Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh

By Yan Mo

Translated by Howard Goldblatt

(2001, translated 2012)

Arcade

(Short Story Collection)

“Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh”

Ding Shikou (“Ten-Mouth Ding) is an institution at the Municipal Farm Equipment Factory, having worked there for forty-three years. So it incomes as a terrible shock to the workforce when one day in the 90s, officials lay the old man off, just a month before his retirement. Ding is devastated, and so are his many colleagues when they learn of the imminent closing of the factory. When protests erupt, Ding injures his leg and is hospitalized for over a month, at which time his savings are entirely gone. Limping through town, Ding tries to find work, almost hopeless, until one late afternoon while walking in the woods behind the factory he hears laughter on the path up ahead of him. A couple holds hands and embraces; Ding quickly concludes he has come upon a lover’s tryst. Unable to thwart his prurient curiosity, he follows the couple to an abandoned bus concealed by forest. As he listens to their lovemaking, Ding realizes that the couple has found a clever way to escape the all-seeing eyes of the township. In an instant, he becomes a capitalist. Making a few minor improvements–welding a lock on the door, blacking out the windows, providing a candle, Ding begins a new, lucrative career as the manager of a love hotel. His new role transforms him, yet his success troubles him. When a middle-aged couple arrives at the end of the “season,” something terrible happens…and we are left with a mystery. 

“His restless, seething fellow workers began to calm down in the presence of the police, the vice mayor, and the factory manager. Without intending to, old Ding set a fine example for all the workers. He heard the factory manager say to the assembled workers: ‘Who among you can boast of old Ding’s seniority? Or match his contributions? Just look at how quietly he’s taking the news. So why are the rest of you kicking up such a row?’” (7)

“Man and Beast”

As the story begins with cinematic flashbacks of events from the horrific bridge ambush described in Yan’s Red Sorghum, the story is either a response to that novel or a revision of a story that did not survive the final edit. Yan’s canny, self-aware narrator is tracking down his grandfather. He’s turned up interesting artifacts: documents from a Japanese prison camp indicate his grandfather was captured during the MId-Autumn festival of 1943 and imprisoned as a POW in Hokkaido. According to records, In 1944, his grandfather escaped the camp. The narrator assumes that the escapee must have gone to the ground, hiding in the most remote regions of the mountains. Coincidentally, the narrator comes across a human interest story from 1949: a woman traveling on a remote mountain path claims she was assaulted by something that was half-animal and half-human. The narrator concludes that his grandfather must have been the beast-like man that accosted the woman. The story he weaves from these disparate sources involves a life-and-death battle with foxes that may also be spirits; as violent as that encounter is, it pales to the grandfather’s attempt to wreak his vengeance on the Japanese who killed everyone he loved by assaulting the innocent woman with whom he crosses paths. Yan is back in the magical world of Gaomi township where anything can happen and where brutality and the miraculous live side by side. A stunning tale of vengeance!

“He picked up his two prized possessions — a cleaver and a pair of scissors — one in each hand. The distinctive stink of fox and the rustling of the vines grew more acute. It was climbing toward him on the vines. Granddad had thought all along that this attack would happen in deep night. A fox’s resourcefulness and liveliness is tied to the darkness of night. This broad daylight challenge to recover lost territory and avenge the murder of its cubs surprised him.” (66)

“Soaring”

In “Soaring,” Yan turns his attention to a kind of marriage contract now outlawed. A family in Jiaozhou Township has a difficult problem: the eldest son, a mute, can not find a bride. His younger sister, Yanyan, though the most beautiful girl in the township, cannot marry until her older brother is wed. Hong’s mother brokers an exchange: if the family from Jiaozhou will give beautiful young Yanyan to be the wife of her forty-year-old, pock-marked son, she will give Hong Xi’s younger sister, Yanghua, to the mute. The deal is struck. As Hong Xi anxiously awaits nightfall and the consummation of his marriage, he worries that something might be amiss. What if she runs away? His mother reassures him this cannot happen, for if she abandons this marriage, she destroys her brother’s chance at happiness. In spite of the double bind, Yanyan does flee, escaping the bonds of the earth.

