The word "sweet" exposes a Maqiao blind spot with respect to food and drink, demarcating the boundaries of their knowledge in this area. But once you take a careful look at anything, you'll discover that everyone has all kinds of blind spots. The boundaries of human awareness do not snugly nestle back-to-back, and the weak flame of human perception is a long way from illuminating the whole world. Even today, the majority of Chinese people still have great difficulty in distinguishing the facial types of western, northern, and eastern Europeans, and in making out cultural differences between the British, the French, the Spanish, the Norwegians, the Poles, etc. The names of each European people are no more than empty symbols in school textbooks, and many Chinese, when put on the spot, are still unable to make any link between them and corresponding characteristics in facial type, clothing, language, and customs. This baffles Europeans, just as it baffles the Chinese that Europeans cannot differentiate clearly between people from Shanghai, Canton, and the Northeast. Thus, the Chinese prefer to use the general term "Westerner" or even "old foreigner," just as Maqiao people prefer the word "sweet." This type of generalization will naturally seem ridiculous to a British person who objects to being lumped together with Germans, or to a French person who objects to being lumped together with Americans. Similarly, even today, the vast majority of Chinese, even the majority of economists, still can't make out any apparent differences between capitalism in America, capitalism in western Europe, capitalism in Sweden and other northern European countries, and capitalism in Japan. Neither is any significant distinction made between 18th-century capitalism, 19th-century capitalism, 20th-century prewar capitalism, 1960s capitalism, and 1990s capitalism. For many Chinese, the term "capitalist" is quite sufficient to convey their intended sense of admiration or of loathing.
When I was in America, I came across an anticommunist political journal in which I was perplexed to discover that the editors' sense of political taste was stuck at the same level as Maqiao people's "sweet." For example, sometimes they lambasted such-and-such a Communist Party for its false Marxism, for betraying Marxism, and at other times just lambasted Marxism (in which case, isn't falsification or betrayal of it a good thing?). On the one hand they exposed the extramarital affairs and illegitimate children of Communist Party members, on the other hand derided the asceticism of Communist Party members for their excessive oppression of human nature (in which case, aren't extramarital affairs and illegitimate children completely in harmony with human nature?). They perceived no confusion or contradictions in their logic; they only perceived that anything anticommunist was worth cheering on, was very good, was sweet. It was in this journal that I happened across a certain news item: a woman named Chen, who had just fled from Hainan Island to Hong Kong, was proclaiming herself an anticommunist dissident and, thanks to the kindness of a Western government, had been given asylum as a political refugee. A few months later, on meeting an official from this country's embassy, I was seized with deep indignation on behalf of his government. At the dinner table, I told him that I knew this Miss Chen. She'd never participated in any political activities on Hainan Island. All she'd done was organize an "Island Heat Literary Contest," in which she'd swindled young writers from all over the country out of nearly 200,000 yuan in entry fees, dumped a huge pile of competition entries in a hotel, then picked up her heels, along with the money, and fled to Hong Kong. She hadn't managed to persuade me to act as a judge for the contest, but this hadn't proved an obstacle: in the call for contributions that she placed in a newspaper, she had cited the names of ten world-famous writers, Marquez, Kundera, Borges, and so on, who had all, amazingly, become her judges. She had envisaged a Super Nobel Literature Prize, to be adjudicated on Hainan Island.
My revelations seemed to puzzle the embassy official somewhat. He said, wrinkling his brow, maybe she had committed fraud, maybe she had acted badly, but couldn't her behavior be seen as a particular form of political opposition?
He gesticulated strenuously.
I dropped the subject. I didn't want to sway this diplomat's political standpoint over the dinner table. You can endorse or you can oppose any type of serious, scrupulous and peaceful political position, but you can't not respect it. I simply felt that I was in a difficult situation. Just as in the past I had no way of making Maqiao people distinguish linguistically between all the different kinds of "candy," neither did I at that moment have any way of making this diplomat distinguish between all the different kinds of "opposition" in China. In what he saw as a mysterious, alien country, fraud counted as no more than another piece of delicious "candy."
*Tincture of Iodine
: The Chinese use a lot of popular names for industrial products. I was born in the city and reckoned myself really quite advanced, until I went down to the countryside. I knew about iodine solution, but I didn't know about tincture of iodine. In the same way, I'd got into the habit of calling mercury "red medicine," gentian violet "purple medicine," a storage battery "electric medicine," an ammeter "firemeter," a ceramic cup "foreign mug," an air-raid siren "nee-naa," whistling "tooting." After I arrived in Maqiao, I often corrected the even more rustic terms used by the villagers. For example, a public square in a city should be public square, not "field," and certainly not "drying field."
So I was flabbergasted to discover that everyone here, men and women, young and old, all used a formal scientific term: tincture of iodine. They, on the contrary, didn't know what iodine solution was, and found it very strange that I used such an odd phrase. Even old grannies with clouded vision and foggy hearing talked in a more scholarly tone than I did. When they pronounced "tincture of iodine" in their Maqiao accent, it was as if they'd unconsciously uttered a secret code, a code that normally remained buried out of sight, only spoken in times of dire necessity, to make contact with the remoteness of modern science.
