Chinese Stories in English
Ordinary People 10
Stories published in 《百姓人家》(2023), 秦俑/赵建宁选编
Page citation and link to online Chinese text noted after each story.
1. Giant Bird 3. Wisdom Tooth 4. Kitchen Gentleman
2. She Who Disappeared 5. Choosing Paper
1. Giant Bird (巨鸟)
Tong Jiping (佟继萍)
The only zoo in town was deserted and dreary. Visitors to the dismal place were few and far between. The animals hid in corners of their enclosures with their heads drooping listlessly. Occasionally they made strange noises, and only they knew whether the noises were cries of protest or loneliness.
Director Benefit Lai was distraught at the urgent situation. She constantly waved her arms around, and her voice got loud enough to raise the roof. If she didn't come up with a solution, the animals and the employees as well would have nothing to eat or drink but the wind. She called countless meetings to brainstorm the issue, all to no avail.
One faction advocated reducing staff to increase efficiency. Reindeer are more expensive to keep than monkeys, so they also recommended getting more monkeys and turning the reindeer enclosure into a monkey mountain. Someone immediately retorted that a zoo without reindeer wouldn’t attract many visitors.
Another faction wanted to beautify the environment to attract visitors and suggested using forest resources to attract birds from the wild. But birds aren’t all that numerous in nature, so where would they find enough of them to stock the zoo?
A rainbow of colors flashed by her office window and landed in the zoo. Bang! Bang! Bang! Someone pounded on her door and a security guard came running in to report that it was a giant bird with dazzlingly colorful feathers. Such a bird had never been seen before. It had a rotund, human-like body with broad wings and short, sturdy legs. Its calls were melodious, sometimes high and sometimes low.
The zoo’s savior had arrived! Director Lai clapped her hands and proclaimed it a blessing from heaven! She picked up the phone to report to her superiors in the local government right away. Animal experts arrived as soon as possible thereafter, and an off-road vehicle from the government’s Wildlife Conservation Association drove onto the zoo grounds. The provincial TV station and the local station both sent reporters and cameramen. News of the giant bird's arrival made headlines, and the zoo became the small town’s central attraction.
A guarded convoy took the giant bird to a separate aviary. Director Lai practically hit her head on the ground when she prostrated herself to pay homage to the creature. She even arranged for a specialist employee to care for it. Strange as it seems, this giant bird was fully fledged and had a sonorous voice. It murmured a variety of polite greetings when it saw senior citizens, chirped happily at children, and spread its wings and danced whenever a woman in a beautiful dress happened by....
The improved mood infected the reindeer and monkeys, too. They were unwilling to play second fiddle to the new attraction and showed off enthusiastically to visitors. People lined up for tickets at the zoo entrance, some even arriving before dawn to reserve seats. Tickets were hard to come by, and Director Lai strutted around the zoo like an old-time mandarin.
The authorities allocated funds specifically to customize a luxurious cage for the giant bird. It was located in the zoo’s central square. Made of glass, from a distance it looked like it was hanging in the air.
The cage’s top and side windows could open and close automatically to protect the bird from wind and rain. Food expenses doubled, and the giant bird's already rotund body became even rounder, but its feathers faded and its limbs started to atrophy. The bird seemed to be practicing flying whenever it flapped its wings, and the wind could be felt outside the cage.
One day the bird stuck its head out of the cage, then folded its wide wings and burst out. It flapped its wings and flew off into the sky. It tested its wings by flying a few circles, probably enjoying the feeling of being free as the wind, then spread its wings wide and headed away from the zoo.
Director Lai chased after it until she was out of breath. She watched it fly higher and higher in the sky, and farther and farther away, slowly turning into a black dot. Eventually she had to stop the chase.
When the zoo visitors heard that the giant bird had flown the coop, they blocked the gate and demanded a refund. The reindeer and monkeys also returned to their grottoes in a funk.
Director Lai was so anxious she felt like she needed to dry out in the sun, so she braved the 40°C heat and walked to the giant bird's cage. Inside, cool air came from all sides and she felt very comfortable. As she walked around inside the cage, the giant bird’s shadow appeared before her eyes. She spread out her arms as if she were going to fly.