“The treetop was still radiant with light, even though the pine grove was turning black and bats had begun flitting nimbly in and among the trees. Foxes barked in the graveyard. His fears returned. Spirits were everywhere in the grove, he could feel them; his ears filled with all sorts of sounds. The sinister laughter kept coming, each burst causing him to break out in a cold sweat. Biting the tip of your middle finger was the best way to drive away evil spirits, he recalled, so he did it, and the sharp pain cleared his head.” (89)

  “Iron Child”

“Iron Child” is one of Yan Mo’s more well-known short stories in the west: It appears in The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Literature. The story focuses on a significant population of parentless or neglected children and takes place during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward!” campaign. Mao saw that the wealthier nations vied for ascendancy by comparing their production of steel and determined that China must not only turn its agrarian culture into a communal agrarian culture overnight, eliminating private ownership of land, but he also tasked a nation of farmers to begin smelting steel. Workers were given lessons in how to construct primitive furnaces, trees, and shrubs were cut down to fire them, and Red Guards swept through towns collecting both broken, old steel and functioning farm equipment to melt into ingots. Unit competed against unit, town against town in the mad rush to increase the nation’s output of steel. In the end, virtually none of the material produced through this process had any value, though it is believed that the forest cutting contributed to flooding and starvation. Yan captures this madness in “Iron Child,” where a young narrator approaches a gang of children who are searching a railroad crew laying track for any sign of their parents. One finds that his father will never return, having been killed in an industrial accident. The narrator spots a strange-looking child in a scrap yard and pursues him. He finds him hiding in a scrap yard and the two become fast friends. The narrator remarks on the rusty cast of his new pal’s face,  and he explains that he has found a novel way to remedy his constant hunger: he eats iron. The narrator watches in awe as the boy bites through iron, chews, and swallows it. and then tries to make a meal of it himself. The two wreak havoc on the smelting and railroad camps, where their activities give rise to rumors that the area is haunted by mountain demons. How long will they be able to keep their newfound independence and freedom?

“They scared me at first. But then I recognized them as my daddy and mommy. They came stumbling toward me, and it suddenly dawned on me what horrifying people they were, at least as horrifying as the three old women at the “nursery school.” I could smell the stench on their bodies, worse than dog shit. So when they reached out to grab me, I turned and ran away” (106)

“The Cure”

“The Cure” is one of the shortest and darkest of the stories in the collection. Like many of Lu Xun’s short stories, “The Cure” focuses on the stark coldness with which Chinese look upon the deaths of their fellows and the intense hold Chinese natural medicine and barefoot doctors hold over the living. In the story, a father wakes his son in the predawn hours to hike in darkness to a riverbed below a recently constructed bridge. There, the two wait for the arrival of the armed work camp. Two men are to be executed at sunrise. The officers made viewing the executions mandatory, and the bridge overhead thunders with the tread of the villagers. Father and son hide in the mud below, listening intently as the two men are blindfolded, walked to the end of the bridge, and shot. For a moment, it seems as if the officer will send someone down to retrieve the bodies, or perhaps relatives will search the waters after dark to rescue the bodies and give their beloved proper burial. But before that can happen, the father wades to the first dead man and pulls out his knife. 

“Now it was light enough to make out some frozen dog turds on the ground of our hiding place, that and some shredded clothing, clumps of hair, and a chewed-up human skull. It was so repulsive I had to look away. The riverbed was as dry as a bone except for an ice-covered puddle here and there; clumps of dew-specked weeds stood on the sloped edges. The northern winds had died out; trees on the embankments stood stiff and still in the freezing air. I turned to look at Father; I could see his breath. Time seemed to stand still. Then Father said, “Here they come.” (117)

“Love Story”

“Love Story” is set at the end of the Cultural Revolution in an unnamed rural village. Sixty-five-year-old Guo Three and fifteen-year-old Junior are a village-born team. The third member of the unit, He Liping, is a city girl sent down to the country for “reeducation.”  She comes from a bad family of landowners, a family so “black” that she is the last of the sent-down youth who have not been allowed to return home. Now in her mid-twenties, she is still beautiful, and a rumor persists that she is trained in martial arts. It turns out to be true: she studies and traveled with an international touring troupe, and when she performs at a village festival, she captures the hearts of every man. However, cadres chastise her for performing with a spear, which is forbidden, and so the length of her sentence is extended. She spends her days in the fields with the young boy and the old man.  Soon the fifteen-year-old falls in love with He Liping — and love must be in the air as the impish Guo Three begins stopping in regularly to visit with the wife of Li Gaofa, whose husband has been conveniently dispatched to the hinterlands to collect geological samples. 

