A Dictionary of Maqiao

by Han Shaogong

  I was amazed that a mouth-ban could affect a person like that for decades. Couldn't he make up for it in some way? Couldn't he begin again?

  In the opinion of most Maqiao people, he couldn't. The matter was already past, and just as you couldn't cry over spilt milk, Fucha's mouthban would be there forever; the longer it was there the bigger it got, the longer it was there the tougher it got, it would never quiet down and disappear.

  The power of language infiltrates our lives deeply. Language is the source of human superiority: humans can pity animals for their lack of language and therefore for their lack of knowledge, for their inability to form societies, to acquire the enormous power of cultural accumulation and scientific progress. But the other side of the coin is that animals, unlike Fucha, will never, ever, after having shouted something improper, go into terminal decline until they've practically lost their capacity for survival. On this point, language makes humans more vulnerable than dogs.

  A "mouth-ban" is a manmade convention, a framework for keeping feelings of fear and awe in place. Humans, who have used language to separate themselves from the animal world, still need to find some kind of framework for emotional expression, to give structure and solidity through commonly accepted psychological props. The way that Maqiao people laid down linguistic taboos is exactly like the way people elsewhere need rings when they marry, like a country needs a national flag, religion needs idols, humanitarianism needs stirring songs and enthusiastic speeches. As these things are passed on and inherited, they then become sacred, inviolable. Any violation on the part of their inheritors and users ceases to represent simply abuse of a piece of metal (a ring), a piece of cloth (a national flag), a piece of stone (an idol), or a few sound waves (songs and speeches), but instead becomes an insult to people's feelings: they have, to be precise, been set into some kind of emotional framework.

  A totally rational being who seeks out logic and functionality alone, should consider not only Maqiao's mouth-ban, but also the sanctification of metal, cloth, stone, and sound-waves absurd-no objective logic dictates these strange psychological constructions should be thus. But this is how things have to be. People just aren't dogs, they can't regard material items as simply material. Even a totally rational being often bestows a spiritual aura on certain material items: he will, for example, separate one piece of metal (his lover's, his mother's or his grandmother's ring) from a big pile of metal objects, view it differently, imbue it with particular emotions. At this moment, maybe he's started to verge on the absurd, is no longer so rational-but he's started to act like a proper, normal person.

  When a ring is no longer simply a lump of metal, rationality has ceded the field to faith, to all forms of unreasoned reasoning. The absurdity and sanctity of life join together in a bizarre fusion.

  Confucius's dictum that "the true gentleman stays far from the kitchen" is, of course, a kind of emotional framework. He couldn't bear to witness the scenes of bloody slaughter that took place in the kitchen, but this didn't in the least prevent him from wolfing down meat (he had a particular fondness for lean, dried meat). The prohibition among Buddhist disciples on killing living things, even from eating meat and fish, is another kind of emotional framework. But they've failed to register that plants are also living organisms, and that, according to modern biology, although a tree can't let out a cry for help, it feels pain, has nervous reactions, and can even make quick physical actions in exactly the same way. But can we laugh at their emotional frameworks? Put another way, in what sense, to what degree, can we laugh at their forms of absurdity and hypocrisy? If we viewed things differently, if we encouraged every person, every child even, to carry out the large-scale slaughter of chicks, piglets, kittens, cygnets, and every edible living thing, if seeing children revel in such blood-letting, we felt no disquieting discomfort within, then absurdity and hypocrisy would no longer exist, to be sure, but at the same time wouldn't we have lost something else?

  What should we do, then? Stop children from eating meat, from eating anything at all, or laugh at and destroy their sympathy for any beautiful living thing? This sympathy that comes from Confucius, from Buddhist disciples, and from our other cultural forbears?

  It was only thinking about this that I came to understand Fucha. He hadn't retracted the curse, hadn't cut off a chicken's head and washed the threshold with chicken's blood in time to save Uncle Luo, and so was engulfed forever by an inescapable miasma of guilt.

  He was totally irrational.

  And totally rational.