I inquired about the history of this word, since I got nowhere with my own conjectures. Maqiao had been visited neither by foreign missionaries (Westerners might have opened hospitals and used the scientific names of medical products) nor by large new-style armies (the soldiers might have been wounded and used the new names for medical products); most teachers would have studied in the county seat, and some would have gone even farther, to Yueyang or Changsha, but they wouldn't have brought back phraseology more modern than anything in use there. I finally discovered that this term was linked to one mysterious person.
Uncle Luo, the old village leader of the lower village, told me as he sucked on his bamboo pipe that a person called Long Stick Xi was the first person to use the phrase "tincture of iodine" here.
*Rough
: I know very little about Long Stick Xi. No one knew where he came from, what class status he had, or why he moved here. No one even knew his real name-"Xi" was a pretty odd-sounding surname. Some remarked on how his receding chin and his eyelids were different from other people's. It was only much later that I came to understand the significance of these features. From all the various legends I heard, I concluded that he most probably came to the village in the 1930s, and lived there for ten or so years, or twenty or so years, or even longer. He brought an old man with him, who helped him cook food and look after a few caged birds. He talked "rough," which meant he spoke with an accent from outside Maqiao that people found difficult to understand. Take, for example, "tincture of iodine." Another example: he would replace "see" with "regard"; "play" with "mess about"; "soda," meaning soap, also became very common here and afterwards spread to neighboring areas for miles around.
One might guess that he was someone who had some knowledge of "New Studies," or at the very least knew something about chemistry. Since he apparently liked to eat snake, it isn't entirely fanciful to imagine him as a snake-eating Cantonese.
He left a rather complex impression on Maqiao people. Some were well-disposed toward him: when he arrived in the village, he'd brought with him foreign medicine, cloth, and fire, which he'd exchanged for grain at a fair price. If he came acr
oss someone with a snake to exchange, he would beam and happily negotiate a discount. He could also cure disease, and even deliver babies. The local quacks used to rail against him en masse, saying it was no more than black magic and mumbo-jumbo, even the yin, yang, and eight hexagrams were blocked – he couldn't cure his way out of a cloth bag! How could anyone who ate poisonous stuff like chessboard snake not have a poisoned mind? This kind of talk, however, later petered out. A woman from Zhangjia District was having a difficult labor, rolling around on the ground in agony, mooing like a cow, neighing like a horse, yelling so much the quack had run out of ideas and the villagers were at their wits' ends. Her uncle finally volunteered to take action: picking up a kitchen knife, he sharpened it on the stone steps and prepared to split open her stomach.
But just as the kitchen knife was put in position, Long Stick Xi luckily rushed over and yelled out, scaring the knife wielder into staying his hand. Slowly and calmly, he had a drink of his tea, washed his hands, and shouted at idle onlookers to get out of the room. After an hour or so, the sound of crying was heard from inside the room and again, slowly and calmly, he strolled out to have a drink of tea. When the crowd went in to have a look, the child had been born, and the woman, amazingly enough, was safe and peaceful.
When he was asked how he'd done it, he talked too rough and no one could understand him.
Afterwards, the child grew up healthy, and when he could talk and run everywhere, his parents forced him to visit Long Stick Xi and make a few kow-tows to him. Long Stick Xi seemed to rather like the child and would often chat with him, as well as to other children who came with him to play. Gradually, the children also began to talk a bit rough, even said how delicious snake meat was and nagged their parents to catch snakes for them.
Maqiao people had never eaten snake. They believed that snakes were the most poisonous creatures in the whole world and that snake meat surely poisoned a person's mind. They regarded Long Stick Xi's ability to drink raw snake's blood and swallow raw snake's innards as supremely horrifying, and would cluster around to whisper about how this boded ill for the village. One by one, they forbade their children ever to go back to Long Stick Xi's house to play, terrified that Long Stick Xi would turn them bad with snake meat. They spoke to the children in menacing tones: you seen that Xi? He sells children-next thing you know, he'll have you tied up in a hemp sack and slung over his back to sell on the street-haven't you seen all the hemp sacks he has in his house?
The children stopped to think: they didn't have any strong recollection of hemp sacks in the house, but when they saw the serious expressions on the adults' faces, they didn't dare visit Xi. They would at most band together and sneak a look from far-off. When they saw Xi's friendly wave, none of them dared go closer.
