A Dictionary of Maqiao

by Han Shaogong

  Two men from round Maqiao were injured and a good bronze gong was lost in the struggle, the whole squadron of men and horses was swimming in sweat and grime and no one had had anything to eat all day. Unable to believe that the revolutionary consciousness of their peasant brothers over the way could be so low, they gave it some thought and seized on the idea that it was all down to Boss Hong's plotting. And this was how their deep feelings of animosity and hatred toward Boss Hong were sealed.

  Now they were perfectly satisfied, with everything fair and just: Grandfather Heaven had sent Boss Hong to shoulder the plough for Maqiao, to be used to death in Maqiao-this settled the debt. One summer, after the higher-ups had transferred some of the oxen to plough the tea fields, only two were left in Maqiao. After having ploughed the last paddy of late summer rice, a panting and wheezing Boss Hong lay down to sleep in the mud, never to clamber up again. When it was sent to the slaughterhouse, it was discovered its lungs had completely filled up with blood, that almost every bubble in its lungs had burst; they lay abandoned in a wooden basin, like a pile of blood-dyed melon pulp.

  *Three-Hairs

  : There's another ox I want to talk about.

  This ox was called "Three-Hairs," a fearsome character over whom, in all Maqiao, only "Precious" Zhihuang had any jurisdiction. People said it hadn't been born of a heifer, it had burst out of a stone like Monkey Sun in Journey to the West. It wasn't in fact an ox at all, it was a stone come to life. As Precious Huang was a stonemason, of course it followed very naturally that he should look after this lump of stone. This line of reasoning was universally accepted by all.

  Cited in connection with this line of reasoning was the fact that the cry Zhihuang used for calling oxen was quite different from everyone else's. When most people wanted to catch oxen, they all went "chuh-chuh-chuh"; only Zhihuang used "slippy-slip slip" to catch Three-Hairs. "Slip" was a word often used by the stonemason. "Slip the son of heaven" meant hit with the iron hammer; therefore, all stones must, will fear getting the "slip." If Three-Hairs got into a fight with other oxen, however hard people tried to calm things down, the usual methods would never persuade Three-Hairs to let things lie. Only after hearing Zhihuang shout "slip" would it leave off, head hanging, panicked, and meek as a bale of cotton.

  As I recall, Zhihuang's ox-handling skills were excellent: his whip never touched the ox's body and even after a day of ploughing the fields, he'd be clean as a whistle, not a speck of mud on him; he'd look just like he was returning, immaculately dressed, from a visit to some relatives, not like he was coming from the fields. In the fields that he'd ploughed, the churned black mud was like page after page of a book, lying smooth, glossy, flawless, elegant, neat, and even, amidst the rising currents of warm air; they exuded an air of natural smoothness that was both perfectly controlled and relaxed, in possession of both spirit and form, that made you feel you couldn't bear to touch or destroy it. If you looked at them closely, you'd discover his furrows had hardly any botched lines: regardless of how irregular the shape of the paddy field, how difficult it was for the ploughman to place the furrow, he still proceeded without skipping over ridges, very rarely intersecting or repeating a furrow; his were the sparing brushstrokes of a grand master, with never a drop of paint wasted. Once, I noticed he'd ploughed the final circuit with a tiny dead end remaining before him which, from the looks of it, would have to be abandoned with regret. Suddenly, to my total astonishment, he leapt with a great cry into action, seizing the plough, tilting it to one side, and in the blink of an eye the dead end was neatly turned over.

  Unbelievable.

  I would swear that dead end hadn't been turned over by a plough. I can only believe he possessed some kind of magic power, a kind of invisible force that he'd spread, via his palms, through the whole iron plough till it burst out of the snow-bright plough tip, springing, leaping, scattering deep into the mud. At any given moment, any distant dead end he wanted to turn over-in the places his strength reached but his plough couldn't, his energy reached but his strength couldn't, his intent reached but his energy couldn't-would turn itself over.

