Chapter Eighteen: Toys of Childhood

Hong Tao was almost certain that this idea had come from Director Bai. She wasn't just subjecting his uncle to inhumane physical punishment, but also tormenting his young heart, making him lose face in front of his own nephew, all in hopes that he would make fewer mistakes in the future. However, Hong Tao doubted that Director Bai’s intentions would be realized. She had underestimated just how thick-skinned his uncle was. This man could snatch popsicles from his little nephew's hand and even trick him out of pocket money, not caring if his nephew’s classmates were watching. How could he possibly be embarrassed about being made to stand as punishment in front of his nephew?

Hong Tao had no interest in pondering whether his uncle felt ashamed or not; his only concern was to occasionally bring him some water or a piece of candy, never allowing even a hint of mockery to show. Over the next few years—at least until he finished middle school—he would be relying on his uncle for support. Offering help in times of need was the most important thing he could do!

After spending the morning at school and returning to his grandmother’s house for lunch, the afternoons finally belonged to Hong Tao. He could nap at home, play in the alley, or wander the main street—so long as he passed his father’s evening quiz, everything would be fine.

It sounded perfect, but reality was not quite so. Sleeping all afternoon was impossible. Playing in the alley was just an empty phrase—the other children were either at daycare or school. From ages two to ten, not one could be seen; any older children wouldn’t want to play with someone his age, and even if they did, Hong Tao would be bored within half an hour.

What did children play with at that time? Forget about computer games—no one, not even Americans, had real home computers yet. Mobile phones were unheard of, and even landlines were rare in ordinary households; if you wanted to make a call, you had to go to a public phone, usually set up in the neighborhood committee office, not a phone booth. As for BMX bikes or rollerblades, those didn’t exist either—not a single one.

As for toys, there were building blocks—the real kind, made from wood and painted in various colors. There was also a wooden duck car that quacked, with a duck’s head at the front, a wooden compartment at the back, four wooden wheels underneath, and a mechanism that, when the wheels turned, moved a striker to beat the base with a series of “quack-quack-quack” sounds.

For boys, owning a toy gun made you the king among your friends. If you had a tin submachine gun with a barrel that could spark (with a flint mechanism that would strike sparks when you pulled the trigger), you were truly top dog. When kids played war games, the ones with the good guns played the heroes; those without had to play the villains who got shot. If kids from that era played a game like Counter-Strike, every single one would choose to be the police—none would want to be the bad guys. That’s just how times were.

Girls, of course, didn’t play with guns. Dolls were their favorite. If they didn’t have a Western-style doll, a rag doll would do. Their games usually involved playing doctor and patient—the child as the doctor, the doll as the patient, and a pen tube as a syringe for giving shots to the doll’s behind.

All these toys cost money to buy, but in larger families, not every child could have one. Besides, these toys never fully satisfied children’s desire for play, so more and more homemade or recycled toys appeared.

The most common was cigarette box flipping. You’d fold cigarette boxes—just the outer packaging—into triangles, then take turns slapping them with your own box, using the air to try to flip your opponent’s over. If you succeeded, you won and got to keep your opponent’s box. This was a form of gambling in disguise.

Not all cigarette boxes were equal, either. The more expensive and high-end the cigarette, the rarer its box, and thus the more valuable to children. A good box could be worth two or more lesser boxes. For example, a “Zhonghua” box costing 1.2 yuan was more precious than a 0.2 yuan “Great Harvest” box, and a 0.5 yuan “Great Harvest” was better liked than a 0.09 yuan “Frugality” brand.

At that time, Beijing had many cigarette brands. The common ones were Daqianmen, Badaling, Beijing brand, Frugality, Great Harvest. The high-end brands were Phoenix and Fireworks, and at the very top were Zhonghua and Hongtashan, which were rarely seen. There was also a kind of plain white cigarette box, typically sold only to factory workers, with no brand on the packaging and only on the cigarette itself, depending on what the factory produced. Hong Tao’s father always smoked these, since his eldest aunt worked at the Beijing Cigarette Factory, giving their family first pick. Her husband smoked a pipe, so all these cigarettes went to Hong Tao’s father at a bargain.

