The reporter, a young woman with green spectacles, ran up to him with a pen. “Old Cao,” she said, “did you expect this to happen? Has the plane ever taken off successfully before? How much did you spend to make this plane?”

He sat and stared straight ahead into the camera lens as her photographer arrived and stood in the plane’s path, clicking away; it was easier than looking at the crowd. A great wasteland of sorrow was opening up in him, unfolding dozens of tiny shacks, terrible squatters setting up residence, banging their miniature liquor bottles against his chest, a hundred feet trampling his organs. It was the same feeling he’d had as a teen when his father had died, a suicide during a year of bad harvest, and only a dirt mound to mark his grave. He’d failed. He’d failed. He’d have to try again.