Chapter 16 The Mysteriously Lost Old Man

One day, little Lin Fengquan came to the bank of the river as always. There was this small patch of willow trees near the site where the river project was done. An old man tied a large piece of tarp over the branches of the willow trees and made a makeshift tent. With the leftover stalks of corns left by the farmers, the old man collected a lot of them which he then tied them into bundles and stacked them together as walls of his tent. By the walls, he had propped up items and junks that he had collected. These were not rubbish, but instead items that the old man had bought with his own spare money. There were some toys and trinkets like clay figurine, flutes, molds, glass marbles, tattered shoes, scrap metal pieces, and others. These were items that were thrown away by people in accordance with the national initiative of shunning and renouncing the Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution. After buying these items from others, the old man would classify them into different groups before selling them to public offices known as collection centers and profit from the sales. This method of earning money was similar to how people sell various scraps to recycling centers for cash, although the old man purchases the items instead of digging them from trash.

The old man was not local; he was neither from the same village, nor was he from any of the neighboring suburbs, for the piece of land beside the patch of willow trees was within the boundaries of the adjacent town. Hence, he would later be known as the Old Man of the River Bank. The old man was accustomed to teasing Lin Fengquan whenever he saw him. He would say, “Are you here with something to eat for me?” when Lin Fengquan holding some food. The kind little boy would offer his food to him although the old man would always make a mock gesture of eating and decline with a smile. Knowing that Lin Fengquan would come to the river every day, the old man then began frying some beans and corns and kept some for the boy. The food was tasty; the old man liked grilling his beans and corns with soy sauce. When Lin Fengquan found out that the old man loved eating chillis, he would pick some from home, with his family’s consent. Growing up in a family which members were kind and big-hearted had also helped Lin Fengquan into the kind and benevolent he was!

Until one day, the old man asked Lin Fengquan, “Have you learned wushu exercises before?”, and the little boy replied, “What are wushu exercises?” The old man then demonstrated to him a few martial arts moves. The little boy had seen some of the older children practicing aerobic exercises before. Being very young then, he thought that what the old man was showing to him was exactly the same with the aerobic exercises the older children were practicing. It was only until he grew older and enrolled into a school where he learned aerobic exercises, only did he found out that it was different from the ones that the old man had trained him with. Feeling puzzled, he asked the old man about this and he got this reply, “The moves which I taught you are the older ones.” Being able to learn both the new and older types of exercises filled him with pride, what an innocent little boy! When the boy grew into his teens and read the Chinese classics of Water Margin and Three Kingdoms, he found out that the moves which were imparted to him were in fact disciplines of martial art. In those days, children in farming villages were required to work and help out in their teens. Many of them would help to mow grass, pick wild vegetables, collect firewood, harvesting wheat and collecting cotton among other chores. Therefore, whenever he passed by with a wicker basket, the little Lin Fengquan would loiter and have fun at the old man’s before leaving. They would engage in mock sparring sessions where Lin Fengquan would try to hit the old man, even though he would miss every time. Whether if his misses were intentional or not, it was a truth that only he knew full well.

When the 1976 earthquake took place, the entire village was thrown into chaos and turmoil and distressful rumors gripped the whole village with anxiety and fear. Some said that the Qiuzhuang Reservoir (location in China, literally the Qiu Farm Water Reservoir) had collapsed. The Qiuzhuang Reservoir was at the upstream of the river that passed through the village. Tremendous floods in the town would be imminent if the rumors that the reservoir had collapsed were true. Therefore, the villagers all hurried up the embankments of the river, which were the highest point in the entire village, hugging blankets and pillows with them. It was total pandemonium as cries and howls filled the air. Lin Fengquan was 15 by then and had escaped being crushed to death during the tremor by kicking open a window. Once reaching the river embankment, his thoughts immediately reached out for the old man. He surveyed his surroundings and found that the old man was not with the crowd. He slipped off and went down the river to the old man’s tent in search of him. There, he found that the old man’s belongings were still there, but he was missing. Feeling worried, Lin Fengquan thought, “This place would be the first to be swept by the flood. But where is the old man?”

Not long afterward, news finally reached the villagers that the reservoir did not collapse. Still, the old man was nowhere to be seen following the turmoil as if he had vanished completely. Some of the villagers began gossiping about his disappearance, saying, “He might have died during the chaos!”

Another three years passed. Lin Fengquan had obtained a place in a local university. Growing up in a farming village where there was a lack of educational facilities, Lin Fengquan was well past the normal schooling age when he entered formal education. Because of the traumatic incident of “Xuan’er Shou”, his grandmother was worried about having him traveling to the school in one of the neighboring villages. By the time when a school was finally built in the village, Lin Fengquan was already 9. Like the rest of the other children in China, Lin Fengquan finished 5 years of primary school, 2 years of middle school before another 2 and a half years of high school. The extended length of his high school period was because of the delay in his exams from spring to summer. Therefore, when he had entered university, Lin Fengquan was 18. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, even during the nights in university, Lin Fengquan would occasionally dream of “Xuan’er Shou” and the nightmares of the incident would continue tormenting him and fill him sorrow, although the nightmares began to reduce as he grew up.

