The Alley Was Always This Long – Chapter 87
by Little PandaSide Story 1
Ha, trick the ghosts.
[How long has passed now. Time flowed from the rings of a tree to the lines of my fingertips.]
Hahahahaha.
Look how far you’ve come, Xiangzi!
Cheng Xiang tilted her head left, then right, in front of the dormitory mirror.
One of her roommates headed out the door, calling back to her: “Little Teacher Cheng, we’re heading out first. Hurry up and go eat at the canteen — isn’t someone coming to interview you today?”
“Ah, got it.” Cheng Xiang poked her head out the door and waved at them. “You go ahead — bye!”
Then she glanced back at the mirror, lifted both hands, pulled her ponytail apart to either side, and tightened the hair tie.
Who said her hair was too thin for long hair? Hmph! She really wanted to sweep her current ponytail across the face of whichever hairstylist had told her that!
Cheng Xiang grabbed her jacket and headed toward the canteen at a brisk pace.
Up here, where the mountains were green and the water clear, even the greens they ate every day were all-natural — how could her health not be good? For breakfast alone, with milk and pickled sides, Cheng Xiang could put away two highland barley steamed buns1. She didn’t think she’d gained weight — if anything, she felt like she’d grown a centimeter taller, though that might have been her imagination.
At any rate, her hair had grown longer and thicker — she could pull it into a ponytail now, heh!
She taught art for all the lower-grade classes at the elementary school, and her daily schedule was packed. But today, knowing an interview was coming, Cheng Xiang had specifically swapped two of her class periods.
When the students found out art class had been replaced by math, the classroom erupted in groans.
Cheng Xiang snickered inwardly: Naïve, children. Back when I was a kid, swapping art for math was basic operation2, okay?
The principal asked Cheng Xiang, “Are you ready?”
“More or less.” Cheng Xiang licked her lips.
Oh wow, she’d never been interviewed in her entire life. When she first heard about it, her immediate reaction was: “Will I be on TV?”
If she were on TV, then Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng would see her, right — bringing glory to the family3, heh! Cheng Xiang sat up a little straighter. But the reply came back: “Not TV — we’re self-media. You don’t have to show your face.”
“Oh, oh,” Cheng Xiang said. “Self-media is great, self-media is really popular these days.”
When the thought of being on TV had flashed through her mind just now, Cheng Xiang had a split-second thought: Would Tao Tianran see her too?
But puh — someone like Tao Tianran watching TV? Cheng Xiang couldn’t even picture it.
That was one of those very rare moments when Cheng Xiang thought of Tao Tianran — her heart welling up like a little bubble, puffed full and round.
At three in the afternoon, the people coming to interview her arrived.
Cheng Xiang handed them cola and bread: “Any altitude sickness4? You can’t go hungry, I’m telling you — absolutely cannot go hungry.”
The interviewers were two young women, one a camerawoman and one an editor. They exchanged a glance and laughed.
Cheng Xiang scratched her head, embarrassed. “I talk too much, don’t I?”
Back when she lived in Beicheng, she’d never noticed it — everyone around her was quick with a quip. You could get in a cab and chat with the driver the whole ride. Since coming here, the three teachers in her dorm were all southerners, speaking in soft, gentle tones. That was when Cheng Xiang realized: Ha, how come I’m so funny when I talk?
The two young women interviewing her today also had southern accents. They smiled. “It’s great — just talk like this during the interview, it’s very natural.”
“Ah?” Cheng Xiang reached up to scratch her head again. “That’s hard to promise. You don’t know this, but my mom is a neighborhood committee director. I caught it from her — if I start trying to elevate the theme or anything later, you’ve got to stop me.”
The camerawoman was named Lin Nian. The interviewer was named Fang Cheng.
During the interview, Cheng Xiang got angry.
Because Fang Cheng asked her a question: “Would some people say that children’s time is precious, and they shouldn’t be spending it on art class?”
There really were people who’d said that.
Cheng Xiang still brimmed with righteous indignation5 when she recounted the incident: “On what grounds? That kind of thinking is so utilitarian — isn’t that just a condescending superiority complex?”
