In another letter, he wrote that Maqiao people used to say that people who "read books" (a phrase which in Chinese also means, more generally, "study" or "learn") "asked books"-this was what his dad used to say. Read, ask, read, ask: if you don't ask, how can you read (and learn)? "Reading books," by comparison, was now a fairly meaningless term for learning, as it manifested a tendency to overemphasize mechanical memorizing and rote learning. He recommended that schools all over the country revive the phrase "ask books" as a phrase more benef- aal to national modernization.

: One night, wails and screams suddenly rose and fell throughout the village, joined a moment later by a chorus of dogs-something serious must have happened. I climbed out of bed and opened the door to peer into the hazy moonlight out of which Wanyu's piercing voice was screeching terrifyingly. A big mountain pig, it turned out, had snuck into the village, been hacked at and walloped by the men, leaving a trail of blood and a few pig bristles in its wake, before running off into the darkness. The men all said it was a great pity and released another round of combative yells at the dim black mountain.

Every door had been flung open, all the men had ransacked their houses for weapons and run out; even Wanyu, with his watersnake waist and girl's voice, had wrapped his fingers around a wood axe and was looking everywhere along with everyone else. This was nothing unusual, Fucha said, somewhat out of breath. Whenever any Master Black, any wild thing came into the village, it took one shout and everyone's doors were flung open. No one could keep their door shut at a time like this, and keep face.

They called all mountain pigs "Master Black."

After a round of yells, followed by round upon round of billowing echoes, everyone concluded there was no hope that night and finally dispersed disconsolately back to their homes. When, half asleep, I'd reached the eaves of our house, I was frightened almost out of my wits by a big black thing I glimpsed lurking under my window. After I'd yelled out to a few of the other Educated Youth, I realized it hadn't moved in ages; when I plucked up courage to go in a bit closer, still it didn't move. A nudge with my foot revealed it to be not a mountain pig, but a creaking bundle of firewood.

I was covered in cold sweat.

: When Maqiao people said "chase the meat," they meant go hunting; "make shoes" meant bring down the sword; "invite guests" meant poison; "ride in a sedan" meant dig a traphole; "whistle to heaven" meant scattered gunfire, and so on. They suspected animals of being fluent in humanspeak and said that when hunting, even if you were inside a building, you had to use code language to guard against indiscretions on which your quarry could eavesdrop.

It was particularly imperative that direction words be rearranged: "north" actually meant "south," "east" meant "west" (and vice versa). That's why people banged gongs and shouted when they hunted Master Black, creating a man-made cacophony to conceal the direction of traps or guns, and used a prearranged code language, shouting out east while attacking west, mixing true with false, all to confuse the animal.

Mou lisheng knew all this perfectly well but he didn't take it in properly and sometimes things didn't quite click into place in his head when it came to the crunch. He was in the middle-school class of 1982, one year above me, and we were sent down to the countryside together. Once, when we were coming back from the banks of the Luo River carrying rice seedlings we'd bought, he said he wanted to get back extra early to wash his shoes and rushed on ahead alone, disappearing in the blink of an eye. We grumbled at how annoying he was: what did he want to wash his shoes for? When'd he ever washed his shoes before? The thing was, we were worried in case someone couldn't keep going on the way back; as he was the strongest, he'd have felt obliged to lend a hand. In any case, whether he helped out or not, he didn't have to scurry off so fast, like a thief-it tired a person out.

Mou had, indeed, never washed his shoes: whenever he discovered his foot slipping on something inside his shoe, he'd tie his shoes together by the laces, dangle them in the stream that flowed between fields, then pull them out a few days later, dry them in the sun and start wearing them again. He said this was the automatic shoe-washing method. Needless to say, shoes washed in this way still stank horribly and whenever a host gestured he should remove his shoes, anyone standing by would exit at top speed after just one sniff.

Our conjectures weren't proved wrong: as we suspected, he didn't go and wash his shoes. Not only that, when we got home his seedling basket was nowhere to be seen-in other words, he hadn't gotten back yet. As the afternoon wore on, even the stragglers returned and we managed to plant out several paddies of seedlings, without sight nor sound of him. When it'd got dark, we heard heavy footsteps on the road, sounds of breathing like the wheezing of a bellows, before finally, thank goodness, he collapsed to the ground as if there were a stone in his stomach. Covered in mud, barely half the rice seedlings in his load left hanging precariously off the pole, he tripped and stumbled over himself, unable to put one foot in front of another. He was not amused: "This damned turtle place with these damned turtle people! They talk crap! Sent me on a wild-goose chase over the mountains! I almost stepped in a trap! I'll stick all your grannies!" (see the entry "Stick[y]")

I didn't know who he was swearing at.

We asked him what'd happened, what he'd been playing around at all day. His face clouded with anger, he ignored everyone and walked to his room to hurl things around. It took us ages to discover that what he'd done was forget the locals' habit of reversing directions. He hadn't really got used to the local accent, either: he'd be all right as long as he didn't need to ask the way, but as soon as he asked he'd be bound to go wrong. So he'd hauled a heavy load of seedlings to Shuanglong Bow to the north of Maqiao, then carried them to Longjia Sands to the south of Maqiao, finally tramped all over the mountains till it was almost dark. A local he passed finally suspected he hadn't caught on, and reminded him about the direction rule. He'd almost keeled over with rage.

We all laughed-a lot.

After the peasants found out, they laughed even more. "As he's just a big lump of flesh that can't understand human speech," said Uncle Luo, "we should call him Master Black."

Since there were fewer and fewer wild pigs on the mountains, the term Master Black had long fallen into disuse, but Mou Jisheng enabled it to stage an unexpected comeback by changing its meaning. Normally, when Mou Jisheng went out to work he didn't wear a bamboo hat and bared his upper body to the sun's violent rays, burning his muscular back deep black; when he ran, his upper body rippled in dark waves, so the nickname Master Black seemed to suit his appearance.

He had a strong physique and liked wrestling with anyone on hand: he particularly enjoyed giving the local "turtle people" a good thrashing. While the turtle people carried two baskets of grain, he'd carry four, divided between two or three carrying poles; once this had produced open-mouthed shock from bystanders, he'd set them down and preen himself, panting with the effort. While the turtle people wore cotton jackets, he'd wear shorts in snowy weather so cold it turned your lips purple; once bystanders had expressed shocked admiration, he'd finally yield (with a teeth-gritted show of reluctance) to general persuasion and go inside. He liked playing basketball and on hot summer days he wouldn't rest at noon but instead would brave the violent sun on the drying terrace to knock a ball around, working up a full sweat even without a basket. The weather was so hot even the crickets, toads, and chickens were silent and only the thump of his ball reverberated throughout the village. The peasants clicked their tongues in awe.