This taciturn dog took another look at me, then went off, its head hanging.
*Streetsickness
: Although standard Mandarin has words like "sea-sick," "carsick," and "airsick," it doesn't have Maqiao's "streetsick." Streetsickness was an illness with symptoms similar to seasickness, but which struck sufferers instead on city streets, causing greenness of face, blurred eyesight and hearing, loss of appetite, insomnia, absent-mindedness, apathy, weakness, shortness of breath, fever, irregular pulse, sickness and diarrhoea, and so on; female sufferers would tend to get irregular periods and run out of breast milk after giving birth. A whole swathe of quacks in Maqiao had special decoction prescriptions for curing street-sickness, including wolfberry, tuber of gastridia, walnuts, all manner of things. So although Maqiao people would visit nearby Changle, they very seldom spent the night there, even less lived there for any length of time. The year Guangfu from the upper village went to study in the county seat, he was seriously streetsick after a month or so, lost an enormous amount of weight, and returned to the mountains on the brink of death. Terrible, terrible, he said, the city's no place for humans! That he later read for a diploma and managed to feed himself by his teaching job in the city constituted a feat that, in Maqiao eyes, was no less than miraculous. His experience of dealing with streetsickness had taught him one pickles and often going barefoot did he manage to stick it out in the city for ten or so years.
Streetsickness was a frequent cause of disagreement between me and Maqiao people. This wasn't a real illness, I suspected, or it was at least a deeply misunderstood illness. The city didn't rock like cars, boats, and planes; there was, at worst, more smell of coal smoke, of gasoline, more chlorine in the tap water and more noise than in the countryside-hardly enough to make anyone ill. In fact, there were millions of city people who'd managed to escape this illness. After I left Maqiao, I read a few journals which increased my suspicion that streetsickness amounted to nothing more than a particular form of psychological suggestibility, rather like hypnosis. Providing you're psychologically suggestible, when you hear someone say sleep, then quite possibly you will really go to sleep; when you hear someone say ghosts and goblins, then you'll probably see them. By the same logic, someone who's received years of education in the principles of class struggle and identification of enemies will probably see enemies everywhere in life-then once his forecast of enmity has incurred hostility, affront, and even retaliation in kind from others, this state of actual enmity will continue to affirm his expectations in fact, giving him even more grounds for his feelings of enmity.
This range of examples has revealed a further range of facts; or rather, not facts in a strict sense, but second-degree facts, facts that are linguistically manufactured or regenerated.
Dogs have no language, and so dogs are never streetsick. Once humans become linguistic beings, they attain possibilities that other animals lack completely-they can harness the magical powers of language; language becomes prophecy, a mass hysteria that confuses true and false, and that establishes fictions, manufacturing one factual miracle after another. After I'd thought of this, I conducted an experiment using my daughter. I took her on a car journey, having pronounced beforehand that she wouldn't get carsick; and, as predicted, she was perfectly happy for the whole journey, didn't feel a trace of discomfort. The next time we traveled by car, I predicted she would get carsick; as a result, she became incredibly anxious, unable to sit still, until in the end her face went ashen, her brow creased over, and she leaned onto me, half-sick before the car had even started moving. I can't claim my experiment has been exhaustively tested, but it serves as proof that language isn't something to be sneezed at, it's a dangerous thing we need to defend ourselves against and handle with respect. Language is a kind of incantation, a dictionary is a kind of Pandora's Box capable of releasing a hundred thousand spirits and demons-just as the inventor of the word "streetsickness," someone I don't know, manufactured the physiology peculiar to generation after generation of Maqiao people and their long-held aversion to the city.
And what about "revolution," "knowledge," "hometown," "director," "labor reform criminal," "god," "generation gap"? What have these words already manufactured? What else will they manufacture?
Maqiao people wouldn't accept any of this.
