His singing of Peking operas and model operas was hugely renowned, and whenever there was a joint performance being given in Pingjiang County, he'd be asked to help out.

I only got a proper look at him after he graduated and returned to the village. He had a round babyface, as if he hadn't yet lost his milk teeth, that bore no particular resemblance to his elder brother Yanzao's sharp mouth and monkeylike features. After watching me play a few games of chess, he coolly took to the board himself. I dropped my guard, thinking only to give him a lesson: within a few moves he'd decimated my pieces, ravaged my defences. In another game, he plundered and pillaged to left and to right with the ruthlessness of a grand master, an implacable opponent he was, cutting me no slack, relentless in pursuit and fearsome in attack, destroying at root and branch, prepared to massacre mistakenly rather than let a single piece escape.

I suffered, in secret amazement, a devastating defeat.

"I'm so sorry, I'm no good, no good at all," he said humbly. But his forehead bore a wrinkle of undisguisable satisfaction.

Afterwards, in secret, I furiously researched through chess manuals, but when I asked him for a rematch, he was full of excuses, having to fetch a prescription or work outside the village; he hid himself far, far away, denying me an opportunity to avenge my humiliation. I could imagine, when he saw for himself my anxious impatience, my desperation, the delight on his face once he turned his back.

He didn't work much in the village or spend much time at home; he didn't even come back when his old mother was seriously ill. When the team leader allocated irrigation repair duties to everyone, his were always done for him by Yanzao. Only Yanzao ever appeared on his family's plot of land. First, he studied to be a painter, and we once met on the road, him carrying a bag of tools and covered in paint from head to foot. When I next saw him, a while on, he'd changed to studying Chinese medicine: quite the expert he looked, treating people with acupuncture and taking their pulse. Afterwards, he studied portrait painting and carving as well-it was said he sold paintings and calligraphy in Changle and in the county, as well as carved Chairman Mao's poems in plain and cursive calligraphy on customers' fountain pens, while-you-wait and at a fair price. In short, there was nothing much he couldn't turn his hand to, nothing that could prevent him from showing off the superlative strangeness of his talent. The fame of his strange talent spread far and wide until everyone, both old and young, knew of him. Even though he was a "traitor to the Chinese" (see the entry "Traitor to the Chinese"), Maqiao people never bore any ill feeling toward him and were always very tolerant of his frequent mysterious journeying outside the village.

Quite the contrary: he was the pride of Maqiao, the communal pride of all the villages and stockades massed around the environs of Maqiao Bow. If rumor spread that such-and-such a place had produced a university student: what of it? Maqiao people would snort. What a pity Yanwu was a traitor to the Chinese, otherwise he could have studied at three or four universities. If rumor spread that someone from such-and-such a place had been recruited as a country irrigation technician and was working for the state: What-someone like that gets to be a technician? Maqiao people would snort. What a pity Yanwu's class status was too high, otherwise this nobody wouldn't have had a chance.

Once, when Benyi's child had been ill for ages and showed no sign of recovery, Benyi made plans to send him to the county seat. Maqiao people concluded that he was sure to die: if Yanwu's prescription couldn't cure him, what use would it be to send him to the county seat? Sending good money after bad, that was. Just two weeks later, Benyi's kid was cured, in the county seat. Still, Maqiao people weren't surprised, weren't lost for words. It wasn't that Yanwu's prescription was no good, they said, nothing of the sort: the only problem was that the prescription hadn't been made up properly in the countryside. Otherwise there'd have been no need at all for Benyi's child to go to the county seat, using all that money up and suffering like he did: he even went under the knife, had his heart, liver, and lungs dug out to be washed like pickled vegetables, must've taken a good ten years off his life expectancy.

Benyi himself fully concurred with this.

Benyi, the Party Branch Secretary and an enemy of Yanwu's father, endlessly repeated how Yanwu was even more strangely talented than his old man, how he definitely had the makings of a future counterrevolutionary, of a convict. But this didn't have the slightest effect on his worship of Yanwu's strange talent, on his special regard for Yanwu: he'd ask Yanwu to come and check the pulses of his own family whenever they were ill. He wouldn't be able to rest easy before he'd done this.

Yanwu never charged for treating Maqiao's sick; and toward cadres, his manner was doubly reverent. Once, after bumming a cigarette off me, he turned and ran, disappeared in the blink of an eye. When I went to the lower village on an errand I discovered Commune Head He sitting on the grain-drying terrace, smoking away there and then on that Qiulu Mountain cigarette of mine, Yanwu standing to one side rubbing his hands, his face wreathed in simple, honest, slightly timid smiles, listening respectfully to the Commune Head's admonitions. I found out later that he didn't smoke, not because he didn't want to, but because he begrudged it. Working as a painter outside the village, as a doctor, as an artist and engraver, he carefully saved and hoarded up all the cigarettes he received as gifts, then eventually presented them with the greatest respect to cadres, and particularly to Benyi. Benyi's cigarettes were always a hodgepodge of brands for this very reason.

For a time, his relations with Commune Head He were particularly intimate: whenever Commune Head He wanted anything, he'd come as soon as he was summoned and smile as soon as he came, forever obedient, supremely gifted at demonstrating his learning whenever necessary, then returning the credit for his learning to the patronage and enlightenment of his leaders. One time, having hardly slept a wink for two days because of a painting job outside the village, he returned to Maqiao late at night, limping and staggering giddily from exhaustion. He heard from his neighbors that Commune Head He had sent a letter over, saying an alarm clock was broken and could he come and see about fixing it. Not daring to rest, he ran through the night to borrow tools from a clock-smith in Changle before hurrying on to the commune. When crossing Tianzi Peak, all it took was one lapse of concentration and you'd fall into the deep crevice. On the morning of the next day, he was eventually discovered by some passers-by, his face, hands, and exposed feet in particular plastered with stinging mountain leeches, as if his body had been overgrown with bright red fibrous roots. The passers-by all fell upon him, trying to beat the leeches off with such violence their hands were covered in blood. After they'd slapped him awake, he burst into terrified tears after one look at his blood-stained form.

If those people hadn't passed by quite so fortuitously, in another few hours Yanwu's blood would probably have been sucked completely dry by mountain leeches.

In the end, none of his displays helped him that much or got his strange talent redirected toward some higher end. Twice when universities were recruiting students from the workers, peasants, and soldiers, Commune Head He usurped Benyi's authority, pushing Yanwu forward as "Re-educable Youth," but as soon as the motion reached the higher-ups he was sent back again. What's more, on the eve of every important holiday, the peasant militia routinely ransacked his house and lectured his brothers: even if it was just a cosmetic exercise, the militia still had to do what the militia had to do.