Was I very bad? Yes, when I was a child, I was pretty bad: I went so far as to misappropriate stolen goods. But, in fact, that’s not the right question to ask. The real question is, with a secret like that — put yourself in my shoes — how could I surrender the train? And then, very soon, it was the winter holidays, and in the winter of that year my father was released from military service and we moved to Wuhan — our whole family moving here from our little town in Sichuan. This news made me extremely excited, not only because Wuhan is a big city but because it gave me the opportunity to put all the trouble with the train behind me. I looked forward more each day to our move; I looked forward to leaving Tan Feng and the town behind.
On the day we left, cold, heavy rain was falling. I was waiting with my family at the long-distance bus station when I saw somebody’s head appear and disappear outside the waiting-room window, then, after a moment, it appeared again. It was Tan Feng. I recognized him but decided to ignore him. It was my mother who had to tell me to go and say goodbye. ‘Tan Feng wants to say goodbye to you. You used to be good friends, how can you ignore him?’ And so I had to walk outside and go over to him. His clothes were soaked from the rain and he used his maimed hand to wipe away the water dripping from his hair; his eyes too were wet. He seemed to want to say something, but he didn’t open his mouth to speak. I grew impatient and turned away. He gripped one of my hands and I felt him slip something into it. Then he ran off, so fast he was almost flying.
As you will all have guessed, it was the key. The key to wind up the little red train! I remember that it was very wet, though whether from sweat or the rain I couldn’t say. I was very surprised; I hadn’t expected things to end like that. Even now I feel surprised by the way it ended. I wonder what Tan Feng meant by it?
None of the man’s friends seemed willing to answer the question. They were silent for a moment, and then someone asked Yu Yong, ‘Do you still have the train?’
He said, ‘No, not for a long time now. On the third day after we got to Wuhan, my parents packed it up in a box and sent it back to Dr He.’
Someone said awkwardly, ‘That’s really too bad.’
Yu Yong laughed and replied, ‘Yes, I suppose. But you have to consider it from my parents’ point of view. How could they have agreed to conceal stolen goods? How could they have let me become a thief?’
How the Ceremony Ends
It was last winter that the folklorist paid his visit to the village of Eight Pines. Carrying his rucksack by the straps, he jumped off the public bus from the city and started walking north-east. The road was covered in a thin layer of fine snow which, from afar, assumed a light-blue tint; shadows from the winding lines of high-voltage wires and telephone poles chequered the surface evenly. Occasionally, flocks of birds passed over the man’s head: sudden, but orderly nonetheless. The folklorist walked towards Eight Pines. By now, he too has become part of the landscape of my memory.
By the entrance to the village, an old man sat on the ground mending a large ceramic urn, his kit bag lying to one side. A tiny, dark red flame licked at a piece of melting tin; the smell of it crept through the air, which otherwise held only the crispness that comes after snowfall. The old man grasped a tin clamp with his tongs and squatted to examine the urn for cracks, but hearing the crunch of footsteps in the snow, he interrupted his work and glanced behind him. He saw a stranger walking towards Eight Pines, then turning back to the task in hand, he took no further notice of him. Spitting on a crack in the urn, he exerted all his strength to force the clamp inside; it held for only a moment before falling into the fire. The old man frowned, and as he did so he discovered the stranger was now standing behind him, gazing intently at the urn.
‘I held it in too long, now it’s gone too soft,’ the old man explained.
‘What period is it from?’ asked the folklorist.
‘What?’ said the old man.
‘The urn.’ The folklorist flicked the side of it with his index finger and a clear ringing resounded from it. Then he observed, ‘Dragon-and-phoenix pattern. Longfeng. Qing Dynasty.’
The old man picked up another clamp with his tongs, and this time it fitted easily into the crack, filling it. He grinned at the folklorist and said, ‘There! That’s the way to do it! I’ve been mending pottery for fifty years now all around these parts. Where are you from?’
‘The city. Is this Eight Pines?’
‘More or less. What brings you here?’
‘I collect folk stories.’ The academic had hesitated before answering, thinking that an old man from the countryside might not understand what he meant by that.
‘Then you’ll need to find a storyteller. Who do you have in mind?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anyone here yet.’
‘You should look for Wulin.’ The old man grinned again. Then he bent over to blow out the fire and repeated, ‘Go and look for Wulin. He has stories coming out of his ears.’
The folklorist rested one hand on the urn and gazed around at the village in winter. The sun shone dimly on the paddies which were turning dry and white. The trees, scattered among the graves and ditches, had all let their leaves fall, and there was nothing to be seen of the pines he had envisaged. The most striking thing about the scene was a solitary scarecrow among the paddies, blackening with age, wearing a straw hat, in whose brim an intrepid bird had pecked holes.
Apparently the folklorist stayed in a classroom at the primary school. There are no hostels of any kind in Eight Pines, so that’s where outsiders are generally housed. You can sleep on the desks free of charge, but you have to be out by the time the morning bell rings. So in the mornings, the folklorist put on his rucksack and set out from the primary school. He demonstrated a particular interest in the village’s recessed doorways, walking in and out, examining them. His face was very pale and his upper lip clean-shaven; this, along with his beige anorak and the rucksack, made a deep impression on all the locals.
Before long, some of the older villagers of Eight Pines were relating what they knew of the area’s remaining customs while the folklorist took notes. They would sit in front of the village tavern’s stove, eating meat and drinking rice wine. By paying for everything, the folklorist was able to reap a new harvest every day. Once, remembering what the old man on the edge of the village had told him about Wulin, he asked the old people, ‘Which one of you is Wulin?’ The strange thing was that none of them could recall any such person, but then one of the old men, looking startled, called out, ‘I remember! Wulin. Wulin the ghost! But he’s been dead almost sixty years. He’s the one who drew the ghost, back when they used to cast lots for them.’
That was how the folklorist discovered that Eight Pines had once had a custom of casting ingot-shaped lots to designate a ‘man-ghost’. Immediately he sensed that this was likely to be the most valuable find of his research. He told the old people to take their time and give him a complete account of the practice, but they were all over eighty and expressed themselves so vaguely that he was only able to note down these brief impressions:
Notes
The custom of ghost-casting in Eight Pines was passed down from ancient times until the thirteenth year of the Republic5. The ceremony, held once every three years, consisted of choosing a human sacrifice from among the living in deference to the dead ancestors of the clan. All the people of the village gathered for the ceremony at the clan hall. Small ingots made of tinfoil were placed on the altar and unwrapped, one by one, by an elder. A single ingot was marked with the outline of a ghost, and the villager who drew this became the man-ghost. The man-ghost was then wrapped in white cloth, thrown into the large longfeng urn and beaten to death with sticks.