by She Lao
Ruan Ming, a squat man, was sitting in the truck, hands tied behind him, looking like a sick monkey. His head was bowed. A two-foot-long white placard giving his name and crime stuck up behind him. Shouts from the assembled mass came in waves as they curled their lips and voiced their disappointment: That’s him, that little monkey? That’s what we came to see? Head down, white-faced, and not a sound! Time to taunt: “Come on, folks, cheer him on!” Shouts of “Bravo!” erupted up and down the lines, the same cries with which they applauded their favorite actress on the opera stage but now scornful, malevolent, and disagreeable. That elicited no response from Ruan Ming, who did not look up. Never expecting such a weak-kneed prisoner, some in the crowd were so annoyed they elbowed their way up to the side of the road and spat at him. And still he neither moved nor made a sound. The onlookers were starting to lose interest but not enough to leave. What if all of a sudden he shouted, “I’ll come back in twenty years, better than before!” Or what if he asked for a couple of pots of liquor and some meat to go with it? No one budged. Let’s see what he’s going to do! So after the truck passed, they fell in behind it. He’s not doing anything now, but who knows, when he reaches the memorial arch he might take a deep breath and sing some lines from Silang Visits His Mother. Follow him! Some would go all the way to Tianqiao. He hadn’t done anything admirable or satisfying, but at least the people could see him take a bullet, and that alone would make the trip worthwhile.
During all this excitement, Xiangzi walked slowly, head down, hugged the wall at Desheng Gate; when he reached Jishui Shoal, he stopped and looked around. Seeing that he was alone, he tiptoed slowly up to the water’s edge, where he found an old tree and leaned up against it. He sat down once he was sure there was no one else around. But each time the reeds rustled or a bird cried out he jumped to his feet, sweating nervously; he’d look and listen for a moment before slowly sitting back down. This happened several times before he got used to seeing the reeds move and hearing the birds twitter. Vowing not to jump up again, he sat there and stared blankly at a ditch beside the lake, where tiny fish swam, their eyes like pearls, schooling and swimming away, this way and that, some bumping into the tender reeds and others sending bubbles to the surface. Tadpoles that had grown legs stretched out in the water at the ditch’s edge, their little black heads bobbing, when suddenly they and the small fish were swept along by a rush of water and swam with the current, tails wriggling. Another school took their place, struggling against the current to stay put. A crab scurried past as the water calmed and the fish came together to nibble at green leaves or water grasses. Slightly larger fish hid at the bottom, rising until their backs broke the surface but quickly returning to safety, leaving little ripples on the surface. A kingfisher skimmed above the water, sending all the fish, big and small, diving for cover beneath the duckweed. Xiangzi’s gaze was fixed on all this activity, but he saw nothing. He picked up a stone and tossed it into the water, raising a series of ripples and parting clumps of duckweed. The movement startled him, and he jumped to his feet.
After sitting back down, he reached a big black hand into his waistband to feel around. He nodded, waited awhile, and then took out a stack of bills, which he counted before carefully putting them back.
All Xiangzi had on his mind was the money—how to spend it, how to keep it a secret from others, and how to enjoy it in safety. He was no longer his own man; he now belonged to money and could only do its bidding.
The source of that money dictated how it would be used. He could not spend it openly. It and the man in whose hands it rested must be kept in the shadows. While other people were out on the street watching Ruan Ming, Xiangzi was lying low in this secluded spot beneath the city wall hoping to find an even quieter and darker place. No longer could he show his face in town, now that he had sold out Ruan Ming. Even resting up against the city wall, with no one else around as he stared at the gently flowing water, he dared not raise his head, so as to keep from seeing the ghostly apparition that he feared was following him. While Ruan Ming might be lying in a pool of his own blood at Tianqiao, to Xiangzi, he was not dead but lived in the stack of bills tucked into his waistband. He felt no remorse, just fear, afraid of a ghost that followed him everywhere with no reprieve.
