Mai Jia - Decoded

59

In what seemed to be an effort to continue to provide me with treatment, the lead physician gave me a list of food to eat: hot porridge, steamed buns, soft bean curd in sauce. He made clear that this was all that I should eat, and no one was to alter the ingredients or the amounts. However, according to my experience, at this time I should eat noodles and they should be a little undercooked.

60

Our lives are full of ideas that we have created for ourselves, these are much more real than genuine ideas that have stood the test of time.

This is because our mistaken ideas appear before us, familiar and powerful.

When it comes to ciphers, you are the doctor, they are the patients.

61

You take them along the same road. The road you walk may lead to heaven but it will take them to hell. The things you have achieved are indeed fewer than those you have destroyed. .

Good fortune and calamity rely upon each other, good can come from bad, bad can come from good.

63

Like a clock, she always arrives on time; she is equally punctual about leaving. She appears with no sound, she leaves in silence.

Is she doing this because she understands you, wishes to pander to you, or was she always like this?

I thought. . I don’t know. .

64

Unexpectedly you hope that she won’t come today, but actually you worry that she won’t.

65

She works more than she speaks and everything she does is done in silence, just like that metronome. But working in this way has allowed her to quietly establish authority over you.

Her silence could be smelted into gold.

66

For God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words. . For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also diverse vanities.*

* Taken from Ecclesiastes 5.

67

Has she read the Bible?

68

She is an orphan!

She’s been more unfortunate than you!

She’s been reared on the food of the masses!

She is a genuine orphan!

An orphan — a word you are most sensitive about!

The answer to the riddle is suddenly clear.

She is an orphan, that’s the answer.

What is an orphan? An orphan has its upper and lower teeth, but

its tongue is incomplete. An orphan always uses its gaze to speak. An orphan is born of the earth (everyone else is born of water). An orphan’s heart is forever scarred. .

70

Tell her, you are also an orphan. . no, why tell her? Do you hope to draw nearer to her? Why do you want to be nearer her? Is it because she is an orphan? Or is it because. . because. . how is it that you suddenly have so many problems? Problems are the shadows of what one desires. . geniuses and fools have no problems, they only have demands.

71

Hesitation is also a form of power, but it is an ordinary person’s power.

Ordinary people like to complicate things, those who create ciphers have the ability to see this, but those who crack ciphers don’t.

72

She stayed an extra thirty minutes today because she was reading to me about Pavel Korchagin, the main character in How the Steel Was Tempered . She said this was her favourite book. She carried it with her wherever she went and whenever she had free time, she would pull it out to read. Today I scanned through it. She asked if I had read it and I answer that I hadn’t, she then asked if she could read it to me. She speaks very good Mandarin. She told me that she had worked as a phone operator at Headquarters. Several years ago she actually had heard my voice over the phone. .

73

The difference lies here, some people prepare for any eventuality while others do not; one should never criticize oneself for this.

74

In his dreams, he saw himself wading waist-deep in a river whilst reading a book. The book contained no words. . then the water began to surge and swirl, he put the book on his head to prevent it from getting wet. Once the surging water passed, he realized that the water had taken his clothes with it. He was naked in the river. .

75

In this world, every person’s dream has already been dreamt by everyone else!

76/77

He dreamt two dreams simultaneously, one was above, one was below. . *

. . What he experienced in his dream made him waken weary and exhausted, it seemed as though his dream had boiled him down to the dregs

* This page was filled, but the subsequent page has no header: I suspect that some sections have been removed..

78

A terrible fall can wreck even the greatest triumph. But that’s not for certain.

79

You’re thinking about things you would never have imagined that you might think about.

80

There is only one method to get rid of you: to look at you with one’s own eyes.

81

Listen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . one. . . . . . . . you. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eyes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . most. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . on. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . you. . †

Two types of sickness: the former causes mostly pain, the latter makes one dream. The former can be treated with medicine, the latter, too. But the medicine is in one’s dreams. One can recover quickly from the former illness, the latter burns you up.

† Whatever he wrote here he erased; it was only possible to make out a few words.

83

Dreams! Wake up, wake up!

Dreams! Don’t wake up!

84/85

Listen, this time he won’t write something and then erase it, he. . *. . As the lily among thorns, as the apple tree among the trees of the wood!†

* I suspect some sections have been removed.

† Taken from the Song of Solomon 2.

86

The symbol of your life is dying out, like one insect being devoured by another.

87

A cage is expecting a bird. . ‡

‡ Unknown source.

88

This is one road that everyone walks, and so it is easy to recognize.

89

A bird!

90

Could it be that he hasn’t struggled enough? A cage waits for a bird, although. . §

It is easy to tell by looking at the notebook that its contents are in a jumble, and it is quite obscure at times. But you can see how Rong Jinzhen’s love for Miss Di grew, you can see how his feelings evolved. Especially in the latter sections, his deep feelings for her become apparent. I reckon that the sections Miss Di removed were most likely expressing intimate, emotional things, and they were probably even more obscure than the rest of it. That’s because I once asked her if Rong Jinzhen had expressed his love for her in a straightforward manner and she told me that he hadn’t. However, she also said that perhaps he had, since some of his words had that meaning.

§ This page was completed, but the pages that followed were removed. I don’t know how many are missing.

I asked her over and over again what those words were, but she hesitated and hesitated. Finally she told me that the words were not his own, they were quoted from the Song of Solomon, specifically song number four, the final verse. I looked this up afterwards to learn exactly what he had written. It must have been this: ‘Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.’