  *Knotted Grass Hoop

  : Fucha had been to high school and was one of the few intellectuals for miles around. Not only was he a good accountant, he could also play the flute and the huqin (the Chinese violin), was respectful and polite to the old, careful and thorough in managing affairs, and his fine, pale white face monopolized the attention of women wherever he went. He was oblivious to this and his gaze was never careless or unfocused but always projected straight out in front of him, directed at some safe, reliable target, such as fields or the faces of old people. Was it that he was unaware or that he pretended to be unaware of the whispering huddles of women, of their pretences of bashful surprise? No one had any idea.

  Some women, seeing him arrive, would deliberately plant the rice seedlings sloppily, to see whether he'd take any notice. He was a cadre, of course he took notice, but-his face utterly expressionless-he'd say something like "Careful with your planting," then walk on without pausing. Another woman, seeing him approach, deliberately tripped over and scattered the basket of tea leaves on her shoulders all over the ground, crying out in pain to see whether he'd help her out. He was a cadre, of course he'd help her out, but poker-faced as ever he just lent a hand gathering the tea back into the basket, hoisted it onto her shoulder, then walked on.

  He had no sense that there was someone still lying on the ground, still wiping her tears, that this was something of greater importance than tea leaves. He just said "Sorry, got to go"-this was not nearly enough, not by a long shot. Neither did he have any sense that, when women wore clothes more flowery than usual and stuck more cassia or peach-blossom flowers into their hair, this had anything to do with him.

  "Use your eyes, can't you?" The women became less and less tolerant, and more and more indignant toward his cold arrogance. After a few of the locals had sought out Fucha's mother to ask about marriage and been brusquely rebuffed by Fucha, this indignation gradually took on collective proportions, spreading out from Maqiao to its environs, and became a common topic of conversation throughout the mass of unmarried girls in the area. Somethimes, when they met each other at the market, or at some mass meeting in the commune, there'd be times when they couldn't help huddling around to share their hatred of the enemy, to bad-mouth his flute, his huqin, his milky-white skin. They'd say Maqiao already had one Red-flower Daddy with Uncle Luo, looked like it had a second generation Red-flower Daddy now-no, more likely it'd produced a eunuch the emperor didn't want. They reveled in their outbursts of venom, laughed till the tears fell.

  Maybe they weren't as angry as all that. But their emotions were always magnified in the collective: things changed as soon as the girls got together. They lost control of their cells and nerve-ends, felt pain where there was no pain, itched where they didn't itch, felt happy where they weren't happy, angry where they weren't angry, they had to make a huge fuss about everything-nothing else would do.

  In the end, about ten of them secretly knotted grass as an oath that none of them was allowed to marry him, and whoever broke the oath would be condemned by the gods to change into a pig or a dog.

  This was called "knotting the grass hoop."

  Time went on, year by year. Fucha had no idea such a grass hoop existed, had no idea he'd provoked such a sacred covenant. In the end, he won no daughter of a dragon king, no princess of a jade emperor, he took a wife whose hair was always badly combed, who always looked as if she had a chicken's nest perched on top of her head. This chicken's nest was th
e bedraggled result of these women's decade-long vow of collective hatred. Of course, long before this time, one by one they'd left their parents' homes to become the wives of other men. Among them, three could have chosen otherwise, since Fucha's matchmaker came to each of their houses in succession to convey the wishes of Fucha's mom and of Fucha. But they had a prior agreement, they'd knotted a grass hoop that they couldn't go back on and be shamed before their sisters. They had a sense of loyalty toward their earlier oath, a sense of joy in revenge, a sense of collective excitement that forgot personal interests, and shook their heads resolutely.

  In my opinion, a vow is like a curse, or a linguistic tyranny. One of the three girls mentioned above, Qiuxian from Zhangjia District, due to this coercive tyranny, later married a veterinarian. It can't be said this coercion had particularly dire results. She learned tailoring and the family ended up quite well-off-it was just that she wasn't a brilliant match with her husband. That was all.

