Student Translation Project
HKBU TIIS 2022
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The World Ends
April in Hong Kong is still cold and wet. An Ning has adjusted to Hong Kong and its weather as well. She was not afraid of the cold. In her hometown, there were a few heavy snowfalls in the season, and she would roll in the snow every year. But she will be turning 40 now! Everything was so hard, and childhood was the happiest time of her life. She went to middle school and junior college, started working, and quit her job to study in Hong Kong. That was almost two years ago. So many things happen in a lifetime?
Life is like Chinese herb cabinets; each cabinet contains a piece of mothball . Each piece of mothball represents a memory. Every memory comes with waves of emotions. Even though bright and dazzling, slightly ambiguous, they still reek of evil. One is unable to track down the source. It is not like you can openly beat your newly washed clothes with a stick to get rid of the dust. No, the memory can only be tightly sealed in a large container; you can occasionally open the container and take in the musty air for comfort.
An Ning steps onto the Shenzhen Bay Bridge, crowded with container trucks and the sparsely scheduled buses full of passengers. An Ning, her thin figure, passes by the tired and indifferent passengers like a plastic bag flying in the wind. She runs away from her overly familiar hometown and comes to an unfamiliar city. However, when she looks at the city, she feels so lonely.
The house she rented in Shekou a week ago was within an hour from school. The neighborhood, just a few steps past the Shenzhen Bay Port, has a nice environment with green trees surrounding the area. The house is furnished and has a "medical alarm." Ling looks around and tries the bell. The ringing echoes through the entire building. Twenty minutes later, but no one came. An Ning and Ling looked at each other and laughed. It had been a long time since An Ning had laughed.
A shade of red is vaguely visible between the grey sky and the spiritless sun. The flowing stream beneath the bridge is grayish, and the reed-like weeds along the shore are covered with a large gray veil. From time to time, some long-legged waterbird would fly up with its outstretched legs and then land on the grass. This side of the shore is Hong Kong, where An Ning goes to school; the other side is Shekou, An Ning's new "home." Standing in the middle of the bridge, An Ning suddenly has a strange and unreal feeling of being separated from her own life and floating in another vast space. When life is to be examined at such a distance, it is somewhat distorted but also appears to be exaggerated and absurd because it is too real at the same time.
Below the bridge is a mangrove forest, and beyond the forest is the Pak Nai beach, a famous attraction for couples. An Ning had been there once to shoot the sunset with the members of her school’s photography club. They carried a tripod and a single-lens reflex camera with a long lens like professionals. An Ning brought a compact camera. No good pictures were taken but watching a group of kids excitedly talking about aperture and focal length while making every possible effort to make others well aware they are as passionate as a shutterbug was something quite interesting to see. The bridge was then half built, standing in mid-air as if it was going to extend into the endless void. When the construction of the bridge is finished, it would only take a few minutes to get from Shekou to Hong Kong.
Few shadows are moving on the Pak Nai beach - probably shutterbugs again. An Ning looks at the sunset and feels sorry for them because they will be disappointed. The sunset is like a blur of light red in an ink painting. Not even a single reflection can be seen on the sea surface or the wetlands. How inharmonious are the excitement and the sunset when they are put together! Then again, it is very similar to the mindset of "the sunset is magnificent - but dusk is near." Nothing to shoot! "Is it ironic? Or is it pure humor?" An Ning thinks to herself.
Her classmates constantly ask her to compare Hong Kong to her hometown and say which one she prefers. It's tiring to answer those questions. In fact, all these questions have a ready answer. However, An Ning thinks it cannot be explained in a few words. Things are getting complicated as people grow. Her classmates are more curious about why she chose to study again at her age. Is it difficult to leave work and go back to school? They ask these questions unintendedly, but An Ning doesn’t want to talk about them too much. So many things have happened, and it's meaningless to speak of them, but for people, it’s juicy gossip. Who really understands the ups and downs? An Ning has given up the idea. She grits her teeth and handles everything on her own.
The entanglement with Ling over the years is probably because of this personality trait. The first year they met, Ling went to An Ning’s place without saying anything. Fortunately, An Ning worked for several years and bought a house on her own. The accommodation was not a problem. But at Chinese New Year, there was a reunion dinner. Ling didn’t know the place. How could she leave Ling behind? But to take her home? An Ning felt embarrassed. Over the years, she was the quiet one at home. Ling's arrival caused troubles. She had no choice but to take her. She made up an excuse saying that it was a friend of a friend, and her family didn't ask too much. Everyone felt uncomfortable during the dinner.
