Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

“What kind of rule is that?”

“I don’t know if there’s a rule or not, but everyone who’s strong enough goes to sell his blood. You get thirty-five yuan a shot. That’s more than you make in six months in the fields. And blood’s like well water. If you never go to the well, the source dries up, but if you use it every day, there’ll always be just as much water as there was before.”

“But Uncle, if what you say is true, then selling blood’s a real money tree.”

“That depends on whether or not you’re in shape. If you’re not in shape, you might as well sell your life away when you go sell blood. When you go sell blood, the hospital has to check you out first. First they take a tube of blood and check to see whether or not you’re healthy. They’ll only let you sell to them if you’re healthy.”

“Fourth Uncle, do you think I’m in good enough shape to sell blood?”

Fourth Uncle looked up at his nephew on the roof, who looked back at him, torso bared and grinning. The flesh on his arms looked solid, so Fourth Uncle said, “You could sell blood.”

Xu Sanguan grinned to himself until another thought crossed his mind, and he looked down at his uncle. “Fourth Uncle, I want to ask you something else.”

“What is it?”

“You said that when they check you at the hospital, they take a tube of blood, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Do they pay you for it?”

“No,” Fourth Uncle said, “you give it to them for free.”

THE THREE OF THEM walked down the road. The oldest was in his thirties, the youngest only nineteen. Xu Sanguan, who was walking in between them, was somewhere in the middle. He said to the two men walking beside him, “You’re carrying watermelons, and you’ve both got a big bowl in your pockets. Are you planning to sell watermelons in town when you’re done selling blood? One, two, three, four — you each have four watermelons. Why so few? Why not bring in a hundred pounds each? What are those bowls for anyway? Why didn’t you bring any food? What are you going to have for lunch?”

“We never bring anything to eat when we’re going to sell blood,” the nineteen-year-old, Genlong, replied, “When we’re finished selling blood, we’re going to go to a restaurant to have a plate of fried pork livers and two shots of yellow rice wine.”

The man in his thirties was called Ah Fang, who explained, “The pork livers build up the blood, and the rice wine gives it life.”

Xu Sanguan went on, “You said you sell four hundred milliliters each time. How much is that really?”

Ah Fang took a bowl from out of his pocket, “See this bowl?”

“Yeah.”

“Two bowls at a time.”

“Two bowls?” Xu Sanguan sucked in a breath. “They say it takes a whole bowl of rice just to make a few drops of blood. So how many bowls of rice do you have to eat to make two bowls of blood?”

Ah Fang and Genlong chuckled. Ah Fang said, “It’s no use at all if you only eat rice. You have to eat the pork livers and drink some rice wine.”

“Xu Sanguan,” Genlong went on, “didn’t you say just now that we don’t have enough watermelons? I’ll tell you something. We aren’t planning to sell any watermelons today. These melons are gifts.”

Ah Fang added, “These melons are for Blood Chief Li.”

“Who’s Blood Chief Li?”

They had arrived at the head of a little wooden bridge. A stream stretched into the distance, widening and narrowing as it flowed through the fields. Green weeds poked out above the surface of the water, clinging to the banks of the stream and climbing up the edges of the surrounding rice paddies.

Ah Fang stopped and said to Genlong, “Genlong, we’d better drink some water now.”

Genlong put down his melon-laden carrying pole and shouted, “Time to drink!”

They took their bowls out from their pockets and clambered down the embankment. Xu Sanguan crossed to the middle of the wooden bridge, standing to watch as they dipped their bowls into the stream, waving them back in forth in the water until they had swept away all the weeds and debris from the area directly in front of them. This accomplished, they noisily gulped down bowl after bowl of water — four or five bowls each.

Xu Sanguan, still standing above them, called out, “Did you two eat lots of salted pickles for breakfast?”

Ah Fang looked up. “We didn’t have any breakfast. We drank eight bowls of water though. And besides what we just drank, we still have to stop in town and have some more, until our stomachs are so swollen that it hurts and the roots of our teeth start to ache. Because the more water you drink, the more blood there will be. The water sinks into the blood.”

“When the water sinks into the blood, does the blood get watery?”

“Sure. But there’s more of it.”

“Now I know why you brought the bowls along,” Xu Sanguan said, as he too climbed down the embankment toward the stream.

“Will one of you lend me a bowl? I’ll drink some too.”

Genlong handed him his bowl. “Take mine.”

Xu Sanguan took hold of the bowl and squatted down by the stream.

Ah Fang said, “The water on top’s dirty, and the stuff on the bottom is too. You want to drink from the middle.”

When they had finished drinking from the stream, they continued down the road. This time Ah Fang and Genlong walked next to each other while Xu Sanguan walked to one side, listening to the rhythmic squeaking of their carrying poles.

Xu Sanguan said, “You’ve been carrying those the whole way. Let me take one.”

Genlong said, “Take Ah Fang’s for a while.”

Ah Fang said, “A few watermelons don’t bother me. When I go to town to sell melons, I usually carry a hundred pounds at a time.”

Xu Sanguan asked, “Just now you mentioned Blood Chief Li. Who’s he?”

“Blood Chief Li,” Genlong explained, “is the bald man who’s in charge of buying blood for the hospital. He’s the one that decides who gets to sell blood and who doesn’t.”

“And that’s why you call him Blood Chief Li,” Xu Sanguan concluded.

Ah Fang continued, “Sometimes there’s a lot of people who want to sell blood, but not very many patients in the hospital who need it. At times like those, everything depends on whether or not you’re on Blood Chief Li’s good side. Because the people who are on his good side are the ones who’ll get to sell their blood.”

Ah Fang added by way of explanation, “And what exactly does it mean to be on Blood Chief Li’s good side? In Blood Chief Li’s own words, ‘When someone remembers me even when he doesn’t need to sell any blood. When he remembers me from time to time.’ And what does it mean to remember him from time to time?”

Ah Fang pointed at the watermelons dangling from the carrying pole, “This is what it means to remember him from time to time.”

“We’re not the only ones who remember him either,” Genlong added. “That girl named Ying something or other remembers him all the time.”

The pair burst into broad grins. Ah Fang told Xu Sanguan, “She gets on his good side under the covers. If she wanted to sell some blood, everyone else would have to stand aside, no matter who it happened to be. And if somebody should offend her, well, it wouldn’t matter if his blood belonged to an Immortal, because Blood Chief Li wouldn’t even let him give it away.”

They arrived at the edge of town as they spoke. As soon as they got into the city, Xu Sanguan took the lead, because he was from town and knew his way around. They told him they wanted to find a good place to drink some more water. Xu Sanguan said, “Once you get into town, you shouldn’t drink stream water anymore. It’s dirty here. I’ll take you to drink well water.”