A Dictionary of Maqiao

by Han Shaogong

  Under the eaves of every house dripped a column of stagnant water, overflowing under the gaze of those avoiding the rain with nowhere to shelter themselves, overflowing with the bitter waiting of the Qingming season, in early April.

  Every leaf on the mountain was being pattered to pieces.

  Spring rain is enthusiastic, self-confident, it rushes and flows, it gushes from deep, long-held stores. Summer rain, in comparison, is more like an occasional absent-minded splatter, while autumn rain is an occasional, distracted about-face, and winter rain is simply indifferent. I reckon it'd be hard to find anyone who looked forward to rain as much as Educated Youth did, who knew so well the sound and smell of each type of rain and the temperature it left the skin. Because it was only on rainy days that we could haul our weary, aching bodies inside our houses, draw breath, and enjoy this precious opportunity for rest.

  My daughter has never liked the rain. For her, spring rain means inconvenience, slippery roads, the terror of thunder and lightning, and the cancellation of sports matches or excursions. She'll never understand my feeling of uncontrollable excitement at the sound of rain, she'll never understand why it's bucketing down in every single one of my dreams about my time in the countryside. She has missed out on a decade of longing for the sound of rain.

  Maybe I should rejoice at this.

  It's started raining again, now. The sound of the rain always gives me a certain feeling: over there in the rain, way, way over there in the rain, there's still a trail of muddy footprints left by me, that floats up on rainy days, sinking into a dazzling white abyss on a mountain path rocked by the waves of rainfall,

  *Rude

  :The first time I heard this word was when crossing the Luo River in flood season, when the river was a few times wider than usual. On the same boat were two unfamiliar women, probably from distant regions, who covered their faces with bamboo hats once they'd boarded the boat, exposing no more than a pair of eyes. The boatman sized them up briefly, then waved at them to get off. The two women had no choice but to get off and smear their faces with mud till they looked like painted actors; doubling up with laughter at the sight of each other, they finally got back on the boat, still convulsed with giggles.

  I was quite amazed: why did they have to paint these funny faces?

  "Even ten Chairman Mao's can't control Sixth Master Dragon and his floods," said the boatman. "I can't be held responsible for the lives of a boatload of people, now can I?"

  People on the boat immediately concurred: that's right, that's right, floods and fire take no prisoners, best be careful. They started talking about some time back in the past, when some woman had been so rude the boat capsized, the people fell in the water and couldn't reach the bank however hard they swam-must've been demons at work.

  It was only afterwards that I found out "rude" meant "pretty." A very particular rule held on this crossing: in times of high winds or turbulent waters, women who weren't ugly weren't allowed to cross. Legend had it that a very long time ago an ugly woman from around here who could never get married had ended up throwing herself to her death off this pier into the river. The ugly woman's soul didn't then scatter: she only had to spot an attractive woman on a boat to whip the wind into jealous waves, causing endless accidents in which boats were destroyed and lives lost. Any remotely good-looking female on the crossing could only avoid bringing disaster on the whole boat by dirtying her face.

  I don't pay much heed to or have much faith in this sort of legend, neither have I done any concrete research on the links between beauty and catastrophe: for example, does beauty tend to make people lose their minds, drive them wild, deranged, or crazy? Does it easily lead people into carelessness, into abandoning responsibilities? It's this word "rude" that I'm interested in. It conceals within an assumption that provokes an involuntary shiver: beauty is a form of evil, good is a form of danger, beautiful and good things will always bring disunity, instability, dissatisfaction, disputes, and animosity-rudeness. A "precious jade" (a beautiful woman) once provoked the State of Zhao to go to war with the State of Qin, Greece embarked on a ten-year war with Troy because of a beautiful woman called Helen-probably a useful footnote to all this. Ordinary people can only drift with the tide, turn to dust in the sunlight, stick to the bottom of the pile, and smear mud over their faces to maintain peace on earth.

