Chapter 18

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After entering the city, the two of them followed Liang Yuanxing’s plan exactly: first they bought a packed portion of braised noodles, carried it to the hot-pot restaurant, and ordered their meal there.

Fortunately, their timing was precise. The hot-pot restaurant closed at nine-thirty, and they arrived a little after eight-forty. Then Liang Yuanxing stalled when it came time to order.

Duan Qingshen glanced at the time on his phone, then at Liang Yuanxing, who had been sitting across from him with a furrowed brow and had yet to move. “Come across a character you don’t recognize?”

Liang Yuanxing looked up. One had to admit, Boss Duan’s tongue had grown increasingly vicious as their relationship grew more familiar.

“Just kidding. You’ve been staring at it forever. What are you agonizing over?” Duan Qingshen ordered the lamb skewers, set down his phone, and asked, “How much have you ordered?”

“No.” Liang Yuanxing’s finger hovered indecisively over the ordering tablet. “There are two yogurt desserts, and I want both.”

“Then order both.”

“We won’t be able to finish them.” Liang Yuanxing looked troubled.

“I have a mouth too,” Duan Qingshen said.

“…”

A passing waiter burst out laughing.

The waiter brought over the lamb skewers, then asked whether they wanted the kitchen to heat them up. Liang Yuanxing felt the bag and said no; they were just right as they were.

After dinner, Liang Yuanxing still wanted to split the bill, but Duan Qingshen made it clear that he was covering his food and lodging.

Back at the hotel that night, Liang Yuanxing chewed six digestive tablets under the doctor’s instructions. Since he had eaten far too much, he was also forbidden to take a bath and could only sit there stupidly.

“Play with your phone for a while.” Duan Qingshen opened his laptop and said, “Take your mind off it.”

“I can’t take my mind off it. It has too much of a presence. I feel like three polar bears that have just eaten seals are gestating inside me.”

“…”

Duan Qingshen sighed helplessly. He connected to his phone’s hotspot and opened his email. “If I take my eyes off you for another moment, you’ll be able to scald the owner and the waiters in the hot pot and eat them.”

“Did they reply?” Liang Yuanxing asked.

“They did.”

“What did they say?”

The editor at the geographical magazine was named Jiang Yi, and she had handled Duan Qingshen’s submissions in the past.

The magazine See: Geography published a special issue once every season. Three years earlier, its autumn issue had focused on the northwest, using one of Duan Qingshen’s photographs of the desert at sunset as its cover.

That was when the photograph “Journey to the Northwest” was published; it had actually been taken a year earlier.

During the three years Jiang Yi had been responsible for communicating with Duan Qingshen about the rights to use his photographs, his father had confiscated all his equipment and ordered him to concentrate on his studies. As a medical student, he had no power to resist. The only thing she could do at the time was tell him by email that his work was wonderful.

Liang Yuanxing set down the cushion and walked over. Duan Qingshen opened the email.

Jiang Yi had written:

It has been a long time since we were in touch. I’m very happy to hear that you’ve continued taking photographs.

We’ve been having trouble finding good submissions lately. What have you been photographing recently? Could you send us a few of your works?

“Oh!” Liang Yuanxing was delighted. “They can’t find any good submissions!”

Duan Qingshen laughed. “You sound awfully pleased about that.”

Even so, Duan Qingshen understood that this was an opportunity. He steadied his breathing, thought for a moment, and said, “We need to go take some photographs.”

“We’ll go tomorrow!” Liang Yuanxing’s attention had successfully been diverted.

“Wake-up.” He looked up at his assistant, whose eyes were shining. “Work starts tomorrow.”

“Mm.” Wake-up nodded.

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“Tomorrow we’ll continue west to Alxa Right Banner. We should try to reach the desert before October is over. Any later, and we won’t be able to photograph the Milky Way.”

“Okay!”

Liang Yuanxing was the sort of person who fell asleep whenever sleep happened to find him. He never forced himself, which was the main reason he had chosen to sing in bars rather than teach children to play the piano at an institution.

A bar’s schedule was wonderful. Cleaning did not begin until five in the afternoon. For a while, Liang Yuanxing would wake up, open his eyes, and see that it was six forty in the evening.

The next morning, Liang Yuanxing opened his eyes and saw that it was six forty again.

He found that somewhat unacceptable.

But his boss was already fully dressed.

“So early?” Duan Qingshen asked in astonishment.

“I just…” Liang Yuanxing sat up blankly. “I just woke up. Good morning.”

“Good morning…?” Duan Qingshen asked.

“Moderately good.”

Duan Qingshen had made very little noise after getting up. He was sitting at the hotel desk, looking at something on his computer. It was a standard twin room. Liang Yuanxing looked at the empty bed beside him, then at Duan Qingshen.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking through the magazine’s latest digital issue.”

“Oh.”

“Go wash up. We’ll eat something and then set off.”

“Oh.”

It was not until they had finished breakfast and returned to the hotel parking lot that Liang Yuanxing slowly realized, like asphalt dripping in an experiment:

“Those weren’t soup dumplings at all! They were small steamed buns! Pan-fried buns without the crispy bottoms!”

Duan Qingshen was arranging things in the trunk. He asked, “What are you talk—oh. You mean breakfast.”

When choosing a breakfast place, the two of them had hesitated over whether to try the local food. They certainly wanted to give it a try, but when they saw a shop advertising “soup dumplings, sticky rice rolls, and soy milk,” they decided to go in and relive the taste of home. Their original plan to eat at a small local restaurant was canceled. Their priority now was to take photographs.

“How can they call those soup dumplings!?” Liang Yuanxing was beginning to understand the Italians. He nearly pinched all five fingers together. “What have they done to soup dumplings!?”

