From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan

I sighed ruefully. Lin could not have known the reason for my sigh. He looked up at me before going on: “I hear he went through some real hard times in the past. Years ago he went in for bamboo on a hill farm in the township, but he ended up not only losing money but even getting beaten up by his own workers. Luckily for him Mr. Yuan and a few others in the town hall helped him out. That’s how they became friends. He often comes here, partly for business, partly to go drinking with his pals. Obviously there’s an element of gratitude on his part. You wait and see, they’ll surely be up all night again tonight.”

“Do you know why the workers turned on him?” I asked.

“No.” Lin shook his head. “I only know what I’ve heard.”

“Oh.” I gave another rueful sigh.

I was lying when I told Lin I didn’t know Li Xinchang. Not only that, but there were other things I knew, such as Li’s origins, his character, and why he’d been beaten up by his own hired hands.

It’s a long story….

Li Xinchang was a friend of ours. I say “ours” because my friendship with him arose within a circle of friends and was multilateral by nature.

Every person has his own private circles of acquaintance, aside from those associated with place of study, politics, and family. In such private circles it is not necessary for every member to get along with every other, or to share the same interests. X and Y may not necessarily be well matched as friends, but within a certain small circle they interact exceedingly well, just perfectly. To a great extent their friendship is collective or communal.

As a youth I was part of just such a circle. All of us were in the vigorous prime of our lives, and on some basic points we were in complete accord: we had all received some education and came from good, solid family backgrounds; we had high ideals and great ambitions, and loved to debate, to rail against the mundane world. Our hearts were pure….

It was in such circumstances that I became acquainted with Li Xinchang. He was in the same class as my half-brother in high school, so he had received a fairly good education. He was clever, bright, and lively. His appearances in our little circle were normally made in the company of my brother. Eventually we became very good friends independently. During the years that I spent in mainland China, Xinchang was conscripted into the Japanese army as a translator and sent to the South Seas. In spring 1946, when I returned from the Mainland, my brother put me up in his home in central Kaohsiung, and that’s how I ran into Xinchang again. He said he too had just been sent back from overseas and was also living in Qianjin, only a block away. It was as if Fate had brought us back together. He and my brother saw a great deal of each other, and he came to our place almost every day. And when he came we’d always end up talking, talking … about all sorts of things, setting the world to rights.

During this immediate postwar period of demobilization and restoration, the old order had collapsed but a new order had yet to be established. Society was pretty chaotic: the old Taiwan dollar was depreciating by the day, and public morale was in a state of flux. The lives of public employees were very hard, as their fixed salaries were unable to keep up with the crazy inflation. At the county level and below, salaries were being sat on for several months on end, so that when employees were finally paid, the value of their remittances was a fraction of what they should have been.

Li Xinchang had had a Japanese education and had known a stable and privileged existence. Like most natives of Taiwan, he was somewhat disconnected from mainland Chinese society and customs, so he felt very dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. He often showed this in his pessimistic and indignant conversation. Whenever I asked him about his future activities and goals he would always shake his head and sigh, before concluding: “Let’s wait and see!”

But my circumstances were not the same as his; I couldn’t just sit and wait like him. At the time I had already done the rounds a few times to Taipei and elsewhere, before getting myself fixed up through an acquaintance with a teaching job of sorts in Pingtung city.

“You really want to work in the public sector?” he asked me rather doubtfully at our gathering that evening.

“Would I lie to you?” I laughed.

“You realize your salary won’t even be enough for you alone?” He seemed genuinely concerned for me. “So how will you support your wife and children?”

“I know,” I said, still smiling but now less naturally, because what he said was indeed true. “But at least one of us will be taken care of.”

“I don’t think so!” He shook his head again.

Later I asked him again about his future plans. He said a few friends wanted him to go in with them in a trading venture.

At that time trade was a red-hot area, with ships constantly plying among Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines; officially it was trade, but in reality it was flagrant piracy. Adventurers and profiteers were attracted to this trade like ducks to water, as if trade were the only path to riches.

A few days later I moved with my family to Pingtung. Xinchang and my brother saw us off at the train station. After several happy months together in Kaohsiung, naturally we shared a sense of impending loneliness now that we had to part. As the train prepared to leave we shook hands and wished one another well.

