Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html

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by A Dictionary of Maqiao (lit)


  Think of her and I lose my wits, When I walk on rocks, I don't feel a thing, When I'm eating, I can't hold my chopsticks, When I squat, I don't know how to get up.

  Another verse was even sillier:

  Think of her and I get in a rage

  I eat every day but never put on weight,

  If you don't believe me, then look under my clothes,

  I'm nothing but skin and bones.

  Some were quite terrifying, such as this one about a foolish woman's secret plot to kill her husband:

  My husband's ever so handsome and smart, My husband's like a stick of firewood, Three chops, two chops, he drops dead, All my friends come to have a barbecue.

  Some were melancholy:

  When I'm with you I hate to leave, I paint a picture and stick it on the wall, We haven't seen each other for weeks on end, Hugging your shadow, I cry awhile.

  Some expressed desperation in love:

  What a waste for us to love each other,

  Makes more sense to grind rice for other people's chickens,

  Her children have already grown up,

  But they don't call me father, just hey you!

  All these were love songs. After reaching a certain point with love songs, the singers moved on to "low songs":

  I see you, a girl twenty years old You don't bolt the door too tightly I see your face, peach-blossom pink My crotch is already soaked through

  Nonstop shouting from your house

  The water flowing out is thick and white

  A thousand pounds are thumping down on your bed

  Stamping out a hole in the ground…

  Every time these songs started, any women in the audience would hastily depart, cursing as they went, their faces burning scarlet; the young men would follow the more eye-catching back views with their eyes, like a line of restless fighting cocks, necks stretched out, eyes red, spoiling for a fight, springing up, then squatting down, their faces contorting into bursts of scorching laughter. They would deliberately make their laughter resound exaggeratedly so that the women would hear far away.

  There were also songs about female suffering; for example, one sung by Wanyu from the lower village, describing the scene as a woman watched her illegitimate child float off downstream in a wooden basin along the Luo River:

  Go slow and steady, steady and slow, Don't crack your head on the rocks you pass, It's not that your ma doesn't want you here, You have no pa, she can't take the shame, Go slow and steady, steady and slow, Don't get wet in the wind and waves, It's not that your ma wants to let you go, Three times each night, she cries out loud…

  In Wanyu's version, the wooden basin drifted into a whirlpool, made a circle and floated back, as if reluctant to leave, wanting to return wailing to its mother's bosom. When he'd sung up to this point, there wasn't one among the women listening whose eyes weren't red-rimmed, who hadn't begun to wipe her eyes on the edges of her clothes, each woman's snivels rising up one above another. Benren's wife's mouth fell at the corners, the basket of pig's fodder dropped from her hand, and she bent over another woman's shoulder and bawled.

  *Striking Red

  : I heard that taking a virgin bride used to be taboo in Maqiao, and that "striking red," as it was called, on the nuptial night was seen as something highly inauspicious. Contrarily, the husband's family would be very content with a female pregnant before marriage, whose stomach stuck out a long way. Li Minggao, a scholar of Dong minority customs from the provincial Cultural Association in Hunan, told me there was nothing odd about this: in areas and periods of low production rate, people were the most important productive force and giving birth was the most important task for women, much more important than maintaining moral chastity. It was pretty common in many parts of the South for men to favor a big stomach when choosing a spouse. Since it seemed to be an explanation that made sense, T made a note of it for reference.

  In connection with this custom, Maqiao men harbored animosity toward their first-born, viewing it as wild spawn of unascertainable origin, not of their flesh and blood, and they either stuffed it into the piss bucket or smothered it in the mattress; they were always glad to be rid of it. This type of custom was called "favoring younger brothers"-in other words, murdering the eldest-and was for a long time practiced tacitly by people in Maqiao. Those mothers unable to bear it would swaddle the baby in a padded jacket and place it on the main road before their husband had struck, or place it in a wooden basin to float downstream, entrusting the fate of their own child to heaven-a common occurrence, this was.