Duan Qingshen closed the trunk, handed him his helmet, and smiled. “The kind of soup dumplings you mean are soup-filled dumplings. Shandong’s soup dumplings are made that way too.”

They put on their helmets and set off again.

It was seven twenty. Duan Qingshen planned to reach Alxa Right Banner that day—a journey of more than five hundred kilometers, about seven hours in all—stopping whenever they saw something worth photographing.

Ever since they had entered Inner Mongolia, Liang Yuanxing had been wearing Duan Qingshen’s clothes. The ones he had brought himself simply could not withstand the temperatures and fierce winds of China’s northwest.

He remembered boasting shamelessly to Duan Qingshen on the road from the guesthouse in a small town in Zhejiang to Shandong: “What would you do if you hadn’t met me?” He sighed.

Now the question had become: What would I do if I hadn’t met him?

“Wake-up.” Duan Qingshen’s voice came through the intercom. “The Helan Mountains are on the right.”

National Highway 307 stretched for more than thirteen hundred kilometers, and Liang Yuanxing followed behind him.

The sky had been clear when they set out. Unexpectedly, after only twenty minutes of driving, dark clouds settled directly over the Helan Mountains.

“The Helan Mountains have gone black in the face,” Liang Yuanxing reported honestly.

“Want to get down and take a few shots?” Duan Qingshen asked.

There were no guardrails along this stretch of highway. Beyond it lay the wilderness. Through the gaps between the gravel, the earth showed its withered-yellow undertone, while countless utility poles stood across the ground.

The lane markings on the highway had already faded and flaked away. Beneath the weather-beaten billboards by the roadside grew a row of weeds that looked close to death. Farther away, the land possessed a kind of visual hardness. Beneath the overcast sky it gleamed gray, silently supporting everything that depended on it for survival.

“There are camels!” Liang Yuanxing exclaimed in delight.

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They parked on a rough track beside the highway. Liang Yuanxing removed his helmet, shook his head, and watched Duan Qingshen set up the tripod.

Duan Qingshen looked up. “The locals.”

There were many wild camels in the deserts of Alxa League—single-humped and double-humped—and sometimes they crossed the road together. Hugging his helmet, Liang Yuanxing asked, “What are they chewing?”

“Grass.”

“The grass managed to withstand the desert, but not the camels.”

“…”

Duan Qingshen handed him the camera. “Take a few shots toward the Helan Mountains. Try different shutter speeds and compare the results. I’ll look for a good position.”

“Okay.”

Liang Yuanxing took the camera, walked over to the vehicle, and tossed his helmet onto the back seat. He lowered his head, switched on the camera, and fastened the wrist strap. His windbreaker hissed and rustled in the wind, making an awful racket.

“Hey, why is the screen black?” Liang Yuanxing hurriedly adjusted the settings. “Is it an exposure problem?”

“Take the lens cap off.” Duan Qingshen watched him from nearby. “Give the camera a proper sense of ceremony before starting work.”

“…”

Liang Yuanxing was speechless.

Still, it was true: ever since they had received Editor Jiang Yi’s email in the hotel room the previous day, the nature of the journey had changed. That was why people always said one should never turn a hobby into a job. Once work was over, you would not even know what to do with yourself… There was some truth to it.

Duan Qingshen seemed to see straight through his thoughts. He smiled. “Assistant Liang, start with the lens you have. Afterward, find the 360-millimeter lens and switch to it. I’m climbing onto the roof to take a look.”

Assistant Liang nodded to show that he understood.

Liang Yuanxing turned back to photographing the Helan Mountains. The weather was worsening by the minute. The wind was strong, the dark clouds sinking lower—none of it boded well. Yet it gave the scene a powerful sense of oppression.

Many photographs of great mountains carried that same feeling: the suffocation of nature bearing down upon you, and the solemnity of something silently looking down on all living things. But the distant Helan Mountains were not like that. They were too far away. It might take a twelve-hundred-millimeter lens to make out that they were mountains of stone. At such a distance, they were hardly oppressive.

They looked instead as though they were guarding the land beneath their feet.

Following Duan Qingshen’s instructions, Liang Yuanxing changed the shutter speed and took several photographs. The wind stung his hands painfully, but the results were quite good. When he looked up after finishing, Duan Qingshen had already climbed onto the roof of the Jeep and set up the tripod there.

“I’m done.” Liang Yuanxing looked up and was about to hand him the camera when—

“Wait!” Liang Yuanxing pulled his hand back, camera and all. “There’s a bird!”

Duan Qingshen crouched at the edge of the roof and looked up with him. “That’s an eagle.”

Liang Yuanxing ignored him. Holding up the thirty-five-millimeter lens, he fired off a rapid burst of shots like a Gatling gun.

The eagle glided on outstretched wings, surveying the land for something edible. To human eyes, the place was desolate: sparse vegetation, little water, and dry air.

But the eagle did not see it that way.

There were no high-rises of steel and concrete, no asphalt highways, no chaotic lights. Here, there was food and water, and the sky and earth stretched freely in every direction.

Even though the landscape was already cluttered, Liang Yuanxing’s lens continued to track it. The eagle suddenly dove, bringing the utility poles and billboards into the frame, and Liang Yuanxing kept shooting.

Duan Qingshen, crouching on the roof, smiled at him. “You love photographing birds so much. You should buy a Nikon.”

“That’s an eagle,” Liang Yuanxing said.

The eagle flew too far away to photograph.

Duan Qingshen held out his hand. “Let me see.”

Liang Yuanxing handed him the camera. “Leica—capturing emotion forever!”

“Mm. Canon—come for the pleasure.”

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