A Dictionary of Maqiao

by Han Shaogong

  "Wrong again!"

  "My name is Luo Yuxing, this year… fif…"

  I was on the point of despair.

  He started to get a bit angry, "I'm fifty-six! Philosophy's all very well, but what's the point of changing my age? What's age got to do with philosophy?"

  "Don't you want to make your deeds more moving?" I carefully explained to him the reasoning I had already explained, pointing out that an old man of seventy from Longjia Sands had made a broadcast speech about the philosophy of pig-rearing, and that fifty-six was chicken-feed compared with seventy, that it wouldn't convince anyone.

  "I always knew that philosophy was a load of old garbage, just hey-eh mouths, sticking old stuff in new bottles. The Communist Party just likes sticking radishes up my little sisters' fannies-fake men, that's what that makes."

  All this reactionary talk gave me a fright.

  Just then a commune cadre arrived and spotted us. Going out to greet him, Uncle Luo started talking about what we'd just been doing, blinking away as if he hadn't woken up properly: "Study philosophy! Study! How could I not study? I studied half the night yesterday, the more I studied, the better it got. When the puppet government was in power I wanted to study but couldn't get as far as the school gates; the Communist Party, now, they really care about the poor and lower-middle peasants, they actually invite you to study. Studying this philosophy is studying understanding, reasoning, strength, studying at the right time, in the right way!"

  The cadre beamed all over to hear this: Uncle Luo really was a poor old peasant, he said, his thinking really was on a higher level, see how well, how deeply he brings things together? Studying understanding, reasoning, strength.

  I secretly admired how Uncle Luo adapted to circumstances, how his phrases came out so fully formed: though he always looked drowsy and sleepy-eyed, he produced sentence after sentence that directly hit the spot for his listener. I later found out that was the sort of person he was, never angry with his fellow villagers, never stuck for words: if he saw a person he'd speak to them, if he saw a ghost he'd divine them, and always come out with what they wanted to hear. If he bumped into someone who bred pigs, he'd say breeding pigs was good: "You can eat your own pigs wherever you want, whenever you want, no need to go and push in the line at the butcher's, eh?" If he bumped into someone who didn't breed pigs, he'd then say not breeding pigs was good: "When you want to eat meat, you take your money to the butcher's and cut some off, that's it, as much as you want, no short-changing! No need to wear yourself out breeding pigs, eh? Three slops every day, you've got to make sure the pig's full before you are, wears a person ragged, that does!" When he bumped into someone who'd had a little boy, he'd say boys were best: "You can rely on a boy to get on with things, hauling stuff, looking after the oxen, you're really lucky." When he bumped into someone who'd had a little girl, he'd say girls were best: "Take a daughter-in-law, lose a son, marry a girl, gain a bridegroom. When d'ycm last see a boy that's good to his parents? All well and good, they are. But it's always girls who care about their moms and their dads, you'll have baba cakes to eat, shoes and socks to wear, congratulations, congratulations."

  Backwards and forwards he'd talk, not necessarily in a phoney way: his sincerity, honesty and forceful eloquence would show in every sentence, the earnest solemnity written all over his face. Maqiao people said he "spoke the Dao." The Dao was Daoism, the Way oiyin and yang. First yes then no, now this then that, the Way is essentially a flexible whole lacking any tangible extreme, always expressible with clarity, and with no clarity at all.

  He had no male offspring himself, only an adopted boy from Pingjiang County. According to local custom, the first guest to enter the house after the birth of a child was the "birth-meeting godfather" or "birth-meeting godmother." Many years ago, when Uncle Luo had gone to Pingjiang to peddle fir-tree resin, he'd turned up at someone's house by the roadside to beg for a mouthful of water and just so happened to barge in on the birth festivities; he thus became a godfather, and every time after that he went to Pingjiang he'd remember to bring his godson a bag of sweet-potato pieces. He'd never imagined this godson would later enter the Red Army and rise to the rank of general, and after he moved to the city he even invited Uncle Luo over to live in Nanjing. This was no blessing, Uncle Luo said: as soon as he set foot on the great quayside at Nanjing, he was taken into a little car by the general and his wife; as soon as the car started moving, heaven and earth started spinning and he'd had to scream to be let out. In the end, the general had no choice but to accompany him on foot, the car following slowly behind.

