Chapter Thirteen: The Police

“Sigh... Well, so much for trying to clear my name,” Hong Tao muttered to himself as he watched the teacher with the long braid’s reaction. He knew that all his apologetic words just now had been in vain. Not only did he fail to win the teacher’s forgiveness, but he’d also managed to frighten her instead.

The end of the alley opened onto Yonghegong Avenue, right next to the southern wall of Yonghegong. At this time, the temple was nowhere near the most bustling place of worship in Beijing. It was much like Ditan Park—a walled-off, neglected garden. In fact, its situation was even worse than Ditan’s, which at least had a management office. Here, aside from a few elderly lamas watching over the place to keep it from catching fire, all the other monks had long been sent back to their hometowns to return to lay life after the old customs were abolished.

Yonghegong Avenue itself was nothing like the busy commercial street it would become in later years. Most of the buildings lining the street were just the back walls of residential houses. In these days, living in a house facing the main street was considered the worst. It was noisy—whenever a bus went by, the window glass would rattle, making it hard to sleep early or sleep in late. And at that time, there were no such things as storefront apartments. The planned economy forbade private shops or businesses of any kind.

Throughout the Beixin Bridge and Andingmen areas, the liveliest spots were the intersections at Beixin Bridge and Jiaodaokou, since both had big department stores: Beixin Bridge Department Store and Andingmen Department Store. From where Hong Tao was, both were about the same distance away. One route was to walk south along Yonghegong Avenue; the other was west through Guozijian Street, then south. Out of habit, Hong Tao chose Beixin Bridge Department Store. It was the way everyone in the neighborhood was used to—heading south along the avenue.

There were few cars on the road. Aside from the occasional round-nosed bus, Hong Tao only saw one sedan and two horse-drawn carts on his way. The rest were all bicycles or tricycles. Such was the state of traffic in those days.

“Skoda! That’s a famous brand!” Hong Tao walked slowly, stopping whenever he saw something interesting. Now, he stood at the No. 13 bus stop, staring in a daze at a red-and-white bus that had just pulled in, muttering to himself.

The bus really was a Skoda, but not the German Volkswagen Skoda of later years. This was the Czechoslovakian Skoda. That country no longer exists—it used to be part of the socialist bloc, but split in the 1990s into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. As for how the Skoda brand ended up under Volkswagen, Hong Tao had no idea.

These buses were everywhere in Beijing back then. The ones with white tops and red bottoms were regular buses; those with white tops and blue bottoms, topped by two long poles, were trolleybuses. Hong Tao could remember seeing these round-nosed giants even when he was in middle school; only later were they gradually replaced by boxy, domestically made buses.

Sedans and other cars were rare sights on the streets. The main characters on the roads were Skoda buses, GAZ trucks, Liberation trucks, BJ130s, SH581 three-wheeled vehicles, Changjiang 750 sidecar motorcycles, and of course, the never-ending sea of bicycles and the horse carts that left dung in their wake. If you wanted to see a sedan, you had to go to Chang’an Avenue, Wangfujing, or the compounds of major ministries, where you might see a few parked.

A few, not a whole fleet. According to records from those years, there were only a few tens of thousands of sedans in the entire country. Many cities never saw one at all; in some prefecture-level cities, seeing a sedan on the road was a rare event. Even in the capital, Beijing, sedans were scarce, and the range of models even more so. Most of them were Soviet or Polish: GAZ M20 Pobeda, GAZ 12 ZIM, GAZ M21 Volga, and SHSH760. These cars were about on par with Western cars from the 1950s—no air conditioning, no cassette players. It wasn’t until 1976 that Japanese cars started to appear in China, and it would be a year or two before they could be seen on the streets.

A sudden bang brought Hong Tao’s thoughts back from cars to reality. Across the street, a small crowd had gathered. An old man in ragged clothes was pouring something from a smoking black iron kettle into a tattered sack, with a tin stove by his side. He was a street vendor making popcorn—a relatively high-end snack at the time. For three cents a batch, you could bring your own rice or corn. If you wanted it sweet, you could even bring your own sugar.

