I Promise to Walk With You for Half of my Life’s Journey - Chapter 35

Early Monday morning of the second week.

Cheng Sutong arrived at the office half an hour earlier than usual. Over the weekend, she had visited the school for the deaf and mute and brought back a gift entrusted to her by Zhou Ming’s daughter, Zhou Xiaoxing.

It was a palm-sized glass jar filled with origami stars. They were multicolored, appearing like a solidified rainbow in the morning light. A hemp rope was tied around the mouth of the jar, and a tag written in crayon read, “Sound Stars for Auntie Cheng.”

When Zhou Ming arrived for work, Cheng Sutong placed the jar on his desk.

“Xiaoxing asked me to give this to you. She said you are too busy with work and cannot hear beautiful sounds anymore, so she folded sounds into stars so that you can see them.”

He picked up the jar, his fingers brushing against the glass surface for a long time without speaking.

“How did she” His voice was a bit hoarse.

“I went to the school for the deaf and mute over the weekend; my teacher, An Chuxin, volunteers there. Xiaoxing was making this in art class, and knowing I worked at your company, she asked me to bring it over.”

Zhou Ming opened the jar and poured out a star. It was pale purple with a unique paper texture that felt slightly bumpy to the touch.

“This paper”

“It is braille paper. Xiaoxing said that purple is the color of church bells. The raised dots on the braille paper represent the vibration rhythm of the bells.”

Zhou Ming stared at the star and suddenly turned toward his locker. After rummaging for a moment, he pulled out a tin box, similar to the one that previously held the “sound sand.”

“Give these to you as well. This is the complete collection of sound specimens Xiaoxing has made over the past few years.”

Cheng Sutong opened the box. Inside were dozens of small sealed bags, each containing different items: dried flower petals, colored grains of sand, tiny shell fragments, and flattened leaves. Every bag was labeled:

“Spring Thunder: Obsidian powder and silver foil fragments”

“Grandmother Spinning the Wheel: Linen fibers and a pinch of cotton”

“First Snow Falling on Eyelashes: Glass microbeads and white sugar”

At the very bottom was a hand-bound booklet with crooked Chinese characters drawn in crayon on the cover: The World I Hear.

Cheng Sutong flipped through the booklet. Inside was Zhou Xiaoxing’s “Sound Diary” from ages five to eight, recorded with drawings and Pinyin. The content read roughly:

“Today it rained. The sound of rain is transparent and feels like silk. Dad says it goes ‘xilili,’ but I cannot write that, so I drew many diagonal lines.”

“Mom cried. The sound of tears is a salty blue, like sprinkling sea salt on a wound. I secretly hid one of her tears and made it into a crystal (it was a salt crystal).”

“The radiator in the classroom is singing. It is orange, and the melody crawls like a caterpillar. I took a rubbing of its wrinkles.”

“These” Cheng Sutong looked up, her eyes stinging.

“She started recording as soon as she could hold a pen.” Zhou Ming leaned against the desk, gazing out the window. “The doctor said her auditory nerves were congenitally defective, but other sensory areas of her brain are exceptionally developed. The way she hears the world is different from ours.”

“I always feel I have let her down. If she had a normal father who did not have to work late at an advertising agency, perhaps I could have spent more time with her”

“Brother Zhou, Xiaoxing does not need a ‘normal’ father. She needs a father who understands how she hears the world. And the fact that you have kept all her sound specimens is the best form of understanding.”

Cheng Sutong picked up the glass jar and the tin box. “Can I borrow these to use in the project?”

“How do you plan to use them?”

“I want everyone to see that while we are anxious about sounds disappearing, some people are preserving the sounds of this world in ways we cannot imagine. They are not disabled; they are whole in a different way.”

Tuesday afternoon, project crisis.

The Creative Director, Director Chen, did not look very pleased when he called Cheng Sutong into his office.

“There has been a change with the public welfare foundation.” He pushed an email toward her. “The twenty thousand dollars in startup funds they originally promised is now being cut in half. The reason is that our proposal is too artistic and not ‘down-to-earth’ enough.”

Cheng Sutong quickly scanned the email. The head of the foundation wrote: “Public welfare projects must first consider the breadth of communication and social influence. Your current proposal is too niche and might be difficult to reach the general public.”

“What do you think?” the Director asked.

Cheng Sutong remained silent for a moment. “They are right.”

The Director raised an eyebrow.

“If we only stay at the level of an art exhibition, it really will only influence a small group of people.” Cheng Sutong put down the email. “But what if we turn the niche into mass participation?”

“Be specific.”

“We will not just do an exhibition; we will do a ‘Sound Exchange Plan.’ Through an online mini-program, users can upload a sound from their lives; it can be any sound. After uploading, they will randomly receive a sound uploaded by someone else, along with a visualization of that sound created by the children at the school for the deaf and mute.”