That gave her a new idea and she held a meeting that very night. She selected young employees who were well-grounded in dancing and fitted each of them with a giant bird feather cape. They worked overtime for days to practice flying and singing like birds. On days when few visitors came to the zoo, they lined up in the deep shade of the forest to rehearse. Some people said they heard birdsong constantly in their ears.
The animals were infected by the renewal of the zoo’s lively atmosphere. The reindeer braved the sun to perform, and the monkeys kept somersaulting to music.
When the light faded as dusk approached, they lit torches in the giant bird’s cage, one, two, three… five piles of them. The director wore a costume made of bird feathers and personally led the team as they sang and flew around the torches. A band played, ding-ding-dong-dong clang-clang, to announce the start of a large-scale song and dance show called "Rebirth from the Ashes".
Firelight and moonlight lit the scene as bright as day. The cheers stopped abruptly, though, when a nearby fire engine, unaware of the situation, swooshed over, raised its long boom from outside the crowd, and sprayed water towards the bonfires.
Director Lai noticed something was wrong and stopped the performance to evacuate the audience without delay. The bonfire went out and the "giant birds" got soaked, their wings drooping.
The fire chief realized he’d made a mistake, so he ordered the firefighters to withdraw.
The performance venue collapsed and the bird cage fell into a huge black hole with a loud bang. After experts had engaged in a good deal of argumentation about the situation, they discovered a magnificent ancient palace under the bird cage. Archaeologists worked to specify which dynasty built it....
Director Lai was rewarded and promoted for her good work. The zoo was converted into a museum and everyone got a new job. Now when she talks about these things, Director Lai always starts with the giant bird. With tears in her eyes, she says, “It really was a propitious and beautiful bird.”
Chinese text at 《彼岸花》 p. 260, also available here.
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2. She Who Disappeared* (消失的她)
Xu Jianying (徐建英)
I was exhausted from the long journey. I’d passed through the Dayu Mountains in northern Guangdong Province and Meiguan Ancient Post Road between Guangdong and Jiangxi Province, and ended up at Meiling Mountain in Jiangxi. The sun had already set when I got there. A woman waited by the road and, when she saw me, she limped over and exclaimed, “You’re here at last!"
That was strange. I looked at her lame leg and asked: "Have we met before? " She smiled but didn't answer. She took my bag and limped forward, leading the way.
I was born to a scholarly family in Linchuan, Jiangxi. I passed the imperial examination at the age of thirty-three and had achieved a bit of renown outside my hometown. Now I’d come to Shaozhou only because of a dream, one that I can't explain clearly.
I heard a woman singing in the dream. "In the morning I gaze upon Fallen Plum Pass, where I left my makeup…."** She was singing in front of a tomb amid flowering plum trees, and her voice sounded genuine. When I straightened up to question her, she disappeared.
It was like that every night, the same dream. The sad lyrics and the large plum tree forest full of plum blossoms made my sleep uneasy. Eventually I had no choice: I had to follow the dream’s lead and head south.
The lame woman walking in front of me was about forty years old. She wore a dark blue robe, and a wooden hairpin held her hair in a coil atop her head. Questions I needed to have answered filled my mind, but no matter how I asked, she just stumbled along ahead of me with my bag on her back. If I stopped, she stood there waiting for me. Strange dress and weird behavior, but I didn't feel she held any ill will towards me.
She opened the front door of a gray tile house and invited me in to sit down. She boiled hot water for me and brought me a bowl of porridge with some vegetarian dishes, then left. Still tired from days of travelling, I didn't worry about the doubts I felt. I washed my hands and scarfed down the food on the table before I looked around. The furnishings in the house were extremely simple, but it gave the place a clean and refreshing feeling. There was an incense stand in the main hall, and a statue of a respectable woman stood before me on the table. She looked like a Taoist or Buddhist nun but wasn’t either. She had a delicate beauty, except for a deeply furrowed brow. I don’t know why, but for some reason my heart ached when I looked at this statue.
I walked out of the house into the dim light of the evening and onto a narrow cobblestone road. Large patches of plum blossoms were in full bloom on both sides of the road, and the few plum branches which hung down to the steps swayed in the evening breeze. I paused in front of an octagonal, double-eaved pavilion carved with peony flowers. The pavilion’s eaves tapered up to the sky, and a magic gourd sat on the roof with eight vermilion pillars. The scene looked quite familiar to me, as it had appeared countless times in my dreams!
