Chapter Thirty-Eight: Old Glaze

“Heh heh, this child is quite sensible. Old Jin, I’m sorry about what happened today. This woman is the wife of the General Affairs Director, and she’s notorious in the compound for being unreasonable. Please just bear with it for now. Next time you come to swim, I’ll go with you and keep an eye out. If her sons try to cause trouble again, they won’t dare with me there.” Director Wang’s laughter sounded forced; it seemed he wasn’t entirely free from trouble either, since they were colleagues who saw each other almost daily. Still, his words were polite enough.

“Sigh, I won’t say any more. When you have time, come by my place, bring Xiao Zhou along, and we’ll have a drink together. I’ll be off now!” Uncle Jin was clearly resigned. What should have been a pleasant outing had turned into a messy affair.

After leaving the police station, Uncle Jin walked home with Jin Yue and Hong Tao. Once there, he recounted the day’s events to Hong Tao’s father, which earned Hong Tao another round of criticism. In his father’s eyes, it was wrong no matter what. Hong Tao didn’t care much about being scolded; what upset him was that he’d probably never be able to visit the nearby swimming pool again. Even though Director Wang had said nice things, after all that had happened, how could he shamelessly trouble them again?

Swimming was no longer an option. In the heat of summer, their house had neither air conditioning nor even a fan. Hong Tao could sit quietly, but Jin Yue couldn’t. She kept clamoring to go out and play, insisting that Hong Tao take her. But what could they do for fun?

“I’ll take you to catch inchworms, and we can feed them to the chickens when we get back. Want to go?” Hong Tao thought hard but couldn’t come up with anything better; he could only return to what he knew best.

“Okay… but I’m scared of inchworms…” Jin Yue was afraid of bugs, as most girls are.

“I’m here, I’ll stomp them dead! Don’t be scared!” Hong Tao stamped his foot to show his masculine authority, which made Jin Yue grin and forget her fear.

The bug in question is called a geometer moth caterpillar, commonly known as an inchworm. It’s a pale green, finger-thick, three-centimeter-long grub, most often found on pagoda trees. In Beijing’s neighborhoods, there were usually only three types of trees: pagoda, willow, and poplar. Back then, no one sprayed them, so each tree would teem with its own bugs in summer.

Pagoda trees had inchworms hanging down; willows hosted hard-shelled beetles; poplars bore hairy caterpillars. Of these, the poplar caterpillar was the most hated—adults and children alike avoided them, for if one touched your skin, it would sting and itch terribly. The hard-shelled beetles huddled in clusters on the trunks, disgusting but mostly ignored. Inchworms, however, were different. They’d dangle from silken threads, swaying in midair, easy to brush against if you passed beneath the branches or rode a bicycle by.

They didn’t bite or sting, just arched across your body as they crawled. Girls were terrified, but boys didn’t mind. In fact, boys often caught inchworms and secretly slipped them into girls’ pencil cases, waiting for the inevitable shriek. Hong Tao did this often; sometimes, feeling mischievous, he’d even drop an inchworm down a girl’s collar just to see her burst into tears.

The consequence was usually a trip to the corridor for punishment if the teacher caught you, or a scolding and a few kicks from the girl’s parents. Still, the mischief would soon be forgotten, and next time, the same trick would be played. Children, after all, remember the fun, not the punishment.

Catching dragonflies required a long pole with a dab of sticky substance on the tip. You’d slowly approach a resting dragonfly on a branch, touch its wings, and it would be stuck, unable to move. The sticky stuff was usually made from melted rubber, sometimes from wheat gluten, but in the city, rubber was easier to come by. Old bike inner tubes, rubber bands, gloves—anything would do. Hong Tao had a more advanced supply: the rubber tubing from hospital IV drips, which was made of natural rubber and worked even better when melted down.

Preparing the glue was simple: cut the rubber into pieces, melt them over a fire in a small tin box until liquid, then rinse the box under cold water. The resulting glue was thick and sticky, perfect for applying to the tip of a pole without dripping.

Hong Tao used his fishing rod, but that was only three meters long—not enough to reach the highest branches where the dragonflies rested, out of reach of the crowds below. That was no problem for Hong Tao. He went to his grandmother’s courtyard, found a bamboo pole as thick as a rolling pin, and lashed it to the end of his fishing rod with string. That did the trick.

