When taking a rest on the burial ground, Maqiao men would eye the tangled mass of skeletons, keeping as far away as possible, an odd blankness in their eyes. They'd all beg Wanyu to sing something-most likely as a way of bolstering their courage. Wanyu would curl himself up under an earthen step out of the wind, wipe a handful of snot from his frozen red nose and slowly sing this verse:

: During the great road-works campaign, Zhaoqing was the least popular person in the workers' shed. People said when he turned up at the construction site, he brought nothing with him save his one naked dragon. He treated everyone else's belongings as common property. If, when mealtime was approaching, you discovered your chopsticks were gone, nine times out of ten he'd got there first and walked off with them, and was shoveling his food in with them right there and then. If you discovered your towel had gone, it would be him who'd got his paws on it and was wiping clean his bony chest or flat nose with it. The Educated Youth objected both to his flame-yellow teeth and to his long nasal hairs, but took particular exception to his stealing their towels. When you'd grabbed the towel back, even when you'd scrubbed at it violently with soap several times over, you'd still worry his nostril filth was left on the towel.

He was as thick-skinned as they came, and would just laugh it off, or even have a go at the other person for being mean. Sometimes he'd even be shamelessly vulgar: "I didn't wash my wife's crotch with it-what're you so upset about?"

Everything came back to crotches with Shortie Zhao. If someone's nose was bleeding: Has your period come? he'd say. If someone went for a pee: Bringing baldy out to see the sun? he'd ask. He could tell these two jokes a hundred times without getting tired of them, or sensing anything at all boring or repetitive about them.

He'd also bring up the subject of his son Three Ears, about how this unfilial son of his had seduced and eloped with Tiexiang, "Before I'd had a chance, he got right in there and screwed that city woman-furious, I was!"

It was the female Educated Youth who took the greatest exception to him. Whenever they came out to work, they never wanted to be put with him.

At home, he'd never used soap. But he wouldn't let other people keep anything special for themselves, wouldn't let there be anything in the world he couldn't try himself. His interest in soap didn't take too long to develop and when he stole a towel he'd always nab the soap while he was about it. He'd get well into his washing, foaming up a huge basin of bubbles for one mandarin jacket-infuriating for the soap's owner.

When Mou Jisheng got back from work and discovered the piece of soap he'd just bought had shrunk almost beyond recognition to a tiny lump, he couldn't stop himself getting angry. "You scumbag, Shortie Zhao, don't you have any sense of right and wrong? Stealing other people's property is against the law, don't you know that?"

Zhao pulled a long face: "What're you shouting about? I'm a grandfather, my grandsons tend cows and gather wood, is using a bit of your soda (see the entry "Rough") against the law?"

"But why're you using it? I want compensation! Compensation from you!"

"I'llgive you compensation, if that's what you want! D'you think I can't afford a bit of soda? I'll give you ten bits. What a fuss!"

"Your dragon, you'll give him compensation," some bystander snickered.

Zhao's face went burning red: "Reckon I can't pay him back? My sow's just had piglets, they're eating a pot of slops every day-any day now, they'll be out of the pen."

His antagonist still wanted to seek truth from facts: "You wouldn't want to pay me back even if your sow shat gold."

"I'll pay, I'll pay! I'll pay him back with my pants."

Mou Jisheng sprang to his feet: "I don't want your pants, d'you think I can wear those pants of yours?"

"What're you talking about? I got them made less than a month ago."

"They're like women's pants, there's no opening to piss or shit."

Mou Jisheng had the utmost contempt for the pants the peasants wore: tied together with a piece of grass string, they had no leather belt or belt hoops, and absolutely no shape at all, just two baggy tubes they were, the back identical to the front. People were always swapping them from front to back, so the bottom often ended up at the front, ballooning out and making people feel as if their lower bodies were heading in the opposite direction from their torsos.

"Well, what d'you want to do about it then?"

Unable to think of anything even remotely appealing in the possession of Shortie Zhao, an exasperated Mou Jisheng had to postpone settlement over the soap till later.

It was then that we realized why Maqiao people called Zhaoqing "Old Forder." Old Forder meant old miser, or stingy devil. In Maqiao vocabulary, a "ford" is the opposite of a "rock." "Rock" implies stupid, or straight-as-an-arrow honest, something mountainlike, while "ford" implies cunning, shrewd, watery: both meanings echo the ancient saying "the benevolent love mountains, the wise love water." Bearing in mind that in ancient times communications, commerce, calculations, and plans only came with the presence of flowing water, the word "ford" quite logically came to describe those who are calculating.

During the few days I shared a bed with Zhaoqing, it was the grinding of his teeth, more than anything else, that drove me mad. No one knew what grudge he was bearing, or against whom, but all night, every night, he'd grind away, as if masticating on some stubborn, unyielding, unchewable mass of glass or nails, and the whole of the workers' shed shook with him. Even insomniacs several sheds away must've been ground down and chewed up by his teeth. I noticed that a lot of people got up in the mornings with red eyes, swollen eyelids, hair sticking up and limbs shaky, utterly weary, painfully exhausted, as if they'd been through a massive trauma.

But Zhaoqing acted as if nothing had happened, bouncing along with a quick, light step, sometimes even flashing a grinning mouthful of yellow teeth, no trace left of the grievance he'd been venting all night.

I raised the issue with him. He seemed rather pleased with himself: "You didn't sleep well? I wonder why I didn't hear anything? I didn't even turn over once, that's how well I slept."

"You must've had a stroke, either that or your stomach's full of bugs!"

"I should go see the doctor. Lend me a bit of money, three yuan, five yuan, whatever you have'll do."

Borrowing money again. After bitter past experience of lending money and not getting it back, I exploded at him: "Still got the cheek to ask? What d'you think I am, a bank?"