The Skoda bus had rumbled away in a cloud of black smoke, leaving Hong Tao alone at the stop. At most stops in those days, unless you were somewhere very busy, there weren’t several bus routes serving the same stop. So, a solitary child waiting under the sign, who didn’t board when a bus arrived, naturally attracted some attention. Among those watching was a man in a white shirt, blue trousers, and a red-collared badge, riding a bicycle.

“Hey there, little one, who brought you out here?” Hong Tao saw him too and wanted to slip away, but there was nowhere to go—the man had already crossed the street and stopped his bike in front of him. He squatted down, smiling as kindly as he could.

“No one brought me. I just came out for a walk,” Hong Tao reminded himself to be polite, to call men “uncle” and women “auntie,” but when he spoke, his words still came out awkward and stiff.

“Out for a walk by yourself? Where are your parents?” The policeman’s smile was fading, his brows knitting together.

“Officer, I live right here in Cangjingguan Alley. The weather’s nice today, so I came out for a stroll. I know my way home, I’m not lost, thank you. I’ll be heading back now!” Hong Tao realized there was no hope of making it to Beixin Bridge Department Store today. Even getting home might be a problem. The policeman was already suspicious—or at least curious. With the work ethic of the time, he wouldn’t let Hong Tao go unless he figured out who he was and who his parents were.

“Then let me walk you home. You show me the way, and I’ll see if you really know where you live!” The policeman forced another smile, trying to sound gentle.

“...You seem pretty busy, sir. How about I go home by myself? If you escort me, my neighbors will think I’ve done something wrong again. I can’t explain to each of them, and once you walk away, I’ll be the bad kid of the alley—the one who had to be taken home by the police. Wouldn’t that be unfair to me?” Hong Tao would never let the policeman walk him home. That would ruin his reputation for good.

“Hey, the kid’s right!” A middle-aged man waiting for the bus chimed in. He’d arrived at the stop around the same time as the policeman and had been listening to their conversation. “Comrade, if you escort him, you’re just making trouble for his parents. He doesn’t look lost. Just ask if he knows his house number and let him go home himself!”

“And if he gets lost, will you take responsibility? What if he snuck out without telling his parents—can you be responsible for that? Wouldn’t you worry if your own child went missing?” The policeman was annoyed and stood up to argue.

“I think the officer’s right,” a middle-aged woman nearby interjected, siding with the policeman. “A child this young shouldn’t be wandering around alone. What if he gets lost? His family would be worried sick. Go home with the officer, little one. He’s not a bad person—he catches bad people.”

“So you’re saying I’m a bad kid, then? If your child was escorted home by a policeman, wouldn’t you be angry? What would your neighbors think of your kid? Easy for you to judge! Officer, I’m going home now. You go about your business!” Hong Tao detested these bystanders who made trouble with a word.

“Hey, whose child are you? How are your parents raising you? Is that any way to talk to adults?” The woman hadn’t expected to be lectured by a child—and when the other people at the stop laughed, she felt embarrassed. She put her hands on her hips, blocking Hong Tao’s path, ready to teach him a lesson for his parents.

“What, are you going to hit me? Go ahead, try it—if you do, I’ll throw myself on the ground and roll around until you have to treat me for the rest of your life! If you block me again, I’ll throw myself against you and hurt myself!” Hong Tao, not even as tall as the woman’s waist, showed no fear. After speaking, he dodged around her and continued toward the alley.

“You... you... Officer, arrest him! This kid can’t be any good—what kind of child talks to adults like that?” Flustered and unable to deal with Hong Tao, the woman turned to the policeman for help.

“Hey, little one... little one... Let me walk with you...” The policeman ignored the woman, hurriedly lifted his bike onto the curb, and jogged after Hong Tao, pushing the bike alongside.

“Well, since you insist, how about this—you’ve got a bike, so give me a ride for a bit. It’s tiring to walk, isn’t it?” Seeing the policeman was determined to stick with him, Hong Tao knew he couldn’t let him see where he lived. Otherwise, no one in the alley would dare mess with him anymore—he’d be untouchable, a pariah. And once his dad found out, he’d be sent back to the daycare for sure. But he couldn’t fight the officer, and running was out of the question. So, gritting his teeth, Hong Tao chose another destination: the school.