Can Xue - Five Spice Street

Dear ones, probably you think I’m going to launch into a tirade or the summary of my thoughts on the roof of the thatched cottage? Hadn’t a torrential argument already accumulated in my mind? Wasn’t my incomparable eloquence already mature? I swept grim eyes over all the people in our community and then slowly sat down. The hoped-for event didn’t occur. Having seen me on the roof, who would dare speak nonsense, or recklessly spread generalities about experiences they had not had in order to temporarily satisfy their vanity? So all of them were waiting, looking with children’s eyes at my lips. They didn’t dare miss anything. I said just one thing, ‘‘This is a tragic time. Higher sexual joy can exist only in our illusions.’’ With that, I raised my eyebrows, sat cross-legged, and once more became the fossil on the roof. The room was silent. Everyone’s head drooped. The last rays of twilight fell. Night would soon descend, and the cold wind poured in from the broken window: the atmosphere in the meeting room was icy. What I’d already said summed up everything, and I didn’t say another word during the meeting.

Who else but the old philosopher who had spent forty-nine or sixty- four days cross-legged on the roof could have uttered these words?

Their impact was overwhelming. Their aloofness and worldly pessimism would have convinced any intellectual regardless of his experience. After the meeting broke up in silence, I can assure you that the intellectuals were no longer concerned with Madam X and Mr. Q. The little slights were all low level. This was not what we needed. ‘‘That day’’ will eventually come. The tide of history can’t be stopped. On a foggy morning, holding hands and shoulder to shoulder, we will sit by the street and sing a song: ‘‘That day is still far away. Everyone should wait quietly. In the silence comes the song of the lark. Life is this weighty. We moan in the midst of torment. Ah, we moan…’’ I’m also the writer of this philosophical song, now popular on our Five Spice Street. Even people like my wife are inspired by it. Once, at midnight, she suddenly rushed into the garden and belted it out. Then she started slapping herself.

Ever since I wrote the song, no one had paid attention to X and Q. Because of my curiosity and fantasies, I observed them but discovered that their little tricks were of no use to theoretical research. From the time I climbed up to the roof of the thatched cottage, I uncompromisingly expunged those two people from my research. I began considering the mutuality of elevation and popularization. X and Q still had a great influence on the crowds (though curling their lips, everyone secretly watched every move they made). But if I put the issue on the table or publicly debated it, I’d get caught in a dogfight, so all of my research would become obsolete. This would be a gross misstep, not in accord with my status. Dear ones, don’t worry: I didn’t engage in that nonsense. I squatted as steadily as Mt. Tai on the roof of the thatched cottage and considered a counter- measure-the popular song, whose profound pessimism would influence the crowds. I knew this wouldn’t be very useful, for while on the roof, I had given up all conceit. But I was determined to do it this way because I wanted to break the monopoly of X and Q in the realm of consciousness. As soon as I put this plan into effect, the elites would tacitly understand, and their understanding would turn around the consciousness of Five Spice Street.

Of course, this isn’t to say that they possessed consciousness or that I became optimistic. Definitely not. My pessimism had long since penetrated to the marrow of my bones. The crowd’s consciousness should rather be said to be like a plastic plaything. You melt it into whatever shape you want. From the bottom of my heart, I believed they had no true consciousness except for what was shaped by the elites, and the elites’ inspiration came from my enlightenment. I sensed obscurely the possibility of future high-level sexual joy and communicated it to the elites through an ordinary popular song. After the elites acknowledged this (there is a qualitative difference between acknowledgment and comprehension; no one could comprehend my abstract consciousness, because it was divine will), they indoctrinated our beloved ordinary folk with it as if force-feeding ducks. Then the beloved folk would begin strolling on the main street like drunks, belting out these high-level lyrics of mine. It may have looked like blasphemy or a farce to an outsider, but what else could we do?

This is life. I had achieved my goal. Who cares how? The fact is that X and Q’s influence had already been swept away. What they did in the granary was purely low-level. The people had already unwittingly recognized another high-level format. They didn’t know what it actually was or what they should feel about it, but still they recognized it. Some people might still be confused, some might be weeping sadly, some might be dreaming, some might be filled with enmity. Still, they recognized it. In any case, I am the winner.

The writer has already made it clear above that the first speaker was supported by the vast majority of the elites, and controlled public opinion on Five Spice Street. The women who supported the second speaker merely pretended to be crazy and made a terrific fuss for a while. It was over soon. It had no effect: it was no more than a ‘‘tempest in a teapot.’’ It seemed that one day, all of them chopped boards at their doors and unanimously threatened to make blackboards from them, but after they’d chopped for a while, they all threw the axes down and went into the public toilet and began discussing the movement. They talked exultantly. They believed that as soon as the blackboards came into use, they could hold their heads high. They wouldn’t put up with being deceived any longer. Some of them even decided to sleep that night in separate beds from their husbands, to starve ‘‘these old dogs.’’ But as soon as they emerged from the toilet, they forgot about the blackboards. They left the axes on the ground and went around visiting, talking animatedly, as if from now on they would break from the old days and their new, high-level life would begin. ‘‘Madam X is a piece of shit, though she did enlighten us in some ways.’’ They all agreed on this. But as for action, they took none. That night, they took care of their men as always. Driven by guilt, some were even more humble and wished to hold their men all through the night. The next morning, their eyes not yet fully open, the men discovered those planks of wood and axes. Before they had time to ask anything, the women began cursing loudly, saying that thieves had come in the night. ‘‘They were going to pound the doors and windows down and come in and pilfer.’’ Luckily, it was discovered in time, and they threw down the axes and took off. ‘‘Too contemptible!’’ they shouted. ‘‘They wanted to wreck our happy family life. If I hadn’t discovered this in time, wouldn’t they have also murdered us?’’

The writer was impartial: he could only record this awkward, embarrassing incident. We couldn’t understand why women had this bad habit of making a great start and then not following through. Beloved readers, I don’t intend to deprecate our lovable women of Five Spice Street (I don’t have to mention that there were many pretty, voluptuous ones among them). Perhaps it’s only a tiny flaw. Anyway, who’s perfect? And so our comments on the second speaker had better end here.

The third speaker is truly lonely (C). But his powerful eloquence, his philosophical theorizing, and his well-known communication with God actually cowed all the elites into submission. There was a time when the majority agreed with him. In several rounds of debate, he almost beat out the first speaker. But just as he was about to triumph, history played another trick on us. Madam X jumped out from the dark granary whose location we didn’t know, and announced to every passerby: she wanted to establish a ‘‘normalized’’ relationship with her beloved! This lightning bolt so shook the elites that their eyes flashed with red and green sparks. Those supporting the first speaker immediately assembled and hooted: “What is a woman? Ah? Look, this is the beginning of retaliation! The krait has crept out of the cave! What civil war are we still fighting? We’re on the verge of calamity!’’