  "Rude" in Maqiao language was also widely used to mean excellence, to tower above others, to stand out from your peers, surpass the norm, and so on. Given that this word was used to describe Benyi's young wife Tiexiang, readers from outside Maqiao should now break into a cold sweat at the very mention of her.

  *Spirit

  : Maqiao people believed that pretty women had a particular kind of smell-a fragrant but harmful kind of smell. When Benyi's wife Tiexiang came over from Changle to be married in Maqiao she brought this smell with her. Two months after her arrival, every single one of Maqiao's daylilies were dead. You could pick flower after dazzling gold flower into your basket, but before you got them back home they'd have collapsed into soggy black blobs which refused to respond to any amount of primping. The old people said this was why Maqiao people would never grow daylilies again, why they could only grow malformed melons, eggplants, bitter gourds, pumpkins, walnuts, and so on.

  Tiexiang's smell also disturbed all sorts of farm animals. The moment it saw Tiexiang, Fucha's family dog went mad-there was no choice but to shoot it. Zhongqi used to have a "foot-pig" (or breeding pig): from the moment it saw Tiexiang, it just couldn't be kept quiet anymore and had to be castrated; it was later slaughtered for its meat. Some people's chickens and ducks were struck down by epidemics, which their owners all blamed on Tiexiang's influence. In the end, even Three-Hairs the ox charged at Tiexiang while under Zhihuang's supervision. She screamed in terror, and if it hadn't been for Zhihuang's sharp eyes and quick hands pulling its halter up smartly, she might have been butted all the way down the hillside.

  The women were all rather sniffy about Tiexiang, but Benyi's face as Party Secretary stopped them from coming straight out with it. Some of them weren't so easily put off and would search out some needling comment as soon as they saw her. They'd go on about how extravagant, how elaborate their obeisance ceremonies or pot-placing had been when they'd arrived in their husband's house in Maqiao, how everything had been just so. Of course there'd been First Uncle carrying the dowry, Second Uncle blowing the trumpet, Third Uncle firing the blunderbuss, Fourth Uncle holding up the red parasol-and so on and so forth went the exaggerations. There were bales of Hangzhou silk brocade, hundreds of Japanese mandarin jackets, the bracelets on wrists were this big, the rings on ears were this shiny-as they never tired of saying.

  Tiexiang's face turned livid as she listened to all this.

  Once, one of them feigned surprise: "Aiya, all you grand ladies, all so lucky, you just make me want to die of shame. When I was left in this rotten dump, I was carrying nothing but a parasol, just a lump of flesh I was, dressed in a mandarin jacket!"

  Everyone laughed.

  This woman was obviously referring to how poor Tiexiang had been when she first arrived. Unable to bear it, Tiexiang fled back home to have a good cry and pummel her pillow and quilt.

  In fact, Tiexiang had grown up in a wealthy household, a house with nursemaids and servants, where food would always be accompanied by soy sauce, aniseed, or sesame oil; she knew what biscuits and cakes were, not like Maqiao people, who called everything "candy." But when she arrived in Maqiao, her father had died in prison and the family finances were in decline. When she scurried across Benyi's threshold, she really was carrying nothing but a parasol.

  Aged sixteen at the time, with a bit of rouge smeared on, a big stomach sticking out in front, she'd rushed alone into Maqiao in a great fluster and asked who the Party member was around here. People eyed her curiously and finally gave her a couple of names only after repeated questioning on her part. She then asked who, out of these Party members, was still a bachelor. Benyi,
people said. She asked for directions to Benyi's home, walked straight up to the thatched hut, and quickly sized up house and man:

  "So you're Ma Benyi?"

  "Mmm."

  "You're a Communist Party member?"

  "Mmm."

  "D'you want to get married?"

  "Whassat?" Benyi was cutting up pigfeed and hadn't been listening properly.

  "I asked, do you want a wife or don't you?"

  "Wife?"

  She drew a long breath, put down the parasol she'd brought with her: "I'm not bad-looking, am I? I can have children as well, you can see that. If you're happy with that, then I…"

  "Uh?"

