Shaogong, han - A Dictionary of Maqiao.html

by A Dictionary of Maqiao (lit)

  Under unbearable pressure by this point, the young man lost the will to defend himself and could only stammer out: "I… ate…"

  Uncle Luo slapped his thigh in excitement, "Didn't I know it? I saw through it at once, didn't I? You were putting me on. Almost sixty, I am, and you've never said one honest thing to me. Wicked boy. You sit down."

  He indicated a stool by the threshold.

  Not daring to sit down, the nephew just hung his head, drank a bowl of cold water, heaved his charcoal back onto his shoulder, and left. Uncle Luo wanted him to rest a while before going on, but the nephew murmured that it would get late if he rested any longer.

  Your sandals are falling apart, said Uncle Luo, you should change them before going.

  The nephew said that new sandals would rub his feet, he wouldn't change them.

  Not long after, while crossing the Luo River, the nephew went down to wash in the river and drowned, due to his own carelessness. Having no descendants of his own, Uncle Luo shared in the descendants of this brother of his who lived far away. Probably because his brother and his wife were afraid he'd be heartbroken, that he'd blame himself, they hid the truth from him, telling him only that his nephew had gone to the city to look for work and that he'd been in too much of a hurry when he went to say goodbye. As a result, for a long time afterwards Uncle Luo would still mention his nephew every now and then, with a great big smile on his face. When someone wanted to borrow a log, he'd say, I want to keep the wood to make a bed for my nephew when he gets married, my nephew eats out of the state rice-bowl now, he knows all about foreign city things, he'll have to ask a city carpenter to make his new bed. When someone bought a mountain chicken for him, he'd smile and say, good, good, and set it over the fire to smoke, keeping it until his nephew came to eat it.

  As time went by, rumors slowly spread to Maqiao: everyone heard his nephew had died young and began to suspect that Uncle Luo was still in the dark. When they heard him mention his nephew, they couldn't help but sneak looks at him. He seemed to pick something up from these looks, to have an uneasy flash of realization-he'd be about to say something, then suddenly become agitatedly forgetful.

  The more people expected him to correct himself, the more, by contrast, he stuck to his stubborn guns: he wouldn't even allow people around him to turn his nephew into a taboo subject to be skirted carefully around. Sometimes, when he saw other people's children, he would suddenly, voluntarily blurt out:

  "Don't wish their lives away. That nephew of mine, there he was one moment, playing in the chicken shit, then the next moment he's working for the state, isn't he now?"

  "That's right, that's right…"

  The people standing around would fidget and mumble.

  But Uncle Luo was very demanding. He wouldn't allow vagueness like this, he needed to draw even more attention to his nephew: "Stick-a-pig, haven't seen as much as a letter from him. You tell me, what use is it bringing up kids? He can't be that busy, can he? I've been to the city myself, what's to be busy about there? They just mess around from morning till night."

  Still his listeners wouldn't take up the subject, exchanging covert glances among themselves.

  He rubbed his chin, "But that's all well and good, I don't want him to come back to see me. What's there to see? If there's meat, don't I know how to eat it on my own? If there's cotton, don't I know how to wear it on my own?"

  After having said enough, finally, about his nephew, having put on enough of a show as an elder uncle, having demonstrated enough of an elder uncle's happiness and headaches, he'd walk toward his thatched cottage, his head lowered, his hands behind his back. His spine, buckling under all those doubting gazes, hunched over as he walked.

  *Model Worker (as Used on Fine Days)

  : The commune wanted every team to nominate a model worker to study philosophy and attend meetings in the commune. Benyi was away, so it fell to Uncle Luo to take charge. After eating breakfast, he made his leisurely way to the terrace, took a few leisurely turns around it, escorted a snail that had climbed onto the terrace onto a clump of grass and that he was afraid everyone would tread on, and then assigned everyone work. He blinked the eyelids he never could completely open, bent his head to roll a cigarette out of tobacco ends and said Zhihuang, Wucheng, and Zhaoqing should go and tend the oxen, Fucha should go and lay rotted oxen manure, Yanzao, hmm, Yanzao should spread pesticide; the women and the sent-down kids should go and hoe the rape plants; model worker, ah, Wanyu'll do that. I couldn't help laughing: "Shouldn't choosing a model worker… be put to a vote?"

