.
During this time, both Fatty San’s mom and Pocky’s mom helped him immensely.
Fatty San and Pocky were his childhood friends. Fatty San’s family were mercenary and vulgar; Pocky and his mother were cowards who wouldn't dare fart louder than a whisper.
There were no high-society people in their neighborhood, yet these vulgar neighbors turned out to be a kind-hearted soul, and even the cowardly ones were willing to do him a favor if asked.
Unlike Pocky’s mum, who didn't dare speak out, Fatty San’s mother was not afraid to voice her opinion. Sometimes she could not bear to see it and would spit in the direction of Wei Qian’s mother’s door in a fit of righteous indignation, but nothing ever came of it.
Wei Qian knew she wouldn't dare do more.
Although Fatty San’s mom was poor and shrewish, she was, after all, a "virtuous woman," and virtuous women don't dare mess with a bitch, just as decent people don't dare mess with a ground hooligan.
Then, eventually, Wei Qian’s mother finally died, living up to everyone's expectation.
Wei Qian calmly accepted the fact; he knew she hadn't wanted to live for a long time. She had been woken from the happiest life she’d ever known with a single blow. The bitterness in her heart was incomprehensible to others. How could she adapt?
There was only one option available to her: to fall back into her old habits, and worse yet, she turned to drugs.
First, she would accompany clients to smoke drugs, and afterwards, they would get high together. When they were happy, they would stuff tips into her bra and knickers. She relied on these brief moments of joy to escape the reality of her vulnerability. Then, her addiction escalated uncontrollably and she started injecting drugs.
For a time, Wei Qian’s home was full of needles. Terrified that Little Bao would see them and put them in her mouth, Wei Qian cleaned the house three or four times a day, collecting and destroying any syringes he found.
When his mother died, Wei Qian burned all her things. She had died of AIDS, contracted from a needle.
What goes around comes around -- it was an aphorism punks used to act tough, and it was also the last message the woman left for Wei Qian and his sister.
In death, his mother looked like a monster. She was skin and bones, her hair almost gone, her face severely deformed. Her eyes, once larger than others, now bulged from their sockets. Her skin was covered in large ulcers. There was no trace of the young beauty she once was, only a dirty, smelly toad.
When a person is about to die, their words are wise. Like a toad, she looked at her two children with almost warm eyes and said frankly,
"Alas, what goes around comes around. I've long known a day like this would come."
Wei Qian snorted, thinking she was full of it. If she had known, she shouldn't have fooled around back then. She shouldn't have taken drugs. She shouldn't have dressed up like a demon to sit at a nightclub table for a few bucks. She should have been like countless other schoolgirls, wearing an ill-fitting school uniform, getting a silly row of bangs, sitting upright in class listening to a teacher talk about analytic geometry, then getting into college, working, getting married... whatever it took to live like a decent human being. Even if she was stupid and couldn't learn, she could have been a babysitter or sold breakfast. That way, she might have lived to ninety and seen her grandchildren get married.
But she didn't. She chose to be a lunatic, letting that flowery look go to waste.
Wei Qian realized he was finally rid of this crazy woman, that he would never see her again.
His heart couldn't restrain a wave of sadness, as if he saw a vast amount of life and time running through his fingers like wind, and he didn't even have time to catch a handful of it before it all went up in smoke.
But he didn't want to show any emotion. He believed that he should despise this woman and that any feelings he had for her were weak and wrong.
So, Wei Qian forced himself to think: she deserved this. He ordered himself to remember his five years of hell and asked her with his deepest indifference, "Bitch, why did you give birth to us?"
The woman looked perplexed for half a second and replied, "Who knows?"
Wei Qian was filled with anger.
If it weren’t for her “who knows,” he might have been reborn as the son of a wealthy family or a government official by now, and he might even be a respectable young man by now! So he gave her shoulder a little shove and cursed, "Fuck you."
It was really just a gentle push—but the next moment, she convulsed. Her eyes opened as wide as ping-pong balls, and then she collapsed backward. For a full five minutes, she gasped like a dried-up bellows, suffering a raw bloodbath before she finally went still.
That year, Wei Qian was less than thirteen years old, still a green youth in his second year of junior high, with a little sister trailing two lines of snot behind her.
Little Bao was five, knew nothing, and could only stand by, dumbfounded, between her big brother and their mother.
Wei Qian froze and let the woman’s body lie in the house for two days until it began to stink, not knowing what to do.
A plot in a cemetery was more expensive than a home for the living, and even if they sold both siblings of them, they still couldn’t afford a grave—not to mention he wasn't even going to pay for the cremation.
