Yan Lianke - Lenin's Kisses

After finishing his breakfast, the township chief headed off to Spirit Mountain to clear snow.

Secretary Shi returned to the county seat.

Chief Liu stayed behind in Liven.

Further Reading:

1) Lenin Fund.A fund specifically reserved for purchasing Lenin’s corpse. This became the most frequently used term after Shuanghuai resolved to purchase Lenin’s remains.

3) Head.Skull.

5) Coquette.Coquettish.

7) Spirit Mount.An abbreviation for Spirit Mountain.

9) Thorough.Continuous.

11) Livening festival.A major festival held every year after the wheat harvest, this being a tradition unique to Liven.

The harvest season was almost over.

The period of hurried walking was almost over.

In the end, it was still summer. When the sun briefly came out, the snow quickly melted, leaving the ground soaking wet — to the point that if you were to pick up a fistful of soil, you would find it half full of water. Just when the sun was needed most, they got day after day of fog. The fog was so thick, in fact, that it was not much brighter during the day than at night, and although Chief Liu continued waving his shovel at the sky every day, the fog continued to envelop everything in sight. Every day, Chief Liu would pick up the shovel when no one was around, and wave it at the sky. Squatting down in the excrement-covered ground of the latrine, he would aim his imaginary handgun toward the area of the sky where the sun should have been and fire several shots, but the fog continued flowing inexorably forward. By the fifth day, he was so anxious that his mouth was filled with cold sores, to the point that he took a real rifle and fired it three times into the fog. All three bullets hit squarely in the middle of the clouds and fog.

As a result, the fog finally dispersed.

The water-laden soil dried up to the point that you could walk on it.

The grains in the ears of wheat were all mildewed. The sediment was greenish, and when people ate it they would vomit and get the runs. The wheat stalk also became mildewed, turning green and black and emitting a foul odor. The cattle refused to eat it, even though they were half-starving. That winter, there would be no wheat stalks to feed the cattle, and no family would have any grain, or even a bowl of snow-white noodles every three to five days. There wasn’t even enough flour to prepare the flatbread 1that they traditionally ate on New Year’s. Nor were there enough wheat seeds to plant in the fall.

Throughout the land, this was truly a year of disaster. On the villagers’ faces there was no trace of the happiness they would normally feel after the wheat harvest. In the past, Grandma Mao Zhi would always organize a three-day festival after the harvest. Every household would extinguish the fire in the hearth and go to whoever had the biggest field, where the villagers would gather together to eat and drink for three straight days. During that period, one-legged cripples would compete with two-legged people to see who could run the fastest. Deaf people would demonstrate their ability to tell what someone was saying simply by touching the speaker’s earlobe, using their hands to feel the sound of the words. Blind people would compete to see whose hearing was the sharpest by having someone drop a needle onto a stone, wood, or dirt surface and trying to determine where it had fallen. And then there were the one-armed people, who held their own competitions.

That three-day festival was like New Year’s, and young men and women would come from miles around to participate. Amid the festivities, young men and women would meet one another, and young men from out of town would often marry the disabled women from the village, while the village’s disabled young men would marry young women from outside. But sometimes, a tragedy would unfold. Once, for instance, an attractive and able-bodied young man from another village came to watch the festivities, and noticed a crippled, not terribly attractive young woman who, although she was lame, could embroider seventy to ninety flower blossoms in the blink of an eye. The young man felt that if he didn’t marry her, he simply wouldn’t be able to continue living, and therefore tried to kill himself after his parents refused to approve the match. In the end, however, he went to live with her. She subsequently got pregnant and gave birth to a child, leaving the young man’s parents with no alternative but to acknowledge their new family member. There was also a beautiful young woman who came to Liven to enjoy the festivities, at which she met a deaf man who not only had not lost his ability to speak, but could tell what you were saying from your expression and the movement of your lips.

The young woman said, “I feel sorry for whoever has to marry you.”

The deaf man replied, “Why would you feel sorry for her? I would wash my wife’s feet, bring her water, cook her meals, and let her relax at home rather than having to work in the fields. Why in the world would you feel sorry for her?”

The young woman laughed. “Your words are prettier than a song.”

The deaf man said, “That’s not true. Just listen to me sing.”

He then lowered his voice and sang her a Balou tune. 3The lyrics went as follows:

When the sun comes out in winter, the ground warms up.

Two people are lying on the ground sunning themselves.

The young man clips his wife’s nails,

While the wife picks her husband’s ears.

There is a rich landlord in the eastern village,

With piles of silver and gold, he lives in a tile-roofed house.

But one day the landlord struck his wife eight times.

I ask you, whose life is bitter, and whose is sweet?

The young woman didn’t laugh when she heard these lyrics. Instead, she thought for a while, then gently placed her hand in his and asked if he could hear her. He held her hand and replied, “As long as I’m touching you, I’m not deaf at all, since I can feel what you are saying.” She then removed her hand and announced that she had to return home to consult with her parents — and even though no one in her family agreed to the marriage, she still returned to Liven to marry him.

There was also a blind man whose eyes were pools of darkness, but whose heart was deep, and who could steal a woman’s heart with just a few words. He was going out to the fields to listen to the livening festival, but on the way he tripped over a stone and almost fell. Fortunately, a young woman from outside the village was there to grab him.

He asked, “Why did you grab me? Why not just let me fall to my death?”

She said, “Brother, you mustn’t be like that. It’s always better to live than to die.”

He said, “That’s easy for you to say. You not only can see, you are also very pretty. Of course it is good for you to live.”

She stared at him, “How can you tell I’m pretty?”

He said, “Precisely because I’m unable to see, I can see everything beautiful in the world, including everything beautiful about you.”

She said, “I’m short and fat.”

He said, “I see that your waist is like a willow.”

She said, “You can’t see. I’m dark and swarthy.”

He said, “Because I can’t see, I therefore can see you as light and tender, just like my own sister. You are like a fairy maiden.”

She said, “You can’t see, and therefore your eyes are clean and untainted.”