  As I recall, he didn't have much confidence in the ox-herders and their little tricks, and always wanted to let the oxen out himself, taking them far, far away in search of clean water and grass that would suit their palates; he'd only take care of himself after he'd settled the oxen. For this reason, he was often the last to get off work, a lonely black spot on the mountainside, sometimes moving, sometimes still against the blazing reddish-purple backdrop of the sky, as the sound of cowbells merged in and out of the silence, scattered in amongst the fiery clouds that soared through the sky. It was about this time that star after isolated star would be coming awake.

  Maqiao would have been unimaginable, dusk would have been unimaginable without the sound of oxbells. Dusk without these muted bells was like a river without flowing water, a spring without flowers, would have left only a magnificent wasteland.

  The ox at his side was always Three-Hairs.

  The problem was that sometimes Zhihuang had to go to the quarry-particularly after autumn, when things got pretty busy there. After he'd left, no one dared use Three-Hairs. One time, though, I decided to try my luck at copying Zhihuang's way of "slipping" it. It was spattering rain that day, with lightning lashing the dark recesses of cloud layers; two bare metal broadcasting wires shaking in the wind had been struck by lightning and were spitting out great rounds of shooting stars. The naked wires strewed themselves across the patch of field I'd just been ploughing, over where I had to pass whenever I returned, my nerves jangling away as I did so. Every time I approached underneath, my legs would turn to jelly, time and again I'd hold my breath, twisting my neck upwards to keep watch, watching my fate rocking and swaying back and forth on a thread in the sky, spluttering handful upon handful of sparks, as I dreaded an earth-shattering blow hitting me smack on the head.

  Seeing that other people were still braving the rain to plant seedlings out in the fields, I felt embarrassed at going inside without permission, felt that it'd look like I was running scared of death.

  Three-Hairs seized this opportunity to have some fun with me. The farther away we were from the live electric wires, the more the animal tripped and gamboled, the more unresponsive and unstoppable it became, however hard I pulled. The nearer we got to being beneath the electric wires, the slower it went, either to crap or to pee, or to nibble the grass at the side of the field, as if greatly enjoying my discomfort. In the end, it stopped moving altogether, completely oblivious to how you "slipped," to how you cracked the whip-even if you pushed its behind forward. Its body leaned, slanted forward, but its four hooves had set down roots into the ground.

  It just so happened to halt right under the electric wire. Sparks were still spluttering out in all directions, crackling, exploding, splitting, a string of them dancing along the electric wire, sounding off into the distance. My willow whip had been beaten to a straggle, breaking ever shorter at every crack. Then Three-Hairs suddenly, unexpectedly produced a great roar, yanked the ploughshare so that it shot out of the mud in a silver streak, and galloped crazily toward the cliffside. A tumult of terrified exclamations resounded somewhere off in the distance as the wrenching motion left me staggering, almost toppled over into the mud. The plough handle flew out of my hands, the pointed ploughshare swung forward and, like the merciless falling of an axe, stuck itself straight into one of Three-Hairs' back legs. Perhaps not yet feeling the pain, it leapt onto a mound of earth a good meter high and swayed briefly, dislodging great lumps of mud that collapsed with a crash; it didn't fall back off in the end, but the ploughshare behind it lodged, with a violent clunk, into a seam of rock.

  I didn't know who was yelling in the distance, neither did I have any idea what was being yelled. It was only a long time after the event that I figured out this person was yelling at me to hurry up and pull out the ploughshare.

  It was already too late. The ploughshare, stuck in the seam of rock,
broke with a clang, and the entire plough frame twisted off into pieces.

  The rope halter also snapped. Awash with the excitement of winning freedom, powered by a vast, unstoppable force, Three-Hairs headed bellowing for the mountains, its stride often lapsing into lop-sided leaps, surging with a never-before-experienced happiness.

