: I know very little about Long Stick Xi. No one knew where he came from, what class status he had, or why he moved here. No one even knew his real name-"Xi" was a pretty odd-sounding surname. Some remarked on how his receding chin and his eyelids were different from other people's. It was only much later that I came to understand the significance of these features.

From all the various legends I heard, I concluded that he most probably came to the village in the 1930s, and lived there for ten or so years, or twenty or so years, or even longer. He brought an old man with him, who helped him cook food and look after a few caged birds. He talked "rough," which meant he spoke with an accent from outside Maqiao that people found difficult to understand. Take, for example, "tincture of iodine." Another example: he would replace "see" with "regard"; "play" with "mess about"; "soda," meaning soap, also became very common here and afterwards spread to neighboring areas for miles around.

One might guess that he was someone who had some knowledge of "New Studies," or at the very least knew something about chemistry. Since he apparently liked to eat snake, it isn't entirely fanciful to imagine him as a snake-eating Cantonese.

He left a rather complex impression on Maqiao people. Some were well-disposed toward him: when he arrived in the village, he'd brought with him foreign medicine, cloth, and fire, which he'd exchanged for grain at a fair price. If he came across someone with a snake to exchange, he would beam and happily negotiate a discount. He could also cure disease, and even deliver babies. The local quacks used to rail against him en masse, saying it was no more than black magic and mumbo-jumbo, even the yin, yang, and eight hexagrams were blocked – he couldn't cure his way out of a cloth bag! How could anyone who ate poisonous stuff like chessboard snake not have a poisoned mind? This kind of talk, however, later petered out. A woman from Zhangjia District was having a difficult labor, rolling around on the ground in agony, mooing like a cow, neighing like a horse, yelling so much the quack had run out of ideas and the villagers were at their wits' ends. Her uncle finally volunteered to take action: picking up a kitchen knife, he sharpened it on the stone steps and prepared to split open her stomach.

But just as the kitchen knife was put in position, Long Stick Xi luckily rushed over and yelled out, scaring the knife wielder into staying his hand. Slowly and calmly, he had a drink of his tea, washed his hands, and shouted at idle onlookers to get out of the room. After an hour or so, the sound of crying was heard from inside the room and again, slowly and calmly, he strolled out to have a drink of tea. When the crowd went in to have a look, the child had been born, and the woman, amazingly enough, was safe and peaceful.

When he was asked how he'd done it, he talked too rough and no one could understand him.

Afterwards, the child grew up healthy, and when he could talk and run everywhere, his parents forced him to visit Long Stick Xi and make a few kow-tows to him. Long Stick Xi seemed to rather like the child and would often chat with him, as well as to other children who came with him to play. Gradually, the children also began to talk a bit rough, even said how delicious snake meat was and nagged their parents to catch snakes for them.

Maqiao people had never eaten snake. They believed that snakes were the most poisonous creatures in the whole world and that snake meat surely poisoned a person's mind. They regarded Long Stick Xi's ability to drink raw snake's blood and swallow raw snake's innards as supremely horrifying, and would cluster around to whisper about how this boded ill for the village. One by one, they forbade their children ever to go back to Long Stick Xi's house to play, terrified that Long Stick Xi would turn them bad with snake meat. They spoke to the children in menacing tones: you seen that Xi? He sells children-next thing you know, he'll have you tied up in a hemp sack and slung over his back to sell on the street-haven't you seen all the hemp sacks he has in his house?

The children stopped to think: they didn't have any strong recollection of hemp sacks in the house, but when they saw the serious expressions on the adults' faces, they didn't dare visit Xi. They would at most band together and sneak a look from far-off. When they saw Xi's friendly wave, none of them dared go closer.

Because Xi was good at delivering babies, the village people in the end refrained from torching his house and driving the young and old in his household out of the village. But they never harbored any good will towards the Xi family. Everyone resented his laziness (the thick hair on his legs was proof of laziness). Neither could they bear his extravagance: he actually fed caged birds on eggs and slices of meat. Even more objectionable was his sinister greenish-pale complexion, frigidly indifferent and arrogant. He also lacked all respect for the aged and never understood that he should give up his seat, much less offer cigarettes or tea. He would always grumble at whoever had come, and if the target of these remarks didn't understand, he would give an icy laugh and mumble to himself as he went about his own business. With that hideous expression on his face, he had to be muttering rough talk. Did he think that if other people didn't understand him then he could use filthy language? He was the precise embodiment of the word "rough": it wasn't just a question of speech-there was definitely a certain air about him, a blast of cold, frigid air, spiteful air that sowed fear and discord. He transformed "rough," a word that already jarred the ear, into a term yet more derogative, a term spat out between snarled teeth. There can be little doubt that this brought calamity to the door of subsequent new-comers, that it had an unstated influence on Maqiao attitudes to all outsiders.

When the land reform work team arrived in the village, they inquired whether there were any landlords or local bullies there. At first, the ordinary people were still rather fearful, they muttered and mumbled, even slammed their doors as soon as they saw the work team people. Finally, though, the work team killed the biggest tyrant from Longjia Sands, paraded around with his head lifted up high, bang-bang-banging drums and gongs to get people to come and look; once the masses saw blood, they threw open their doors and rubbed their hands together, itching to be a part of it all. A lot of men went looking for the work team, and the first name they brought up was Long Stick Xi.

"What crimes is he guilty of?"

"Exploitation, greed, laziness, never grows his own vegetables."

"Anything else?"

"He wears a foreign chain, goes ticktock ticktock."

"A pocket watch? A pocket watch is movable property. Anything else?"

"He eats poisonous snakes-disgusting, bleurgh!"

"Eating snakes doesn't prove a specific problem. The most important thing is whether he has mountains, whether he has land. We need to control the limits of policy."

"He's got land all right, oh yes, I should say so."

"Where?"

The men became vague, said they should go and have a look, it was around here somewhere.

"Whereabouts?"

Some pointed to the east, some to the west.

The work team went to check, but discovered that Long Stick Xi actually had neither land nor mountains and that apart from a few caged birds, his house was empty and bare. He had no pocket watch, either; it was said that he'd sent it to a lover in Longjia Plain. Someone like him could be labeled neither a landlord nor evil tyrant, nor could he be regarded as an enemy. The work team's conclusion annoyed all the local men, who grumbled they couldn't count on anything anymore. On and on they muttered about their grievances: if Peng Shi'en (a super-bully from Longjia Bay) could be killed, then why not him? He was far worse than Peng Shi'en; he swindled people like there was no tomorrow! What was Peng Shi'en compared to him? He treated his own old man like his grandson!