2after the wedding, grandma returned to her parents’ home to spend three days before headingback to her in-laws’. she had no appetite during those three days, her mind distracted. great-grandma cooked all her favourite foods and tried to coax her into eating, but she refusedeverything and moped around the house like the walking dead. even then her appearance didn’tsuffer: her skin remained milky, her cheeks rosy; her bright eyes, set in dark sockets, looked likesmall moons glowing through the mist. ‘you little urchin,’ great-grandma grumbled, ‘do youthink you’re an immortal or a buddha who doesn’t need to eat or drink? you’ll be the death ofyour own mother!’ she looked at grandma, who sat as composed as the guanyin bodhisattva,two tiny white tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes.

great-granddad awoke from his drunken stupor on the second day of grandma’s return, andimmediately recalled shan tingxiu’s promise to give him a big black mule. his ears rang withthe rhythmic clippety-clop of the mule’s hooves as it flew down the road. such a mule: fetchingblack eyes like tiny lanterns, hooves like little goblets. ‘you old ass,’ great- grandma saidanxiously, ‘your daughter won’t eat. what are we going to do?’

great-granddad glanced out of the corner of his drunken eyes and said. ‘she’s spoiled, spoiledrotten! who does she think she is?’

he walked up to grandma and said angrily, ‘what are you up to, you little tramp? peopledestined to marry are connected by a thread, no matter how far apart. man and wife, for better orfor worse. marry a chicken and share the coop, marry a dog and share the kennel. your dad’s nohigh-ranking noble, and you’re no gold branch or jade leaf. it was your good fortune to find arich man like this, and your dad’s good fortune, too. the first thing your father-in-law did waspromise me a nice black mule. that’s breeding.?.?.?.’

grandma sat motionless, her eyes closed. her damp eyelashes might have been covered with alayer of honey, each thick, full lash sticking to the others and curling like a swallowtail. great-granddad glared at her, his anger rising. ‘don’t you act deaf and dumb with me. you can wasteaway if you want to, but you’ll be the shan family’s ghost, because there’s no place in the daifamily graveyard for you!’

grandma just laughed.

great-granddad slapped her.

with a pop, the rosiness in grandma’s cheeks vanished, leaving a pallor behind. but the colourgradually returned, and her face became the red morning sun. her eyes shining, she clenched herteeth and sneered. glaring hatefully at her dad, she said: ‘i’m just afraid?.?.?. if you?.?.?. then youcan forget about seeing a single hair of that mule!’

lowering her head, she picked up her chopsticks and gobbled down the still-steaming food infront of her, like a whirlwind scooping up snow. when she was finished, she threw the bowl highinto the air, where it tumbled and spun, sailed over the beam, and picked up two cobwebs beforefalling to the floor; it bounced around in a half-circle before settling upside down. she picked upanother bowl and heaved it; this one hit the wall and fell to the floor in two pieces. great-granddad was so shocked his mouth fell open, his sideburns quivered, and he was speechless.

‘daughter,’ great-grandma exclaimed, ‘you finally ate something!’

after throwing the bowls, grandma broke down and cried. it was an agreeable, emotional,moist sound, which the room couldn’t hold, so it spilled outside and spread to the fields, to mergewith the rustling of the pollinated late-summer sorghum. a million thoughts ran through hermind; over and over she relived what had happened from the time she had been placed in thebridal sedan chair until she had returned on the donkey’s back to her parents’ home. every scenefrom those three days, every sound, every smell entered her mind?.?.?. the horns andwoodwinds?.?.?. little tunes, big sounds?.?.?. all that music turned the green sorghum red. itpounded a curtain of rain out of the clear sky: two cracks of thunder, a flash of lightning, rainfalling like dense flax?.?.?. turning her confused heart to flax, dense rain pouring in at an angle,then straight up, then straight down.?.?.?.

grandma thought back to the highwayman at toad hollow, and to the valiant actions of theyoung sedan bearer. he was their leader, the main dog of the pack. he couldn’t be more thantwenty-four – not a wrinkle on his rugged face. she recalled how close his face had been for awhile, and how his lips, hard as mussel shells, had covered hers. her blood had frozen for aninstant, before gushing forth to dilate every blood vessel in her body. her feet had cramped, herabdominal muscles had jerked madly. their call to revolt had been aided by the vibrant sorghum– the powder on the stalks, so fine it was barely visible, spreading in the air above her and thesedan bearer.?.?.?.