“To success in your adventure!” I said to Xinchang as I shook his hand. He just smiled.

I settled down in Pingtung and went to work on time every morning and home again at night: a clockwork existence. After a few months I received a letter from my brother from which I learned that Li Xinchang had gone into the construction business with an architect friend. There was not a word in the letter about trade. I was quite surprised by this. Only later did I hear that Xinchang’s father had strenuously opposed his going into trade. His father was an old-fashioned sort who believed in knowing one’s own place in society; old-fashioned people are afraid of taking risks.

Mind you, in those days the construction business certainly was a promising field of endeavor. During the war Kaohsiung had been badly bombed by the Allies and turned into a pulverized waste, its system of streets and buildings destroyed. Everything had to be begun again from scratch, so you could imagine what a prosperous business construction was. Unfortunately inflation was rampant and construction projects almost always went over budget as a result. Again and again this month’s perfectly sound estimate for building materials would buy only a fraction of what was necessary come the following month. When the building was finished and payment was made by the client, profit on paper would turn out to be loss in real terms. After a year or more of this Xinchang was battered and bruised, and even his health was affected.

Unable to carry on in construction, Xinchang went into fishmongery. It was now already late 1947 and from what I heard his fishmonger’s did rather well at first. I visited his shop once when I happened to be in Kaohsiung. It wasn’t that big but looked pretty good. The shop assistants were young and spirited, polite and attentive, and its distinctive smell of fresh seafood and salt fish blended with the prosperous air of a thriving shop. The result was that just stepping inside made you feel invigorated and cheerful.

That evening Xinchang invited me and my brother to a small tavern for a couple of drinks. He’d always had a good capacity for liquor, and now, with two of his best friends, he seemed even happier than usual and drank accordingly. He got through almost three of the four bottles, and his conversation poured as freely as the sake, as he denounced social corruption and bemoaned the inflationary economy. His eyes gleamed, his nostrils snorted like a bull’s, and he seemed much more energetic than usual. As the third bottle grew emptier his head was already rocking wildly on his shoulders as he gesticulated and babbled like a madman. He grabbed the hand of the waitress and placed it on his own chest, mumbling thickly: “C’n ya feel whass inside here? Huh?”

“I know what’s inside,” the girl said, smiling merrily. “There’s roast chicken, sushi, and sake.”

“Baka!” He used Japanese to call her a blockhead. “Baka! Wrong! Thissn’t my stomach. Izhish my shtomach?”

He glared at her and took her hand again.

“Feell’t again.”

“Oh, ah! I can feel it.” She smiled even wider. “It’s your chest, and inside it lies your true love!”

“Baka! Baka!” He flung her hand away violently. “Inshide ’t sitsh a bomb, you know? Sh’about t’ shplode!”

There were tears in his eyes, his nostrils were flaring, and his face grew alarmingly red.

“Ah! Ah!” He raised a fist and hammered it down on the table, sending cups and plates and all jumping several inches in the air and clattering back down. “’Sh unbearable, and’s gonna xshplode any minute!”

The waitress grabbed his hand and spoke soothingly, pleading with him.

“Mr. Li, don’t bang the table. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“’m not dzrunk, don’ talk nonshenshe!” The tears were now flowing from his eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe them away but allowed them to flow down his gaunt cheeks. “D’ya shink I haven’ made money? In c’nshtruction n zh’ fish chrade, I’ve alwayzh made profitsh. Bu’ ‘nflation’z eaten zh’ lot; zhat demon’zh eaten my whole life, eaten everyshing.”

He raised his fist again. The waitress hurriedly grabbed it.

“Mr. Li,” she kept smiling sweetly, hoping to soften him with her charms, “don’t bang the table, please calm down.”

“Ge’ zh’ hell outta here, you foksh-fairy!”¹ He shook off her hand. “Whadda you know?” He sank into the sofa. “Ah! Ah! ’Sh unbearable!”

He was completely inebriated.

When we got home my brother and I talked about Xinchang’s fish shop, and I told him what I’d seen earlier in the day.

“No!” said my brother. “It seems things are not looking too good. The shareholders are grumbling. I don’t think it can go on much longer like this.”

