by Han Shaogong
They weren't sticking (see the entry "stick(y)") each other's bottoms, were they?
Meaning: irregular goings-on between men.
Maqiao people didn't concern themselves too much about such things. There was someone in Zhangjia District, and also some redflower daddies and red-flower uncles in neighboring villages who got up to similar stuff-it wasn't that uncommon. In any case, seeing as Benyi was always busy being angry during the day, no one dared make any further inquiries, so nothing was ever proved.
*Old Man (etc.)
: This term doesn't actually mean anything much, it's just a turn of phrase which can be used for old people, young people, even children. When overused, it gradually loses its meaning, becomes equivalent to the interjection of coughs or yawns into speech, camouflaged between phrases; no one whose ears were attuned would take any notice, would sense it was there. For example, someone might ask whether the supply and marketing cooperative had slaughtered a pig. The reply would be: "It's been slaughtered, old man." Or then again: have you bought any meat? The reply would be: "Bought some, old man." Here, the listener should hear but not heed "old man," should just pass it by, shouldn't take it the wrong way. Once, Uncle Luo cheerily greeted a female Educated Youth carrying rice seedlings whom he came across on the road: "Carrying seedlings, old man?" The girl, who'd just arrived in the village and wasn't much of a looker, spun on her heel and stomped off in a great rage. She later said to everyone else: "That old guy's so rude! Just because my skin's a bit dark doesn't mean I've become an old man, does it? I don't look older than him, do I?"
This was what happened when outsiders hadn't yet got the hang of local expressions; it also showed how Educated Youth didn't always understand the Maqiao tradition of prizing age far above youth: it was a compliment to call you old, it was, in fact, a form of flattery.
Careful investigation has shown that linguistic development and distribution are not even, uniform processes. There are actions that lack words, and words that lack actions-this is how things have always been, without any system or balance. It's rather like how some people die in droughts, some in floods, while inhabiting the same world. When the floodwaters are high, perfectly serviceable words will bloat up to distorted dimensions, then even when the high waters recede the effects of the flooding remain. When foreigners visit Japan, they never fail to notice all the superfluous "convention words" that exist. If a Japanese person were to praise a commodity you produced and approve your plans, without discussing with you any concrete steps toward a joint venture, you really mustn't take it seriously, you mustn't stay at home, waiting like an idiot for him to place an order. Foreigners have to be careful in Paris, too: if someone invites you to visit them at home, no matter how great their enthusiasm, no matter how much they slap your back, shake hands, even embrace you, press their face against yours, while they haven't actually given you their address, haven't actually fixed a time, you should just smile and read their behavior as a form of social nicety, as a common, standardized false token of friendly feeling, to be broadly ignored. You should not phone them and ask, "When should I come?"
It isn't that the Japanese and the French are particularly hypocritical; Chinese people are also extremely proficient at producing words that lack actions. For a long time now, Maqiao phrases such as "the revolutionary masses" / "the state of the nation is excellent, and is improving all the time" / "the warm, loving concern of our brilliant higher-level leadership" / "say what is in our hearts" / "elevate thought progressively" / "don't withdraw troops before victory is complete," etc. haven't stood up to serious scrutiny, either. Take, for example, the death of Uncle Luo, the old village leader. He'd been an old poor peasant, a pillar of Land Reform, even a sometime Red Army soldier-of course he had to have a proper funeral. At the wake, Benyi spoke as representative of the Party's deep sadness: "The golden monkey twirls a staff of a thousand tons, the jade roof is cleared of a myriad li of dust. The four oceans seethe, clouds and rain rage, the five continents quake, winds and thunder rise. In the mass upsurge of study of Mao Zedong philosophy and thought throughout the entire county, in the entire excellent circumstances of national revolutionary production, under the brilliant leadership and loving concern of the higher level Party organizational leadership, in the upsurge in our production brigade's complete implementation of deployment of the serial strategy from the Commune's Party representative meetings, our comrade Luo Yuxing was bitten by a mad dog…" A young cadre from the county civil administration wrinkled his brow and nudged Benyi, "What was that? What's that got to do with the brilliant upper-level leadership?" Taken aback, Benyi blinked: "Did I say leadership? I just said mad dog." The civil administration cadre said: "What about before? What did you say before that?" Benyi said: "Nothing much, just a bit of padding-shouldn't I have said it?"