  After the Communist Party arrived, they prohibited such brutality and very little more was heard about it. There's no way of telling whether or not some people continued the practice in secret. Of course, when Wanyu sang ballads such as "Farewell from the Riverbank," it's easy to understand how, as the sound of weeping rose up on all sides, the song evoked for its female listeners the misery of earlier days.

  *The Qoqo Man

  :The best singer in Maqiao was Wanyu, but I only got to know him a long time after I arrived in Maqiao. Orders had been issued for the village to organize an arts propaganda team to propagate Mao Zedong thought, which meant performing documents or editorials sent down from above to the sound of clappers. Performers were sent off to other villages banging drums and beating gongs, and other villages did the same thing. When the performance was finished, they would always have to yell a few slogans. Since everyone would be yelling at once, it was very difficult to yell them in a neat, coordinated fashion. Therefore, they would often divide up the long slogans into several sentences for the purpose of yelling, which created some unavoidable problems. There was one quotation from Chairman Mao which divided into three sentences: (1) Strike at poor peasants! (2) Means! (3) Strike at revolution! The first and last sentences thus became reactionary slogans. But everyone, as ever, raised their arms together and shouted, not hearing anything odd about it. Orders were also issued to perform model revolutionary operas. As resources in the countryside were limited, people had to make do with what was available-you couldn't be too particular about props and costumes. When the White-haired Girl got on stage, a length of flax hung from her head, transfixing the faces of small children with terror. The hero Yang Zirong didn't have a proper cape, and had to make do with a rush cape to go up the mountain and fight the tiger. Once in late autumn, a very strong wind blew over the wooden scenery, along with a door plank covered in cotton, and poor Comrade Yang Zirong, who had just finished fighting the tiger with his lofty ideals, was knocked sideways by the snowy mountain. His eyes glazed over, as he swayed left and right, before toppling over onstage. Luckily, the oil lamps on stage were quite dim, and the audience couldn't see very well, or even thought that the hero falling to the ground was planned as part of the fight, and gave him a round of applause.

  The peasants said that although the old plays were still the best, the new ones were also fun in their own way.

  Although Yang Zirong was injured, he still gave a pretty good performance. As his brain was a bit fuzzy, he forgot his lines, but he came up with an emergency solution. When he saw gongs and drums, he would sing "gong," "drum"; if he saw chairs and tables, he would sing "chair," "table." When he finally sang in one breath "Land Reform Cooperative and People's Commune repairing irrigation sowing rape plants," the whole theater burst into spontaneous cheers. Not having heard properly, the commune cadre said again and again how good it was. He decided to choose the Maqiao propaganda team to represent the whole commune at the theater festival in the county seat.

  Going to the county seat was a very rare treat. Rehearsals, moreover, were bound to be a lot more relaxing than hauling pond sludge. The men and women could also make use of this rare opportunity to mix freely, make each other up, fiddle with each other's costumes, and so on. Everybody was overjoyed. The Party Branch Secretary in the village, Ma Benyi, felt it gave him face and explained to me in great excitement that he wanted a play with four girls. He didn't care what it was about
, as long as it had four girls in it.

  I asked why.

  "Didn't you have four red mandarin jackets made up last year? Those jackets cost the production brigade more than two carrying poles of grain, it's a shame to leave them locked in a case."

  Back then, he hadn't wanted to sink two carrying poles of grain into the jackets.

  Everyone thought this suggestion was spot on.

  In order to improve the play, two people came from the Cultural Center in the county seat and suggested we add a mountain song to represent the folk characteristics of Maqiao. Benyi took a moment to think, then said, no problem: Wanyu had a fine pair of lungs, could do just about anything, funeral songs, comic songs, you name it. Let him sing!