  "That's what I'm here for."

  "Here for what?" Benyi still hadn't quite got it.

  Tiexiang stamped her foot, "I'm yours."

  "My what?"

  Tiexiang twisted her neck and glanced over the door: "To sleep with!"

  Benyi jumped in fright, too stunned to produce a single sentence, "You you you you where did you spring from you spirit woman… Bloody hell, where's my basket?"

  He fled indoors. Tiexiang pursued him inside: "What's there to complain about? Look at my face, look at my hands, my feet, all there, all present and correct. Look, I'll be frank with you, I've even got some of my own money. You can relax, I've got an educated man's baby inside me, if you want it, you can have it. You don't want it, then get rid of it. I just wanted to show you I can have children, there's nothing wrong with my body…"

  Before she'd finished, she heard someone slip out the back door.

  "You must've stored up lots of secret good deeds in an earlier life to land someone like me-" Tiexiang stamped her foot in fury; a noisy sob followed shortly.

  Later, Benyi dispatched his same-pot brother Benren to send this spirit woman on her way. When Benren came to the door, he discovered the woman was already chopping up pig grass; wiping her hands, she got up to bid him sit down and took out the kettle to boil some tea. She really wasn't bad-looking, either. Seeing that her full, round buttocks and thick legs were the properly child-bearing sort, he went a bit tongue-tied and failed again and again to come up with the words required to send her packing. He later told Benyi: "She may be a bit of a spirit, but she looks pretty healthy. If you don't want her, I'll have her."

  That night, Tiexiang didn't go home-she stayed at Benyi's place.

  Things worked out pretty simply: Benyi didn't get a matchmaker, didn't buy any betrothal gifts, he got it all on the cheap. Tiexiang also got what she wanted: as she put it later, she'd been fed up with government surveillance and with her four mothers weeping and wailing all day long, fed up with the daily threats and nags of the handyman next door. So she made up her mind, walked out of the door with nothing but a parasol, and swore she'd find a member of the Communist Party to look after her. As things turned out, she succeeded at the first attempt and a few days later really did take a demobilized revolutionary soldier and Party Branch Secretary back home with her. The neighbors on both sides eyed her with more respect and, after one look at the medal pinned on Benyi's chest for resisting America and helping Korea, the cadres became a few degrees politer to her family.

  The two of them went to the government office to register. The government office said she was too young, she should come back in two years. When it became clear that nothing she said was having any effect, her apricot eyes hardened and she told the secretary who handled official seals: "If you don't register us, I won't go, I'll have the kid at your place and say it's yours. How'd you like that?" The secretary jumped in terror and scrambled to sort everything out, the sweat running down his face. He watched their back-views-hers and her bridegroom's-recede far off into the distance, his mind still unhinged with fear: that spirit woman, he said, d'you think she'll stay like that?

  Bystanders also shook their heads and tut-tutted: she truly was Master Nine Pockets' daughter, they said, she'd eaten the food of every family in town and the skin on her face was thicker than shoe soles. If she was like this now, what would she be like later?

  As Benyi afterwards slowly came to realize, it would be hard to say this marriage business had turned out well for him. Tiexiang was about ten years younger than him and so reserved the right to flare up into tempers at home; sometimes, when her spirit got quite carried away, it only took the slightest thing not to go her way, the tiniest provocation, and she'd be yelling about how god-forsaken Maqiao Bow was, how could anyone live there? She cursed Maqiao's roads for being uneven, cursed Maqiao's mountains for being too steep, cursed the gully holes for burying people alive, cursed the rice for having too much sand in it, cursed the firewood for being so wet you choked on the soot, cursed the way you had to run seven or eight li to buy a needle or soy sauce. What with her cursing this way and that, her curses inevitably ended up directed at Benyi. If she just cursed and left it at that, it would've been all right, but once in a particularly violent screaming fit she actually chopped off the head of an eel. What'd happened to patriarchal law? For better or for worse, Benyi was still her old man, for better or for worse a Party Secretary; how'd he gotten himself into this mess with eels' heads?

