by Huang Fan
However, even this kind of grated cover allows you a peep into the world underground, though they are gradually being replaced by airtight concrete; they are capable of supporting a truck and an elephant weighing several tons and give the road’s surface a classier look, making them the unsung heroes who protect the appearance of the city. So, in short, someone must step forward and be concerned about this matter.
“What matter? Which one?”
“Listen. The first question is: How many ditches are there in this city? The second question is: What method do you use to measure their widths?”
“I’m not certain about the answer to your first question. As to your second question, my guess is that they use a tape measure. It must be, because I have seen the water main repairman—”
“Miss,” I replied, interrupting her, “you have totally misunderstood my question. I said ‘ditch’ and not ‘water main.’”
I then repeated my concerns about the disappearance of ditches and how no one really cared.
But regardless of my efforts, I couldn’t make the young lady on the other end of the line understand. She simply muttered a few apologies.
“I should be the one to apologize,” I said as I hung up. “When I have the answer, I’ll let you know.”
Then it came to me that if I didn’t start from the beginning, no one would understand this matter, much less its importance.
2
On May 30, 1960, we decided to measure the width of a ditch.
There were five of us.
I was born in 1949. In 1971, I graduated from the university with a degree in physics, and in 1976, I began working at Rainbow Peanut Butter Company, where I have worked to this day. Many people have asked me, why peanut butter and not a peanut sauce for satay? They say that the long-term prospects for satay sauce look good, and are related to the taste for eating hot pot in the winter, among other factors. My reply is that as a young person I read and was deeply touched by a piece written by the author Xu Dishan titled “The Peanut” in which he says, “One should study the peanut to learn how to conduct oneself.”
In the ’80s, the boss decided that peanut butter was no longer enough for him, so he decided to invest in shoe manufacturing.
A year later, Rainbow Company was already producing pigskin soccer shoes and had even signed a contract to provide one soccer team with their shoes free of charge for a year. The boss also hoped that I would sell shoes for him. There was no way I could refuse. So, from manager of the peanut butter production department I was transferred to the post of assistant manager of the athletic shoe business. The gap between the two was huge and would be the equivalent of an author like Xu Dishan, who eulogized the peanut, becoming an insurance salesman.
That very same year, I began writing poetry, which I did for a while before switching to science fiction.
My first work appeared in the literary supplement of an evening paper. It was a story about an alien with eight clawed limbs wearing shoes. Because it had eight clawed limbs, putting on shoes was a complicated thing.
Unfortunately, the story didn’t receive much notice. Actually, the idea behind the story came entirely from my boss. One day he sighed and uttered the following words: “Why do people only have two feet? Why not four? Or six?”
In a word, I fervently wanted to become a respected science fiction writer, but to this date, I have only finished three pieces.
Lai Xiaosheng and I are the same age. In 1975, he sent me a postcard out of the blue from someplace down south. I don’t know what has become of him since then.
Zeng Yiping. My memories of him are somewhat vague. I seem to recall that he was the tallest of us and always brought up the rear.
Lu Fang died in a traffic accident in 1976. I clipped the story from the newspaper and stuck it in the autograph album for our grade-school reunion. It was a major accident. The bus he was on was broadsided by a train at a railway crossing. The pieces of broken metal from the shattered body of the bus became sharp deadly weapons. Six bodies lay scattered piecemeal for a distance of a hundred meters on both sides of the tracks.
Chen Jinde is the only grade-school classmate with whom I’m still in touch. One evening after I transferred to the athletic shoe department in 1981, I had a brainstorm. I opened the phone book and found that there were eight people listed with the same name. Ever so patiently, I began dialing each one until I located him.
“Do you recall the name Xie Mingmin?”
“Xie Mingmin?”
“Twenty-one years ago. Section four, sixth grade at Qingping Elementary School.”
Silence. I saw that there were two more Chen Jindes left in the phone book and was about to give up.
“Ah, is that … is that really you?”
We arranged to meet the following day.
I located him at the Western-style restaurant by having him paged. We didn’t hesitate in the slightest to thrust our hands forward to shake. His palm was pudgy and moist like an orange.
“Wow!” He gave my hand a frightful shaking. “I never thought, I never thought …”
We both ordered two complete KFC meals. The steaming hot fried chicken smelled so good. The golden oil ran down Chen Jinde’s chin, which he wiped with great brio with his paper napkin.
“How did you know that I like to eat this?”
“Have you forgotten? Coming here was your idea,” I said, laughing.
“What about the others? Were you able to contact them all? Why don’t we form a students’ association and get together once or twice a year?”
“Lai Xiaosheng moved to the south; I’m not sure about Zeng Yiping—he may have left the country. Lu Fang died in a traffic accident several years ago. What about you? What have you been up to?”
Chen Jinde told me that after finishing primary school, he studied for two years in a junior high before goofing off. He worked as an unskilled laborer, doing legwork for a medicinal plaster salesman and an insurance salesman, and was now selling used cars and auto parts.
