Chapter 94: The Stone and the Little Lobster

I would hold your hand every time, and wander these streets together. There are always so many thoughts, so many feelings, yet none of them can be spoken aloud.

You always see straight through me, telling me that men should not be shy, that loving you means learning the rhythm, and even having a little drink.

You say that to love you I must be able to eat spicy food, and ask me to keep you company over crayfish. I grow so hot and red with heat, sweating as if in a downpour.

You tell me to eat more spice, that I need not fear the heat; you are my crayfish, your numbing, fiery flavor tying up my heart. So it turns out loving you is addictive.

You tell me to eat more spice, that I need not fear the heat. You also know I am lying, yet I am willing to do anything to make you happy, even if it means becoming a crayfish myself.

...

With a guitar in hand, penning lyrics and memorizing melodies, Zhang Tan soon wrote out the score and words for Fire-Spiced Crayfish.

This song had originally been sung by Xiao Fei, a star from the talent show Fast Boy. Xiao Fei was something of a remarkable man. He had once come to the capital as a migrant dreamer and entered Fast Boy, only to be eliminated outright. Yet who could have guessed that a few years later he would become one of the judges on that very show. Later he became a director and even founded his own film and television company, now worth hundreds of millions. Truly, he was the model of a life turned around.

Among the many who came out of Fast Boy, this rejected contestant was probably the one whose career proved most successful.

Xiao Fei did not have many musical works. Fire-Spiced Crayfish could be considered one of his few signature pieces.

In truth, the song was not all that widely popular; at most, it enjoyed decent circulation and was especially beloved by food lovers. The reason Zhang Tan remembered it was that he used to enjoy crayfish on Ningguo Road in Hefei City, at the Crayfish Street, where there was a shop offering good food at low prices. For a time, the老板 played Fire-Spiced Crayfish there every day.

As a result, whenever Zhang Tan ate crayfish, this song came to mind.

"You tell me to eat more spice, that I need not fear the heat; you are my crayfish."

So when he saw Hefei Crayfish Festival soliciting a theme song, Zhang Tan immediately thought of this piece. After writing the lyrics, he even tried singing it through once.

The song was decent. As a theme song for a crayfish festival, it should be more than enough.

Still, it somehow felt a little less than perfect.

It lacked the unique flavor of Hefei.

He picked up the manuscript and looked it over again and again, wanting to add something more. But after searching through his memory, he could not find anything that suited the festival better than this song.

There were two places in China especially known for crayfish festivals. One was Hefei City, named by the Fisheries Association as China's Capital of Freshwater Crayfish. The other was Xuyi County, which had invited a great many celebrities to help promote it before eventually being elevated to the level of the China Crayfish Festival. There was also the newer Qianjiang Crayfish Festival.

In the decade to come, crayfish would rise from a humble dish to a nationwide craze, and be transformed from something scarcely worth mentioning into a culinary sensation across the land.

"I often watch the gala for the Xuyi Crayfish Festival," Zhang Tan said with a shake of his head. "They always solicit songs related to the festival, but it seems none about crayfish ever became a real hit."

"The festival theme song should either highlight the crayfish or highlight Hefei... Maybe I should just write another song with more hometown flavor and submit that too."

There is always a song that, once heard, makes one think of a city.

Hefei did not have many musicians, nor many songs about it. But there was one song that almost any native of Hefei would know as soon as it was sung.

"Sanxiaokou, Si Pai Lou, Women's Street, then over to the Changjiang Road intersection."

Zhang Tan did not even need to glance at the lyrics; he could play and sing it from memory at once: "Walk forward or back, a wind from Bao River blows in from the east. Hotpot and big field snails, spending the whole summer eating crayfish."

The melody was gentle, the words intimate and unhurried.

"Say it out loud: I am the singer in the bar, and you are my one and only girlfriend."

"Always at the busiest intersection where people come and go, I will hold your hand tight and never let go."