Don’t underestimate those two cartons of internal cigarettes each month. At that time, they were more precious to smokers than food. Though Beijing no longer required ration tickets for cigarettes, a regular smoker’s monthly cigarette money was a significant sum. If a family was struggling, they had to buy the cheapest brands, or even roll their own with loose tobacco and paper.

Besides cigarette boxes, matchboxes could also be used for slapping games, following similar rules, or you could simply fold white paper into blocks and play the same way.

Other toys included popsicle sticks, mosaic tiles, marbles, or poplar leaf stems. Older boys played with slingshots or chain guns. These were all for the boys; girls had even fewer options besides playing house, hopscotch, beanbag toss, skipping elastic bands, and spinning tops.

Hong Tao, of course, had neither the patience nor the will to play these games with much younger children. In games—including those with a gambling aspect—the most addictive thing besides winning or losing was having a worthy opponent, just like in chess: it’s only fun when you meet your match. One-sided slaughters were dull. Hong Tao didn’t think any of these kids could outplay him, and even if they could, he couldn’t stand all the dirt on them, their muddy hands, or the twin lines of snot dangling under their noses.

Did that mean Hong Tao had nothing to do in this era? In truth, he really didn’t have much to play with—especially with a forty-year-old soul trapped in a four-year-old’s body. He couldn’t very well go shirtless, cigarette dangling from his lips, to play cards or mahjong with the adults! By the way, few people played mahjong in Beijing at that time; the special era wasn’t quite over, and mahjong was considered one of the Four Olds. Not many families dared to keep it around.

But Hong Tao wasn’t worried about being bored all afternoon. He had two very important things to take care of. The first was his own appearance—specifically, his clothes. Ever since traveling back in time, he’d been dissatisfied with how he looked. When the weather was mild, it was bearable; at most, his pants were a bit too baggy. But as the weather grew colder and December arrived, he had to wear his padded winter trousers. When Hong Tao saw these in the wardrobe, he nearly wanted to throw himself off a building.

It was a pair of blue padded trousers covered in little red flowers! No waistband—just two straps that went over the shoulders. The style wasn’t the issue; overalls were fine, even a bit retro. But the pattern was simply outrageous. If you want something bright, go for a bold color scheme so at least it makes a statement, or keep it plain and elegant so it doesn’t stand out. But a dark background with little red flowers? How could that be suitable for a boy’s winter trousers?

Hong Tao didn’t blame his parents for preparing him such pants. They weren’t wealthy. Though they had only one child and decent incomes, they had to contribute to his grandparents’ living expenses and send money to his father’s two older brothers. Those two had dropped out of school as teenagers to ease their grandmother’s burden, following a friend of their grandfather up to the Northeast to mine coal. That way, they could support themselves and send a little money back for their grandmother, so their father could stay in school.

Whatever was left went toward Hong Tao’s food and drink—he’d been drinking milk since infancy, so there was an extra expense every month just for that. Add in his father’s cigarettes and his mother’s cleaning supplies, and there really wasn’t much left over at the end of the month. Hong Tao was also growing too fast, shooting up every year. Last year’s clothes—especially pants—were always too short by the next, so buying new ones wasn’t an option. Those padded trousers were probably hand-me-downs from when his aunt was little. Whether or not it was appropriate for a boy to wear girls’ pants never crossed the adults’ minds. As long as there was something to wear, who cared about being picky!

If it were the old Hong Tao, he would probably have just worn them—what did a four-year-old know about beauty? But the current Hong Tao was different. He could accept patched, old, or ill-fitting clothes, but there was no way he’d wear a girl’s floral pattern. So he immediately decided on his first task: altering his clothes!

Altering clothes is a technical job; you can’t just learn it in a couple of days. But Hong Tao could do it. To be precise, in his previous life he’d taken a year-long course in garment cutting and tailoring after failing his college entrance exam. He hadn’t chosen the fashion school out of a love for clothing or the industry, but for a rather base reason: the school was full of female students. However, a little over a year later, his father forced him to go home and study, and the following year he was admitted to his father’s old university, Beijing Institute of Iron and Steel.