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Sometimes An Ning thinks she's living in a muddle. How can she really date Ling and come to Hong Kong? To outsiders, it may seem the power of love is strong. But how much do they love each other? How can love leave scars? Once, when An Ning suggested breaking up, Ling picked up a knife and deeply cut her wrist. The scars were still visible; An Ning's love for Ling had been obliterated. Every day and night, Ling would argue with her. Whatever An
Ning said, Ling would take it seriously. When An Ning said she wanted to go somewhere to take her mind off everything, Ling would be mad at her and keep bothering her. Regardless of the season, the situation, and whether An Ning had a holiday or not, she insisted that An Ning no longer loved her as promised. It was noisy every day, and everything at home dropped and crashed in the last two years. An Ning couldn’t think of a future for Ling and herself.
The future cannot be avoided, no matter how much you wish to escape from it. An Ning and Ling had a 'two-year commitment' from the beginning. Or maybe Ling and her husband had a two-year commitment? An Ning and Ling were not talking to each other and Ling married a fireman named Cheung, a confidant whom she had known since childhood. An Ning didn't know anything about their marriage or their commitment. She inexplicably moved into their house like a homewrecker, sleeping with Ling in the master bedroom while Cheung occupied the guest bedroom for two years. One midnight of the
new year celebration, An Ning woke up, and on her way to the bathroom, she heard whimpering from Cheung's room. It stung her. She then wept piteously in the toilet despite not knowing much about Cheung. An Ning didn't ask about him much; Ling wouldn't tell her even if she did.
With the two-year commitment coming to an end, An Ning planned to rent an apartment. Ling once again flew off the handle, yelling all sorts of nasty things at An Ning, accusing An Ning of being ungrateful and biting the hands that fed her. Despite the unpleasant words, An Ning understood there was a broken heart, an empty heart hidden within Ling. But who could sympathize with her? Hysterical, Ling was fuming and foul-mouthed, which An Ning found unbearable. Without hesitation, An Ning gave Ling two slaps. Those slaps bolstered An Ning's courage, sapped the tenderness, sympathy, and guilt she had left in her heart, making her despise herself even more. In her state of despair, she was ready to slit her wrists, jump out of the window, or whatever! She couldn't care less! She thought, "having lived my entire life in cowardice, do I have to continue living this way?" Grasping her backpack, An Ning rushed out, with Ling following closely behind. They were in a standoff in no time, one inside the lift, the other outside. Seeing Ling blocking the lift door, An Ning yelled at her, "I'll call the police if you continue doing this any longer!" and sounded the alarm.
As soon as the police arrived, Ling told on An Ning first, crying and alleging that An Ning had beaten her up as if she had called the police. The police considered it a "domestic dispute" and asked An Ning to apologize. An Ning’s temper flared up, and she refused to apologize. She wasn't bothered, even if this meant heading to the police station and leaving a criminal record. At worst, she could return to her hometown and never come to Hong Kong again, for all she cares! Getting panicky and almost losing face, Ling cried her eyes out. It just so happened that Cheung returned home from work. The police officer who used to work with Cheung reached out, winking at him, patting his shoulder, showing sympathy and understanding for Cheung, hinting that girls tend to be short-sighted and thus have a minor problem when they live together. Implying that the problem was nothing more than that. There was no response from Cheung; he just roared at Ling, 'Go home and clean yourself up a bit!' An Ning would rather have Cheung get angry and spill the beans. She couldn't stand his expression. In the end, the police closed the case and left after she walked out of the lift and signed the papers.
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Cheung moved out the next day, leaving his house to his wife and her lover. Did all this just happen yesterday? It felt like something from a past life. An Ning stood in the middle of the bridge. Under the bridge ran the quiet stream of water, "like a spring water flowing to the east". Is every river flowing east? Can the ocean hold so much water? Maybe they converge, disperse, return, and start all over again? What a wonderful nature; when it seems to
come to a dead end, it doesn’t. Do thousands of passages underneath connect every corner of the world? If so, there is nothing unusual about the water from different places mixing. Perhaps it is the same for human fate.
