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Yiyun--> Amber
Xianhua--> Henry
:)

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"Promise you'll take care of Mama while I'm away?" Han Geng said, kneeling down so that he was level with his six year old daughter and four year old son.

His children nodded solemnly, the serious expression on their faces making him smile.

"I love you, both," Han Geng said, hugging both of his children as they hugged him back just as tightly.

"We love you too, Baba," the siblings said in unison, not wanting their father to leave again.

"Yiyun, Xianhua, why don't you go get the lunch we made for Baba, hm?" Zhou Mi smiled, discretely providing himself and Han Geng with a moment to be alone together.

Han Geng smiled, standing up as Yiyun and Xianhua enthusiastically ran to the kitchen, which wasn't really too far at all, given how small their house was.

"Look after yourself, okay?" Zhou Mi said softly, running his fingers over Han Geng's cheek bones as Han Geng gently pulled him close, by his waist.

"I will, Mimi," Han Geng tenderly took Zhou Mi's hands and kissed his palms as well as the insides of his wrists.

As quietly and discretely as possible, they'd compensated for all the missed nights of physical intimacy that their separation had stolen from them but even then, Han Geng just coudn't get enough of Zhou Mi's soft, sweet skin.

"Mimi... I'm sorry," Han Geng found himself apologizing to his partner for what was likely the thousandth time since he'd taken the job in the city. "It's not fair to you or to Yiyun and Xianhua..."

While he had only had the best intentions for his family in mind when he had accepted the job that he had been offered in Beijing, he couldn't help but to dwell on the ways in which his job far away from home was burdening his family. He'd started working in Beijing when Yiyun was two and Xianhua was only a few months old and he feared that his children were essentially growing up without a father. And his beautiful Zhou Mi... raising two children by himself must be so difficult, not to mention taking care of their cramped little tenancy amidst an equally aged and decrepit courtyard of one-floor houses. Having obtained qualifications to become a teacher from a city university, Zhou Mi was able to teach at the village school and the salary that he earned, although humble, afforded them a little more financial stability than perhaps other households but in the face of a greedy government and even greedier property development firms, their income really meant little. In the space of their first wedding anniversary to the birth of their daughter, Han Geng and Zhou Mi's home, which they'd inherited from Han Geng's parents, had gone from being in the heart of a self-sustaining farming settlement with green fields and clear, flowing streams to being overshadowed by empty, looming apartment buildings that no one in the living commune could afford and being inundated with mud and polluted water whenever it rained and the nearby river flooded.

Han Geng hadn't grown up in much more affluent conditions than those in which his family currently lived. His parents hadn't managed to make much of an income farming, as national demand began to shift from crops to cellphones and cars and it had been by his hard work, alone, that Han Geng had managed to pay his way through university in order to earn a degree in computer engineering. He'd worked two jobs, in addition to attending classes, and it had been on shift at his job in a small city cafe that he had met Zhou Mi.

Zhou Mi was a regular and as it turned out, they attended the same university, although they were in different faculties. Friendship had soon turned into romantic interest and seven years after he'd met Zhou Mi for the first time, Han Geng had proposed to Zhou Mi with a modest but still elegant pearl engagement ring for which he'd managed to save up enough money to buy.

A year into their marriage, happily and still deeply in love and with Zhou Mi expecting their first child, Han Geng had been confronted by the denuding reality that even though he had graduated top in his class in university, his qualifications meant little in a world of work in which corporates and presidents were more preoccupied with resource extraction than maintenance of the goods into which raw materials were manufactured, then exported. He certainly didn't have any luck putting his degree to use in the local village, in which residents didn't even own televisions let alone a computer and he'd in fact spent his first year working in Beijing assembling computer keyboards in a factory. The working conditions had been utterly squalid and depraved: workers regularly dunked their bare hands into vats of processing chemicals, safety regulations were nonexistent and on many occassions, workers wound up hospitalized for some form of on-the-job casualty.

Han Geng could never lie to Zhou Mi and had had to tell him where he was working when Zhou Mi asked. It was the only time in their relationship that Han Geng had made Zhou Mi cry: nursing Xianhua who had only been two months old at the time, Zhou Mi had emotionally told Han Geng that he didn't care if they lived in the village for the rest of their lives; he didn't want Han Geng to work in the factories given the multitude of reports in the newspapers about workers protesting the conditions or falling ill because of the chemicals to which they were exposed.

