I received a WeChat message today from Li’s account. The sender said she was his younger sister, and that Li had passed away the day before after an illness.
My first reaction was disbelief. I thought it had to be a scam. Had his WeChat account been stolen? Had he lost his phone? I called to confirm, hoping for some ordinary explanation. But there was none. His account had not been hacked, his phone had not been lost. Li was really gone. A cerebral infarction had taken him.
For a long time I could not accept it. A man of forty-two, just like that. Such a strong life, such a bright life, such a warm and approachable person.
I first met Li in my second year after graduating from university. I had joined the Beijing branch of the company where I worked, and Li had arrived there two or three months before me. We became colleagues almost immediately. Both of us were newcomers, and neither of us smoked. But the company had a smoking culture. The men would often call out to one another and go smoke together in groups, talking while they smoked. In truth, the talking mattered more than the cigarettes.
Li and I did not smoke, so we could only tag along and bum cigarettes from others. Because both of us were easygoing, people liked us well enough, and there were plenty of chances to join in. After enough of those free-cigarette gatherings, everyone grew familiar with one another. Li and I, in particular, became close.
Once I knew him better, I discovered that he was a born talker. No matter whom he was chatting with, he could always find a topic. Even if the other person said nothing, Li could go on for two hours by himself without stopping. Because of this, he had friends everywhere, from every walk of life. His network was wide, his ways were many, and his work performance was naturally good. Judged only by the job, Li seemed to handle everything with ease. He could get work done while eating, drinking, joking, and socializing. That was something most people could not learn.
Li’s outgoing nature and love of making friends may have had something to do with his background. Before he started working, he had been a soldier—more precisely, a marine. His feelings for the military stayed with him long after he left the service. He kept close contact with his former comrades, and for him “comrade” did not only mean men from his own unit. It could mean people who enlisted the same year as he did, or even anyone who had ever served. In his eyes, all soldiers were comrades.
When there are many comrades, there are many gatherings. When there are many gatherings, there is naturally more drinking and more talking. Over time he developed the habits of being able to drink, being able to brag, and being able to mix with people easily. Once those habits carried into society, he became the sort of person who could make friends anywhere.
Military life shaped not only his personality, but also his body. Li was covered in muscle. Even his face seemed to be made of muscle—not in flat blocks like other people, but in distinct strips and lines. Yet despite that muscular face, there was nothing fierce about him. He smiled whenever he met people. Together with the visible sense of strength he carried, that smile made people trust him almost without knowing why. Perhaps this was another reason he had so many friends.
Li liked making friends and had many of them, but he was not the kind of person who mixed with everyone without principle. On the contrary, he was a man with clear lines. To friends, he was good from the heart. Toward those he regarded as “enemies,” he had the satisfaction of an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves.
I remember the year I came to Beijing. A new sales director arrived from headquarters, and our Beijing branch did not much like this leader. So, in our minds, everyone had already agreed to make him drink properly at the dinner table. When the sales director came to Beijing for an inspection, Li volunteered to be the first to toast him at the evening banquet.
It was the director’s first time meeting the branch staff, so of course he did not want to lose face. He said we could set the rules, as long as they were fair. Li took four glasses. One bottle of baijiu filled exactly four cups. He first drank two cups himself and said, “You are the leader, so I’ll drink first. The opening toast is three cups. After you finish these two, we’ll open another bottle for the third.”
The sales director managed only two cups before collapsing asleep on the table. After that, the rest of the dinner belonged to us.
We were young then and did not spare our bodies. The Beijing branch was famous among all the branches for being able to drink. On average, every man could put away a bottle of baijiu. The manager was even more formidable; after drinking a jin and a half, he could still drive. If measured only by drinking capacity, Li was not the best. He could drink about one jin at most. His advantage was that he could drink fast. Whether he downed that jin quickly or stretched it over three to five hours, his limit was still about the same. More than that was truly too much.
Li was a man full of strength, the kind of person whose power you could see at a glance. Even so, he was once robbed.
One day he told us he had been mugged. None of us believed him. Li was strong, he knew how to fight at close range, and he had a personality that did not easily yield. Besides, this happened in the capital. It was hard for us to imagine him being robbed.
He said he had been handling something in the southern part of the city when he passed through an empty road. Two young men pointed daggers at him and robbed him. He handed over his wallet. Then, when they relaxed their guard, he snatched it back and ran. The two young men were physically weak and could not catch him at all.