  Uncle Luo was surprised by this: "If Wanyu doesn't go, who'll go? His back's like a woman's, he's no good with oxen, not strong enough to lay manure, and yesterday he said his finger was swollen, to set him hoeing the rape plants'd be like setting a dragon to play the lute. I've thought about it, and there's no one else. Only he'll do."

  Everyone else present felt making Wanyu the model worker was perfectly reasonable. What about Fucha? If it'd been raining, then Fucha could go and that would be that, he had a high cultural level. The problem was that the weather was fine today and there was work that had to be done. If Fucha were to go, who'd spread the manure? It was a no-win situation: if the manure wasn't spread on shoal patch (see the entry "Public Family"), how could it be ploughed tomorrow?

  Pair after pair of perplexed, uncomprehending eyes stared at me. Only then did I understand that the term "model worker" meant one thing on fine days, and another on rainy days. I agreed: it had to be Wanyu.

  *Speaking the Dao

  : After Wanyu died, the hat of philosophy-studying-model-worker fell onto Uncle Luo's head. The team leader arranged that I should write the speech about his past experiences for him, and after having written it I'd read it to him sentence by sentence, get him to memorize it, then send him off to meetings in the commune or in the county to do philosophy work. The cadres said that when Wanyu had gone to the commune, he hadn't done that good a job talking philosophy; Uncle Luo, however, was elderly, had a long service record, had speech rights, had even carried out a courageous rescue at the aqueduct: the higher-ups would certainly be pleased to have him. But Fucha also told me in confidence that although Uncle Luo was famous around here as an old revolutionary, he was a bit fuzzy in the head, and he was illiterate. As soon as he started talking, he'd mix up his sixes and sevens, his sheep and his goats-precautions would have to be taken. I had to get him to memorize the speech inside out.

  It was only later that I discovered it was in fact very difficult to prevent Uncle Luo mixing up his sixes and sevens while making his philosophy report. He'd talk and talk, leaving the speech way behind him, clean forgetting everything he'd gone to so much trouble to memorize, digressing onto radishes, cabbages, tables, stools, onto who knew what. Sometimes, I considered waiting for him to find his own way back, only to discover that the more he ran on, the further he went; the further he went, the more fun he had. He'd never taken a wife, never even gone near the female sex, but this didn't stop him coming out with all sorts of risque local expressions: "like my little sister looking at a prick" (meaning "by accident"); "like making my little sister drop a baby" (meaning "to bully someone"). All this "little sister" business didn't really mesh that well with philosophy.

  From the look in my eyes, he could tell there was a problem: "stick-a-pig (see the entry "Stickfy]"), have I said the wrong thing again?" he'd blink.

  The more he practiced, the more anxious he got, and in the end he began to mess up as soon as he opened his mouth: "Senior officers, comrades, I, Luo Yuxing, am fifty-six years old this year…"

  This didn't actually count as a mistake as such, but on instructions from the Party Branch I'd raised his age to sixty-five, so that he could be the even more outstanding embodiment of a Red old man. The philosophical significance of a sixty-five year old braving the rain to gather in the collective's harvest early was, of course, different from that of a fifty-six year old braving the rain to gather in the collective's harvest e
arly.

  I reminded him it was sixty-five: remember, the six at the beginning.

  "Just listen to me talk! Ai, what use is a man when he gets old?" Ignoring my suppressed laughter, his face taking on a tragic expression, he looked around at the sky, set his concentration, then began again: "Officers, comrades, my name is Luo Yuxing, this year I'm fifty-"

  "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 of 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…