Yan Lianke - The Four Books

“With an experimental wheat field capable of producing more than ten thousand jin per mu , and with ears of wheat larger than ears of corn, I think we’ll definitely be invited to the capital to pay tribute.” As he was saying this, the Child lay on the ground and stared at the sky with a look of hope and expectation.

About half a month later, those leaves suddenly began wilting overnight. I knew I needed to use my blood to strengthen these plants, and that this wouldn’t be a question of irrigating specific plants that had begun to wilt, but rather I would need to wait until a rainy day and cut open all ten of my fingers and then stand on the embankment above the wheat field and let my blood spray everywhere, mixing with the rain and falling together onto the wheat leaves, the wheat ears, as well as the soil between the individual plants. I waited until the next rainy day, then did indeed cut open all ten of my fingers, and stood at the front of the field letting my blood spray over my wheat plants. Three days later, the rain stopped, and I saw that all of the plants that had previously turned yellow were green again, and were producing new growth. At first those wheat stalks were as thick as ordinary ones, but within a few days they had become twice as thick, like bamboo stalks in the spring. In order to sample their flavor, I found a stalk that wasn’t growing as fast as the others and cut it open. I discovered that my wheat was different from any I had ever tasted. While other wheat stalks are hollow, mine turned out to be solid, and inside the hard outer shell there was a thick pulp with the consistency of tofu. I used my fingernail to scoop out a chunk of this pulp and tasted it, and my mouth was immediately filled with a delicious sweetness.

That day, I greedily ate the pulp from three wheat plants. Later, I cut down some of the stalks that were growing too closely together and placed them in a pot to make soup. When I added a dash of salt, I discovered that even without oil, the result was as delicious as a wild mushroom soup full of fresh meat. Moreover, wild mushrooms typically have a stench of soil, while my soup was as pure as though it had been boiled from water taken directly from the clouds.

Unfortunately, this wondrous taste did not last long, and once summer formally arrived three weeks later, that white pulp inside the wheat stalks disappeared after only three to five days of hot summer sun. It’s not clear whether it had dried up or had simply been reabsorbed by the rapidly growing wheat plants, but by the end of the fifth lunar month, none of my wheat stalks had any more pulp inside. They were already waist-high, and while they had not yet begun producing ears of wheat, the stalks were as tall as they typically are at harvest time, with stems as sturdy as pond reeds. I should have been able to predict that those wheat stalks would be half as tall as pond reeds, just as I knew they would produce ears of wheat that would be as large as ears of corn. Yet I overlooked this, distracted by the favorable weather.

Because the wheat was growing so quickly and needed to absorb so many nutrients, each time it rained I cut all of my fingers and let my blood pour out over the entire field. And if it went a couple of weeks without raining, I would irrigate the field myself, and in the process would pour at least a bowl and a half of my own blood into the bucket. Eventually, I lost so much blood that I began to feel faint, and would frequently become so dizzy after donating blood that I would have to kneel down immediately so as not to collapse. In fact, I had already passed out many times, and in order to supplement my nutrition I began going to a distant pond to catch fish and crabs. But once while fishing, as I was groping under the water plants and pond reeds, there was a sudden gust of wind. The wind was from the north, and while it started as a cool breeze, it soon blew harder and harder, and the water plants and pond reeds were blown down like a head of hair that has been combed flat. I remembered my own wheat stalks, which were as tall as pond reeds. I dropped the bucket I was using to catch fish and started running, barefoot, back to my fields. It began raining. The sky instantly became as dark as night, broken intermittently by bright flashes of lightning and thunder so violent that it practically knocked me to the ground. I ran crazily through the rain, and after several li finally managed to make it to my sand dune, which I then climbed to reach my plots of land. I gasped, and saw that it was as I had feared. Given that my wheat plants were not as supple as pond reeds, they were now all lying flat on the ground, like a crumpled green blanket. The rain had washed the wheat leaves and broken wheat stalks down from the terrace, and now they were lying in the sand at the base of the dune. I stood there in shock, and after a moment I bit my lip and knelt in the rain. I started wailing, like an infant abandoned in the wilderness.

After the sun came out, I removed those stalks that were completely broken and propped up the ones that were only bent, using some string to bind them to sticks that I impaled in the ground next to them. I also erected the sort of trellises that people often use for beans and squash, to support the stalks. Several days later, I counted the stalks I had managed to save, and found that whereas I had started with a hundred and twenty, I was left with only fifty-two. What had once been a dense field of plants was now merely a few isolated stalks. From that point on, I never again dared to leave the field, and apart from going to the river to claim water and a few other essential tasks, I spent all of my time watching my field with its fifty-two stalks. Even when I needed to return to the district to fetch my grain, oil, and salt rations, I would be careful to pick a day with good weather and quickly hurry back — jogging the entire way, like a mother who has stepped out for a moment and left her children at home alone. I stopped writing my Old Course manuscript in order to focus my attention on tending to those fifty-two wheat plants. Those plants were all that I had left, and in addition to irrigating them with my own blood, I even gave them the lard and vegetable oil I retrieved from the canteen, to help nourish their roots. I would take the fish, crabs, frogs, and tadpoles that I managed to catch when the weather was good, and would either make soup out of them or else would chop them up and bury them under the wheat stalks. Although this shrimp soup and crab paste were not as nutritious as my own blood, I could nevertheless use them to supplement the water each time I irrigated the plants. By the beginning of the sixth month, when everyone else’s wheat was just beginning to reach people’s knees, my plants were already as tall as small trees, and their leaves were as thick as a man’s finger and as long as a chopstick and a half.

These were not mere wheat stalks, but rather they were wheat trees.

In this sixth lunar month, these little wheat trees started producing ears of wheat. One evening, I noticed that a bright, tender ear was perched, like a dragonfly, on the tip of one of the wheat stalks in the third plot. I touched it with my hand, and a fresh scent emanated forth. I examined the other wheat plants, and found that about a dozen of them had a small ball surrounded by green leaves at the ends of their stems.

It was only then I realized that the wheat was producing ears significantly ahead of schedule. In the middle of summer, when the sun was beating down on my head like fire, it was heating the wheat plants to the point that they needed to be irrigated once every three to five days. After all, my eight plots were planted in sandy soil that couldn’t retain moisture, and if it hadn’t been for my blood, the plants would have already died from lack of nutrients and water. In order to make sure that the plants had enough as they were producing ears, I exchanged the support rods that were not tall or strong enough, and replaced them with even taller and thicker rods, using rope to fasten them from the base to the middle of the stem, and on up to the top. Then, every morning I would sprinkle them with water, and every three days I would irrigate them thoroughly. When doing so, I would always single out the plants that had begun to ear and make sure they received extra nutrition, pouring half a bowl of my blood-water directly onto the base of each plant.