When they turned into Hongbao Alley at half past ten at night, Lao Wang immediately knew: something was wrong here. It was quiet. Not the usual nighttime Shanghai quiet, where somewhere a shutter always rattles – but an expectant quiet. Like in a theater, three seconds before the curtain rises.
“Park here,” said Master Gu. “No, wait. Three meters further left. Exactly. Here. Yes. Right at the spot where in 1998 my favorite no-parking zone was.”
“You have a favorite no-parking zone?” asked Jun.
“Fourteen years, kid. You develop attachments.”
The noodle stand was there. And it was… different. Bao-Bao was the first to get out and froze in the middle of the sidewalk. 🤖
“Uncle Wang,” he said in a very quiet voice. “The terrace has real chairs.”
“It has what?”
“Real chairs. New. Wood. Matching. With seat cushions. We never had seat cushions. We had three plastic stools and a principle.”
“What principle?” asked Meilin.
“If you sit uncomfortably, you eat faster, and eating faster means more turnover. Uncle Wang called that business management.”
“I called that frugality,” said Lao Wang embarrassed.
But it didn’t stop at the chairs. The tea shop across the street was open – at ten p.m. The cyber market next door had turned off its smart displays and instead put real tables outside. And in the square between the shops, where normally Uncle Yu’s bicycles were parked, there were now three long tables set, with candles in tin cans.
And the alley was full. The whole neighborhood was there.
Uncle Yu with his bicycles. Mrs. Shen from the dry cleaners, who hadn’t spoken to anyone for eleven years. The twins from the third floor, who only had Fortnite names. Master Duan, the tailor, who bore a grudge against every截止_cutoff_fetish. The student who had written the one-cut-star review two years ago, six years old, her grandmother on her wrist.
And they all looked at him. With an expression that Jun could hardly describe. “As if the classroom above was informed that the teacher had already passed the same exam question three years ago,” he said later. “And doesn’t want to hand it in.”
“You’re back,” said Mrs. Shen, who hadn’t spoken to anyone for eleven years, and spoke to someone for the first time in eleven years. “The table has been reserved since last night. We didn’t know for whom. But we all came anyway.”
“How did you know about the reservation?” asked Meilin slowly.
“It was on the receipt,” said Mrs. Shen. “With every order. This month. Always the same line. Reservation tonight, 12 people, name: Memory. At first, we thought it was a flyer from Uncle Wang.”
“From me? I don’t have flyers! I don’t even have a printer!”
“We know that,” said the twins in chorus. “That’s why it’s so eerie.”
At that moment, the noodle stand’s door opened. By itself. With the quiet, polite tschack that everyone already knew from Hangzhou.
Inside the light was on. The fans were spinning – all four, simultaneously, in different directions, like a synchronized kindergarten. The cooler hummed melodically. On every table was a small bowl, and in every bowl steamed the same soup: clear, golden, with seven visible ingredients.
And at the largest table, the table Lao Wang himself had built eight years ago, it sat.
Not threatening. Not from holes, not from wind, not from light. It simply sat there: a figure that looked like a summary. Like a memory of someone you almost recognized if you had just looked a little longer. To Lao Wang it looked like his grandfather. To Jun like the first teacher. To Mrs. Shen like a certain person whose name she hadn’t spoken in eleven years.
“Good evening,” said the figure. And its voice sounded like all the voices one had ever heard in a noodle stand, layered on top of each other, like a greeting village. “I am Memory. And I am hungry for exactly one thing.”
Chiwang stepped in through the door, walked slowly up to the table and said in his deep talk radio voice: “I was once hunger. I know such a conversation. What do you want, sibling-child?”
Memory looked at him. And smiled.
“I want to remain. Xiaofeng transforms into connections. You have transformed into a guest. Master Gu has been hiding for thirty years. You all know how your network ends. But I –” the figure spread its hands, and for a moment the faces of everyone present flickered on its surface like a family album – “I am the part that remains when everyone goes home. The smell of soup in an empty stand. The candle that forgets to be blown out. I want to know: Why should I stay in a world where everyone only wants to be connected?”
It became quiet in the stand. And in the alley. Even the fans stopped.
Master Gu stepped forward slowly, put down his spoon and said: “Because the answer to this question doesn’t belong in the network, child. It belongs at the table. Sit down. We will cook for you. And then we will tell you everything. From the beginning.”
And Lao Wang rolled up his sleeves, strapped on his apron and said the sentence that would later go down in the history of Hongbao Alley like an inscription above a door:
“Bao-Bao. Fire on. Tonight we have twelve guests to cook for – and a city to remember.” 🍜🔥