by Han Shaogong
Once he went to someone's home to clean the millstone, to recondition the old stone. While the two of them were idly chatting, the conversation got around to operas; the householder's opinion differed from his and they ended up arguing till they were red in the face. Just go, go, said the peasant, I don't want my millstone washing. Zhihuang gathered up his tools, got up, and had gone out the door when something occurred to him, and he turned back to add: "Whether you have it washed or not, this millstone still isn't yours. Just as long as you understand that."
The peasant pondered this for some time, but still didn't understand anything at all.
After Zhihuang had walked another few steps away, he turned around again in a fury: "Got that? It's not yours!"
"Well, it's not going to be yours, is it?"
"It's not mine either, it's my dad's."
What he meant was, the millstone had been hammered out by his dad, so it was his dad's.
There was another time when someone from Shuanglong Bow came to the quarry weeping and wailing, saying his uncle had died and he had no money for the funeral; his great fear was that his uncle wouldn't have a decent burial, and he begged Zhihuang to sell him a tombstone on credit. Zhihuang saw how pitifully he was sobbing and said, don't worry about credit. Just take it, give your uncle a decent burial. Having said this, he hauled out a piece of top-quality blue-and-white stone and chiseled out a stele, even tied it up with some rope and helped him carry it down the mountain, taking him back part of the way. By this time, the quarry had been reclaimed into the collective. When the accountant Fucha discovered that he'd given a memorial stone to someone for nothing at all, he insisted that he chase after him to get the money back, saying he just didn't have the right to take pity on people like that. The two of them had a big row. Zhihuang's face darkened: "I dynamited the rock, I broke it, I carried it, I chiseled it, so how come it belongs to the team leader now? What's the sense in that!"
Fucha just docked him some work points and left it at that.
Zhihuang didn't actually care about work points, even if he was being docked by a team cadre. He didn't care about anything apart from rocks, nothing that hadn't been produced by his own two hands had any great importance for him; he just couldn't find any reason to care. The year he and Shuishui got divorced, Shuishui's people came and almost cleaned his house out of stuff, but he didn't care a bit; he just watched them move things out, and even made them tea. He lived in the upper village, and on the mountainside not far away there was a grove of good bamboo. When spring came, the bamboo roots spread like wildfire underneath the ground, the shoots running everywhere: sometimes, as if by magic, a thick bamboo tip would sprout up in someone's vegetable garden, or under their bed, or in their pigsty. According to the general rule, the bamboo shoot belonged to whichever household it had run to. Zhihuang understood this, it was just that he had difficulty remembering to put it into practice. Once, when he went to his vegetable patch to build a melon hut, he saw a stranger there, a passer-by most likely, who fled in panic as soon as he saw him. He obviously didn't know the way, and jumped into the ditch instead of taking the main road; Zhihuang shouted out but couldn't get him to stop and watched, wide-eyed, as he stepped onto nothingness and then fell into the deep ditch, sinking up to his waist in sludge. He yowled at great volume, a big fat bamboo shoot rolling out of his shirt.
It was obvious that this bamboo shoot had been dug up from Zhihuang's garden. But making as if he'd seen nothing, Zhihuang hurried over, deftly cut down a sapling with a wood knife he produced from behind his back, and lowered one end down into the ditch for the person in the ditch to grab hold of and slowly climb out.
Seeing the knife in Zhihuang's hands, the passer-by blanched and started trembling all over. Seeing as Zhihuang didn't seem to be making any move, the man took a few tentative pigeon steps toward the main road.
"Hey! Your bamboo shoot-" Zhihuang yelled out.
The person almost tripped and fell.
"Your bamboo shoot, don't you want it?"
He threw the bamboo shoot over.
The person picked the bamboo shoot up from the ground, stared at Zhihuang in stupefaction, but as he couldn't actually spot any trick, any danger, off he pelted like a madman and soon afterwards disappeared. Zhihuang watched his back view with some amusement, and it was only a good while later that the expression on his face turned to puzzlement.
All the villagers laughed at Zhihuang afterwards, laughed that he hadn't just failed to catch the thief, he'd even cut down a tree and rescued the thief from out of the ditch. And the funniest thing of all was that he'd worried the thief would've had a wasted trip and made a gift of what was his own property. Zhihuang blinked at these comments, and just smoked his tobacco.
