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.

Later that night, he and Anning lay in bed under their duvet, which had started life as a white blanket trimmed with pink flowers but had since gone gray with dirt and age. The moonlight spilled in from the window across the floor. Beside him, Anning’s snores vibrated the room. Cao Cao turned on his side and tried to make out her outline. In the darkness it was easier to pretend that neither of them had aged, that it was just the two of them, twenty years old and childless; life had yet to leave its scars on their bodies, they lay as pure and fresh as infants.