“And you? You look like you’ve done well. What do you do? Own a barbershop?”
“I work in an athletic shoe factory.”
“Adidas or Puma?”
“Rainbow. It’s pretty famous. We have commercials on TV every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’m sure you’ve seen them. First you see a rainbow, and then our shoes walk from one end to the other. It’s pretty interesting. I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
Chen Jinde didn’t recall seeing the commercial. He scratched his head, rolled his eyes, and then with a wave of his hand, changed the subject. “I seem to recall that big ditch you mentioned yesterday. But what is it we wanted to do by that stinking ditch?”
“We all wanted,” I began, shifting position, “to measure the width of the ditch.”
3
We planned to measure the width of the ditch on May 30, 1960.
But as detective fiction author Lin Deng said, “Before the tale actually took place, it had been developing in secret for a long time.”
For this reason, I must begin on the morning of that day so as to let everyone know the motive for measuring the width of the ditch.
The weather on the morning of May 30 ought to have been clear.
“Give me fifty cents!”
“For what?” my dad asked. “Didn’t I just give you fifty cents yesterday?”
“To buy a notebook.” It was an old ploy. I already had one in which I had written on only two pages. All I had to do was tear out the two pages.
My dad was a nice person who liked a drink and to play the huqin, but never at the same time. He passed away a long time ago. I still have his photos, in each of which he is seen smiling as if he knew that one day his son would describe his smile in a work of fiction. I don’t know why I have always felt that I owe him something.
(If any of my readers are interested in him, you can write to the following address: Literary Supplement of the United Daily News, 555 Section 4 Zhongxiao East Road, Taipe
i. [I’m preparing to submit this piece to them.])
In high spirits, I then took the money to school.
By the end of the third period class, I had already used thirty cents. My last dime I gave to a girl student by the name of Goldfish, who was perhaps the poorest student on campus. I gave her a dime and she let me stick my hand up her skirt, which was made from old flour sacks.
Many years later, I told this to my girlfriend, with whom I was living at the time (of course I was not the protagonist of my tale). She was furious and said I had made up the story purely influenced by the gossip pages.
“You’ve read too many salacious and violent stories.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “The girl is now a television newscaster.”
“Nonsense!”
(We had a huge fight over this. Three months later, she left me. Before she left, she said, “Megalomaniac!” At first I was never going to forgive her for as long as I lived, but the moment I wrote this, I suddenly forgave her. From this one can see the cathartic power of fiction, especially for authors.)
Anyway, my pockets were as empty as ever. Lu Fang proposed going to the edge of the big ditch after school, so I joined them.
The five of us set off from the side gate of the school. The shortest of the bunch, I walked in the middle while Zeng Yiping brought up the rear. Lai Xiaosheng was at the head—he always saw himself as our leader.
“Heads up, everyone!” Lai Xiaosheng shouted. “Up ahead is the virgin forest.”
The so-called virgin forest was nothing but a bunch of bushes. Lai Xiaosheng brandished a stick symbolically.
“We don’t want to go there,” said Zeng Yiping behind me.
“If we don’t go there, we can go home and do our homework,” I said.
At this point, Chen Jinde chimed in with some bad words about our teachers.
However, strange at it may seem, twenty-one years later in the KFC restaurant, Chen Jinde spoke in an entirely different fashion.
“I remember teacher Wang Wuxiong. He showed a great deal of concern for me and hoped that I would test into a decent junior high, but my family’s financial situation wasn’t so good.…”
“The day we founded the Ditch Gang, you told me that teacher Wang despised you more than anyone because he often threw chalk at your head.”
“That’s impossible—teacher Wang liked me more than anyone else.”
“Okay! Then you should at least remember that other event.”
“I have no recollection of it,” said Chen Jinde. “I don’t recall that we ever organized a gang with such a strange name.”
(Chen Jinde, no doubt, is a troublemaker, whether in real life or fiction.)
Let me go back and talk about the circumstances when we left school that day. Our group of explorers left through the side gate and went down a narrow path through entwined bushes, trees, and a bamboo fence.
I saw the path again in 1983 (the year I was called up for military service) and again in 1985 (after completing my service) and again in 1987. Since then, I have spent a couple of afternoons a year walking around the area.
It was probably between 1985 and 1987 when the bushes were dug out to make room for a cobblestone road that motorcycles could use. Nonconforming buildings made of steel and wood were erected on either side. In 1989, the nonconforming buildings were torn down, the road widened, and long. narrow, three-story residential buildings erected on either side. It was at that time that the ditch was moved underground.
Four years later, I bought a Ford and that very day went to see the old neighborhood. I slowed down and circled the school.
The school looked small and cramped. Then I went down the small path, or, I should say, the avenue, a four-lane street with seven- and eight-story buildings on either side. In a matter of minutes, I arrived at the former site of the big ditch.
I stopped my car, planning to relive some childhood events there above the ditch. Unexpectedly, a horn sounded behind me. That sound is one of humiliation in the big city, but all the more so in the suburbs. I finally parked my car thirty meters away in front of a coffee house. I spent the entire afternoon inside, staring blankly out the window.
