It had only been half a month since the previous post, Across Half of China: A Different New Year Spent at the Edge of the Desert, was published, and I was back in Gansu again. Only this time, it was more rushed than any other, and heavier than any other.
That Phone Call in the Early Morning
That morning, a little past five, I got up to use the bathroom and saw a missed call on my phone from the kids’ uncle (my wife’s brother), who had started calling just after five. He was calling via WeChat. My WeChat was on silent — but if someone calls three times in a row by phone, you can hear it; because he called via WeChat, I didn’t. My heart tightened. I knew something very urgent must have happened.
I called back. My brother-in-law’s voice was hoarse and urgent: Mom had a cerebral hemorrhage, the hospital needs a family member to sign, and they said that even if she’s revived she may end up in a vegetative state. He said, hurry and let my sister take the call.
I stood there frozen. How could this be?
When I went back for the New Year, I knew my mother-in-law had severe anemia — her platelets, hemoglobin, and other blood counts were all far below normal. She said her legs hurt and she walked with a limp. My brother-in-law had already taken her to the Wuwei hospital before the New Year and arranged for her to be admitted on the seventh day of the New Year for a blood transfusion. He stayed at the hospital caring for her for over a week. My wife and I, because of the kids, couldn’t manage, so we headed back to Hangzhou first. But after coming back, we called and video-chatted every day. From the video, my mother-in-law’s complexion looked much better than before she was admitted, her vigor had returned, and she herself said she felt much better than before.
But who could have imagined — we’d only just finished a phone call the night before, and by morning we got news like this.
We immediately started packing and took a taxi to the West Railway Station. In the rush we bought plane tickets, and it turned out my wife had somehow missed her own ticket — so we hurried to buy one on another platform at a higher price. We were still on the subway to Xiaoshan Airport when my phone rang. It was my brother-in-law saying the hospital had already put her on a ventilator, and then: No need to go to the hospital. Just go straight home.
My mother-in-law had just left us, that suddenly.
My wife cried like a fountain. I didn’t know what to say — I could only hold her and gently pat her back. Facing something like this, no one has any answer. I just felt that, from a certain angle, becoming a vegetative state and just leaving directly — maybe the latter is kinder to the patient. Otherwise the ones left behind suffer, and the one who fell ill is living a fate worse than death.
Setting Foot on This Land a Second Time
This was my second trip to Wuwei, Gansu this year.
The first was for Spring Festival; we stayed there a few days. It was also the longest I’d ever stayed there, and my first time spending the New Year in the northwest.
Who would have thought that the second time I came back, it would be for a funeral.
There’s one thing I still can’t let go of.
On the morning of the sixth day, the day we left Wuwei for Lanzhou, my brother-in-law suggested going to the county town to take a family photo. It was the first proper full family portrait our big family had ever taken — my mother-in-law was wearing a new red outfit.
Little did we know, that would be the last family photo.
That photo is still sitting in my phone’s album. Back then, who could have known it would be the final group picture?
Wuwei is a place close to two great deserts, the Tengger and the Badain Jaran, and it’s arid and short of water all year round. Every time we came back, even taking a shower was inconvenient, and the drinking water was hard to swallow — I always went to the supermarket to buy bottled water. The locals mainly live by growing wheat, corn, and pepino melons, and their diet is astonishingly monotonous: dry, hard steamed buns for breakfast, noodles at noon, and still noodles at night. There are very few vegetables; the meat is mostly beef and mutton, and I’ve hardly ever seen them eat fish.
The doctor said my mother-in-law’s anemia was caused by malnutrition and sicca syndrome. Looking at this land, I suddenly realized that this might be the fate of many people here.
Houses Stamped with a Mark
During these days in the village, I noticed many houses had a blue stamp on their door — “Long-term vacant.”
I asked around and learned it was stamped by the government to indicate that this household had long stopped living there and the house was sitting idle. I counted: at least half the houses in the hamlet bore this stamp.
Most of these houses are empty. Young people have basically all gone out to work — to Lanzhou, Xi’an, Xinjiang, some even farther. Many of them probably will never come back.
This land raised them, but it couldn’t keep them.
These Past Days
These past days have been busy. Relatives on my wife’s side all pitched in to help arrange the funeral, and I was driving the whole time — buying this and that, receiving the friends and relatives who came to pay their respects.
Some Scattered Thoughts
Actually, what I admire most is my mother-in-law as a person.
My wife’s family wasn’t well off. My father-in-law was in poor health in his early years, so the household was basically held up by my mother-in-law alone. With no one to rely on, she just gritted her teeth and, by sheer tenacity, put both of her children through university. In the rural northwest back then, that was no easy thing — many girls dropped out before finishing middle school, let alone sending two kids to university.
She was barely literate, yet she understood deeply the importance of education. My wife says that from childhood to adulthood, the thing her mother repeated most was “study hard and get out.” She herself never left that yellow earth her whole life, but her children did.
I think of a line often seen online: In this life, we are always saying goodbye.
When you’re young you don’t feel it; you always think there’s still plenty of time. But as you grow older and the people around you begin to leave one by one, you understand the weight of that line. My mother-in-law was just past sixty this year — by today’s standards, not really old. But illness doesn’t reason, and death won’t wait for you to be ready.
Actually, every middle-aged person knows it in their heart — the adult world is never easy. Work, kids, mortgage, life — each one is pulling at you. All we can do is, within our limited means, make a few more phone calls and send a few more messages.
As for the rest, leave it to fate.
In Closing
This piece was written on and off; many things were on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t know how to put them.
I didn’t spend that much time with my mother-in-law — mainly because I couldn’t really understand the local dialect. But I could feel that she loved her children very much; every New Year she’d send us a lot of mutton. Sadly, from now on my wife will never again receive mutton her mother sent. Scenes of parting by life and death like this are probably a required course for every middle-aged person.
She never enjoyed much in this life, yet she paved a way out for her two children.
That family photo, I’ll keep it well. It’s the fullest smile she left us.
These scattered memories have now all turned into longing.
The dead are gone. All the living can do is live well, and live on her share too.
After returning to Hangzhou, life goes on. Work, kids, the daily trivia — none of it will be less. But I know some things are different now. Just like this yellow earth — it looks just as dry and barren, but there are always some roots, rooted very deep.
May the departed rest in peace, and may the living take care.
March 9, 2026
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