When asked, he nodded his head, and confirmed that he was Ma Ming.

I asked him what he had just said.

He gave another slight smile and said that these simplified characters had no logic at all. Full-form Chinese characters fall into six categories, the picto-phonetic type (in which one element represents meaning and the other sound) being easiest for communication. Take the full-form character for "time" [|^f]: its meaning derives from the left-hand element, the character for "day" [g]; its sound shi derives from the right-hand element, the character [=^], which is pronounced si. If it means [|E]] and sounds like [^f], why change something that works perfectly well? In simplified form [H\f], its side component became [~f], pronounced cun. The reader now had nothing to orient himself by and the character didn't lend itself to quick memorization. What was introduced as a measure to reduce confusion in fact completely confused the texture of Chinese characters. Time being thus confused, confused times could not be far-off.

Such an educated remark gave me a fright, and also fell outside my range of knowledge. I quickly changed the subject and asked him where he had just been.

He said he'd been fishing.

"What, no fish then?" I saw that both his hands were empty.

"Do you also fish? You must know that the fisherman's intent lies not in obtaining fish, but in the Dao. Big fish, small fish, fish or no fish at all, in fishing all has its own Dao, its own pleasure, of incalculable worth. Only the fierce and cunning will be blinded with greed, poisoning the water, setting off dynamite, casting nets, beating the water, ruining the atmosphere, vile evil practices, vile, vile, vile!" At this point, his face flushed with unexpected animation, and he burst into a fit of coughing.

"Have you eaten?"

He pursed his lips and shook his head.

I was terribly afraid that next thing he would ask me to lend him some rice, so before he had finished coughing, I burst in with "fishing-good idea. Nice steamed fish."

"What's so great about fish?" he grunted contemptuously. "Like eating dung, bleurgh!"

"So, do you… eat meat?"

"Ai, pigs are the most stupid of animals. Pork only wakes up after you've stabbed it. Oxen are the most idiotic, beef damages the intelligence. Goats are the most cowardly, eating goat will make you lily-livered. All no good."

I'd really never heard anything like this before.

Seeing that I was puzzled, he smiled dryly. "With heaven and earth this big, you're worried there's nothing to eat? Take a look, butterflies have beautiful colors, cicadas sing a clear song, mantises can fly over walls, leeches can divide up a body. The hundred insects are thus, they gather the essence of heaven and earth, collect the ingenuity of the old and the new. They are the most elusive delicacies. Delicacies. Tsk tsk tsk…" With insatiable gusto he smacked his lips and tongue, then suddenly thought of something, turning back to the side of his nest, where he took out a ceramic bowl and held out to me a long thin black something. "Here, have a taste, this is leftover pickled golden dragon. It's a pity there's only a bit left, it's really fresh."

At one glance I took in that the golden dragon had started off life as an earthworm, and my entire digestive system did a back-flip.

"Taste it, taste it." His mouth opened wide in enthusiasm, a gold tooth glinting out. A yellow cloud of vapor reeking of fermented urine hit my face.

I stumbled out and fled.

After that, it was a long time before I saw him again-I hardly ever had reason to cross paths with him. He never came out to work. The Four Daoist Immortals hadn't touched a pickaxe or carrying pole for the last ten years or more. Apparently it made no difference what rank of cadre went to argue with them or curse them, even tie them up with rope, it was all to no avail. If the authorities threatened to lock them up in jail, they seemed delighted, since being in jail saved them the trouble of cooking for themselves. Actually by this time they hardly ever cooked anyway, and their relish of jail was just part of a scheme to take laziness to an absolute, pure extreme.

They didn't bunch together in a group at all, and never had a fixed time for eating; whenever one of them got hungry, he would disappear for a while, then return wiping his mouth, perhaps after having eaten some wild berries or bugs, or stolen a radish or some maize off someone's floor and just swallowed it down raw. For any of them, lighting a fire to cook food counted as the most incredibly laborious, unbearably tiresome thing for which they would be ridiculed by the other Daoist Immortals. None of them had any possessions, and the issue of ownership of the House of Immortals was of course extremely hazy. But neither was it the case that they owned nothing whatsoever: in Ma Ming's words, "the mountains and rivers have no owner, the idler is the master of all." They wandered around happily the whole day long, playing chess, humming operas, surveying the scenery, climbing up high to admire the view, taking in all that lay around, swallowing up the new and the old; it was as if they were borne aloft on the wind, freed from this world, had taken wing and become immortal. Those working on the land down below couldn't suppress their smiles when they first saw them standing on the mountains. The Daoist Immortals saw things differently, and instead laughed at the plodding work of the villagers, day in, day out, eating to work, working to eat, the old working for their sons, sons working for their grandsons, one generation after another suffering like beasts of burden-was this not pitiful? Even if they accumulated ten thousand strings of cash, a person could never wear more than five feet of cloth, or eat more than three meals a day, and how could this possibly compare with courting the friendship of the sun and moon, with taking the heavens and earth as their abode, enjoying beautiful scenery and experiences in luxurious leisure!

Later on, people were no longer surprised to see them in broad daylight just standing still, looking around, and took no notice of them.

The Daoist priest among the Four Daoist Immortals sometimes went to distant parts to perform a few rites. One Hu Erce once went to the county seat to beg and didn't return to the village for a month or more. There began to be talk in the county that it looked very bad if Maqiao people were going into town to beg for food. The village should impose strict controls and give assistance to those with real economic problems-people couldn't starve to death under socialism. The old village leader Uncle Luo had no alternative but to send the accountant Ma Fucha over to the House of Immortals with a basket of grain from the granary.

Ma Ming was an extremely unyielding kind of person, and just glared and said: "Nay. This is the blood and sweat of the common people-how can it be right for you to give it away out of pity?"

There was in fact something in what he said.

Fucha had no choice but to carry the basket of grain back.

Ma Ming didn't eat food that had been cadged, he didn't even use other people's water. He hadn't dug stones or hauled mud for the village well, so there was no way he would draw water from it. Off he'd go, wooden bucket in hand, to a stream two or three li down the road, often so exhausted the blue veins on his forehead bulged out, taking huge panting breaths, all the bones in his body twisted into one chaotic mass under the weight of the water bucket. Every few steps he'd have to rest, moaning and wailing, nose and mouth distorted into unrecognizable shapes. When they witnessed this, people did manage a little sympathy: the well was for all the villagers, how could we grudge you a mouthful of water? He would grind his teeth ferociously and say "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."