  Neither could he get used to the way the general's home didn't have a fireplace, or a toilet bucket. You could've grown a fine garden of vegetables on the patch of land behind the house. With great effort he dug it over, leveled it out, but couldn't find the toilet bucket. But when he took to collecting dung in a bucket and enamel jar, the general's wife and her two daughters felt moved to hold their noses, and wail and moan about his lack of hygiene, of civilization. In high dudgeon by this point, he refused to eat for a whole day until the general was forced to buy an airline ticket to send him back to Maqiao.

  "Lazy!" he shook his head, referring to his two god-granddaughters, "Too scientific (see the entry "Science") they are, just useless lumps of flesh; they can't feed pigs, can't spin silk, how'll they ever get to place a pot for their husband's family?"

  I'd heard that the general sent him money at New Year's and on other festivals, and couldn't help asking enviously about it.

  "What d'you mean, a lot of money? Stingy, very, very stingy." He dug his tobacco out of his cloth bag and blinked energetically as he mombled: "It's just… just… three or four yuan."

  "So little?"

  "Would I be telling lies, at my age? By my little sister's earwax-I swear that's how much!"

  "I won't get anything out of you at land reform!"

  "You come and search my home, search my home!"

  I was really quite interested in him at the time, as I felt he truly embodied the essence of his simple, hardworking, poor old peasant class (unwilling to enjoy the easy life in the city) and possessed a glorious past (as exemplified by his close relations with the Red Army) that I hoped I could write into his speech. Little had I imagined that as soon as we got into details, he'd suddenly start speaking the Dao, until I was utterly lost in a fog of incomprehension. He'd praise the Red Army, would always be praising the Red Army, on and on until he changed tone and said the Red Army was totally rotten: there'd been a platoon leader who'd had local connections, sworn brothers, and whom the newly arrived company commander had killed as a counterrevolutionary. The company commander was only sixteen, and not too tall, so when he cut the head off, he'd had to jump up to do it, hacking so much that the blood spurted up to the sky, and then he stuck his face into the neck to drink the blood while it was hot-terrifying stuff. When he got onto the subject of class enemies, he even wept reactionary tears. "What'd Bandit Ma done wrong? A decent, honorable farmer, he was, salt of the earth. Such a pity, he went to all that trouble to surrender, and you all wanted him to surrender, then when he surrendered you said he'd surrendered falsely and made him swallow opium, a terrible business that was…"

  He wiped his nose with the palm of his hand.

  I had to restrain him: "What're you crying about? You're all mixed up, that was a revolutionary operation when the Communist Party purged bandits and tyrants, what was unfair about what happened to Bandit Ma?"

  "I… shouldn't cry?" He was a little uncomprehending.

  "Of course you shouldn't cry. You shouldn't cry. You're a poor peasant. Think about it, who were you crying for just then?"

  "This head of mine's no use anymore. I can't say what I do say, but you tell me I've got to talk!"

  "Now that's not quite right, some bits you said very well."

  When he went to relieve himself, he was gone half an hour, which struck me as a little strange. When he returned, I guided him onto recalling some o
f the crimes of the Guomindang reactionaries, got him to drink some water, calm himself, then begin again. It was only then that he recovered his identity as a poor peasant. He spoke of the extermination of Communists by the GMD, a vicious business that was. Even women and children had been killed together, three-year-old kids grabbed and hurled at walls, their heads shattering before they managed even a groan. Some were thrown into kilns and burned, their skin and flesh stinking for three whole days and nights. He spoke of Pock-marked Lu, who'd probably been a GMD ringleader, the most treacherous double-dealer of them all: he'd take Red Army livers and lungs, secretly mix them up in a big pot of beef and make everyone eat. He, Luo Yuxing, unaware of this at first, only found out after he'd eaten, when he vomited till his guts almost turned over…

  He'd done a month in the Red Army as well, then returned home after dropping out. Pock-marked Lu'd almost had his liver and lungs, but fortunately he sold a coffin he'd prepared for his grandmother, held a three-table banquet in atonement, and begged two people to be his guarantors-even so, he only just escaped with his life.

