Night Reading | Old Locks Hold Long Days

Listening to the rain halfway up the mountain

The Paper

Mu Xin wrote: “The locks of the past were also beautiful, and the keys were exquisite and had a distinctive style. When you locked it, people understood.” When I read this sentence, the first thing that came to my mind was the old brass lock on my grandmother’s door.

The lock wasn’t big; its brass surface was polished smooth by years of hand contact, and a layer of dark green rust covered the edges. The key was tied with hemp rope and hung on an iron nail on the door frame. When Grandma came in, she would take the key, squeeze it in her palm, and then slowly insert it into the keyhole, turning it as if she were turning an old clock.

Click. With a soft sound, the door was pushed open. A thick aroma of cooking wafted from the main room: firewood, sweet potato porridge, and the faint, dry scent of old wood dried in the sun.

When I was a child, I often stayed at my maternal grandmother’s house in a small town in southwestern Shandong during winter and summer vacations. The town was small, with a long street running through it, lined with old houses with gray bricks and tiles on both sides. At the entrance of the alley was a pancake stall, with a griddle on a brick stove, steaming every day.

The woman making pancakes didn’t talk much; she had an old burn scar on her wrist. She scooped a spoonful of batter onto the pan, scraped it gently with a bamboo stick, the batter sizzling, then flipped it over, and a pancake was handed to her. I always told her, “Add more scallions.”

She didn’t answer much, but grabbed a handful of chopped scallions and sprinkled them on the table, the aroma of wheat mixed with the scent of scallions wafting towards us.

People back then weren’t talkative. There were no unnecessary formalities; a casual promise would be remembered and silently awaited to be fulfilled.

Grandma would bring over a bowl of sweet potato porridge, served in that blue-painted enamel mug. The porridge was so thick that a spoon could stand upright in it. “Drink slowly, it’s hot.”

I would blow on it a few times, then sip it, often burning my tongue and pulling it back. Grandma would laugh beside me, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes like ripples spreading across water in the wind.

That’s life—a series of small, ordinary things that bring a sense of peace.

My father worked in a mining area far away at that time, and he rarely came home, only once or twice a year. Because of the distance between us, writing letters became a regular occurrence in our family.

The old post office at the town’s street corner had faded green paint on its wooden sign. Behind the counter, an auntie, wearing sleeves, scribbled her pen on the envelopes. My mother wrote letters carefully, laying the paper flat and writing slowly, stroke by stroke. After finishing, she folded it four times, pressed the creases smooth with her fingernails, moistened the seal with her tongue, and pressed it firmly before dropping it into the mailbox.

I asked her what she was writing. She said, “Tell your dad that everything is fine at home.”

My father’s reply was a thin sheet of paper, written in small but steady handwriting. He talked about the hard, unappetizing steamed buns in the cafeteria, about the sycamore trees outside the window shedding their leaves, and reminded me to wear more clothes in the cold weather. He always ended with the same sentence: “Everything is fine, don’t worry.”

After reading it, my mother carefully folded it and tucked it into an old book. Over the years, the letter has yellowed and curled at the edges, and you can still smell the faint scent of old paper mixed with camphor.

At the edge of the town stands an old train station. The wooden chairs in the waiting room are uncomfortable to sit on, and the walls are covered with timetables. As the train approaches, the ground trembles slightly, and a long, drawn-out whistle drifts slowly from the other side of the open field.

Grandma held my hand as we stood on the platform, the wind lifting the collar of her navy blue cotton-padded coat. People came and went on the platform; some were traveling far away, others were waiting for their loved ones to return. Watching people stand there for so long, I looked up at Grandma and asked, “Don’t they get tired of waiting like this all the time?”

Grandma thought for a moment and said softly: When you have something to think about, you don’t feel tired.

Back then, I didn’t quite understand; I just felt that time passed slowly. The sun moved from the east wall to the west wall, and even the waiting time seemed endlessly long.

Later, the roads in town were paved again and again, and rows of old houses were demolished. The pancake stall at the alley entrance was still there, but a plastic shed was erected, and the stove was replaced with a gas cylinder. The old burn scar on the woman’s wrist had disappeared sometime later. The old post office closed down, and the red “For Rent” signs that had been pasted on the wall were soaked by rain and torn off.

Everything is changing, and everything is changing so fast that before you can even take a look, everything has changed. The old way of living life slowly has been gradually diluted.

But there is no longer a key tied with a rope and hung on an iron nail on the door frame to wait for someone to return.

After Grandma passed away, the old house became empty. I went back once, and when I opened the door, the house was full of dust. The stove was cold, and the large iron pot remained where it was, with a ring of brown limescale around the bottom. The enamel mug still sat on the windowsill, its blue rim almost completely worn away.

I stood in the room for a long time, without crying, but my heart felt empty and heavy.

I often think back to the past. The firewood crackled in the stove, sweet potato porridge bubbled in the pot, and Grandma would hand me a bowl, saying the same thing: “Drink slowly, it’s hot.”

I wish I could turn back time, and slowly finish that bowl of hot porridge.

The smoke from cooking fires still rises at the alley entrance, and the breeze still wafts along the long street. Only the old lock on the door feels slightly cold; no one is waiting for me to return home anymore.