Can Xue - Five Spice Street

We will get ‘‘more of a general idea’’ if we examine the incident of the colleague’s son more carefully. This son was the colleague’s own flesh and blood. And from the day he was born, he had the same immunity as other children on our Five Spice Street. Later, he unfortunately contracted a serious disease and lost this protection. But this isn’t the same as affirming that he must necessarily have become the person he is now. Ahead of him a bright broad road was rolling out. With the guidance of elders, he could have averted disaster and disease and grown up to be one in a thousand. One summer at dusk, he was mesmerized by a strange shout, and following it, he walked into Madam X’s home. There, he stayed woodenly for two hours and went crazy. Suddenly all his mother’s painstaking efforts in bringing him up turned to nothing. Madam X’s plot was an ‘‘acetabulum’’ that sucked him in so tightly he couldn’t get away. When his mother asked about this frightening ‘‘acetabulum’’ and tried to help him detach himself, he flew into a rage. He denounced his mother’s good intentions as ‘‘murder’’ and said he would ‘‘rather die’’ than change back! Terrible! Was Madam X really not aware of the havoc she caused? Did she think only of her own inner tranquility when she did her damnable work at night? Who would buy this bullshit?

If a person wanted to remain aloof from worldly affairs in order to cultivate herself, she wouldn’t do such things. Madam X flaunted her dynamism; she expressed fake inhospitality; her activity achieved impersonal effects (although very small); and she was utterly determined: everything substantiated our established view. Could a person who had secretly cultivated murderous intentions since childhood become detached, expunge those intentions, and blindly start attending to her inner tranquility so as to become a saint? Is it possible that she simply ignored the youthful, tender bodies of those teenagers swaying before her eyes instead of pouncing and biting them? If she had really ignored them and become detached, she should have sat on the roof of a thatched cottage or on a mountaintop and communed with the gods. On the contrary, she was surrounded by crowds all day, and only at night did she fuss with broken mirrors or create dubious miracles. Yet she dared talk of detachment!

Now, as soon as X talks of detachment, we ‘‘turn pale.’’ Our ‘‘turning pale’’ doesn’t mean that we look terrified. Our ‘‘turning pale’’ is rather like ‘‘having a stern countenance.’’ By this we show that we have completely seen through her deception. Everyone was watching her! Her detachment = murder. Probing it this way, we ‘‘completely grasped the general idea.’’ If we consider this from the standpoint of murder, Madam X not only hadn’t ‘‘forgotten’’ the people around her, she was on the alert all the time. Her movements were full of tempting traps aimed at her quarry. (Too bad only one had fallen for the bait.) What else was she relying on? She claimed that her eyes had ‘‘retired.’’ This was also a crafty trick. (Otherwise, why bother making an official announcement?) Nobody knew that in the back of her head, she had grown a third eye. This eye was even more formidable. Though it didn’t penetrate everything, it ‘‘was like a sharp sword.’’ With this mystical eye hidden in her hair, she saw everything in the world: she had her finger on everyone’s pulse. Our naive, simple people saw only the two eyes that she had ‘‘set’’ on her face. Many swallowed what she said, and thought that she really had begun to be detached. Someone even talked of her detachment and a genius’s aloofness in the same breath! X manipulated the gullibility of ordinary people and talked self- importantly about her philosophy of ‘‘detachment.’’ She said that her detachment was higher than that of geniuses, and more profound. At any time and any place, she could ‘‘divide herself in two.’’ If she didn’t will it, the ‘‘two would become one again.’’ She didn’t have to climb up to the roof of a thatched cottage or to a mountaintop in order to commune with the gods. She could do this whenever she wished. And she boasted that her dialogue would be loftier than that of the geniuses, as though she had already surpassed them.

She also had some blasphemous abuse for geniuses: ‘‘They exaggerate the facts and put on airs. People live in such a weary way that most became exhausted a long time ago: how would anyone still have the strength to climb up to the roof of a thatched cottage or up to a mountaintop? Most die before they grow up. Just think how fragile people are: how is it possible to be a genius? Luckily, I haven’t been bothered by such thoughts. I have no interest in being a genius. Long ago, my body grew a protective armor-plated layer. I can never again be thin-skinned and quick to anger as geniuses are. I am callous to almost everything. This has made it possible for me to protect my inner serenity and remain as happy as a clown. There are no geniuses today. There are just some people who, from inner fragility or terror, use this word to fool others. They think if they flaunt it, they’ll become detached and won’t be responsible for anything. The word hangs on their tongues all day long. Every time they run into someone, they boast that they’ll soon be qualified to talk with the gods, blah, blah, blah. I don’t sympathize with them at all: they look for trouble. Every idle genius should take a job and live the life of an ordinary person, working hard for daily necessities, and then, in his spare time, he can do his so-called genius work, which is nothing so wonderful.’’

Everyone could see she was saying this in order to vent her jealousy. She was well aware she wasn’t good enough to be considered a genius, and she begrudged anyone who was fortunate enough to be one. Over time, she perfected this rationalization When she got on the subject, she tried to show she was confident and knew everything. She would look upward and show the whites of her eyes to express her ‘‘aloofness.’’ Who among her listeners knew that in fact her third eye was hard at work? She cared deeply about other people’s assessment of her! If someone had discovered her ‘‘third eye’’ and pointed out that her ‘‘aloofness’’ was a fraud, she would probably have fainted! On Five Spice Street we all knew: whenever someone expressed contempt for a certain thing, that thing was what he or she secretly desired. Madam X was talking like this, yet there was not a moment when she didn’t look forward to being recognized as on an equal footing with the geniuses. She disguised her ambition well, but why else would she attack geniuses? She knew that no one on our street had ever judged the handful of geniuses who stood high above ordinary people. They were our leaders, our guides, the idols we venerated. Madam X knew this: she knew that only by blaspheming geniuses could she get people to pay attention to her and set her in their ranks. Unwittingly, people would talk of her and the geniuses in the same breath. This was precisely what she desired. She was overjoyed and declared that ‘‘turning the world upside down’’ gave her the greatest happiness.

We might as well say that this declaration was one component of her murderous nighttime activity. It also showed her stupidity. If she wanted to be a genius, she needed to be down-to-earth and endure humiliation and thereby gain the people’s trust. She could never achieve her objective by being so blindly self-indulgent and using such crooked ways. Who had ever seen a misfit succeed? Just think of how much castigation and censure the writer had endured to reach the position he holds today, and yet the people still haven’t publicly recognized him as a genius (the writer knew that this was because they were exceedingly prudent; in fact, they had long ago tacitly recognized him. The writer understood this). Madam X was a different case. She did nothing (just think about the writer’s difficult interviews!). She ‘‘had nothing to do with people.’’ She just hid out in her little room, engaging in magic. How could she expect to be recognized as a ‘‘genius’’? Isn’t she insane? She even attempted to alter the definition, declaring that the common practice of geniuses (climbing up on a thatched cottage or a hill) was ‘‘merely an artificial pose,’’ and that they ‘‘didn’t have to be that serious,’’ blah, blah, blah. Wasn’t she implying that we had to accept her redefinition of genius? Of course, she also said that there were no geniuses today, that they were already a thing of the past. She had only one goal: ‘‘to turn the world upside down.’’ And from this, she reaped unfair gains. We can say for sure: Madam X was definitely unable to do anything like climb to the roof of a thatched cottage or climb to a mountaintop. She suspected that the gods would punish her-whether by lightning or by accidental death. She ridiculed things she couldn’t do, saying it wasn’t that she couldn’t do them, but that they weren’t worth doing, thinking that this would elevate her over others.