“It’s not that studying art is about becoming a painter someday. It’s that later, they’ll look at the world with these kinds of eyes — colorful, vivid, tender. Once they’ve built that perspective, they’ll face this world with so much more composure!”
At the time, someone saying that had made Cheng Xiang furious.
Now, retracing the memory, the more she spoke, the more worked up she got, and then — she cried.
Fang Cheng was stunned. She quickly grabbed a pack of tissues and handed them over. Cheng Xiang pulled one out and pressed it against her eyes, waving her other hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just like this. Mostly it’s because I feel like I didn’t win the argument. When I argue and don’t perform well, I can literally cry from frustration at myself.”
She pulled the tissue away and broke into a grin.
Fang Cheng: “Pfft.”
When the interview wrapped up, Cheng Xiang asked, “Will you write which school this is?”
“No — to protect the children.”
“Will you write my name?”
“Up to you.”
Cheng Xiang thought about it. “Then let’s not.”
Lin Nian, who’d been working through the whole shoot, was getting a bit of altitude sickness. Cheng Xiang offered her own dormitory bed for her to rest. Fang Cheng was doing fine, so Cheng Xiang took her for a stroll on the hillside beside the school.
“So many flowers I’d never seen before, I’m telling you.” Cheng Xiang made a hard sell. “Gorgeous.”
“How are you so funny?” Fang Cheng ambled alongside her.
“Hm?”
“Going on and on, then suddenly crying.”
“Oh.” Cheng Xiang pinched her own palm, a little sheepish. “I’ve just always been like this.”
Pretty embarrassing, wasn’t it?
“Really interesting, though.”
“How so?”
“When you’re happy, you’re so happy — your eyes just sparkle. When you’re mad, you don’t manage your expressions at all, you know that?” Fang Cheng laughed. “You’re a beauty — how do you have zero pretense?”
“Who?” Cheng Xiang practically suspected she’d misheard. “Me?”
Growing up, nobody had ever called her a beauty. At most, they’d say she was cute, or pretty in a clean sort of way.
Wow — Cheng Xiang sighed inwardly. The green mountains and clear waters really did nourish a person. She didn’t even want to leave.
“It’s true,” Fang Cheng said. “Your eyes are so bright, really beautiful.”
“Let me tell you, I wasn’t like this before. Dead-eyed, full of corporate slave vibe6.” Cheng Xiang curved her lips. “Then I quit my job and came out here? It’s completely different. I especially love standing here and looking out into the distance — it’s like washing your eyes. You’d better put your hat on, though. The wind is fierce. When I first stood here trying to be artistic, it practically gave me a headache.”
Cheng Xiang said this as she stood at the cliff’s edge.
Fang Cheng glanced at her.
How to put it — Cheng Xiang was a straightforward northern girl, incredibly lively and chatty. With her around, no conversation ever hit a lull. But just when you thought she’d keep being this animated forever, she stood at the mountain’s edge, the wind scraping between her fluffy lashes.
For an instant, she went very quiet.
Fang Cheng couldn’t help asking, “What are you thinking about?”
“Hm?” Cheng Xiang turned to look back.
“I just feel like when you look out into the distance, you’re thinking about something.”
“Ah, is that so.” Cheng Xiang grinned. “Maybe I’m just — feigning profundity7.”
Before the interview team left, Fang Cheng found Cheng Xiang. “Could I add your personal WeChat? If you don’t mind.”
“Who? Me?”
Look at you, Xiangzi — someone’s actually asking to add your WeChat.
Cradling a tiny vanity, Cheng Xiang cheerfully accepted.
After the interview team departed, she lay on her bunk bed. The teacher on the upper bunk was already asleep, breathing in a steady rhythm.
Cheng Xiang lay with her eyes open in the darkness, nibbling gently on her lower lip.
Maybe this was just how people moved forward.
Saying goodbye to old faces. Meeting new ones. Maybe after enough back-and-forth, among all the people newly met, someone who liked her — or someone she liked — might appear.
Someone she liked?
Cheng Xiang slipped her hand out from under the blanket, very carefully so as not to rustle the covers and wake her roommate. No matter how well her eyes adjusted to the dark, she still couldn’t make out the lines of her palm. She raised her other hand and traced the paths of those lines with a fingertip.
