Mo Yan - Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh

It was noon when Hong Xi's new wife entered the bridal chamber. A cluster of prankish children had poked holes in the pink paper window covering to gawk at the bride as she sat on the edge of the brick bed. A neighbor woman patted Hong Xi on the shoulder and giggled, “Pocky, you're a lucky man! That's a tender little lotus bud you've got, so handle it gently.”

Hong Xi fidgeted with his trousers and snickered. The marks on his face glowed red.

The sun hung motionless in the sky, as Hong Xi paced back and forth in the yard, waiting for night to fall. His mother hobbled up with her cane and said, “Xi, there's something about my new daughter-in-law that bothers me. Be careful she doesn't run off.”

“Don't worry, Mother. With Yanghua over there, this one's not going anywhere. They're like locusts tied together with a string. One can't get away without the other.”

While mother and son were talking, the new daughter-in-law walked out into the yard accompanied by two bridesmaids. Hong Xi's mother muttered disapprovingly, “Whoever heard of a bride getting up off the bed before dark to relieve herself? That just shows the marriage won't last. I think she's up to something.”

But Hong Xi was too taken with his wife's beauty to share his mother's concern. She had a long face, fine eyebrows, a high nose, and slanted eyes like those of a phoenix. But when she spotted Hong Xi's face, she stopped in her tracks and, after a long quiet moment, let out a screech and took off running. The bridesmaids reached out to grab her by the arms, and rip , tore her red gown to reveal the snowy white skin of her arms, her slender neck, and the front of the red camisole she wore underneath.

Hong Xi was stunned. Rapping him on the head with her cane, his mother shouted, “Go after her, you fool!”

That snapped him out of it, and he staggered after her.

Yanyan flew down the street, trailing her loosened hair like the tail of a bird.

“Stop her!” Hong Xi shouted. “Stop her!”

His shouts brought villagers swarming out of their houses into the street and drew frantic barks from a dozen or more big, ferocious dogs.

Yanyan turned down a lane and headed south into the field, where wheat stalks bent in the wind, their flowered tips dipping like waves in an ocean of green. Yanyan crashed through the waist-high waves of wheat, their green contrasting with her red camisole and milky white arms, a lovely painting in motion.

A bride fleeing from her wedding disgraced all of Northeast Gaomi Township. So the village men took up the chase with a vengeance, coming at her from all sides. The dogs, too, which leaped and bounded in the waves of green.

As the human net closed in, Yanyan dove headfirst into the waves of wheat.

Hong Xi breathed a sigh of relief. The pursuers slowed down, breathing heavily; grasping hands, they moved with great care, like fishermen tightening a net.

As anger gripped his heart, all Hong Xi could think about was the beating he'd give her once she was in his grasp.

All of a sudden, a beam of red light rose above the wheat field, startling and confusing the mob below, who fell to the ground. Then they spotted Yanyan, her hands flapping in the air, her legs held together like a gorgeous butterfly, as she rose gracefully out of the encirclement.

The people froze like clay statues, gaping as she flapped her arms and hovered above them, then began to fly, slowly enough for them to keep stepping on her shadow if they ran after her. She was only six or seven meters above their heads, but, oh, so graceful, so lovely. Just about every oddity you could think of had occurred in Northeast Gaomi Township, but this was the first time a woman had taken to the sky.

Once the shock had passed, the people recommenced their pursuit. Some ran home and returned on bicycles to take up the chase of her shadow, waiting for her to land so they could grab her.

The flyer and the people below acted out an engrossing drama of pursuit and capture amid the shouts of people all across the fields. Out-of-towners joined passersby in craning their necks to watch the strange event in the sky. The woman in flight was mesmerizingly graceful; her pursuers below, always having to look up as they ran, stumbled through the rutted fields, falling and crashing into one another like a routed army.

Eventually, Yanyan settled into a grove of pine trees surrounding the old graveyard on the eastern edge of town. The black pines, covering nearly an acre, kept watch over hundreds of mounds under which Northeastern Gaomi ancestors lay. The trees, all very old, stood straight and tall, their tips piercing the low-flying clouds. Together, the old graveyard and the grove of black pines were the township's scariest and most sacred spot. Sacred because it was the resting place of the township's ancestors; scariest owing to all the ghostly incidents that had occurred there.

Yanyan settled onto the tip of the tallest and oldest pine tree, in the very center of the graveyard. The people below followed her there, then stood and looked up to where she rested lightly on the slender topmost branches of the tree, which easily supported her, even though she must have weighed over a hundred pounds; it was a cause of wonderment to all who were gazing from below.

A dozen or more dogs raised their heads and bayed at the levitating Yanyan.

Hong Xi shouted, “Come down, come down from there this minute.”

The dogs’ baying and Hong Xi's shouts fell on deaf ears. Yanyan sat there nonchalantly, rising and falling with each passing breeze.

The crowd below soon grew weary of standing there helplessly, except for a few rambunctious kids, who shouted, “New bride, hey there, new bride, let's see you fly some more!”

Yanyan raised her arms. Fly, the kids shouted, fly, she's going to fly. But she didn't. Instead, she combed her talonlike fingers through her hair, like a bird preening its feathers.

Hong Xi fell to his knees and wailed, “Uncles, brothers, fellow townspeople, help me find a way to bring her down. You know how hard it was for me to find a wife!”

Just then Hong Xi's mother was led up on a donkey. She slid down off the animal's back, groaning in pain as she stumbled to the ground.

“Where is she?” the old woman asked Hong Xi. “Where is she?”

Hong Xi pointed to the treetop. “She's up there.”

Screening her eyes with her hand, the old woman looked up to where her daughter-in-law was nestled atop the tree and screamed, “Demon, she's a demon!”

Iron Mountain, the township head, said, “We have to find a way to get her down, demon or not. This has to come to an end, like everything else.”

“Elder,” the old woman said, “please take charge of this, I beg you.”

To which Iron Mountain replied, “Here's what we'll do. First, we send someone to Northern Jiaozhou Township to fetch her mother, her brother, and Yanghua. Then if she won't come down, we keep Yanghua here and not let her go back. Next, we send some people home to make bows and arrows and cut some long poles. If nothing else works, we'll bring her down the hard way. And we'll report this to the local government. Since she and Hong Xi are man and wife, the government will surely step in to uphold the marriage laws. Right, then. Hong Xi, you keep watch here under the tree. We'll send someone back with a gong. If anything happens, bang it for all you're worth. The way she's acting, I'm pretty sure she's possessed. We'll have to go back to town and kill a dog so we can have some dog blood at hand when we need it.”

The crowd broke up and headed back to make preparations. Hong Xi's mother insisted upon staying with her son, but Iron Mountain was adamant. “Don't be silly. What can you hope to accomplish by staying here? If the situation turns ugly, you'll be caught in the middle. Go on home.” Seeing it was pointless to argue, the old woman let herself be boosted up on the donkey's back and left the scene weeping and wailing.