‘‘My relationship with Old Woman Jin comes from my affection for the worthy lady. As long as I still feel passion for the worthy lady, I can’t leave Old Woman Jin. I very much like expressing my passion this way. (Although people reproach me for being absurd, I never waver.) I can’t help it: every day, I repeatedly practice and become more skillful. I know that some people mention my passion and the vulgar ‘spare-time recreation’ in the same breath in order to detract from the value of my existence. How can you expect my former buddies to have any better opinions? They splash cologne all over themselves and swarm into the toilet and talk indiscreetly of relationships between men and women. They boast, and they’re filled with self-satisfaction. Once someone goes beyond their limited notions, they crowd together to attack him. Looking scornful, they say, ‘This is all there is to it. How can there be anything new?’ I know how chilling this is. Really, my former friends can’t evolve into civil people. It’s too late. My verdict is completely pessimistic. Everything I’ve experienced has led me to this verdict. I can tell you about it.
‘‘The first conflict occurred at noon that day. Winking and so delighted they couldn’t contain themselves, my former buddies surrounded me at the toilet and kept making sh-sh-sh sounds. They pressed me to the wall, wanting me to make a clean breast of ‘the inside story’-‘c’mon, give your buddies some fun,’ ‘tell us all the juicy parts.’ They also let me know: Since I had mentioned ‘sex appeal’-no trivial matter-they had reason to conclude that I had a carnal relationship with the lady. Can you use this word offhandedly? Isn’t it obvious what it refers to if you use it about someone other than your wife? On our Five Spice Street, ‘sex appeal’ means ‘spare-time recreation.’ Since long ago, these two expressions have meant the same thing, and the hidden meaning of ‘spare-time recreation’ is something everyone can understand. Both expressions are transparent and descriptive: they produce almost physiological pleasure. My buddies weren’t interested in the semantics of the expression. They just wanted to understand what was going on, authenticate it, and learn something educational. They for sure didn’t intend to try anything themselves with that lady: I didn’t need to take precautions with them. In any case, not everyone was aroused just by seeing her. This lady had lived right under their noses for years. It’s too bad that none of them had paid any attention to her, nor did they even know what she looked like. Only after I described her did they know that she had remarkable ‘sex appeal.’ Why wouldn’t this make them look at her with new eyes?
‘‘With a gloomy expression, I explained: ‘There are some things in this world which can’t be understood by the book. Sometimes, we have to change our way of thinking and look with brand-new eyes before we can enter into the essence of something.’ This seems difficult and troublesome, but with hard struggle you can make it. Of course, if you want to reform, there will be sacrifices. For instance, I sacrificed all my molars. This partial loss, however, let me achieve total freedom. If you can’t bear any loss, you’d better just blindly conform; you’ll never be able to understand vital newfangled things.’ My relationship with the worthy lady goes beyond the bounds of their ideas. This is a lofty relationship: it belongs to the future; it spans the present. There’s been no physical contact in my relationship with the worthy lady. It was in my fantasies that I felt her sex appeal. This is real, not a bit abstract. Still, it isn’t the same as ‘spare-time recreation.’ For the moment, I can’t find the right word to express it, but anyhow, it’s the momentum for my life development. They had to admit that beyond the notion they had, there was a huge space filled with novel things. I hoped they could all break through and try hard to expand their horizons and not be suffocated by parochial ideas.
‘‘As soon as I finished saying all this, they were even more excited. They started clamoring and pulled at my pants, saying that they wanted to see if I was actually impotent. The young guy on the other side of the wall added fat to the fire by reminding everyone: ‘People with this problem all talk a big line. They have one pack of dizzying reasons after another. They can talk the dead back to life. But they just want to distract you from their own invisible conditions. I know a guy who-after getting this condition-suddenly became very eloquent. Every day, in the scorching sun, he went to the street corner and clearly and logically analyzed old ideas and new ones and put forward an unlimited number of new scenarios. He also suggested that people all rub lard into their hair, and said that the more ‘spare-time recreation,’ the better, blah, blah, blah… Everybody was really interested and asked him to demonstrate in public. He was sweating profusely, and fell to the ground and died.’ When these guys were just about to pull down my pants, an old man (like Old Meng from the pharmacy) came stumbling into their midst, berated them, and held them back. Then he suggested ‘giving me enough rope to hang myself.’ He said this would bring out even more exciting scandals. Wouldn’t this be much better?
‘‘The second conflict occurred while we were cooling off outside. Those were days when my fortunes rose and fell. At the time, my buddies and I were discussing whether or not to put up advertisements for photographic equipment. Our discussion was lively, with a lot of views being presented. We also came up with the basic blueprint. Everyone was in a good mood. While all of us were absorbed in longing for the good life, we suddenly looked up and saw the worthy lady and her family stroll by in their leisurely way. They were talking loudly with their child about good birds and vermin. They were so rude that they didn’t even look at us: it was as if they were walking through a pile of stakes. The man was also laughing foolishly, quite pleased with his high-pitched voice. And the woman cheered him on: ‘Great! Go on! Talk a little louder!’ Looking at each other in despair, we were terrified. We turned pale and fell silent. After they disappeared into the distance, an old woman thumped her chest and shouted, ‘Aren’t they just treating other people as if they were fools?!’ Not until then did they become infuriated. After a quick brainstorming session, they looked around at me.
The spear was aimed at me: I was the cause of their arrogant bluster. Madam X used to be a sickly old woman whom no one respected; her husband always had to support her when they went for walks. Her hair was also very thin. After I started spouting nonsense about Madam X’s ‘sex appeal’ and took some ‘sweets’ from her, she wasn’t the same as before, although no one was sure exactly how she was different. In most people’s eyes, she was still an old woman, but there was something about her attitude that told people she was no longer the same as usual. If she still wasn’t a peerless beauty, she was at least a beautiful woman. The foundation for this view was hidden in the crowd. She could manipulate that person; she could master everyone via this person. He was the one who had elevated her position from that of a beggar so that everyone now paid attention to her, talked about her, looked up to her. In the meantime, so many of the charming, stylish women on the street were fading: no one was paying attention to them. It was as if her reality had vanished: wearing rose-colored glasses, everyone had discovered a goddess.
‘‘I was being treated so unjustly it was hard to vindicate myself. I swore to them that this worthy lady and I were just ‘soulmates.’ Though I respected her greatly, she had no idea who I was. The more I said this, the less the crowd would relax its grip: they greatly distorted what I’d said in the past and forced me ‘to come clean.’ The old woman with the high-pitched voice suggested that the worthy lady and I ‘perform again.’ The crowd supported this proposal. They pushed me into the lady’s house. (Two buddies watched from outside the window.) The lady was looking through her microscope, and because I blocked her light, she blew up. She didn’t notice me in the middle of the room but charged into another room and told her husband that two oxen outside the window had wrecked her research. ‘It’s really damnable.’ She wanted to find the hunting rifle and let the wild animals ‘get a taste of her marksmanship.’ The two buddies were so scared they took to their heels. Narrowing her eyes, she looked mockingly at the clowns outside the window and then turned around and noticed me. She was displeased. ‘There’s always something coming in. Damn it!’ Her husband ran up to soothe her: he said that I wasn’t a person but merely a rag drying on the clothesline. As he talked, he blocked me with his body and pushed me out of the house.