The Lead River

Huina Zheng

She reread the news report. A hospital in City A claimed the lead levels were

normal, while one 300 kilometers away in City B diagnosed excessive levels. Nearly

300 kindergarten children had absurdity flowing through their veins. She almost

wanted to believe the official explanation. That the kindergarten had used paint

instead of food coloring to save money. But her instincts as a manuscript conservator

told her otherwise: when the inscription, paper, and ink all appear flawless, it’s

usually a forgery. She opened the Taobao app. Edible food coloring cost 10.58 yuan

for 300 grams; decorative pigment, 20.7 yuan for just 30 grams. Twenty times the

price! This, she thought, was like comparing the fibers of Dunhuang scrolls. She had

to trace each fracture under a microscope, then stitch along the grain with raw silk.

Restoring truth required the same precision. The absurdity was almost too obvious.

One kilogram of paint contained 80 milligrams of lead, yet two sampled pastries each

held over 1,000. That’s like mixing twenty pounds of pigment into a single pound of

flour. As if someone had told the public: the children had devoured paint paste,

mistaking it for dessert. In the cracks hid the absurd “truth.” Perhaps, as online satire

suggested, the poison had been slipped in by foreign forces on the journey from City

A to City B.

She smelled the scorched air from burning stalks. As for the wildfire, the

explanation was this: an old woman set the mountain ablaze, hoping firefighters

would come, drink bottled water, and leave behind plastic bottles she could collect.

She saw it then. In the dusk, the flaming ridge snaked like a river running backward.

Truth twisted in the flames, like a thread in a dream, rewritten again and again.