One Day in New Bund | Sanmingzhi Short Story

by Sunny

Sunny was convinced that her father Ziho did not know how to sm ile.

In her ch ildhood memory, Ziho always wore a poker face, a black Sony Walkman clipped to his waist, and earphones draped over his neck. The same tape played on repeat, its English words standing out: abandon, abolish, abhor.  Now, he was playing a talk show with a smartphone.  He smiled occasionally, but only when he was staring at his grandson.

Every Friday evening after work, Sunny's husband would take his car and drive to his in-law's place to pick up his son and wife. As Sunny needed to breastfeed her son at noon and take care of the baby with the help of her parents in the evening, the husband and wife did not live together on weekday evenings. For the weekend, Sunny would take Luneur back to the apartment rented by her husband's company. Luneur, now six months old, could already smile interactively, his gaze following the speaker with a soft curiosity.

Qing and Ziho always dressed their grandchild tightly, so much so that even moisture would rise from the little one once outside. Winters in Shanghai were no warmer than those in the northern part of China, theirhometown. After putting the baby into his clothes, Qingwould sit down in the bedroom, sweating and coughing. Qing always needed a moment to catch her breath. That’s when Ziho would take over, carrying Luneurdownstairs with an elevator. He’d secure him in the car seat and close the door. The handoff would be complete when Sunny and Ziho waved goodbye to each other.

That evening, Sunny hadn’t exchanged a single word with Ziho. She didn’t know how to speak up. She feared Ziho’sresponse. Her husband, noticing her unusual silence, asked, “Why didn’t you say goodbye to your father today?”

When Sunny didn’t respond, he continued, “When your dad looks at Luneur, there’s something different in his eyes—like a special gentleness, a rare patience. Sometimes, I think he’s looking at a younger version of you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sunny said. “You didn’t even know me as a kid. How could you tell?”

“You can ask your mom next time. I’m pretty sure of what my gut feeling tells me,” He said.

Sunny couldn’t help but laugh. “Gut feeling? Since when do you have it? Don’t you always claim only women have strong intuition?”

-

Qing disagreed with her daughter. Ziho smiled gently when they first met. He was in his twenties then. He learned English from scratch every day through radio programs. Later, he used the salary of half a year to buy a walkman, a black one, with a silver framework. Wearing a black jacket, Ziho stood still, leaning over the railings of a bridge, waiting for Qing, who lived in a villa near the railway station. It was one of the transport hubs for the entire northern China.

Qing always wore her hair in two neat braids, with not a single stray strand falling over her shoulders. Ziho watched as her hair grew long. At the end of 1987, her braid was long enough to reach her waist. After seeing each other for half a year, Ziho said, “Our unit has apartments for young professionals. But only the married ones could apply.” Ziho said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “So, what do you think about it?”

“About what?” Qing asked.

“Shall we choose a good date and get a certificate?”

Ziho never once mentioned love, and Qing never got the chance to say, “I will”.

Did Ziho love Qing? That is a question buried in Qing’s heart for more than thirty years. After all, he had been loyal to her. That, for her, would be good enough. After their daughter was born, Ziho did not look down on either Qing or Sunny because Sunny was a girl.  That, Qing thought, should be good enough for Sunny.

Their first family apartment was on the second floor, thirty steps up from the ground. Two stories above lived Sunny’s best friend. Her neighbor’s daughter was a tough figure, studying at the same primary school as Sunny. Shouting often came from their rooms. Next door lived an elderly woman. Sunny called her “Nainai”. She took care of Sunny once in a while when both Qing and Ziho were away on business trips. When Nainai collapsed from sudden cardiac arrest, Ziho called the neighbor and acted swiftly, saving her life by promptly calling for an ambulance and ensuring she received immediate medical attention at midnight.

When Sunny was in primary school, Ziho taught her how to ride a bicycle. On winter nights after school, Ziho would leave her alone in the middle of a street, at a crossroads. Sunny would cry aloud as she pedaled fast, her tears mixing with the cold wind. Every time she returned home, she would complain to Qing about her father’s indifference.