grandma hoped that by concentrating on the youthful passion of that moment she could holdon to it, but it kept slipping away, here one moment, then gone. and yet the leper’s face, like along-buried rotten grape, kept reappearing, along with the ten hooked claws that were his fingers.

then there was the old man, with his tiny queue and the ring of brass keys at his belt. grandmasat quietly, but even though she was dozens of li away from the spot, the rich taste of sorghumwine and the sour taste of sorghum mash seemed to roll around on her tongue. she recalled howthe two male ‘serving girls’ reeked like drunken geese fished out of a wine vat, the smell ofalcohol seeping from every pore in their bodies.?.?.?. he had cut a swath through the sorghum,leaving the blade of his razor-sharp sword wet with little horseshoes of inky green, sticky residuefrom the decapitated plants, their lifeblood. she remembered what he had said: ‘come back inthree days, no matter what!’ daggers of light had shot from his long, slitted eyes.

grandma had a premonition that her life was about to change in extraordinary ways.

in some significant aspects, heroes are born, not made. heroic qualities flow through aperson’s veins like an undercurrent, ready to be translated into action. during her first sixteenyears, grandma’s days had been devoted to embroidery, needlework, paper cutouts, foot binding,the endless glossing of her hair, and all other manner of domestic things in the company ofneighbour girls. what, then, was the source of her ability and courage to deal with the events sheencountered in her adult years? how was she able to temper herself to the point where even inthe face of danger she could conquer her fears and force herself to act heroically? i’m not sure iknow.

grandma wept for a long time without feeling much true grief; as she cried, she relived thejoys and pleasures of her past, even the suffering and sorrow. the sounds of crying seemed to bea distant musical accompaniment to the beautiful and hideous images appearing and reappearingin her mind. finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, sowhat was there to fear from taking chances with your life?

‘time to leave, little nine,’ great-granddad said, calling her by her childhood name.

leave! leave! leave!

grandma asked for a basin of water to wash her face. then she applied some powder androuge. as she looked in the mirror, she loosened her hairnet, releasing long, flowing hair thatquickly covered her back with its satiny sheen, all the way down to the curve of her legs. whenshe pulled it across her shoulder with her left hand, it spilled over her breast, where she combed itout with a pear-wood comb. grandma had uncommonly thick, shiny, black hair that lightened abit at the tips. once it was combed out smooth, she twisted it into large ebony blossoms, whichshe secured with four silver combs. then she trimmed her fringe so that it fell just short of hereyebrows. after rewrapping her feet, she put on a pair of white cotton stockings, tied her trousercuffs tightly, and slipped on a pair of embroidered slippers that accentuated her bound feet.

it was grandma’s tiny feet that had caught the attention of shan tingxiu, and it was her tinyfeet that had aroused the passions of the sedan bearer yu zhan’ao. she was very proud of them.

even a pock-faced witch is assured of marriage if she has tiny bound feet, but no one wants a girlwith large unbound feet, even if she has the face of an immortal. grandma, with her bound feetand lovely face, was one of the true beauties of her time. throughout our long history, thedelicate, pointed tips of women’s feet have been viewed as genital organs, in a way, from whichmen have derived a sort of aesthetic pleasure that sets their sexual juices flowing.

now that she was ready, grandma left the house, clicking her feet. a blanket had been thrownover the back of the family’s little donkey, in whose glistening eyes grandma noticed a spark ofhuman understanding. she swung her leg over the donkey’s back and straddled it, unlike mostwomen. great-grandma had tried to get her to ride sidesaddle, but grandma dug in her heels andthe donkey started off down the road, its rider sitting proudly on its back, head up and eyesstraight ahead.

once she was on her way, grandma didn’t look back, and although great-granddad washolding the reins at first, when they were out of the village she took them from him and guidedthe donkey herself, leaving him to trot along behind her.

another thunderstorm had struck during the three days. grandma noticed a section of sorghumthe size of a millstone where the leaves were singed and shrivelled, a spot of emaciated whitenessamid the surrounding green. assuming that lightning was the culprit, she was reminded of theprevious year, when lightning had struck and killed her friend beauty, a girl of seventeen,literally frying her hair and burning her clothes to cinders. a design had been scorched into herback, which some people said was the script of heavenly tadpoles.