  All the villagers laughed-especially the women, who simply collapsed. Somewhat perplexed, 1 inquired who this person was, and they gave a brief description of someone who sounded vaguely familiar: beardless, eyebrows twisted but extremely thin, head always shaved smooth, rather like a shiny oiled radish. I remembered that he always left the village bearing a carrying pole, but I didn't know what he went off to do. I also remembered that when he stood looking on while others were singing, and people asked him to join in, he'd whine old-fashioned classical Chinese in shrill girlish tones: "Nay, nay, I'll sing not, thou must not jest with little me, comrades." He even blushed as he spoke.

  He lived in two thatched huts in the lower part of the village, divorced, with a small child. It was said he was a bit of a lowlife: his high-pitched voice always appeared in places where there were a lot of women, and he always provoked guffaws or was chased away by them with stones. He'd started off as a miller, one of those people who came to the door to mill rice, and so had a lot of dealings with housewives. As time went by, the word "mill" started to take on connotations of low behavior because of its association with him. People would often ask him, so how many women have you actually milled? He would give an embarrassed laugh, "Tease me not, don't you know that in the new society we should be civilized?"

  Fucha told me that once, when Wanyu went to Longjia Sands to mill rice, a child asked him what his name was. He said he was called old officer Ye. The child asked him what he'd come to do. Mill your mommy's baba cakes, he said. The little child rushed back into the house in excitement and reported what he'd been told. There was a group of women gathered at home drinking ginger tea, and they burst into raucous laughter on hearing the news. The child's elder sister was furious, and set the dog onto Wanyu, who scurried away like a terrified rat before losing his footing and falling into the manure pit.

  Covered in manure, he climbed up onto a ridge between fields, leaving a great big hole in the pit, as if an ox had been asleep there. On the way back, people asked him in surprise, "Miller Wan, why did you leap into the manure pit today?"

  "I wanted to see… how deep the manure pit really is."

  "Did you come to check on production then?"

  He hurried off, muttering away to himself.

  A few children followed behind him, clapping their hands and laughing, and he picked up a stone as a threat and twisted round a few times in preparation for throwing it, but even straining every muscle he lacked the strength to toss it a bamboo-pole length away. The children laughed even more uproariously.

  From then on, "checking on production" became a Maqiao allusion, referring to a Wanyu-type of sticky situation and to covering up difficulties. For example, if someone fell over, Maqiao people would laugh and ask "Have you been checking on production too?"

  Wanyu was Benyi's same-pot cousin. At one time, when there was a pretty female guest at Benyi's place, he would turn up at Benyi's almost every day to sit around, hands in sleeves, his girly voice shrilling out deep into the night. One evening, he casually barged his way with a chair into the circle of people by the fireside. "What are you doing here?" Benyi asked ungraciously.

  "The young lady's ginger tea smells good, really good," he answered virtuously.

  "We're having a meeting in here."

  "A meeting? Oh good, I'llhave one too."

  "This is a meeting for Party members. D'you understand?"

  "That may be, but I haven't had a meeting for months. I really feel like one today, I'm getting desperate."

  Uncle Luo asked "Eh, eh, eh, when did you become a Party member?"

  Wanyu looked at the people around him, then looked back at Uncle Luo. "I'm not a Party member then?"

  "Have you got a member?" said Uncle Luo, at which everyone guffawed.

  Wanyu finally started to look embarrassed. "Bah, your humble slave stumbled into the royal sanctum, I take my leave, I take my leave."

  Once he'd stepped outside the threshold, he exploded in anger, and said menacingly to a Party member on his way in, "When I feel like having a meeting, they don't let me come. Next time there's a meeting, don't ye come bothering me!"