Intersecting, branching — these unreadable maps of fate, what meaning were they writing?
Would she and Tao Tianran keep tangling together, or… was it severed, just like that?
Every time, Cheng Xiang had to find a spot with good signal to call Director Ma and Deputy Director Cheng.
Director Ma asked, extra loudly: “You didn’t come back last New Year — are you coming back this New Year?”
“Mom, Mom.” Cheng Xiang’s ears ached from the volume. “It’s windy on my end, not yours. You don’t need to speak so loudly. I can hear you.”
“I think… I still won’t come back,” Cheng Xiang said, her toe scuffing lightly against the ground.
She’d been here two years now.
How to put it — like an old film she’d seen, about a pianist who’d lived his whole life on a ship. He knew the ship’s fate was to sink, and still chose never to disembark, because he didn’t know how to face the world outside.
It was an ordinary day. When Cheng Xiang woke up, she suddenly had a craving for the sugar oil cake8 from the stall at the entrance of her old alley. She licked her lips.
Her class schedule today wasn’t too packed. For the last class of the afternoon, she taught the students to draw apple trees.
This, too, was an ordinary lesson. She sketched the branches of an apple tree on the blackboard, and the chalk dust settled on her fingertips. She rubbed it between her fingers, suddenly struck by a poetic thought — it was like the ash of time.
Ha. When did you get so artsy, Xiangzi?
The students were all drawing quietly. She set down the chalk and dusted off her fingers.
For a moment, she didn’t turn around. She stared at the apple tree on the blackboard for a long time.
She rarely let herself think of Tao Tianran.
In this instant, it seemed like the first time in two years that she’d hidden in the stillness of a classroom where no one was watching her — like crouching in a crevice of time — and let herself think of Tao Tianran without restraint.
She’d once made a promise with Tao Tianran: if they ever lost each other, they’d meet under the apple tree.
Cheng Xiang suddenly smiled.
Did she really believe that Tao Tianran owed her a sugar oil cake, and so the thread between them wasn’t yet cut?
Her palm itched faintly. Cheng Xiang resisted the urge to scratch and turned back to check on the students drawing quietly.
Her gaze drifted past the window — and stopped.
She flinched away as if electrocuted, staring fixedly at the lesson plan on the lectern. Only after a long moment did she let her eyes creep back up.
First to enter her field of vision: the blue window frame.
Then: Tao Tianran’s black coat.
Then: Tao Tianran’s snow-pale, elegant face.
Cheng Xiang stared at her for three seconds, then snapped her gaze away.
She held it together until the end of class.
Cheng Xiang stood at the lectern, unhurriedly gathering her lesson plan. “Any questions?”
“Come on,” Cheng Xiang said earnestly. “You need to ask. You need to investigate things to acquire knowledge10. You need to thirst for knowledge11. You need to…”
“Little Teacher Cheng,” a student teased her again. “You’re the art teacher, not the Chinese teacher.”
Honestly. Cheng Xiang tucked away her lesson plan, sighed “Class dismissed,” and the students shot out one by one.
Cheng Xiang dawdled out of the classroom.
Countless students ran past her, all craning their necks at Tao Tianran.
What are you all looking at? Cheng Xiang seethed inwardly. Your Little Teacher Cheng here is clearly a beauty too — how come you all look at her and not me? The moment she shows up I’m not pretty anymore?
She walked forward without glancing sideways12. Tao Tianran walked over and followed lightly behind her.
Just like the last time they’d seen each other in Beicheng — Tao Tianran had followed behind her like this too, not saying a word.
Cheng Xiang whipped around. “Tao Tianran, you’re seriously annoying, you know that?”
Tao Tianran’s footsteps stopped.
“What is your deal?” Cheng Xiang hadn’t flexed her motormouth in ages, and now she was firing on all cylinders: “You come up to a high plateau and you dress this thin? You think that coat makes you look extra gorgeous, is that it? Do you have any idea how big the temperature swing is here between day and night? I told you so many times — dress warm, dress warm — did all of that go in one ear and out the other?!”
