Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

eat, or lying in bed, the people would prick up their ears in anticipation. One night, the Unicorn announcer said, “Low and middle poor peasants, revolutionary comrades-in-arms, according to an authoritative source, the individual who attacked the onetime leader of the Wind and Thunder Faction, Guo Pingen, leaving a gash in his cheek, was the infamous thief Sha Zaohua. Thief Sha is the daughter of the traitor Sha Yueliang, who ran rampant for years in Northeast Gaomi Township, and Shangguan Laidi, who murdered a public servant and was herself executed for the crime. In her youth, thief Sha met a strange man at Southeast Lao Mountain, from whom she learned martial arts. She can fly over eaves and walk up walls, she is a master of sleight-of-hand who can pick a pocket or walk off with a purse right under your eyes, and you’ll never know it. According to my authoritative source, thief Sha sneaked back to Northeast Gaomi Township three months ago, and has already established secret contacts in every village and hamlet. Using intimidation and coercion, she has enlisted the services of underlings who report to her on everything and serve as a little army of spies. The youngster who stole the dogskin cap of poor peasant Fang Shixian at the Dalan marketplace was one of thief Sha’s accomplices. Thief Sha has plied her evil trade in large towns. She has many aliases, but the most commonly heard is Swallow Sha. Her purpose in sneaking back to Northeast Gaomi this time is to avenge the deaths of her father and mother, and the gash on Guo Pingen’s cheek signals the first stage of her class retaliation. Even cruder, even more terrifying incidents can be expected in the days to come. It has been reported that one of the tools of her trade is a bronze coin she placed on a railroad track to be run over by a passing train. It is thinner than paper and so sharp it can cut a hair in half by blowing on it. When it cuts skin it takes ten minutes for the wound to bleed and twenty for the victim to feel the pain. Thief Sha hides this weapon between her fingers, and with an unnoticeable flick can sever a man’s carotid artery, bringing instant death. Thief Sha’s skills are unmatched. When she was studying with her master, she tossed ten coins into a pot of boiling oil, then reached in with bare fingers and removed every single one without so much as singeing her skin. Her movements are so fast, and so precise, they are barely visible. Revolutionary comrades-in-arms, low and middle poor peasants, the enemies who use guns have been eliminated, but the ones who use coins remain among us, and they can be counted on to fight us with ten times the deceit and a hundred times the frenzy.”
Time’s up, time’s up!
That was what the listeners heard over the PA all of a sudden. “I’m almost done, almost done.”
No, that’s it. The Unicorn can’t talk over u The Internationale”!
“Can’t we go on a little longer?” But the strains of “The Internationale” abruptly poured out of the PA.
    The following morning, the PA broadcast the Golden Monkey Rebel Regiment’s detailed renunciation of Unicorn’s Sha Zaohua myth, and then laid all the crimes at the feet of Unicorn. The mass organizations broadcast a joint declaration retracting Unicorn’s broadcast privileges and ordered the faction’s leaders to disband within forty-eight hours and to destroy the official seal and all propaganda materials.
    Even though the Golden Monkey Rebel Regiment denied the existence of a super-thief named Sha Zaohua, they nonetheless assigned secret agents and sentries to watch the Shangguan family. Not until the following spring, during the Qingming Festival, when a police van from the County Security Bureau came to take Jintong away, did Wu Yunyu, who by then had risen to the position of chairman of the Dalan Revolutionary Committee, relieve the agents and sentries, who were pretending to be wok menders, knife sharpeners, and shoe repairmen, of their duties.
    When they were clearing out the Flood Dragon River Farm, a diary kept by Qiao Qisha was discovered. In it she recorded in detail the illicit relationship between Shangguan Jintong and Long Qingping. As a result, the County Security Bureau arrested Jintong on charges of murder and necrophilia and, even before the investigation began, sentenced him to fifteen years in prison, which he began to serve at a labor reform camp on the edge of the Yellow Sea.

Chapter Seven
1
    During the first spring