Yu Hua - Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

Before he had finished, Sanle pushed open the front door and rushed in with a shout of alarm, “Someone put up a poster on the wall of the rice store saying that Mom is a ‘broken shoe.’ ”

Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan, frightened out of their wits, immediately ran over to the rice shop to see the poster on the wall. Sanle had not been mistaken. Among many other posters, there was indeed one that singled out Xu Yulan, saying that she was a “broken shoe,” a shameless tramp, saying that she had become a prostitute at the age of fifteen, saying that you could sleep with her for just two yuan a night, saying that the men she had slept with would fill up ten whole trucks.

Xu Yulan pointed at the poster and broke into a string of curses. “It’s your mama who’s the real ‘broken shoe’! Your mama’s the real tramp. She’s the one who’s a whore. Ten truck-loads? She’s slept with so many men the whole earth couldn’t swallow them all!”

Xu Yulan wheeled around to face Xu Sanguan and began to cry. “Only someone who’s had no sons and no hope of grandsons, who’s got boils growing on his head and running sores on his feet, only someone like that could be capable of spitting out this kind of venom.”

Xu Sanguan said to the people standing next to him, “This is slander, pure and simple. It says Xu Yulan became a prostitute at fifteen. Bullshit! You think I wouldn’t know if that were true? The night we got married, Xu Yulan left this much blood on the sheets.” Xu Sanguan drew a circle in the air with his hands. “If Xu Yulan was a whore at fifteen, you think I would have seen any blood on our wedding night?” Seeing that the other people in the store hadn’t replied, Xu Sanguan answered his own question, “Of course not!”

That afternoon Xu Sanguan called Yile, Erle, and Sanle to him and told them, “Yile, you’re already sixteen now. And Erle’s fifteen. Go out to the street and copy one of those posters. Doesn’t matter which one. Just copy one of them, and then paste it over the poster about your mom. Sanle, you’re still a snot-nosed little brat, so I guess all you can really do is carry a bucket of paste for the other two. Now remember, you can’t just tear down a big-character poster. These days, if you tear one of those things down, you’re a counterrevolutionary. Don’t even think about tearing them down. Just copy out a new poster and paste it over the other one. I can’t very well take care of this myself, because everybody will be looking. If you kids go, you won’t draw as much attention. You brothers better go get the job done before it gets dark.”

When night came, Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “Your three sons have pasted over that poster, so you can relax now. I doubt very many people saw it. There’re so many posters out there that no one could possibly get around to all of them. And they’re putting up new ones all the time. Before you can finish the first one, someone’s put another one on top of it.”

TWO DAYS LATER a group of people wearing red armbands came to Xu Sanguan’s house and took Xu Yulan away. They were planning to hold a massive struggle session in the town square. They had already found a landlord, dug up a rich peasant, located a rightist, caught a counterrevolutionary, and gotten hold of a capitalist roader in a position of power. They had everyone they needed except a prostitute. They said they had spent three days looking for a prostitute, and since there was only half an hour left until the meeting was to begin, they had finally found one. They said, “Xu Yulan, come with us. We need your help. This is an emergency.”

She didn’t come back until later that afternoon. When she returned, the hair on the left side of her head was all gone, but the hair on the right remained untouched. They had given her a “yin yang” haircut, neatly shaving half of her hair at the part, so that it looked like a rice paddy midway through the harvest season.

When Xu Sanguan saw her, he let out an involuntary cry. Xu Yulan moved over to the window, picked up the mirror from the sill, and after seeing herself in the mirror, began to sob.

“Now that I look like this, how can I show my face? How am I going to live? When I was walking home, they were all pointing and laughing at me. Xu Sanguan, I didn’t know how ugly I was yet. I knew they’d cut off half my hair, but I didn’t know it would be this ugly. I didn’t know until I looked in the mirror. Xu Sanguan, what am I going to do? Xu Sanguan, they cut off my hair at the struggle session. I heard the people below me laughing, and I saw my hair falling by my feet, so I knew they’d shaved my head, but when I tried to feel it with my hand, they slapped my face so hard my teeth hurt, and they said I wasn’t allowed to touch. Xu Sanguan, how am I going to go on living? It would be better to die. I don’t have anything against them, and they didn’t have anything against me. I don’t even know them. So why did they shave my head? Why didn’t they just let me die? Xu Sanguan, why don’t you say something?”

“What am I supposed to say?” Xu Sanguan said. Then he let out a long sigh. “There’s not a whole lot we can do now. You’ve got a ‘yin yang’ head. Nowadays women with hair like that are supposedly either ‘broken shoes’ or whores. There’s nothing much you can say, now that you’ve been made to look like that. No one will believe what you have to say for yourself. You couldn’t wash yourself clean even if you jumped into the Yellow River. You can’t go out anymore. You’ll have to stay in the house.”

Xu Sanguan helped shave off the other half of Xu Yulan’s hair, then kept her inside the house. Xu Yulan herself was perfectly willing to stay in, but the people in red armbands were not willing to let her. They would come and take her away every few days, dragging her along to their struggle sessions. At almost every struggle session held in town, no matter how big or small, Xu Yulan was always standing to one side. Most of the time she was just playing a supporting role.

Xu Yulan said to Xu Sanguan, “They’re not after me. They’re attacking other people. I just stand to one side and keep the ones who are being attacked company.”

Xu Sanguan told his sons, “Actually, they’re not attacking your mom. Your mom is just keeping those capitalist roaders and rightists and counterrevolutionaries and landlords company. She just stands to one side and pretends to be participating. Your mom is just playing a supporting role. What do I mean by a supporting role? Well, she’s like MSG. You can add MSG to any kind of dish, and it makes everything a little tastier.”

Later, they made Xu Yulan bring a stool out into the busiest part of the shopping street and stand on top of it. She stood atop the stool with a wooden sandwich board around her neck. They had made the sign especially for her. It read simply: XU YULAN, PROSTITUTE.

They escorted Xu Yulan to her spot, watched as she put the sign around her neck and stood up on the stool, then left. After they left, they forgot all about her. She stood there all day, looking left and right, waiting for them to come back. When the sun went down and the streets emptied, she began to wonder if they had forgotten that they had left her there. Only then did she make her way home, carrying the stool in one hand and the sign in the other.

She was left to stand on the street all day long many times. When she got tired of standing, she would sit down on the stool and pound her legs and rub her feet until she was ready to stand once more on the stool.

The place where she stood was quite a distance from the nearest public toilet. When she had to go to the bathroom, she would walk two blocks to the public toilet next to the rice shop, with the wooden placard still dangling around her neck all the while. Everybody would watch as she walked by, clasping the placard and, with averted eyes, remaining as closely as she could to the side of the road. When she arrived at the toilet, she would take off her sign and lean it against the wall. When she was finished, she would replace the placard around her neck and move back to her spot.