I sat down in a chair on the veranda. I drifted into a heavy sleep.…
I seemed to hear someone singing in a sad, mournful voice, "Beautiful flowers bloomed all around me, brilliant purples and reds, but now they’ve all been given over to dried-up wells and run-down walls. How can momentary beauty be compared to heaven? Delectable pleasures in anyone’s garden…. People love these flowers and plants, but death follows life as its reward, and no one complains about the pathos…."
Every word in that drawn-out female voice went straight through the door to my heart. I couldn't see her shadow, let alone her face. I tried to get closer, but every time I drew near, she disappeared, and her voice also retreated from me.
I heaved a long sigh, then blurted out: "I don't know where love comes from, but it is everlasting and deep. The living may die but the dead can reincarnate, while those who live without dying cannot be reborn. Neither is the end of love." The singing stopped and completely dissipated in the moonlight even before my words had faded away.
I walked through the pavilion in the moonlight searching for the singer. I stopped by a quiet pond and watched a few wisps of cold wind blow over the surface. When the breeze quieted down, a figure gradually manifested in the water. I saw an old man with silver hair and beard, and clad in an ebon robe, standing in the middle of the pool. I stared at him from the shore as he stared at me from the pond. I moved and he moved; I laughed and he laughed. After we laughed, we both fell silent at the same time.
A voice again came through the stillness. Someone was calling: "Sir Plum...."
My ears perked up and I listened carefully. Was she calling me? Obviously not. My humble surname is Tang, and my courtesy name is Righteous.
The voice stopped again. The moonlight was getting chillier. I walked further ahead and came to a forest of plum trees. The blossoms reflected a cold, dark red light under the moon. Petals fell from the trees like snow when the wind blew.
"So you came to this cenotaph after all, making it easier for Spring Perfume to find you!" Startled awake, I found myself still sitting in the chair on the balcony. A woman in a green robe stood behind me. I didn't know how long she’d been there.
"A cenotaph? You mean, a monument to someone buried elsewhere?"
The woman in the green robe nodded and pointed to a tall plum tree not far away. I turned around dispiritedly, and there was indeed a small mound under the tree.
"My Lady sent a dream to Spring Perfume, telling her that a distinguished guest would come to visit. That’s why Spring Perfume came here to Meiguan Ancient Post Road early in the morning to wait. My Lady said that human love is natural and common to all those born in the world. If you, Sir, are able to help My Lady prevent the women of the world from suffering the pains of love, then Spring Perfume's years of guarding this Meiguan Ancient Road will have been worth it."
The woman paused. When she noted my puzzled expression, she rubbed the redness from her eyes and continued, "My Lady’s yearning at the time broke her soul and she died of lovesickness. My Lady was resurrected when Sir Plum dug up her grave and opened the coffin, but the essence of her humanity had been damaged. The sweetness of her soul passed a few years later. A wisp of her spirit remained in Meiling, which is why I came here to set up this cenotaph."
I stood in front of the grave, feeling dejected. The image of the respectable woman who was neither Taoist nor Buddhist flashed in my mind from time to time. When I came to my senses, I found I could taste the salt left at the corners of my mouth by the tears that had streamed down my cheeks. I was stunned. I’d experienced worldly love from my green years through the time my hair turned silver, and I couldn’t understand why I was so sad.
The woman in the green robe had left at some point.
"The world is all about love. It’s innate in people…." The last bit of that mournful song which still lingered in the plum forest drifted away on the cold evening wind. The whole plum forest quivered, and the plum petals fell like snow.
The world has always been about love. It’s innate in people. It seemed I’d begun to understand.
In 1598, the 26th year of the Wanli reign, I resigned from my official position and retired to my hometown. I wrote “The Peony Pavilion” on the basis on this adventure on Meiguan Ancient Post Road.
Translator’s notes
* This story is told from the point of view of Tang Xianzu, a Ming Dynasty playwright, recounting how he came to write “The Peony Pavilion”, his most famous work.
** This is a song from “The Peony Pavilion”.
Chinese text at 《彼岸花》 p. 263, also available here.