The next day Xinchang was completely sober. When sober he was calm, mild, and polite. Naturally he didn’t remember what he’d said and done the night before.

“Old Zhong,” he said to me quietly, “perhaps you’re right.”

Not knowing what he meant, I asked, “What about?”

“I think I should sit down and wait, like you.”

“Our past education isn’t suited to today’s society. If we hope to get back on our feet, we have to start again from scratch—we have to remold ourselves, don’t you think?”

Before long Li Xinchang got out of the fish business. Later he moved back to his native place. But I only learned of these things the next time I went back to Kaohsiung. That would have been in early autumn 1948, as I recall. I’d been prepared for his retreat from fishmongering, but his removal back home came as something of a surprise.

“I did ask him what he planned to do after going back to his village,” said my brother. “He said he wasn’t going to do anything, and that he just didn’t want to go on trying to get by in the city. I think he’s very disillusioned. But perhaps there are even more practical reasons for his decision—his daily rice, for example!”

“Surely he’s not so hard up?” I said.

“I’m not really sure. But it’s true that it’s easier to get by in the countryside. With no job here, going home was another way forward. What’s more, he and his brothers have now divided up the family assets. They couldn’t keep the whole clan together any longer.”

One day not long afterward Li Xinchang came to visit me in my Pingtung lodgings.

He was as pessimistic and discontented in his conversation as ever, but the difference was that he seemed to be seeking some harmony in it all. There’s no use in wallowing in depression and dismay, a man has to seek a way out in order to go on living, in order not to die of frustration. This much is understandable, but precisely for this reason Xinchang’s painful inward struggle made me feel even more sympathy toward him.

That same year I fell into ill health and gave up my position and city life to return to a quiet existence in the Kaohsiung countryside. I had hardly any contact with the outside world and could hear of Li Xinchang only from my brother’s infrequent letters. He wrote that Xinchang had finally gone into trade as he had always wanted. Less than a year later another letter reported that his trading venture had collapsed disastrously, swallowing almost every penny he had. My brother wrote that if Xinchang had been allowed to go into trade before, he might have been in the right place at the right time, but now everything was gradually settling into established patterns and the economy was getting increasingly stable. It was getting very difficult to succeed in irregular profiteering. And with his family now divided, there was no longer anyone to stop him, more’s the pity.

“Perhaps it was Fate!” wrote my brother in conclusion.

The following year, just after the Spring Festival, Xinchang came with my brother to my little house in the hills. Xinchang had grown even thinner in the months since I had last seen him. Sitting idly at home, he had heard from my brother that our family had a hill farm with plenty of bamboo. Just at that time the army was buying up great quantities of bamboo, so he was thinking of trying his hand at this business. This was the reason for their visit. Privately, my brother also told me that Xinchang was afraid it might be awkward for him to come alone, so he’d dragged him along. Not having any money, Xinchang was hoping I’d let him take the bamboo on credit, to be paid for when he sold it.

I couldn’t help smiling at his courtly manners, but at the same time I could understand that a person who has suffered a blow to his selfconfidence will often treat his friends differently from before: his psychology is somehow distorted.

That same evening we agreed on all the conditions, and so Xinchang began to negotiate with Army HQ, hire workers, and complete the formalities required by the town hall. Next, the bamboo cutting began.

But Fate can be treacherous, and its vicissitudes are unknowable. Legally our hill farm was jointly owned by gentlemen’s agreement: my family’s portion had never been formally divided from those of our two partners. Because of a boundary dispute Xinchang was prevented from moving the bamboo he had cut. Our co-owner said Xinchang’s men had cut bamboo on the wrong side of the line.

On the day in question I too happened to be at the plantation. There were many of us and only a few of them, so, ignoring their protests, we went on loading the truck with bamboo. When it was fully laden, the truck began to move slowly forward. Suddenly my beanpole of a neighbor leaped out into the middle of the road, spreading his arms and shouting as if possessed: “You can’t take away the bamboo! I won’t let you take away the bamboo!”

The truck stopped. “Are you getting out of the way or not?” The truck driver was beside himself with anger. “If not, see if I don’t run right over you!”

But the man showed no sign at all of giving in. He glared, roundeyed: “Run me down then, if you’ve got the balls!”