Because Xi was good at delivering babies, the village people in the end refrained from torching his house and driving the young and old in his household out of the village. But they never harbored any good will towards the Xi family. Everyone resented his laziness (the thick hair on his legs was proof of laziness). Neither could they bear his extravagance: he actually fed caged birds on eggs and slices of meat. Even more objectionable was his sinister greenish-pale complexion, frigidly indifferent and arrogant. He also lacked all respect for the aged and never understood that he should give up his seat, much less offer cigarettes or tea. He would always grumble at whoever had come, and if the target of these remarks didn't understand, he would give an icy laugh and mumble to himself as he went about his own business. With that hideous expression on his face, he had to be muttering rough talk. Did he think that if other people didn't understand him then he could use filthy language? He was the precise embodiment of the word "rough": it wasn't just a question of speech-there was definitely a certain air about him, a blast of cold, frigid air, spiteful air that sowed fear and discord. He transformed "rough," a word that already jarred the ear, into a term yet more derogative, a term spat out between snarled teeth. There can be little doubt that this brought calamity to the door of subsequent new-comers, that it had an unstated influence on Maqiao attitudes to all outsiders.
When the land reform work team arrived in the village, they inquired whether there were any landlords or local bullies there. At first, the ordinary people were still rather fearful, they muttered and mumbled, even slammed their doors as soon as they saw the work team people. Finally, though, the work team killed the biggest tyrant from Longjia Sands, paraded around with his head lifted up high, bang-bang-banging drums and gongs to get people to come and look; once the masses saw blood, they threw open their doors and rubbed their hands together, itching to be a part of it all. A lot of men went looking for the work team, and the first name they brought up was Long Stick Xi.
"What crimes is he guilty of?"
"Exploitation, greed, laziness, never grows his own vegetables."
"Anything else?"
"He wears a foreign chain, goes ticktock ticktock."
"A pocket watch? A pocket watch is movable property. Anything else?"
"He eats poisonous snakes-disgusting, bleurgh!"
"Eating snakes doesn't prove a specific problem. The most important thing is whether he has mountains, whether he has land. We need to control the limits of policy."
"He's got land all right, oh yes, I should say so."
"Where?"
The men became vague, said they should go and have a look, it was around here somewhere.
"Whereabouts?"
Some pointed to the east, some to the west.
The work team went to check, but discovered that Long Stick Xi actually had neither land nor mountains and that apart from a few caged birds, his house was empty and bare. He had no pocket watch, either; it was said that he'd sent it to a lover in Longjia Plain. Someone like him could be labeled neither a landlord nor evil tyrant, nor could he be regarded as an enemy. The work team's conclusion annoyed all the local men, who grumbled they couldn't count on anything anymore. On and on they muttered about their grievances: if Peng Shi'en (a super-bully from Longjia Bay) could be killed, then why not him? He was far worse than Peng Shi'en; he swindled people like there was no tomorrow! What was Peng Shi'en compared to him? He treated his own old man like his grandson!
When they first started talking about the business of treating his old man like his grandson, the work team didn't understand. A few days' investigation, however, produced a rough outline of the affair. At one point, a startling piece of news had secretly spread around Maqiao: apparently, Xi was in fact more than a hundred years old. He'd taken a Western elixir of life and lived to a ripe old age in the pink of health, his face glowing with youth. The old man who followed him around wasn't his dad at all, but his grandson, who, stubborn by nature, hadn't obeyed the family rules and had refused to drink the precious Western potion, thereby turning into a desiccated old prune. Some were flabbergasted by this piece of news. Eyeing Xi with new respect, they timidly approached his door to make inquiries. The old chap in the Xi household was as rough as they came, and couldn't utter a single intelligible word. Long Stick Xi wouldn't say too much either, but once, when he came up against someone who wouldn't be put off, when enough bowing and scraping had been done, after Xi had hedged a while, then, finally, with great reluctance, he said he didn't really remember how long he'd actually lived, but the emperor had changed a few times, he'd seen everything, nothing surprised him. As he said this, he told the old man to go to bed. His listeners heard very clearly that he didn't call the old man Dad, but said "laddie" instead, his tone definitely that used for dismissing those of a younger generation.
Maqiao people were naturally very interested in an elixir of life. Some offered money, meat, and wine to beg for the treasure from Xi. Some even offered up their wives, because Xi said people's physiques were not the same, sometimes the male element was too weak, and he needed to add a woman's "three peaks"-that is, saliva, breast milk, and vaginal fluid-into the elixir, because only this would gather up the yin to balance the yang, ma
king the elixir effective. Of course, this was very complicated and needed a lot of careful research, something he was most unwilling to do. Sometimes the seeker of elixir got it wrong time and again, and the "three peaks" sent over were useless, but after the man begged abjectly, he'd finally relent and agree to help him out, calling on him to sort out a replacement. He'd shut himself up with the man's wife and pull down the mosquito net, making the bed wheeze and creak in a highly disconcerting way. Since this greatly sapped his energy, normally he'd be forced to charge even more for it.
When this kind of thing started happening more and more often, talk began to spread among the people involved. First, angry suspicions gradually formed in the minds of the women; subsequently, the men also started to pale with fury, but they didn't know quite what to say. Shortly before the work team went into the mountains, a little girl was dispatched by her mother to get to the bottom of the Xi mystery. When she came back, the little girl reported that as soon as outsiders weren't around, Xi called the old man "Dad"!
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 4
