"A Man Like Him"

"A Man Like Him"
by Yiyun Li

Rating: 6.8



Short story about a retired teacher in China who takes an interest in the case of a teen-age girl who is suing her father for being unfaithful to her mother. Teacher Fei, a 66-year-old retired art teacher, reads a magazine article about a nineteen-year-old girl…

In the dusk, a thin mist hung in the air. The two men shook hands as they parted. There was little more for them to say to each other, and Teacher Fei watched the man walk down the street, knowing that nothing would be changed by their brief meeting. He thought about his mother, who would be eager to see him return, though she would not show her anxiety to Mrs. Luo. He thought about his girl student: fifty-two she would be now, no doubt a wife and mother herself, and he hoped that he had not been mistaken and she had grown into a woman like his mother. She—the girl student, whom he had never seen again—would outlive him, just as his mother had outlived his father, their beauty and wisdom the saving grace for a man like him, a man like his father. But for the other man, who would be watching the night fall around the orange halo of the street lamps with neither longing nor dread, what did the future offer but the comfort of knowing that he would, when it was time for his daughter to carry out her plan of revenge, cooperate with a gentle willingness? ♦