"Dear life" refers to a man's life before the age of eighteen, or a woman's life before the age of sixteen. "Full life" refers to a man's life up to the age of thirty-six and to a woman's life up to the age of thirty-two. To live this long is to live fully, and anything after that is "cheap life," worthless. By this logic, an early death is of course better, of higher value.

Xiongshi's parents had no reason to grieve.

The village women gathered around Shuishui's bed, each producing a platitude more beautiful than the last. Ah, Shuishui, your Xiongshi never went hungry, isn't that much better? Much better that your Xiongshi never felt the cold. Much better your Xiongshi never saw his dad die, his mom die, didn't go after his brothers and sisters, never saw a cloud pass over him. If heaven brought him back to life, he'd have to find a wife, set up home on his own, fight with his brothers for a patch of land one day, fight with his sisters for a bite to eat the next, row with his mom and dad in between, where was the fun in that? You know what our life's like, harvesting in the boiling heat, sun baking overhead, water steaming up below, dark both ends of the working day, soon as day breaks, it's off to the fields, you can only feel with your hands whether it's rice or grass. You know what our life's like, fixing irrigation under a full moon, shoulders rubbed raw, tramping over ice in bare feet, so cold you wet yourself. What was so great about that, hey? Your Xiongshi left before trouble came knocking at his door, he was the cat that had all the cream, then went out with a bang. He's still got his dad to weep, his mom to wail, so many uncles to give him a good send-off, it's really better this way- you've got to think of the bigger picture.

They also started to talk about an old laborer in the upper village, a destitute old man whose children had all died before him and who now lived like a dog, lame in one leg, unable even to fetch water for himself- he'd had all the trouble he was going to have. Think about it, sister, if your Xiongshi were destined to have a long life, a cheap life, wouldn't he be much worse off?

They were unified around the belief that people should die young; it was just that they were trapped, unable to die. Only Xiongshi could die good and early, only Xiongshi had this stroke of luck.

In the end, Shuishui decided to stop crying.

: When old people met each other, they would always ask "Still cheap?" meaning how were they feeling. This word was often used when inquiring about old people, for example "Yanzao's ma is still as cheap as anything, she eats two bowls of rice at a sitting."

In Maqiao language, old age is cheap life, and the longer your life the cheaper it gets. Despite this, some people still hope to live longer, until their eyesight fails, their hearing goes, their teeth have fallen out, their spirit has left them, they're bedridden, can't recognize anybody-living is still living.

Probably thanks to the efforts of some well-intentioned types, the character for "cheap" (pronounced pan) is hardly ever used when this expression is seen written down. When recording dialect, "cheap"pan is usually changed to the homophonic character pan meaning healthy. "Are you healthy" has a much nicer ring to it and has passed into everyday usage, to alleviate the harsh pitch of human life.

By this linguistic reckoning, Maqiao's cheapest life was a destitute cripple, called Old Pa Zisheng. He himself had no idea how many years he had lived-in any case he'd outlived his sons, grandsons, greatgrandsons… Even though his grandsons had met a premature death, his life still limped on. His ability to stay alive was starting to make him rather anxious: when he made up his mind to hang himself, the rope broke; having made up his mind to throw himself into the pond, he jumped only to discover that the water was too shallow. One evening, as he called on the Zhihuang household to borrow a bowl, the door was opened by Shuishui. Raising the lamp in her hand, she first saw the face of the old man, then taking a closer look, discovered that behind the old man were two round, shining balls, like two lamps. Rather surprised by this, she raised the lamp even higher. Her whole body went weak: they weren't lamps! It turned out that a large, downy head was breathing raspily behind Pa Zisheng, its towering spine dimly swaying in the darkness.

Tiger! Those two lamps they're tiger's ayaaaaaaaes!

Shuishui couldn't remember whether or not she had in fact cried out; all she could remember was yanking the old man inside, then bolting the door tightly, sticking in a broom then two hoes for good measure.

When her breathing had once more returned to normal, she sneaked a look out of the window, but the field was completely empty except for a faint suspension of moonlight. The two lamps had already gone.

The tiger never reappeared; most probably, it had just come upon Maqiao by chance. Far from rejoicing at this event, Pa Zisheng was filled with sorrow. "You see how cheap I am? Even tigers reckon there's no meat on me, they follow me along but can't even be bothered to take a bite. Where's the good in someone like me staying alive, hey?"

: Shuishui was from Pingjiang County but was married in faraway Maqiao, on this side of the Luo River. Her little sister, it was said, was a famous actress in Pingjiang, a good opera singer, whose dainty lotus-flower gait had won her quite a following. It was also said that in the past Shuishui had been even more beautiful and talented than her sister, it was just that once she'd given birth to Xiongshi, her back began to ache, and her voice cracked and broke; as soon as her mouth opened, it produced a sound of breath hissing through her bronchial tubes, and any words came out harsh and splintered. From then on, her clothes were always in disarray and her gown was never buttoned up right, neither at the top nor bottom. Her hair was wild, her face unwashed; her features were always ringed in black. She would often weave cloth, hunt out pig fodder, sift rice chaff with women much older than she was; listening to them coughing up phlegm, clearing their noses, she probably didn't have to worry about her own appearance, didn't need to mark in any special way the passing of those drab, gloomy days.

Once females moved to their husband's house, particularly after they had had children, they became women, wives, and stopped taking any great care of themselves. However, it did seem that Shuishui's appearance was excessively unkempt, as if it was some kind of drive to abuse herself intentionally, a drive to hold herself hostage in obstinate retaliation against someone or other. There were plenty of times when she went out to look for pig food, hips swivelling to both sides, tramping along in a worn-out pair of men's shoes, yelling out raucously "heyaheyaheya" to chase the chickens out of the vegetable patch, the deep red menstruation stain in the crotch of her pants on full display to all she passed. It would be hard to say this was workaday carelessness.

After Xiongshi died, Shuishui became a dream-woman, what's known in Mandarin as a mentally ill person: her face often wore a flickering smile and she developed an absolute intolerance of potato plants- one look and she'd want to rip them out by the roots, as if she believed that her son was hiding under the ground and all she had to do was grab the potato plants, pull them up, then she could pull her son out of the earth. Usually, she was rather better in the mornings than in the afternoons, better on clear days than on rainy. At these times, her gaze was clear, and the way she behaved toward people and things and bustled around inside and out wasn't that different from ordinary people. She was, at best, someone of few words. Her worst, most agitated times came at dusk on rainy days. As the clouds drew in ever more gloomily, her breathing became rougher and heavier, and anything-the sound of the water drip-drip-dripping off the eaves, a withered leaf flying in the window, catching sight of the base of a wall or foot of the bed permeated with damp, the gradual blurring of neighbors' faces into darkness, or the melancholy cackle of ducks and chickens suddenly coming out of any part of the house-could send her into a state of trance. Moonlight was even worse: one glimpse of moonlight outside the window sent her body into a fit of uncontrollable trembling, she would put on a flowered head scarf, take it off, then put it back on, repeating this countless times.