… After a long and tearful conversation, the tears being those of his daughter, Fu Ming agreed to go and live with her in the city. The farm was quickly sold, and a van was hired to transport Fu Ming’s possessions.

 

The van arrived on a cold and dreary day. Heavy clouds hung overhead, and on that day a thick damp fog rolled across Fu Ming’s fields. The only thing more somber than the day was Fu Ming’s state of mind. He remained alone in his room while his daughter and son-in-law loaded the last of his belongings into the van. Seeing that they were almost finished, he left the house and wandered about aimlessly in the fog. Twice his daughter called for him, and twice he pretended not to hear her. He wandered further from the house each time she called out to him. The daughter wanted to go and fetch him, but her husband intervened, saying it was important to let her father say goodbye to the land he had cultivated for more than a half-century.

 

Rather than saying goodbye to his land, Fu Ming seemed to be saying goodbye to himself. He traipsed about his fallow fields, seeing little or nothing because of the fog and feeling only the sucking sensation of the mud stuck to his feet. He headed in the direction of the creek. When he came to the wheelhouse, he sat down to rest. There he watched in silence as the waterwheel turned. The wheelhouse had always been a place of peace for Fu Ming. No matter how bad things went on the farm, the creek always ran and the waterwheel always turned. The creek and the wheelhouse seemed to him a model for the whole universe. No matter how bad things got in any one part of the universe, the galaxies still turned, and the celestial business of existence went on uninterrupted. At the wheelhouse, earth, air, water, and fire were always in harmony. The question for him was whether he was still in harmony with anyone or anything. The answer seemed to be no. Feeling that “no” to be final, he decided to put an end to his useless life. That would save his daughter and her husband the trouble of carting his worthless carcass off to a city where he would only be miserable.

 

Seized suddenly by a sense of purpose, he marched to the wheelhouse in the hope of finding a sharp tool. Breaking through the rotting door, he discovered that only dust and cobwebs remained. Someone had taken the tools. He then remembered an old bent butcher knife he’d used years ago to kill chickens. Perhaps that had been left behind. However, a search through all the drawers in the wheelhouse produced no knife. Forlornly, he stood at the window and gazed out at the creek . . . not deep enough to drown a cat, much less a man. With a sigh, he resigned himself to his fate and returned to his house.

 

Approaching the house, he thought of the shotgun he used for shooting rabbits when they invaded his fields. The gun and shells were in a closet in his bedroom. He would use the shotgun to end his life. Arriving back at the house, he noticed that the van had already departed, and his daughter and son-in-law were sitting in their car waiting for him. Fu Ming responded to their gaze by signaling that he had to go into the house to get something. He went straight to his bedroom and opened the closet door. Nothing was left—no clothes, no shoes, no shotgun, and no shells. For a long moment, he stood staring into the void that was the empty space of his closet. When he came out of the house, without acknowledging the concern in his daughter’s eyes, he climbed into the back seat of the car. Without saying a word, he closed his eyes.