by Yunte Huang
HOW MANY CARTS and horses are extricated from this quagmire every year may never be known. But, you ask, does no one ever think of solving the problem by filling it in with dirt? No, not a single one.
AN ELDERLY MEMBER of the gentry once fell into the quagmire at high water. As soon as he crawled out he said: “This street is too narrow. When you have to pass by this water hazard there isn’t even room to walk. Why don’t the two families whose gardens are on either side take down their walls and open up some paths?”
As he was saying this, an old woman sitting in her garden on the other side of the wall chimed in with the comment that the walls could not be taken down, and that the best course of action would be to plant some trees; if a row of trees were planted alongside the wall, then when it rained the people could cross over by holding onto the trees.
SOME ADVISE TAKING down walls and some advise planting trees, but as for filling up the quagmire with dirt, there isn’t a single person who advocates that.
Many pigs meet their end by drowning in this quagmire; dogs are suffocated in the mud, cats too; chickens and ducks often lose their lives there as well. This is because the quagmire is covered with a layer of husks; the animals are unaware that there is a trap lying below, and once they realize that fact it is already too late. Whether they come on foot or by air, the instant they alight on the husk-covered mire they cannot free themselves. If it happens in the daytime there is still a chance that someone passing by might save them, but once night falls they are doomed. They struggle all alone until they exhaust their strength, then begin to sink gradually into the mire. If, on the contrary, they continue to struggle, they might sink even faster. Some even die there without sinking below the surface, but that’s the sort of thing that happens when the mud is gummier than usual.
What might happen then is that some cheap pork will suddenly appear in the marketplace, and everyone’s thoughts turn to the quagmire. “Has another pig drowned in that quagmire?” they ask.
Once the word is out, those who are fast on their feet lose no time in running to their neighbors with the news: “Hurry over and get some cheap pork. Hurry, hurry, before it’s all gone.”
After it is bought and brought home, a closer look reveals that there seems to be something wrong with it. Why is the meat all dark and discolored? Maybe this pork is infected. But on second thought, how could it really be infected? No, it must have been a pig that drowned in the quagmire. So then family after family sautés, fries, steams, boils, and then eats this cheap pork. But though they eat it, they feel always that it doesn’t have a fragrant enough aroma, and they fear that it might have been infected after all. But then they think: “Infected pork would be unpalatable, so this must be from a pig that drowned in the quagmire!”
Actually, only one or two pigs drown each year in the quagmire, perhaps three, and some years not a single one. How the residents manage to eat the meat of a drowned pig so often is hard to imagine, and I’m afraid only the Dragon King knows the answer.
Though the people who eat the meat say it is from a pig drowned in the quagmire, there are still those who get sick from it, and those unfortunates are ready with their opinions: “Even if the pork was from a drowned pig, it still shouldn’t have been sold in the marketplace; meat from animals that have died isn’t fresh, and the revenue office isn’t doing its job if it allows meat like this to be sold on the street in broad daylight!”
Those who do not become ill are of a different opinion: “That’s what you say, but you’re letting your suspicions get the best of you. If you’d just eat it and not give it another thought, everything would be all right. Look at the rest of us; we ate it too, so how come we’re not sick?”
Now and then a child lacking in common sense will tell people that his mother wouldn’t allow him to eat the pork since it was infected. No one likes this kind of child. Everyone gives him hard looks and accuses him of speaking nonsense.
For example, a child says that the pork is definitely infected—this he tells a neighbor right in front of his mother. There is little reaction from the neighbor who hears him say this, but the mother’s face immediately turns beet-red. She reaches out and smacks him.
But he is a stubborn child, and he keeps saying: “The pork is infected! The pork is infected!”
His mother, feeling terribly embarrassed, picks up a poker that is lying by the door and strikes him on the shoulder, sending him crying into the house. As he enters the room he sees his maternal grandmother sitting on the edge of the k’ang, so he runs into her arms. “Grannie,” he sobs, “wasn’t that pork you ate infected? Mama just hit me.”
Now, this maternal grandmother wants to comfort the poor abused child, but just then she looks up to see the wet nurse of the Li family who shares the compound standing in the doorway looking at her. So she lifts up the back of the child’s shirttail and begins spanking him loudly on the behind. “Whoever saw a child as small as you speaking such utter nonsense!” she exclaims. She continues spanking him until the wet nurse walks away with the Lis’ child in her arms. The spanked child is by then screaming and crying uncontrollably, so hard that no one can make heads or tails of his shouts of “infected pork this” and “infected pork that.”
IN ALL, THIS QUAGMIRE brings two benefits to the residents of the area: The first is that the overturned carts and horses and the drowned chickens and ducks always produce a lot of excitement, which keeps the inhabitants buzzing for some time and gives them something to while away the hours.
The second is in relation to the matter of pork. Were there no quagmire, how could they have their infected pork? Naturally, they might still eat it, but how are they to explain it away? If they simply admit they are eating infected pork, it would be too unsanitary for words, but with the presence of the quagmire their problem is solved: infected pork becomes the meat of drowned pigs, which means that when they buy the meat, not only is it economical, but there are no sanitation problems either.