With their dragonfly-catching gear ready, they couldn’t head out just yet—the sun outside was scorching. Hong Tao didn’t mind getting tanned, but Jin Yue couldn’t afford it. She needed protection! Hong Tao had a solution: he made her a big sun hat. The brim was fashioned from thin wire used to secure the chimney, the fabric from a brightly colored piece of cloth left over from one of his aunt’s dressmaking projects—probably a length of Terylene.

This kind of hat was all the rage in the 1980s. When not in use, you could twist the brim into a figure eight and fold it in half so the whole thing was small enough to fit in a pocket or bag. Let go, and it would spring open like a little umbrella, shading your head from the sun. Of course, the fabric back then didn’t really offer UV protection—there was no reflective coating—so it kept off the sun but not the rays.

Hong Tao’s version was based on those hats, but since he didn’t have flexible steel wire for the brim, his sun hat for Jin Yue was fixed in shape—not collapsible. Still, Jin Yue was delighted; she had a hat unlike anyone else’s, made of pretty patterned cloth. At her age, all that mattered was how pretty the fabric was—no other standards of beauty had formed yet.

Not only did Hong Tao dress up Jin Yue, he changed himself too. He swapped out his white short-sleeved shirt and uniform shorts for a vest and shorts made from his father’s old work clothes—a practical outfit for catching dragonflies, since just carrying that battered bamboo pole was enough to get dirty.

The two children, carrying a five or six meter pole, wandered through the alleyways. Whenever they spotted a dragonfly perched high in the trees, they’d carefully move the sticky-tipped pole toward it. With Hong Tao’s skill, he almost never missed. Catching dragonflies took real technique: you needed sharp eyes to spot them amid the leaves and the right moves—approaching the dragonfly from the side-rear, and slowly. Dragonflies have compound eyes with almost 360-degree vision, except for a blind spot at the side-rear. They’re sensitive to movement, but less so to objects that move slowly or stay still.

If you were particular, you’d keep the dragonflies in a birdcage, but only if someone in the family raised birds—not the case in Hong Tao’s house. The next best thing was a cage made from window screen, which Hong Tao hadn’t had time to make. He used the simplest method: clamping the dragonflies’ heads between his fingers—two per finger, sometimes four as he got older.

Don’t underestimate this technique. Squeeze too hard and you kill the dragonfly; too gently and it twists around to bite you, and dragonflies, small as they are, have sharp jaws—enough to hurt. Plus, you still had to carry the bamboo pole and keep catching more, so anyone who doubts can try and see how many they can hold this way.

Those who’ve done this might ask if the glue would stick all the dragonflies together. It could, but that depended on your glue-making skill. Too runny and it’d get everywhere, sticking to you and the dragonflies; too thick and it wouldn’t hold. The trick was to get the glue just right—sticky enough to catch them, but not so much that it left traces when you removed the dragonfly. It was an art, much like a chef mastering the fire.

Jin Yue could only hold one dragonfly in each hand; anything more and she’d need a free hand for an ice pop, which meant Hong Tao would have to hold the extra dragonfly by its wings between his teeth. Once both their hands were full, they’d return to their grandmother’s. There, they’d tear off the dragonflies’ wings and toss them at the chicken coop door. The two hens would gobble them up in an instant. People were short on fat and oil in those days, and so were the chickens; a few dragonflies were a rare treat, like a holiday feast.

The same method could be used to catch cicadas—called “ji birds” in Beijing, though their scientific name is cicada. There were several kinds; the small ones were called “hot weatherers,” because they always sang at the peak of summer, their calls sounding, if you listened closely, like “hot weather… hot weather…”

Besides catching adult cicadas for fun, their nymphs—called “ji bird monkeys” in Beijing—were also a source of amusement. They looked nothing like the adults, their whole bodies sheathed in a hard shell the color of sesame paste, with claws covered in sharp spines. On summer nights, they’d emerge from the soft earth, climb the nearest tree, and cling to the bark. By morning, they’d break out of their shells and become winged cicadas.

These nymphs were edible, and deep-fried, they were said to be delicious, but Beijingers rarely ate them. Even when everyone was short on food, no one thought of going out to catch cicada nymphs in large numbers. It was like the attitude toward catfish—people clung to a sense of dignity, holding tight to certain intangible things. That was the city’s temperament, and every city had its own unique character.