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3. Wisdom Tooth (智齿)
Pang Yan (庞滟)
Blue heard her mother sobbing on the phone in the middle of the night. "I want to go home, Bluie. I don't want to have the operation. I heard they want to... to cut my leg open and saw off a piece of my bone. I'm afraid I'll be crippled…. I don’t want to do it. Take me home!" That scared Blue -- It was the first time in over thirty years she’d heard her mother cry.
Blue hurried to pack a bag and rush back to her hometown that very night. The surgery on her mother's upper femur had been scheduled for next week. She’d planned to persuade her mother to go to the hospital in a few days, and have her father take care of her while she recuperated, but then something unexpected happened. Her wisdom tooth started to hurt when it was touched.
The wind in the darkness outside the car window reminded Blue of that night when she was a child, when her mother and father had quarreled and her mother left the house. Her father picked up a bat and went looking for her. He looked all over but when he couldn't find her, he came home and fell sound asleep on the kang. Blue hid in a corner by herself and cried, worried that her mother would be eaten by the big bad wolf. She finally fell into a deep sleep after her mother came home at dawn.
She never understood.... After the quarrel, her mother made breakfast in silence, did housework quietly, and never engaged in a proper conversation with her father. Not until the two of them had another fight because of some trivial disagreement, and then the cycle of running away and coming back home would start again. Later, she came to understand that her mother only endured the long nights and days under the roof of this home because of the child she couldn’t take with her if she left.
Every year before the Spring Festival, while her father was away from home, her mother would furtively write a long letter to her parents, who lived thousands of miles away, hoping that her brothers and sisters could come to take her home. Her mother had to grit her teeth to write the letter’s conclusion, words heavy enough to tear through the paper. Blue couldn't imagine how the people in her grandmother's family felt when they received two letters that arrived one after the other every year.... One from her father reporting on how well things had gone during the last year, and the other from her mother complaining about her life.
Her mother always hated the sweet-talking matchmaker who’d tricked her into marrying a strange man from thousands of miles away. Once, her mother had returned to her parents' home determined to get a divorce, but she was scared back by a telegram saying that her children had been injured.
Her father admitted that her mother was a good woman who knew how take care of business. She’d even pick up twigs on the side of the road to bring home for firewood. She did everything quickly and well and would just as soon trot as walk. But her father complained that she wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted to live with. If her mother hadn’t birthed their children and if the family weren’t so poor, he’d have chosen to get a divorce. He didn’t want to live a stone-cold life.
Her parents' marriage had adversely effected Blue's own love life. As a consequence of those dark, fearful nights, as well as those letters and her father's words, she’d always shied away from getting married. Also, she fell in love with someone who didn't want to get married, another hidden pain that left her heartbroken. The pain was interminable, just like her wisdom tooth. She’d never had the tooth removed because she thought it was as lonely as she was and shouldn’t be deprived of its right to live.
In the hospital, her mother's thin body was curled up under a quilt like a child who hadn’t grown tall. She wore a worried frown on her face as she slept. Her father sat hunchbacked on a plastic stool next to her mother. He'd dozed off with his head hanging down over the sickbed. He woke up when Blue opened the door, and rushed over to whisper, "Welcome home, dear. Your mother’s changed her mind and said she won’t have the operation no matter what. Please talk to her. I’m really scared for her. She keeps saying her leg hurts because I beat her. Back then.... Jeez, it takes two to tango. I never really beat her. I just wanted to scare her. We’re an old couple, and I still have to take care of her, don't I?"
Blue felt a burning pain shoot through her wisdom tooth as she watched her father’s arms hang and head droop like a child who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. She covered her cheek and took in a sharp breath of cold air. She told her father not to worry, but in her heart she wondered if her mother would listen to her, since she and her mother had always been so different.
When her mother woke up and saw Blue, she stretched out her skinny hands and cried that she wanted to go home. Tears filled her eyes. Blue was so flustered that she hardly knew the woman in front of her. Was this the mother who’d worn a cold face all her life? Her gaze had always been like steel, but now her eyes were so soft that they dissolved in water, like calcium carbonate meeting acetic acid.