After becoming an official, Ruan Ming had begun to enjoy the very things he had once fought against. Money leads people into society’s evil domains; they cast off their noble ideals and travel willingly to the depths of hell. He began wearing fancy Western suits, visiting prostitutes, gambling, and taking up the use of opium. When his conscience caught up with him, he laid the blame for what he had become on the evil nature of society. While admitting that his behavior had been wrong, he was powerless to resist society’s seductive pull. And so he continued, until his money ran out, and he was reminded of the radical thoughts he had entertained as a student. But rather than translate these thoughts into action, this time he was more interested in translating them into money, much the same as trying to translate his friendship with his teacher into a passing grade without working for it. Moral integrity has no place in the philosophy of a lazy man; sooner or later anything that can be converted to cash will be sold. Ruan Ming took what was offered; someone eager to promote revolution cannot be choosy in finding fighters for the cause and must hope that those who come forward are like-minded. But people who take what is offered are expected to produce results, regardless of how they do it, and reports must be submitted. Ruan Ming had to produce something to show for the payment he accepted, so he involved himself in organizing rickshaw pullers.
Xiangzi had become an old hand at waving flags and shouting slogans by then, and that is how he met Ruan Ming.
Ruan Ming sold ideas for money; Xiangzi accepted them for the same reason. Ruan Ming knew that if the need arose he could sacrifice Xiangzi. Xiangzi, on the other hand, never entertained such a thought, and yet that is precisely what he did—he betrayed Ruan Ming. People who do things for money fear being confronted with more of it. Loyalty cannot be built on money. Ruan Ming believed in his radical ideas and used them to excuse all his evil actions. Xiangzi listened to everything Ruan Ming proclaimed and found it reasonable, yet he envied the man’s extravagant lifestyle: “If I had the money, I’d enjoy life, for a few days at least, like that Ruan fellow!” Money diminished Ruan Ming’s character; it enticed Xiangzi. He sold the man out for sixty yuan. Ruan Ming sought the strength of the masses. Xiangzi set his sights higher: he wanted more enjoyment out of life, just like Ruan Ming. Ruan Ming spilled his blood for payments received; Xiangzi stuffed the money he received into his waistband.
He sat there until the sun sank in the west, dressing the duckweed and willows in red and gold light. On his feet again, he headed west, hugging the city wall. Accustomed to cheating for money, this was the first time he’d sold a man’s life. To top it off, he had found Ruan Ming’s exhortations perfectly reasonable. The vast expanse at the base of the wall and its towering height instilled dread in him as he walked. He even gave crows scavenging piles of garbage a wide berth for fear of startling them into inauspicious caws. He sped up when he reached the western wall and slipped out through Xizhi Gate like a dog that has stolen food. He craved a place where he could be with someone who would help dull his emotions and deaden his fears; the White Manor beckoned.
By the early days of autumn Xiangzi’s sickness had ended his days as a rickshaw man, but even if that had not been the case, he had lost the trust of anyone who might rent him a rickshaw. He found work as a night watchman for a little shop, earning two coppers a night and a place to sleep. His daytime jobs provided him with a daily bowl of thin porridge. Begging on the street was out of the question, for no one would take pity on a big fellow like him. And he had never learned how to scar himself up enough to tug at the heartstrings of pilgrims at the city’s temples. He didn’t have what it takes to be a thief, and besides, thieves banded together in gangs with tight connections. He had no one to rely on but himself if he was
to eat. He would work for himself until the day that work killed him. He was waiting for that last breath, for he was already one of the walking dead, with individualism as his soul. That soul would one day accompany his body into the ground.
Ever since the city of Beiping was chosen as the nation’s capital, its pomp and ceremony, its handicrafts, its cuisine, its language, and its police structure had slowly spread in all directions, searching out and fostering people who aspired to achieve the dignity and resources of the Emperor. Beiping’s mutton hot put was now served in the Westernized city of Qingdao; doleful cries of “Hard dough—pastries!” were heard late at night in the bustling city of Tianjin; in Shanghai, and Hankou, and Nanjing, the police and yamen runners spoke the Beiping dialect and ate flatbreads stuffed with sesame paste. Scented teas originating in the south came north to Beiping, where they were smoked twice and returned to the south. Even pallbearers sometimes rode the train to Tianjin or Nanjing to help carry the coffins of the rich and powerful.
But Beiping was beginning to give up its pomp and ceremony: glutinous cakes were now available in shops after the Double Ninth Festival, on the ninth day of the ninth month; peddlers of sweet dumplings once sold only on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month began showing up at markets in the fall; shops that had been around for hundreds of years celebrated anniversaries by passing out handbills announcing grand sales. Economic pressures forced pomp and ceremony to look elsewhere, since decency and honor could not fill anyone’s belly.