  That day, its nose was ripped through and it almost hacked off its own leg. In addition to breaking a plough, it also mowed down a telegraph pole, flattened a low wall, stamped to pieces a large bamboo basket, and barged over a manure shed in the village as it was being repaired-if the two people putting up the shed hadn't dodged quickly out of the way, they might not have escaped with their lives.

  After this, I no longer dared use this ox. When the team leader decided to sell it, I gave my enthusiastic approval.

  Zhihuang didn't agree the ox should be sold. His reasoning was somewhat singular: he'd fed this ox grass and water, he said, he'd got the doctor over to give it medicine when it was ill, if he said not to sell it, who had the right to sell it? The cadres said, you use the ox but you can't then say the ox's yours, you need to distinguish clearly between public and private. The ox was bought with the team leader's money. Zhihuang said, the landlord's fields were bought with money, but after land reform, weren't the landlord's fields all divided up? The fields went to whoever used them-wasn't this the same principle?

  Everyone felt there was nothing much wrong with his reasoning.

  "Accidents will happen. When Guan Yunchang threw Jingzhou away, did Zhu Geliang kill him, or sell him?" Even after everyone had finished talking and dispersed, Zhihuang was still wandering along making new points to himself.

  Three-Hairs wasn't sold, but died at the hands of Zhihuang, in a finale that no one would have predicted. He staked his own honor on Three-Hairs: if this beast injured anyone again, he declared, he'd take the axe to it himself. He couldn't go back on what he'd said. One spring day, when everything in the world was sprouting back to life, sounds and colors shifting under the warm sunlight, a secret disquiet pervaded the air. Just as Zhihuang was driving Three-Hairs down the field, suddenly the animal's whole body shuddered, its eyes fixed straight ahead, and with a yank of the ploughshare it charged forward insanely, tramping the mud, smack-smack-splatter, into a rising and falling curtain of water.

  Caught unawares, Zhihuang eventually identified Three-Hairs' target: a red dot at the side of the road. It was only afterwards that he found out it'd been a woman passing by from a neighboring village wearing a jacket with red flowers on it.

  Oxen are particularly sensitive to the color red and often react to it aggressively-nothing strange about that. What was strange was that Three-Hairs, who'd always been led by the nose by Zhihuang, went mad like it did that day, became deaf, oblivious to the shouts and screams of its master. Not long after, a woman's high-pitched scream carried over.

  In the evening, definite news came back from the commune clinic to Maqiao: the woman's star must have been in the ascendant, as she'd hung onto her life, but Three-Hairs had tossed her up into the air, smashing a bone in her right leg, and her fall to the ground had left her with a concussion.

  Zhihuang hadn't gone to the clinic; dazed, alone, he sat at the side of the road fingering a half-length of ox rope. Three-Hairs was not far off, timidly eating grass.

  When he returned to the village at dusk, he set Three-Hairs under the maple tree at the mouth of the village and searched out half a bowl of yellow beans to stuff into Three-Hairs' mouth. Three-Hairs probably sensed something was up and kneeled down before him, murky tears dropping from its eyes. He'd picked out a thick, coarse hemp rope and knotted it into a noose, looped round each of the beast's four legs. A good, long axe was grasped in his hand.

  The village herd of oxen produced an anxious lowing chorus that merged into wave upon wave of echoes, swirling round the mountains and valleys. The setting sun sank, all of a sudden, into gloom.

  He kept watch in front of Three-Hairs, waiting and waiting for it to finish eating the yellow beans. A few women thronged round, Fucha's mother, Zhaoqing's mother, Zhongqi's wife, wiping their noses, their eyes reddened. They said to Zhihuang, he's got himself into trouble, you know, you're sparing him, really, by settling things now. They then turned to Three-Hairs: it's no one's fault but your own things have turned out like this. Weren't you in the wrong, X number of years ago, when you hurt that ox in Zhangjia District? D'you admit you did wrong, Y number of years back, when you killed that ox from Longjia Sands? There was that time you almost kicked Wanyu's boy to death, you should've been killed long ago. That other time, though, that got people really mad, when you ate the yellow beans, you ate the eggs, and still you wouldn't stir yourself, wouldn't take the plough, then finally when it was on, you wouldn't move a muscle, even with four or five people beating you, and we nearly had to lift you onto a sedan chair-people don't forget these things, you know.