"But in the sea of people you must stay close to me, for I am afraid you will go and buy a cheap thing at an expensive price again."

That year, Hefei's only local band, Piao, burst onto the scene, and their song The Stones of Hefei rang through every street and alley of the city, reaching the point where everyone knew it. Outsiders might not have been familiar with it, but for Zhang Tan's generation of Hefei natives, it was far too familiar.

Every time he heard it, the details of life in Hefei seemed to rise before his eyes.

Sanxiaokou, Si Pai Lou, Women's Street—those places had been walked back and forth thousands of times, wearing out more than a few pairs of shoes. Hotpot, big field snails, and crayfish; often he would call up three or five friends, sit down at a late-night food stall, order a plate, and drink it in with beer. The taste could not be more satisfying.

"Fire-Spiced Crayfish and The Stones of Hefei—if I send these two songs, it will basically be perfect. No matter which one the organizers choose, both are highly representative. Fire-Spiced Crayfish highlights the festival's selling point, the crayfish itself; The Stones of Hefei emphasizes the festival's geographic identity and helps make a name for Hefei. As for which is better, let the organizers worry about that."

"But The Stones of Hefei needs a little polishing."

Zhang Tan put down the guitar and began scribbling and revising again.

He tinkered in blind speculation until deep into the night.

At last Zhang Tan had worked over both songs, copied them neatly onto manuscript paper ruled with staves, and sealed them into an envelope, ready to mail to the crayfish festival committee.

After licking the envelope shut, he stretched, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

Lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, his thoughts drifted off somewhere else entirely.

"In the letter, I mentioned that I can sing these two songs myself. I wonder if the committee will agree? And if they do, will I have to record them, or perform onstage during the festival? If the performance goes well, will a company sign me to release an album? I have so many songs. If I make an album full of classics, wouldn't I explode in popularity? And if I really became a sensation... ah, I am getting a little excited."

"Sleep, sleep!"

Ever since his rebirth, Zhang Tan had actually been rather poor at planning. Perhaps he simply lacked ambition.

He was always being pushed forward by life rather than taking the lead himself.

If it were anyone else, they would already have written a mountain of songs, mailed them to every major record company, conquered the bosses with raw talent, and made a forceful debut.

But he always took a more easygoing approach, and dressed it up with the noble-sounding phrase, "accumulating strength before striking."

Writing novels was likewise only to earn some money and improve life a little. Now that life was already good, his motivation to keep pounding away at the keyboard had weakened; during the more than a month around the New Year, he had only written twenty thousand words.

If he had not gone to Wuhan and run into such an obnoxious person, spurring himself to determination, he might well have ended up owing the magazine his manuscript.

Songwriting was the same. If not for this wave of opportunity brought by the solicitation for a crayfish festival theme song, he might still be tucked away at home, singing to himself and basking in his own satisfaction.

He had simply happened to catch the timing and then took a step forward.

Lazy.

Still, he was not the sort of person who shirked with hands and feet alike. Once he truly set out to do something, Zhang Tan could be extremely serious and fully absorbed. Especially when he decided something, he would hold to it without wavering. His nightly runs had never been missed except on rainy days, and he had never once been late for morning class. When it was time to wake up, he never dawdled in bed.

In that respect, Zhang Tan could be called disciplined.

His laziness came only in the way he faced life; he was not the kind of person who forced himself to be famous, or to rise above everyone else at any cost. Becoming a hit would certainly be glamorous, but a leisurely life was not bad either. To toil and rush every day, dazzling before others and haggard behind their backs—why suffer for that? Being truly happy oneself was what mattered.

...

The songs were mailed out the very next day.

Because it was an in-city letter, within five days the envelope had reached the desk of the Crayfish Festival committee office. For this theme song, the committee specially invited a somewhat well-known music producer, Liu Yicheng, to serve as the judge. Any lyrics and melodies that were passable would be presented to him for appreciation and evaluation.

At that moment, Liu Yicheng picked up Zhang Tan's two scores.