by Han Shaogong
When he was asked how he'd done it, he talked too rough and no one could understand him.
Afterwards, the child grew up healthy, and when he could talk and run everywhere, his parents forced him to visit Long Stick Xi and make a few kow-tows to him. Long Stick Xi seemed to rather like the child and would often chat with him, as well as to other children who came with him to play. Gradually, the children also began to talk a bit rough, even said how delicious snake meat was and nagged their parents to catch snakes for them.
Maqiao people had never eaten snake. They believed that snakes were the most poisonous creatures in the whole world and that snake meat surely poisoned a person's mind. They regarded Long Stick Xi's ability to drink raw snake's blood and swallow raw snake's innards as supremely horrifying, and would cluster around to whisper about how this boded ill for the village. One by one, they forbade their children ever to go back to Long Stick Xi's house to play, terrified that Long Stick Xi would turn them bad with snake meat. They spoke to the children in menacing tones: you seen that Xi? He sells children-next thing you know, he'll have you tied up in a hemp sack and slung over his back to sell on the street-haven't you seen all the hemp sacks he has in his house?
The children stopped to think: they didn't have any strong recollection of hemp sacks in the house, but when they saw the serious expressions on the adults' faces, they didn't dare visit Xi. They would at most band together and sneak a look from far-off. When they saw Xi's friendly wave, none of them dared go closer.
Because Xi was good at delivering babies, the village people in the end refrained from torching his house and driving the young and old in his household out of the village. But they never harbored any good will towards the Xi family. Everyone resented his laziness (the thick hair on his legs was proof of laziness). Neither could they bear his extravagance: he actually fed caged birds on eggs and slices of meat. Even more objectionable was his sinister greenish-pale complexion, frigidly indifferent and arrogant. He also lacked all respect for the aged and never understood that he should give up his seat, much less offer cigarettes or tea. He would always grumble at whoever had come, and if the target of these remarks didn't understand, he would give an icy laugh and mumble to himself as he went about his own business. With that hideous expression on his face, he had to be muttering rough talk. Did he think that if other people didn't understand him then he could use filthy language? He was the precise embodiment of the word "rough": it wasn't just a question of speech-there was definitely a certain air about him, a blast of cold, frigid air, spiteful air that sowed fear and discord. He transformed "rough," a word that already jarred the ear, into a term yet more derogative, a term spat out between snarled teeth. There can be little doubt that this brought calamity to the door of subsequent new-comers, that it had an unstated influence on Maqiao attitudes to all outsiders.
When the land reform work team arrived in the village, they inquired whether there were any landlords or local bullies there. At first, the ordinary people were still rather fearful, they muttered and mumbled, even slammed their doors as soon as they saw the work team people. Finally, though, the work team killed the biggest tyrant from Longjia Sands, paraded around with his head lifted up high, bang-bang-banging drums and gongs to get people to come and look; once the masses saw blood, they threw open their doors and rubbed their hands together, itching to be a part of it all. A lot of men went looking for the work team, and the first name they brought up was Long Stick Xi.
"What crimes is he guilty of?"
"Exploitation, greed, laziness, never grows his own vegetables."
"Anything else?"
"He wears a foreign chain, goes ticktock ticktock."
"A pocket watch? A pocket watch is movable property. Anything else?"
"He eats poisonous snakes-disgusting, bleurgh!"
"Eating snakes doesn't prove a specific problem. The most important thing is whether he has mountains, whether he has land. We need to control the limits of policy."
"He's got land all right, oh yes, I should say so."
"Where?"
The men became vague, said they should go and have a look, it was around here somewhere.
"Whereabouts?"
Some pointed to the east, some to the west.
The work team went to check, but discovered that Long Stick Xi actually had neither land nor mountains and that apart from a few caged birds, his house was empty and bare. He had no pocket watch, either; it was said that he'd sent it to a lover in Longjia Plain. Someone like him could be labeled neither a landlord nor evil tyrant, nor could he be regarded as an enemy. The work team's conclusion annoyed all the local men, who grumbled they couldn't count on anything anymore. On and on they muttered about their grievances: if Peng Shi'en (a super-bully from Longjia Bay) could be killed, then why not him? He was far worse than Peng Shi'en; he swindled people like there was no tomorrow! What was Peng Shi'en compared to him? He treated his own old man like his grandson!
When they first started talking about the business of treating his old man like his grandson, the work team didn't understand. A few days' investigation, however, produced a rough outline of the affair. At one point, a startling piece of news had secretly spread around Maqiao: apparently, Xi was in fact more than a hundred years old. He'd taken a Western elixir of life and lived to a ripe old age in the pink of health, his face glowing with youth. The old man who followed him around wasn't his dad at all, but his grandson, who, stubborn by nature, hadn't obeyed the family rules and had refused to drink the precious Western potion, thereby turning into a desiccated old prune. Some were flabbergasted by this piece of news. Eyeing Xi with new respect, they timidly approached his door to make inquiries. The old chap in the Xi household was as rough as they came, and couldn't utter a single intelligible word. Long Stick Xi wouldn't say too much either, but once, when he came up against someone who wouldn't be put off, when enough bowing and scraping had been done, after Xi had hedged a while, then, finally, with great reluctance, he said he didn't really remember how long he'd actually lived, but the emperor had changed a few times, he'd seen everything, nothing surprised him. As he said this, he told the old man to go to bed. His listeners heard very clearly that he didn't call the old man Dad, but said "laddie" instead, his tone definitely that used for dismissing those of a younger generation.
