A Very Good Man
Illustration: Ansellia Kulikku. Back in the 1990s, it was not easy for people in China to watch TV. Not many of us had a color TV. Even if we had one, it was usually so small that it almost hurt to watch. And there was no remote control. When one show ended, we had to lift our asses from chairs, rush to the TV, rotate the dial, then rush to fit our asses back. Sometimes silver snowflakes blotted out the screens, or the images were crystal clear but no sound emerged. In these moments, we had to pull the two long antennae on top of the TV’s head, pointing them in different directions—towards the park, the river, the factory, or the school—to see which one was the most fortunate that day. If no direction summoned good luck—it happened a lot—our grumpy fathers would slap the iron heads of the disobedient TVs. Only one man in our community did not need to take so much trouble: Mr. Xiao. Legend has it that he just sat on the sofa, cleared his throat, and called out a muffled “ahem.” The TV soon changed its behavior, like a naughty kid caught in the middle of a prank. The image would return and the sound come back.
Mr. Xiao was a household name in our community of Beixinjing. My father called him a genius of household electrical appliances.
Beixinjing was a large apartment complex with over 100 buildings, divided into three neighborhoods. Between the first two was a small park, and a river separated these from the third. My family’s and Mr. Xiao’s apartments were both in Neighborhood One, though three blocks apart. By the time I was eight, I often accompanied my father to Mr. Xiao’s after supper with our malfunctioning TV, or lamp, or radio. He stood in the doorway of his apartment, a cigarette in his mouth, another one behind his ear. My father and I waited in a line while the people ahead of us plugged their electrical appliances, one by one, into the power strip in the corridor. Mr. Xiao only needed a glance before he told us what to do.
“Too much dirt in your radio. After you go home, unscrew the back, wipe the inside with an alcohol cleaning swab, then put the back on. It’ll be fine.”
“Something’s wrong with the screen. You need a new one. It costs a lot, like up to 1,000 yuan. Something to think about.”
After the diagnosis, we would pull out some bills from our pockets to show our gratitude.