“There will be a time when she needs to face difficulties on her own. You cannot protect her all her life.

Now, Ziho was doing the same thing to Luneur. “Crawl forward, good job! Crawl forward. Don’t cry!”

“Poor boy,” Sunny murmured, waving her son goodbye and closing the bedroom door. “At least the firepower is spread out now–it is not all directed at me anymore.”

That Friday morning, Sunny took off her phone and scanned the QR code of a shared bike. The blue one was her favorite. The proportion between the handlebars and the seat was just right for her.

She took a route different from the one she used to take to the office in the New Bund, Pudong District of Shanghai. The New Bund is a place of intersections. Taikooli and Freshippo are the most touristy shopping destinations.  Other Stores have been open for less than a year. Restaurants and Cafés kept popping up. One single cup of coffee and a small piece of cake can take 100 yuan, which used to be the monthly salary of Ziho or Qing in the 1990s.

The Chinese name for this area is “Qian Tan”, the opposite of “Hou Tan.” The direct translation would be “Front Bund”, not “New Bund”. The choice of the English name reflects the ambitions of its developers and the local government. Shanghai has long been called a “Bund.” Here will be a newer Shanghai. Twenty minutes later, Sunny reached her office. She scanned the QR code to lock a shared bike.

She saw the advertisements on the bike seat, promoting things like obtaining housing funds, borrowing money, or even ordering sexual services. The white stamps are printed with indelible ink, making the words remain visible.

"That's actually a cunning idea," Sunny thought to herself. “Advertisements on sticky paper get washed away by rain, but it's hard to overlook something on a bike seat."

Sunny pulled out her earphones and walked onto the stone steps to cross the lawn. "You can’t walk through here," a security guard stopped her. "This is the exit for the carousel park."

Louis Vuitton has set up a carousel right across from Tiffany, taking over an entire stretch of lawn. The children, accompanied by their parents, lined up to ride the carousel. The lawn had been trampled into a muddy mess.

"A park? Are you kidding me?" Frustrated, Sunny turned around and walked past the entrance of Tiffany instead.

That is New Bund, full of opportunities. It is also a place where rules are often bent.

Just one kilometer from the New Bund, everything feels so different. The residential areas have witnessed years of construction. The outer walls of buildings are worn and crumbling, and their original colors have long faded. Even the newest buildings are at least 30 years old. If they were people, they would be stepping into their middle age.

Although the exterior walls of these neighborhoods have recently been repainted, the fresh paint cannot conceal the crumbling staircases and rusted iron gates. Like a person reaching middle or old age, there is a lingering regret of being unable to reclaim the vitality of youth.

After Sunny went to work, Ziho would go to the farmer's market to shop. It was one of his favorite leisure activities. He loved the neighborhood, as the old buildings always reminded him of the one-bedroom apartment he no longer owned. It was the place where Sunny was born and where he had spent the first fifteen years of his marriage to Qing.

Ziho reminisced on their first months in the apartment, the place he had found for them, the reason he proposed. Soon after their wedding, they moved into a second-floor apartment allocated by Ziho’s unit. The home of this newlywed couple was far from the city center. The vast open space around the residential buildings eventually attracted the attention of developers. Five years after they moved in, Carrefour opened its first branch in China there.

When they moved out, the area had become a kind of “New Bund” of its time, full of businesses, opportunities, and money. Unfortunately, he could not talk Qing out of the idea to sell the apartment at a much cheaper price, long before property values soared. He could not offer a better solution at the time.

But Qing didn’t care about that at all. She had a bigger problem to solve. If selling an apartment could keep a family from falling apart, it would be a good deal.

-

It was back in 2011. Qing attended Sunny’s graduation ceremony and explained why she talked her out of going abroad for further studies. Even now, Sunny could remember the moment when her mom hugged her and told her what was going on. “You were just a sophomore at the time. Your father and I lost all our savings in the foreign exchange market. And we were in debt–almost 300,000 yuan.” Qing said tranquilly, letting out the long-buried truth.