*Precious (continued)
: I've got a couple more things to say about "precious."
I once saw Zhihuang bring a few people to the supply and marketing cooperative to put up two buildings. When the last piece of tile had been lowered into place, Benyi sprang up from somewhere or other to check on the quality of work, giving it a kick here, a prod there. His face suddenly clouded over: the stone wall hadn't been built level, he declared, and too little mortar had been used-everyone would have their work points cut.
Zhihuang went to reason with him, to ask what on earth he was talking about. "I'm a stonemason, d'you think I don't know how much mortar to use?
Benyi sniggered icily: "Are you Party Secretary or am I Party Secretary? What's more important: what Awakened Huang says, or what the Party Secretary says?"
It looked like he had it in for Zhihuang.
Bystanders tried to smooth things over, pulling Zhihuang to one side, placating Benyi. Zhaoqing tailed the Party Secretary everywhere: if he saw him going to the toilet hut, he'd wait outside the toilet hut; if he saw him going to the butcher's, he'd wait outside the butcher's. When he finally saw him leave the butcher's smoking a cigarette, he accompanied him on an inspection tour of the cucumbers and peppers along the side of the road, but still couldn't get so much as a backward glance out of him.
The mealtime bell sounded in the cooperative. Benyi rubbed his hands in glee, "Good, good, off to Director Huang's to eat a nice bit of turtle!"
The delight was written all over his face.
Just as he was about to set off, a rat-a-tat noise suddenly erupted from somewhere around the just-completed granary, a rather irregular noise. People hurried over to report: unbelievable, unbelievable, Precious Huang's out there pulling down the building. Momentarily stunned, Benyi quickly propelled himself over to have a look and discovered that old Zhihuang had indeed worked himself into a lather; this solitary figure, swearing and cursing away, was savagely thwacking the wall with his double-ball hammer.
The new wall was like beancurd. One piece of stone had already warped on one side, another piece had started to bend, and powdered debris cascaded in fine trickles. Old Huang of the cooperative was at his side, unable to get him to stop. Old Huang spotted Benyi: "What's going on here? What's going on here? What's the point in pulling down a good building? Even if you don't care about your labor, eh, I care about my bricks. Four cents a brick, doncha know?"
Benyi cleared his throat, to announce his arrival on the scene.
Precious Huang didn't grasp the significance of the cough.
"Huang, you fartbrain!"
Huang threw him a glance, but took no notice.
"Why're you acting so precious!" Benyi had reddened to the base of his neck, "Whether we pull it down or not, you've got to wait till the cadres have looked into it… and then we'll see. You've got no speech rights. Go back home! All of you, you're going back with me!"
Zhihuang spat into the palm of his hand, then picked up the stone hammer again. "I broke these stones off the mountain, I brought them here in my cart, I built the wall. If I pull 'em down, what's it to you?"
Once he'd gotten onto the subject of stones, no one could reason with Zhihuang, no one could do anything about his ba
leful glares. Zhongqi stepped forward to give the Party Secretary some verbal support. "Huang, m'boy, that's no way to talk, the stone isn't the cooperative's, it isn't yours either. You belong to the team leader, so the stones you break belong to the team leader."
"What kind of logic is that? Old Dribbler belongs to the team leader too, and his old lady too, so everyone can sleep with her, can they?"
Everyone snickered quietly to themselves.
This got Benyi so angry he couldn't speak, and his jaw hung out of place till he pulled it back in again. "Fine, you smash away! Give it a good smash! I won't just dock all your work points, I'll punish you till you howl! I won't give you another chance, you'll know that nails are made of iron and eggs are eggs when I'm through with you!"
When they heard they'd be punished, the situation started to turn; the expression on several people's faces changed and they came forward to tug at, to intervene with, Zhihuang. Some stuffed cigarettes into his hand.
"What's the point? Calm down a bit, calm down."
"Don't ruin things for other people."
"Let them cut our work points, but why pull the thing down?"
"Part of this wall's mine too: why should it be smashed just because you say so?…"
Zhihuang was quite a bruiser, and one shake of his shoulders to the left, then to the right, threw the people on both sides off. "Don't worry, I only want my stones, I won't lay a finger on any of yours."
