People never forget, how they felt

He has no arms. What’s left from the limbs barely covers the armpits. He’s probably around 12 years old, lean and tall, wearing nothing but knee-high shorts. He’s facial expression lets me observe without guilt, it says something like “don’t you dare remind me with your look, that I can’t give you a finger for giving me that look even if I wanted to”. He apparently says something insulting to our tour guide because she angrily raises her voice and starts yelling at him. Seems like he doesn’t really care about upsetting her. I have to trust my judgment. I don’t understand a word in Chinese and neither does anyone around.
We’re taking a detour from Beijing. Such a contrast to the lavish summer palace. Here the concrete surface is covered with carpet sized bamboo mats with rice crop on top for drying. I see a bicycle getting around between them and suddenly realise, it’s the armless boy. He leans forward and controls the handlebars with his pits, manoeuvring perfectly, reminding me that at 25, I still can’t ride a bike. I feel embarrassed.
Other locals don’t care we’re there until they see the plastic bottles we’re holding. Group of over 40 people is a good plastic mine. Probably gets some cash flow into the household.
The guide brings lunch, wrapped and stored in plastic. I don’t plan on eating. You don’t feel like biting off a hotdog, when a pregnant barefoot girl is struggling with the bamboo mat, several times her size. Sun is getting crimson in the horizon. They need to take the crop inside.
I feel like giving food would insult them, so I go to the bus and find several more bottles around my seat, quickly gather them and descend the stairs. There he stands with his bike, keeping balance with one foot on the concrete surface, yelling something and raising the remnants of his arms. I don’t get it at first and continue looking for someone to give them the bottles. He gets closer, turning his shoulder towards me, so I put one bottle in each armpit and he holds them. Suddenly he opens his mouth. Round abyss. Still childish lips around it, that will soon turn into a man’s and god knows what will happen to him. Takes me seconds to remember I’m still holding a hotdog so I put it in his mouth and it feels so bizarrely intimate, like feeding a newborn, I abruptly turn around, go back to bus shaking, and don’t look out the window for the rest of the trip.
Names get smudged in memory, locations do too, but the feeling they carve out, never fully vanishes.