Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

Chen Dajian sat in the chair in the consultation room, looking at the CT report on the table.

He read the text on the report three times. He recognized every word, but when put together, it sounded like a foreign language.

A mass was found in the middle lobe of the right lung, suggestive of peripheral lung cancer with mediastinal lymph node metastasis.

"It's late stage; the cancer cells have already spread," the doctor said.

"I see," Chen Dajian replied, looking at the doctor with a puzzled expression. He wondered if doctors all learned in medical school to remove their glasses when discussing important issues, or if nearsighted doctors simply removed their glasses to avoid eye contact with patients. The bags under the doctor's eyes exuded an air of unease.

"That's all there is to it?" Chen Dajian asked in a voice he hadn't heard in over fifty years. The voice was hollow, hoarse, and came from his throat, his vocal cords trembling with fear of death.

"Yes, but if we seek aggressive treatment..."

"Please, doctor, just tell me, how much time do I have left?" Chen Dajian raised his voice, hoping the doctor would hear him speak steadily, hoping he could hear himself speak steadily.

The doctor's gaze swept across the table, over the worn marble floor, and out the grimy glass. He lingered there for a long time before finally looking directly into Chen Dajian's eyes. The doctor found a cloth and repeatedly wiped his glasses.

"Current medical technology..."

"Doctor, I don't want to hear anything else." Chen Dajian heard himself let out a short, dry laugh. "Doctor, don't be angry. Everything else is meaningless to me. I just want to know how much longer I can live."

He noticed the doctor was quite uneasy, and at the same time, he heard the sound of water dripping from a faucet into the sink in the distance. It was a new sound. Suddenly, he seemed to have the incredible hearing of a twenty-year-old.

The doctor put on his glasses, picked up a piece of paper as if writing down what he wanted to say, cleared his throat, and said, "Brother, listen to me, if you get active treatment, you'll have about a year left. If you don't get treatment, you might only have three to six months left."

Chen Dajian felt it was better not to use such an intimate tone.

Chen Dajian walked out of Jiaotong University Affiliated Hospital, stepped down the steps and left. The strong summer sun made it hard for him to open his eyes. He stopped, the doctor's words still echoing in his ears.

His pupils slowly contracted, his hands gripped the railing tightly, and he took slow, deep breaths. He listened to the various noises: cars, motorcycles, electric scooters honking, voices, and music. But none of these could drown out the doctor's words: "With aggressive treatment, you have about a year left. Without treatment, it might be three to six months."

He was fifty-four years old and had lived in this city for fifty-four years.

He was familiar with the smells of every season in this city: the pungent scent of sycamore catkins in spring, the sweltering heat of asphalt roads in summer, the caramelized aroma of roasted chestnuts in autumn, and the warm sweetness of roasted sweet potatoes in winter.

Cars shuttled through the streets, and groups of pedestrians came and went on the sidewalk.

Fifty-four years, nearly twenty thousand ordinary days, no different from today, but he had never noticed as much as he did today that the streets were so full of vitality, so joyful, so eager for life.

It's July now. He remembers that day forty-three years ago, also in July, when he first walked into Xinhua Bookstore and bought a copy of "Song of Youth" with his three months' worth of saved pocket money.

He hid the book under his pillow and read it in the bathroom at night under the moonlight. When he read the part about Lin Daojing standing on the train platform, his eyes filled with tears, and he eventually soaked a corner of the page.

At that time, he believed that he would become a writer and that words could change the world.

Pure white was tinged with color, forming Huashan Avenue. Chen Dajian arrived at the bottom of the steps, stopped, looked to the right, then to the left, seemingly unable to decide which direction to take, and then fell into deep thought.

He trembled slightly, as if someone had woken him, and then walked towards the direction of Hujiang Literature and Art Publishing House. His steps were hesitant, his eyes were downcast, his thin body was hunched, and he was wearing a loose black shirt.

Chen Dajian stopped in front of the side door of the hospital's inpatient department and heard familiar voices.

He turned and looked into the courtyard. In the inpatient ward's garden, there was a ginkgo tree, and an elderly man in a hospital gown was sitting on a bench under it, with a young couple standing beside him. The elderly man had a thin blanket draped over his legs and was looking up at the young man, a smile on his face.

Chen Dajian recognized the old man.

Han Baohua, president of Qingniao Publishing House.

The old editor-in-chief who used to sit behind his desk and write annotations on his manuscripts with a red pen. Back then, Han Baohua's hair was still black. He could make thirty-seven annotations in a 30,000-word novella, each one written in tiny, meticulous characters in the narrow margins of the page.

"The ending was too rushed," Han Baohua said, pointing to the manuscript. "Professor Chen, you wrote about intellectuals being sent to the countryside for reform, and you laid so much groundwork beforehand, but then you glossed over the crucial part. Were you unwilling to let them suffer, or unwilling to let the readers suffer?"

Chen Dajian was in his early thirties then, full of youthful vigor, and immediately retorted: "The blank spaces in literature are not omissions."

Han Baohua wasn't angry; she just smiled gently and pushed the manuscript back: "Think about it again."

He's thought about it for many years. Now he's fifty-four, and he still hasn't figured it out.

Chen Dajian also recognized the young man.

That's Han Fei, Han Baohua's son, and the current president of Qingniao Publishing House.

What are they saying?

Chen Dajian stood still, listening intently.

The new model is very successful. Daily turnover is 680,000.

How many words has he written? He's calculated it. Thirty-eight years, six novels, and over two hundred short stories, totaling nearly four million words. The highest royalty he ever received was for a novella published in the magazine *Harvest* in 1996—eighty yuan per thousand words. Eighteen thousand words, that's 1,440 yuan. He treated a few literary friends to a meal at a small restaurant near the alleyway, spending sixty yuan. He deposited the remaining 1,380 yuan into a six-month fixed deposit.

All the words he wrote, those words he painstakingly picked out one by one, those words that covered an entire page of graph paper and then tore up and rewrote, would add up to 680,000 in royalties?

Far from enough.

However, that young man sold 680,000 copies of those low-brow novels that insulted literature in a single day.

Absurd! Shameful!

That young man named Han Fei knows nothing!

Chen Dajian took a breath, savoring the warmth of the summer sun, but then a sharp pain struck, and Chen Dajian staggered back a few steps.

He has fluid buildup in his lungs. Within six months, or perhaps less, inflammation and pus will produce fluid that accumulates in his lungs. I've heard this is the worst-case scenario.

Without treatment, it may take three to six months.

He had to desperately restrain himself from coughing.