The old woman threw away what remained of her turnip, took shell forty-one from the old man and shouldered me out of the way. ‘Idiot!’ she muttered. Standing beside the mortar and huffing loudly, she dropped it in the tube. Shell forty-one fluttered out like a kite cut loose from its string. It flew and it flew, a lazy, distracted arc, on and on aimlessly, this way and that, like a young goat running amok. In the end it fell reluctantly to the ground about twenty yards from the rebirth platform. One second and counting, two seconds, three—and nothing. Damn! ‘Another dud.’ The words were barely out of my mouth, when POW! The air shuddered, like ripped cotton. A single piece of shrapnel, a little bigger than the palm of my hand, whistled through the air and sliced Lao Lan in half…
An immature crowing floats on the air from a distant village, the sound of one of this year's young roosters learning how to announce the dawn. I've welcomed the dawn with a narrative replete with artillery fire that has crisscrossed the earth with scars. During the course of my tale, most of the Wutong Temple has crumbled, leaving only a single column perilously holding up part of the dilapidated tile roof, now more like a mat screen against the morning dew. Dear Wise Monk, it no longer matters whether or not I renounce the world. What I want to know is: Has my tale moved you? What I hope you can tell me is: Is what Lao Lan said about his third uncle true or is it all a lie? Can you tell me, or not? The Wise Monk sighs, raises his hand and points to the road in front of the temple. I am surprised to see two processions. The one from the west comprises beef cattle in fancy dress, each with a big character written on its raiments, together spelling out slogans that oppose the construction of the Meat God Temple. There are exactly forty-one heads of cattle. They trot down the road and form a circle at our temple, with the Wise Monk and me in the middle. Daggers have been tied to their horns. Lowering their heads, they seem ready to charge, slobber snorting from their noses, flames of anger shooting from their eyes. The one from the east comprises naked women with big characters written on their bodies, together spelling out slogans that support the rebuilding of the Wutong Temple. There are exactly forty-one naked women. They run down the road, then mount the forty-one bulls like equestriennes and surround the Wise Monk and me. Scared witless, I take refuge behind the Wise Monk but even that is no guarantee of safety. Niang, help me…
Here she comes, followed by Dieh, carrying my sister on his shoulders. She's waving to me. Behind her come the lame and blind Lao Lan and his wife, Fan Zhaoxia, carrying the pretty little Jiaojiao in her arms. Then come the kindly Huang Biao and valiant Huang Bao. Huang Biao's pretty young wife is behind them, smiling enigmatically. They are followed by the swarthy Yao Qi, the corpulent Shen Gang and the hateful Su Zhou. My three meat-eating competitors—Liu Shengli (Victory Liu), Feng Tiehan (Ironman Feng) and Wan Xiaojiang (Water Rat Wan)—are next, followed by Lao Han, director of the United Meat Inspection Station, and his assistant Xiao Han. They are followed by the now toothless Cheng Tianle and Ma Kui, almost too old to walk. Behind them come the four skilled artisans from Sculpture Village and, in their wake, the old-school paper craftsman and his apprentice, who are right in front of the silver-lipped, golden-haired new-school paper craftswoman and her assistant. The foreman, Big Four, wearing a suit with the trouser legs rolled up, and his assistants follow them and are in turn followed by the old, nearly toothless master musician and members of his troupe. They come just ahead of the old monk from Tianqi Temple, with his wooden fish and his flock of semi-authentic little acolytes. They are followed by Teacher Cai of the Hanlin School and a group of her students. Behind them come medical-school students Tiangua and her sissy boyfriend. They are followed by the boy who polished my mortar shells and the chivalrous old husband and wife, then the crowds who showed up in the Meat God compound, on the highway and at the open square. Next come the photographer, Skinny Horse, and the video-cameraman, Pan Sun, and his assistant. They climb a tree with their equipment to record everything below. But there is also a large contingent of women, led by Miss Shen Yaoyao, followed by Miss Huang Feiyun and the singer Tian Mimi—I can't make out the rest, but in their finery they are like a gorgeous sunset. The entire scene is a painting fixed in time, as a woman who looks like she has just emerged from her bath, exuding feminine charms, her appearance five parts Aunty Wild Mule and five parts a woman I've never seen, splits the people and the bulls and walks towards me…
AFTERWORD
Narration Is Everything
A good many people will, consciously or unconsciously, often wish they never had to grow up. This sort of evocative literary theme was explored in a work by German novelist Günter Grass decades ago. But here's the problem. When you read something someone else has written and try to make it your own, yours becomes derivative, a form of copying. Oskar, the protagonist of Grass’ The Tin Drum (1959), who had witnessed so much ugliness in the world, falls into a wine cellar at the age of three and stops growing. Only his physical growth is stunted; mentally he keeps maturing, but in almost evil ways, outgrowing everyone in this regard, gaining a greater complexity. Nothing like that is likely to happen in real life, and for that very reason its appearance in fiction is not only deeply meaningful but also thought-provoking.
With POW! my only option was to do things in opposite fashion. When my protagonist, Luo Xiaotong, is in the Wutong Temple narrating his childhood to Wise Monk Lan, he has matured physically but not mentally—he is now an adult but his mental growth stopped when he was a boy. Someone like that would usually be considered an idiot. But Luo Xiaotong is no idiot. If he were, there would be no need for this novel to exist.
The desire to stop growing is rooted in a fear of the adult world, of growing old and feeble, of dying and of the passage of time. Luo Xiaotong tries to recapture his youth by prattling away with his tale; writing this novel was my attempt to stop the wheel of time from turning. Like a drowning man grasping at straws, I was desperate to keep from sinking. While I knew that my attempt must end in failure, it had a comforting effect.
While it may seem that the protagonist is narrating the tale of his childhood, in reality, I have employed this ‘narration’ to create my own childhood, as a way to hold on to it. Making use of the protagonist's mouth to recreate the days of my youth and to contend with the blandness of life, to counter the futile struggle and the passage of time may well be the sole source of pride for me as a writer. Narration can bring satisfaction to all the unsatisfying aspects of real life, and that fact has provided me with considerable solace. Relying upon the splendour and fullness of a narrative to enrich one's bland life and overcome character flaws is a time-honoured tradition among writers.
Seen in that light, the story line of POW! isn't all that meaningful. Throughout the novel, narration is the goal, narration is the theme and narration is its construct of ideas. The goal of narration is narration. But if I were forced to make a story out of this novel, I'd settle for the story of a boy prattling on and on about a story.
A writer's existence is found in narration, which is also the process in which he finds satisfaction and absolution. Like everything else, a writer is by nature a process. Many writers are children who have never grown up or who are afraid to. Not all of them, of course. The conflict between a fear of growing up and its inevitability is the yeast that gives rise to a novel, and from that can sprout many more novels.