Now, after the cow had enjoyed the tender grass, Liu Yue led her out of Shuangren fu Avenue, and as they walked down a lane, the cow shooed away gadflies with her tail and began to think again. In this life she had been born as a beast of burden deep inside Mount Zhongnan, and everything in the city still felt strange, even though it had been here for quite some time. What is a city? Just a mountain of concrete. Everyone in the city complains that there are too many people, saying the sky is getting smaller and the land narrower. Yet people in the countryside want to escape into the city, and no city resident would give up residency and walk out through one of the four city gates. Are humans really that debased? They create a city to hem themselves in. Mountains have their ogres and waters their spirits, so what demons does a city have? What makes people leave their harmonious, amiable villages, where everyone knows the nickname of everyone else’s grandpa, and people all know who owns every chicken on the ground? What makes them come to a city with its single-family units, where people shut their doors when they get home, ignoring everyone outside? With so many people out on the streets, people inhale each other’s breath; the buses are crammed full and the theaters are jam-packed, but people just stare at each other, total strangers. They are like dirt that forms a clod in your hand but falls through your fingers when you open it; the more you try to bring it back together with water, the more it scatters. People from places with an ocean or a river want to swim in man-made lakes at a party, while those who come from mountains climb fake hills. What is laughable is that they suffer from heart, stomach, liver, and nerve problems in their square or round or trapezoid concrete structures within the confines of four city walls. Forever vigilant in regard to hygiene, they wear facemasks, produce soaps to wash their hands and feet, invent medicines and vaccines, brush their teeth, and put condoms over their male organs. And they seem to wonder what it is all about. Research is conducted, meetings are held, leading to the conclusion that the population must be reduced, so they promote the idea of a powerful bomb that will kill off everyone but their own families.
All this made the cow laugh, which was manifested in the form of a sneeze, something she did every day. Then she resumed her contemplation, going back and forth with her thoughts. Occasionally she hit upon the idea that she didn’t really understand humans, while wondering whether her inability to deal with this overcrowded city was due to the fact that she wasn’t human and didn’t have city residency. She was, after all, a beast of burden, with a wild streak, a large capacity to digest grass, and a substantial body with no need for clothing. Yet she firmly believed that humans were just one of the beasts that had populated the earth back when the world was in primal chaos. At the time, there was a correspondence between heaven and earth, between all animals and heaven and earth, when humans and animals were equal. Now humans were among the most populous species, along with flies, mosquitoes, and rats, and were different from other animals solely because they built cities like this. Sadly, however, they had built a city that made their species move in reverse, turning into them selfish, petty, narrow-minded creatures whose fingernails were not strong enough for anything but cleaning their ears. Their intestines, too, grew shorter, with one section becoming a useless appendix. Snobbery made them look down on other animals, oblivious to the fact that the creatures in the mountain forests and the rivers were silently anticipating the impending doomsday annihilation. Moreover, the cow had always sensed that this city would be leveled one day, as she realized on quiet nights that it was sinking, either because so much water was being drawn every day or because the pressure of increasing numbers of people and buildings was affecting the movement of the earth’s crust. But completely unaware, the humans continued to pile cement on top of the land and to ceaselessly draw water from underground. Hadn’t some of the eight rivers that circled the city and gave the residents so much pleasure already dried up? Wasn’t the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, the city’s landmark, slanting so much it was about to topple? When that day came, the city would sink into the ground, while the water from the Yellow River could turn the place into a marsh; either that or it could be drained of water, overgrown with wormwood. Then and only then would humans truly see the error of their ways; they would know how wrong they had been, but they would have already become fish and tortoises in the marsh or wormwood-eating cows, sheep, pigs, and dogs. They would understand how wild animals were one with heaven and earth, and know that they must find a new way to survive in the world.
Thinking about this made the cow’s head hurt. She was walking down streets in a haze, with the satisfying feeling that she was a philosopher, though she rued the insufficient intelligence she had been given, for her thoughts were so jumbled that her head ached from prolonged contemplation. Sometimes her soul would leave her body, giving her the illusion that she was pulling a plow from the Western Han dynasty or the early Tang period, searching in vain for a field as she stared uncomprehendingly at the constantly moving heels of shoes, while she was hemmed in by little cars that looked like dung beetles. She had to sigh over her lack of wisdom and her uncontrollable tendency to lose concentration. Hence, as Aunty Liu took her down a path outside a park wall, she decided to turn and gnaw on wild jujube thorns. Humans ate hot peppers for their spiciness, and cows chewed on date thorns for the prickliness. Aunty Liu was so upset, she kept hitting her with a switch.
“Get moving. Come on, it’s getting late.”
. . .
It was taking Zhuang Zhidie’s injury longer than expected to heal, so Niu Yueqing would not let him move around after changing the dressing. She talked to the elderly gatekeeper and to the families on either side of the lane outside Shuangren fu, asking them not to give out Zhuang’s address and to tell visitors he was not home. In private, she also told Liu Yue to keep the phone off the hook so no calls could come through; that bothered Zhou Min more than anyone. One afternoon he came to tell Yueqing about the three directives from the head of the Propaganda Section at the Department of Culture, as well as their decision that Zhou and someone from the magazine must apologize to Jing Xueyin. He and Li Hongwen had gone. Jing had received them, her head held high as she painted her fingernails. When she was finished, she inspected her nails but did not say a word. Zhou spat on the floor, opened the door, and walked out. When Li reported their visit, the department head said, “Well, she can ignore you if she wants. We don’t have to do anything about the other directives, just the third one, which requires us to publish a formal announcement in the next issue. You go write a draft, and I’ll check it later.”
Zhou Min had gone to see Zhuang about the wording, but he had been at the People’s Congress that day, and Zhou was not allowed into the Gudu Hotel. Since he was running out of time, he penned a draft with Zhong Weixian the following morning. The department head sent the draft for Jing’s approval, which she refused to give, complaining about the ambiguous language and demanding that the words “grave inaccuracy and malicious slander” be added. Zhou and Zhong naturally would not concede, resulting in a stalemate. The department head then handed the draft to the Propaganda Section for their judgment. Zhou went to the Literary Foundation compound and to Zhuang’s house a few more times, but each time was told by the gatekeeper that he was not home. He phoned both houses and became suspicious when he always got a busy signal, wondering if Zhuang had decided to wash his hands of the matter. If Zhuang, a celebrity with many connections, turned his back on Zhou, then he would be done for. He silently cursed Zhuang at home.