The people standing around would fidget and mumble.

But Uncle Luo was very demanding. He wouldn't allow vagueness like this, he needed to draw even more attention to his nephew: "Stick-a-pig, haven't seen as much as a letter from him. You tell me, what use is it bringing up kids? He can't be that busy, can he? I've been to the city myself, what's to be busy about there? They just mess around from morning till night."

Still his listeners wouldn't take up the subject, exchanging covert glances among themselves.

He rubbed his chin, "But that's all well and good, I don't want him to come back to see me. What's there to see? If there's meat, don't I know how to eat it on my own? If there's cotton, don't I know how to wear it on my own?"

After having said enough, finally, about his nephew, having put on enough of a show as an elder uncle, having demonstrated enough of an elder uncle's happiness and headaches, he'd walk toward his thatched cottage, his head lowered, his hands behind his back. His spine, buckling under all those doubting gazes, hunched over as he walked.

: The commune wanted every team to nominate a model worker to study philosophy and attend meetings in the commune. Benyi was away, so it fell to Uncle Luo to take charge. After eating breakfast, he made his leisurely way to the terrace, took a few leisurely turns around it, escorted a snail that had climbed onto the terrace onto a clump of grass and that he was afraid everyone would tread on, and then assigned everyone work. He blinked the eyelids he never could completely open, bent his head to roll a cigarette out of tobacco ends and said Zhihuang, Wucheng, and Zhaoqing should go and tend the oxen, Fucha should go and lay rotted oxen manure, Yanzao, hmm, Yanzao should spread pesticide; the women and the sent-down kids should go and hoe the rape plants; model worker, ah, Wanyu'll do that.

I couldn't help laughing: "Shouldn't choosing a model worker… be put to a vote?"

Uncle Luo was surprised by this: "If Wanyu doesn't go, who'll go? His back's like a woman's, he's no good with oxen, not strong enough to lay manure, and yesterday he said his finger was swollen, to set him hoeing the rape plants'd be like setting a dragon to play the lute. I've thought about it, and there's no one else. Only he'll do."

Everyone else present felt making Wanyu the model worker was perfectly reasonable. What about Fucha? If it'd been raining, then Fucha could go and that would be that, he had a high cultural level. The problem was that the weather was fine today and there was work that had to be done. If Fucha were to go, who'd spread the manure? It was a no-win situation: if the manure wasn't spread on shoal patch (see the entry "Public Family"), how could it be ploughed tomorrow?

Pair after pair of perplexed, uncomprehending eyes stared at me. Only then did I understand that the term "model worker" meant one thing on fine days, and another on rainy days. I agreed: it had to be Wanyu.

: After Wanyu died, the hat of philosophy-studying-model-worker fell onto Uncle Luo's head. The team leader arranged that I should write the speech about his past experiences for him, and after having written it I'd read it to him sentence by sentence, get him to memorize it, then send him off to meetings in the commune or in the county to do philosophy work. The cadres said that when Wanyu had gone to the commune, he hadn't done that good a job talking philosophy; Uncle Luo, however, was elderly, had a long service record, had speech rights, had even carried out a courageous rescue at the aqueduct: the higher-ups would certainly be pleased to have him.

But Fucha also told me in confidence that although Uncle Luo was famous around here as an old revolutionary, he was a bit fuzzy in the head, and he was illiterate. As soon as he started talking, he'd mix up his sixes and sevens, his sheep and his goats-precautions would have to be taken. I had to get him to memorize the speech inside out.

It was only later that I discovered it was in fact very difficult to prevent Uncle Luo mixing up his sixes and sevens while making his philosophy report. He'd talk and talk, leaving the speech way behind him, clean forgetting everything he'd gone to so much trouble to memorize, digressing onto radishes, cabbages, tables, stools, onto who knew what. Sometimes, I considered waiting for him to find his own way back, only to discover that the more he ran on, the further he went; the further he went, the more fun he had. He'd never taken a wife, never even gone near the female sex, but this didn't stop him coming out with all sorts of risque local expressions: "like my little sister looking at a prick" (meaning "by accident"); "like making my little sister drop a baby" (meaning "to bully someone"). All this "little sister" business didn't really mesh that well with philosophy.

From the look in my eyes, he could tell there was a problem: "stick-a-pig (see the entry "Stickfy]"), have I said the wrong thing again?" he'd blink.

The more he practiced, the more anxious he got, and in the end he began to mess up as soon as he opened his mouth: "Senior officers, comrades, I, Luo Yuxing, am fifty-six years old this year…"

This didn't actually count as a mistake as such, but on instructions from the Party Branch I'd raised his age to sixty-five, so that he could be the even more outstanding embodiment of a Red old man. The philosophical significance of a sixty-five year old braving the rain to gather in the collective's harvest early was, of course, different from that of a fifty-six year old braving the rain to gather in the collective's harvest early.

I reminded him it was sixty-five: remember, the six at the beginning.

"Just listen to me talk! Ai, what use is a man when he gets old?" Ignoring my suppressed laughter, his face taking on a tragic expression, he looked around at the sky, set his concentration, then began again: "Officers, comrades, my name is Luo Yuxing, this year I'm fifty-"

"Wrong again!"

"My name is Luo Yuxing, this year… fif…"

I was on the point of despair.

He started to get a bit angry, "I'm fifty-six! Philosophy's all very well, but what's the point of changing my age? What's age got to do with philosophy?"

"Don't you want to make your deeds more moving?" I carefully explained to him the reasoning I had already explained, pointing out that an old man of seventy from Longjia Sands had made a broadcast speech about the philosophy of pig-rearing, and that fifty-six was chicken-feed compared with seventy, that it wouldn't convince anyone.

"I always knew that philosophy was a load of old garbage, just hey-eh mouths, sticking old stuff in new bottles. The Communist Party just likes sticking radishes up my little sisters' fannies-fake men, that's what that makes."

All this reactionary talk gave me a fright.

Just then a commune cadre arrived and spotted us. Going out to greet him, Uncle Luo started talking about what we'd just been doing, blinking away as if he hadn't woken up properly: "Study philosophy! Study! How could I not study? I studied half the night yesterday, the more I studied, the better it got. When the puppet government was in power I wanted to study but couldn't get as far as the school gates; the Communist Party, now, they really care about the poor and lower-middle peasants, they actually invite you to study. Studying this philosophy is studying understanding, reasoning, strength, studying at the right time, in the right way!"