The driver shifted into first gear, the truck screeched angrily, and it began to nose forward. Gradually the distance between man and truck grew shorter. To everyone’s surprise, the man suddenly lay down in the road, gesticulating toward the truck and his own chest: “Come on! Come on! Try and run me over, if you’ve got the balls!”

The driver kept going until his whole face was dripping in sweat, but in the end he had to step on the brakes. Now the worker who’d been tying the bamboo bundles came flying down from the stack on the truck and stormed up to the man. With one hand he dragged him up by his clothes, and then he bunched the other hand in his face and yelled: “Motherfucker! Wanna die, do ya?”

Li Xinchang rushed in between them. With difficulty he broke them up, saying, “Enough! That’s enough!”

Then, using every possible argument and inducement, he finally persuaded the man to let them take away “the bamboo that had already been loaded onto the truck.”

That evening I killed a big capon and opened a bottle of sake. My wife served the sake and acted as hostess. When I toasted Xinchang, he downed his cup of sake in one and toasted me back, also pouring a brimming cup for my wife.

“I toast you, Mrs. Zhong, to thank you for your kindness these past few days. Old Zhong! Let’s drink to your good lady.”

So saying, he flung his head back, glug-glug, and turned his cup upside down to show it was empty.

“A few years ago I might have killed that guy today, but not now!” Flames were burning in his eyes, but his voice was low and calm. “It’s not that important, not worth coming to blows over, is it? I’ve had bigger business losses than this. You might find it hard to believe, but when I was in trade do you know much money I made? A whole truckload! I put the banknotes in gunny sacks topped up with a layer of chaff and stored them in a woodshed. If I hadn’t been raided by the inspectors on a tip-off, even my sons and grandsons could never have spent all that money. You can imagine: when a man’s been through something like that, why should he get het up about a little thing like today? Alright then! Tonight we’re going to get thoroughly drunk, and we won’t stop till we’re soused! My dear lady, pour some more sake for Old Zhong.”

And so we drank to our hearts’ content and didn’t mention the bamboo business again. Xinchang was very jolly, frequently losing himself in loud gales of laughter, sometimes to the point of weeping with mirth. He sang a few songs that he said he’d learned in the South Seas. After the songs came a grass-skirt dance. He swung his hips and shook his belly around in the dim lamplight.

It was eleven o’clock when the party finally broke up. Before going to bed I softly went over to Xinchang’s window and saw him sitting quietly at his desk, looking gloomy and dejected. It was a sudden change from his behavior just now. I stood there for a short while. I just had no way of knowing which of these two attitudes represented the real Li Xinchang.

Suddenly, I felt guilty.

Unable to move the cut bamboo, Li Xinchang had no way to pay his men’s wages, and so the workers pestered him every day for their money. Naturally no more bamboo was cut. I asked someone to arbitrate the dispute, but after a fortnight or so of to-ing and fro-ing there was still no acceptable solution. Xinchang was terribly depressed.

One day when he returned from the hill his nose was bleeding, there was a big bruised swelling on his right temple, and his shirt was torn to strips. He looked really terrible.

I felt myself go pale with shock. I rushed out of the yard to meet him.

“Xinchang, you …”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said indifferently. “I got beaten up.”

When I quizzed him further he told me he’d got into an argument with the workers about their unpaid wages. Neither side would back down, and the men had worked him over. Truly it was just one piece of trouble after another.

That day Xinchang was more worked up than ever, but he kept silent all day. After dinner he sat bolt upright at his desk again, aloof and alone, a study in desolation. Whenever I recalled my own involvement in his misfortune I felt terribly bad about it, but there was nothing I could do.

The next day Xinchang got up very early, and as soon as he saw me he told me he was leaving. I was somewhat surprised and told him that the dispute should be settled within the next few days. Hearing this, he gave a thin smile and said, “Forget it!” I looked at him without speaking. It seemed that he had thought about it all night and in the end he’d seen through it all. There was no chance of changing his mind about leaving. He said I should do whatever I saw fit with the bamboo, but he hoped I would pay the wages he owed.

After breakfast he shook hands with my wife and me and bade us farewell. That was our last meeting as friends. The bruising and swelling on his temple were still visible, and there was a cut on his nostril. Although he kept smiling and did his best to seem cheerful, in his smile I could see sadness, loneliness, and regret. As far as I know, this was the lowest, roughest time of his life.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “This was all because of our land dispute.”

