Xiao Bai
Xiao Bai had a photo album of her family, and she carried it with her wherever she went. In the album, there were a few photos of her parents and the family house they had lived in. The album was well-kept, and we could clearly see Xiao Bai missed her parents very much.
Unfortunately, Xiao Bai’s family house had been demolished, for some obscure reason she failed to understand — it was difficult for a little girl of thirteen years old to have a grasp of some basic but cruel ‘principles’ of China’s individual-unfriendly society.
Currently (May 2018) an uncle of hers was managing the tea trees once owned by her parents. This uncle gave Xiao Bai some money (several thousand Chinese yuan) every year, as he made profits from selling tea leaves. Xiao Bai firmly believed someday in the future she would inherit her parents’ tea trees and farmland. (She had little idea what it meant to have a lot of tea trees, but I sensed that she savored the very thought of “owning” some stuff. At Children’s Home (a center run by a local NGO for children living with HIV), there was little privacy, and children had to compete for various resources. Some were naturally good at it, while others like Xiao Bai shrank in fear of this competition and feigned nonchalance. But when she did have conflicts with others — the biggest reason might be that she thought many kids kept speaking ill of her behind her back — she usually ended up being the one who cried the loudest and longest.)
In the album, Xiao Bai kept her parents’ ID cards, and she couldn’t help wondering why her father’s was an official one but her mother’s was only a temporary one. (“Maybe because my mother was from waidi — another county, not Yongde.”)
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Xiao Bai did not fit in at Home. She was never enthusiastic about group activities. During free time, she spent hours sitting alone, with a textbook on the desk or her knees. It seemed she was doing her homework or reading, but in fact she was pondering on something else, maybe reminiscing about things in the past, or dreaming about the future. (She does not need to worry about it any longer.)
But if someone showed enough curiosity in Xiao Bai, she was quite open for conversations. She would tell stories about her hometown, her parents, her relatives, her collections, and her concerns. She had a lot of questions about the outside world, and she truly needed someone whom she could trust wholeheartedly to explain everything. (I once tried explaining a lot of things about the relationship between individuals and the government to her after she invited me to have a close look at her collections. Although she could only understand a small part of my explanation, she was patient with my illogical words. My impression was that she was quite determined to find answers to all her questions about life in her way.)
And this scrappy essay is to commemorate Xiao Bai. She lived. She struggled. She suffered. She died. May she find eternal peace in heaven.
Dedicated to Xiao Bai (April 20, 2005 to January 30, 2022)
Hometown: Yongde, Lincang, Yunnan
She yearned for a kingdom of cartoons on Earth.