Ziho sat slumped in front of the computer. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for two days. He kept transferring money into the account, but every digit he entered turned to “0”. Every time Qing tried to stop him, he lashed out. “Do not bother me! Leave me alone.” Qing couldn’t process what had happened in the last 24 hours. They had lost all their property, including the foreign exchange Ziho earned from Japan, the money they set aside for Sunny’s graduate school abroad, and even her sister’s deposit. For a fleeting moment, Qingconsidered ending her life.

But then, the phone set on the desk rang. She stared at it and did not know whether she should pick it up or not. The gray cord attached to the phone receiver coiled around her fingers, just like her tangled thoughts. “Mom,” the call was from Sunny, “I won the national debate championship. Our department might sponsor my trip to the U.S. for an international tournament.”

Qing soon pulled herself together. She sold the apartment where she and Ziho had started their married life and took out a mortgage on the condo they were living in. But that was far from enough. She needed to work. As she had a recurrence of asthma and retired in her fifties, the only job she could find was a janitor.

Bit by bit, she saved enough money for Sunny to travel abroad for international exchange studies. Bit by bit, Sunny pieced together the clues to Qing’s secret plan to clear their debts. Sunny couldn’t help but feel guilty for having been kept in the dark for so long. She remembered how, every time she tried to hug her mother during those days, Qing would brush her off, saying her clothes were dirty. Sunny blamed herself for not recognizing her mom’s panic and helplessness over those past years. Sunny also felt the compulsion to resent her fat her, as if it were a way to compensate for her mother’s suffering.

To protect Ziho’s self-esteem, Qing told Sunny to pretend that she knew nothing. Sunny had secretly held onto this resentment for more than ten years after learning the truth. But because of Luneur—the birth of her son—she had to find something that closely resembled forgiveness.

-

Sunny discussed with her husband the possibility of having Qing and Ziho take care of baby Luneur. After Sunny went back to work after six months of maternity leave, the two seniors took a five-hour train to Shanghai and started their life in a rented one-bedroom suite.

For the past few months during weekdays, she had been living with her parents and son in this rented apartment near her office, as Sunny’s husband was currently renovating their newly purchased three-bedroom apartment near there.

They purchased the apartment in New Bund in 2020, with financial support from both sides of the family. However, the city had been locked down all of a sudden. The rooms remained empty and undecorated for a long time. People, furniture, and cement were confined to their homes. It was only this year, after the birth of Luneur, that Sunny and her husband decided to restart the renovation.

They had bought the apartment with a down payment of three million yuan. Everyone believed that this residential area would be the new "flagship unit." But,property prices have dropped recently and policies offering housing stimulus and favorable loan terms supported homebuyers. One only needs to pay one million yuan upfront and take out a loan to get a similar place to live.

Is it a smart deal? Ziho always hoped that Sunny would learn some financial knowledge to make an informed forecast. He was quite satisfied with his son-in-law, a financial professional. He saw himself in the eyes of Sunny’s husband. In hard work and solid skills, they trusted. The only difference was that Ziho’s skill set was no longer needed.

That Friday morning, after buying groceries and locking his bike, Ziho stood in front of a shared bike for quite a while. He was attracted by the advertisement. “Hey, are you in need of money these days? Contact me if you would like to get some cash at a very low-interest rate. All we need is your ID card.”

This wasn’t the first time Ziho had borrowed money through unconventional channels. In the past, he had relied on credit cards with installment payment plans. But since retiring, no banks were willing to lend him money anymore. Using the handwriting feature on his phone, Ziho replied, “I want 50,000 yuan. How much would I need to pay back every month?”

After several rounds of chatting, the negotiation was nearing its final stage. As Ziho read the latest message, he hesitated. Sending his real name and ID card to the lender made him uneasy. “Will this affect Sunny’s job?” The thought lingered in his mind.

Sunny came back from work for lunch and called out,“Dad, can you cook some onion and beef for me?”

