The Garlic Ballads

acne scars. Her fair-skinned companion had an attractive oval face, with— lamentably—one blind eye. He sighed. Blind old Zhang Kou said it best: even a famous beauty like Diao Zhan had pockmarks, which proves that perfect beauty simply doesnt exist. The two women stared down at the flat tire and wrung their hands, as people behind them shouted and swore to get them moving again. So, stumbling and straining, they wrestled their cart over to the muddy roadside, as the others quickly closed up ranks.
    That started an epidemic of blowouts; a fifty-horsepower tractor lost several in one deafening explosion that drove the metal wheels deep into the roadway and nearly tipped the tractor over. A cluster of officials stood helplessly alongside a mass of ruined rubber, while the driver—a young man whose sweaty face was black with mud—-stood by holding a large wrench and heaping insults on the mothers of everyone who worked for the transportation department.
    Up a gradual incline they went, then down the other side. Both the climb and the descent were hindered by the same stony roadbed— jagged teeth and wolfish fangs nipping at their heels. More and more blowouts caused a succession of traffic jams, and Gao Yang prayed silently: Old man up there, please look after my tires and don’t let them pop.
    At the bottom of the last hill they moved onto an east-west highway, where a gang of men in gray uniforms and broad-billed caps stood waiting at a traffic light. Garlic-laden carts filling the highway were joined by a stream of latecomers emerging from the south. Fourth Uncle informed him that they and everyone else were headed toward the county’s new cold-storage warehouses east of them.
    After they had traveled several hundred yards on the highway, their way was blocked by the carts ahead of them. That was when the gray-uniformed men, little black plastic satchels in hand, moved into action. Their badges identified them as employees of the traffic control station.
    From experience Gao Yang knew that traffic controllers dealt with motor vehicles; so when one of them, an imposing young fellow in gray, blocked his way, black satchel in hand, he was unconcerned, even flashing him a friendly, if foolish, grin.
    The stony-faced young man wrote out a slip of paper, handed it to him, and said, “That’ll be one yuan.”
    Taken by surprise, and not sure what was going on, Gao Yang could only stare. The man in gray waved the slip of paper in front of him. “Give me one yuan,” he said icily.
    “What for?” Gao Yang asked anxiously.
    “Highway toll.”
    “For a donkey cart?”
    “It wouldn’t matter if it was a handcart.”
    “I don’t have any money, comrade. My wife just had a baby, and that cost me every penny I owned.”
    “I’m telling you to hand it over. Without one of these,” he said, waving the slip of paper in the air, “without one of these, the marketing co-op wont buy your garlic.”
    “Honest, I don’t have any money,” Gao Yang insisted as he turned his pockets inside-out. “See—nothing!”
    “Then I’ll take some of your garlic. Three pounds.”
    “Three pounds is worth three yuan, comrade.”
    “If you don’t think that’s fair, then hand over the money.”
    “That’s blackmail!”
    “Are you calling me a blackmailer? You think I like doing this? It’s state-mandated.”
    Oh, well … if it’s state-mandated, then go ahead.”
    The man scooped up a bundle of garlic and tossed it into a basket behind him—attended by two boys—and stuffed the white slip of paper with the official red seal into Gao Yang’s hand.
    The traffic controller then turned to Fourth Uncle, who handed over two fifty-fen notes. He was also given a white slip of paper with a red seal for his troubles.
    The boys picked up the nearly full basket and staggered under its weight toward the traffic control station, where a truck was parked. Two men in white, who appeared to be loaders, leaned against the rear bumper with their arms crossed.
    At least twenty gray-uniformed men were busy handing out slips of paper from their black satchels. An argument erupted between one of them and a young fellow in a red vest who spoke his mind: “You bunch of cunt babies are worse than any son of a bitch I can think of!” The traffic controller calmly slapped him across the face without batting an eye.
    “Who do you think you are, hitting me like that?” the young man in the red vest shrieked.
    “That was a love tap,”