Weddings and funerals, however, retained most of the traditional rites and practices. These joyful and mournful events still seemed noteworthy enough to warrant a degree of grandeur. The paraphernalia, musicians, bridal sedans, and coffin shrouds were not available in every city. Longevity cranes and lion dogs that led funeral processions replete with paper figurines of people, chariots, and horses, or the dignitaries and twenty-four musical instruments in weddings still evoked an aura of power and prestige, reminiscent of the prosperity and spirit of more peaceful times.
Xiangzi relied on the remnants of such rites and customs to get through the days. In wedding processions he held up ceremonial parasols; for funeral corteges he carried wreaths and scrolled elegies. He neither took pleasure in nor cried over his role in such processions, for which he received ten cents or more. He dressed in green robes supplied by funeral homes or blue ones from bridal shops and wore ill-fitting caps, all of which hid the rags he wore underneath and gave him a bit of respectability. When a rich and influential family arranged the event, everyone in the procession had to shave their heads and wear boots, giving Xiangzi a rare opportunity to walk with a clean head and feet, though his unspeakable sickness slowed him down. He would shamble along by the side of the road holding up a banner or a pair of scrolled elegies.
Even at such trivial tasks, Xiangzi was not particularly good. His best years were behind him. A rickshaw had not provided him with a family or a lasting trade, and everything he did, along with all his hopes, had turned into: “So what!” He put his large body only in the service of carrying a flying-tiger pendant or a pair of short scrolls. He refused to hoist the heavy red parasols or solemn tablets. Competing with old men, children, even women was not beneath him, just so long as he did not get the worst of any situation.
He shuffled along slowly, laboriously, carrying his light burden, head hung low, bent at the waist, a cigarette butt he’d picked up off the ground dangling from his lips. When everyone else stopped, he kept walking, and when they were off again, he stopped where he was for a while. He seemed not to hear the signaling gongs and never paid any attention to the distance between him and those in front or back or whether he was aligned in his row. He just plodded along, head bowed, as if in a dream or pondering some arcane truth. Rustic curses from the mouths of the red-clad gong beater or the procession steward, who carried a silk streamer, all seemed directed at him: “You son of a bitch, I’m talking to you, Camel! Stay in line, damn it!” They fell on deaf ears. The gong beater came up and hit him with the gong hammer, but he merely rolled his eyes and looked around through a veil of haze. Ignoring the man’s curses, he kept his eyes glued to the ground to see if there were any butts worth picking up.
Respectable, ambitious, idealistic, self-serving, individualistic, robust, and mighty Xiangzi took part in untold numbers of burial processions but could not predict when he would bury himself, when he would lay this degenerate, selfish, hapless product of a sick society, this miserable ghost of individualism, to rest.
About the Author and the Translator
LAO SHE (1898–1966) is one of the most acclaimed Chinese writers of the twentieth century. He is the author of numerous novels, short stories, and plays.
HOWARD GOLDBLATT is a research professor at the University of Notre Dame and the foremost translator of modern Chinese literature in the West. He is the recipient of the Man Asian Prize, the Newman Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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Credits
Cover design by Emin Mancheril
Cover photograph © Bettmann/Corbis
Copyright
RICKSHAW BOY. Translation copyright © 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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EPub Edition © August 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-201064-3
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*Ranbir Vohra, Lao She and the Chinese Revolution (Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, 1974), 2.
*An English translation entitled The Quest for Love of Lao Lee was published in 1948.
†An English translation entitled Heavensent was published in 1986.
‡C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 180.
*Thomas Moran, “The Reluctant Nihilism of Lao She’s Camel Xiangzi,” in Joshua Mostow, ed., The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 453.
†Bonnie S. M. McDougall and Kam Louie, The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 118.
‡Lao She, “Afterword,” Camel Xiangzi, tr. Shi Xiaojing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), 230.
*Vohra, Lao She and the Ch
inese Revolution, 129.
*Vohra, Lao She and the Chinese Revolution, 163.
†An English translation was published in 1987.
‡Vohra, 164.
*Hong Kong, the Chinese University Press, 2005.