I later learned that Benyi missed out on a job with the state because of his streetsickness. When he returned from the Korean War, he looked after the horses in the prefectural commission and could very likely have become a cadre later on; a glorious future stretched out before him. But, just like other Maqiao people, he felt that life in the city was no life at all. You hardly ever saw ginger salted bean tea, heard no sound of flowing water under the starry sky on summer nights, there was no roasting of knees and crotch by the fireplace… He had difficulty making his Maqiao dialect understood. Neither could he get up as early as city people. His colleagues were constantly snickering at his forgetting to button up his fly. He couldn't get used to calling the toilet hut "lavatory," or whatever it was, nor to differentiating between men's and women's toilets.
He did learn some of his colleagues' habits, using a toothbrush, using a fountain pen, for example, even messing about at basketball. The first time he played, he ran around so much his face streamed with sweat, and he didn't even manage one touch of the ball. The second time, when someone on the opposite team had grabbed the ball and was about to score a basket, he suddenly cried out: "Stop-." All eyes turned to him, no one knowing what had happened. Slowly, unhurriedly, he left the court, picked a booger, then returned to the court, waving at the players as if nothing had happened: "Slow down, slow down, easy there."
He didn't know why the people on the court burst out laughing and perceived some malice in the laughter. What was wrong with him picking his nose?
On hot summer days, it was much hotter and drier on the streets than in the countryside-mercilessly hot. Roaming the streets at night, he spotted some girl students run past in front of him, wearing really low clothes, shorts that revealed their thighs and legs. He also saw row upon row of bamboo beds in the shade of trees, on which unknown women lay fanning themselves and sleeping. A smell reminiscent of cooked meat floated from their chins, bare feet, the tufts of hair in their armpits or the rounds of snow-white skin accidentally exposed by their collars.
His whole body burned, his breathing quickened, his head was swaddled in insupportable agonies-it had to be streetsickness. He tried rubbing in half a jar of balm, to no effect; he had someone pare a few bright red pimples off his back, but his brain was still fried, bubbles still foaming out of his mouth. Hands in sleeves, he took a few deeply discontented turns through the streets and back, then kicked a rush basket about ten feet:
"I'm off!"
A few days later, he came back from the countryside, his fire somewhat cooled, his face covered in smiles. He took out a baba cake from the mountains and divided it amongst his colleagues to give them a taste of something new.
What had happened was a ligelang of his in Zhangjia District, a widow twelve years older than him, as big as a bucket, had quelled his fires- and then some.
The prefectural commission was a good two days' journey from Maqiao and he couldn't often go back to cool his humors. He reported to his senior officer that he had streetsickness, that everyone from Maqiao got this illness, that it stopped them enjoying the good life. He hoped he could return to the mountains to work on his two mw of paddy fields. The senior officer just thought he wasn't happy looking after horses and changed his job for him, making him custodian at the Public Security Station. In the eyes of his colleagues, he was a little unappreciative of this favor from his superior, as on the second day he reported for duty he was actually rude to the department chief's wife. At the time in question, the wife had been examining a sweater on the bed, her buttocks sticking up very high as her hands gripped the sides of the bed. Rather pleased by this, Benyi gave those arresting buttocks a pat: "What're you looking at?"
> The astounded woman went bright red and started to yell at him: "Where did you crawl out from, you filthy turtle's egg? What d'you think you're doing?"
"Why're you laying into me like that?" He asked a secretary standing by: "Why doesn't someone wash her mouth out? All I did was have a little pat…"
"Still full of it! Shameless!"
"What did I say?"
As soon as he got upset, Benyi started to talk in Maqiao dialect; he could talk till he was blue in the face and still no one would be able to understand him. But he saw that filthy woman move off to cower in a corner and heard her clearly, distinctly enunciate one word:
"Bumpkin!"
Afterwards, the leader came looking for Benyi to have a word. Benyi had no idea what the leader could possibly have to talk to him about. How absurd-did this count as a mistake? Was this taking liberties? All he'd done was pat with his hand, he could pat where he wanted, in his village whose buttocks couldn't he pat? But he controlled himself, didn't wrangle with the leader.