Blue’s wisdom tooth inexplicably decided to join the party. It was so painful that Blue felt like she’d jumped off a cliff. Her mother calmed down and got out of bed to get medicine and pour water for her daughter. "Wisdom teeth are useless,” she advised. “It’ll stop hurting if you pull it out."
Blue’s heart ached at the sight of her mother staggering on her lame leg. She remembered when her mother took her somewhere when she was a child. She’d always trot, like a little bird flitting over the ground. But now her mother was like a big bird with an injured wing, walking alone in the painful dark night.
"I'll do what you say, Mom. I’ll have my wisdom tooth removed tomorrow."
Her mother's face softened into an unnatural smile. "That’s right. Why hang on to such a useless thing?"
"But please listen to me, Mom. The top of your femur has gone bad where it meets the hip joint. It doesn't work anymore and needs to be replaced with something wear-resistant. There are two types, ceramic and metal. They’re like a porcelain bowl and a stainless-steel bowl. Which one do you want?"
"You, too? You want to hurt me? I still have a few years left. I’ll muddle through to the end and that’s all there is to it!" She let out a long, angry breath, then softened her tone. "Look at you, crying for nothing? I'll do what you want. But don't put that cold, hard piece of metal in my body. I’ll feel a bit more down-to-earth with a piece of dinnerware in there. I’m willing to have surgery at my age because I’m afraid I won’t see the two of you again if I don’t. When are you going to get married, Bluie? I won’t be able to pass away in peace until you do.” Her lips curled and she shed a tear as she said that.
Her mother was trembling. Blue hugged her and patted her back gently to comfort her. "Don't be afraid, Mom! We’re all here, and there’s nothing to be afraid of while we’re together. Everything will be fine." What she said startled her. It felt so strange. At her age, it was the first time ever that she’d hugged her mother.
Her obstinate wisdom tooth also calmed down and gave her some relief from the earth-shattering pain. She decided to take her mother’s advice and remove this unseen source of agony.
Chinese text at 《彼岸花》 p. 266, also available here.
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4. A Ceremony for the Kitchen Gentleman (祭灶爷)
Yang Xiaofan (杨小凡)
In my hometown, people call the Kitchen God the "Kitchen Gentleman" or the "Old Kitchen Gentleman". Changing "God" to "Gentleman" makes it feel more intimate and homier, turning him into the family’s senior member.
I didn't like to wash my face when I was five or six years old, and loved to play outdoors, so a layer of dirt often covered my face. Eventually my face turned gray and black, prompting my mother to point at me and scold me. Sometimes she’d grab me, press my hands into the water in the washbasin, dip her right hand in the water and scrub my face. Whenever that happened, she’d scold me while she washed, “Your face is as black as the Old Kitchen Gentleman. You won't be able to get a woman to marry you when you grow up!”
At the time, I thought the Kitchen Gentleman’s face must be very black, even as black as the scorched bottom of a pot. I’d never seen him and didn't know how black he was, so I asked mother where he lived and why I hadn't seen him. She’d never answer me, just raise her hand to slap my head or pull my ears. I was left to worry about who and where he was.
It was 1977, sometime around December 23 by the lunar calendar, almost time for the Spring Festival. One day, while mother was in the kitchen boiling sugar, my father came home from the market and mysteriously told her, "I invited the Kitchen Gentleman today!"
Mother was very happy. "We haven't invited him for over ten years”, she said as she stirred the syrup in the pot. “This year we have to give him his due respect so he’ll bring some blessings to our family!"
I was at the kitchen door and overheard that astounding conversation. I’d finally get to see the Kitchen Gentleman and find out how dark his face was. Right away I asked my father, “When will the Kitchen Gentleman get here?” He took the New Year's goods he'd just bought out of the bamboo basket one by one and ignored me.
Mother had a violent temper and shouted, “Zip your mouth shut! You’re too young to be talking about the Old Kitchen Gentleman! Scram!”
I left the kitchen and walked out into the courtyard. I didn't go out the gate, though. Since father had invited the Kitchen Gentleman, he’d definitely come into the courtyard. I stood at the gate looking out from noon until the sun set, but didn't see anyone coming to our house. During dinner, I was so anxious that I asked, “Dad, when will the Kitchen Gentleman come to our place? Will he come in the middle of the night?”