2
Besides the special attraction of the big quagmire, there is little else to be seen on Road Two East: one or two grain mills, a few bean-curd shops, a weaving mill or two, and perhaps one or two dyeing establishments. These are all operated by people who quietly do their own work there, bringing no enjoyment to the local inhabitants, and are thus unworthy of any discussion. When the sun sets these people go to bed, and when the sun rises they get up and begin their work. Throughout the year—warm spring with its blooming flowers, autumn with its rains, and winter with its snows—they simply follow the seasonal changes as they go from padded coats to unlined jackets. The cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death governs their lives as they silently manage their affairs.
Take, for example, Widow Wang, who sells bean sprouts at the southern end of Road Two East. She erected a long pole above her house on top of which she hangs a battered old basket. The pole is so tall it is nearly on a level with the iron bell at the top of the Dragon King Temple. On windy days the clang-clang of the bell above the temple can be heard, and although Widow Wang’s battered basket does not ring, it nonetheless makes its presence known by waving back and forth in the wind.
Year in and year out that is how it goes, and year in and year out Widow Wang sells her bean sprouts, passing her days tranquilly and uneventfully at an unhurried pace.
But one summer day her only son went down to the river to bathe, and he fell in and drowned. This incident caused a sensation and was the talk of the town for a while, but before many days had passed the talk died away. Not only Widow Wang’s neighbors and others who lived nearby, but even her friends and relatives soon forgot all about it.
As for Widow Wang herself, even though this caused her to lose her mind, she still retained her ability to sell bean sprouts, and she continued as before to live an uneventful and quiet life. Occasionally someone would steal her bean sprouts, at which time she would be overcome by a fit of wailing on the street or on the steps of the temple, though it would soon pass, an
d she would return to her uneventful existence.
Whenever neighbors or other passersby witnessed the scene of her crying on the temple steps, their hearts would be momentarily touched by a slight feeling of compassion, but only for a brief moment.
THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE who are given to lumping together misfits of all kinds, such as the insane and the slow-witted, and treating them identically.
There are unfortunates in every district, in every county, and in every village: the tumorous, the blind, the insane, the slow-witted. There are many such people in our little town of Hulan River, but the local inhabitants have apparently heard and seen so much of them that their presence does not seem the least bit unusual. If, unhappily, they encounter one of them on the temple steps or inside a gateway alcove, they feel a momentary pang of compassion for that particular individual, but it is quickly supplanted by the rationalization that mankind has untold numbers of such people. They then turn their glances away and walk rapidly past the person. Once in a while someone stops there, but he is just one of those who, like children with short memories, would throw stones at the insane or willfully lead the blind into the water-filled ditch nearby.
The unfortunates are beggars, one and all. At least that’s the way it is in the town of Hulan River. The people there treat the beggars in a most ordinary fashion. A pack of dogs are barking at something outside the door; the master of the house shouts out: “What are those animals barking at?”
“They’re barking at a beggar,” the servant answers.
Once said, the affair is ended. It is obvious that the life of a beggar is not worth a second thought.
The madwoman who sells bean sprouts cannot forget her grief even in her madness, and every few days she goes to wail at the steps of the temple; but once her crying has ended, she invariably returns home to eat, to sleep, and to sell her bean sprouts. As ever, she returns to her quiet existence.
3
A calamity also struck the dyer’s shop: Two young apprentices were fighting over a woman on the street, when one of them pushed the other into the dyeing vat and drowned him. We need not concern ourselves here with the one who died, but as for the survivor, he was sent to jail with a life sentence.
Yet this affair too was disposed of silently and without a ripple. Two or three years later, whenever people mentioned the incident they discussed it as they would the famous confrontation between the heroic general Yueh Fei and the evil prime minister Ch’in K’uai, as something that had occurred in the long-distant past.
Meanwhile the dyer’s shop remains at its original location, and even the big vat in which the young man drowned is quite possibly still in use to this day. The bolts of cloth that come from that dye shop still turn up in villages and towns far and near. The blue cloth is used to make padded cotton pants and jackets, which the men wear in the winter to ward off the severe cold, while the red cloth is used to make bright red gowns for the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old girls for their wedding days.
In short, though someone had drowned in the dyer’s shop on such and such a day during such and such a month and year, the rest of the world goes on just as before without the slightest change.
Then there was the calamity that struck the bean-curd shop: During a fight between two of the employees the donkey that turned the mill suffered a broken leg. Since it was only a donkey, there wasn’t much to be said on that score, but a woman lost her sight as a result of crying over the donkey (it turned out to be the mother of the one who had struck the donkey), so the episode could not simply be overlooked.
Then there was the paper mill in which a bastard child was starved to death. But since it was a newborn baby, the incident didn’t amount to much, and nothing more need be said about it.
4
Then too on Road Two East there are a few ornament shops, which are there to serve the dead.