There was a story about a despairing man who fell sick on his deathbed after learning his fiancée married someone else. A monk gave the man a piece of mirror, which showed an image of a beach. On the beach was a female corpse. The first passerby caught a glimpse of the corpse and left. The second passerby took off his jacket and covered the naked body. The third passerby dug a grave and buried the body. The monk told him, “this is the prelife of your fiancée, and you are the second passerby, you had earned her love because of your kind action, but she would need to return the favor to the third passerby, who buried her.” After hearing from the monk, the man was relieved and eventually recovered from his illness. What kind of past and current life had she and Ling had? At that moment, An Ning wondered: does Ling love her?
One time, the Christians at school evangelized her. They asked in her face, "Do you think you have sinned? For all have sinned, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes him may have eternal life" (John 3:16). She was annoyed a little, and asked, "What is love?" Having lived for so long, she? realized our society, our education system, no one has ever taught her how to love as if it was an innate instinct. If it is an instinct, why are so many people morbidly in love? The student opened the Bible nervously and read, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (Corinthians 13:5-7). The student was stuttering, and his voice got smaller, as if he also had doubts. An Ning got angrier as she listened, "How abstract and unrealistic! What do you know? You asked if I sinned. You taught me what love is?" The student panicked. She swallowed the rude remarks, turned around, and walked away.
Passing by the Gold Coast in the afternoon, An Ning sees someone receiving a baptism. The priest, immersed in the waist-deep holy water with blue lips, reaches out to the candidate for baptism. The priest presses his hands against the forehead of the candidate and starts to pray. He then places his hand on the back of the candidate, lowering the candidate backward into the water. Once the candidate is soaked wet, the priest lifts the person—the audience at the beach cheer with dance and
songs. An Ning, however, is with a cluttered mind. A child, glancing at An Ning, approaches with a bag in his hand. Before An Ning could react, the child stands before her. He hands her a tiny plastic bag and immediately rushes off. It’s a bag of mini Easter eggs. An Ning just puts it in her pocket and turns around to leave.
A sudden round of cheers from afar caught An Ning by surprise. The sunset was laying before the clouds. The grey-bluish clouds dissolve into the orangish redness of the sunset, like a tangerine diving into the sky or a puffy eye from crying. An Ning can't help taking out her phone, capturing this moment.
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The sun sets alongside the cheers of the crowd. An Ning takes out the bag of Easter eggs, untying the golden ribbon. She takes out one of the Easter eggs and tastes it. She can taste the bitterness and the sweetness of the chocolate. The crowd on the beach starts to pack up, leaving a dinghy tied to the wooden groynes at the beach, bobbing softly on the waves. An Ning finishes the Easter eggs and finds a small pale green card in the bag. On the card is a drawing of flying doves with branches and leaves and a bible verse: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5: 17). Grabbing the card, An Ning flips it over and reads out loud the bible verse a few times with a hollow laugh. She leans on the railing, trying to reach the water by stretching out her arm. She loses grip of the card, and it falls, riding the airwaves like falling autumn leaves. An Ning watches the card go until it rests on the sea surface. She mutters, "From now on, I would vanish from sight, among waters, on my boat bobbing for the rest of my life". Cocking her head, she asks, "From now on should I vanish from sight, among waters, on my boat bobbing for the rest of my life?" Lying on the railings, she chuckles.
The two sides of the harbor start to light up. An Ning stands still in the middle of the bridge. The water flows silently. It will eventually pass through An Ning’s homeland. She stands on the bridge. At this moment, An Ning belongs to another space.
28th September, 2007 (Friday)
Mothballs are small balls of chemical pesticide and deodorant, sometimes used when storing clothing and other materials susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae (especially clothes moths like Tineola bisselliella).
One of the lines from the Chinese poetry “Deng le you yuan” 《登樂游原》 by the poet LI Shang Yin （李商隱）of late Tong Dynasty.
One of the lines from the Chinese song prose poetry “Yu Meiren: Spring Flower and Autumn Moon” 《虞美人．春花秋月何時了》 by the third emperor and poet Li Yu of late Song dynasty.
One of the lines from the Chinese song “Lin Jiang Xian” - Su Shi 《臨江仙》by the poet Su Shi （蘇軾）of Song Dynasty.
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