It happened in my hometown – the Northern Midlands, where neighbors are separated by ponds and fences, but no one is allowed to touch the boundaries.

My house and Mr. Hao’s house are close to the wall, only one wall apart. When my father was alive, the two families had a heated argument over the garden land — Mr. Hao at that time also tried to encroach on a row of bricks, my father always carried a red book and a tape measure in the middle of the yard, put up stakes, and called the whole village to arbitrate, causing him to step back and “face thick” until now.

In the past few years, my father died, I went to work far away, leaving the garden house for my old mother to take care of. Recently, I went back to my hometown to renovate my house, and before I had time to clean up the old tiles, I saw Mr. Hao rebuilding the gate next door. Worth mentioning: the new wall encroached on my land exactly one hand – about 10 centimeters.

My mother sighed,
“Come on, son, ten cents of land, the words and melons go back and forth.”

But I think otherwise. In the countryside, land is an honor. Ten cents today, tomorrow to one meter. Fasting once is being crushed for a lifetime.

I didn’t say anything to my mother. He didn’t say half a word to Mr. Hao.

That afternoon, I went to the back of the house and opened my father’s old wooden box. In it, there are still several old bamboo poles that my father saved to plant the boundary more than ten years ago, each exactly 1 meter long, with a pointed tip, and my father’s name was engraved with an iron pen.

That night, when Mr. Hao’s house had turned off the electricity to go to bed, I quietly inserted a bamboo stake into the land near the base of the wall where he had just encroached. No writing, no paper. Only one was plugged in, tilted at an angle, just enough to be seen from inside his house.

The next morning, when I was cutting banana leaves behind the garden, I heard a rumbling sound from the house next door. When I peeked out, I saw that Mr. Hao was sending workers to break the wall, building backwards by 50 centimeters.

I pretended to ask,
“Oh, why did you smash Uncle Hao?”
He was stunned:
“Ah… oh… I think it’s not pleasing to the eye…”

But I know very well, he has turned pale since he saw that bamboo pole this morning. Because the whole village knows: the bamboo pole engraved with the name is the ancestral landmark of my family. Touching the stake touches a whole person’s life, not only about the land, but also their nose, face and scandal.

Not to mention, he was once “treated” by my father like that, now he sees the bamboo pole growing right on the encroached land, he knows that he can’t help it.

That night, I knitted a basket on the porch, looked over and saw Mr. Hao carrying a kettle of water to the village chief’s house. It must be explained. I don’t care.

I just took a sip of tea, smirking, and thought to myself,
“You’re still young, old man.”