The Garlic Ballads

sixth-grader at the Gaotong Village elementary school in Paradise County’s Tree Trench Commune as he stood in the lavatory. It was the summer of 1960. Wang Tai, whose father was the leader of Gaotong Production Team Number 2, had a poor-peasant background.
    It was recess time. As soon as the bell rang, the students had swarmed out of the schoolhouse, merging into a single body until they reached the athletic field, where they split up by gender, with boys to the east and girls to the west. Weeds grew all over the athletic field, whose wooden basketball post sported a nice crop of edible fungus; the basket rims were rust red. A blue-eyed, bearded old billy goat tied to a wooden post on the eastern edge of the field stared at the gang of gaunt, wiry, wild children.
    The lavatories were located on the southern edge of the athletic field: two open-air structures, with the boys’ lavatory to the east and the girls’ to the west, separated by a low wall made of brick fragments. Gao Yang recalled that the wall barely cleared his head at the time. But Wang Tai, who was the oldest boy in the class, was as tall as the wall, so by standing on bricks he could see what was happening on the other side.
    Gao Yang thought back to the sight of Wang Tai standing on three bricks to peek over the wall into the girls’ lavatory. He also recalled what the boys’ lavatory looked like: a large brick-lined pit in the center, with boys standing on all four sides pissing at the same time. The clearing around the opening of the pit was dubbed “the precipice,” the innermost portion of which was shiny from the boys’ feet. Sleek black weeds and red rushes grew on the far edges, alongside purslanes, with their tiny yellow flowers.
    “Hey, everybody, don’t pee right away! Hold it, and we’ll see who can drink his own,” Wang Tai said from the precipice.
    Since the boys from grades one through five couldn’t squeeze up to the precipice, they watered the weeds and flowers on the outer edge, making them rustle loudly.
    “Who’s first?” Wang Tai asked. “Gao Yang, give it a try.”
    Gao Yang and Wang Tai belonged to the same production team. Wang Tai’s father was the team leader, while Gao Yang’s was a former landlord assigned to work under the supervision of poor and lower-middle-class peasants.
    “Okay, I’ll go first!” Gao Yang responded happily.
    A quarter of a century later, he still recalled the incident.
    Gao Yang had been only thirteen at the time, and even though their family had never had enough to eat or decent clothes to wear, by scrimping and saving, his folks kept him in school through the sixth grade. His father was a landlord, his mother a landlord’s wife. With that kind of background, all the talent in the world couldn’t help Gao Yang avoid the only path open to him—straight to Gaotong Production Team Number 2 as a worker under the supervision of Wang Tai’s father, and very soon. Gao Yang was pretty sure he’d never pass the middle-school entrance exam, even if he got perfect scores in every subject, which was impossible in any case. So naturally he was eager when Wang Tai gave him the chance to drink his own urine. Back then being noticed by others, for whatever reason, made him happy.
    When he said he’d try, he was confident he could do it. So he aimed his taut little pecker skyward and shot a stream of yellow piss straight up, way over his head. Quickly sticking his lips into the watery column, he took a big mouthful and swallowed it. Then he did it again.
    Wang Tai roared with laughter. “How’d it taste? How was it?”
    “Kind of like tea,” he lied.
    “Who else wants to try?” Wang Tai asked. “Who’s next?” No takers.
    Some of the smaller kids ran out onto the athletic field and shouted, “Come over here, quick! The sixth-graders are seeing who’ll drink his own pee!”
    Wang Tai turned to another of the sixth-graders. “Li Shuanzhu, go out there and take care of those little pussies.” Then he lowered his voice. “Hey, guys, do you know how girls pee?”
    They said they didn’t.
    Wang Tai spread his legs, squatted down, and made a hissing sound with his mouth. “Like that.”
    The sixth-graders shrieked in delight.
    Then Wang Tai lined them up on the west edge of the precipice. “Now we’ll see who can piss the highest,” he said. “The winner gets a prize.”
    A dozen or more students lined up, with Wang Tai at the head, and launched that many watery columns—some