The Zhang Family Log | 001 Zhang Haiyang

Some people from the Zhang family were still out there somewhere.

I wondered if they were still stuck in a hopeless position, walking back and forth in the mountains and the wilderness. They had lived for a long time, but it was as if they had never existed. The whole thing was an unsolved mystery.

I wondered if there were others who had been picked up by someone like me and got to enjoy the beautiful things in life. I still thought it likely that there might be countless wonderful stories like mine that we didn’t know about.

The plan to find people from the Zhang family lasted for a long time. I would intermittently get some responses—including both emails and letters—but I didn’t know whether they were telling the truth, and there was no way for me to tell, either.

For a long time, I felt as if the Zhang family members I personally knew were the only ones in the world.

Zhang Haiyang (1) was the first to come to Wushanju, almost like he was applying for a job interview.

I was a bit uncomfortable, since it made me feel like my distant relative was coming. I had to be polite and appear decent while not knowing what the other person’s intention was. Was he here to borrow money, take refuge, sort out the genealogy, or show his superiority?

Zhang Haiyang wore a simple sweatshirt, looked young, and had a buzz cut. It was rare for people in the Zhang family to have buzz cuts and fierce looks. His eyebrows made him look very aggressive.

I stared at him for a long time and couldn’t shake the feeling that he looked familiar. When I remembered it later, I realized that he looked similar to Hanamichi Sakuragi. (2)

I felt that he wasn’t the kind of person I was good at communicating with.

“I’m here to say goodbye.” Zhang Haiyang drank my Yuqian Longjing tea and looked around at my shop. “So, this is the temple. Not bad, not bad at all. It’s livelier than I expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are rumors that the place where the patriarch lives now is the Zhang family’s temple. I thought the building would look like a church or an old mansion like the Zhang family’s ancient building. I didn’t expect that it was a shop at a tourist attraction.”

“You all know the patriarch lives here?” I was somewhat surprised.

Zhang Haiyang shook his head, “We just heard some things about you sometimes since you did a lot of thrilling things.” With that said, he took out a laptop-sized box from his backpack and put it on the table. “This is a first-meeting gift.” He opened the box and I saw a bunch of property ownership certificates inside. “These are the houses I’ve bought over the years. Now that I’m leaving and don’t have any children or family, these things should belong to the patriarch. You can count how many certificates there are. When the patriarch comes back, I’ll chat with him for a while and then leave.”

My jaw dropped and it took me about three minutes before I calmed down enough to close it. I picked up one of the certificates and found that it was a property in Gubei, Shanghai. I quickly put it back down.

I knew that the glory and wealth of the next half of my life was right in front of me, but I couldn’t take it. I would burn if I had such a vast amount of wealth. (3)

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” I asked him.

“I’m terminally ill and won’t survive the year. But I’ve lived long enough. I want to meet the people of my clan since I hardly get to see them. I also want to see the patriarch. After that, I’ll peacefully accept my death.”

I was stunned yet again. After thinking about it for a while, I asked “Can people in the Zhang family still get terminal illnesses?”

“There are some diseases that people in the Zhang family won’t get, but we’ll still get most of them. People in the Zhang family look healthy because we have a healthy lifestyle,” Zhang Haiyang said. “We sleep a lot.”

“What’s the disease?” I could see that he was telling the truth and felt a little sorry for him.

His expression was a little awkward and he looked at his socks before whispering, “Diabetes.”

“Diabetes. Can people die from diabetes nowadays?” I was shocked again.

“I also have a brain tumor.” Zhang Haiyang patted his head. “It’s terminal. My eyes have been affected by the tumor, so I can’t see clearly now.”

Now I also felt awkward. Didn’t you just say you all have a healthy lifestyle? Why do you have diabetes?

“I love eating sweets too much, especially ice cream,” he explained.

“Oh, it’s inevitable since you’re quite old.” I also looked at my socks and took a deep breath. I didn’t think we could continue talking anymore.

Where’s Fatty at? Is he playing basketball or golf with Poker-face? Poker-face hit the golf ball into the tree last time, and no one could dig it out no matter how hard they tried. Would the people at the golf course even let him in?

“Where were you before you came here?”

“I was in South Korea and Liaodong,” Zhang Haiyang said.

I fell silent. I couldn’t keep the conversation going anymore. Zhang Haiyang looked at me and didn’t come up with any new topics, either.

I looked at the entrance of the shop. If they were playing basketball, I figured it would still take half an hour before they came back. But if they were playing golf, I had no idea when they would be back.

I coughed and decided to adopt my go-to strategy. If the other party didn’t want to talk about common topics, then I would directly ask some soul-searching questions. 

I poured some water for him, changed to a more comfortable sitting position, and asked, “What do people in the Zhang family think about death? You must spend much more time thinking about it than ordinary people, right?”

“You overestimate us. We haven’t lived long enough to seek death. I still want to live like any ordinary person would. But I’m not exactly afraid of death.”

“Oh? How so?”

“We’re like ordinary forty-year-olds. We don’t want to die and can find many benefits to living, but if we really die, we won’t be all that sad about it. It’s almost an ‘Oh, he’s finished his work’ kind of feeling. It just feels like you’ve completed your mission in the world. That’s it. People aren’t so afraid of death.”

Is that so? Then it suddenly dawned on me that he was right.

“This world isn’t so good that I don’t want to leave,” Zhang Haiyang said. “But it’s also not so bad that I want to leave immediately.”

When Poker-face and Fatty came back in the evening, Zhang Haiyang and Poker-face chatted for a long time. I had no idea what two people who weren’t good at talking would even talk about.

Fatty and I looked at the fish they had caught that afternoon. I glanced at the living room, some of my thoughts too hard to express. Fatty asked what was wrong with me.

“Do you think we should buy a blood-glucose meter?” I asked him. “I’ve eaten so much sugar recently that I think my urine smells like fruit.”

“No,” Fatty said. “Your urine smells like fruit because you drink sugar-free cola. The sweeteners in it are completely excreted.”

Really? I silently wondered to myself.

That night, I put my hands on the toilet and hesitated for a long time, wondering if I should taste my urine.

For the first time, I experienced the sadness of getting older.

<The Ice Bucket Challenge><Table of Contents><Extra: Some of Wu Xie’s Thoughts>

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TN Notes:

(1) Haiyang also means “ocean” in Chinese.

(2) Hanamichi Sakuragi is the main protagonist of the Slam Dunk series. He plays as a Power Forward for the Shohoku High School basketball team. Link here. This is what he looks like:

(3) There is a saying in Chinese that people will burn if they are too wealthy. It means that people who are very wealthy will be in great danger because others are envious of them.

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Merebear note: As a type 1 diabetic, I had a VERY good laugh at a Zhang becoming a type 2 diabetic and saying he’s terminally ill. I think he’s just trolling Wu Xie at this point. I also want a mini drama series of Poker-face trying to play mundane sports. First that poor badminton racket and now the golf ball lol.

Translated by: Tiffany X
Edited by: merebear226