After a person dies his soul goes down to the netherworld, and the living, fearing that in that other world the dear departed will have no domicile to live in, no clothes to wear, and no horse to ride, have these things made of paper, then burn them for his benefit; the townspeop1e believe that all manner of things exist in the netherworld.
On display are grand objects like money-spewing animals, treasure-gathering basins, and great gold and silver mountains; smaller things like slave girls, maidservants, cooks in the kitchen, and attendants who care for the pigs; and even smaller things like flower vases, tea services, chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs. There are even parrots on the window ledges.
These things are enormously pleasing to the eye. There is a courtyard surrounded by a garden wall, the top of which is covered with gold-colored glazed tiles. Just inside the courtyard is the principal house with five main rooms and three side rooms, all topped with green- and red-brick tiles; the windows are bright, the furniture spotless, and the air fresh and clean as can be. Flower pots are arranged one after another on the flower racks; there are cassias, pure-white lilies, purslanes, September chrysanthemums, and all are in bloom. No one can tell what season it is—is it summer or is it autumn?—since inexplicably the flowers of the purslanes and the chrysanthemums are standing side by side; perhaps there is no division into spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the netherworld. But this need not concern us.
Then there is the cook in his kitchen, vivid and lifelike; he is a thousand times cleaner than a true-to-life cook. He has a white cap on his head and a white apron girding his body as he stands there preparing noodles. No sooner has lunchtime arrived than the noodles have been cooked, and lunch is about to be served.
In the courtyard a groom stands beside a big white horse, which is so large and so tall that it looks to be an Arabian; it stands erect and majestic, and if there were to be a rider seated upon it, there is every reason to believe it could outrun a train. I’m sure that not even the general here in the town of Hulan River has ever ridden such a steed.
Off to one side there is a carriage and a big mule. The mule is black and shiny, and its eyes, which have been made out of eggshells, remain stationary. There is a particularly fetching little mule with eyeballs as large as the big mule’s standing alongside it.
The carriage, with its silver-colored wheels, is decorated in especially beautiful colors. The curtain across the front is rolled halfway up so that people can see the interior of the carriage, which is all red and sports a bright red cushion. The driver perched on the running board, his face beaming with proud smiles, is dressed in magnificent attire, with a purple sash girding his waist over a blue embroidered fancy gown, and black satin shoes with snow-white soles on his feet. (After putting on these shoes he probably drove the carriage over without taking a single step on the ground.) The cap he is wearing is red with a black brim. His head is raised as though he were disdainful of everything, and the more the people look at him, the less he resembles a carriage driver—he looks more like a bridegroom.
Two or three roosters and seven or eight hens are in the courtyard peacefully eating grain without making a sound, and even the ducks are not making those quacking noises that so annoy people. A dog is crouching next to the door of the master’s quarters, maintaining a motionless vigil.
All of the bystanders looking on comment favorably, every one of them voicing his praise. The poor look at it and experience a feeling that it must be better to be dead than alive.
The main room is furnished with window curtains, four-poster bed frames, tables, chairs, and benches. Everything is complete to the last detail.
There is also a steward of the house who is figuring accounts on his abacus; beside him is an open ledger in which is written:
“Twenty-two catties of wine owed by the northern distillery.
“Wang Family of East Village yesterday borrowed 2,000 catties of rice.
“Ni Jen-tzu of White Flag Hamlet yesterday sent land rent of 4,300 coppers.”
Below these lines is written the date: “April twenty-eighth.”
This page constitutes the
running accounts for the twenty-seventh of April; the accounts for the twenty-eighth have evidently not yet been entered. A look at this ledger shows that there is no haphazard accounting of debts in the netherworld, and that there is a special type of individual whose job it is to manage these accounts. It also goes without saying that the master of this grand house is a landlord.
Everything in the compound is complete to the last detail and is very fine. The only thing missing is the master of the compound, a discovery which seems puzzling: could there be no master of such a fine compound? This is certainly bewildering.
When they have looked more closely the people sense that there is something unusual about the compound: How is it that the slave girls and maidservants, the carriage drivers and the groom, all have a piece of white paper across their chests on which their names are written? The name of the carriage driver whose good looks give him the appearance of a bridegroom is:
“Long Whip.”
The groom’s name is: “Fleet of Foot.”
The name of the slave girl who is holding a water pipe in her left hand and an embroidered napkin in her right is:
“Virtuous Obedience.”
The other’s name is: “Fortuitous Peace.”
The man who is figuring accounts is named: “Wizard of Reckoning.”
The name of the maid who is spraying the flowers with water is: “Flower Sister.”
A closer look reveals that even the big white horse has a name; the name tag on his rump shows that he is called:
“Thousand-Li Steed.”
As for the others—the mules, the dogs, the chickens, and the ducks—they are nameless.
The cook who is making noodles in the kitchen is called “Old Wang,” and the strip of paper on which his name is written flaps to and fro with each gust of wind.
This is all rather strange: the master of the compound doesn’t even recognize his own servants and has to hang name tags around their necks! This point cannot but confuse and bewilder people; maybe this world of ours is better than the netherworld after all!
