The salt merchant rushed forward to fan him.

Dai Shiqing let out a yawn and waved his hand; I know, he said.

His words were very veiled. But for the salt merchant to get this much out of him was no mean feat, and when he returned home he in fact discovered that the beggars had already scattered, with only four self-styled Five Pockets beggars remaining, stuffing their faces around a table of wine and meat; they were just stoking up for later, nothing excessive.

The salt merchant smilingly told them to eat more, poured wine for them himself.

It was no simple matter for Dai Shiqing to achieve such strict, orderly control over the comings and goings of vagrant beggars. Apparently, the original Nine Pockets had been a cripple from Jiangxi, a man of astonishing courage, a man of iron who surpassed all others in the beggars' gang. But he was also a crooked individual, who'd collected in too many of the takings; when dividing up the beggars' land all the best land went to his nephews-the most fertile plots, in other words, were never fairly-allocated. This was more than Dai Shiqing, at that time of the Seven Pockets rank, could bear, and finally one dark night, he and two other brothers under his leadership pounded this Nine Pockets to death with bricks. After he became the Nine Pockets, matters were managed more justly than under the previous dynasty: the beggars' fields were redivided, fertile land was balanced out with barren, and everything rotated at set times so that no one lost out and everyone had an opportunity to "rinse bowls" with prosperity. He also ruled that if members of the gang were ever ill and couldn't work in the fields, they could eat off common land and draw a guaranteed allowance from him; this, in particular, won him the unanimous gratitude of gang members.

Old Master Nine Pockets was a beggar not only of scruples, but also of talent. By the river was situated a Five Lotus Zen temple in possession of a relic that had been requested back from Putuo Shan (a Buddhist mountain in eastern China); the incense attendants were doing very well out of it and, from the looks of it, some of the monks were growing plumper and plumper. Afraid of offending the Buddha, no one had ever come to beg a bowl of rice, and likewise no one would dare take anything by force. Unafraid of evil spirits, Old Master Nine Pockets Dai was determined to get a slice of this pie. He headed off alone and asked to see the Master Abbot, saying that he didn't believe the relic was really stored in the temple and that he wanted to see it with his own eyes. The monk didn't put up any opposition, and with great care took the relic out of its glass bottle and placed it in his hands. Without another word, he swallowed the relic down in one gulp, at which the abbot began shaking all over with fury, grabbed hold of him by the collar and started to beat him.

"Terribly hungry, I was, just had to eat something," he said.

"I'll beat you to death, you scum!" The monks brandished their staffs in agitation.

"Don't you think that if you keep beating me like this, you'll make such a racket everyone in the street will come and see you bald coots have lost the relic?" he smartly, threateningly pointed out.

And so the monks didn't dare raise a hand against him, but simply stood around him in circles, on the verge of tears, so they seemed.

"How about this: you give me thirty silver dollars and I'll give you the relic back."

"How will you give it back?"

"That's not for you to worry about."

His antagonists didn't have that much faith in what he said, but having no choice in the matter they swiftly produced the silver dollars. After checking over each and every one, Dai Shiqing graciously pressed this small gift to his bosom, then produced a croton berry he was carrying on him-a kind of strong laxative.

After he'd swallowed the croton, with a roll of his eyes he soon released behind the Buddha Hall a large pool of diarrhea, the stench from which assaulted heaven itself. The Master and a few of his subordinates finally fished the relic out from amongst the mass of diarrhoea, washed it clean with fresh water and placed it once more in its glass bottle, giving thanks to heaven and earth.

After this, nothing lay beyond his skills in begging or cadging; his fame grew and grew, and his power spread to Luoshui, in Pingjiang County. Even colleagues of rank similar to Nine Pockets from the great port city of Wuhan came from all that way to call on him, to repeat over and over how they revered him as Master. He'd burn a piece of tortoiseshell to divine when was the best time and which direction was most auspicious for begging, and no one who went out following his directions failed to make money. When people in the town held weddings or funerals, the place of guest of honor at the banquet was always reserved for him. If he didn't appear, people would worry that the meal wouldn't proceed peacefully, that beggars would come and disrupt the feast. One Mr Zhu, someone who'd been in government, even presented him with a plaque inscribed with a couplet in black and gold characters, made of high-quality pear-blossom wood and so heavy that several people were needed to carry it.

The two couplets ran thus:

Public opinion is as fleeting as the clouds and rain Both rich and poor are the same to the beggar whose mind is vaster than the universe.

The horizontal inscription was: "a clear heart purifies the world," with Old Master Nine Pockets' name inlaid within.

After Old Master Nine Pockets had been presented with this plaque by the government official, he bought a luxurious, blue-bricked residence with four wings and three entrances, made loans and received visitors, and took four wives. Now, of course, he didn't need to go out begging every day, except for the first and fifteenth of every month when he would make an imperial obeisance and take a turn around the streets, behaving, in total earnestness, just as his subordinates did. This kind of behavior might have seemed a little unnecessary, but those who knew him well knew that he simply couldn't not go begging; if, apparently, ten days or a couple of weeks passed without him begging, his feet swelled up, and if three or five days passed without him going barefoot, his feet would break out in red itchy blotches that he'd be scratching day and night until he drew blood.

He attached the greatest importance of all to begging on the thirtieth day of the last lunar month. Every year on this day, he would refuse all banquet invitations and forbid any fires to be lit at home, would order his four wives each to take off their padded silks, each to put on tattered items of clothing; each would pick up a bag or a bowl and go out begging on her own. They could only eat what they brought back from their begging. When Tiexiang was only three years old, she'd been scolded and beaten, forced to follow him tearfully out the door and beg for food in snow and wind that cut right through you, knocking on door after door, kowtowing as soon as someone appeared.

If the youth of today didn't understand what suffering was, he said, what would become of them later?

He also said that it was a pity, a real pity that most people knew about the delicacies that came of the mountains and seas, but knew not that the fruits of begging tasted sweetest of all.

He was later classified by the Communist Party as a "Rich Peasant Beggar" because he both exploited his employees (he exploited all the beggars below the rank of Seven Pockets) and was a dyed-in-the-wool beggar himself (even though only on the thirtieth of the last month); and so this rather unsatisfactory term had to do. On the one hand, he possessed a fired-brick mansion complete with four wives, on the other he still went around often barefoot and dressed in tatters-this fact had to be acknowledged somehow.