by Lu Xun
‘I still think we should check his genealogy…’
‘I told you, I don’t have one,’ the idiot said. ‘Things being as they are now, it would take weeks, if not months, for your friends to send in letters of verification. More inconvenient than a Daoist rite in a snail shell. Look, let’s not be too literal about the business of names. Take yours, Birdbrain, . Are you a man, or a birdbrain?’
‘The disrespect! The insult!’ Mr Birdbrain was now so enraged that his ear lobes glowed purple. ‘Let us both go before a judge, this very afternoon, and settle our differences in a court of law. If he finds against me, if I turn out to be a birdbrain indeed, I’ll lose my head for it. If he finds for me, you’ll pay in the same coin! Hold on, let me just finish my fried noodles.’
‘As you, sir,’ the countryman phlegmatically replied, ‘are a learned scholar, you will surely know that it is past midday – a time when hunger tends to creep up on people. And how bitterly inconvenient it is that the stomachs of the stupid grow empty exactly as do the stomachs of the wise. Please accept my profuse apologies, but the fishing of waterweed calls me. Once you’ve filed your suit, I’ll return forthwith to give myself up.’ He hopped on to his raft and, scooping up waterweed with the help of a net bag, floated off into the distance. The crowds slowly thinned, while Mr Birdbrain returned to his fried noodles, his ear lobes and the tip of his nose still purple, and the genealogist with a walking stick went on shaking his head.
Yet serious question marks remained, over whether Yu was a man or a worm.
II
Yu, it began to seem increasingly likely, was indeed a worm.
A good half year trickled by: half a year in which the flying chariots of the Land of Clever Tricks had been and gone eight times, in which nine out of ten of the raft people who had read the writing on the pine trees had caught beriberi; but still no word of the new official sent to manage the flood waters. Only after the tenth delivery by flying chariot was it reported that Yu did, in fact, exist: that he was indeed the son of Gun and had been appointed Imperial Minister of Irrigation; that three years ago he had set out from Jizhou and was shortly headed for these parts.
Only the faintest tremors of excitement were felt. So many groundless rumours had already circulated that no one took much notice any more.
This time, however, it seemed the reports were to be believed. In another ten days, almost everyone was saying the minister truly was about to arrive. One of the raft-dwellers, out fishing for weed, had seen the government boats with his own eyes; a black-and-blue lump on his head – bequeathed by a stone projectile a soldier had thrown at him for not getting out of their way fast enough – corroborated the claim. He became quite a celebrity afterwards, his raft almost sinking beneath the weight of visitors desperately jostling to see the bump. Even the scholars called him in to interview and, after much scrupulous research, concluded that the protrusion on his head was indeed a bump. Finding his previous position now untenable, Mr Birdbrain ceded the field of textual inquiry to others and took himself off somewhere else to collect folk songs.
Some three weeks after the bump to the head, a great fleet of wooden boats arrived, each with twenty imperial soldiers at the oars, thirty warriors with spears standing guard on deck, pennants fluttering at stern and helm. As they approached the mountaintop, a respectful welcoming party of dignitaries and scholars lined the crags. After a substantial delay, two corpulently middle-aged senior officials emerged from the largest boat, thronged by an entourage of around twenty soldiers draped in tiger skin, and allowed themselves to be escorted to a stone building at the summit.
Following careful inquiry, everyone – land- and sea-dwellers alike – eventually understood that these two individuals were special investigators and not Yu himself.
Seated in the middle of the stone building, the senior officials ate some bread, then began their investigation.
‘Things aren’t as bad as they might be,’ the academics’ representative – an expert in the Miao dialect of western Hunan – began. ‘No one’s starving. Every month, bread falls from the sky; and there’s no shortage of fish. They taste a bit muddy, mind, but they’re rich in oils, Your Eminences. The lower classes mindlessly stuff their faces all day long on elm leaves and seaweed – both of which offer ample nutrition, as they’re not labouring with their brains. We’ve tasted them ourselves: an unusual, acquired kind of taste, though far from repellent – ’
‘And don’t forget,’ another intellectual – this one an expert on ancient compendia of Chinese herbs – took up, ‘elm leaves are crammed with vitamin W, while seaweed’s full of iodine, just the thing for scrofula. They’re both desperately health-giving.’