Maqiao people were naturally very interested in an elixir of life. Some offered money, meat, and wine to beg for the treasure from Xi. Some even offered up their wives, because Xi said people's physiques were not the same, sometimes the male element was too weak, and he needed to add a woman's "three peaks"-that is, saliva, breast milk, and vaginal fluid-into the elixir, because only this would gather up the yin to balance the yang, making the elixir effective. Of course, this was very complicated and needed a lot of careful research, something he was most unwilling to do. Sometimes the seeker of elixir got it wrong time and again, and the "three peaks" sent over were useless, but after the man begged abjectly, he'd finally relent and agree to help him out, calling on him to sort out a replacement. He'd shut himself up with the man's wife and pull down the mosquito net, making the bed wheeze and creak in a highly disconcerting way. Since this greatly sapped his energy, normally he'd be forced to charge even more for it.
When this kind of thing started happening more and more often, talk began to spread among the people involved. First, angry suspicions gradually formed in the minds of the women; subsequently, the men also started to pale with fury, but they didn't know quite what to say. Shortly before the work team went into the mountains, a little girl was dispatched by her mother to get to the bottom of the Xi mystery. When she came back, the little girl reported that as soon as outsiders weren't around, Xi called the old man "Dad"!
This meant that Xi had all along made his dad pretend to be his grandson in front of other people, he was not one hundred years old at all, and he had no elixir of life!
"The swindler." The head of the work team understood, and nodded
his head.
Another cadre said, "whatever he's swindled you of, money, grain, women, just let us know-we'll settle accounts with him."
Though they were spitting with anger, the men would talk only in vague terms, wouldn't spell things out in detail. The work team saw their difficulty, thought things over and over again, and at last came up with a solution: they got someone highly learned to mull it all over until he finally concluded that Long Stick Xi was guilty of moral bankruptcy plotting with landlords and tyrants colluding with bandits forcibly resisting land reform illegal commerce, and so on, producing a list of crimes ten items long which, in conclusion, made him a counterrevolutionary carbuncle who should be tied up double-quick.
"So, d'you actually have an elixir of long life?"
"No, no, I haven't." Long Stick Xi trembled all over before the work team. His arrogance had completely evaporated and snot was streaming from his nose.
"What did you sell them?"
"A… aspirin."
"Why'd you lie like that?"
"I… I… a counterrevolutionary stance, moral bankruptcy, plotting with landlords and tyrants…" He'd memorized the list of crimes item by item. Not one word was incorrect.
"Got that?"
"I've got a good memory, I don't like to blow my own horn, but-"
"Cut it out! This is your criminal record. You have to confess honestly."
"I confess, I confess."
The work team sent him to the county seat under escort. A member of the People's Militia was responsible for the escort, but he must have eaten something funny on the way, because he started vomiting yellow, then green and black bile; he vomited till you could see the whites of his eyes-quite extraordinary, it was. Long Stick Xi knelt down and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, then found a bucket of water to sluice out his guts. When his condition had stabilized a little, he carried him on his back all the way to the county seat and handed him over, together with his gun holster. Of course, he also handed himself over. Apparently, people later on asked him, why didn't he take this opportunity to flee? He said, I couldn't run away, I just couldn't, I wanted to remold myself, escape the dung heap, serve the people.
His law-abiding behavior while under escort was taken into account when the government judged his case, and his sentence was reduced by two years, after which he was sent to some farm for labor reform. Some people also said that the above version of events was incorrect, and that he didn't serve any part of his sentence; a senior officer took a fancy to him, bailed him out, and sent him to some mountainous mining area where he could make use of Xi's medical skill. Other people had seen him in teahouses in the county seat drinking tea. He had by then cut off his long hair and shaved his head. Oddly enough, his speech was not in the slightest bit rough any more. When he'd talked himself into a state of self-satisfaction, he wouldn't be able to resist some private boasting: in order to get off lightly, he'd first poisoned that soldier escort, then saved his life, thereby reducing his sentence by two years, and so on.
I don't know how near the truth this version is.
His old dad soon died. The signs of their roughness also soon disappeared from Maqiao, leaving only those few random words, like "tincture of iodine" and "soda," which so surprised me all those years later. Of course, he also left behind in Maqiao at least three sons, all three with that receding chin particular to him, who will appear in some of my subsequent entries, and who will be the focus of later stories about Maqiao.
*Same Pot
: Maqiao people don't talk in terms of same ancestry, or same clan, or same parents. They call sons of the same parents "same-pot brothers." When men remarry, they call their former wife "former-pot wife" and call the wife married after the death of the first "later-pot wife." This shows the importance they attach to blood ties doesn't equal the importance they attach to pots, that is to say the importance they attach to eating.