We asked whether he had called the police. He said no. They were young and ignorant, still of school age. There was no need to ruin them over it.
Li’s marriage was unhappy. I witnessed the whole process, from his falling in love to his divorce.
Like all couples before marriage, Li and his wife were happy when they were dating. His wife was highly educated, had a good job, earned well, and was good-looking. We all thought Li had found a fortunate marriage. But after they married, conflicts came one after another. They were all triggered by small household matters, the sort of trivial disputes that seem insignificant at first. But when a husband and wife live together year after year, small frictions accumulate, and eventually they can become physical fights.
Li was often scratched across the face by his wife, leaving visible nail marks. He kept suppressing the urge to fight back. Whenever he felt miserable, he would call us out to drink. After enough alcohol, he would often break down and cry. People nearby were always startled to see such a muscular man sobbing uncontrollably. We did not know how to comfort him.
After crying, he would get past it. Once the wounds on his face healed, Li would return to running among his “friends” and making a living. He always wore that bright smile, the kind that made people feel an inexplicable trust in him. But however sunny he appeared outside, he could not avoid the battles waiting at home.
At one point, when he could bear it no longer, he gave his wife a shoulder throw. He controlled his strength well, and she was not injured. But he was scratched again until his face was a mess. That incident brought an even more serious consequence: his mother-in-law moved in with them to support her daughter. After that, whenever a fight broke out, his mother-in-law was responsible for holding Li around the waist from behind, while his wife specialized in scratching his face.
From then on, Li became more agitated. For a period of time he stopped seeing clients, and his work drifted along. Later he and his wife separated. After that they discussed divorce. Li’s only demand was that their son stay with him, because the child’s grandmother could not bear to be without him. But the child was not yet two years old at the time and could only follow his mother, so custody was awarded to his wife.
Not long after the divorce, Li’s father passed away. At home there were only Li and his mother. He did not want his old mother to remain alone in an empty house, lonely and grieving, so he stayed home to keep her company. His original plan was to return to Beijing for work after half a year, once his mother’s emotions had settled. In the end, that plan was delayed for three years, and he still had not left home.
Of course, many things happened during those years. His family could not do without him, and the work situation in Beijing was also poor because of the industry cycle. So he never made the trip.
Last year, Li often called me. He said he wanted to come out and try again, to struggle for a new start, and to drink properly with the old brothers. I knew that in those years he had probably spent most of his savings. Financially, he might already have been under pressure. With other things at home going badly too, he must have felt deeply troubled.
I told him to come quickly. With the brothers around, starting again would not be so hard. He said yes, yes, of course. But he still did not move. I do not know whether he feared starting over in middle age, or could not bear to leave his mother, or had simply grown used to life back home and no longer dared to change it.
On December 24, 2020, he drank with friends in his hometown. He was happy and had drunk more than enough. He called another former colleague of ours in Beijing and said he missed us very much. He said that after the Spring Festival he would come to Beijing to drink and catch up with us.
Today the terrible news came. On December 30, 2020, Li suffered a sudden cerebral infarction. He was hospitalized, but treatment failed. He passed away yesterday at the age of forty-two.
Li’s death shocked our circle of former colleagues. No one could believe it was real. Several colleagues called me to ask about it. Sadly, it was true, even though none of us wanted to admit it.
Because I had been close to Li, I knew some of the private details of his family life. My feeling is that since the conflicts in his marriage broke out, he had been trapped in unhappiness. Much had been bottled up inside him for a long time, and drinking to drown sorrow became a normal part of life. Long-term emotional anxiety and excessive drinking may both contribute to cerebral infarction.
These words are written in memory of Li, and in that sense they are a kind of eulogy. They are therefore inevitably written more from Li’s side. In describing the conflicts between him and his wife, there may be a bias. But family matters are hard even for an upright official to judge, and outsiders cannot simply decide right and wrong in the disputes between husband and wife. The unhappiness of Li’s marriage was not his misfortune alone; it was the misfortune of both of them.
Life is made of countless accidents. In the vast sea of people, I happened to meet Li. He happened to meet his wife. Countless other accidents eventually led to his accidental departure from this world.
Li is gone. He has truly left us.
I had not seen him for nearly three years, but the Li who remains in my mind is still the same: a strong body, a gentle smile. That is the impression he left on me, and on almost everyone who knew him.
Life is impermanent, full of unpredictable turns. There is no real inevitability. We cannot choose whom we meet, and we cannot choose whom we lose. All we can do is cherish every person we still have.
Li, rest in peace.