  One by one they enumerated the black marks on Three-Hairs' history; finally they said, your sufferings are all over, go in peace, don't go blaming us Maqiao people for being cruel, our hands are tied, y'know.

  Her eyes moist, Fucha's mother said everyone's got to go, sooner or later-don't you remember how Boss Hong suffered much more than you, he even died with the plough still on.

  Three-Hairs was still shedding tears.

  Zhihuang, his face totally expressionless, finally picked up the axe and walked over-

  A dull thump.

  The ox's head split into a rivulet of blood, followed by a second, a third… Even when the fountain of blood had spurted a foot high, the ox still put up no resistance, didn't even call out, still kept its kneeling position. Finally, it swayed briefly, leaned to one side, then collapsed heavily, like a mud wall splaying over the ground. Its legs flexed weakly a few times, while its body lay straight and stiff over the ground, looking as if it had been stretched much longer than normal. The light grey skin covering its stomach, which you couldn't usually see that much of, lay completely exposed. The blood-red head twitched violently in repeated convulsions, the shiny black eyes wide open, fixed on the onlookers, fixed on Zhihuang, who stood before it covered in blood.

  Fucha's mother told Zhihuang, "It's going; call out to it."

  Zhihuang called out: "Three-Hairs."

  The ox's gaze flickered.

  Zhihuang shouted again: "Three-Hairs."

  The ox's broad eyelids finally fell shut; its body slowly stopped twitching.

  All night long, Zhihuang sat before those eyes which would never reopen.

  *Born-to-the-Pen

  : Each of Maqiao's oxen had its own name. People had lots of different words for oxen: for example, there were oxen that "understood," meaning oxen with intelligence; there were oxen "born-to-the-pen," meaning oxen that had been brought up like family, oxen that ox-rustlers found hard to steal away. Although Three-Hairs had something of a foul temper, it was still an ox born-to-the-pen.

  Two months before it died, nothing had been seen of it for two days, the team leader had sent people searching everywhere with no result, and everyone thought it'd never be found again, that it'd already been slaughtered or sold by ox-rustlers. But on the evening of the third day, while I was playing chess at Zhihuang's, Zhihuang unexpectedly turned back from relieving himself and said his ox whip was twitching on the wall, there was definitely something up, definitely. Maybe Three-Hairs had come back. No sooner were we out of the door than we heard Three-Hairs' lows and saw a familiar black shadow in front of the oxpen. Right at that moment it was butting the wooden oxpen with its horns-clunk, clunk, clunk-wanting to get inside. Half a length of ox rope was hanging from its nose, its tail had been cut to half its length for some unknown reason, its whole body was covered with dozens of bloody scars, its whiskers were in a real state and it had clearly lost a lot of weight. After escaping from the ox-rustlers it must have meandered all over the mountains on its long, long tramp home.

  *Qingming Rain

  : There was nothin
g I could say-seeing wave upon wave of misty rain sweep toward me over the fields on the mountainside, dousing the mud wall of the cow pen, wrinkling the surface water on the fields into wind-driven concertinas, dying away in round after round among the clumps of reeds on the ridge opposite, out of which two or three mute wild ducks would then flap furiously. The harmonies from the brook grew ever louder, ever more fragmented, until there was no way of differentiating precisely between each of the various original noises; nor did you know where they came from, there remained nothing but the vast expanse between heaven and earth that had converged into a roaring whole so turbulent that the very surface of the earth seemed to tremble. I saw in a doorway a dog soaked through, howling in wide-eyed terror at the storm.