“No!” he replied. “Perhaps it’s the other way around: it was I who caused problems for you. I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Not long after that, my brother died, and I lost touch with Li Xinchang altogether.

I heard that he subsequently did a lot of things, and that later on he was running a chemical plant or something in Tainan. What fragmentary news I had of him was all second- or third-hand.

The flow of my reminiscence was suddenly interrupted by a great hubbub outside. When I looked up I saw several men alighting in single file from a minibus. A middle-aged gentleman walked in front. The others, who followed behind him, were all town hall officials. They walked into the office out of the sunshine.

Although I hadn’t seen him for ten years I immediately recognized the gentleman as Li Xinchang.

I instinctively drew back and hid in the shadow of the bookcase. I didn’t want to meet him.

Li Xinchang was carrying a leather briefcase, and he wore a silk Hong Kong shirt and a large gold ring on one finger. He looked elegant and dashing, grand and superior. What especially surprised me was the physical change in him. His face was plump, well fleshed out, and radiant with health. Although he wasn’t yet what you’d call corpulent, he had certainly put on a bit round the middle. He had all the appearance of a real big shot. For the first time in my life I saw the close and evident correspondence between a person’s physiology and success or failure in his career. Li’s voice, intonation, and gestures were composed, calm, and full of self-confidence. This too was different from before.

In short, everything about him had changed into something quite different from ten years before. I looked at him, and then back at myself: shabby, impoverished, down on my luck!

I hunched back a little further.

Luckily everyone in the town hall had long since completely forgotten my part in that business ten years ago, and Li Xinchang himself would never have expected to bump into me in a place like this—that I would have become a common clerk in a rural town hall. And anyway, my appearance had completely changed in the past ten years: old, skinny, withered, feeble…. Even if he had seen me he would have been unable to recognize me.

Just then, wild laughter suddenly broke out among the men, and one voice could be heard shouting, “No way! No way!”

It was Li Xinchang’s voice, booming and jolly.

“No way! No way! Your country women are no good: they’re far too stiff and starched! Why not come to Tainan sometime, and I’ll show you the women there. Ah, they’re the ones to give you a taste of what you’re missing! Even their eyes can talk! Have a smoke!”

His last words were louder, and with them a cigarette flew through the air and landed on my desk. Then another landed in front of Mr. Lin.

I noticed that he dispensed with even the basic courtesies. Indeed, his tone was contemptuous.

From the shadow of the bookcase I looked out intently. I saw that each of them had a cigarette, which they were getting lit at Li Xinchang’s lighter. Their faces were flushed and there was a strong smell of drink; obviously they had just finished a rather liquid lunch. Soon they were wreathed in clouds of smoke, and the smell of tobacco, mingled with that of alcohol, wafted over to us in the corner.

Li Xinchang had not noticed me, but still I felt that the cigarette-throwing stunt had been uncalled for. With that action, everything between him and me was over and done with. The parabola traced in the air by that cigarette represented the distance between us that now existed. He was at one end, and I at the other; he wouldn’t cross the space, and nor could I.

I experienced the most complex feelings, feelings I could not sort out or name. You could say this was the sadness of a man losing a friend, or perhaps the indignation of a man who finds himself dropped, or even the bitterness of a man discovering his own degeneration; it resembled all of these, or a combination of all three.

They sat for a while, and then all crowded upstairs in a huddle.

Lin picked up the cigarette from his desk.

“Wow! Double Happiness!” he exclaimed in delight. “Aren’t you having yours?”

He stuffed the cigarette between his lips, got a match, and lit it.

A song drifted down from the gramophone upstairs.

“All a man needs is money,” Lin went on feelingly, after a few puffs on the cigarette. “Don’t you think so, Old Zhong? If you’ve got money, everything is fine; and you get respect!”

But by now I was thinking of something else.

—Perhaps he—Li Xinchang—had already remolded himself!

1. Fox-fairy (hulijing 狐狸精): in Chinese mythology there are many tales of beautiful and oversexed vixens in human form seducing men and sometimes causing their deaths. There are similar stories from Japan and Korea.