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i returned to northeast gaomi township to compile a family chronicle, focusing on the famousbattle of the banks of the black water river that involved my father and ended with the death ofa jap general. an old woman of ninety- two sang to me, to the accompaniment of bambooclappers: ‘northeast gaomi township, so many men; at black water river the battle began;commander yu raised his hand, cannon fire to heaven; jap souls scattered across the plain, ne’erto rise again; the beautiful champion of women, dai fenglian, ordered rakes for a barrier, the japattack broken?.?.?.’ the wizened old woman was as bald as a clay pot; the protruding tendons onher chapped hands were like strips of melon rind. she had survived the mid-autumn festivalmassacre in ’39 only because her ulcerated legs had made walking impossible, and her husbandhad hidden her in a yam cellar. the heavens had smiled on her. the dai fenglian in her clapper-song was my grandma. i listened with barely concealed excitement, for her tale proved that thestrategy of stopping the jap convoy with rakes had sprung from the mind of my own kin, amember of the weaker sex. no wonder my grandma is fêted as a trailblazer of the anti-japaneseresistance and a national hero.

at the mention of my grandma, the old woman grew expansive. her narration was choppy andconfused, like a shower of leaves at the mercy of the wind. she said that my grandma had thesmallest feet of any woman in the village, and that no other distillery had the staying power ofours. the thread of her narrative evened out as she talked of the jiao-ping highway: ‘when thehighway was extended this far?.?.?. sorghum only waist-high.?.?.?. japs conscripted all able-bodiedworkers.?.?.?. working for the japs, slacked off, sabotage?.?.?. took your family’s two big blackmules?.?.?. built a stone bridge over the black water river.?.?.?. arhat, your family’s foreman?.?.?.

something fishy between him and your grandma, so everyone said?.?.?. aiyaya, when yourgrandma was young she sowed plenty of wild oats.?.?.?. your dad was a capable boy, killed hisfirst man at fifteen, eight or nine out of every ten bastard kids turn out bad.?.?.?. arhat hamstrungthe mule.?.?.?. japs caught him and skinned him alive.?.?.?. japs butchered people, shit in their pots,and pissed in their basins. i went for water once that year, guess what i found in my bucket, ahuman head with the pigtail still attached.?.?.?.’

arhat liu played a significant role in my family’s history, but there is no hard evidence that hehad an affair with my grandma, and, to tell the truth, i don’t believe it. i understood the logic ofwhat the old clay-pot was saying, but it still embarrassed me. since uncle arhat treated myfather like a grandson, that would make me sort of his great-grandson; and if my great-granddadhad an affair with my grandma, that’s incest, isn’t it? but that’s hogwash, since my grandma wasuncle arhat’s boss, not his daughter-in-law, and their relationship was sealed by wages, not byblood. he was a faithful old hand who embellished the history of our family and brought itgreater glory than it would have had otherwise. whether my grandma ever loved him or whetherhe ever lay down beside her on the kang has nothing to do with morality. what if she did lovehim? i believe she could have done anything she desired, for she was a hero of the resistance, atrailblazer for sexual liberation, a model of women’s independence.

in country records i discovered that in 1938, the twenty-seventh year of the republic, fourhundred thousand mandays were spent by local workers from gaomi, pingdu, and jiao countiesin the service of the japanese army to build the jiao-ping highway. the agricultural loss wasincalculable, and the villages bordering the highway were stripped clean of draught animals. itwas then that arhat liu, a conscript himself, took a hoe to the legs of our captured mule. he wascaught, and the next day the japanese soldiers tied him to a tethering post, skinned him alive, andmutilated him in front of his compatriots. there was no fear in his eyes, and a stream of abusepoured from his mouth up until the moment he died.