‘Oh-kei!’ agreed another scholar. The officials stared at him.
‘And as for potables,’ the learned herbalist went on, ‘they’ve far more than they could possibly ever need. Granted, the water round here’s a bit muddy, but nothing a touch of distillation won’t sort out. I’ve shown them how to do it more times than I can remember, Your Eminences, but they’re just too stubborn to follow my instructions. That’s why so many of them are ill – ’
‘Anyway, didn’t they bring the flood on themselves?’ a local dignitary in a long, reddish-brown gown, his beard sculpted into five points, interjected. ‘Before the waters came, they were too idle to maintain the dykes, then afterwards, they were too lazy to bail the water out again.’
‘I blame a general decline in public intelligence,’ smirked a literary historian at the back with a long, pointed moustache – an expert in the ancient essay form. ‘I scaled the Pamirs, the winds of heaven gusting about me. The plum trees were in flower, the white clouds flying, the price of gold rising, the rats sleeping. I saw a young man, a cigar in his mouth, his face veiled by the mists of savagery… Ha! They’re all hopeless cases.’
‘Oh-kei!’
And so it went on, for hours and hours, the senior officials taking diligent note. As the conference drew to a close, the scholars were asked to compile a report, ideally with detailed recommendations for post-flood rehabilitation measures.
The officials then boarded their boat again. The following day they did not conduct any public business, pleading exhaustion. The day after that, the scholars invited them to visit an ancient parasol-shaped pine on the summit, followed by an afternoon fishing for yellow eels round the back of the mountain, which kept them richly entertained till dusk. The day after that, the officials again declined to conduct public business, pleading more exhaustion. On the afternoon of the following day, they summoned a representative of the lower classes to an audience.
The process of choosing such a representative had commenced four days previously. Since no one had ever met a government official before, no one had been willing to volunteer. The majority choice was the man with the bump on his head, the argument being that he had personal experience of civil servants. Though the bump had by now subsided, it suddenly began to throb again, as if it had been jabbed with a needle. ‘I’d sooner die!’ its owner sobbed. He was then ambushed day and night by petitioners pressing upon him his duty to accept the task for the public good, and denouncing him as a selfish individualist grinding the glorious traditions of China into the dust. The more excitable of their number shook their fists at him, accusing him of sole responsibility for the floods. Eventually worn down, he concluded that sacrificing himself for the common weal was probably a marginally more appealing prospect than fleeing across the boundless ocean on a wooden raft. And so, on the fourth, momentous day, his agreement was won.
For which he was awarded with universal acclaim, and even envied by the more fearless of their number.
At first light on the fifth day, he was dragged over to the shore, to await the official summons. When it came, his legs began to tremble. But he had given his word and so, with tremendous resolution, two enormous yawns and eyes puffy from lack of sleep, he dizzily boarded the boat.
And how extraordinary it all was: neither the so
ldiers holding spears nor those dressed in tiger skins beat or insulted him, instead allowing him free passage to the central cabin. There, he found himself in a room wondrously carpeted with bear and leopard skins, hung with crossbows and arrows, and stacked with bottles and jars. Eventually, he composed himself enough to note two immensely corpulent officials sitting directly opposite. He didn’t dare examine them too closely.
‘Are you the Representative of the People?’ one of them asked.
‘They made me come,’ he replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the pattern of the leopard skin – rather like mugwort leaves, it occurred to him – over the cabin floor.
‘So – how are things?’
He maintained a baffled silence.
‘Are you managing?’
‘Not too badly,’ he muttered, giving the question some further thought. ‘Thanks to Your Eminences. We’re getting by… muddling through…’
‘What are you eating?’