  "That Pock-marked Lu, I'd run his ancestors through! Son of a tiger and a pig-sticker, stupid he was, evil too, even if his death took seven days and nights it still wouldn't settle these scores!" When he reached the bit about his grandmother's funeral, he couldn't stop himself howling and yowling. Out came the snot and tears again, once again he wiped his nose with the palm of his hand.

  This wipe set my mind more at rest.

  "If Chairman Mao and the Communist Party hadn't come, I, Luo Yuxing, wouldn't be here today!"

  "Well said! You must say that when you get onto the stage, you must cry."

  "Cry? Of course I'll cry!"

  To my everlasting regret, he didn't actually cry. But still, it wasn't too bad: though he stammered a little from nerves, he basically produced the memorized speech, going from history to reality, from the individual to society, using philosophies like the "externals/fundamentals" theory, spoke of his own outstanding achievements, and praised socialism. He didn't wander too far off the point, thanks to my repeated earlier warnings to him, didn't end up blabbing about having been a porter for the GMD and having eaten American flour. The worst he did was to extemporize a little when denouncing revisionist philosophy: revisionism was really bad, he said, it plotted against Chairman Mao and harmed the meeting we were having now, held up work. Although this wasn't quite the point, it still went along with the general idea.

  So, as it turned out, the three days I'd spent getting him to memorize it weren't wasted.

  Afterwards the commune nominated him a few times to go and speak in other communes. By then Fd been given a temporary transfer to the County Cultural Institute to write theater scripts and didn't have much to do with him. All I heard about was that one time when, returning from philosophy work, he passed a mad dog on the road that attacked him and took a bite out of his leg; medical treatment came too late and he was bedridden for about six months. Later on, he scattered-died.

  I remember the last time I saw him: a plaster stuck on his forehead, hardly anything left of him apart from his two eyes, he was watching oxen from the side of the field. A golden yellow butterfly was nibbling at the oxen's backs.

  When I asked about his sickness, his eyes widened in surprise: "Strange, isn't it, I've never been bitten by a dog, and now one comes and bites me here."

  This remark struck me as odd.

  He lifted up his leg to show me. What he meant was, there'd been a scar on this leg where a sickle had cut him, where he'd fallen, and in the end a dog bit him here as well. He'd reflected on this replication a hundred times without ever figuring it out.

  "Be better soon, eh?"

  "How's it going to get better then?"

  "Had an injection?"

  "Doctors can cure illness, they can't cure fate."

  "You should have faith, old man, it'll get better."

  "What's the good in getting better? Won't I still have to slave like a beast of burden? Planting rice, digging the hills, what's so great about that? Much better to watch oxen like I am now."

  "Don't you want to get better?"

  "What's the good in not being better? It hurts me to take just one step, I can't even squat in the toilet hut."

  He hadn't lost his way with words.

  He had a small, pink radio in his hand, probably brought to him recently by his godson, a rare treasure indeed for country people.

  "Here's a good friend," he pointed to the radio, "from morning till night, never stops talking, never stops singing, don't know where he gets his energy from."

  He held the radio to my ear. I couldn't hear very well since the sound was too soft; probably the batteries were too low.

  "Everyday I know whether it's raining in Beijing," he said smiling.

  It was only later that I found out the illness had already reached his vital organs, that he'd put his funeral shoes at the head of the bed, afraid that when the moment came he wouldn't have time to put them on. But still, calmly as ever, he got out of bed to watch the oxen for a couple of days, to put down a layer of fresh grass in the ox pen, to twist two lengths of ox tether; he even smiled and discussed the rain in Beijing with me.

  *Mouth-Ban (and Flip Your Feet)

  : The team leader had asked the bamboo carpenters to mend the bamboo baskets and winnowing baskets, but there was no money for meat. Fucha, who, in his capacity as public accountant, was responsible for getting hold of meat to treat the carpenters, reckoned that Uncle Luo would be flush, that maybe he'd have his remittance from his godson in Nanjing, and decided to try borrowing a couple of yuan to tide things over.