After the Educated Youth arrived in Maqiao, seven people lived together in a household, all eating from the same pot. The fact that they had seven different surnames, were from seven different families, had seven different sets of blood ties was of no importance to locals; the fact that there was only one pot formed the basis for making a lot of important decisions. For example, there was the question of going to the market in Changle on the fifth day of every month. When it was the busy season for farming, the team leader decreed that each pot could at most spare one person to send to the market; everyone else had to stay in the village and work. The Educated Youth, who all wanted to go to town, argued themselves hoarse, protesting that they were not one family, that all had their own individual right to go to the market-to no avail. The household's communal pot stood behind them as cast-iron proof of the final verdict they were futilely disputing.
At one time, the fires of love blazed between two Educated Youth who, as they settled down to begin their blissfully happy life together, separated their pot off from those footloose and fancy-free Educated Youth. This brought an unexpected bonus when the team leader was distributing oil. Because there was very little, it wasn't distributed according to labor capacity, or by person; in the end, each pot was allotted one catty, so that everyone could have a little oil to grease the pot and enjoy the "righteous glow of shared good fortune." When the storeman came to have a look at the Educated Youth's stove, he certified that they had two pots and allotted two catties of oil to them, fully double the amount they'd been expecting.
They fried up a feast of profligate oiliness, wiping their greasy mouths in blissful happiness.
*Placing the Pot
: When women leave home to get married, the most important of the wedding rites is when the bride places a new pot on the stove of her husband's family, draws water to wash the rice, chops wood to light the fire, and boils a pot of rice, showing she has become a member of her husband's family. This is called "placing the pot," synonymous with getting married. Placing the pot is normally scheduled for the winter, not only to avoid the busy season for farming, and not only because people can only afford the expense after the autumn harvest-there is a yet more important reason. I was told that only in winter could the bride wear the several layers of padded clothing needed to protect herself from the boisterous japes, punches, and kicks that young men go in for giving at weddings.
Once Fucha dragged me along to one. Under the dusky light of oil lamps and candles, in which elegant shadows flickered and the smell of alcohol stung the nose, I sat squeezed into a seam of people in a corner cracking sunflower seeds when suddenly I heard a cry of alarm; a black shadow speedily loomed towards me and hurled me violently against the wall, pressing so hard I could barely breathe. Struggling to poke my head out from behind this black shadow, I discovered that it was a person; that it was in fact none other than the bride dressed in her flowery jacket, her face obscured by a tangled bird's nest of hair, and on the verge of tears. I was terrified, but before I had time to break free from the suffocating force that seemed to emanate from her legs and back, hands closed in from all sides to grab at her; amongst roars and cheers, she made her limping escape, sheltered against the chest of another male guest. Her shrill cries were drowned out by thunderous laughter all around.
The next day, I heard that although the bride had wrapped herself in four layers of padded clothes, tightly tied up with six belts, she had still been mauled black and blue on several parts of her body, testament to the boisterous excess of the young men.
There was no way the husband's family could register any objection.
Quite the contrary; if people didn't get carried away, it meant a loss of face for the husband's family, made them the object of general contempt. When a villager called Zhaoqing held the reception for his eldest son, he did everything in a miserly way, watering down the wedding wine, cutting the pieces of meat too small. Highly disgruntled, the guests conspired to take revenge. And so it came about that nobody lifted a finger in the direction of the bride throughout the entire wedding night. If they saw h
er, they either hardly stirred and pretended not to have seen her, or scuttled away. The next day, the bride threw a huge tantrum: how could everyone have snubbed her like that, she wept, how could she ever show her face again? The two uncles who had come with her to place the pot also flew into a rage and, oblivious to the bride's feelings, heaved up the pot from the stove top and walked out of the door, carrying it back home on their backs. The bride hadn't originally intended her tantrum to extend to revoking her vows, but seeing the pot gone, there was nothing she could do but tearfully follow it back to the family home. A village marriage was thus annulled.
*Little Big Brother (etc.)
: "Little big brother" means big sister. Clearly, by the same token, "little little brother" means little sister, "little paternal uncle" means an aunt on the father's side, "little maternal uncle" means an aunt on the mother's side, and so on.
I noticed very early on that because Maqiao and places nearby didn't appear to have an independent system for female nomenclature, most female names were formed simply by preceding the male name with the word "little," thus tying women forever to the diminutive. This meant, in effect, that women were people of little consequence, petty people. I can't be certain whether there's any link between this kind of ruling and ancient sayings such as Confucius's dictum that "women and petty people are hard to handle."
Language, it seems, is never absolutely objective or neutral. A linguistic space will always be distorted under the influence of a particular set of beliefs. Bearing in mind the namelessness of females, it's easy to draw further conclusions about their social status around here; it's easy to understand why they always bound their chests flat, crossed their legs tightly, and lowered their eyes timidly onto steps or short grass, harboring a deep-felt fear and shame that sprang from their status as females.
