A large, gleaming purplish red coffin rested in Lao Lan's living room. In it lay a fancy urn full of bones. Why go to all that trouble? I wondered. But then Lao Lan knelt by the coffin and smacked it with his hand as he keened, and I got my answer. A hand on an empty coffin was the only way to create such a soul-stirring sound; only a grand coffin suited the sight of the imposing Lao Lan kneeling alongside; and only a coffin of that grandeur was capable of encapsulating the appropriately sombre atmosphere. I had no way of knowing if my conjectures were correct, because what happened later made me lose all interest in this train of thought.
I sat at the head of the coffin, draped in hempen mourning attire. Tiangua sat at the opposite end, similarly clad. A clay pot for burning spirit money had been placed in the space between us. She and I lit sheets of yellow paper embossed like money from the flame of the bean-oil lamp resting atop the coffin and fed them into the clay pot, where they quickly turned to white ash and swirls of smoke. The stifling heat of that lunar July day, coupled with the rope-belted hempen cloth I was swathed in and the fire in the pot made the sweat spill from my pores. I looked at Tiangua—she was in a similar state. We took turns removing sheets of paper from the stack in front of us and burning them. Her sober expression was short on grief and there were no signs of tears on her cheeks; perhaps she had no more tears to shed. I was faintly aware of talk that the woman in the casket wasn't her birth mother and that she'd been bought from a human trafficker. Another rumour had it that she was born of an affair between Lao Lan and a young woman in another village, then brought back to be raised by his wife. I kept looking at her and at the face of the woman in the framed photograph behind the coffin but saw no resemblance. Then I compared her with Lao Lan and saw no resemblance there either, so perhaps she had been bought from a human trafficker after all.
Mother walked up with a cool wet towel and wiped my sweaty face. ‘Don't burn it too fast,’ she whispered. ‘Just enough to keep the fire going.’
She folded the towel, walked over to Tiangua and wiped her face as well. Tiangua looked up at Mother and rolled her eyes. She should have thanked her but she didn't.
Intrigued by our burning of the spirit money, Jiaojiao tiptoed over and crouched down next to me. Picking up a sheet, she tossed it into the clay pot and whispered: ‘Could we barbecue meat in that?’
‘No,’ I said.
The two newspaper photographers we'd hired walked in from the yard, one carrying a video camera, the other a light, to film the activity round the bier. Mother rushed up to take Jiaojiao outside; she balked and Mother had to grab her under her arms and drag her away.
Since I was being filmed, I affected a sombre expression as I placed a sheet of paper into the bowl. Tiangua did the same. After turning his lens to the fire, nearly touching the flames, the cameraman moved first to my face and then to Tiangua's. Next my hands, then her hands and from there to the coffin. Finally, to the framed picture of the deceased, which drew my attention back to the pale, oversized face on the wall. There was sadness in Aunty Lan's eyes, belying the trace of a smile on her lips, and as I stared at her I became aware that she was staring at me. I was awestruck by how much was hidden in her gaze; I looked away, first to the reporters in the doorway and then to Tiangua, who sat head-down, looking stranger to me by the minute. She grew less like a person and more like some sort of sprite, while the real Tiangua died along with her mother (birth mother or not, it didn't matter). What filled my eyes next was a funeral cart pulled by four horses along a broad dirt road heading southwest from their yard, carrying Aunty Lan and Tiangua, their baggy white attire billowing like butterfly wings.
At noontime, Huang Biao's wife called Tiangua and me into the kitchen; there, she laid out a platter of meatballs, a winter melon soup with ham and a basket of steamed buns for the two of us and Jiaojiao. I didn't have much of an appetite—the day was hot and I'd spent most of the morning breathing in smoke from the burning paper. But Tiangua and my sister wolfed down their food—a meatball washed down with a spoonful of soup, followed by a bite from a steamed bun. They ate without looking at each other, as if engaged in an eating contest. Lao Lan walked in before we'd finished. He hadn't combed his hair or shaved, his clothes were rumpled, his eyes were bloodshot and he looked utterly dejected.
Huang Biao's wife went up and gazed at him with her limpid eyes. ‘General Manager,’ she said, her voice heavy with concern, ‘I know how painful this is for you. One night between a man and a woman produces a lifetime of affection. And you were together for so many years. Your wife was a virtuous woman, so saintly that we are as saddened by her departure as you. But she has left us, and there is nothing we can do about that, while you have your family to look after. And the company cannot operate without you. You are the village backbone. So, my dear elder brother, you must eat something, not for yourself but for all us villagers…’
His eyes red and puffy from crying, Lao Lan said: ‘I appreciate your kind thoughts but I can't eat. Make sure the young ones are fed. I have many things to do.’ He rubbed my head, then Jiaojiao's and Tiangua's, before walking out of the kitchen with tears in his eyes.
Huang Biao's wife followed him with her eyes. ‘He's a fine man with a good heart,’ she said emotionally.
When we finished eating, we went back to burning spirit paper at the bier.
A steady stream of people walked in and out of the yard, undisturbed by the family's dogs, which had been struck dumb after the death of Lao Lan's wife. They lay sprawled on the ground, resting their heads on their paws, teary-eyed and sad; only their eyes moved as they followed the people in the yard. The saying ‘Dogs share human qualities’ could not be truer. A group of men carrying papier-mâché human and horse figures entered the yard and made a big show of looking for a spot to place them. The artisan was a fit old man whose eyes darted this way and that. His head was as smooth and shiny as a light bulb, and he sported a few mousey whiskers on his chin. Mother signalled to him to have his men stand the figures in a row in front of the house's western wing. There were four altogether, each the size of a real horse, white with black hooves and eyes made of dyed eggshells. Horse-sized though they were, they had the mischievous look of ponies. The camera focused first on the horses, then moved to the craftsman and then finally to the human figures, of which there were two, a boy and a girl. Their names were pinned to their chests. His was Laifu—Good Fortune—hers Abao—Treasure. People said that the whiskered old man was illiterate, and yet at the end of every year he set up a stall in the marketplace and he sold New Year's scrolls. He didn't write what was on his scrolls—he simply drew what had been written by others. He was a true artist, a master of plastic arts. There were many stories about the man but none that I can go into here. He also brought along a money tree, its branches made of paper and from which hung leaves, each a shiny coin whose sparkle dazzled the eye.
But before Mother had seen off the first paper artisans, a second group showed up, this one with a Western flavour. The leader, we were told, was an art-institute student, a girl with short hair and glittering hoops in her ears. She was wearing a short fishnet blouse and what looked like rags over a pair of jeans. Her midriff was bare and her trouser legs shredded, like mops, with holes at the knees. Imagine a girl like that taking up a trade like that. Her men carried in a paper Audi A6, a large-screen TV, a stereo system—all modern things. None of those seemed especially out of place—what did were her human figures, also a boy and a girl. The face of the boy, dressed in a suit and leather shoes, was powdered, his lips painted red; the girl wore a white dress that showed her breasts. Everything about them said bride and groom—and not funeral figures. The cameramen were captivated by these new arrivals—they followed their subjects and knelt for close-ups. (The one from the small-town paper would one day gain fame as a portrait photographer.) Yao Qi wove his way through the paper figures crowding the small yard ahead of a band of funeral musicians, led by a man with a suona hanging at his waist and a cassocked monk working his prayer beads. They went straight to Mother.