The cadre beamed all over to hear this: Uncle Luo really was a poor old peasant, he said, his thinking really was on a higher level, see how well, how deeply he brings things together? Studying understanding, reasoning, strength.

I secretly admired how Uncle Luo adapted to circumstances, how his phrases came out so fully formed: though he always looked drowsy and sleepy-eyed, he produced sentence after sentence that directly hit the spot for his listener. I later found out that was the sort of person he was, never angry with his fellow villagers, never stuck for words: if he saw a person he'd speak to them, if he saw a ghost he'd divine them, and always come out with what they wanted to hear. If he bumped into someone who bred pigs, he'd say breeding pigs was good: "You can eat your own pigs wherever you want, whenever you want, no need to go and push in the line at the butcher's, eh?" If he bumped into someone who didn't breed pigs, he'd then say not breeding pigs was good: "When you want to eat meat, you take your money to the butcher's and cut some off, that's it, as much as you want, no short-changing! No need to wear yourself out breeding pigs, eh? Three slops every day, you've got to make sure the pig's full before you are, wears a person ragged, that does!" When he bumped into someone who'd had a little boy, he'd say boys were best: "You can rely on a boy to get on with things, hauling stuff, looking after the oxen, you're really lucky." When he bumped into someone who'd had a little girl, he'd say girls were best: "Take a daughter-in-law, lose a son, marry a girl, gain a bridegroom. When d'ycm last see a boy that's good to his parents? All well and good, they are. But it's always girls who care about their moms and their dads, you'll have baba cakes to eat, shoes and socks to wear, congratulations, congratulations."

Backwards and forwards he'd talk, not necessarily in a phoney way: his sincerity, honesty and forceful eloquence would show in every sentence, the earnest solemnity written all over his face. Maqiao people said he "spoke the Dao." The Dao was Daoism, the Way oiyin and yang. First yes then no, now this then that, the Way is essentially a flexible whole lacking any tangible extreme, always expressible with clarity, and with no clarity at all.

He had no male offspring himself, only an adopted boy from Pingjiang County. According to local custom, the first guest to enter the house after the birth of a child was the "birth-meeting godfather" or "birth-meeting godmother." Many years ago, when Uncle Luo had gone to Pingjiang to peddle fir-tree resin, he'd turned up at someone's house by the roadside to beg for a mouthful of water and just so happened to barge in on the birth festivities; he thus became a godfather, and every time after that he went to Pingjiang he'd remember to bring his godson a bag of sweet-potato pieces. He'd never imagined this godson would later enter the Red Army and rise to the rank of general, and after he moved to the city he even invited Uncle Luo over to live in Nanjing. This was no blessing, Uncle Luo said: as soon as he set foot on the great quayside at Nanjing, he was taken into a little car by the general and his wife; as soon as the car started moving, heaven and earth started spinning and he'd had to scream to be let out. In the end, the general had no choice but to accompany him on foot, the car following slowly behind.

Neither could he get used to the way the general's home didn't have a fireplace, or a toilet bucket. You could've grown a fine garden of vegetables on the patch of land behind the house. With great effort he dug it over, leveled it out, but couldn't find the toilet bucket. But when he took to collecting dung in a bucket and enamel jar, the general's wife and her two daughters felt moved to hold their noses, and wail and moan about his lack of hygiene, of civilization. In high dudgeon by this point, he refused to eat for a whole day until the general was forced to buy an airline ticket to send him back to Maqiao.

"Lazy!" he shook his head, referring to his two god-granddaughters, "Too scientific (see the entry "Science") they are, just useless lumps of flesh; they can't feed pigs, can't spin silk, how'll they ever get to place a pot for their husband's family?"

I'd heard that the general sent him money at New Year's and on other festivals, and couldn't help asking enviously about it.

"What d'you mean, a lot of money? Stingy, very, very stingy." He dug his tobacco out of his cloth bag and blinked energetically as he mombled: "It's just… just… three or four yuan."

"So little?"

"Would I be telling lies, at my age? By my little sister's earwax-I swear that's how much!"

"I won't get anything out of you at land reform!"

"You come and search my home, search my home!"

I was really quite interested in him at the time, as I felt he truly embodied the essence of his simple, hardworking, poor old peasant class (unwilling to enjoy the easy life in the city) and possessed a glorious past (as exemplified by his close relations with the Red Army) that I hoped I could write into his speech. Little had I imagined that as soon as we got into details, he'd suddenly start speaking the Dao, until I was utterly lost in a fog of incomprehension. He'd praise the Red Army, would always be praising the Red Army, on and on until he changed tone and said the Red Army was totally rotten: there'd been a platoon leader who'd had local connections, sworn brothers, and whom the newly arrived company commander had killed as a counterrevolutionary. The company commander was only sixteen, and not too tall, so when he cut the head off, he'd had to jump up to do it, hacking so much that the blood spurted up to the sky, and then he stuck his face into the neck to drink the blood while it was hot-terrifying stuff. When he got onto the subject of class enemies, he even wept reactionary tears. "What'd Bandit Ma done wrong? A decent, honorable farmer, he was, salt of the earth. Such a pity, he went to all that trouble to surrender, and you all wanted him to surrender, then when he surrendered you said he'd surrendered falsely and made him swallow opium, a terrible business that was…"

He wiped his nose with the palm of his hand.

I had to restrain him: "What're you crying about? You're all mixed up, that was a revolutionary operation when the Communist Party purged bandits and tyrants, what was unfair about what happened to Bandit Ma?"

"I… shouldn't cry?" He was a little uncomprehending.

"Of course you shouldn't cry. You shouldn't cry. You're a poor peasant. Think about it, who were you crying for just then?"

"This head of mine's no use anymore. I can't say what I do say, but you tell me I've got to talk!"

"Now that's not quite right, some bits you said very well."

When he went to relieve himself, he was gone half an hour, which struck me as a little strange. When he returned, I guided him onto recalling some of the crimes of the Guomindang reactionaries, got him to drink some water, calm himself, then begin again. It was only then that he recovered his identity as a poor peasant. He spoke of the extermination of Communists by the GMD, a vicious business that was. Even women and children had been killed together, three-year-old kids grabbed and hurled at walls, their heads shattering before they managed even a groan. Some were thrown into kilns and burned, their skin and flesh stinking for three whole days and nights. He spoke of Pock-marked Lu, who'd probably been a GMD ringleader, the most treacherous double-dealer of them all: he'd take Red Army livers and lungs, secretly mix them up in a big pot of beef and make everyone eat. He, Luo Yuxing, unaware of this at first, only found out after he'd eaten, when he vomited till his guts almost turned over…

He'd done a month in the Red Army as well, then returned home after dropping out. Pock-marked Lu'd almost had his liver and lungs, but fortunately he sold a coffin he'd prepared for his grandmother, held a three-table banquet in atonement, and begged two people to be his guarantors-even so, he only just escaped with his life.