On Chinese New Year's Eve in 1903, Gao Yi spent it with the corpse.

Old Gao Yi's body was lying on the small bed beside him. In the dim candlelight, dark shadows flickered suspiciously, but now they could not arouse any of his apprehension. Having lived and died twice – if this time is the case today, he looked down on everything that had to do with death. It's normal to live, eat, laugh, hope, be disappointed, be happy, and then die. No matter what kind of death you have, no matter how much preparation you have, when death really comes, it will not actually make you aware of it, it is always so quick and easy, and when you are still turning other thoughts, click and it will be over.

So what is there to fear? As long as you live, keep eating, and keep laughing, what's there to worry about? Anyway, nothing is immortal, from insects and ants, to ignorance to plants and trees, to wisdom to all living beings, to stars that are so huge that they wield infinite energy, and even the entire world, and even death itself, which is destined to become dung, garbage, and nothingness since the day of its birth.

It's fate, it's something that is unpredictable. He went out and suffered a life-and-death struggle in the face of great calamities, but he was still alive; Lao Gao Yi stayed at home, should have enjoyed peace and tranquility, but he was already dead.

He turned his head, and under the flickering candlelight, Old Gao Yi's skin-covered old face looked even more sunken. He stared at the face, this was his only friend on this plane, his former guide, his original protector, William Cowie, a Scottish addict who had been decent, wealthy, had a family, and finally lost his family, his wealth, his social status.

It's hard to believe that this old friend, who had been talking to him in the morning and joked about other things, had come to his own end. It's too easy, it's as light as a feather, and no one can leave any ripples in this world with all your might; It was so fast, so fast that he didn't have time to repay what he had received.

Gao Yi occasionally wonders, what would have happened if he hadn't met Old Gao Yi? Death may not be, but it's impossible to get through the first few months of this plane with ease.

He can really be said to have come to this world naked, not to mention the clothes on his body and the gold watch on his wrist, he is even more red than a newborn baby. The baby still has a few fetal hairs, but even his eyelashes disappeared in the process of crossing. The worst thing is that his body has lost almost all of its fat, and his teeth are so cold that he can't say anything in Mayday, and his image is also very terrifying, and his skin is directly wrapped around his muscles, which looks like a physical specimen used to explain muscles in a human anatomy class.

You can imagine what he looked like at that time, a tall man of 1.93 meters with a bare head, no hair on his body, distended veins and blood vessels coiled all over the surface of his body, his complexion was pale, and his body kept swinging, like a large groom.

So Gao Yi has always been very glad that the first person he met was this addict who lived between reality and illusion all year round, not just a Pudong hillbilly who had never seen the world.

Although it was winter, and although it was snowing outside, nothing could stop the microbes from doing their productive work, and the organic matter in the intestines, as well as the protein-rich internal organs, had taken the lead in sending out their scents along their respective pores. These smells, along with those inherent in the enduring addicts in the room, synthesized into a peculiar sweet and greasy putrid smell that gradually filled Gao Yi's entire nasal cavity, trachea, and lungs.

The sage time caused by a violent concussion, although much longer than the other way, cannot last forever. Gao Yi ended his meditative state and struggled to get up from the bed. His calf bone was already swollen with a ping-pong ball-high piece, but at most it was a cracked bone, otherwise he would not have been able to stand up; As for the one on the top of the head, probably because of the broken skin, it was not so swollen; The other shoulders, on the necks, on the most horrible arms, hurt everywhere, pinpricks, hot, cut-through, heart-to-heart, like a concentration camp of pain.

He shifted his steps, bypassed the small bed where old Gao Yi was lying, and walked to the window and opened it. A bitter smell of snow mixed with fresh cold air rushed in, blowing the two candles on the bedside partition and swaying.

Outside the window, the snow has not stopped, the moon is like a hook, and it is already the early morning of the third day of December in the 28th year of Guangxu.

Gao Yi had never seen the moon around New Year's Day in his memory, let alone the moonlight in the snow. I saw that the heavy snow was still blowing, but the night sky had been clear, and a crescent moon hung clearly in the western sky, such as Wu hook, such as a longbow, such as an eyebrow, such as a shallow smile, like a gossamer, but swayed out of endless clear light, so that no matter how dense the snowflakes could not be blocked, the moon paved the ground, the snow reflected the glow, and added brilliance, so that the original not very bright crescent moon, like water, shone into the window, flowing on the head of the bed, with this light to identify things, although it is unbearable, but there is still afterglow.

A gust of wind swept the snow into the window lattice, turning over the diary on the camphor box under the window. This Chinese-style camphor box was used by Gao Yi as a desk, and it always contained a diary, writing instruments, and a smoking gun and a cigarette lamp. A rocking chair is placed next to the camphor wood box, which is the only luxury item of Lao Gaoyi. Every afternoon, he would enjoy his after-dinner leisure time in this rocking chair, with all his beloved things at his fingertips. Today, or more accurately yesterday, he passed away from this chair with a peaceful look, at least for Gao Yi, which can be regarded as a comforting thing.

