Yan Lianke - Lenin's Kisses

Having encountered this idyllic setting, the young man, who had just been appointed to a seventh-grade prefect position, decided not to continue on to Shuanghuai to become the county magistrate and to instead stay in Liven, marry Sister Hua, settle down with her, and set up a business.

Of course, Sister Hua’s family adamantly rejected this proposal to permit her to marry a man who would then move in with them as their son-in-law, rather than having her marry out. They asked her, We are just villagers, so how could we presume to have you marry a county official?

The prefect proceeded to take out his imperial letter and stamps, together with the paperwork he had brought with him in his quest for fame and glory, and tossed them all into the ravine.

Sister Hua’s father said, Everyone in our family is disabled. How can we accept a healthy wholer as our son-in-law?

The prefect went into the family’s kitchen. Everyone thought he was going to put away his water bowl, never expecting that he would instead grab a cleaver and proceed to chop off his left hand at the wrist, thereby leaving himself permanently disabled.

Sister Hua therefore had no choice but to marry him.

From that point on, the prefect ceased being a prefect, and instead became Sister Hua’s husband and moved in with her. Sister Hua’s father began teaching this young man, who had been studying ever since he was young, how to farm and use a hoe. Her father taught him to use one hand to hold a sickle and thresh the grain, while Sister Hua herself taught him how to plant vegetables and flowers. From that point on, they enjoyed their heavenly days.

By the time Sister Hua’s parents passed away, the prefect could already use one hand to plant millet and sow beans, pick sorghum and harvest wheat, and transplant seedlings. As a result, in summer the hillside was always covered in wheat, and in autumn it was covered in corn that grew as large as a wooden club. When the cotton turned white, it was as though clouds had descended from the sky, and when the rape plants bloomed in spring, it looked as though the sun had been swallowed up by the water. All year round, there were fresh flowers and vegetables, and the ducks and chickens were able to feed from dawn to dusk.

Because Sister Hua not only was incomparably beautiful, but from the time she was young had loved to plant flowers behind the house, she would transplant magnolias, wild crysanthemums, and moon grass to the mountainside, so that in spring the slope would be full of the fragrance of magnolias; in summer it would have the red and green aroma of sunlit flowers and moon grass; in autumn there would be the scent of wild crysanthemums, melons on vines, and beans laid out to dry; and in winter she would plant a kind of wild bramble that grew over the eaves of the house and mountain plums to grow along the cliff. She would let the moon grass grow in the warm sunlight at the head of her bed, where it would produce little red flowers like those of carriage-wheel chrysanthemums, and in winter she would plant fragrant purple Chinese roses and Chinese peonies, which always wilted in the sunlight but bloomed when it was overcast. In this way, it was like spring throughout the year, and she could always enjoy the smell of fresh flowers. All year round, you could smell this spring fragrance from far, far away.

This was an excellent place, a heavenly place.

During the day, while the prefect was working in the fields, Sister Hua would be either sewing or mending shoes. With one of them working in the fields and the other in the doorway of their home, they would always be carrying on a conversation,

She asked, How could you have decided to simply chop off your hand?

He said, If I hadn’t been disabled, would you have agreed to marry me?

She said, No, I wouldn’t have.

He said, Well, there you have it.

Sometimes, when he was working in the fields and happened to stray too far from the house, such that the two of them could no longer hear each other, she would move her spinning wheel over to where he was working, and would spin cotton or mend shoes while he worked.

He said, This soil is very rich; it’s full of oil.

She said, Actually, you should have accepted the position of magistrate — that is a man’s true honor.

He said, To tell the truth, when I was seven I had a dream that if I wanted to enjoy a heavenly existence, I should study hard. If I studied hard and became an official, heavenly days would await me. So, I studied diligently for thirteen years, passed the jinshi exam, and was appointed county magistrate. When I passed in front of your house, that dream from thirteen years earlier suddenly reappeared in my mind’s eye, with you and the fields of crops appearing just as they had in my dream. I remembered that in my dream there were nine chickens, and your house also turned out to have nine chickens. In my dream there were six or seven ducks, and your house also turned out to have six or seven ducks. In my dream the girl was three years younger than I, and when I met you it turned out that you were seventeen while I was twenty. In my dream there was a pile of grain as big as a mountain, and the mountain slope was covered in fresh flowers, and it turned out that your house also had a pile of grain as big as a mountain and a mountain slope covered in fresh flowers.

He asked, Why wouldn’t I have stayed behind?

Needless to say, each night they would hug each other tight. He told her countless stories he had learned from books, and she would tell him endless stories about life in the mountains. Time flowed like water, grass, or wheat fragrance, as one day followed another, year after year. Eventually she said, Someday, I want to give you a child.

He said, I worry that the child might turn out to be a wholer.

She said, Actually, I hope we have a wholer.

He said, If it is a wholer, then when he grows up he won’t understand people’s lives here, and might miss out on this heavenly life and instead leave and wander aimlessly. He would endure immense hardship and sorrow.

She reflected for a moment, but didn’t respond. She ended up getting pregnant anyway, and while she was pregnant provincial officials discovered that as the new magistrate was on his way to assume his new post in the Shuanghuai county seat, he had happened to encounter days of livening and had decided not to take his assigned post after all. The provincial officials reported this matter to the emperor, who thought, Are you not using the livening days of the disabled to mock the prosperity of the able-bodied? He therefore replied angrily, Having only one hand, he can’t very well fight, but he can certainly cook, so send someone to make him join the army, to cook for the troops.

At that time, there were many uprisings in the area around Yunnan, so the prefect was told to go there to serve as an army cook. When he left, Sister Hua gabbed him by the leg and sobbed. He said, I should have chopped off both of my hands, because if I had, today’s events would never have come to pass. He added, These past few years of livening have been worth it. I’m just worried that after our child is born, you won’t be able to bring yourself to render him disabled. He added, Mark my words. First, wait for me to return, and second, after our child is born, you must at the very least make him lame in one leg, so that he can’t walk properly and would be counted as disabled.

Having said this, the magistrate was taken away by the troops.

Sister Hua gave birth to their child on Sister Hua Slope. The child was a perfectly healthy wholer. Afraid that Sister Hua might have a difficult delivery, the women of Liven all came to watch over her bedside, and they were delighted when she gave birth to a wholer. Given that she was the child’s own mother, how could she possibly bear to maim him? Even the prospect of shaving off a layer of skin from the back of his hand was enough to make her burst into tears. She and the child therefore waited at Sister Hua Slope for her husband to return from Yunnan. They waited and waited, and when her son turned seventeen he announced that he wanted to leave the Balou mountains and go look for his father. One day, the son did in fact leave Liven and set out in search of his father, wandering through distant lands.