by Han Shaogong
Just as we call the Maple Demon a tree, a maple tree, how meaningful is this degree of correctness?
A tree lacks human will and freedom, but in life's complex network of cause and effect it can often occupy a position of quiet importance. In this sense, the difference between one tree and another can sometimes be comparable to the difference between Hitler and Gandhi, to the distinction between the Songs of Chu and the instruction manual for an electric razor-it can be much greater than we imagine. Even if we've read cartloads of botanical books, when confronted with an unfamiliar tree our knowledge seems rudimentary indeed.
The two maple trees finally disappeared in early summer of 1972, when I was away from the village. On the journey back, I couldn't see the crowns of the trees from far off and immediately felt there was something not quite right about the panorama before me; I almost thought I'd taken a wrong turn. After I entered the village, I found that the houses seemed much more spaced out, much lighter, and that there was a rather striking patch of bare, empty ground. It turned out the shade from the trees was no longer there. Everywhere I saw wood chippings and sawdust reeking of sap, and mounds of branches and leaves sandwiched with birds' nests and spiders' webs, yet no one was taking them home for firewood; the soil lay overturned in waves, testifying to the violent struggle that had taken place not long before. I smelled something rather peppery, but couldn't say where it came from.
The crunching sound of feet trampling leaves and branches was the sound of advancing old age.
The trees were cut down under commune orders, to make, it was said, rows of seats for the newly built commune assembly hall and also to dispel the superstitions surrounding the Maple Demons. When the time came, absolutely no one was prepared to put hand to axe or saw, and in the end, the commune cadres had no choice but to order a landlord under official surveillance to get on with it. They also added workers from two hard-up families, to whom they had to promise to cancel a ten-yuan debt before they could finally make them hesitantly start work. Later I saw in the commune row upon row of those spanking new maplewood chairs, used for Party meetings, family planning meetings, irrigation and pig-feeding meetings, and so on. I also saw filthy footprints left behind, as well as oily banquet remains. It was probably from this time on that a kind of skin irritation started to rage through dozens of nearby villages: when sufferers, male or female, happened to meet, they would scratch wildly, pulling up their clothes all over the place, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Some, unable to stand it, would place their backs to a wall and move up and down, or from side to side, or discuss instructions from the county with a hand down their pants all the while. Herbal remedies were tried, with no result. Apparently the county medical team were completely flummoxed, found it all very puzzling.
It was rumored that everyone had caught "maple pox," instigated by the Maqiao Maple Demons-they wanted to make people suffer for their arrogance, taking revenge on the murderers who'd chopped them down.
*Will/Willing (Ken)
: Ken (will/willing) is a word used to express wishes or preferences, to demonstrate desire and permission. For example, "ken with the head" (nod agreement), "ken do" (will do), "ken get my head around it" (will think about it) all describe a person's psychological inclinations.
Maqiao people use ken in a much broader sense-not only for people and animals, but for anything in the whole world.
Some examples:
• This plot of land ken grow crops.
• It's strange, but the firewood at home ken not burn.
• This boat ken go quite a ways.
• This sky ken not produce a drop of rain in a month.
• Benyi's hoe ken not dig very deep.
And so on.
On hearing these remarks, I couldn't stop a thought forming in my mind: everything has a will, a life of its own. Fields, firewood, boats, sky, hoes, and so on, they're all the same as men, should even have first names and last names of their own, stories of their own. Maqiao people in fact spoke to their objects as a matter of course, cajoling or cursing, praising or promising. For example, if they gave a plough a really savage talking-to, it would then move much more quickly along the ground. Then again, resting their axe at the top of the wine jar to soak up the alcohol fumes strengthened it enough to chop wood. If they hadn't been forced to submit to outside interference, if it hadn't been for the spread of science, Maqiao people perhaps would never have acknowledged that these were lifeless objects lacking the capacity to feel and think for themselves.
With these assumptions in mind, we've reason to feel sad at the death of a tree, even to cherish its memory. In places where trees are toppled one after another without provoking any sadness, the trees have never lived, have never been anything but an inert natural resource, a form of revenue. People from these places wouldn't use the word ken like they did in Maqiao.
When I was little, I also had lots of strange fantasies involving personifications and spirits. For example, I used to turn blossoms on trees into the dreams of the tree roots, or rugged mountain paths into a conspiracy plotted by the forest-all very childish, of course. After I got bigger and stronger, I used my knowledge of physics or chemistry to explain blossom or mountain paths-or should I say, rather, that because I could use my knowledge of physics or chemistry to explain blossom and mountain paths, I started to get bigger and stronger. The problem, though, is whether big and strong modes of thought are correct modes of thought. For a long time, men were bigger and stronger than women-does that mean that men were correct? The great imperial powers were bigger and stronger than the colonies-does that mean that the great powers were correct? If in an alien galaxy there exists a race of beings much more advanced and much stronger than mankind, should their mode of thought be used to exterminate and replace that of mankind?
This is a question, a question I can't answer, a question that pulls me this way and that. Because I yearn both to be big and strong, and to go back to my small, weak childhood, to tree-root dreams and mountain conspiracies.