“And you definitely haven’t been eating properly! Or drinking enough water! Or sleeping well! I said all of that for nothing, didn’t I?!”
Tao Tianran looked at her for a beat before saying quietly, “Then lend me one.”
“What?”
“A down jacket.”
“No way.” Cheng Xiang was infuriated into laughing again. “Why would I lend you one?”
Tao Tianran blinked very slowly, then called her softly: “Little Teacher Cheng.”
Had this person undergone cultivation13 or something?
Using that tone to call her Little Teacher Cheng… Cheng Xiang cast a sidelong glance at Tao Tianran and felt her ear tips itch.
Without another word, she turned and walked toward the dormitory. Tao Tianran, clever as ever, followed without asking a single question.
Cheng Xiang pushed open the dormitory door and pointed at a little stool by the foot basin. “Sit.”
Without so much as a glance at Tao Tianran, she buried her head in the wardrobe, rummaging.
Dig, dig — she fished out a wrinkled white long down jacket. Cheng Xiang still didn’t know what she’d been thinking, bringing a white down jacket. The very first meal she wore it for, she’d splashed oil on the chest.
Cheng Xiang thought vindictively: Tao Tianran deserves to eat sugar oil cake wrapped in a plastic bag — the stale, not-crisp kind!
She deserves to wear a down jacket with oil splattered on the chest!
But as she handed the jacket over, Cheng Xiang felt a twinge of conscience. She considered whether to swap it for a different one, even as her mouth asked: “Hey — afterward, did you ever go eat at that sugar oil cake stall by our old alley?”
“I did,” Tao Tianran said. “Often.”
No way! Cheng Xiang fumed. That sugar oil cake I’ve been craving day and night14 — how come Tao Tianran can just eat it whenever she wants?!
She shoved the down jacket into Tao Tianran’s hands. Tao Tianran, very obedient, put it on without a word, not the least bit bothered by the oil stain in front of her.
Cheng Xiang got mad again — how is it fair that a beauty wears a down jacket with an oil stain on the chest and still looks this gorgeous?!
Cheng Xiang turned and marched out.
Tao Tianran, sitting on the little stool, called after her: “Little Teacher Cheng.”
Cheng Xiang turned back, pinching her ear. “Can you not call me that?”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the canteen to help out and then get dinner. Where else would I go?”
“Then what do I eat?”
“How should I know what you eat.” Cheng Xiang’s eyes went to the sky — er, the ceiling. “Let me tell you, the food here is rationed. My portion — if I eat it, you don’t get it. If you eat it, I don’t get it. Figure it out yourself.”
“I’ll eat.”
“You—!” Cheng Xiang’s eyes bugged out as she glared at Tao Tianran.
Tao Tianran smiled faintly.
Two years really did make a difference, Cheng Xiang grumbled inwardly. Even Tao Tianran could crack a joke now.
Cheng Xiang headed out. Tao Tianran stood and followed behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll go take a look.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” Cheng Xiang didn’t look back. “You just look. Don’t eat.”
Mid-stride, Cheng Xiang suddenly spun around, and Tao Tianran, caught off guard, nearly bumped into her.
Cheng Xiang asked, “You’re not dizzy, are you?”
“What?”
“Altitude sickness.”
Tao Tianran shook her head. “No.”
“Oh.” Cheng Xiang turned and kept walking.
“Little Teacher Cheng.” Tao Tianran trailed behind her. “Actually… a little bit.”
Ha, trick the ghosts15.
Inside the canteen, Cheng Xiang rolled up her sleeves to help. Staffing was tight here, so teachers pitched in at the canteen outside of class, and also helped with dormitory inspections.
Tao Tianran followed her in.
Cheng Xiang cast a sidelong glance. “What are you doing?”
“Helping.”
“Give it a rest, Jiejie.” Cheng Xiang remembered when she and Tao Tianran had lived together — on the rare occasions she saw this woman lift a finger, the way Tao Tianran held bowls and plates made her nervous.
「Living together.」
Cheng Xiang’s gaze slipped unobtrusively over Tao Tianran again. She’d actually lived with Tao Tianran once. It felt like a very, very long time ago.
