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最愛她寫的小城故事,一切仿佛還未消失

顏歌,小說家,1984 年出生於四川郫縣。迄今為止,她出版了包括《平樂鎮傷心故事集》《我們家》《五月女王》在內的十本小說,作品也見於《收獲》、《人民文學》等雜誌,並獲得了《人民文學》“未來大家 TOP 20”及華語文學傳媒大獎年度潛力新人等獎項。

The Spices of Life

by Yan Ge

– translated by Poppy Toland

Not Carrying Money

Before Pi County New Town was built, the county town, Pitong, used to be so small it was like a yeerba – a sticky-rice bun filled with minced pork and greens – with all the townspeople squashed together snug but not stifled, knowing each other thoroughly, intimately. At that time, successful people were described in the town as, “Folk who go out onto the street without a single penny on them and walk fast.”

This may sound like a good thing, but you can’t generalise.

My father was giving me a lift on his bike one day when suddenly, just past the West Gate of the city wall, we heard someone calling out to him. “Dai Wei! Dai Wei!” My father jumped in surprise, applied the brakes, and turned his head to the wonton shop across the road to see Third Brother Huang from South Street sitting there. “Third Brother, it’s been a while,” father said, a bit taken aback, leading me over to say hello. “Come on, address him properly. Say ‘Hello Uncle Huang.’”

So I called out to Uncle Huang, who responded with a half-hearted grunt, before turning to father, saying, “I’m really sorry Dai Wei, but I haven’t got a penny on me. I ate half this portion of wontons before realizing I’d forgotten to bring any money out today! Oh my days!”

It immediately became clear that his greeting had been a cry of desperation. Father gave Third Brother Huang the money he needed, and Third Brother Huang thanked him repeatedly saying, “Oh, dear how embarrassing, I’ll give it back to you another day.”

“It’s one yuan – there’s no need to pay it back!” With a wave of his hand, father and I took off.

This was just a case of your basic, unintended Not Carrying Money. But then there was Serious Next-Level Not Carry Money, which was more calculated.

One example occurred not long after father had graduated from Pi Teachers Training College and started his job. He was walking down the street, when he heard someone calling out his name: “Dai Wei! Dai Wei!”

Father turned to see his friend Qiu, who he’d known almost all his life, on the other side of the street. It had been a long time since they’d last met, and they were delighted to bump into each other, Qiu jumping up and down as he crossed the road, patting father’s shoulders and saying “Dai Wei! I’ve heard you’ve been doing really well for yourself!”

“I’m not doing that well, I’m just a teacher!” father said.

“You’re a teacher of the people, that’s an honorable profession!” Qiu said flatteringly.

They were both in their early twenties, neither of them attached, and they stood by the side of the road chatting enthusiastically, smoking a couple of cigarettes together as they caught up. “Hey, Dai Wei, it’s been such a long time. Come on – let me take you out for a meal!” suggested Qiu.

“You want to eat out?” Father looked a little shocked. “Qiu, you old dog, you hit the jackpot, didn’t you?”

Ignoring him, Qiu dragged my father to the Wang Family Restaurant by the East Gate and they both sat down, ordered half a kilo of braised pigs’ ears and began to eat.

They ordered a number of dishes, and a bottle of wolfberry wine, which they knocked back, drinking until the day turned to night. The two of them told drunken stories of back in the day, chatted about their current situations, and shared visions of the future.

At closing time, the restaurant manager came over. “Sorry to bother you, but it’s time to pay up – your bill is ten yuan and three jiao.”

Qiu reached his hand into his pocket for his wallet. At once, his facial expression altered theatrically. “Oh damn, oh damn. Oh, son of a bitch. Dai Wei! Damn! Do you happen to have any cash on you? How can I have forgotten my money...?”

It just so happened that Father had just received his paycheck, and the forty-one yuan and five jiao that he’d been keeping warm in his pocket was immediately reduced by a quarter.

He followed the streetlight-illuminated city wall back home that evening, the whole way thinking, “That bastard Qiu, calling out to me so sweetly, then treating me like scum! He was clearly taking me for a fool. Oh, but it was my own fault really, leaving the house with so much money. I won’t be carrying any money on me from now on!” He thought about the ten yuan and three jiao and felt a painful tug at his heart.

So that was why no one in town carried money. You could walk out the south gate and there’d always be someone you knew; you could eat dates at this person’s house, or have a glass of water at that person’s; you could make your way to the North Gate and back again, never carrying a penny.

Of course, that was before the New City was built.

After the New City came every new building tried to out-Western the last building. Instead of buying clothes from a street vendor, you went to the shopping mall; instead of eating at a roadside stall you went to a restaurant; and tea shacks were soon replaced with tea houses.

They said tea in the tea house cost 15 yuan a cup, a fact that scared the dickens out of many older village residents. But even more terrifying things were still to come.

One day, two business proprietors were sitting inside this tea house, a man and a woman. Bit by bit, their conversation started to ramp up into an argument.

“You watch what you say! I’ve got plenty of money!” said the man.

“You think you’re the only one who’s seen money?” replied the woman.

Unable to settle it, they both whacked their wallets down on the table and said, “Let’s compare! See who’s got more money!”

The other people in the tea house stared in shock as the two of them counted out the notes, one, two, three, four, five, six. The man turned out to be carrying 3,700 RMB, while the woman had 4,200 RMB.

The man was flabbergasted – had he really lost to a woman?

After the tale of the money battle made the rounds of our village, everyone felt as if their eyes had truly been opened.

