Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

basketful of apologies. I told my wife to give him two feet of green wool to take home and make a couple of pair of cloth shoes for the new year. Huang Tong, oh, Huang Tong, after all those good years between your father and me, you should not have shot me with that musket of yours. Oh, I know you were just following orders, but you could have shot me in the chest and left me with a decent-looking corpse. You are an ungrateful bastard!
    I, Ximen Nao, a man of dignity, open-minded and magnanimous, was respected by all. I had taken over the family business during chaotic times. I had to cope with the guerrillas and the puppet soldiers, but my family property increased by the addition of a hundred acres of fine land, the number of horses and cows went from four to eight, and we acquired a large wagon with rubber tires; we went from two hired hands to four, from one maidservant to two, and added two old women to cook for us. So that’s how things stood when I found Lan Lian in front of the God of War Temple, half frozen, with barely a breath left in him. I’d gotten up early that morning to collect dung. Now you may not believe me, since I was one of Northeast Gaomi Township’s richest men, but I always had a commendable work ethic. In the third month I plowed the fields, in the fourth I planted seeds, in the fifth I brought in the wheat, in the sixth I planted melons, in the seventh I hoed beans, in the eighth I collected sesame, in the ninth I harvested grain, and in the tenth I turned the soil. Even in the cold twelfth month, a warm bed could not tempt me. I’d be out with my basket to collect dog dung when the sun was barely up. People joked that I rose so early one morning I mistook some rocks for dung. That’s absurd. I have a good nose, I can smell dog dung from far away. No one who is indifferent to dog dung can be a good landlord.
    There was so much snow that the buildings, trees, and streets were buried, nothing but white. All the dogs were hiding, so there’d be no dung that day. But I went out anyway. The air was fresh and clean, the wind was yet mild, and at that early hour there were all sorts of strange and mysterious rarities — the only way you could see them was to get up early. I walked from Front Street to Back Street and took a turn around the fortified village wall in time to see the horizon change from red to white, a fiery sunrise as the red sun rose into the sky and turned the vast snowy landscape bright red, just like the legendary Crystal Realm. I found the child in front of the God of War Temple, half buried in the snow. At first I thought he was dead and figured I’d pay for a meager coffin to bury him to keep the wild dogs away. Only a year before, a naked man had frozen to death in front of the Earth God Temple. He was red from head to toe, his pecker sticking out straight as a spear, which drew peals of laughter. That outlandish friend of yours, Mo Yan, wrote about that in his story “The Man Died, His Dick Lived On.” Thanks to my generosity, the corpse of this man, the one who died by the roadside but whose dick lived on, was buried in the old graveyard west of town. Good deeds like that have wide-ranging influence and are more consequential than memorials or biographies. I set down my dung basket and nudged the boy, then felt his chest. It was still warm, so I knew he was alive. I took off my lined coat and wrapped him in it, then picked him up and carried him home. Prismlike rays of the morning sun lit up the sky and the ground ahead of me; people were outside shoveling snow, so many villagers were witness to the charity of Ximen Nao. For that alone, you people should not have shot me with your musket. And on that point, Lord Yama, you should not have sent me back as a donkey! Everyone says that saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda, and I, Ximen Nao, sure as hell saved a life. Me, Ximen Nao, and not just one life. During the famine one spring I sold twenty bushels of sorghum at a low price and exempted my tenant farmers from paying rent. That kept many people alive. And look at my miserable fate. Is there no justice in heaven or on earth, in the world of men or the realm of spirits? Any sense of conscience? I protest. I am mystified!
    I took the youngster home and laid him down on a warm bed in the bunkhouse. I was about to light a fire to warm him when the foreman, Old Zhang, said, You can’t do that, Boss. A frozen turnip must thaw out slowly. If you