All she remembered was how white Tao Tianran was all over — as if she’d rolled through frost and snow.
Bah! Cheng Xiang! What are you thinking!
Cheng Xiang asked Tao Tianran, “Do you think I’ve gotten tanned?”
“No,” Tao Tianran said. “Why ask suddenly?”
“No reason.” Cheng Xiang lifted a hand and touched the tip of her nose.
After helping the canteen aunties set out the insulated food trays, Cheng Xiang pulled on gloves and served the students streaming in at the appointed time. “Eat more, eat more.”
Cheng Xiang figured she’d inherited this trait from her mom, Director Ma — always urging people to eat. Though maybe it wasn’t Director Ma’s fault. Maybe it was Tao Tianran’s. Tao Tianran used to eat so little, and Cheng Xiang had worried herself ragged.
At the thought, Cheng Xiang cast another sidelong glance toward Tao Tianran.
…Wait, where’s Tao Tianran?
Cheng Xiang’s eyes darted around the canteen before she spotted Tao Tianran standing off to one side, handing out milk to the students.
The children giggled as they walked past her, stealing glances at her and then huddling together to whisper16. Tao Tianran’s expression stayed cool, as if she’d been stared at since childhood. She handed out the milk, and if someone got bold enough to say “Thank you,” she’d reply mildly, “You’re welcome.”
She looked like a fairy handing out peaches of immortality.
“No way.” Cheng Xiang turned to a colleague. “Who told her she could hand out milk over there? Who is she?”
“Isn’t she your friend?” The colleague was confused. “Isn’t she wearing your down jacket?”
Cheng Xiang badly wanted to lie with her eyes open17: “No, she’s not!”
Teachers had to wait until the students finished getting their food before collecting their own. Cheng Xiang carried her tray to a table and sat down. Tao Tianran walked over and sat across from her, diagonally.
Cheng Xiang said nothing. Today’s dishes were pretty good, heh — braised beef with potatoes, shredded pork with green peppers, scrambled eggs with tomatoes.
Cheng Xiang picked up a piece of beef and chewed.
Her jaw gradually slowed. “Why do you keep looking at me?”
“Hm?” Tao Tianran lifted her gaze from the cup of hot water in front of her. “I wasn’t looking at you.”
“You were totally looking at me! Every time I look down to eat, you look at me. When I look up, you pretend you weren’t! How am I supposed to eat with you staring at me like that?”
It was like when she was eating alone at home and the family cat sat beside her, watching her with wide eyes.
But this one in front of her might not be a cat — more like a fox.
That elegant, refined face, hiding its powers of enticement very deep.
Cheng Xiang, irritated, switched seats to sit directly across from her. She shoved her tray toward Tao Tianran, fished a pair of chopsticks from the holder, and held them out.
“For me?” Tao Tianran asked softly.
“No.” Cheng Xiang pushed the tray a little closer, not looking at her — staring fixedly at the shredded pork with green peppers.
Tao Tianran said nothing for a long moment. Cheng Xiang clicked her tongue and looked up —
Tao Tianran was gazing quietly at her.
Cheng Xiang pressed her lips together.
This was hardly a romantic scene — slow-stewed potatoes and fall-apart beef, the air thick with everyday kitchen warmth. The students’ mealtimes were cheerful and noisy, and teachers ate nearby, discussing tomorrow’s lessons.
Cheng Xiang and Tao Tianran sat at opposite ends of a blue plastic table. Tao Tianran didn’t speak, didn’t sneak a nudge against her knee under the table — just looked at her, quietly like that.
The surrounding noise blurred into a vague background.
Cheng Xiang couldn’t say why she didn’t look away. She looked straight into Tao Tianran’s dark eyes.
How long has it been, Tao Tianran.
From the first snow of that winter, to us sitting here, warm and cozy, you wearing my down jacket with the oil stain on the chest.
Cheng Xiang sniffed and said, “Are you going to eat or not? If not, forget it,” and started pulling the chopsticks back.
At the same moment, Tao Tianran reached out to take the chopsticks from her hand.
Ha — if this scene showed up in a TV drama, Cheng Xiang would laugh at how cheesy it was. But the fact was, Tao Tianran accidentally touched her hand.