“It turns out you should carry money when you leave the house after all, the more the better!” We only figured that out then.

Loud Voices

If you drive past Chengdu’s western Third Ring Road and follow straight down to the end of the Yanxi Line for twenty minutes, you will arrive at Pitong, the county town of Pi County. In the blink of an eye, the sky widens and the earth expands. Taking a deep breath of the country aroma, you feel a sense of belonging as your eyes finally relax once more.

While back home there are three things to keep in mind: not to carry money when walking around, how salty the food is, and how loud people talk.

My father had the loudest voice of them all. He was so loud that when he sneezed in the courtyard, the sound-activated lights would come to life in all the surrounding buildings, first floor to the sixth. He was so loud that when he called me to dinner from the doorway of our house, all the other kids would drop what they were doing and run home, too. He was so loud that when he chatted with my grandmother about household matters, my grandmother, who was over eighty and didn’t have great hearing, would say, “Dai Wei! Can you please talk more quietly!”

They said it was because my father had become fat, which made his voice more robust. But I don’t know about that – I’d never seen him when he was still young and thin, and I certainly hadn’t ever heard him talk in an inside voice.

Eighth Uncle Zeng, who worked in the polytechnic college mailroom, had the second loudest voice. Every day after he’d eaten and had nothing to do, he’d stand in the courtyard doorway and depending on who he saw, he’d shout, “Third Aunt Zhou! You’ve come back from your visit!” or “Teacher Song, have you only just finished work? You’re eating dinner so late today!” or “Jiang Yanzi, there’s a letter for you – it’s from Guangzhou!”

Thanks to him, everyone in our courtyard knew all about each other: whether the Zhou family ate a plate of salted meat today, or the Wang family were making three portions of noodles tomorrow; as for fights and quarrels, or weddings and funerals, well, you can imagine.

He annoyed plenty, but lots of folks said it was thanks to him that our courtyard had never had any problems with thieves, and a many years later, when he left the mailroom, we really started to miss him.

There were also a few other characters that everyone knew for being especially loud: the knife repair man, the knife grinder, and the guy who sold mosquito, fly and flea repellent. At that time, everyone in our village spoke in this very standard Pi County dialect. To speak Pi dialect you had to stretch your mouth, bulge it full of air, roll up your tongue and then, with a clack, out came the sounds that we recognized – only then was ‘white’ really white, ‘black’ really black, ‘eating’ really eating, and ‘the state’ really the state. Every so often someone from Chengdu would show up, pointing their tongue and flattening their mouth, coming out with things like “have some food” in their reedy voices, which had us all cracking up laughing.

Of course, we knew that, “Speaking in a loud voice doesn’t make you right,” and sometimes we’d even tell one another to save our strength and speak a bit quieter. But if you tried addressing someone eloquently and elegantly on the street, they’d say, “What’s wrong with you today? Haven’t you had enough to eat? Don’t have the energy to talk properly? Come on then, let’s get some food in you!”

There was only one situation in which loud voices were not welcomed, which I learned when my father took me to the hospital to see the doctor. We were waiting in the corridor, we heard someone moaning and groaning from some way off. “Oh dear, oh dear. What agony!” For a long time everyone was craning their necks to see, eventually making out this man in his forties being led over. He seemed healthy enough and was decently dressed, but he kept calling out the words, “Oh dear, what agony, oh dear, what agony!” his voice booming so loudly it carried throughout the hospital.

Most people were prepared to endure it, but one wizened old lady went straight over to him saying, “Young man! You’re not a child – why are yelling at such a loud volume when you’re ill! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

The man looked astonished, and like a balloon poked with a needle, he let out a puff of air and fell silent. As we watched him shuffle off silently, my father said, “You see that, you gotta keep your suffering to yourself. Crying out ‘Oh dear,’ like that, you’re really asking for it!”

So that’s how I learned that bad news shouldn’t be shared in a loud voice, because only good things needed be spread around. That was why we liked to shout at each other. It was an unspoken rule; everyone in the county town had grown up this way. It was only after finishing high school, going to the city to study at university, graduating, and finding a job, that I finally understood that speaking Mandarin in quiet, dulcet tones makes other people feel relaxed.

I also had to learn that when talking to people, you shouldn’t say, “My dad said,” “My aunt said,” or “Fifth-born Xie said.” Instead the appropriate expressions were, “I heard,” “A friend said,” or “Someone told me.” Out in the world everything was lackluster, vague and distant, which is what made it all seem so much more elegant, civilized and appropriate.

After long periods of time without seeing my father and mother, let alone folk like Third Uncle Zhang, Second Sister Chen and Fourth Uncle Zhou, I’d return home once a year to find the sofa, tea table, television and fridge all unchanged. Sitting in the living room, plugged into wifi, worried you might be missing something from the outside world, suddenly father (who was cooking in the kitchen) would holler, “Dai Yuexing! Hurry outside and buy me a packet of salt!”

And I’d jump in fright and couldn’t help but think, “My lord, father really is loud!”

Author:

Yan Ge was born in 1984 in Sichuan in the People’s Republic of China, and currently lives in Dublin, Eire. She recently completed a PhD in comparative literature at Sichuan University and is the chairperson of the China Young Writer Association.

Poppy Toland is a London-based freelance literary translator. She studied Chinese at Leeds University and lived in Beijing for four years during which time she worked as an editor for Time Out Beijing and field research supervisor for the BBC's Wild China TV series.

This piece first appeared in Chinese in Dandu (單讀) Magazine and is published in collaboration with the LARB China Channel.

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圖片來自《飲食男女》

平樂事。

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