Startled, Ziho froze and said nothing.

“Dad, I’m starving today,” Sunny added impatiently.

He nodded and headed into the kitchen, leaving his phone on the desk.

A moment later, a call came in. The contact on the screen had been labelled as “fraud.”

“What a clever anti-fraud app,” Sunny thought to herself, picking up Ziho's phone. She decided to tease the person on the other end.

“Let’s meet in person, and I will explain everything to you. Bring your identification card.”

“What needs to be explained?” Sunny asked.

The voice on the other end sounded cautious. “Are you the one who wanted to borrow 50,000 yuan? I will meet you at the bank and help you get the money. We need to do a credit check over the counter.”

Sunny set the phone aside, staring at the screen. Qing asked her to make some formula for Luneur, snapping her back to reality. Without much time to think, she took a picture of the “fraud” dealer and saved his phone number.

Sunny finally found an opportunity to get hold of Ziho’s phone and took it away. The moment the screen lit up, her palms began to sweat, and her heartbeat pounded loudly. She held her breath, opened the WeChat contacts list, and many strange numbers appeared before her. Those contacts were as unfamiliar as a long-forgotten key, hinting at her father’s world she had never unlocked.

As she scrolled through the messages and chat history, the fragmented conversations pieced together an image of a father she barely knew—one she had never truly understood. Her eyes skimmed over several messages until they stopped at a short and striking note:

“Make sure the funds are released quickly, preferably by the end of this month.”

Those brief words hit her like a heavy hammer, pound ing into her chest. Who was urging him to apply for the funds? Where was the money coming from? A sinking realization dawned on her: this might not be an ordinary transaction but the tip of a much deeper marshland. She must know how deep it could be.

Back at the office, Sunny added the scammer’s WeChat and disguised herself as an unemployed middle-aged woman who had just had a baby and felt disconnected from the surrounding community. Her husband controlled the family finances but didn’t support her in starting her own business, and neither she nor her family could come up with any money. She wasn’t lying; she just told part of the truth. She hoped to borrow fifty thousand yuan, to be repaid in installments with interest.

What surprised Sunny was that the scammer offered a lump sum loan with multiple repayment options. The fifty thousand yuan borrowed could be paid back in monthly installments of 600 yuan, covering both principal and interest, until the entire amount was paid off. The interest rate sounded particularly tempting, almost like it was lower than credit card installment plans. But the trap here was compound interest, where the interest was always calculated based on the original loan amount of fifty thousand yuan, no matter how much had been repaid.

After chatting for the entire afternoon, Sunny got clear the rules of “borrowing money” and inferred that Zico had not succeeded in securing the loan due to retirement, and his previous loan eligibility had failed the review process. But the bigger bombshell was that he had been trading gold. Whenever the market rose, he always wanted to invest more. This was the real reason he needed cash flow.

Knowing this did not calm Sunny's anger. Does Ziho's behavior deserve forgiveness just because the loan was unsuccessful? Does his kindness mean that deception can be allowed? Does taking care of Sunny's child give him the right to disrupt the stability of the family?

Sunny still didn’t know what to do, but she chose not to tell Qing for the time being until everything was clearer. Qing's health was poor, and she couldn’t bear the weight of so many complicated thoughts. Should she share her troubles with her husband? She was having doubts. She was even worried that her husband might start disliking her father. But it was Ziho who had done something unforgivable first! Why should she make excuses for him?

-

For the entire afternoon, Sunny was troubled by these thoughts, almost crying during a meeting. It wasn’t until the tea break that she noticed five or six unread messages on her phone. Qing had sent a video of Luneurplaying with a fabric book. His expression was so calm and composed as if the chaos of the world had nothing to do with him. The book Luneur read was Guess How Much I Love You, which Ziho bought last week.

As she read more messages, the conversations with so many loan officers in her hometown were like threads, weaving together the secrets of the past ten years. Vague, scattered memories resurfaced in her mind, and she began to grasp the truth she had long ignored. It was Ziho’s secret.