The five of us continued on, leaping and shouting as we went, as if we wanted to let everyone know how happy we were.
After a while, we stifled our laughter and breathed deeply through our noses because the foul odor of burning trash filled the air.
A while later, we smelled chicken manure (perhaps it was dog shit— it’s hard to be certain after the passage of so many years). After that stink, light and shadow flickered before our eyes. It was a small dirt mound in which were embedded pieces of broken glass, slag, and chunks of brick. We carefully climbed to the top of the mound of dirt and stood in the bright light and the breeze, which smelled of dry grass, and looked down at the big ditch snaking away at our feet.
4
When I thought about giving a complete picture of the big ditch, an idea suddenly came to me: Why not draw a picture of it?
So I put down what I was doing and ran to the stationery store, where I purchased a box of colored pens and a sheet of paper.
(The previous lines were written upon my return from the stationery store. If a reader should ask why I chose a box of colored pens and not crayons or pencils, my reply would be that the stationery store sold only colored pens or that upon entering the store all I saw were colored pens. They cost eighteen yuan.)
I will now begin to draw!
Note: the ratio of this picture is approximately 100–150:1. But, dear Reader, please don’t take out a ruler to measure the width of the ditch in this picture and then multiply that figure by 150. In doing so, it would be you, not the author, me, measuring the ditch. As to the color, there will be some difference from reality. And if the editor rejects my suggestion, the picture will be in black and white and the ditch will be gray. It will be the same as the color of the river you saw recently. But the color of river water was different in those days, as was that of the ditch water. At this point, I’d like to remind everyone: do not let Chang E laugh at our dirty river water.
5
I was quite satisfied with the results and felt it could help explain the matter of how to measure the width of a ditch. So I inserted the picture in an envelope in preparation for finding someone on whom its usefulness could be tested.
At this point in the story, many readers might feel impatient. If that is the case, I have a number of suggestions:
1. You can immediately stop reading and think of a way to forget what you have read.
2. You must be anxious to learn how the author measured the width of the ditch. If that is the case, I will tell you. At the time we carried a bow and arrows. We tied a string to the end of the arrow and shot the arrow into the bark of a tree on the opposite side of the ditch. Then we pulled the arrow back and measured the length of the string, and we had our answer.
3. If you are dissatisfied with the above two suggestions, I’ll make another. For the moment don’t think about how to measure the width of a ditch and patiently keep on reading.
I gave the young lady at the Environmental Protection Department another call.
“I called a few days ago and asked how many ditches there are. Do you remember?”
“Ah!” she cried out softly.
“My name is Xie.”
“I didn’t expect you to call again, Mr. Xie.”
“Why not?”
“People always call me.” She continued, “May I ask why you are so interested in that question?”
I detected a sound. I guessed that it was the sound of someone covering their mouth to laugh.
“A lot of people ask the same question, but for the moment I can’t explain it.” I said, “How about this. Are you busy? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t go out with strangers.”
“I’m no stranger. I told you who I am.” I had told her my profession and age. “Besides, I can meet you at
your office. Public offices such as yours have someone responsible for answering people’s questions, right? In this way, I’m just trying to adopt a more informal approach.”
“Can I bring a colleague?”
Pouring out your heart to someone uninvolved is risky, but also exciting.
Thus I carried a copy of the United Daily News (this was our prearranged signal). I waited at the coffee house for five minutes before two young ladies appeared.
“Mr. Xie, this is my colleague Miss Ma.” I asked them to have a seat. Miss Ma, who was wearing glasses, was tittering.
“It’s very funny, isn’t it?” I asked.
“No need to ask.” Miss Chen laughed as well. “Miss Ma and I work in the same office. I told her about the matter you mentioned.”
I laughed too. Laughing, I sighed to myself as I sized up the two young ladies, their mediocre looks and their childish makeup.
“You must both be curious, right?”
“Yes!” said Miss Chen. “I receive several strange phone calls every day, but yours is the strangest of all.”
“It’s so interesting!” commented Miss Ma.
“What kind of strange calls?” I asked.
“One guy called and said there was a snake burrow in his rooftop garden. I told him to call 911.”
“How interesting!” said Miss Ma.
I figured the next thing she was going to say was “How amusing!”
“Don’t think for a moment that I’m joking. If an atomic bomb were to explode, just think of how many people could take shelter in the underground ditches. If an atomic bomb went off, everything on the streets would be incinerated. The only thing on your mind then would be to flee into an underground ditch, shouting as you did so, ‘Look at this ditch—why didn’t the city government make it larger?’”
“How frightening,” said Miss Ma, adding her two cents.
I stared at her as I continued, “That’s why I have developed the habit of measuring ditches. Whenever I pass a ditch, whether it is concealed underground or in the open, I can’t help but ask myself, ‘How wide is it really? How many people will fit into it?’ That’s why I called to ask how many ditches there are in the city and what method you use to measure them.”