Poem: "The Ferryman’s Son: Yuanpu Archives"

For Li of Yuanpu Town’s Wushan Ferry

I. Water Memory

I am the son of the ferryman. The river is my father’s father. Three rivers—Qiantang, Fuchun, Puyang—three threads braided into one rope around our necks… We lived in the knot… 

Before the bridges, the world was water. 

To go to Xiaoshan for work, you pay my father a coin. Step into the belly of his wooden boat.

When I was a child, my hands learned the shape of the oar 

before they learned a pen. The rhythm: dip, pull, creak.

Then men from the city came with their blueprints. They drew lines

across the water. Concrete. Steel. The language of progress. The ferry fell 

silent. My father laid down his bone. He returned to the dirt, to speak the slow language of seeds.

The bridge was not a bridge. It was a suture. It stitched 

our isolation shut, and we bled a different way.

II. Sand Years

ACT I: THE FEVER

… Everywhere, the cranes… A forest of metal birds… The city eating the village... 

The river, they said… held the bones of the city. Sand.

I became a pilot of substance… My barge…

a mountain of sediment… I carried the pulverized past… 

to the mouths of the future… Hangzhou… Shanghai… Jiangsu…

The money was a thick, brown current… We were all drunk on it.

ACT II: THE HANGOVER

The government memo, a sudden winter:

Directive on the Rational Exploitation of Riverine Sand Resources.

The river was scraped clean. 

The golden goose, gutted. 

The fever broke, leaving only the chill. 

The mountain on my barge grew smaller, 

then vanished.

III. The State’s Vessel & its Ejection

I joined the fleet at Wulinmen. A uniform. 

A number. A fixed route: Jiande—Huzhou. 

The state’s boat. Lighter work. A smaller current of money, 

but predictable.

But a new velocity was being born:

high-speed rail, expressways. They sold time, and we had only space to offer. 

The passengers evaporated.

A letter from the company. Route Optimization. Streamlining.

At fifty-six, your services are no longer required.

I was a piece of driftwood washed ashore.

IV. The Apparatus of The Shore // Pension as Interpellation

FIFTEEN YEARS. This is the magic number. 

The border between a body that is useful and a body that is allowed to rest.

My timeline is insufficient. My contributions to the collective fund, a thin stream.

Q: Have you EVER been a member of a state-owned enterprise for a continuous period of fifteen years?

A: (No)

Q: Do you understand that your benefits are contingent upon your continuous contribution to the national social security fund?

A: (Yes)

Q: Will you change your employment status?

A: I am fifty-eight. Who will have me?

They say the next town over, the policy is a kinder river. Their government throws a life ring to men like me. 

Here in Yuanpu, the policy is a concrete bank. You cannot climb it.

So I have built my own raft. A small shop. 

Wushan Ferry: I sell Coca-Cola, instant noodles, single-serving dreams. The coins I collect are not currency. They are tokens for the gatekeeper. Two more years of tokens.

In 2027, I will be sixty. The gate will open.

I will cross from Labor to Rest.

This is the last ferry I will ever take.