One day, during the university sports meeting, everyone was lazing off in their lines when there were only a few sports events taking place that hour. Out of boredom, one of the students traipsed to the edge of the running tracks and began practicing wushu moves. This attracted the attention of many of his fellow students who began surrounding around him to watch and ogle. The wushu moves he practiced were of the Hung Ga school, one of the few schools of the Southern Fists of the “Northern Kicks and Southern Fists” of Chinese wushu. When he had finished, the boy looked around him and found Lin Fengquan staring at him. Feeling that Lin Fengquan must also know some wushu, the boy went to Lin Fengquan and invited him for a show of his skills, saying, “Come on, have a go!” The students huddled around them applauded and cheered enthusiastically, compelling Lin Fengquan to demonstrate his skills as well. Lin Fengquan then stepped forward and displayed the martial art techniques that the old man had imparted to him. Instead, everyone broke into laughter with some screaming, “His moves are ugly!” The boy who was also showing his wushu moves earlier, said to him, “You would be easily defeated if you threw a punch in this way,” as he tried to demonstrate the flaws of Lin Fengquan’s moves. But suddenly, when the boy was throwing a punch in expression of his point, Lin Fengquan reflexively defended himself and felled the boy with a kick! Even Lin Fengquan himself was surprised and shocked by his reflex that he quickly rushed to help the boy up and helped rubbed his sored spot. The boy would later remain in pain for the entire day because of that kick. It was common knowledge to anyone trained in the skills of martial arts that the muscles around a human’s tibias were the hardest to strengthen. An injury to this part of the body would be excruciatingly painful. Yet, the skills that Lin Fengquan was trained in concentrated on inflicting blows to this very part!

Unsatisfied with his loss, the boy then called for help from his relatives from home, all of whom were also trained in the same Hung Ga school of martial arts. They challenged Lin Fengquan to some duels, only to be sent home painfully with the similar parts of their legs injured. They returned home and sought advice from their elders by illustrating some of Lin Fengquan’s moves with drawings and pictures. A letter came from home for the boy one day, telling him that Lin Fengquan’s moves belonged to at least two different schools of Chinese wushu that specialized in kicks. One was the Tan Tui (also called Tam Tui, sometimes translated as Spring Kicks or the Tam Family Kicks), also known as the Ten-Round Kicks. The other was Chuojiao, another Northern Kicks school of Chinese wushu. The letter also mentioned that since Lin Fengquan was trained particularly in kicks, the boy should befriend Lin Fengquan and learn from each other for he might one day be able to teach some of these moves to his relatives as well as senior and junior brothers. Therefore, in his fourth year, Lin Fengquan began learning from the boy martial arts moves of the Hung Ga school while he would also teach them the wushu skills that the old man had taught him.

After his graduation, Lin Fengquan was assigned to a state-owned enterprise which 30 miles away from home to work. He would cycle to work on Monday mornings and cycle home on Saturday evenings. There was a fervor in martial arts at that time, due to the screening of a popular film, the Shaolin Temple. Hence Lin Fengquan would be sparring and discussing wushu moves with his colleagues in their free time. One day, on a Saturday two years later, one of Lin Fengquan’s superiors instructed him to wait for a representative from a supplier which would be late in delivering an apparatus due to some mishaps with his truck. By the time the device had reached the office, it was already in the evening, and the sky had gone dark by the time the representative had completed the delivery. Therefore, Lin Fengquan was forced to stay in the office that night. To make things worst, the supply of electricity into the office was cut off that night due to maintenance works that were carried out when the offices were closed for the weekend leave. This would cause no disruptions to daily operations of the offices, and the maintenance staff would be able to file for overtime claims.

Due to the lack of electricity supply, Lin Fengquan could do nothing but sleep. It might have been due to the long hours of his sleep, that he suddenly began dreaming of “Xuan’er Shou” again. But this time, he did not dream of the horrifying incident that had claimed “Xuan’er Shou’s” life, instead, the older man was tenderly patting his head and smiling to him affectionately like how a father would. He heard “Xuan’er Shou” said to him, “You have grown up well, my boy. You have not come to visit me, you mischevious boy…” When he woke up later, his face drenched with tears, he began feeling guilty. He had never thought of visiting “Xuan’er Shou” grave! He then decided that he would visit “Xuan’Er Shou” grave and pay some respects since he would be cycling home in the morning. As he passed by a roadside stall, he stopped to buy some sacrificial offerings and hung them on his bicycle before cycling out of the town.

Passing out of the vicinity of the town, Lin Fengquan cycled towards where his memory told him where the grave was. The incident of “Xuan’er Shou’s” death caused quite a stir back then that even after 18 years, many still remembered him. With the directions from a farmer, Lin Fengquan came to a large tract of land which was now a graveyard. This was one of the lands that was allocated by the People’s Commune for using as a public graveyard that the villagers had used ever since. Standing among the unkempt tombstones, Lin Fengquan did not knew which one of these was Lin Fengquan’s grave. He saw an old man shepherding goats and asked him about the grave. But the old man was confused and perplexed, muttering, “Why is everyone asking about his grave today? What’s so special about today? Look there; there’s a man burning offering. That grave belongs to ‘Xuan’er Shou’!” Feeling baffled by what the old man had said, Lin Fengquan began wondering, why were there others asking about “Xuan’er Shou’s” grave? But he walked towards the man burning joss papers without much thinking.

When he had walked closer, Lin Fengquan found that the mound of the grave was small and low. He observed that the ground had sunk a little after so many years without proper care and conservation of the grave. Weeds were growing rampantly over the mound. He climbed over the mound, approaching the man from his side. Noticing that somebody was near, the man’s head rose and looked at him. But when Lin Fengquan saw who it was, his heart nearly stopped!