This was, in fact, nonsense. The stones he'd laid today were all at the base of the wall. If he pulled out the bottom, could the wall above hang in thin air?
Benyi threw up his hands and walked off into the distance. But Zhaoqing, who'd tailed him all the way, quickly ran back, his face covered in smiles, saying that Benyi had changed his mind, that not one of the work points would be cut-or not for the time being, that he'd settle accounts later on. At this the tension finally, simultaneously vanished from everyone's faces. Seeing that Precious Huang's hammer had stopped, everyone piled in to stuff back into place the rocks he'd just smashed out.
On the way back to the village, a lot of people fought for the privilege of helping Zhihuang carry the tool basket: if Precious Huang hadn't been around today, they said, wouldn't everyone have been done over good and proper by Old Dribbler? Wouldn't they have been dead meat on the chopping block? They thronged Zhihuang on all sides to sing his praises, Precious Huang this, Precious Huang that, on and on it went. In my opinion, the word "precious" here was now no longer derogatory but had recovered its original meaning: something to be treasured.
*Lion Dance
: Zhihuang had been the hand-drummer in the old opera troupe, the head drummer in other words. He drummed beats like "Phoenix Nodding," "Dragon Gate Leaping," "Ten Vows Redeemed" and "Lion Dance," whirlwind blasts that made the blood surge, the spirit soar, a string of terrifying thunderbolts that fell like axe-blows. There were a lot of bar breaks and dotted notes, all kinds of dangerous and unexpected sudden halts. It stopped and started, died away then picked itself up, snatched itself back from the jaws of death, dramatically recovered from the brink of collapse. If it pulverized your every bone, dislocated your every muscle, made your sight run to your nose and your sense of smell run to your ears, smashed up every part of your brain- then it had to be Zhihuang's "Lion Dance."
You needed a full half hour to beat a set of "Lion Dance." Many drums were smashed under this lion's thunderous feet-Zhihuang's rock-chiseling hands were too heavy.
A lot of the lads in the village wanted to learn from him, but no one mastered his art.
He very nearly got to drum in our Mao Zedong Thought arts propaganda team. He accepted the invitation with great excitement and set about fixing up oil lamps, making gong hammers, writing Propaganda Team System, or something like that, on red paper in higgledy-piggledy characters, throwing himself into absolutely everything. He smiled at everyone: because he was too thin, when he smiled all that remained of his lower face were two rows of bright, clean, snow-white teeth. But he only drummed for a day, then never came back; the next day he went back to the mountain to break rocks. Fucha went to call him back, even promised to give him twice as many work points as the others, but he wouldn't budge.
The main reason, apparently, was he felt the new operas were dull, they had no scope to give free play to his percussion. Spoken poems, short songs, the bumper harvest dance-none of these needed the added excitement of a Lion. When a scene from a Model Opera-The New Fourth Army Convalescing in the Homes of the People-came along, his lion finally showed its muzzle, only to be slain by one wave of the director's hand.
"I haven't finished!" he yelled in outrage.
"How can people sing when all we can hear is you drumming?" The director was from the County Cultural Institute. "This opera's for strings and wind, when it finishes just tack on a finale and that'll do."
Zhihuang's face darkened, but all he could do was keep waiting.
When the Japanese devils had come on and the scene had livened up, was Zhihuang allowed to play a good hand? The director, it turned out, was even worse than he'd thought, and only allowed him to beat some running water sounds and bang a few small gongs at the end. He didn't get it, so the director grabbed the hammer and banged it a couple of times to show him, "just like that, got it?"
"What tune is it?"
"Tune?"
"There's no tune for the percussion?"
"No tune."
"So, just let it out any old how, like a kid having a crap?"
"The problem with you, you know, is you only know the old stuff, it's always Lion Dance this, Lion Dance that. What lion's dancing when the Jap devils come on, eh?"
Zhihuang had nothing to say to this and had to take what he was given. After one whole day of rehearsal, after drumming odds and ends with no pattern or order, he had no choice but to resign in massive disappointment. He had total contempt for the director and refused to believe there were any good operas in the world apart from Bi Rengui, Yang Silang, Cheng Yaojin, Zhang Fei, and the like; in fact he found it very hard to believe there was all that much else full stop in the world that could impress him. If you told him about special effects in opera films, how many people the world's biggest steamer could seat, how if you always walk forward you'll return to your starting place because the earth is round, how in gravity-less space a child's finger could lift 108,000 catties, and so on and on, he'd summarize his opinion of it all in four utterly cold, indifferent words:
"You're putting me on."