Father smiled and said, "Eat your dinner. He'll be here before long!"
After dinner, mother cleared the table and walked into the kitchen. "Go out and play,” she told us children, “and don't go into the kitchen. “We’ll ask the Kitchen Gentleman in in a while!"
My sister and three brothers were afraid of her, so they all went to the main hall. But I refused to leave. I’d been waiting the whole day and wouldn’t be satisfied until I’d seen the Kitchen Gentleman with my own eyes.
When mother saw I hadn't left, she raised her hand and demanded, "Why are you still here?"
“I promise not to say anything,” I cried. “I want to see the Kitchen Gentleman!”
She must have noticed how pitiful I looked. She told me, "Sit by the kitchen door and don't say a word!"
I was so excited that she’d agreed to let me stay in the kitchen that I could hear my heart pounding. At this time, my father washed his hands with clean water, took out three smoke bombs from the bamboo basket and walked into the courtyard. Boom...boom...boom! He returned to the kitchen after setting off the three bombs and took three incense sticks from the bamboo basket, lit them, and inserted them one by one into an incense burner filled with grass ashes. His expression was solemn.
Mother brought over some dough she’d prepared. Father took a one-foot square piece of colorful paper from the bamboo basket. He spread dough on the four corners of the paper, held it up with both hands and stuck it on the wall above the cupboard behind the stove. He took two steps back, bowed three times toward the paper, and then knelt on the ground and kowtowed three times. Still kneeling, he intoned respectfully, "Kitchen Gentleman and Lady, I haven’t been allowed to invite you in for over ten years and I’ve missed you with all my heart. Thank you for blessing my family so that we’ve had enough food every day and peace every year! Please come back to our home this year, and I’ll pay proper tribute to both of you!" He kowtowed three more times after he finished speaking.
I stood by the kitchen door and stared at my father. I held my breath for fear that my breathing might be too loud.
When he was done with the ritual, father took out his pipe and filled the bowl with golden tobacco leaves. He drew near the kerosene lamp on the stove and used it to light the pipe, and started puffing away. He had a look of happiness and satisfaction on his face, the kind one gets after completing an important task.
Mother used the back of a knife to knock off a small piece of the sugar she boiled during the day. She put it in a bowl and melted it with hot water. What would she do with this little bit of sugar? I was mystified but didn't dare ask too much -- I just stared at her.
After father finished smoking his pipe, mother suggested, “Let’s send the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady off to heaven!” As she spoke, she went over to the piece of paper they’d just pasted on the wall. She dipped her chopsticks in the melted sugar and smeared it on the paper, one swipe at a time. After five or six swipes, she peeled the paper off the wall with both hands and gave it to father. He knelt down again and lit the paper with a match, and the ash fluttered up into the air.
"Gentleman and Lady of the Kitchen, we’ve put some sugar on your mouths. Please say good things about us when you get to heaven. Bless my family, young and old, so that we won’t have to go through any tough times. Let us live in peace with enough food and clothing!" The paper burned completely in no time. Father stood up, looking very satisfied.
The stove was between father and me. So, much to my regret, I hadn’t clearly seen what was written on the paper. I basically understood that the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady were little people drawn on the paper, and suspected their faces must be very black. Mother put syrup on their lips to sweeten their mouths, so that they’d say good things to the gods and not say bad things about our family.
New Year's Eve arrived a few days later. Before cooking dinner, mother told father, "It's time to welcome the Kitchen Gentleman!" I went to the kitchen again and stood by the door. I’d kept quiet last time when they sent the Kitchen Gentleman off to heaven, and because of my good behavior, mother didn't chase me away this time. It was like she didn't see me.
The ritual was the same this time as seven days before. After washing his hands, father set off smoke bombs, burned incense, knelt down to pray, and used both hands to stick a piece of paper with images of the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady printed on it above the cupboard behind the stove. Mother started cooking after the ceremony. When New Year's Eve dinner was ready, the family gathered around the table in the main hall and dug into the delicious food. I was as happy as I’d ever been eating that meal. There were six dishes, and I got a few extra pieces of meat without mother complaining.