  While Benyi's old ma was still alive, she too was helpless before her daughter-in-law, whose rages spared not even the old: "Are you never going to die, you old crock, I don't care how old you are, how heavy you are, will you never end? Just go and die! Why don't you just go and die?"

  Generally speaking, Benyi turned a deaf ear to such remarks-he was, in fact, a little deaf. Even if sometimes, at the end of his tether, he yelled "I'll do you in!" all it took was for his wife to shut her mouth just for a moment and no real action would be taken. His moment of greatest authority was when one slap of his hand sent Tiexiang rolling into the middle of a flock of terrified ducks who scattered into the air in all four directions. That, as he put it, was the time that good overpowered bad, the east wind overpowered the west wind. When she clambered up again, Tiexiang would have thrown herself into the pond if she hadn't been stopped by the villagers. She had no choice but to run back to her parents' house, and nothing was heard of her for three months. Once again, it was Benren who, with two catties of potato flour and two catties of baba cakes, finally went to make peace with Tiexiang on behalf of his same-pot brother, and who drove her back on a dirt cart.

  In the foregoing narrative, the reader may have noticed that the word "spirit" came up a few times. Maqiao people, it should by now be apparent, used the word "spirit" to describe any kind of unconventional behavior. People from around here were anxious above all else to affirm human ordinariness, to affirm that humans were conventional beings. Any unconventional behavior was, essentially, inhuman behavior, derived from the mysterious shadows of the netherworld, from superhuman forces of heaven or destiny. If the problem wasn't a spiritual (i.e., mental) matter, then it had to be a matter of spirits (i.e., ghosts or divinities). Maqiao people used the word "spirit" for both these two meanings, probably considering the difference between the two to be of little importance. Any story about spirits began with fantasies of a spiritually abnormal nature. People always babbled and danced insanely in front of altars to spirits. Maybe spiritual disorders were just spirits in worldly, vulgarized form. A whole bundle of expressions-"spirit-fast," "spirit-brave," "spirit-good," "spirit-weird," "spirit-pretty," "spiritsmooth"-referred to achievements that temporarily transgressed ordinary human limits, often witnessed in people close to the obsessive derangement of spiritual disorder, close to the spirits, and who were putting their mental state to positive use, either subconsciously or unconsciously.

  A spirit like Tiexiang's, everyone said, just had to be possessed by evil forces.

  *Rude (continued)

  : Tiexiang didn't much like spending time with Maqiao women, and after getting off work she'd hustle her way in amongst the men and really let herself go. Benyi didn't like this much, but there was nothing he could do. So although going to the mountains to cut down trees was men's work, she wanted to join in t
he fun too. When she got to the mountain, she grasped the axe as she would a chicken, gritted her teeth, but still didn't manage to chop even so much as a toothmark; the axe ended up ricocheting off to who knew where, while she collapsed onto her bottom in laughter, her body dissolving into waves of giggles.

  After this fall, things got busy for the men. She ordered this one to beat dust off her, asked that one to extract the thorn from her finger, instructed this one to go look for the lost axe, commanded that one to hold the shoes she'd just trodden in the wet without realizing. Under the spell of her gaze, the men all hovered around in raptures. Her piercing cries, the tragic convulsions of her body, the possibility that at careless moments a wider expanse of dazzling white… something would glint out of her neckline or cuffs got the men (and their roving eyes) buzzing around.

  Her fall had been far from heavy, but having tried a couple of steps on tiptoe she insisted it hurt too much to walk and demanded that Benyi carry her home on his back-never mind that Benyi was just then in conversation on the mountainside with two cadres visiting the forestry station.

  "You spirit! Can't you get someone else to lean on?" Benyi's patience was low.

  "No, I want you to carry me back!" she stamped her little foot.

  "Just walk, you can walk."

  "Even if I can walk, I still want you to carry me!"

  "Firstly, there's no blood, secondly you haven't broken anything."