  As threatened, he subsequently attended no meetings, each time justifying his refusal with "Why did you stop me having a meeting when I felt like one? Fine, you have all the good meetings, then drag me along to the rotten leftover meetings-let me tell you, you can forget it!" As a result of his resentment at having been driven out of the Party meeting, he gradually started whining more and more. Once, for example, when helping a few women dye clothes, working up a happy sweat, he was talking away, getting more and more pleased with himself, until his mouth ran away with him. He said that Chairman Mao didn't have a beard-d'ycm reckon he looks anything like old Mother Wang San from Zhangjia District? He had two cherished portraits of the leader, he continued, one stuck on the front of his rice bucket, one stuck on the front of his piss bucket. If there was no rice in the bucket to scoop, then he'd give the portrait a clip round the ears. If there was no piss in the bucket to carry, he'd whack that portrait too.

  Seeing the women grinning from ear to ear, he felt even more pleased with himself and said that next year he wanted to go to Beijing for a bit, to talk things over with Chairman Mao, ask him why the cold-water paddies have to be planted two seasons in a year.

  Once his remarks reached the ears of a cadre, the cadre immediately got the People's Militia to grab their rifles, tie Wanyu up, and send him under guard to the commune. He returned a few days later, muttering away, somewhat paler than before.

  "Well, what happened? Did the commune invite you to check on production?" people asked.

  He rubbed his face and smiled bitterly: "Luckily the cadre who came with me had respect, the punishment wasn't too heavy, not too heavy."

  He meant that the commune had seen he was a poor peasant and only fined him one hundred catties of grain.

  From then on, "have respect" or "the cadre had respect" also became a Maqiao allusion, meaning to explain away personal ridicule, or a grain fine.

  When he first appeared in the propaganda team, he seemed really down on his luck: his thin, tattered jacket was held together with a straw cord, he wore a crooked woollen hat and his stockingless feet stuck out from pants that were too short for him, revealing a length of leg that was raw from the cold. He still had an ox whip in his hand, as he'd just come back from the fields. What on earth were we playing at! he said. One minute we wouldn't allow him to sing, the next we'd want him to sing, then we wanted him to go to the county seat to sing-he felt like a chamber pot at the foot of the bed, dragged out when needed, shoved back when he wasn't needed. Nothing good could ever come out of Commune Head He!

  None of this, in fact, had anything to do with Commune Head He.

  He asked mysteriously "Can I sing qoqo songs now? The Communist Party…?" He made a toppling over gesture.

  "What are you blathering on about?!" I thrust a piece of paper at him, some lines about spring ploughing. "Memorize them today, tomorrow we rehearse, the day after the commune are going to come and check it."

  Having studied it a while, he suddenly seized me by the arm. "Sing this? Hoes and rakes and carrying poles filling manure pits watering rice seedlings?"

  I wasn't sure what he meant. />
  "Comrade, I have to put up with all this stuff every day in the fields, and now you want me to get on stage and sing about it? Just thinking about hoes and carrying poles makes me sweat, gives me palpitations. What d'you really want me to sing?"

  "What do you think we asked you here to sing? You'll sing what we want you to sing, if you don't sing then go and do some work!"

  "Ooooh, comrade, temper, temper!"

  He didn't give the lines back.

  I didn't find his voice as beautiful as people said it was; though it was clear and sharp, it was too abrupt, too stark, too direct, sung throughout in a monotone, a real girly screech it was, as piercing as a knife edge scraping on tiles. I felt that the sinuses of listeners must be contorting horribly, that everyone must be listening not with their ears, but with their nasal cavities, their foreheads, the backs of their heads, in order to cope with these repeated knife cuts.

  This kind of scraping noise must have been known in Maqiao. Yet except for the Educated Youth, the locals all had a high opinion of his singing voice.

  The Educated Youth were even less impressed with how smug he was about his choice of costume, and wouldn't let him wear his old leather shoes. He also wanted to wear his candle-wick silk pants, even put on a pair of glasses. As the people from the County Cultural Center pointed out, how on earth could there be a toffee-nosed intellectual right in the middle of the spring ploughing? No way. They paused to think, and decided that he should be barefoot, roll up his trouser legs, wear a bamboo hat on his head, and carry a hoe on his shoulder.

 

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