A decade has passed since the financial crisis in 2008, but Ziho felt unwilling to let it go. During the past ten years, Ziho traveled across the country for work. His background as a textile engineer in his younger years had become outdated in the industry. He had to compete with much younger workers for jobs. Fortunately, as they moved to the suburbs, his salary was sufficient to support himself and Qing and to cover the monthly mortgage payments on their apartment. After graduating, Sunny started working at a high-tech company and soon started to see someone, who later became her husband.

Ziho saved some money when he was working. But during the pandemic, it was very hard to find a place to work. Even, affording his own life was a difficulty as the price of daily necessity roared. Still, Ziho kept giving money to Qing, “buy some good clothes for our daughter, I do not want Sunny to be looked down upon by her local Shanghai in-laws.” When Sunny and her husband were buying the apartment, Ziho withdrew money from the card with high interest. After Luneur was born, he told Qing, “buy a brand-new crib for Luneur, I want Sunny’s Shanghai local in-laws to know that she is from a well-to-do family.”

The blue light of the screen reflected off her face. She knew these clues would unravel everything she thought she understood—about her father, his past and her own life. Her seemingly happy life had been built on a foundation of hidden costs. But whose happiness had been sacrificed to sustain hers?

It was quite dark outside the car window. People were celebrating Friday evening after a long working week. The debate over "gut feeling" between Sunny and her husband carried on as they drove out of the New Bund. The back-and-forth conversation gradually unwound Sunny’s tense emotions. The questions she had about the perfect image of her father collapsing, the fear of taking the role of decision maker in the family, settled at the back of her mind.

Ziho, meanwhile, stood watching his daughter and son-in-law’s car fade into the distance. But he made no move to return upstairs. Lighting a cigarette, he sank into his thoughts.

It was thirty years ago, back in 1995, when he sailed from Shanghai to Japan and worked for one year. By the time he returned to his hometown, he had made his first fortune of 100,000 yuan. Back then, he was like his son-in-law—tall, handsome, and well-off, standing at what seemed to be the pinnacle of life. The family went to Carrefour every weekend for shopping. He would buy various kinds of stationery and toys for Sunny. Ziho used to think he could always give his wife and daughter everything they wanted. But soon, the state-owned company collapsed, and the textile industry declined in the north.

Now he earnestly hoped that his son-in-law’s path would be smoother than his own, ensuring Luneur and Sunny a better, more secure life. And yet, a sliver of fear gnawed at him—what if his son-in-law became too successful? Would he then look down on him, an old man who had reached retirement age with nothing to show for it, living in an apartment rented by his son in-law, with a pension that couldn’t even cover the living expenses in a worldly New Bund?

The cigarette smoke was thick. Chunghwa cigarettes from his son-in-law was one of the premium Chinese brands, which was known for their strong flavor due to their high tar content. It must be quite expensive, Zihothought. He had quit smoking years ago—since he’d returned from Japan, when Qing was suffering from asthma. But today, he felt he needed one.

His wish was not granted. The phone in the pocket of his down jacket began to vibrate, and he hurried to take it out. The cigarette he had just lit was snuffed out by a sudden gust of wind. Ziho discarded the cigarette and stomped hard on the flattened butt he had been puffin g on.

Coming home, Ziho saw Qing lying on the bed. Ziho nudged her, “I want to save some money and take out insurance for our grandson, how do you say?”

Qing was snoring. She was too tired in recent days.

One message was from Sunny, “Thank you for taking care of my son. The Chinese New Year was just around the corner. Buy something for yourself,” followed by a digital red envelope of 5,000 yuan, “And I knew everything, Dad.”

Other messages were from the dealer. “Hey, I just checked the policy. You could take advantage of an insurance policy, as long as you are the policy holder.” Ziho turned the phone over and his gaze lingered on the towering skyscrapers and various construction sites of New Bund.

He had deleted that message, as if it had never happened, and as if no one could ever uncover what had taken place.