‘Well… leaves… waterweed…’
‘Can you digest them?’
‘Oh, yes. We’re used to eating anything. A few of the younger ones make a bit of a fuss – the youth of today, eh? – but we just give them a good thrashing.’
The great men burst out laughing. ‘We’ve found ourselves an honest fellow,’ one said to the other.
‘We’ve ways and means,’ the Representative burbled on more confidently, bucked up by the praise. ‘Waterweed, for example, makes a lovely smooth green soup, while elm leaves go best in a good thick broth. You mustn’t strip all the bark off trees in one go, or you won’t get new leaves on the branches come spring. If, by the great grace of Your Eminences, we could catch some yellow eels – ’
But by now the Eminent interest seemed to have dried up. ‘Just compile a report, ideally with detailed recommendations for post-flood rehabilitation measures,’ one of them interrupted, after two brisk yawns.
‘But none of us can write,’ the man nervously confessed.
‘None of you? Have you no ambition at all? In which case, bring us examples of everything you eat!’
Still fearful, but happy, he retreated, rubbing the bump on his head, to disseminate the Eminent instructions to those waiting back on the shore, in the treetops and on rafts. ‘Remember!’ he boomed, ‘this is for the eyes of our superiors! It must be done hygienically, carefully, properly!’
The lower classes set feverishly to work: washing leaves, cutting tree bark, fishing for waterweed; while their Representative constructed a wooden box for the offering. After sanding down two wooden boards – one to seal the casket, the other intended as a plaque for his raft – that very night he went up the mountain to ask the scholars to inscribe the first ‘Longevity as Enduring as the Mountains, Happiness as Deep as the Ocean’, and the second ‘The Great Hall of Honesty’ – to commemorate the singular praise the officials had honoured him with. But they would write only the first.
III
Our two officials returned to the capital around the same time as most of the other investigators, leaving only Yu still out in the field. After a few days’ recuperation at home, their colleagues organized a welcoming banquet in the Ministry of Irrigation, setting up three funds to cover the costs – Happiness, Prosperity and Longevity – to which the minimum acceptable contribution was fifty large cowrie shells. Guests arrived throughout the day, and by dusk the company was gathered, the torches lit in the courtyard, the beef sitting fragrantly in cauldrons, the smell wafting out to the noses of the guards by the gate, and everyone’s mouths watering. After three toasts, the assembled Eminences began to speak of the scenery around the rivers and lakes that they had passed through, of the reed flowers like snow, of the sludge like gold, of the fat yellow eels, the slippery green waterweed, and so on. After some progress towards inebriation had been made, everyone produced the local delicacies they had collected, all of which were contained within delicately worked wooden caskets, their lids inscribed with a miscellany of calligraphic styles. Soon, a heated debate began over the artistic merits of each inscription until, just short of blows, it was decided that one reading ‘Country and People, Blissful in Peace and Prosperity’ should be the winner – because not only was the calligraphy cursive to the point of illegibility, and therefore blessed with a spirit of ancient simplicity, but also its message was so impeccably orthodox that the imperial historians should record it for posterity.
Once judgement had been passed on China’s incomparable artistic heritage and discussion of cultural matters thus brought to a temporary close, the contents of the boxes themselves were then broached. No one could fault the exquisite presentation of the cakes, but perhaps because everyone had drunk a little more wine than they strictly needed, disputes began to proliferate. From one, a nibble of pine-bark cake drew the highest praise, causing him to threaten to resign the next day, to abandon himself to the simple pleasures of the hermit’s life. Another argued that, by permitting his tongue to be stung by the coarse bitterness of cypress-needle patties, he had amply shared in the trials of the lower classes and that a minister’s lot was no easier than a ruler’s. Others again rushed forward to bear the sampled delicacies away, proposing that an exhibition should be held to raise money, and that too many teeth-marks in the exhibits would detract from the quality of the display.