  One day, when it was about to rain, she was cycling back home, having finished her door-to-door business, harboring an unspecifiable feeling of discontent, and decided she didn't want to go back home, that she'd spend the night at the house of a same-pot uncle. On the way, she passed a man with a deeply wrinkled face hitting a child, and her heart suddenly thumped in her chest: the person inside this pair of shabby pants with one leg shorter than the other was none other than old Fucha! If this old man hadn't timidly ducked his head at her in something approximating a nod, she would certainly have thought she'd got the wrong person.

  "Brother Fucha…" The words sounded unfamiliar to her.

  "Humph…" The man's face bore the trace of a bitter smile, "This boy's driving me mad! It's about to rain, but he just won't move."

  "Keke, want a ride on my bike?" Qiuxian's gaze was directed at the child.

  The child's eyes lit up on seeing the woman and her bicycle.

  "No, tell little uncle you don't, don't hold her up."

  "It doesn't matter, I've got to pass through Maqiao anyway."

  The child sneaked a look at his father, then a look at Qiuxian, and climbed on like a flash, scrambling with great expertise onto the front bar of the bicycle.

  Fucha was at a total loss: since he couldn't very easily step forward to grab the child, he could only stamp his foot from where he was: "Are you getting off then? Are you getting off then? Asking for a spanking?"

  "Keke, tell your dad it's no problem."

  "Dad, it's no problem!"

  "Ask your dad if he wants a ride too."

  "Dad, d'you want a ride too?"

  "No… I don't know how…"

  "You want him to get on."

  "Dad, little uncle wants you to get on!"

  "No, no, off you go…"

  Qiuxian hesitated a little, then, hearing the pattering sound of rain on the mountain over the way, pressed her own umbrella on Fucha, bestrode the bicycle, and rode off. The child was very excited to have the wind rushing right up against him and made horse-galloping noises for a bit, then made car noises for a bit-when they passed children who stared along the way, these noises got even louder.

  "Keke, is your dad… nice… to your mom?"

  "Very nice. Vrooooosh!"

  "Do they argue?"

  "Nope."

  "They really don't?"

  "My mom says my dad has a good temper, so he's no good at arguing."

  "They haven't argued once?"

  "Nope."

  "I don't believe you."

  "They really haven't…"

  "Your mom's really… lucky."

  Qiuxian's tone dripped with disappointment.

  After falling silent for a while, she then asked:

  "D'you… like your mom?"

  "Yup."

  "What d'you like about her?"

  "She makes baba cakes for me."

  "What else?"

  "And… when I don't do my homework and Fucha's about to hit me, she shouts at him." Whenever he felt resentful, he used his father's proper name.

  "Has your mom bought you games?"

  "Nope."

  "Or taken you to the city to look at the trains?"

  "Nope."

  "Can your mom ride a bike?"

  "She… can't."

  "That's a real pity, isn't it?" Qiuxian was clearly jubilant.

  "No, it's not. I don't want her to ride a bike."

  "Why not?"

  "She might fall off. Her mom, Guixiang, was almost squashed to death by a tractor when she was riding a bike."

  "What a bad boy you are-aren't you afraid your little uncle will fall off her bike?"

  "If you fall off, that's nothing."

  "That's nothing" meant that's nothing to worry about.

  Qiuxian asked anxiously: "Why's it nothing?"

  "You… you're not my mom. Peow-peow-peow." The child had spotted another slope and was happily making the signal to accelerate.

  Dazed, Qiuxian suddenly felt a moistness well up and threaten to drop from her eyes. She set her teeth and pedaled forward. Luckily, a shower of autumn rain had already started to fall.

  * Asking Books

  : The next time I saw Fucha, his head full of white hairs, one trouser leg shorter than the other, he rubbed his hands and insisted I come over to his house for a bit. I didn't really have time, but seeing as he just stood there, waiting to one side, not about to give up, I had no choice but to comply. I found out afterwards that he'd wanted to grab this opportunity to show me a book he'd written, drafted in tiny letters on a pile of sheets from an account book, bound in a plastic fertilizer bag, with a few strands of grass mixed in. The ink quality, faded and unclear in many places, wasn't great. But this, I discovered to my surprise, was the most daring piece of research I'd ever seen.

