He stared blankly at the three bright, spacious rooms before him. Was this really his home? Where had that old, shabby mud-brick house gone?

He tentatively knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

A young woman with messy hair opened the door, wearing a checkered pajama set that looked completely out of place in this mountain village. She asked, “Who are you looking for?”

“Is this the Clark family?”

“There’s no one with the surname Clark here, you’ve got the wrong place!”

With that, the woman slammed the door shut with a “bang,” and the sound of her slippers shuffling away grew fainter and fainter.

Andrew Clark couldn’t make sense of the situation and didn’t act rashly. After thinking it over, he decided it was best to find his second uncle and ask him first.

He turned and went to his second uncle’s house. This was his father’s only brother, who had a wife and child and was doing fairly well. Before leaving for Beijing, Andrew Clark had asked him to look after the old house.

“Second Uncle! Second Uncle!”

As soon as Andrew Clark entered the small courtyard, he started calling out.

A little girl ran out, saw a stranger, got a bit scared, shouted “Mom! Mom!” and ran back inside.

After a moment, a woman came out. When she saw it was Andrew Clark, her face froze for a second, then she forced a smile and said, “Oh! Andy is back! Why didn’t you let us know ahead of time? Now we’re all flustered. Come in, come in, have a seat inside.”

Andrew Clark called out “Second Aunt” and, without standing on ceremony, followed her inside.

The main room was bright, and compared to when he’d last been there, it had a lot more things—a big red lacquered wardrobe stood by the kang, and there was even a color TV.

The woman made him a bowl of sugar water and smiled, “Andy, you’ve been gone four or five years now, right? Oh, your second uncle misses you so much, he talks about you all the time. How are things over there? Are you doing well?”

“I’m doing okay, I’m okay. Where’s Second Uncle?” Andrew Clark had always been distant with her and didn’t want to talk much.

“He’s out working in the fields. Girl, go call your dad back and tell him Andy is home!”

The little girl answered and ran out.

The woman sat with him on the edge of the kang, and for a while, neither of them spoke.

Before long, footsteps sounded in the yard, the door curtain lifted, and a middle-aged man came in.

“Andy, your second uncle missed you so much! You finally remembered to come home!”

As soon as he entered, the man looked like he wanted to throw himself at Andrew Clark, as if he wanted to check him from head to toe to make sure nothing was missing.

“Second Uncle, I’m back now, aren’t I? How have you been these past few years?” Andrew Clark said with a smile.

“Oh, you know, just getting by.” the man replied.

“Don’t be so modest, you’re clearly doing well—you even have a color TV now!” Andrew Clark teased.

But the man looked a bit awkward at that, forced a laugh, and said, “It’s alright, it’s alright!” Then he told his wife, “Go make a couple more dishes, Andy will eat with us tonight!”

“Time really flies, you’ve grown so tall. I remember when I took you to the train station, you were just a half-grown kid!” the man said with emotion.

Andrew Clark laughed too, “Uncle, you’ve gotten a lot older as well!”

The man laughed heartily, pulled over the little girl, and said, “This is your little sister. There’s quite an age gap. Girl, call him big brother.”

The girl shyly called out, “Big brother.”

Andrew Clark took a few pieces of candy from his bag and handed them to her. The girl happily ran out again.

His second uncle had married late and had trouble having children. For more than ten years after getting married, his wife’s belly never showed any sign of pregnancy. Unexpectedly, when he was nearly forty, they finally had a daughter.

“The second year after you left, she was born! You just missed it.” the man said with a smile. “Your second aunt wasn’t happy at first when she saw it was a girl—she wanted a son. I told her, forget it, it took ten years just to have this one, who knows if we’d ever have a boy. Besides, the country’s had policies for a while now—boy or girl, it’s all the same. We don’t do that preferring boys over girls stuff. Whatever you have, you have!”

As they chatted, the woman worked quickly, and before long, a table full of dishes was served.

There was only one meat dish—stir-fried pork slices—the rest were things like cabbage and tofu, but the ingredients were naturally fresh, with a faint earthy aroma.

It had been years since Andrew Clark had eaten this kind of home-cooked meal. He was craving it so much that he wolfed down two big bowls of rice before he finally slowed down.

“Young people really have an appetite. I can’t eat like that anymore,” the man said, finishing his own bowl and then sitting back with his pipe, smiling.

“It’s all thanks to Second Aunt’s good cooking,” Andrew Clark said.

At this point, he finally got to the main issue. “Uncle, what happened to our house?”

The man put down his pipe and said, “Uh… here’s what happened. Last year, the village chief’s son was getting married and didn’t have land to build a new house, so he took a liking to your family’s plot. He talked to me about it—not asking for it for free, he offered money, gave… uh…”

Just as he was about to say the amount, his wife kicked him under the table.

“Uh… he gave two thousand yuan. When I heard that, I thought, well, he’s being sincere, and it’s for a new house. We can’t stand in the way of a good thing, so I made the decision to transfer your family’s homestead to the village chief.”

The man smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I haven’t touched a single cent of that two thousand yuan. I’ve kept it all for you. Hey, go get Andy’s money!”

The woman shot him a look, opened the wardrobe, and dug out a cloth bundle from the very bottom. She unwrapped it layer by layer, revealing a small stack of crisp, new renminbi.

Andrew Clark looked at the stack of money, not sure how to feel.

He wasn’t stupid—if there wasn’t something fishy going on here, he wouldn’t believe it for a second.

In the four years he’d spent struggling in Beijing, he’d experienced more than in all his years in this mountain village—let alone the experience and knowledge from his previous life.