Cheng Xiang’s hand paused. First she handed over the chopsticks as if nothing had happened.
Then asked, “Are you still cold?”
Her hand was so cold.
Tao Tianran shook her head. “Not cold.”
“Oh.” Cheng Xiang lowered her thick lashes again and started picking the green peppers out of the shredded pork on Tao Tianran’s side.
No way! Why was she still picking green peppers out for Tao Tianran? It really was like the moment she sat across from her, the habit kicked right in.
Two years had changed a lot of things, and yet hadn’t changed a lot of things.
Cheng Xiang held her chopsticks. She couldn’t very well mix the picked-out peppers back into the shredded pork, could she? She frowned, torn18 for a moment, then her nose wrinkled and she smiled.
Tao Tianran, sitting across from her, said, “You smiled.”
The canteen hummed with chatter. Tao Tianran said this very quietly.
Cheng Xiang lifted the back of her hand to rub her nose. “It’s not because of you.”
Cheng Xiang hadn’t eaten her fill.
But she was too embarrassed to say she hadn’t eaten her fill.
She shot a sidelong glance from the corner of her eye at Tao Tianran. They’d both eaten half a portion — how did Tao Tianran manage to look so full?
The two of them walked out of the canteen, and Cheng Xiang asked, “What’s your plan? If you don’t catch the last bus, there’s nowhere for you to sleep here, I’m telling you.”
“Your dormitory?”
“My dormitory?” Cheng Xiang was incensed into laughter again. “Did you not see that tiny narrow bed in my dorm? And it’s not just me — there are three other female teachers in there. They’d really mind!”
Just then, one of Cheng Xiang’s colleagues happened to walk out of the canteen too, overheard the tail end, and waved with a grin: “We don’t mind at all — we really don’t mind!”
Hey! Cheng Xiang glared at them with her best beady-eyed look. How could you not mind? You need to mind!
The principal ambled over, smiling kindly. “Heading back to the dorms? What are you chatting about?”
Cheng Xiang’s brain raced and she blurted out: “Principal, she wants to steal my bed.”
The moment the words left her mouth: Really, Cheng Xiang?
But whenever she was face-to-face with Tao Tianran, she just felt so wronged! She’d latch onto anyone of higher seniority and want them to take her side.
The principal smiled warmly at Tao Tianran.
Hmph, hmph, Cheng Xiang glanced sidelong. Fooled, aren’t you? You think our principal is mild-mannered? When he gets serious, he’s seriously serious.
But the principal nodded and said: “Well stolen. Well stolen.”
Footnotes
- Highland barley steamed buns, a staple food in Tibetan-region cuisine made from highland barley flour.
- Internet slang for 'basic operation,' meaning something standard or to be expected.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'to bring glory and prestige to one's family,' originally referring to adding luster to the family gate.
- Short for 'plateau reaction'; altitude sickness experienced at high elevations.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'filled with righteous indignation,' describing a deep sense of moral outrage.
- Internet slang meaning 'office smell' — the exhausted, soulless aura of an overworked corporate employee.
- Colloquial Chinese for pretending to be deep in thought, often used self-deprecatingly.
- A classic sweet Chinese fried pastry — a flat dough cake fried crisp and coated with sugar syrup.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'complete silence — not a crow or sparrow is heard.'
- A classical Confucian phrase meaning 'to investigate things in order to acquire knowledge' — here used humorously by a teacher urging students to be inquisitive.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'to thirst for knowledge,' describing an eager desire to learn.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'to look straight ahead without glancing aside,' describing focused or deliberately aloof behavior.
- Literally 'to cultivate and practice' — a term from spiritual or martial training, here used metaphorically to mean someone has transformed or improved themselves through discipline.
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'to yearn for something day and night,' describing constant, intense longing.
- An expression of disbelief equivalent to 'yeah right, as if.'
- A Chinese idiom meaning 'to whisper or speak in low voices,' describing quiet, secretive conversation.
- A Chinese expression meaning 'to lie with eyes wide open' — to blatantly say something false without any shame.
- A Chinese term meaning extreme indecisiveness or internal conflict, describing a state of being painfully torn between choices.
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