If it was up to Zhou Mi, Han Geng wouldn't be working in Beijing, either. He worried about his husband constantly being exposed to the thick fog of industrial smog but it wasn't as though their home was much better. All Zhou Mi needed to do was look outside to see the towering blocks of apartment units that were closing in around the village, soon to overtake their land, too. As construction came closer so, too, did waste and contamination. There were even some days when Zhou Mi would do all that he could to prevent his children from playing outside in muddy, sludgy water that he wished was only dirtied by soil rather than industrial emissions and chemical run off, only to come to the painful realization that it made little difference because they would be drinking and bathing in the very same water later in the day.

He'd grown up more affluent than Han Geng but his parents' business had collapsed shortly after he had graduated from university and his parents were now little better off than he and his husband. Zhou Mi didn't know whether to blame the government for putting them all at risk of being evicted from their homes for the sake of lucrative development or the industries for completely disregarding the health of the land on which they lived and forcing his husband to work in such poor conditions or even himself, for going to university when his parents could have saved the money that they'd spent on his tuition and would perhaps be better off than they were now.

In much the same position as a parent and acutely aware of Zhou Mi's feelings, Han Geng hated that Zhou Mi had to be under so much pressure. Zhou Mi always took care of others, not only their family but their neighbors, as well. Across from them (not more than seven steps away) lived an older, sickly woman and Zhou Mi always brought her hot meals, did her shopping for her and helped her clean her home, for she was often too weak to cook and clean, herself. His thoughtful kindness and gentleness were one of many traits that had drawn Han Geng to him and he just felt that Zhou Mi deserved so much better than the little with which he provided him. Zhou Mi shouldn't have to worry so much about making ends meet or about him.

Seeing how worried Zhou Mi was, Han Geng agreed to quit work at the factory and had since found another job repairing office computers. Per job, he earned more than he had at the factory, but work wasn't always a daily guarantee. No longer with as large an organization, he also had to pay for his own accomodation and while he lived in a run down, one-room apartment, he still wasn't sending as much money home as he had hoped to. His dream was to be able to buy a new apartment for his family, in a clean city where his children could go outside and go to a better school...

He couldn't stop apologizing to Zhou Mi, it seemed. For burdening him with worries, for being unable to provide for him, for leaving him alone nearly all year to take care of their children... 

"You don't have to apologize for anything, Geng," Zhou Mi smiled. "You do so much for us and we love you," he whispered, kissing Han Geng.

Han Geng deepened their kiss, his hands finding their way just under Zhou Mi's shirt as he pulled Zhou Mi closer. He wanted to memorize every single curve and contour of Zhou Mi's body: they wouldn't see each other for another six months.

"Baba!"

Zhou Mi and Han Geng separated from each other and smiled as their children soon came running back, the meal that Zhou Mi had put together with their help in hand.

They walked Han Geng up to the village gate, where he caught a bus going to the train station. Parting was just as difficult as always and Zhou Mi almost cried as his husband gave him a last kiss.

"Mama, when will Baba come back?" Yiyun asked her mother as they watched the bus disappear down the dirt road.

She sounded sad and Xianhua, who was holding his mother's hand, looked deflated, as well.

"Soon, I promise," Zhou Mi bent down and kissed their foreheads.

It was hard enough for him to be without his husband and he could just imagine how his children were feeling, being without their father. 

"Why don't we do some laundry, hm?" Zhou Mi took both his children's hands as they began walking back home. 

Yiyun and Xianhua liked helping their mother with house work and Zhou Mi really wanted to cheer them up.

"We'll keep the house clean for Baba when he comes back home, okay?" Zhou Mi smiled.

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Han Geng smiled as he sat on the train to Beijing and opened the container that Zhou Mi had prepared for him. A home packed meal saved him money as he didn't have to buy anything on the train as others did but more than anything, the meal reminded him of home. The meal was nothing particularly elaborate: they could only afford rice and vegetables and occassionally fish or meat, but Zhou Mi always made the food brighten with spices.

Looking out the window as he ate, Han Geng watched the luxury apartments pass by. He wasn't sure that he would ever be able to afford to move his family into a high end apartment, but he vowed to continue working for a better life for all of them.

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Thanks for reading :)

I will be continuing this story, tracking Han Geng's life in Beijing and Zhou Mi's in the village. Hopefully things will get better for them...

x Angela