"Here we are! Get ready to disembark." The captain's low shout pulled me back from my thoughts, twenty years in the past.
My name is Shen La, and the "Shen Yuanchao" I mentioned earlier is my third uncle. That year, for his bravery fighting the Daxing'anling wildfire, he was fast-tracked up three ranks—from a junior squad leader all the way to full company commander. Not long after, he earned another promotion to deputy battalion commander. But that was as far as his career would go. He held that deputy-commander post for over a decade, then at forty-two transferred out of the military to work in the security department of a state-owned enterprise in the Northeast—technically as a deputy director, but really just a section chief.
Uncle Shen married twice. The first time, shortly after he became deputy battalion commander, my grandfather back home arranged a match for him. Despite Uncle's status in the Armed Police, his outlook was old-fashioned: "Marriage is a family matter," Grandpa would say. After just a few formal meetings, the wedding was on.
Six months later, tragedy struck: my aunt was killed when her car plunged off a mountain road—forty-four people on board, none survived. The news devastated my uncle. Though their marriage had been arranged and their acquaintance brief, they were newlyweds. Nobody could make sense of it.
As I grew older, my father and second uncle would still mention her. As my second uncle once put it: "If only Old Third had a harder fate, that girl Xiu-zhi would've had decades more of happiness."
Nearly a year after her death, my spry grandfather began agitating again for Uncle to remarry. Uncle flatly refused: "It's only been a year. I'm not ready." He was worried his comrades would tease him for a quick second marriage.
But Grandpa never gave up. He waited until the anniversary of my aunt's passing, and Uncle took leave to return home and hold the one-year memorial rites. That very day, Grandpa rallied fifty or sixty clan elders and village dignitaries to the family courtyard. As soon as Uncle stepped back from the graveside, they surrounded him like a storm.
From the moral duty of father and son, they shifted to how vital early marriage and childbearing were for building the new socialist countryside. Then they extolled the happily remarried Widow Shen in the east end of the village, whose life had flourished since her second marriage.
Finally, the village chief gave a rousing summation: "Yuanchao, we've all grown up together—once we were bare-bottomed kids running around. Now you're one of us. Take Liu the oil-miller, for example: a few years back someone ordered sixty-six baskets of oil from him. He was single then, no family help, and he couldn't press out that much oil. He lost the deal! A few years later, after he got married and had kids, they came back and ordered the same sixty-six baskets—and he knocked them out in under two weeks!"
The chief delivered this like a seasoned storyteller, quoting rhymes and rhythms he'd learned from a troupe visiting the countryside. Everyone nodded along—except the village accountant, who had once run around Beijing and spoke with a noticeable city accent. He leaned over to the public-security director and whispered, "This guy used to perform those rhyming folk-songs, you know."
The village chief—renowned for his sensitive ears—snapped, "You calling me names?" He grabbed the accountant by the collar and slapped him hard. A scuffle broke out: the security director, the accountant's friend, joined in, and soon a fistfight erupted. The women's affairs director, who was close friends with the chief, leapt onto the security director and scratched his face, drawing blood. In moments, half the clan leaders and village officials were brawling in Grandpa's courtyard.
Grandpa, furious to see his respectable "mobilization meeting" turn into a street brawl, thundered, "Enough! Get the hell out of my yard!" As clan patriarch—the real power in the village—he never had to raise his voice twice. Sheepishly, everyone departed.
After the courtyard cleared, Grandpa sat Uncle down one-on-one. He wiped his eyes and choked out: "Third Son, you're a battalion commander now—when has our Shen family ever had an official that high? If you won't remarry and have children, I'll die with no face to face your grandfather in the afterlife!"
My uncle is the most filial man I know. Hearing that, he bowed his head and agreed to remarry. Grandpa was overjoyed and began wedding preparations at once.
Though this was Uncle's second marriage, his rank as battalion commander commanded immense respect. Word spread through the ten surrounding townships: even matchmakers from afar came bearing gifts, vying to introduce potential brides—so many, in fact, that a lifelong bachelor later lamented, "I'd nearly arranged my own wedding that year, but no matchmaker could be found—the whole county's matchmakers were at the Shen place!"
Thanks to Grandpa's thorough planning, this marriage proceeded smoothly. Grandpa chose the new aunt himself; Uncle strolled through the ceremonies as more of a formality. The wedding day was a grand affair—Grandpa spared no expense, setting off two million firecrackers to celebrate. In the early '90s, two million firecrackers was nothing to sneeze at!
By then I was old enough to remember the new aunt's entrance. She was tall and slender, with a heart-shaped face and two charming dimples. Her big eyes would have rivaled any movie star's.
Not long after the wedding, two pieces of joyous news arrived: First, the military commissar had summoned Uncle and planned to promote him to full battalion commander—and even send him to the Military Academy for advanced training. Then, back home, word came that my new aunt was two months pregnant.
Compared with Uncle, the happiest person was Grandpa. When he learned that my uncle was going to have a child, his grin wouldn't quit. (I was about seven or eight then, and my second uncle had also had a son—or was it a granddaughter?—but Grandpa couldn't have cared less about that.) He even went to Great-Grandpa's grave, offered paper money, and kept muttering about finally having someone to pass the family seal on to.
Two months later, Uncle took leave from the military to take his new wife to the city hospital for her prenatal check-up. When their coach—a rattling long-distance bus that sprinted with the promise of higher pay per trip—pulled into the station, Uncle saw his wife already waiting on the platform.
Then came a sudden "boom" beneath the bus. The vehicle lurched to the right. In panic, the driver slammed on the steering wheel and cursed, "Damn it, hold on—flat tire!" But in his fright he hit the brake instead of the clutch. The out-of-control bus veered toward the platform. His wife, frozen in shock, didn't even have time to jump out of the way. The bus struck her and pinned her against the station wall.
By the time the other passengers–turned-first-responders had hoisted her back onto the bus and it roared toward the hospital, she was still conscious, clutching my uncle's hand and calling his name. Halfway there, her breathing stopped. Her last words were, "Yuanchao—don't go… I'm scared…"
Later, the hospital confirmed she had been carrying a boy. When Grandpa heard that, he spat blood across the floor right there in the hallway.