The leader declared he wanted him to examine the roots of his own criminally erroneous thinking.
"There are no roots, I'm just streetsick. Once I get onto those streets, my fires rise, my scalp hurts, when I wake up every morning it's like I've been beaten upside the head."
"What're you talking about?"
"I said, I'm streetsick."
"What d'you mean, streetsick?"
The leader wasn't from Maqiao and didn't understand what street-sickness was, neither did he believe Benyi's explanations and snapped back that Benyi was stalling him with gibberish. But this cloud's silver lining brought Benyi great joy: that one pat absolved him from further punishment, lost him his commission and meant he could go back home! From now on, every day he could drink ginger salted bean tea, every day he could sleep in! When he received the order to return to the countryside, he had a very satisfactory yell at his wife, then went alone to the tavern to wolf down a bowl of shredded pork noodles and three ounces of wine.
Years later, on a visit to the county seat to attend a cadre meeting, he bumped into a certain Hu, one of his own old colleagues from the prefectural commission, a junior reporter in days gone by. This Hu was now an official who'd discussed at the meeting "the three crux issues," "the four links," and "the five implementations," all of which were completely lost on Benyi. Hu's way of smoking, of arranging his hair up and to the right, of gargling after meals and peeling his apples with a small knife all seemed very alien to Benyi, and filled him with amazement and envy. He felt all at sea in the guestroom at the hostel where his old colleague lodged, unable to look at the bright electric lamp with his eyes open.
"Hey, you were unlucky, you know, way back then, they shouldn't have punished you so hard for such a small thing." Hu mused on the past in the light of the present, passing him an apple he'd already peeled.
" 'Snot important, not important at all."
His old colleague heaved a sigh: "You're no good now, your cultural level's too low, it wouldn't be right for you to come back on the team. D'you have kids?"
"A boy and a girl."
"Good, good; how's the harvest?"
" 'Bout the same as you, still got food in the pot."
"Good, good; are your folks still alive?"
"Been sent up to the yellow earth commune work team in the sky."
"You still like your little joke, I see. Where's your wife from?"
"She's from Changle, she's nice enough, bit of a temper though."
"Good, good-good to have a bit of a temper."
Benyi didn't know what this "good, good" was supposed to mean; after these careful inquiries into his situation, he thought Hu was going to arrange something for him, do him some favor, but he never heard anything about it in the end. That was a happy evening, though. He was grateful to his old colleague for not having forgotten him, for being polite to him still, for giving him ten catties' worth of grain coupons. Thinking back to the good, round rump of that section chief's wife all those years back still sent him off on a happy spirit journey. The day the meeting broke up, his old colleague wanted to keep him there for another evening. Benyi wouldn't agree. He said he was getting on now, that his streetsickness was even worse, that he'd better go back; his old colleague wanted to send him back on his way in his jeep, but still Benyi waved his hands in refusal. He was afraid of the smell of gasoline, he said, if ever his path took him by a gas station, he usually had to make a long, twisty detour; there was no way he could sit in a car. A cadre standing nearby affirmed that he wasn't just being polite, that a lot of people from round Maqiao were afraid of gasoline and would rather walk than go by car. The County Automobile Transportation Company had, not long ago, extended the long-distance route to Longjia Bay, intending to make life more convenient for the masses, but since, contrary to all expectations, barely a handful of people had taken the bus in the past month, they'd had to cancel the regular bus service.
Only then did Old Hu believe him, waving as he watched Benyi's silhouette set off down the road.
