Pow!

the mixture in his daughter's bowl, he said: ‘Jiaojiao, thank your aunty.’

    She obeyed, timidly, but failed to please Mother. ‘Drink it,’ she said. ‘There's no need to thank anyone.’

    Father dipped the spoon into the sugar water, blew on it, then carried it up to her mouth. But then he abruptly poured it back into her bowl and, flustered, picked up his bowl and drank its contents in one gulp. The water was so hot his lips pulled back to expose clenched teeth and perspiration dotted his forehead. Then he picked up Jiaojiao's and poured half the sugar water into his now-empty bowl. When he laid the two bowls together, I guess to see if the contents were even, I wondered what he had in mind. It soon became clear. He pushed his bowl across the table to me and said, apologetically: ‘Xiaotong, this bowl's for you.’

    That really touched me. The gluttonous desire gnawing at my belly had been swept away by a noble spirit. ‘I'm too big for that stuff, Dieh,’ I said. ‘Let her drink it.’

    Another wheeze rumbled in Mother's throat. Turned away from us, she dried her eyes with that black towel. ‘It's for all of you!’ she said angrily. ‘I may not have much but I've always got water!’ She kicked a stool up to the table and, without looking at me, said: ‘Why are you still standing there? If Dieh tells you to drink, then drink!’

    Father set the stool straight for me and I sat down.

    Mother untied the braided grass string round the cuts of sausage and placed them on the table in front of us. I think she gave Jiaojiao the thickest piece. ‘Eat it while it's hot,’ she said. ‘The noodles will be ready in a minute.’

POW! 15

    The sound of music out on the street, from both the east and the west, is deafening. The Carnivore Festival parade is drawing near. Thirty or more panicky jackrabbits dash out of the planted fields on both sides of the highway and come together in front of the temple entrance, where they engage in whispered conversations. One of them, with a droopy left ear that looks like a wilted vegetable leaf, and white whiskers, appears to be the leader and lets out a shockingly shrill cry. Now I know rabbits, and I can assure you that that is not the sort of noise commonly made by them. But all animals produce distinctive sounds in an emergency, to alert members of their species to danger. As I expected, the rest of the rabbits react to the command by shouting all at once and then bounding into the temple. The beauty of their leaps across the threshold is indescribable. They run straight to a spot behind the Wutong Spirit, where a breathless discussion breaks out. All of a sudden it occurs to me that there's a fox family back there—the entry of the rabbits is the equivalent of a meal delivered to their door. But there's nothing anyone can do about that, not now. It's best left to nature, since the foxes will be angry if I alert the rabbits. Ear-splitting musical notes erupt from a pair of loudspeakers on the stage across the way. It is jubilant music with a foot-tapping beat and a great melody, an open invitation to start dancing. During the decade that I roamed the country, Wise Monk, I worked for a while at a dance hall called Garden of Eden. They had me dress in a white uniform and told me to keep smiling as I attended to well-fed and liquored-up or just plain horny, red-faced customers who visited the men's room. I turned on the taps for them and, when they were finished washing their paws, handed them folded hot towels. Some accepted the towels and then, when their hands were dry, thanked me as they handed them back, often tossing a coin into the dish placed there for tips. Every once in a while, a particularly generous customer would leave a ten-yuan note, and, on more than one occasion, a hundred-yuan one. Anyone that free with his money must have been well heeled and lucky in love. For people like that, life was good. Then there were those who ignored my ministrations and used the electric hand-dryer on the wall. One glance at their impassive expressions told me that life was not so good to them. Chances are that they were expected to cough up the money for a bunch of drunken sots, most likely corrupt individuals who held some sort of power over them. No matter how much they hated them, they had to grin and bear it. Losers like that get no sympathy from me. Good people don't spend their money in degenerate places like that and, as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't have