The fishing lights were bright as Chun Si walked out from under the boat’s awning (1) and shivered in the strong winter breeze. She covered a yawn as she looked towards the bustling old city where the lights were brightly lit.
“Don’t go in and out.” Her father said from beneath the awning. Chun Si sighed, filled a bucket with river water, and then slipped back under the awning.
It was a fishing boat with double awnings, and there was a quilt hanging at the entrance and a stove inside. The river became so cold at night that icicles would form by the hanging quilt, so they slept close to the stove to stay warm. Chun Si poured the river water into a pot and boiled it. Once it was heated, it could be poured into the soup.
Random little trinkets that were hanging from the top of the awning swayed and clinked together in the breeze. They had been picked up from the bottom of the river over the years. In the summertime, the children would often dive into the river to see if they could find some garbage that had washed down from upstream. It was hard to tell what these things were, but some of the more interesting ones had been hung up.
“That Chen Pi stared at me for a long time today. Let’s not park the boat here tomorrow.” Chun Si said to her father. “He also told me that he kills people to make money. One person for a hundred coins.”
“The poor man is sick, don’t pay any attention to him.” Chun Si’s father said lightly as he patted Chun Shen on the back.
Chun Shen raised his head and asked his sister, “Won’t the government decapitate him for killing people?”
Chun Si’s dad poked Chun Shen on the forehead. “He’s lying, he wouldn’t dare. Go to sleep and don’t listen to the adults talking.”
Chun Shen tucked his head under the quilt. There were a few hollowed out spots at the bottom of the boat, and two near the stove, which was where he and his sister slept. Since he was small, he could fit his whole body into the hollow.
Chun Si’s dad wrapped his clothes tighter around his body and said to Chun Si, “Those who roam around don’t have anything. No one knows this ghost Chen Pi’s origins, so don’t mind him. He definitely won’t be around come spring. This kind of person can’t stay in one place for long.”
Chun Si nodded as her mother dug out the clam meat nearby. During the winter, the river tributaries flowed into the nearby lake, and the clams buried under all the mud weren’t as easy to find as they were in summer. Clams were said to give you strength, so Chun Si, Chun Shen, and their mother would go dig them up from the lake during the day while their father pulled the boatmen’s tow-ropes. Clam shell ash was also used to treat burns, so the army had been collecting it. Chun Si’s family could get a copper coin for every twenty taels (2) of clam shells they found.
When Chun Si went to help, her mother glanced at her and then straightened her hair. “Dear, Chun Si is a big girl now. She needs to go ashore and marry so she doesn’t have to suffer through these kinds of hardships. The Japanese are coming, and it will be hard to survive.”
It was impossible for a small fishing boat to go upstream. If they tried, Chun Si’s father couldn’t be sure where they would end up. Moreover, they had been living on the Yangtze River for several generations, so they didn’t know how to live on shore.
The boat was silent.
Chun Si’s dad lit his pipe and kept his head down, while Chun Si stood there speechless. She had never thought of this problem before. Of course, she had heard that a lot of things had happened, but she had never witnessed them. She felt uneasy, but she never thought of leaving here.
After she was done helping her mother, Chun Si went to lie down and sleep, but a series of strange sounds suddenly came from the distance. They seemed to go on endlessly as they spread across the river. Chun Si’s dad was surprised, but quickly recognized that it was the sound of a drum. He immediately opened the curtain and looked out. He didn’t see anything on the river, but the drumbeats still rang out through the darkness.
“Why is someone playing the drums?” Chun Si’s mother asked.
Chun Si’s father grabbed the nearby lantern and dipped it into the river to extinguish it. He then entered the awning, used the soup water to put out the stove, jumped to the scull, and untied the anchor rope. Chun Si was surprised and asked him, “What’s going on, Dad?”
“Don’t talk. Pirates are coming.” Chun Si’s father looked towards the shore and began moving the scull from side to side. When he looked in the direction of the original dock, he was horrified to find that the garrison’s campfires had been extinguished. He didn’t know when it had happened, but the garrison had withdrawn sometime during the day.
The pirates were usually located around the various lakes and followed the river’s direct current, but after the Japanese came, they all rushed to the Yangtze River. There had been an army on the dock earlier, but now that the military goods were ready, they had pulled out and headed towards the front line. When the army left, it wasn’t the Japanese who came first. It was the pirates. These pirates killed people without batting an eye, so they would all surely die.
As the ship slid smoothly upstream, the drumbeats suddenly stopped. In the sudden silence, Chun Si’s father breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at his daughter, who also looked pale. He was just about to speak, when the whole ship suddenly shook and the bow dipped into the water. As it rose back up again, Chun Si’s dad jumped up and said, “Not good!”
He had been sailing for many years, and knew from the feeling under his feet that someone else was on board.
He rushed to the bow and saw a half-naked man crouching there in the moonlight. He had big arms, a thick waist, and his pale skin was covered in water. His body temperature seemed extremely high, for the cold river water on his body formed a white mist. This man had chased their boat all the way through the cold river.
Chun Si’s father grabbed the nearby harpoon and leveled it at him, but the man completely ignored the weapon as he stared straight at Chun Si, who was clutching her collar and holding a clam knife.
“I’d like a bowl of hot water to drink.” The half-naked man said suddenly. “I’m a little thirsty.”
<Extra 4.3> <Table of Contents><Extra 4.5>
*****
TN Notes:
(1) I believe their boat is a sampan with a shelter on it (and blankets put up to keep out the cold). Sampans are a relatively flat-bottomed wooden boat like this:
(2) Unit of weight equal to 50 grams (modern) or 1⁄16 of a catty
MereBear's Translation 
thank you for the chapter
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