Once he'd opened his mouth, the civil administration cadre had ruined the whole meeting: it wasn't just Benyi who was put out, the gathered crowds also felt their spirits dampened. As I saw it, no one had understood that people hear things in different ways, that everything Benyi had said before "mad dog" had long been automatically applicable to things like irrigation, manure collection, logging, struggling landlords, school commencements, had been so overused that it went in one ear and out the other, had already merged so completely with the linguistic scenery that only an outsider would take any notice of it. This outsider was still too young, didn't understand the potential of language to create verbal flourishes, to misfit reality, to diverge from facts.
As the encrustations of linguistic camouflage, superfluous words- which include terms of respect-can rarely be speedily purged and buried. In certain circumstances, they can suddenly, dramatically proliferate and expand, like a linguistic amplification of human morality, a sort of linguistic collagen implant within the austerity of human truth. Anyone with any knowledge of the world ought to realize this.
Having knowledge of the world means having the ability to make use of superfluous words-or rather, developing the functions cultivated by the vast quantities of ethical and political superfluous words in the world.
I know of a foreign writer who venerated slang, who described slang as the most powerful, the most precious language there was. These views of his are a little overstated, of course, a little inaccurate. But there's one reason, there's one point on which I can empathize with this writer: this writer wrote in the most refined and elegant of countries. That he shocked his world and transgressed its norms in this way must be because he had been so long suppressed by the oceans of incomparably refined, affable, courtly superfluities used in his sophisticated interpersonal relations that irritation finally gave way to torrents of obscenities. He must have been suffocating so much under the weight of linguistic falsity that he couldn't stop himself from spewing forth filth: it was as if he'd ripped off everyone's pants, exposing the anus of language to one and all. The anus is just like the nose, ears, and hands: it doesn't matter whether it's pretty or not, it isn't born pretty or ugly. In a world congested with falsity, the anus becomes the final unimpeded outlet to truth, the last bastion of rebellion where life force is stored and preserved. It thus becomes only too understandable that after Benyi had closed his grand, stately mourning meeting, as soon as he walked out into the night, he couldn't stop himself from yelling out:
"Stick your fucking, fuck, fucker-"
He'd stubbed his toe on a stone, seemed to be swearing at the stone.
His swearing done, he felt the blood begin to flow much more smoothly around his body.
*Eating (as Used in Springtime)
: Spring brought with it an unperceived seasonal change in language. A nephew of Uncle Luo from far away had come to the mountains to haul charcoal and, on reaching Uncle Luo's doorway, was asked by the master of the house: "Have you eaten?"
To ask someone on meeting whether they'd eaten or not was a Maqiao custom, and a waste of breath: generally speaking, it was a convention that didn't need to be taken seriously.
Similarly speaking, "I've eaten," the set response, was not to be taken seriously. Particularly not in springtime, as it was then, in the time of shortage when every family ate porridge, when most people were so hungry their hands and feet went weak and their knees knocked.
But the nephew turned out to be a bit dim and adamantly replied: "No, I haven't," which caught Uncle Luo off guard. "You really haven't eaten?" he asked. "I really haven't," the young man said. Uncle Luo blinked: "Out with it now, if you've eaten you've eaten, if you haven't eaten you haven't eaten, now have you eaten or not?" The young man's features twisted under the pressure: "I really haven't." Uncle Luo started to get angry: "I know you, you never give me a straight answer. When you've eaten you say you haven't, when you haven't eaten you say you have, what're you playing at?! If you really haven't eaten, I'll go and cook something, the firewood's ready, the rice is ready, a lick of flame and it'll be done. Otherwise, I can go and borrow a bowl from someone, easy as pie, don't hold back now!" The young man was quite swept away by this verbal torrent, couldn't understand what he'd just held back on and started to sweat beads of embarrassment: "I… I really…" Uncle Luo fiercely intoned: "You, you, you really need a wife you do, still talking rubbish you are, don't leave things out, keep it plain, can't you tell me the truth? When you're here you make yourself at home. We're not strangers. If you've eaten, then you've eaten, if you haven't eaten, then you haven't eaten."
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 L
uo 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 early.
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-"