His mom was already dead; the dead can settle for whatever. But he had to stay alive. He had to pay his tuition and feed his sister.
In the end, Wei Qian decided to find a good day, roll the body up in a broken blanket, and throw it directly in the garbage, letting her degrade back to nature on her own.
But before he could implement his plan, a few of his mother's "sisters" found their house, proving with cold hard facts that even Satan has a few acquaintances.
They pooled their money to give her a funeral and send her off. One woman told Wei Qian that she wasn't born decent and shouldn't die so undignified.
After managing the aftermath, they left Wei Qian and his sister with the remaining money.
Wei Qian rummaged through a box and sold some jewelry the woman had left behind. These things were as precious to the woman as her own life... no, more valuable than her life. Her baby boy had been eyeing them for a long time, and the moment she closed her eyes, he immediately shook them out and sold them.
With this meager savings, Wei Qian lived through the days of raising a little burden, struggling for more than a year until he graduated from junior high.
The three days of High School Entrance Exam ended, and on the last day, Wei Qian handed in his papers and rode his bike home. He studied like a madman and worked odd jobs like a punk, refusing to let his grades slip, because school was his only link to the words like "future," "hope," and "decent life." He desperately wanted to hold on to them.
Along the way, Wei Qian bought a few steamed buns and parked his bike in a large, simple shed built among the silos. Carrying his things toward home, he saw a little cub.
With thin hands and skinny, bony feet, the little cub seemed to be all head. He was a little taller than Little Bao, but not by much. He was wearing an adult's undershirt, bare underneath, with no shoes. The undershirt was stained with soup, dirt and all kinds of other stains. He looked like a beautiful piece of the motherland, red and vibrant, and he was pulling through the garbage next to a small alley, looking for something to eat.
Such a little thing. Wei Qian didn't know how he had survived. Even the wild dogs bullied him. When Wei Qian passed by, the little cub was confronting a dog in a small alley—fighting over half a can of beef that someone had thrown away.
The wild dog was skinny but not small, with red eyes. Wei Qian didn't know if it had rabies, but it was probably a hero among dogs to have survived the city's dog-fighting campaign.
Originally, Wei Qian wasn't going to pay attention. He saw cubs like this once a month—accidentally born, accidentally living, parentless, and destined to die soon enough. But just as Wei Qian happened to glance over there, the little cub —who was still locked in a tender farewell with his dog—coincidentally looked up and caught his eye.
In that moment of distraction, the wild dog seized its chance. Seeing its opponent's lapse, it immediately pounced. The little cub, probably surrounded by people for a long time, was very agile. He dodged to the side, causing the wild dog to pounce at the soles of Wei Qian's feet.
The beast, red-eyed and whirring through its nostrils as if impatient and hostile, barked at the innocent bystander and bared a mouthful of large, yellow teeth.
Wei Qian was calculating how to solve his tuition problem if he got into high school. He hadn't intended to pay attention and lifted his leg to go, but the beast, for some reason, lowered its head and rushed at his ankle to take a bite.
Wei Qian quickly shrank his leg back, missing the bite.
Wei Qian was thirteen or fourteen, with a dead father, a dead mother, and a sister who could only sniffle. He was in a miserable situation where, even though he played top-notch on his exams, he wasn't guaranteed a place in high school. It was not normal for a child to grow up like this and not be cynical—that would mean he was too good at acting and would probably turn into a highly intelligent sociopath in the future.
So, the annoyed junior high teenager snapped. He raised his leg and kicked the wild dog. He had grown up fighting gangsters and was accustomed to using his hands; the weight of this kick was not light. He directly kicked the big dog into the wall.
The stray dog was still relentless, sinking its teeth into Wei Qian's shoe once again. Luckily, the shoe was a secondhand plastic pair. Though stiff and completely unbreathable, it was tough enough to hold up—the dog's teeth couldn't break through.
Wei Qian flailed a bit, unable to shake off the dead dog. So, he vigorously stepped on the wild dog's stomach, picked up a brick from the side, and smashed it down on the dog's head. He smashed it once, and the dog loosened its grip. He smashed it twice, and the dog's head was a bloody mess, completely becoming a ghost.
At times like this, in places like this, humans and dogs are no different. Some people wear tailored suits and drive nice cars, just as some dogs are groomed to a glossy shine. But then there are other humans and dogs, destined to fight and bleed on garbage-strewn streets, tearing each other to pieces over reasons that are both pathetic and absurd.
Some people are born lucky, others are not. And the same goes for dogs.