She spoke faster and faster. “For example, if I upload the sizzling sound of frying an egg for breakfast, I might receive a collage made of eggshell fragments.

If another person uploads the sound of a subway station announcement, they might receive a collage made from used subway tickets. Every exchange is a conversation between the sounds of two strangers, and the children with hearing impairments are the translators of this conversation.”

The Director thought it over. “And then? Is it over after the exchange?”

“No.” Cheng Sutong opened her sketchbook. “We can make physical installations, placing ‘Sound Postboxes’ in various corners of the city. People can record a sound and drop it in, then retrieve a sound sent by someone else along with the corresponding artwork from another postbox. These postboxes themselves will be designed by the children.”

“This way, the barrier to participation is lowered to the minimum; anyone can record a piece of sound. But the experience is profound enough because you receive a unique piece of work from a child translating your sound. The communication chain forms naturally: everyone will want to show off the ‘translation’ they received.”

The Director stared at the sketches in the notebook. “Cheng Sutong, do you have any idea how much work this proposal involves?”

“I know, but it is worth it.”

“I will go talk to the foundation.” The Director stood up. “You go to the school for the deaf and mute and have a meeting with the children and teachers. If they all agree, we will do it.”

For the next three days, Cheng Sutong spent every afternoon at the school for the deaf and mute.

An Chuxin helped make the connection. The art teacher, Su Hang, was a woman in her early thirties, tall and thin, wearing round glasses. She spoke slowly but was very sharp.

“Will the children be willing?” Cheng Sutong asked her biggest concern. “This is equivalent to making their creative process public and facing the sounds of countless strangers.”

Su Hang pushed up her glasses. “It is better to ask them directly.”

She led Cheng Sutong into the art room, where about a dozen children were in class, ranging in age from six to fourteen. Seeing a stranger, they looked up curiously and then continued with their drawings. They were drawing “The Smell of the Wind,” with each person using colors and shapes to express their feelings about the autumn breeze.

Su Hang used sign language to explain the purpose of the visit. The children stopped their pens and looked at each other, and then a girl with pigtails was the first to raise her hand; it was Zhou Xiaoxing.

She gestured in sign language, and Su Hang translated: “Xiaoxing asks: Will the people who upload the sounds know that we made the art?”

Fortunately, Sutong had learned some basics from An Chuxin before. She thought for a moment and replied in sign language: “You can choose to be anonymous, but if you want to be known, we will label the creator’s name and age.”

Xiaoxing’s eyes lit up, and she gestured a long string of signs again.

“She says: Then can I ‘write back’ to the sound? For example, if I hear a laugh, can I draw a smiley face and send it back?”

“Of course you can.” Cheng Sutong knelt down. “You can also write a sentence on the back of the drawing, explaining in your own way why that sound is this color or this shape to you.”

Another boy raised his hand, and Su Hang translated: “What if the uploaded sound is very unpleasant? Like an argument or noise from a construction site?”

Cheng Sutong looked at Su Hang. “How would the children handle this kind of sound?”

Su Hang conveyed the question to the children using sign language. After a moment of silence, a boy about ten years old stood up and walked to the drawing board. He picked up the darkest black pigment, mixed in a bit of silver, and then used a palette knife to make a harsh slash across the paper.

Then, next to that black mark, he drew a small cluster of bright green sprouts.

Su Hang said softly, “He means: Unpleasant sounds are like the earth in winter, cold and hard. But it is precisely because of such a winter that the new sprouts growing in spring are exceptionally precious.”

Cheng Sutong’s nose felt a bit sharp. She remembered the period when her heart disease was at its worst; the alarms of the monitors, the whispers of the doctors, and her own labored breathing were all “unpleasant” sounds.

She said to Su Hang, “Tell them that we want the unpleasant sounds too. The real world has all kinds of sounds, and their translations might allow the uploaders to re-understand the meaning of those sounds.”

The meeting lasted for two hours, and the children raised various questions:

“What if the person does not like the work I made?”

“Can I do more than just painting? I want to use clay, leaves, or collages of old clothes.”

“If the person who uploaded the sound is very sad, can I hide a word of comfort in the artwork?”

Cheng Sutong answered them one by one, and finally, all the children raised their hands in agreement to participate.

As she was leaving, Xiaoxing ran over and tucked a piece of paper into her hand. On it was an ear drawn in crayon, with a tree growing out of the ear and the tree filled with stars.

On the back, it was written in Pinyin: “wo xiang rang suo you ren zhi dao, women ye you wo men de sheng yin.” (I want everyone to know that we have our own voices too.)

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