*Dear Life
: One winter's day, Zhihuang's snot-nosed son Xiongshi was playing with a few ox-herder lads on the hillside to the north. They'd dug out a snake hole, planning to extract a hibernating snake to roast. They unearthed a heavy, rusty iron carbuncle but had no idea what it was; Xiongshi banged it hard with a sickle, saying he wanted to use the two ends of the carbuncle to hammer out a few kitchen knives for his mother to sell in the market.
His banging set off an explosion that blasted the lads, who were some distance away hunting snake holes, a good few feet off the ground, arms and legs flailing helplessly in mid-air. After falling painfully, they looked back, but Xiongshi, oddly enough, was nowhere to be seen-there was only a light shower of leaves and earth, along with a few icy drops of rain, floating down from the sky. The boys were surprised to discover that these droplets were red and seemed rather like… blood?
Having no idea what had happened, they still thought that Xiongshi was hiding somewhere, so they set about yelling for him at the tops of their lungs. There was no answer. One of them, frightened by the discovery of a bloodied, fleshy lump of finger, took it back to show the grown-ups.
Later on, people from the commune came and busied themselves for a while. People from the county seat also came and busied themselves for a while, before a conclusion was produced: a bomb dropped by Japanese planes in 1942 had detonated after a thirty-year delay. This meant that the Sino-Japanese War in Maqiao lasted right up to the year when it claimed the life of Xiongshi.
Zhihuang and his wife were utterly grief-stricken. Zhihuang took it particularly badly: since previously he'd always thought there'd been something between his wife and Wanyu, and that Xiongshi was most likely illegitimate, he'd never been terribly affectionate toward his son. After Wanyu died, the discovery that Wanyu was hardly a man dispelled this cloud of suspicion, and he turned a far more genial, fatherly face to Xiongshi, picking wild chestnuts and other things for him on his way home
from the mountain quarry. Little had he imagined that from that time on, there would no longer be a pair of little hands to receive those chestnuts. Xiongshi wasn't at home, in the fields, by the stream, near the mountains; he was nowhere. His son had become a resounding explosion, before scattering and disappearing into eternal quiet.
Xiongshi's head was both unusually big and unusually round. He grew into quite a sturdy figure, his fluttering eyes as bright and beautiful as his mother Shuishui's. Just one of his sidelong glances dripped with feminine charm, reminding people of how Shuishui had been in her days as an actress. When people saw him, they couldn't help giving his bottom or his cheeks a pinch, vying with each other to squeeze his irresistible charms. He hated this kind of harassment, and unless offered something nice to eat would imperiously reject such advances, giving outsiders a steely once-over. With one roll of the eyes he could gauge whether you really had something to eat in your pocket, whether it was really worth trusting your smiling face, or whether he should act cool and calm for the time being and bide his time. He hated mushy talk from old people more than anything, it drove him mad, to curse then kick then spit-until, pushed to his limit, he would suddenly bite. His lion's jaws bit everything under the sun, starting with his mother's breast. No one who'd sat next to him at primary school, whether male or female, escaped his teeth. In the end, even the teacher's luck ran out.
He refused to produce a self-criticism in front of the headmaster for hacking at the table edge with his knife. "Self-criticize this, self-criticize that! I've had enough of doing things your way!"
As the head teacher dragged him by the ear to the teacher's room, he retaliated by biting the head teacher, then fled far, far away, holding up his pants and swearing his head off.
"I'll get you, you horrible brat!" raged the head teacher.
"You might beat me today, but just wait until you get old and come by my place with a stick, I'll push you into a great big pit!"
He was forecasting a victory many years in the future.
The head teacher followed him off into the distance, brandishing a carrying pole.
He couldn't catch up with him, of course, and soon the ball of flesh that was Xiongshi had rolled up to the house facing the mountains, and stood there, arms akimbo, keeping up the flow of abuse. "Hey, Li Xiaotang, you big old pig, your pubes are showing…"
He was using the headmaster's full name to curse him, although I don't know how he found it out.
Going back to school was, of course, now out of the question. Other people said that Zhihuang had brought up a complete menace through lack of discipline. Him, a student? You'd train a dog before you trained him!
Later, he would often come down to look at the school, viewing from a distance the students reading aloud in unison, doing gymnastics, or playing ball. If his former classmates saw him, he would make as if he was playing horse, "Whoah there, chaaaaaarge," galloping off into the distance, acting as if he were having a grand old time, as if he were taking absolutely no notice of what was going on in the school.
One day, playing in the sands with a few kids, he started to antagonize the others by grabbing hold of a battered overshoe which he was using to shovel sand. A few of them resolved to take revenge by shitting into the village well and framing Xiongshi for the deed. Saying he'd done it, they went with great fanfare to where the adults were working to report him. The adults were all furious at this news and Shuishui wanted to hide her face in shame; turning red, then white in anger, she yelled at Xiongshi: "Can't stand it if you don't get into trouble, can you?"
"I… didn't do it."
"Still talking back! All these people saw you-d'you think they're blind, got beans for eyes?"
"I didn't do it."
"There's no water to drink, so you'd better go fetch some! You fetch water for every single family, go fetch it from the river!"
