: When Maqiao people chopped firewood on the mountainside, they'd carry it home on their backs, then lay it out on the ground to dry in the sun before burning it. Wet firewood is very heavy, and carrying it on the back really bit into the shoulders. We Educated Youth later on came up with the idea of leaving the firewood, after it had been cut, to dry in the sun on the mountainside. Once it had dried, we would come back to carry it down the next time we came to cut firewood. We still carried a whole load of firewood every time, but as it was dry firewood, it was quite a lot lighter. Uncle Luo had heard that this technique was quite effective, and swapped loads with me to give it a try; eyes wide in astonishment, he agreed that it was a lot lighter.

I said that at least half the water had evaporated out.

He put my load down, then took up once more the wet firewood he had just cut and set off down the mountain. A little perplexed, I went after him to ask why he didn't give our method a try.

"People who chop wood but won't carry it have missed the whole point."

"It's not that we won't carry it, we just want to carry it a bit more scientifically."

"What d'you mean scientific? You mean lazy! Those city automobiles, railroads, flying machines of yours-name me one that hasn't been thought up by a lazybones! Who else but lazybones would've thought up such a devilish set of names?"

This outburst quite took my breath away.

He went on: "With all these scientific comings and goings, we'll all be like Ma Ming before you know it."

He was referring to the owner of the House of Immortals. Ma Ming, its resident-in-chief, had never come out to work, didn't even want to see to his own needs. Sometimes he would bring back a bit of gourd, but he was too lazy to light a fire, so he would eat it raw. He'd got used to eating things raw like this, and so when he'd scavenged out some uncooked rice, he'd put it straight into his mouth and crunch away on the grains until the corners of his mouth were a mass of powdery rice starch. People would laugh at him, but still he came up with justification after justification, saying that cooked things lacked nutritional value; that tigers and panthers in the mountains had always eaten their food raw, and see how much stronger they were than humans, how much less prone to illness-so what could be wrong with it? He never used a urine bucket either, but instead poked a hole in the wall at crotch height, and fixed a length of hollow bamboo stem leading out of the house; any urine was discharged into the stem. He considered that this method was more scientific than hauling a urine bucket: the water flow was carried along, and it was better to let things run out than have them pile up.

Once winter came, he never washed his face. A crust formed around his face, which fell off in pieces once he gave it a rub or pinched and picked at it. He wouldn't say he was afraid of cold water, but would argue that frequent washing of the face wasn't scientific-washing your face clean of its natural organic oils damaged the skin.

The absurdest thing of all was the way it took him an hour to carry a load of water back home from the stream. Particularly when going uphill, he would walk in a Z-shape, taking ages twisting and turning back and forth, then still find he was only halfway there. Onlookers idling around the hillside would watch in bemusement: wouldn't it be better if you just put down your water buckets and sang us a song? Ma Ming said: "What do you know? This is the only way to preserve your strength when walking. Zhan Tianyu built the railroad at Badaling in a Z-shape."

His listeners had no idea who on earth Zhan Tianyu was.

"How on earth would you know?" His face set into a mask of arrogant aloofness as if he disdained to waste his breath on the masses, he picked up his two buckets of water and continued on his way, twisting and turning as before, saving his precious energy all the way to the House of Immortals.

From this time on, people said that as the lazybones in the House of Immortals were each more scientific than the other, it should really become an academy of science. It's easily to imagine, then, that for Maqiao people the implications of the word "scientific," once projected onto Ma Ming, were far from positive. I suspect that henceforth they barely glanced at the pamphlets on crop-sowing distributed from above, simply ripped them up into cigarette papers, that they remained entirely indifferent to the endless broadcasts on scientific pig-feeding, that they even cut the metal wire serving as a lead to use as a hoop for the piss bucket; all this was a form of psychological inertia. To put it another way, science became an extension of the general mockery of the Daoist Immortals. There was the time a group of Maqiao lads set off to carry lime into Changle; on the highway they passed a big bus that was being repaired, which struck them as a great novelty. They gathered round, unable to help themselves from knocking at the body of the vehicle with their carrying poles until it rattled and shook, until, before they knew it, they'd bashed two dents in the body, which had been hitherto in perfectly good condition. The driver, who had been lying under the car making repairs, sprang out furiously and started cursing them, jumping up and down, spoiling for a fight, until they finally scattered. But still the Maqiao lads were unable to suppress a kind of nameless impulse, turning to shout and yell, picking up stones to hurl at the big bus after they'd fled some distance away.

They harbored no ill will toward the driver. Neither had they ever displayed any wantonly destructive tendencies: when walking past any household, for example, they'd never dream of knocking against the walls or door with their carrying poles. Why, then, could they not restrain themselves on encountering a motor vehicle? I can only suspect that underneath their joking and laughter there lay concealed a kind of unconscious loathing, a loathing of all new-fangled gadgets, of all the fruits of science, of all the mechanized oddities that came out of modern cities. In their opinion, the so-called modern city was nothing other than a great big bunch of scientific-or lazy-people.

To blame this assault on a bus on Ma Ming is, or course, rather farfetched, and not entirely fair. But the process behind understanding a word is not just an intellectual process, it's also a process of perception, inseparable from the surroundings in which the word is used and the actual events, environment, facts relating to it. Such factors often largely determine the direction in which understanding of this word proceeds. "Model Operas" (the eight revolutionary operas deemed "politically correct" during the Cultural Revolution) are an appalling concept, but someone whose memories of love or youth are interlinked with the strains of a model opera tune will perhaps feel an unstoppable surge of heightened emotion on hearing these words. "Criticism," "position," "case for investigation" are not made up of inherently evil words, but someone whose memories have been colored by the red terror of the Cultural Revolution may well start to tremble with deep, uncontrollable revulsion on hearing them. Actual understanding of these words in their final form will perhaps have a far-reaching influence on the subsequent psychological state and existential choices of a person or race, but the literal meaning of these words can't be held responsible for this understanding. Thus, the word "science" can't be held responsible for the vicious attacks on "science" expressed in the views of Uncle Luo and other Maqiao people; neither can it be held responsible for the chance encounter on the highway in which Maqiao lads picked up their carrying poles to launch a unified assault on the fruits of science.