rumours spread that greed had killed beauty, who had caused the death of an abandonedbaby. the details were lurid. on her way to market one day, she heard a bawling baby by theroadside. when she unwrapped the swaddling clothes she found a pink, newborn baby boy and anote that said: ‘father was eighteen, mother seventeen, the moon was directly overhead, the threestars were in the western sky, when our son, road joy, was born. father had already marriedsecond sister zhang, a girl with unbound feet from west village. mother will marry scar eyefrom east village. it breaks our hearts to abandon our newborn son. snot runs down his father’schin, tears stream down his mother’s cheeks, but we stifle our sobs so no one will hear us. roadjoy, road joy, our joy on the road, whoever finds you will be your parents. we have wrappedyou in a yard of silk, and have left twenty silver dollars. we beg a kindhearted passerby to storeup karma by saving our son’s precious life.’

people said that beauty took the silk and the silver dollars, but abandoned the infant in thesorghum field, for which heaven punished her by sending down a bolt of lightning. grandmarefused to believe the rumours about her best friend, but as she pondered the tragic mysteries oflife her heart was gripped by desolation and melancholy.

the rain-soaked road was still wet and pitted by pelting raindrops; soft mud, with a light oilysheen, filled the holes. once again the donkey left its hoofprints in the mud. katydids hid in thegrass and on the sorghum leaves, vibrating their long silken beards and sawing their transparentwings to produce a cheerless sound. the long summer was about to end, and the sombre smell ofautumn was in the air. swarms of locusts, sensing the change of season, dragged their seed-filledbellies out of the sorghum fields onto the road, where they bored their hindquarters into the hardsurface to lay their eggs.

great-granddad snapped off a sorghum stalk and smacked the rump of the weary donkey,which tucked its tail between its legs and shot forward a few paces before resuming its unhurriedpace. great-granddad must have been feeling very pleased with himself as he walked behind thedonkey, for he began singing snatches of popular local opera, making up the words as he wentalong. ‘wu dalang drank poison, how bad he felt.?.?.?. his seven lengths of intestines and theeight lobes of his lungs lurched and trembled.?.?.?. the ugly man took a beautiful wife, bringingcalamity to his door.?.?.?. ah – ye – ye?.?.?. big wu’s belly is killing him?.?.?. waiting for secondbrother to complete his mission?.?.?. to return home and avenge his murder.?.?.?.’

grandma’s heart thumped wildly as she listened to great-granddad’s crazy song. the imageof that scowling young man, sword in hand, appeared in a flash. who was he? what was he upto? it dawned on her that, even though they didn’t know each other, their lives were already asclose as fish and water. their sole encounter had been lightning quick and was over in a flash,like a dream, yet not like a dream. she had been shaken to the depths of her soul, overcome byspirits. resign yourself to your fate, she thought as she heaved a long sigh.

grandma let the donkey proceed freely as she listened to her dad’s fractured rendition of thewu dalang song. a breath of wind and a puff of fire, and there they were, in toad hollow. thedonkey kept its nostrils closed tight as it pawed the ground, refusing to go any farther, even whengreat-granddad smacked it on the rump with his sorghum switch. ‘get moving, you bastard! getgoing, you rotten donkey bastard!’ the switch sang out against the donkey’s rump, but instead ofmoving forward, it backed up.

an awful stench assailed grandma’s nostrils. quickly dismounting and covering her nose withher sleeve, she tugged on the reins to get the donkey moving. it looked up at her, its mouth open,tears filling its eyes. ‘donkey,’ she said, ‘grit your teeth and walk past it. there’s no mountainthat can’t be scaled and no river that can’t be forded.’ moved by her words, it raised its head andbrayed, then galloped forward, dragging her along so fast her feet barely touched the ground andher clothes fluttered in the wind like red clouds tumbling in the sky. she glanced at the shamhighwayman’s corpse as they passed. a scene of filth and corruption greeted her eyes: a millionfat maggots had gorged themselves until only a few pieces of rotting flesh covered his bones.

grandma climbed back onto the donkey after they’d managed to drag one another past toadhollow. gradually she became aware of the smell of sorghum wine floating on the northeastwind. she whipped up her courage, but as she drew nearer to the climactic scene of the drama hersense of fear and foreboding was as strong as ever. steam rose from the ground under the blazingsun, but shivers ran down her spine. the village where the shans lived was far away, andgrandma, surrounded by the thick aroma of sorghum wine, felt as if the marrow in her spine hadfrozen solid. a man in the field to her right began to sing in a loud, full voice:

little sister, boldly you move on

your jaw set like a steel trap

bones as hard as cast bronze

from high atop the embroidery tower

you toss down the embroidered ball

striking me on the head

now join me in a toast with dark-red sorghum wine.

‘hey there, opera singer, come out! that’s terrible singing! just awful!’ great- granddadshouted towards the sorghum field.