He wouldn't argue, or get angry, sometimes he'd even give a thin little smile; but he'd lick his lips and summarize, always, with perfect confidence: "You're putting me on."
Normally, he'd be really quite civil to us transferred youth, and had some respect for knowledge. He wasn't uncurious or unquestioning, quite the opposite: whenever there was an opportunity, he liked to approach those of us who'd been to middle school and ask questions he'd never been able to think of an answer to. It was just that he had his doubts about anything new-including Marxist writings-and was too quick to judge our answers, too absolute, he'd always be denying things without leaving any room for discussion.
"You're putting me on again."
For example, he'd seen films but categorically refused to believe that the kung-fu in revolutionary model operas was rehearsed. "Rehearsed? What rehearsal? These people've been having the bones knocked out of them since they were children, there's only flesh left in 'em; they get the living daylights thrashed out of them onstage, offstage they can't even pick up an empty water bucket."
At times like these, persuading him, convincing him the bones of those kung-fu fighters were still in place, that carrying water would be absolutely no problem at all, was harder than flying to the moon.
*Boss Hong
After stopping work one day, I spotted by the side of the road a small calf, too young to have grown horns, its furry muzzle round and well-formed, snuffling down under the mulberry tree eating grass. I felt like givin
g its tail a tug and had just extended a hand when, as if it had grown eyes in the back of its head, it slipped away, head tilted to one side. I was just about to go after it when a moo sounded out from a flatland in the distance and a big, glaring ox pointed its horns at me and charged ferociously, leaving the ground and mountains trembling in its wake; I dropped my hoe in terror and ran.
It was only some time later that, still with lingering fear, I came to retrieve my hoe.
While retrieving the hoe, I tried to ingratiate myself with the calf by feeding it some grass, but just as I'd waved the blades of grass near its mouth, the ox in the distance charged at me again, mooing like a banshee, with maddening obtuseness, intolerant of treatment either good or bad.
The big ox's desperate fierceness toward me meant it must be the calf's mother. It was only later that I found out this animal was called "Boss Hong": because it had been born with a bit of its ear missing, people identified it as the reincarnation of someone who'd come from near Luo River. This person, Boss Hong, had been a great bully with seven or eight wives and had also had a bit of his left ear missing. People said he'd done so many bad things that Heaven had condemned him to a lifetime as an ox, pulling ploughs, drawing harrows and being whipped to atone for the sins of his previous life.
People also said that Heaven must really have eyes in its head to have sent Boss Hong to be reborn in Maqiao. The year the Red Army came to incite the peasants to attack local bullies, Maqiao people hadn't dared make a move at first; but when they saw a tyrant in Longjia Sands had been brought down, had had his head cracked open, and that nothing had come of it, they itched to have a go themselves. Unfortunately, by the time they'd got the peasants' association together, drunk the chicken's blood wine and made a red flag, they discovered their moment had already passed: all the certified bullies in the vicinity had already been struck down and all the granaries emptied, bar a few rats. None too happy about this, they made a few inquiries back and forth before finally heading across the Luo River, spears and blunderbusses in hand, to make revolution in Boss Hong's village. Little did they expect that the peasants there would also be making revolution: Boss Hong was their bully, they said, only they could revolutionize him, not people from other villages, and the Hong family's grain could only be divided between them, not between people from other villages. You don't go watering other people's fields, do you, now? The peasants' associations of the two villages negotiated without reaching any agreement and in the end it came to blows. The people from around Maqiao (not just Maqiao itself) thought the people from over the way were protecting the bully, that they were a fake peasants' association, making fake revolution, and built a pine tree cannon to bomb the village. The people from over the way showed no signs of weakening either: banging an almighty racket out of their gongs, they took down the wooden doors of the whole village, moved a few threshing windmills, and blocked the road that led into the village. They also fired at will, until the leaves hidden deep in the forest trembled and fell to the ground in a tattered flurry.
