A Lonely Soul

Yesterday my wife and I went to Sancha Lake to see the water. Around noon, we parked at the pier, grabbed some snacks, and boarded a free ferry. This boat shuttles residents between the two shores — a straight-line crossing of 1.2 kilometers. Without it, you’d have to drive over ten kilometers along the lakeside road to reach the opposite bank. Though Sancha Lake hasn’t been developed as a tourist attraction, its vast waters draw scattered visitors, so this ferry doubles as a sightseeing boat. I didn’t want to go to the other side — I just wanted to take my wife out onto the middle of the lake to take in the scenery.

Not many people ride the ferry anyway, so it runs on a schedule. Right then, we were the only ones on board. The ferryman had probably gone home for lunch. We sat on the boat eating our snacks. I stood up, leaned against the railing, and tossed meat from a chicken leg into the lake to feed the fish. The marinade from the chicken sank underwater, then floated back up, spreading into a rainbow of iridescent oil slicks on the surface.

That’s when a man leaning on a crutch boarded, limping aboard step by step. His face was youthful — couldn’t have been older than 23. Close-cropped hair, a clean gray long-sleeve shirt, dark blue jeans, shoes caked in mud — they looked like New Balance 504s. He set down a bottle filled with tea on the seat across from us, propped up his crutch, gripped the railing, and sat down, watching us with bored eyes. I sat back down, turned sideways to chat with my wife, didn’t feel like engaging with him, and deliberately didn’t look at him. Maybe ignoring his differences would make him more comfortable.

Since there was no departure schedule posted anywhere, my wife kept asking me whether this boat would actually leave. I assured her: the boat would definitely depart.

That’s when the young man chimed in: “I asked — it won’t leave until 2:30. You can go catch little shrimp on the nearby dam.”

He spoke in an odd accent of Mandarin — didn’t sound like a Sichuan local. He picked up the bottle he’d set down earlier and shook it, proudly showing off his catch. So the murky liquid in that bottle wasn’t cold-brewed tea after all. Naturally, neither my wife nor I had any interest in catching useless little shrimp.

“Are you from Chengdu?” he asked. I nodded, saying we came from Shiling.

“Oh, the Pidu direction — I’ve never been there,” he replied. Actually, Shiling is in Chenghua District, on the northeast side of Chengdu; Pidu is on the northwest. But I didn’t feel like explaining such pointless details.

“There’s a bus on the other side that goes to Jianyang, then you can transfer to Pidu,” he offered warmly. I told him we drove here.

“Then where did you park?” he pressed, perhaps a little too curiously. I casually pointed toward the pier, where a few BMWs and Cadillacs were parked. Actually, my car wasn’t there — it was parked a bit farther away, and it certainly wasn’t that expensive.

I still didn’t feel like chatting with a stranger, but my wife started talking and asked him: “Where did you come from?”

“I rode my adapted disabled scooter here from Shuangliu by myself — about 60 kilometers, took me over two hours.” He seemed to have been waiting for this question, answering in great detail. “A friend actually invited me to Heilongtan, which is closer. But Sancha Lake is bigger, so I came on my own.”

I wasn’t in the mood for life conversations and stayed silent, so this brief chat ended quickly.

A little past two, the ferryman arrived, started the engine, and headed toward the opposite shore. Waves spread outward from both sides of the hull. On the isolated islands, a few anglers sat in silence — perhaps silently cursing the ferry’s roar. The egrets, however, remained unfazed, skimming low over the water, suddenly changing course, plunging their long beaks into the water to snatch a fish, then flying to the shore to enjoy their lunch. In the hazy gray sky, the distant Longquan Mountains were barely visible — but they’ve always stood there.

In the middle of the lake, I told my wife to stop playing Honor of Kings and get up to enjoy the view. She said she would in a moment, but by the time she put her phone down, the boat had already docked.

We didn’t get off. We watched him crutch his way ashore and walk slowly toward the water’s edge. He crouched down, unscrewed that bottle, and lowered it into the lake. Without a doubt, he was releasing all the little shrimp he’d caught back into the water.

“What a pitiful person,” my wife murmured, “traveling so far all alone just to catch shrimp.”

I don’t think he’s pitiful at all. He has food and clothing, and he’s living well. He’s just a bit lonely. That “friend” he mentioned might be another disabled person — or might not exist at all, and certainly didn’t accompany him to Heilongtan. I can understand everything about this person. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to navigate without GPS directly to this winding peninsula pier, or confidently tell my wife the ferry would definitely leave, or have taken photos of this very place a year ago.