: This was a kind of thin porridge, pronounced gang in Maqiao dialect (jiang in mandarin). As Maqiao was a poor mountain village short of grain, "gruel" was a pretty commonly used word.

One of the "Odes of the small states" in the Book of Odes says: "It is better to serve guests wine than gruel," and the word gruel is generally used to refer to a drink one rung below wine, such as corn soaked in water. The biography of Bao Xuan in Chapter Seventy-two of the Han History contains the phrase "wine into gruel, meat into bean leaves," referring to those who live in extravagance and luxury, treating wine like gruel, meat like the leaves on beans. From this it becomes clear how the term "gruel" has since come to refer more generally to the food and drink of the poor.

When the Educated Youth first came to Maqiao, they often misheard "eating gang (gruel)" as "eating gan (dry grain)," thus confusing it with its exact opposite. In fact, the people around here always replaced the j sound with a hard g sound: the word for river (jiang), for example, was also pronounced gang. So "eating gruel" sometimes sounded like "eating river." When the harvest was late and the pot in every household held nothing but water thickened with only a sprinkling of grain, this phrase fit perfectly well.

: Maogong's eldest son, Yanzao, was always the one who did the heavy work in the work team, hauling rotted ox manure, breaking up stones, burning charcoal, and so on. When houses were being built, he cast the earthen bricks, when there were funerals, he carried the coffins; his mouth used to hang open with exhaustion, unable to stay shut, and the blue veins on his calves bulged into great, terrifying nodules. Because of this, he'd always wear long pants, however hot the weather was, patched in layer after layer, to hide his ugly legs.

When I first met him, his old granny was still alive. His old granny was what was known in local legend as a poison woman, someone who hid deadly poisonous powder made from snakes and scorpions in cracks in her nails and tried to kill enemies or strangers by secreting it into their drinks. Such people normally used poison to avenge a grievance or, some said, to shorten other people's lives in order to lengthen their own life spans. People said that Yanzao's granny only became a poison woman after the cooperatives were set up, because of her class hatred for poor and lower-middle peasants, because she wouldn't let things lie with the Communist Party. Benyi's mother had died many years ago, and Benyi had always suspected she'd been poisoned by this devil-woman.

The wind had blown down Yanzao's thatched hut that day, and he entreated the villagers to come and help him mend it. I went along too, to help mix the putty. I caught a glimpse of this famous old woman's benign countenance as she stood over the stove tending the fire; to my amazement, it bore absolutely no resemblance to the picture of villainy painted by popular legend.

The thatch was fixed in a morning. As people were carrying their own tools back home, Yanzao ran up behind them: "Why aren't you staying to eat?" he shouted, "Why are you going without eating? What's the sense in that?"

Having smelled the fragrance of meat float out of the kitchen some time ago, I too felt there was no good reason for everyone to be going. Then I heard Fucha say that people not only wouldn't eat at his home, they wouldn't even dare touch the food bowls there. Everyone knew there was a poison woman in the family.

I moistened my lips, and slipped off home with quickened steps.

A short while later, Yanzao came pounding on the doors of houses to beg everyone once more to come and eat; he even pushed open the door of our house. Instantly thumping to his knees, he pounded out three crisp, resonant kowtows. "D'you want me to throw myself into the river? D'you want me to hang myself? Doing things for free, without getting fed, that's never been the way, not since the time of the three great emperors and five lords. You've walked over everyone in the Yanzao household today, I can't go on living, I'll just die here."

Frightened out of our wits, we quickly pulled him to his feet, saying that we'd cooked at home and hadn't planned to eat out. In any case, we hadn't done anything much, it was embarrassing to eat his food, and so on and so forth.

His face was sweating profusely with agitation; despite all this effort, he hadn't changed the mind of one single person, and was now on the verge of tears. "I know, I know, you're all afraid, afraid that old…"

"Not at all, not at all, rubbish, total rubbish!"

"Even if you don't trust that old woman, why shouldn't you trust me? D'you want me to cut out my heart, liver, and lungs, chop them into tiny pieces for you to see? Fine, if you're afraid, then don't eat. But right now, my little big brother's rinsing out the pots to cook all over again! If any of you are still worried, just go and watch her cook. This time I won't let that old woman anywhere near…"

"Yanzao, why are you so upset?"

"Generous, honorable people, please allow me to live." Saying this, he fell to his knees once more, his head pounding the floor as if he were crushing garlic with a pestle.

One by one, he begged everyone who'd helped; he ended up pounding his forehead so much it bled, and still he hadn't managed to persuade anyone. It was just as he said: he really had thrown out three whole tables of already prepared food, thrown them into a ditch, and made his sister wash rice and borrow meat again to make another three tables-by this point, it was already time to start the afternoon's work. Some time ago, he'd tied up his granny with rope, a long, long way from the cooking area, under a big maple tree in the village, making a public example out of her. Out of curiosity, I went to have a look. The old woman was wearing only one shoe and seemed to be somewhere between sleep and consciousness, her eyes slanted downwards, focused on some spot on the upper face of a stone, her toothless mouth opening and closing, listlessly producing a few indistinct sounds. She'd wet her pants and stank of sourness. A few children watched her from far-off, not without fear.

The tables of food were once more laid on the terrace in front of his house, but still there was no one to be seen. I saw Yanzao's elder sister sitting by the tables, wiping her eyes.

Finally, we Educated Youth were unable to contain our greed-and didn't much believe in evil spirits, in any case. With one of us taking the lead, a few of the lads went and enjoyed a few pieces of beef each. One of them muttered, as his mouth ran with grease, that he hardly knew what the meat tasted like: he didn't care whether he was poisoned or not, he'd quite happily die of overeating.

Probably because of this act of face-giving, Yanzao henceforth felt exceptionally indebted to us. We practically never chopped our own firewood-he'd always carry it over before it was needed. He had a unique capacity for carrying heavy loads. As I recall, his back was almost never empty: if there wasn't a carrying pole of rotted manure then there'd be a carrying pole of firewood, or the whole, sprawling mass of a threshing machine. In winter, in summer, his shoulders could never be empty, neither on fine, nor rainy days. It looked strange and awkward if he wasn't carrying something on his shoulders: like a snail without its shell, it just didn't look right. It was like a deformity that made him uneasy, that made his heels slip up when he walked-when he wasn't carrying things he really did stumble along, stubbing his toe so much that the blood throbbed inside it.