On Qingming Festival, I think of my former deskmate, forever frozen at the age of ten. May she rest in peace. Qingming Festival, the night is still chilly; it's time to remember someone. The image of a chubby little girl fills my mind, wearing a bulky yellow cotton-padded coat and a hand-knitted red woolen hat.

Her name, Yue Jing, was as quiet as she was. She and her quietness accompanied me through my incessantly chattering and jumping fourth grade years.

In our elementary school class, the name "Yue Jing" was barely noticeable because she was born with a serious illness. Most of the time, her seat was empty; she only attended school for an average of two or three weeks per semester. During those few weeks, the teachers repeatedly warned us not to joke or play around with her, not to have any physical contact with her, and she didn't participate in any physical education classes or after-school activities. She always sat quietly in her seat, her chubby body wrapped up tightly, making the space she occupied almost appear still and frozen.

We didn't know what illness she had, and she had no friends in her class. On the few days we saw her during the semester, she always sat quietly in her seat, listening attentively in get out of class and watching her classmates play during breaks. No one would approach her or chat with her. I had heard other classmates say that the strange illness caused uncontrollable bleeding at the slightest touch, until death. It sounded like a fabrication, but I never took it to heart again.

Throughout elementary school, I was a real handful. I was a picky eater, thin and pale, and I was always talking in class and getting punished by standing every day. Even my new male homeroom teacher in fourth grade was amazed that a girl could be so mischievous. To reduce the negative impact of my talking in class, the teacher arranged for Yue Jing and me to sit together. As a result, I had a double desk to myself for most of the semester. Although this didn't prevent me from chatting with the students in front and behind me, my left side, which was always conveniently located, was always empty.

The first half of fourth grade passed by in my leisurely life, with me occupying a desk all to myself. One morning, close to New Year's Day, I entered the classroom and saw that the seat to my left was occupied by a large blob of yellow.

I sat down next to Yue Jing, feeling rather uncomfortable, yet unable to suppress my curiosity to observe her. She was much more plump than girls her age, yet she looked pale and frail, a fact amplified by her oversized yellow cotton-padded coat. Students weren't allowed to wear hats in the classroom, but she was an exception; she always wore that hand-knitted red woolen hat that covered her ears.

I became very cautious, afraid of accidentally bumping into her, and I had nothing to say. She was very attentive in class, her eyes almost never leaving the teacher. It was the kind of precious time she cherished, like how I cherished the last few firecrackers in my hand on New Year's Eve.
I had been observing her, and there was a detachment in her calmness that far exceeded our years. She was actually quite pretty, with thick eyebrows and eyelashes, and her features, squeezed by her chubby cheeks, had a just-right dignity. If her cheeks could blush a little, she would really look like a doll in a New Year's painting.

Gradually, I started chatting with her about school stuff, and she would tell me she liked Sailor Moon and Legend of the White Snake stickers. Her voice was sweet but always soft. New Year's Day was just around the corner, and back then, it was common for elementary school students to exchange New Year's cards. For a whole week before New Year's Day, the whole class was busy writing and sending cards, and I was busy too.

During a break between classes, as I rushed back from another group clutching a stack of greeting cards I'd collected, I saw Yue Jing secretly take several blank cards out of her bag. She seemed hesitant and unsure what to do, but in the midst of the chaos, no one noticed her. I returned to my seat and asked her for one. She shyly but very carefully chose what she thought was the prettiest one. The card depicted two rabbits in red scarves looking up at a shooting star in the night sky, with a cozy little wooden house in the background and the words "Happy New Year" written in cursive script on the window. On the back of the card, she carefully wrote two lines: "There is a path to the mountain of books, diligence is the way; the sea of learning is boundless, hard work is the boat." The neat handwriting, the small and restrained lines, were just like her voice.

That afternoon after school, we walked home together for the first time. To be considerate of her health, we walked very slowly. For the first half, I used my special talent—storytelling (at that time, my only outstanding ability was that I read a lot and was good at telling stories). I told her Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince," and she was as delighted as a child eating ice cream for the first time. After I finished, she took the initiative to tell me about her illness. Actually, we weren't going in the same direction. After walking the first part, we came to a large intersection. Her house should have turned right, and I should have continued straight. But to hear her talk about her illness, I insisted on walking home with her.

She said her illness was called hemophilia, a genetic disease, and she had a very severe case. Actually, hemophilia is not considered a fatal disease today, but in western cities in the 1990s, no one understood what genetic defects were, and hospitals did not have advanced treatments.

