Lao Lan pats the Horse Spirit's neck and says: ‘Goodbye, Horse Spirit. Let me know in a dream if you spot the woman you like, and I'll see that you get her. Women these days go for big guys’ Lao Lan exits the temple with his large retinue. A bunch of children holding sticks of cotton candy dart this way and that. A peddler of roasted corn on the cob fans his charcoal brazier with a moth-eaten fan. ‘Ro-o-oasted cor-r-r-n’ he shouts, drawing out each word. ‘One RMB an ear, free if it's not sweet’ The crowd has swollen in front of the opera stage, and the musicians fill the air with the clang of cymbals, the pound of drums and the twang of stringed instruments. A boy with tufts of hair standing up on either side of his head, wearing a red stomacher, his face heavily rouged; a Qingyi in a side-buttoned robe and baggy trousers, her hair gathered in a bun; an old man in a bamboo hat and straw sandals, sporting a white goatee; a blue-faced comic actor; and his female counterpart with a medicinal patch at her temple. They all clamour their way into the temple. ‘You call this an actor's lounge?’ the Qingyi is angry. ‘There isn't even a chair! ‘Try to make the best of it, can't you?’ pleads the old man with the goatee. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I'm going to talk to Troupe Leader Jiang. This is no way to treat people’ Jiang walks in as he hears his name: ‘What's the problem?’ ‘We're not famous actors, Troupe Leader,’ the Qingyi says, and we don't make unreasonable demands. But we are human beings, aren't we? When there's no hot water we drink it cold, when we have to do without rice and vegetables we eat bread and when we don't have a dressing room we get ready in a car or truck. But a simple stool isn't asking too much, is it? We're not mules that can sleep standing.’ ‘Put up with it as best you can, Comrade’ he says. ‘I dream of getting you to Changan Municipal Theatre or the Paris Opera House, where you'd want for nothing. But what are the chances, I ask you? Let's be frank. We are high-class beggars, or not even that. Beggars can smash a pot just because it's cracked, but we—we can't stop thinking that we're better than that’ ‘Then why don't we go out and start begging?’ the woman snaps. ‘I guarantee we'd make more than we do now. Look at all the beggars who live in Western-style houses.’ ‘You can say that if you want,’ reasons the troupe leader. ‘But you'd never make it as beggars even if you had to. Comrades, try to make do. I damn near had to kiss Lao Lan's arse for the extra five hundred. I'm a drama-school graduate, I'm supposed to be an intellectual. Back in the 1970s, a play I wrote even won second prize in a provincial contest. But if you'd seen how I degraded myself in front of Lao Lan's lackeys, well, I'm ashamed of the sickening talk that came out of my mouth. Afterwards, when I was alone, I actually slapped myself. And so, assuming we are all reluctant to give up this bit of income and still cling to this poor, pedantic art of ours, we must all endure a bit of humiliation to do what we've come to do and, as you said, when there's no hot water drink it cold, when you have to do without rice and vegetables eat bread. And if there are no stools please stand. Actually, standing is better, for you can see farther.’ The young boy, the one made up to look like the legendary celestial Prince Naza, scoots between me and the Wise Monk and leaps onto the back of the Horse Spirit. ‘Aunty Dong,’ he cries out brightly, ‘come up here, it's great! ‘You're a silly little meat boy,’ the Qingyi says. I'm not a meat boy, I'm a meat god, a meat immortal,’ he says as he bounces up and down atop the horse. Its water-soaked, crumbling back soon gives way and the frightened boy quickly slides off. ‘The Horse Spirit's back is broken,’ he shouts. ‘That's not the only thing that's broken,’ the Qingyi says as she surveys the temple. ‘The whole place looks like it's about to collapse. I hope it doesn't tonight and make meat patties out of all of us.’ ‘Don't worry, miss,’ says the man with the goatee, ‘the Meat God will protect you, for you are his mother! The troupe leader runs in with a rickety chair. ‘Get ready to go on stage, meat boy,’ he says and places the chair behind the Qingyi. ‘Sorry, Xiao Dong,’ he says, ‘but this is the best I've got.’ The meat boy dusts himself off, rubs his hands to clean off the mud, bounds out of the temple and mounts the wooden steps to the stage. The drums and the cymbals fall silent and give way to the two-stringed huqin and flute. ‘I've come to rescue my mother,’ the meat boy says in his high voice, ‘travelling day and night,’ and then runs to the centre of the stage as he finishes his line. Peeking through the gap between old blue curtains behind the stage, I see him turn a couple of somersaults. The drums and the cymbals set up a raucous din that merge with the crowd's ardent shouts of approval for the boy. ‘I cross mountains, ford rivers and pass through a sleepy town—to see a physician of great renown—he prescribes a concoction for mother mine—what a mix of ingredients—croton oil, raw ginger, even bezoar, a strange design—at the pharmacy I hand up the slip—the clerk demands two silver dollars for this trip—from a family with no money to enjoy—causing agonizing distress for this dutiful meat boy.’ He rolls about the stage to display his agonizing distress. With the beat of drums and clang of cymbals all round me, I feel like he and I have fused into one. What's the relationship between the story of the meat-eating Luo Xiaotong and the me who's sitting across from the Wise Monk? It's like some other boy's story, while my story is being acted out up on the stage. In order to get the concoction for his mother, the boy goes looking for the woman who buys and sells children to offer himself up for sale. The child merchant mounts the stage, bringing with her a happy, humorous air. Her lines all rhyme: ‘A child-seller, that's me, my name is Wang. My clever mouth takes me far and long. A chicken, you know, can be a duck, a donkey's mouth on a horse's arse is stuck. You'll believe me when I say the dead can run, the living in the underworld a sad song have begun…’ As she speaks, a naked woman, her hair in disarray, climbs up a post and then tumbles onto the stage. An uproar at the foot of the stage ends in excited shouts of Bravo! that split the clouds. ‘Wise Monk!’ I cry out in alarm. I can see the face of the crazed nude and—my God!—it's the actress Huang Feiyun. The meat boy and the child-seller move out of her way; she circles the stage as she were all alone until her attention is caught by the Meat God at the stage's edge. She walks up and pokes it in the chest with a tentative finger. Then—smack smack—she slaps it across the face. Men rush up to her, perhaps to drag her off stage, but she slips out of their grasp as if she were greased. Several leering men rush up, link their arms, form a wall round her and close in. She smirks and backs up slowly. ‘Back, back…Leave her alone, you bastards!’ That's my heart shouting. But the unfolding tragedy is inescapable. Huang Feiyun falls off the stage, drawing cries of alarm from below. A moment later I hear a woman's shout—it's the medical student Tiangua—‘She's dead, you sons of bitches!’ Why did you have to do that? That breaks my heart, Wise Monk, I can't hold back my tears. I feel a hand on my head—it's ice cold. Bleary-eyed, I can see it's the Wise Monk's hand. This time he doesn't try to mask the sadness he feels. A soft sigh escapes from his mouth. ‘Go on with your tale, son,’ I hear him say. ‘I'm listening—’