  Uncle Luo said he didn't have any money; what godson? he said, he spends all his salary on Party fees, he'd long forgotten all about his birth-meeting godfather.

  Fucha didn't really believe him and said he'd return anything he borrowed, he wasn't going to keep what was his. What good was the money doing moldering in a crack in the wall?

  This needled Uncle Luo: "Slanderer, you slanderer! Fucha, my boy, I'm eight years older than your dad, where's your conscience? Where's your conscience?"

  That day Fucha had been frazzled by the sun, traipsing everywhere- with no success-to borrow the money, and as he walked along the road afterwards he couldn't stop himself swearing: "Flip your feet!"

  You couldn't help saying things like this when the sun was just too hot.

  Little did he realize that "Flip your feet," the most taboo oath that Maqiao people knew, the most poisonous curse imaginable, was practically equivalent to digging up someone's ancestral grave. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, two bamboo carpenters standing nearby jumped in surprise and looked Fucha over twice. Fucha was probably just like me, having no idea about the phrase's history, nor much time for mouth-bans, and the words just slipped out of his mouth when his guard was down.

  The next day, Uncle Luo was bitten by a mad dog and set off for the underworld.

  Uncle Luo's death became a source of terrible heartache for Fucha. There were, besides, some private mutterings in Maqiao that held Fucha responsible. According to local custom, a curse could still be retracted even after it'd been set loose: all it would've taken was for Fucha to stick incense into his doorframe in time, cut off a chicken's head, wash the threshold with chicken's blood, and Uncle Luo's life would have been protected. But Fucha had been busy that day and he forgot about this set of procedures. Afterwards, he explained to a lot of people that it'd been an accident, he hadn't at all meant to curse Uncle Luo to death. Nor had he known how serious the curse was. Why did a mad dog happen to come along so coincidentally? He tended particularly to address such remarks to Educated Youth, because Educated Youth came from barbarian parts and didn't care much for Maqiao rules; they all told him to give himself a break, that he shouldn't pay any credence to it being a mouthban, or whatever. Some Educated Youth even thumped their chests in fraternal spirit: curse me, then, curse as hard as you can, they'd say, let's see w
hat demons you can bring out!

  Quite overcome, Fucha would wend his uncertain way back home.

  Not long after this, whenever he was talking about the drought or grain rations with other people, he'd meander distractedly onto the business of Uncle Luo, how he hadn't really meant it, it was just that the sun had frazzled his brain and his mouth had run away with him for a moment, and so on and so forth. This started to get on people's nerves, started to become a problem.

  A "mouth-ban" is a linguistic taboo. Words are, in fact, just words, no more than a whoosh of wind past the ears, unable to harm a single hair on anyone's body. But Fucha quickly shed a layer of flesh, the white hairs on his head noticeably increased, and even when he flashed a smile it would lack depth, it would be a facial exercise without roots in his inner being. Previously, he'd generally been a neat dresser, would even glance in the mirror and comb his hair, would always pin his collar down straight and smooth with a few clips. But now his clothes were a mess: there was mud on his shoulders, his concentration easily wandered, had him doing his buttons up wrong, or losing his pen, his keys. In the past, he'd only needed a day to do the end-of-year accounts; now he had to sweat over them for three or four days, the accounts sheets heaped into a confused pile. His mind was decidedly not on the job, he'd search for ages, up and down in the pile of account books, until he'd forgotten what he was looking for. In the end, after he'd managed inexplicably to lose five hundred yuan of cotton money in the supply and marketing cooperative, the team committee no longer felt he could stay on as accountant.

  He himself no longer felt he could stay on as accountant; he handed over the account books and they found someone else. Afterwards, he kept ducks for a while but they were struck down by duck plague. He studied carpentry for a time but couldn't get the hang of it. Basically, nothing worked out for him, and he ended up rushing into marriage with a woman whose hair was a permanent bird's nest.