We went around the village offering New Year's greetings to the elders the next morning. When we got home just before dawn, I snuck off into the kitchen to see what the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady looked like. The painting turned out to be in four colors, black, green, yellow and red. More than a dozen little people crowded around the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady, who sat together in the middle with an attendant on each side. Chickens, dogs, pigs and sheep rounded out the picture.
I didn't understand the meaning of the picture at the time, but now I think it was a microcosm of a family. Back then I was full of fear and respect for the painting. I was amazed that the images could keep our family safe and ensure that we had enough to eat.
I noticed that over the following days, mother would scoop a little soup with a spoon before each meal and pour it behind the stove. She said a prayer as she poured: “Kitchen Gentleman and Lady, it's time to eat!” She did it every meal, never missing one.
After a year, on the twenty-third of the twelfth lunar month, father smeared sugar syrup on the mouths of the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady, then lit them on fire and sent them off to heaven. Then he stuck a new picture on the wall. He did so every New Year's Eve from then on.
And, really, our lives did get better day by day from the year we invited the Kitchen Gentleman and Lady into our home. Of course, I understand now that our improved lives weren’t due to the images, but to the government’s policy of reform and opening up to the West. A piece of paper and a legendary god cannot give people a good life.
My father, who is now ninety-three, still sends the Kitchen God off to heaven every year. Except, since he’s moved to the city, he’s simplified the various rituals. His devout expression is still as solemn and full of hope as before, though.
I’ve also come to understand why my mother always said my face was as black as the Kitchen Gentleman when I was a child. Back then we burned wood in the stove for three meals a day. Since the paper Kitchen Gentleman was pasted on the kitchen wall for a year, how could it not get blackened? Later I wanted to discuss my idea with mother on several occasions, but I never did. That’s become a lifelong regret, since she’s been gone for fifteen years and I no longer have the chance to tell her. We really need to cherish the time that children have with their parents!
As this article comes to an end, I do want to assure my mother: I wash my face every day now, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll turn as black as the Kitchen Gentleman.
Translator’s note: During the Cultural revolution, which ended in 1976, even mentioning the “old gods” could land an entire family in serious trouble.
Chinese text at 《彼岸花》 p. 271, also available here.
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5. Carrying Paper (挑纸)
Xiang Yuting (相裕亭)
Flash paper from Salt District... has eyes.
Flash paper is rough paper with fuzzy edges that’s been soaked in sulfuric and nitric acid to make it readily ignitable. It’s been used for ages in Salt District as “ghost money” burnt as an offering to ancestors. However, the phrase "flash paper from Salt District has eyes", refers to people who aren’t treated as equals by their peers.
Salt District flash paper has round perforations which make it easier to burn. In the minds of the people there, only that kind of ghost money would be acceptable to the ancestors. It was originally made by the Shang Family Paper Mill.
Salt District’s North Village didn’t use to have a papermaking workshop. People either used regular paper for ghost money, or they had to cross the Bath River and the Salt River to go to the city to get flash paper. The Shang family started bringing in bundles of flash paper from the city and selling it at the door of their shop at a markup to residents who needed it for ancestor worship.
Back then, rough paper with fuzzy edges was worthless, but a piece of flash paper cost the same as a handful of dried dates. It was sold in stacks, but buyers and sellers didn’t call it “stacks” or even “sheets” of flash paper. They used the term “knives” to count it: "Give me two knives of flash paper!" To this day, the price of flash paper in Salt District is still determined by knives. "Here you go, two knives for twenty bucks." That’s the price of flash paper these days.
Flash paper vendors usually quote the number of knives and the price together. No one cares about how many pieces of flash paper are in one knife, or how long and wide each piece should be. After all, they’ll just be burned up as offerings to the dead. The gesture itself is enough to show the living people's gratitude to their ancestors, without regard to the specific quantity.
When the Shang family started selling cheap flash paper in North Village, they also sold animal hides. They treated freshly skinned donkey hides and sheepskins with nitrate and alkali to remove the grease, then stretched them out, dried them and rolled them into reed mats or straw bundles. They carried the hides to a leather factory in the city, where they were processed into expensive goods like leather hats, shoes and men’s belts.
The Shang family’s work was just the first step in making leather products. It was a rough process requiring no technical skills. Anyone who can endure hardship and isn’t afraid to get dirty can scrape the grease off donkey hides and sheepskins, wait until it’s half dry and then take it to the city to sell.