Suddenly, there was a commotion outside. A burly crowd of ragged, weather-beaten beggars seemed to be charging the barriers around the ministry. With a bellow of outrage, the guards crossed their gleaming lances to block the way forward.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ their leader, a tall, thin, uncouth-looking fellow with rough hands and feet, shouted back at them. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
After peering at him through the dusk, the guards stood respectfully upright, straightened their spears and let the throng pass, obstructing only a breathless woman right at the very back, dressed in a dark blue gown of homespun cloth, a child in her arms.
‘Don’t you recognize me?’ she snapped, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her hand.
‘Of course we recognize you, Madame Yu.’
‘Well, why aren’t you letting me in, then?’
‘These are sensitive times, Madame Yu. This year, they’ve started segregating the sexes, to encourage moral hygiene. Women and children are barred from every government department – not just you, not just here. We’re only obeying orders.’
After a moment of astonishment, Madame Yu spun around, her eyebrows arched. ‘May you die by a thousand swords! What’s your hurry? You went past our door without even bothering to look in on your family! What’s so marvellous about working for the government? Just look at your father: worked all his life then ended up in exile. And what happened to him there? He fell into a pond and became an enormous turtle! Heartless brute! By a thousand swords!’
Her noise was rapidly superseded by fresh uproar in the main hall of the ministry. As the savage crowd rushed in, the banqueters’ first instinct was to flee. But when they saw the rude new arrivals were unarmed, they held their nerve and took a closer look. Their gaunt, weather-beaten leader the officials recognized as Yu; the rest, as his retinue.
Everyone smartly sobered up, and retreated to their seats with a rustling of robes. Yu made straight for the head of the banquet table. Perhaps out of natural swagger, or perhaps because his joints were inflamed, he did not fold his legs under him but sat with them stretched out in front of him, exhibiting to his eminent subordinates the bare soles of his enormous feet, along with calluses the size of chestnuts. His retinue sat to his left and right.
‘Did Your Eminence get back today?’ one of the bolder banqueters respectfully inquired, edging forward on his knees.
‘Come a bit closer!’ Yu ordered, ignoring the question and addressing the assembly at large. ‘What did you learn from your investigations?’
On their kneeling progress forward, the senior officials glanced surreptitiously at each other, before seating themselves below the ruins of the feast,
surveying the nibbled pine-bark cakes and the conscientiously gnawed ox-bones. There was something very uncomfortable about the view before them – and yet they did not dare order the cooks to clear it away.
‘Begging Your Eminence’s pardon,’ one official finally said, ‘things didn’t seem too bad – in fact, they seemed very good indeed. There’s plenty of pine bark and waterweed, and an overwhelming abundance of potables. The lower classes are all good, stolid salt-of-the-earth types – quite used to it all by now. World-champion sufferers, I might even say, sir.’
‘Allow me humbly to present a plan for raising funds,’ another official offered: ‘an exhibition of recherché survival foodstuffs. We are preparing also to invite an exotic barbarian mademoiselle to give a fashion show. All funds will be raised from ticket sales alone – there’ll be no extra audience collection. We’ll get more people in that way.’
‘Very good,’ said Yu, with a bow in his direction.
‘But our most pressing task is to dispatch a flotilla of large rafts to bring the academics back on to dry ground,’ a third official spoke up, ‘while sending representatives to the Land of Clever Tricks to reassure them of our regard for high culture and request that their monthly material aid should now be redirected to the capital. Here is the report we commissioned from the scholars, which really makes terrifically interesting reading. Now, their view is that culture is the lifeblood of a nation, embodied in its scholars. So as long as culture survives, China will also survive, all else being of secondary importance – ’
‘They think that China’s population is too large,’ the first official said, ‘and that the path to peace and prosperity lies in a moderate reduction. The common people, after all, exist in the most benighted state of ignorance and emotional superficiality, possessing not a scrap of the profundity that wiser minds project on to them. Subjectivity is the key to judging men and their times. Take Shakespeare, for example…’