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"Forget it, I've got another way." Apparently, Yellow Hair's family owns a set of rosewood furniture, despite the fact that they are not gentry. "A little worn, but where can you get real rosewood nowadays? When there aren't any new ones, it doesn't matter if something is old." Rarer still, among the pieces of furniture was a rectangular ancestral altar.
I have seen that type of altar: it comes up to one's chest and is about four feet long. An incense burner and the family genealogy are placed on the top, where one can also honor the wealth god, the earth god, or Guanyin and Emperor Guanyu, gods enough for everyone; there's no doubt about there having been religious freedom back then. Yellow Hair says it was used as a cupboard for a while but even then wasn't entirely appropriate, being both too exalted and too lowly for such a purpose. It was only because the wood was so hard that it wasn't long ago chopped into kindling. Who would have thought that fortunes would shift to what they are today? That villagers would grow wealthy and want to worship their ancestors again? They might very well already own seven or eight of the ten required "big appliances," but if they are missing an ancestral altar, they ca
I am relieved and share with him this thought: "Now you should burn a stick of incense to thank your ancestors for their secret act of benevolence."
He laughs loudly and leaves.
A crude and heroic man, Yellow Hair is also very practical, able to put the present in front of the past, able to use the old to serve the new.
But I have been too hard on Old Wu. He shows up, after all, although not in the company of his wife. As soon as he steps inside the door, he tosses the yellowed and spotty scroll onto the table, a
I unroll it, and sure enough, it is a picture of the object of many years ago. Carefully evaluating it, I realize I am a cultured man after all, for I can think only that there is nothing praiseworthy about the technique, that the brushstrokes are uninspired, and that the sleeping figure looks more like a dog than anything else. But old as it is, the silk painting is full of mystery and thus ca
Old Wu's seat is not even warm when he rises to leave. In an awkward moment, I urge him to stay. A couple of drinks?
"Got anything good?" he asks.
Napoléon brandy from an overseas relative.
He gives me a knowing look and sits down. In a matter of moments, he proceeds to instruct me. Foreign liquor can't be ingested with Chinese cuisine because the oil will destroy the flavor.
Happily, I obey him; I was not overly enthusiastic about cooking something to begin with. Instead, I locate a box of chocolates, open a can of pineapple, and slice a few preserved eggs, a sort of East-West combination plate. We begin to drink.
I savor the pure flavor of the brandy; as promised, it is marvel-ously different from anything I have ever had before. I drink more than usual. Foreign liquor kicks in more slowly than Chinese, but inevitably our faces flush bright red. Old Wu's words are endless, from Napoleon to the French Revolution; he says that the European lords could have been united and the heroic Napoleon could have strangled the July Revolution, and then history would have been pushed back many years. Here I add, "But then we wouldn't be able to enjoy this fine liquor, a loss that ca
He isn't in the mood for jokes, so completely absorbed is he in his historical musings, saying further that it was Napoleon who once said that China was a sleeping lion. "Sleeping lion,…" he murmurs groggily as if he is very sorrowful, then suddenly bursts into laughter.
"What's so fu
He reeks of brandy, his finger poking in my face. "I'm laughing at you! And me! At everybody in the world."
I see he is drunk and hurry to brew some oolong, not knowing if it will have any effect on foreign liquor, since the tea leaves and teapot are Chinese products.
Still queasy, he murmurs, "Past events and dream shadows… fog before my eyes."
I think he must still be nostalgic about the French emperor and hand him a cup of strong tea, which he knocks over with a contemptuous snort. "These are the names of two books; take a look at them if you don't want to be a fool…"
Morning and night, all I have been thinking about is my "schol-arization," so how can I accept being a fool? I go to fetch the volumes and find that there is indeed a Record of Fog Before My Eyes, written during the Yuan or Song, and a Record of Past Events and Dream Shadows, written during the Guangxu period of the Qing, both histories of old paintings. I pull them off the shelf and immerse myself for two entire nights, after which I unroll the silk painting and compare it. Then I understand. Paintings like this, in which the ink doesn't bleed through the vitriol paste onto the silk and which make use of starch and crude-patterned silk sprinkled with gold dust, are characteristic of Late Qing and Early Republican paintings. When you add this to the fact that the illegible characters in the square seal are of an oil-based paint and are blue and not red in color, the conclusive evidence is that this filial mourner's carelessly scrawled painting of a lion could not have been made earlier than the reign of the ill-fated Emperor Guangxu.
Never have I felt so strongly that this painting of a sleeping lion is an inferior work. The more I look at it, the uglier it seems. Waking up from an absurd ten-year dream, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Who would have thought that this thing was totally worthless? Although antique collecting is found among all peoples and is a very noble pastime indeed, certainly foreigners are the only ones who hang plows and wagon wheels upon their walls in an attempt to be sophisticated. Here in China, what are a mere hundred years? Back at my maternal grandmother's house, the broken dish she feeds the cat out of was made during Guangxu, and my father's father in the countryside has a flowerpot in his courtyard that is a Qing monochromatic Shiwan piece from 1851.
The poor brass lion lies tucked away somewhere in Leizhou, lost in dream.
My emotion spent, I still ca
In my stupor, I peer at the silk again. Is that me in the picture?
I decide to hang it on the wall.
Translated By Susan Mcfadden
Wang Xiangfu – Fritter Hollow Chronicles
Opening
I have enormous respect for storytellers. I tried to teach myself how to do it once, but in the end I had to admit it was not to be. The story that follows, for instance, should be packed with entertainment value, but it isn't much of a story when I get through with it. Way back in 1990, I was all set to study the art of storytelling with Comrade New Day Tian when of all things, he was swept away in a windstorm of unprecedented ferocity. The additional costs of that windstorm to Fritter Hollow included seven old oxen, eight colts, and fifty-two goats (some say fifty-six); it also shattered the grammar school windows and sent snowy shards of glass swirling into the air. What that means, of course, is that I'll have to grope my way through the story, starting with the following opening:
In the heart of Fritter Hollow lies Fritter Village, home to a carpenter by the name of Tian, who had a son called Broad Bean. To ensure that Broad Bean would have a long life, the carpenter Tian gave him the name Broad Bean, and after a dizzying procession of springs and autumns, Broad Bean appeared as a grown man of thirty-one. Our story opens in 1992, at noon one summer day, when Broad Bean, lathered with sweat, came ru