“With her chin held high, her back arched, and her dark eyes sparkling, she cut quite a figure. Then she began to twirl her spear until all anyone could see on the stage was a red blur, and no one could follow the twists and turns of her lithe body. Finally, she stopped spinning and stood ramrod straight with her spear, looking like a column of red smoke. The audience seemed frozen in place for a moment, no one making a peep. Then, suddenly snapping out of their trance, they clapped politely, as if physically drained.” (131)

“Shen Garden”

“Shen Garden” is also a love story, though it is devoid of the mist of romance that Yan’s Gaomi township bestows upon every relationship. Ambiguous, tense, and more focused at the end of an affair than at a beginning, “Shen Garden” is every inch a modern Chinese love story. It is also very cinematic. The couple is in a quiet bakery waiting out a fierce, drought-ending Beijing rainstorm. The woman declares that she wants to go to Shen Garden, a place she’s long wished to visit but somehow never managed to get there. The man corrects her: there is no “Shen Garden” in Beijing. She must be thinking of Hangzhou or Jinhua. Beijing has Yuanming gardens… As he continues to mansplain, the woman begins collecting her things and stands, announcing that she is going to Shen Gardens, which prompts the man to recall that there is a Shen Gardens in Shaoxing, not far from the birthplace of Lu Xun.  The woman advances toward the door and steps out into the driving rain. The lover tries to persuade her to remain another night in Beijing, but she crosses the street and gets into the cab. The man joins her, continuing an argument about Shen Garden that only becomes more complex when the cabbie becomes a third in their dispute. Who will win the argument? And will the woman ever find the garden of her dreams? 

“The taxi turned onto a narrow street cluttered on both sides with light-colored trash, with the occasional glint of green watermelon rind. Colorful sheets of flypaper draped in front of roadside diners fluttered in the wind and rain. Coarse, dirty women in revealing blouses leaned against doorways, cigarettes dangling from their mouths beneath bored expressions. The sight took his thoughts vaguely back to the town where she lived. ‘Driver,’ he said anxiously, ‘where are we?’” (146)

“Abandoned Child”

“Abandoned Child” is a fairy-tale-like story told by a simple, naive narrator, yet it is one of the most direct and unforgettable critiques of old and new China that I have encountered. The narrator is returning home by bus to the town of Three Willows. Disembarking, he finds a note pinned to a willow: “in the flowers, hurry, save a life!!!” He walks to a field of sunflowers, and at the end of a brief search, he discovers a still bloody newborn infant in a basket. Though he confesses that he is likely to be punished for his good deed, he decides to bring the child home with him. His wife, daughter, and elderly parents are shocked by what he has done and immediately insist he returns the child to the field and conceals all traces of his involvement. The child will die as the mother intended and with any luck, he will not be implicated in her crime. There is some consideration of the child’s gender. If the child is a boy, he may be welcome. But when the child is revealed to be a girl the grandparents point out that there should be no wonder that she was abandoned. And the little girl who had been taught since birth to crave a brother throws a tantrum. The family presents an implacable front: the child must be returned to the field. True, when the narrator’s wife discovers twenty yuan tucked into the basket, her scowl turns into a warm smile. The narrator can not bring himself to abandon the child, but he also can not bear to spend another moment in his home. He ponders the action of the mother and then thinks deeply about the history of abandoned children in Three Willows. The first group is those born to couples too poor to even take care of themselves. The second group includes children born with physical deformities, the deaf, the blind, the crippled, and the developmentally disabled. The third group of children is illegitimate. The fourth group is an altogether new phenomenon: those whose birth would be a violation of China’s “One Child” policy.  The narrator decides he should report his discovery to the village headman; perhaps he will be able to offer a reasonable solution. Yan’s portrayal of the narrator’s talks with his family, his own recollection of the hidden history of child murder in Three Willows, and his legalistic discussion with the village head provide a traumatizing overview of the perilous and inhumane status of infants in China, especially those unfortunate enough to be born female.

“My wife, who had by then gone into the outer room, came back and said, ‘The way you ignore your own kid, it’s as if you’re not her real father. But you’ll even wipe the butt of somebody else’s kid, like she was your own flesh and blood. Who knows, maybe she is. Maybe she belongs to you and some woman out there. Maybe you went out and had yourself a nice little daughter …’”  (165)