He himself no longer felt he could stay on as accountant; he handed over the account books and they found someone else. Afterwards, he kept ducks for a while but they were struck down by duck plague. He studied carpentry for a time but couldn't get the hang of it. Basically, nothing worked out for him, and he ended up rushing into marriage with a woman whose hair was a permanent bird's nest.

I was amazed that a mouth-ban could affect a person like that for decades. Couldn't he make up for it in some way? Couldn't he begin again?

In the opinion of most Maqiao people, he couldn't. The matter was already past, and just as you couldn't cry over spilt milk, Fucha's mouthban would be there forever; the longer it was there the bigger it got, the longer it was there the tougher it got, it would never quiet down and disappear.

The power of language infiltrates our lives deeply. Language is the source of human superiority: humans can pity animals for their lack of language and therefore for their lack of knowledge, for their inability to form societies, to acquire the enormous power of cultural accumulation and scientific progress. But the other side of the coin is that animals, unlike Fucha, will never, ever, after having shouted something improper, go into terminal decline until they've practically lost their capacity for survival. On this point, language makes humans more vulnerable than dogs.

A "mouth-ban" is a manmade convention, a framework for keeping feelings of fear and awe in place. Humans, who have used language to separate themselves from the animal world, still need to find some kind of framework for emotional expression, to give structure and solidity through commonly accepted psychological props. The way that Maqiao people laid down linguistic taboos is exactly like the way people elsewhere need rings when they marry, like a country needs a national flag, religion needs idols, humanitarianism needs stirring songs and enthusiastic speeches. As these things are passed on and inherited, they then become sacred, inviolable. Any violation on the part of their inheritors and users ceases to represent simply abuse of a piece of metal (a ring), a piece of cloth (a national flag), a piece of stone (an idol), or a few sound waves (songs and speeches), but instead becomes an insult to people's feelings: they have, to be precise, been set into some kind of emotional framework.

A totally rational being who seeks out logic and functionality alone, should consider not only Maqiao's mouth-ban, but also the sanctification of metal, cloth, stone, and sound-waves absurd-no objective logic dictates these strange psychological constructions should be thus. But this is how things have to be. People just aren't dogs, they can't regard material items as simply material. Even a totally rational being often bestows a spiritual aura on certain material items: he will, for example, separate one piece of metal (his lover's, his mother's or his grandmother's ring) from a big pile of metal objects, view it differently, imbue it with particular emotions. At this moment, maybe he's started to verge on the absurd, is no longer so rational-but he's started to act like a proper, normal person.

When a ring is no longer simply a lump of metal, rationality has ceded the field to faith, to all forms of unreasoned reasoning. The absurdity and sanctity of life join together in a bizarre fusion.

Confucius's dictum that "the true gentleman stays far from the kitchen" is, of course, a kind of emotional framework. He couldn't bear to witness the scenes of bloody slaughter that took place in the kitchen, but this didn't in the least prevent him from wolfing down meat (he had a particular fondness for lean, dried meat). The prohibition among Buddhist disciples on killing living things, even from eating meat and fish, is another kind of emotional framework. But they've failed to register that plants are also living organisms, and that, according to modern biology, although a tree can't let out a cry for help, it feels pain, has nervous reactions, and can even make quick physical actions in exactly the same way. But can we laugh at their emotional frameworks? Put another way, in what sense, to what degree, can we laugh at their forms of absurdity and hypocrisy? If we viewed things differently, if we encouraged every person, every child even, to carry out the large-scale slaughter of chicks, piglets, kittens, cygnets, and every edible living thing, if seeing children revel in such blood-letting, we felt no disquieting discomfort within, then absurdity and hypocrisy would no longer exist, to be sure, but at the same time wouldn't we have lost something else?

What should we do, then? Stop children from eating meat, from eating anything at all, or laugh at and destroy their sympathy for any beautiful living thing? This sympathy that comes from Confucius, from Buddhist disciples, and from our other cultural forbears?

It was only thinking about this that I came to understand Fucha. He hadn't retracted the curse, hadn't cut off a chicken's head and washed the threshold with chicken's blood in time to save Uncle Luo, and so was engulfed forever by an inescapable miasma of guilt.

He was totally irrational.

And totally rational.

: Fucha had been to high school and was one of the few intellectuals for miles around. Not only was he a good accountant, he could also play the flute and the huqin (the Chinese violin), was respectful and polite to the old, careful and thorough in managing affairs, and his fine, pale white face monopolized the attention of women wherever he went. He was oblivious to this and his gaze was never careless or unfocused but always projected straight out in front of him, directed at some safe, reliable target, such as fields or the faces of old people. Was it that he was unaware or that he pretended to be unaware of the whispering huddles of women, of their pretences of bashful surprise? No one had any idea.

Some women, seeing him arrive, would deliberately plant the rice seedlings sloppily, to see whether he'd take any notice. He was a cadre, of course he took notice, but-his face utterly expressionless-he'd say something like "Careful with your planting," then walk on without pausing. Another woman, seeing him approach, deliberately tripped over and scattered the basket of tea leaves on her shoulders all over the ground, crying out in pain to see whether he'd help her out. He was a cadre, of course he'd help her out, but poker-faced as ever he just lent a hand gathering the tea back into the basket, hoisted it onto her shoulder, then walked on.

He had no sense that there was someone still lying on the ground, still wiping her tears, that this was something of greater importance than tea leaves. He just said "Sorry, got to go"-this was not nearly enough, not by a long shot. Neither did he have any sense that, when women wore clothes more flowery than usual and stuck more cassia or peach-blossom flowers into their hair, this had anything to do with him.

"Use your eyes, can't you?" The women became less and less tolerant, and more and more indignant toward his cold arrogance. After a few of the locals had sought out Fucha's mother to ask about marriage and been brusquely rebuffed by Fucha, this indignation gradually took on collective proportions, spreading out from Maqiao to its environs, and became a common topic of conversation throughout the mass of unmarried girls in the area. Somethimes, when they met each other at the market, or at some mass meeting in the commune, there'd be times when they couldn't help huddling around to share their hatred of the enemy, to bad-mouth his flute, his huqin, his milky-white skin. They'd say Maqiao already had one Red-flower Daddy with Uncle Luo, looked like it had a second generation Red-flower Daddy now-no, more likely it'd produced a eunuch the emperor didn't want. They reveled in their outbursts of venom, laughed till the tears fell.