What she said next was a huge shock to me, who was not yet ten years old at the time: After she was diagnosed with a terminal illness at a young age, her parents tried to have a younger brother, whose condition was even more serious. He had died in the city hospital the previous year at the age of five. Her father believed that her mother was a jinx, that it was because her mother had committed sins that she could not have healthy children. Her father was devastated by her brother's death and went to live alone in a temple in the mountains to practice asceticism, never to care about her and her mother again. Fortunately, I was too young at the time to understand concepts like "feminism," "scumbag," and "shirking responsibility." I simply felt that she and her mother were incredibly pitiful.

When we arrived at her door, we were engrossed in conversation, and she invited me to come up to her house for a while. We climbed to the second floor of a simple tenement building. When her mother opened the door and saw me, she was visibly surprised, probably because she never expected her daughter to bring a friend over. I was equally shocked by her mother's appearance. In my mind, my classmates' and my mothers were all in their thirties, mature and beautiful women with wavy hair and high heels. Shouldn't a primary school student's mother look like that? But the moment the door opened, a frail, aged face appeared. Her broad frame was nothing but skin and bones, her eyes were sunken, her mouth drooped, and almost half of her short, ear-length hair was white. Her mother wiped her hands on her apron and quickly ushered us in. In the middle of the cramped living room stood a tin chimney stove…

That distant afternoon is now only a few scattered fragments in my memory, the clearest of which is her mother happily showing me a photo album, flipping through it page by page, pointing and telling me about Yue Jing's childhood. In every photo, whether she was young or closer to now, she was chubby, sitting or standing quietly. I suddenly said, "She's so chubby." Her mother paused, a hurt look in her eyes. After a few seconds, the woman simply said to me, "She used to be as thin as you, if she hadn't taken hormones." Her tone was helpless, sorrowful, and tinged with envy.
What I really wanted to express was envy. Growing up as a picky eater, I was often beaten for not eating, and I genuinely believed that being a little chubby was what adults liked. I can't go back in time to defend myself, nor can I comfort that grieving mother. I only remember not knowing what to say and quickly saying goodbye. That afternoon, Yue Jing was genuinely happy; her happiness was quiet and understated, simply sitting there watching me and smiling.

Even after New Year's Day, she insisted on coming to school and took the final exams for the first semester of fourth grade, which was probably the longest she had consistently attended all semester. On the day the final exams were over, a group of classmates and I ran to the playground like wild animals released from their cages. I occupied the parallel bars, forgetting everything else on Earth. I hooked my feet on one bar, sat on the other, and leaned back, hanging upside down. In this upside-down world, I saw Yue Jing standing not far away, watching me. She was still wearing that bulky yellow cotton-padded jacket and red woolen hat. She waved to me upside down, then turned and got on her mother's bicycle, gradually disappearing into the distance.

She didn't come back to school a few days later, but her grades were quite good, ranking in the top ten or so out of a class of sixty or seventy students. After the winter break, the second semester began, and unsurprisingly, the seat to my left remained empty until April.

It was an ordinary April day. The morning reading session hadn't even finished when our homeroom teacher was called out. A little while later, the boy on morning duty came in carrying a mop, excitedly announcing, "Yue Jing is dead!" His expression was the same as when he'd announced "AC Milan won" or "Weng Meiling committed suicide." The homeroom teacher immediately followed, silencing our commotion. Before the afternoon even arrived, I had a new deskmate, and Yue Jing seemed to have never existed. However, for the next few days, I surprisingly didn't appear on the blacklist of the sycophantic discipline committee member, and my new deskmate thought I'd become quiet. But it only lasted a few days; after all, my tenth birthday was coming up soon, and I was already thinking about my birthday cake and taking off my sweater for a new shirt.

For many years afterward, I almost never thought of her. Only very occasionally would the image of that little girl in the yellow cotton-padded jacket and red hat waving to me in an upside-down world flash through my mind. Today, on Qingming Festival, that yellow figure lingers for a long time, perhaps because I am getting older and my heart is weary.

I can't help but wonder what you would be like if you were still alive? We might have lost touch a long time ago. Maybe we're on WeChat through a classmate group, but at most we'd exchange polite likes occasionally and send holiday greetings. You'd probably have your own children by now, and maybe your mother is still tirelessly helping you take care of them.

If you're still alive—and just if—then I don't need to guess what kind of life you're living. You just go your way, and I'll go mine. We'll meet eventually anyway. Even if you're forever frozen at ten years old, we'll still meet eventually. Maybe I'll be middle-aged then, maybe I'll be old, but I'll still be able to tell you stories and play quiet games with you.

The mountains are silent, the night is still and the world is empty. I still remember you, until we meet again.

Max.W
2025. 4