The Shangs happened to discover they could make extra money from hides while they were in the city buying flash paper for resale. When they got home, they mobilized family members to go to surrounding villages in their free time to buy animal skins for processing.
They needed the extra income because the flash paper business is cyclic. People only need flash paper to commemorate their ancestors at certain times, such as the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month, and annually during the Qingming Festival, the Winter Solstice and the Spring Festival. The family’s business was very hot at such times and kept everyone busy collecting money and handing out flash paper. On ordinary days, though, no customers came to the shop so the Shangs thought of making extra money by processing animal hides.
When they went to the city to buy flash paper, they carried their "semi-finished" animal hides along to sell. It was a good way to make a living, but outsiders said they were earning "dead money". And it was true. They sold flash paper to give to dead people and sold the hides of dead animals to make leather. No matter how you look at it, their business was all about death.
Thus the people of North Village regarded the Shang family the same as the unlucky people who worked as butchers and the hermaphrodites who helped bury dead bodies. The Shangs were taboo and rarely visited other people's homes. When everyone else was visiting neighbors to exchange New Year's greetings on the first day of the Lunar New Year... their home was deserted. And they didn’t visit other people's homes, either. Who’d want to see a family that dealt in "death" at such a time?
One good thing, though. The Shangs were relatively safe when they went out, especially when they were walking along the road with flash paper on their shoulders -- no one would rob them. Robbing flash paper would be like casting a death spell on someone in their own family. Just think how unlucky that would be! Therefore, even bandits who blocked the road and robbed other people would stay away from the Shangs. The three-mile wide Bath River valley on the road to the city was overgrown with reeds and often haunted by robbers, but they wouldn’t rob members of the Shang family carrying flash paper.
The Mu River valley is also called Wheat Lake. The locals plant wheat in the wide valley in winter and spring. When the breeze starts to blow, the seedlings that were originally "green and close to the ground" soon look like waves of wheat rolling on a lake.
If the rain came late one year, people on both sides of the river would have new wheat to eat. But if the rain came early or was too heavy, the wheat would be washed away by the flood. Therefore, the people living in the valley often had to care for their fields with no food to eat, so they resorted to stealing and robbing. Even children of seven or eight years old learned how to stop passers-by and demand money.
"Hey, hey, hey! You dropped your stuff!" was a common tactic they used to hold people up. They’d throw an object behind travelers to trick them. When anyone was fooled and took the bait, and turned back to pick up their stuff, several people would rush out to demand a "dividend", and they wouldn’t stop until they’d "dividended" all the traveler’s money.
If the traveler saw through the trap and chose to ignore it or turn around and walk away, that didn't work, either. Another person would pop up from the reeds ahead and block their way, so they’d have to give up some coins anyway. Those people were hungry!
But when the Shang family carried flash paper across Wheat Lake, no one stopped them. Taking flash paper was unlucky and couldn't be eaten, anyway, so what was the point of stealing it? As time went by, though, the Shang family brought more and more flash paper from the city, and the robbers in Wheat Lake finally saw through the “loophole”.
A load of flash paper is as heavy as two buckets of straw. On the shoulders of the Shang family, though, it weighed as much as two baskets of wet soil and made their small bamboo carrying poles creak. That made the Wheat Lake bandits wonder.
One day they forced the Shang family to put down their load. They tore open the bundles of flash paper and found white silver coins hidden inside.
It turned out that the Shangs drilled holes in the slugs around which the flash paper was wrapped. They stuffed their money into the holes and then covered it with layers of flash paper, so no one could hear the sound of coins clanking together. This fooled the greedy Wheat Lake robbers.
At least, that’s a folk legend from back then!
Now, over half a century later, the Shang Family Paper Mill no longer exists. But selling flash paper with holes commemorates the family's ruse of drilling holes in the slugs to hide coins. The custom has been passed down from generation to generation. Nowadays, flash paper with holes in it has a more appropriate and vivid name in Salt District: paper money.
Translator’s note: The Chinese text is non-sequential and repetitive. Our translation follows the text very loosely.
Chinese text at 《彼岸花》 p. 275, also available here.