  He wanted to correct, to overturn the universally acknowledged theorem of pi.

  As I didn't understand math, I had no way of volunteering any opinions on his research-I was, in any case, pretty doubtful about his ground-breaking theorem.

  He smiled faintly, rolled out some tobacco, and filled a bamboo pipe. Different professions were as far apart as different mountains, he said, so I wouldn't understand. Did I know of someone more senior?

  "Who?"

  "Someone who does math."

  "No," I said quickly.

  A glint of disappointment shone from his eyes but his smile didn't falter: "No problem, I'll keep looking."

  After I went back to the city, he wrote me a letter: he'd put aside pi and started on some linguistic questions. For example, he considered the characters for "shoot" and "short" to be the inverse of each other. The character for "shoot" [ff] was made up of the characters for body [J^ and inch [~*f]: an inch-long body. The character for "short" [g?] contained the sign for "arrow" [^], thus implying "shoot." He'd written this up in a letter to the State Council and the State Committee for Character Reform, and was asking me to find an acquaintance to pass it on to, "someone who does language stuff."

  In another letter, he wrote that Maqiao people used to say that people who "read books" (a phrase which in Chinese also means, more generally, "study" or "learn") "asked books"-this was what his dad used to say. Read, ask, read, ask: if you don't ask, how can you read (and learn)? "Reading books," by comparison, was now a fairly meaningless term for learning, as it manifested a tendency to overemphasize mechanical memorizing and rote learning. He recommended that schools all over the country revive the phrase "ask books" as a phrase more benef- aal to national modernization.

  *Master Black

  : One night, wails and screams suddenly rose and fell throughout the village, joined a moment later by a chorus of dogs-something serious must have happened. I climbed out of bed and opened the door to peer into the hazy moonlight out of which Wanyu's piercing voice was screeching terrifyingly. A big mountain pig, it turned out, had snuck into the village, been hacked at and walloped by the men, leaving a trail of blood and a few pig bristles in its wake, before running off into the darkness.
The men all said it was a great pity and released another round of combative yells at the dim black mountain.

  Every door had been flung open, all the men had ransacked their houses for weapons and run out; even Wanyu, with his watersnake waist and girl's voice, had wrapped his fingers around a wood axe and was looking everywhere along with everyone else. This was nothing unusual, Fucha said, somewhat out of breath. Whenever any Master Black, any wild thing came into the village, it took one shout and everyone's doors were flung open. No one could keep their door shut at a time like this, and keep face.

  They called all mountain pigs "Master Black."

  After a round of yells, followed by round upon round of billowing echoes, everyone concluded there was no hope that night and finally dispersed disconsolately back to their homes. When, half asleep, I'd reached the eaves of our house, I was frightened almost out of my wits by a big black thing I glimpsed lurking under my window. After I'd yelled out to a few of the other Educated Youth, I realized it hadn't moved in ages; when I plucked up courage to go in a bit closer, still it didn't move. A nudge with my foot revealed it to be not a mountain pig, but a creaking bundle of firewood.

  I was covered in cold sweat.

  *Master Black (continued)

  : When Maqiao people said "chase the meat," they meant go hunting; "make shoes" meant bring down the sword; "invite guests" meant poison; "ride in a sedan" meant dig a traphole; "whistle to heaven" meant scattered gunfire, and so on. They suspected animals of being fluent in humanspeak and said that when hunting, even if you were inside a building, you had to use code language to guard against indiscretions on which your quarry could eavesdrop.

  It was particularly imperative that direction words be rearranged: "north" actually meant "south," "east" meant "west" (and vice versa). That's why people banged gongs and shouted when they hunted Master Black, creating a man-made cacophony to conceal the direction of traps or guns, and used a prearranged code language, shouting out east while attacking west, mixing true with false, all to confuse the animal.