*Colored Tea
: When Benyi was looking after the horses at the prefectural commission, city tea was the thing he found hardest to swallow. Normally, Maqiao people drank ginger tea, also known as pounded tea. Using a tiny bone pestle and mortar, they pounded chopped ginger, added salt, then poured on boiling water from a hanging kettle until it was brewed. The fairly affluent would use a copper kettle rather than a ceramic kettle, always polished till it dazzled with an extraordinary metallic gleam. Housewives put flavorings such as beans and sesame seeds into iron pots and stuck them in amongst the wood fire to roast. None of them was afraid of getting burned, and while firewood was burning under the cooking range, they'd often grab hold of the iron pot with their bare fingers to give it a shake, to prevent the flavoring ingredients inside from getting scorched. The rustling of the shaking, the exploding of the beans, and the cracking of the sesame seeds soon released a piping hot fragrance that coaxed smiles from the faces of guests. Red dates and eggs could also be added, to make even grander sorts of tea.
Benyi could never understand why it was that city people, who weren't short of cash, insisted on drinking colored tea, tea with no spices in it, the lowest grade of tea. Colored tea wasn't freshly boiled, it was usually heated up in a big pan and stored in a big pot, one batch lasting two or three days, its only function being to quench thirst. Often enough, tea leaves weren't used for colored tea; instead, it was boiled up out of a few tea-tree twigs till it was as dark as soy sauce. Maybe this was where the name "colored tea" came from.
How could you fail to laugh at, to pity city people who drank only this and not pounded tea?
*Barbarian Parts
: Around here, the dialect changes three times every ten li. People from Changle all call any faraway place "over there," people from Shuanglong all say "over the way," and people from Dongluodong all say "over to the west"; but Maqiao people say "barbarian parts," whether they're talking about Pingjiang County, Changsha, Wuhan, or America. Whether they're cotton-pickers, hide-trappers, or sent-down youth and cadres, they're all people from "barbarian parts." The Cultural Revolution, fighting in Indochina, Benyi looking after horses in the prefectural commission-all these events took place in "barbarian parts." I reckon they must have always felt they were in the center, must always have had a deep sense of self-satisfaction and confidence. What justification did they have for regarding these places outside their own poor village as "barbarian"? This word "barbarian" was used by the ancient people of the central plains to describe the small, weak, surrounding races. The Chinese character for this word combines the characters for "bow" [^5] and "people" [A]: [51]- What justification did Maqiao people have for believing that the inhabitants of those flourishing, developed cities that lay beyond the horizon still lived by hunting? Or that they were tribes who hadn't yet mastered agricultural techniques?
A professor of cultural anthropology told me that in ancient China, among the hundreds of d
isputing philosophies of the Warring States period (770-221 b.c). only one tiny school of thought contradicted the belief that China was the center of the world: the School of Logicians from the Spring and Autumn period (777-476 b.c). Finding the ideas of this school rather hard to stomach, some thinkers later expressed doubts over their nationality: their names, such as "Gongsun Longzi," sounded rather odd, very much like the kind of name that would be given to a foreign student or visiting scholar in China. When translating the oracle bones, the modern poet Guo Moruo came to believe China's Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches revealed an influence from Babylonian culture. Ling Chunsheng also conjectured that the tribe of the "Queen Mother of the West" written of in China's ancient historical annals was just a translation of the Babylonian word Siwan (moon spirit), thus inferring that foreign culture had flowed into China long before the Silk Road, and that the sources of ancient Chinese culture were perhaps very complex. All this increased people's suspicions about the origins of the Logicians. Of course, with an enormous entity such as Chinese culture, even if the disciples of Gongsun Longzi really were a group of foreign scholars, their voices were still very feeble and they never managed to shake the confidence of the Chinese race in its belief that it inhabited the "Middle Kingdom"; it would have been pretty difficult to weaken the Chinese sense of cultural complacency. This use of the word "barbarian" in Maqiao clearly displayed its ancient Chinese pedigree, containing within it contempt for and dismissal of anything that hailed from distant parts. Maqiao's forefathers never gave a moment's thought to the heartfelt warnings of Gongsun Longzi, and this obduracy has survived in its language up until the present day.
Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html Page 21