"I didn't do it!"
"Still won't own up?" Shuishui gave him a resounding blow to the face. Xiongshi swayed back, swayed forward; the impact instantly produced a deep red imprint of her fingers on his face.
Seeing that Shuishui was prepared to go further, a few women standing around stepped forward to calm her down, telling her to let it be, kids don't understand anything, they're always like that, knock them around a bit, okay, but you don't want to beat them too hard… These mediations in fact only enraged Shuishui yet further, acting as a kind of pressure on her: if she didn't become more furious, more ferocious, she would have had no way of differentiating herself from everyone else. It wasn't worth anybody's while to try and calm her down-a bad end was already in sight. Under this kind of pressure, she had no option but to roll up her sleeves and plunge on. Pow, wham, two more slaps exploded; not with the sound made off a human face, more like the cracking of a wooden bucket.
Xiongshi bit his lip hard and stared fixedly at his mother. Tears gleamed unsteadily in his eyes; in the end they didn't fall, but paused then slowly retreated.
He didn't return home that evening, nor the next day, nor the day after that… still no Xiongshi. Zhihuang and Shuishui searched everywhere in the mountains, helped by the villagers. Just as everyone was pretty much despairing, an old herbalist from Zhangjia District found Xiongshi in a burrow in the mountains. Wild in appearance, he was asleep in a nest of thatch grass, and apart from the occasional flash of his eyes, all else was filth and grime, the clothes on his back ripped and torn into strips of tattered cloth. For a whole eleven days, he had survived on wild fruits, leaves, and tree bark; when he was taken back home and Shuishui boiled him two eggs, his face contorted into a terrible grimace after just one bite. He ate no more, and ran outside to sit under a tree, staring blankly at everyone, as he ripped up the grass around him in an automatic reflex and stuffed it into his mouth. The onlookers were all astounded: surely only animals prefer grass to boiled eggs?
Probably because of this history, Shuishui lost her mental grip after Xiongshi was obliterated in the huge explosion, and for some time refused to believe that her son was no more. She would run up to the mountains and shout herself hoarse calling her son's name-she still believed he was hiding in some hole in the mountains. This went on until people had no choice but to show her what they had all along held back: the finger, the half of the little foot and the two bowls containing splinters of bone and flesh. Her eyeballs bulged terrifyingly, then she fell into a dead faint.
When she came to, some of the women said to her, "You have to think of the bigger picture, in a situation like this all you can do is think of the bigger picture. Your Xiongshi left you early, but wasn't it a dear life? No worries about food, or clothes, messing about all day long, then when he'd messed about as much as he could, he left, no illness, no pain, he was lucky. Things could have only got worse for him."
"Dear life" refers to a man's life before the age of eighteen, or a woman's life before the age of sixteen. "Full life" refers to a man's life up to the age of thirty-six and to a woman's life up to the age of thirty-two. To live this long is to live fully, and anything after that is "cheap life," worthless. By this logic, an early death is of course better, of higher value.
Xiongshi's parents had no reason to grieve.
The village women gathered around Shuishui's bed, each producing a platitude more beautiful than the last. Ah, Shuishui, your Xiongshi never went hungry, isn't that much better? Much better that your Xiongshi never felt the cold. Much better your Xiongshi never saw his dad die, his mom die, didn't go after his brothers and sisters, never saw a cloud pass over him. If heaven brought him back to life, he'd have to find a wife, set up home on his own, fight with his brothers for a patch of land one day, fight with his sisters for a bite to eat the next, row with his mom and dad in between, where was the fun in that? You know what our life's like, harvesting in the boiling heat, sun baking overhead, water steaming up below, dark both ends of the working day, soon as day breaks, it's off to the fields, you can only feel with your hands whether it's rice or grass. You know what our life's
like, fixing irrigation under a full moon, shoulders rubbed raw, tramping over ice in bare feet, so cold you wet yourself. What was so great about that, hey? Your Xiongshi left before trouble came knocking at his door, he was the cat that had all the cream, then went out with a bang. He's still got his dad to weep, his mom to wail, so many uncles to give him a good send-off, it's really better this way- you've got to think of the bigger picture.
They also started to talk about an old laborer in the upper village, a destitute old man whose children had all died before him and who now lived like a dog, lame in one leg, unable even to fetch water for himself- he'd had all the trouble he was going to have. Think about it, sister, if your Xiongshi were destined to have a long life, a cheap life, wouldn't he be much worse off?
They were unified around the belief that people should die young; it was just that they were trapped, unable to die. Only Xiongshi could die good and early, only Xiongshi had this stroke of luck.
In the end, Shuishui decided to stop crying.
* Cheap
: When old people met each other, they would always ask "Still cheap?" meaning how were they feeling. This word was often used when inquiring about old people, for example "Yanzao's ma is still as cheap as anything, she eats two bowls of rice at a sitting."
In Maqiao language, old age is cheap life, and the longer your life the cheaper it gets. Despite this, some people still hope to live longer, until their eyesight fails, their hearing goes, their teeth have fallen out, their spirit has left them, they're bedridden, can't recognize anybody-living is still living.
