Ding ding tang. That sound belongs to Kunming.
When I was little, I lived there. I don’t remember much of those early years. But there’s one sound I remember. Waking up from an afternoon nap, still half asleep, hearing it from the street below: ding ding tang. That was the ding-ding candy man coming. He sold maltose candy that you had to strike off with a little hammer and a metal chisel. He would walk through the alleys, tapping as he went, singing: Ding ding tang, ding ding tang… The children would run out when they heard him. He didn’t come every day. When he did, I was happy, even if I didn’t get to buy any.
The other day, by Green Lake, I heard that sound again.
I ran up to the man and said, “I haven’t heard that in decades! Could you play it for me so I can record it?”
He smiled good-naturedly and stopped his walk. “Sure.”
He raised the little hammer and struck it against the bell—ding, ding—
He hadn’t even finished two notes before he stopped himself. “Wait,” he said. “Let me do it again. I want to make it good. It sounds real nice when played slowly.”
He played it again. Carefully, earnestly, as if he were a musician with an instrument. His face was humble, but he cared about this sound. All his life, this was the sound that made so many little children happy.
I noticed his backpack. Stitched and re-stitched, layers of thick thread holding it together. Yet he stood in the sun in his little hat, chest held high.
A sudden sourness swept up from my chest to my nose.
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