The two photos were lifted out of the diary by the wind, and Gao Yi caught up with them with difficulty, and then returned to the window with the same difficulty, he gasped for breath, and slowly lay down on the rocking chair in pain.

The photo is a few years old, and in one photo, the old Gao Yi is sitting on his lap, next to a woman holding a baby in her arms. The other is a bust of this woman, dressed in Chinese style, holding a fan in her hand, with a slight sideways, I don't know if it is a problem with the photographer's technique, or if the nose of the portrait is too flat, the whole face looks blurred, and the impressive only a pair of eyes, which are very separated, which shows that the foreigners' aesthetics of oriental women have not changed much even after a hundred years.

Gao Yi flipped the photo over, and the back of the family photo was marked with the words "Nov.20, 1887", which should have been taken when the baby was one year old. The opposite side of the half body is simply written "May", which should not be the shooting date, but the homonym of the Chinese name of Lao Gao Yi's wife. Lao Gao Yi called his wife "Mei", but it is not clear whether it is really the word "Mei", it may also be "Mei", but the word "beauty" is unlikely. His wife is Cantonese, and the pronunciation of "Mei" and "Mei" in Cantonese is different. When Lao Gao Yi mentions his wife's name, the pronunciation always has the rhyme of ui, not pure may.

These two photos are the first time Gao Yi has seen them. Regarding this happiest time in his life, Lao Gao Yi rarely mentions it in his usual chats. It was only through a few occasional conversations that Gao Yi learned that Mei and his son had both died in 1894 from the famous outbreak of plague in Guangdong. At that time, there were nine funerals in ten rooms in Guangzhou City, and 100,000 coffins were sold within half a year. After the epidemic spread to Hong Kong, 86 kilometers away, the plague bacillus, which had plagued mankind for hundreds of years, was finally isolated from the lymph glands of the deceased for the first time.

Gao Yi picked up the diary on the lid of the box and prepared to clinch the photo back in, but found that it was a diary he had never seen before.

He had read a few passages in his diary before, usually in smoky babbles, such as "As the creative state of the eye grows, a sympathetic force seems to arise at a certain point between the waking state and the sleeping state of the brain, so that whatever I summon or depict into the darkness, it will be transferred to my sleep", "In the center of the darkness, the mental image builds the city and the universe, and its exquisite art surpasses that of Fitias and Prakhitli, more magnificently than Babylon and Sicatopilos", or "The beauties who have been buried in the ground for a long time, after washing the tomb of impurity, are called back to broad daylight, and only you can give all these gifts to people, and you alone hold the keys to heaven", and so on.

However, in this diary, on the page that was blown away by the wind, it was soberly written:

"There were other people around, all lying on the mats, and I couldn't tell how many there were, because the hall was almost dark. But knowing that there were like-minded people next door who were immersed in the fluttering drunkenness at the same time filled my soul with the pleasure of fraternity and the security of emotions. This is my new homeland, my new religion. The strong and pleasant connection, close to the human distance, I feel more at home with these Asian brothers who smoke on Fuzhou Road than in Edinburgh, where I was born, or in decadent cities like London or Paris. ”

The date is Fri Jun, a Friday in June. Gao Yi flipped a few more pages forward, and finally found the year on a page of a similar business summary, which was 1867. At that time, Gao Yi should have just turned 20 years old.

When he was young, Gao Yi was one of many Scottish employees at the Jiang Customs (Shanghai Customs). Under the rule of Robert Hurd, the Qing Customs adopted a global recruitment system, and it was through the public selection examination of the customs office in London that he came to the Far East.

Gao Yi flipped through the diary casually, and a brand new old Gao Yi who was unknown to him gradually jumped onto the paper.

He had always subjectively believed that Lao Gaoyi only became addicted to smoking after losing his wife and children, and his addiction caused him to fail in his career and isolate himself from the mainstream class in which he was originally located, so that he fell to the bottom of society.

But according to this diary, Lao Gao Yi was in fact a hopeless addict since his youth, a natural philanthropist who transcended class, nationality, and race, and was by nature self-destructive and anti-social. The break with his own class was entirely a spontaneous choice.

After serving in the Jiangxi Customs for five years and accumulating a lot of wealth, he first went north to Tianjin to participate in the trading of mining machinery and railway machinery, and then he independently ran a feather and fur business. He did a good job in this, expanding his business to Hankou and Harbin, and gradually began to own some real estate such as wharves and warehouses.

However, his aggressive life came to an abrupt end, and the negative part of his nature prevailed. At the age of thirty-five, in 1882, he had already ended all business in the north and moved to Guangzhou, where he lived a life of solitude. After another three years, after marrying Mei, who was born in the Nursery, he almost completely broke off the relationship with his original circle and became a hermit through and through, until bad luck kept hitting and forced him to return to society and start anew.

A small diary condenses most of a person's life. Gao Yi was reading the diary until dawn, but it made him forget the pain in his body for a while.