Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

clouds blotted out the sun. The sleet was like kernels of white rice that slipped beneath my collar. My wife, from the Bai family, walked behind me, wailing loudly, but I heard nothing from my two concubines, Yingchun and Qiuxiang. Yingchun was expecting a baby any day, so I could forgive her for staying home. But the absence of Qiuxiang, who was younger and was not pregnant, bitterly disappointed me. Once I was standing on the bridge, I turned to see Huang Tong and his team of militiamen. You men, we all live in the same village and there’s never been any enmity between us, not then and not now. If I have somehow offended you, tell me how. There is no need to do this, is there? Huang Tong gazed at me briefly, and then looked away. His golden yellow irises sparkled like gold stars. Huang Tong, I said, Yellow-eyed Huang, your parents named you well. That’s enough out of you, he said. This is government policy! You men, I went on anyway, if I am to die, I should at least know why. What law have I broken? You’ll get your answers in Lord Yama’s underworld, Huang Tong said as he raised his ancient musket, the muzzle no more than half a foot from my forehead. I felt my head fly off; I saw sparks, I heard what sounded like an explosion, and I smelled gunpowder in the air . . .
    Through the unlatched gate at my house I saw many people in the yard. How did they know I would be coming home? I turned to my escort.
    “Thank you, brothers, for the difficulties encountered in seeing me home,” I said.
    Sinister smiles spread across their blue faces, but before I could figure out what those smiles meant, they grabbed my arms and propelled me forward. Everything was murky; I felt like a drowning man. Suddenly my ears filled with the happy shouts of a man somewhere:
    “It’s out!”
    I opened my eyes to find that I was covered with a sticky liquid, lying near the birth canal of a female donkey. My god! Who’d have thought that Ximen Nao, a literate, well-educated member of the gentry class, would be reborn as a white-hoofed donkey with floppy, tender lips!

2

Xlmen Nao Is Charitable to Save Blue Face
Bai Yingchufi Lovingly Comforts an Orphaned Donkey
    The man standing behind the donkey with a broad grin on his face was my hired hand Lan Lian. I remembered him as a frail, skinny youth, and was surprised to see that in the two years since my death, he had grown into a strapping young man.
    He was an orphan I’d found in the snow in front of the God of War Temple and brought home with me. Wrapped in a burlap sack and shoeless, he was stiff from the cold; his face had turned purple and his hair was a ratty mess. My own father had just died, but my mother was alive and well. From my father I had received the bronze key to the camphor chest in which were kept the deeds to more than eighty acres of farmland and the family’s gold, silver, and other valuables. I was twenty-four at the time and had just taken the second daughter of the richest man in Bai-ma, or White Horse, Town, Bai Lianyuan, as my wife. Her childhood name was Apricot, and she still had no grown-up name, so when she came into my family, she was simply known as Ximen Bai. As the daughter of a wealthy man, she was literate and well versed in propriety, had a frail constitution, breasts like sweet pears, and a well-proportioned lower body. She wasn’t bad in bed either. In fact, the only flaw in an otherwise perfect mate was that she had not yet produced a child.
    Back then I was on top of the world. Bumper harvests every year, and the tenant farmers eagerly paid their rent. The grain sheds overflowed. The livestock thrived, and our black mule gave birth to twins. It was like a miracle, the stuff of legend, not reality. A stream of villagers came to see the twin mules, and our ears rang with their words of flattery. We rewarded them with jasmine tea and Green Fort cigarettes. The teenager Huang Tong stole a pack of our cigarettes and was dragged up to me by his ear. The young scamp had yellow hair, yellow skin, and shifty yellow eyes, giving the impression he entertained evil thoughts. I dismissed him with a wave of the hand, even gave him a packet of tea to take home for his father. Huang Tianfa, a decent, honest man who made fine tofu, was one of my tenant farmers; he farmed five acres of excellent riverfront land, and what a shame he had such a no-account son. He brought over a basketful of tofu so dense you could hang the pieces from hooks, along with a