Chapter 1: 1924, Winter

Translator's note: curious about why I'm working on the earlier chapters? You can find an explanation in the translator's note on the ninth chapter. This chapter took much less time to translate than the first one I translated, so hopefully if I can keep up this pace, I should finish with these first few chapters fairly quickly, and then I can get to the later, untranslated ones soon.

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The cloudy, overcast sky was wet, and it was hard to tell if it was fog or the smoke exuded from the bamboo steamers. The scent of coal was heavy in the air, and the smell of the baozi^[1] was no longer fragrant. Tu Laoyao lifted the bamboo steamer and stretched his neck to take a look, and shook his head. “This face of yours, it really has become thick.”

The old baozi seller who’d been on the corner of the street for twenty years let out a scoff, and hit the cover of the bamboo steamer. “Too rough, you say, Tu Laoyao—get, get, get!”

Tu Laoyao grinned and moved his face back, tucking his hands into his sleeves. “Alright, alright, alright, your baozi is the most fragrant, old man, or you couldn’t have managed to sell them for twenty years! Your fortune really is good.”

He turned away from the baozi seller and started walking forward, until he reached a corner, and squatted down in front of a hookah stall, limbs askew, and asked, “Laoban,^[2] what sort of tobacco is there today?”

The hookah vendor was gaunt and weak, her appearance listless and without colour, her hair clipped short enough that it didn’t cover her neck, her bangs ragged as if a dog had gnawed on them, some strands short and some long, covering her drooping eyes, a worn guapi^[3] hat on her head, an appearance that was somewhat comical. Her surname was Li, and her appearance had always been this way, neither that of a man nor that of a woman, and she had no name, the eleventh child in her family. “Hello, what sort of tobacco?” she asked, neither emotional nor willing as she took her hands out of her cotton-quilted handmuff,^[4] shifting side to side a couple of times as she continued, “spicy? Not spicy?”

Tu Laoyao leaned a bit closer to her her and said, “What a cool day, smoking a hookah you’d catch a cold, is there any for long-stemmed pipes?^[5] Shiyi-jie?^[6][7]”

Li Shiyi raised her eyelids to cast him a glance, and contrary to appearance her eyes were very clear, and although he had seen it many times before, the scar on the right side of her face still gave Tu Laoyao a fright, like a burn or an ulcer, a large red and purple and wrinkled bean curd sheet, like a dog skin plaster^[8] on her cheek, incredibly unpleasant to look at. “That type of tobacco has been passed down from our ancestors, you can have it as long as you can afford it,” she said. She stood up, straightened her guapi hat, rolled her handmuff into a wrinkled ball, and unhurriedly withdrew inside. Tu Laoyao let out two short ha’s, and followed after her.

After passing through a couple of alleys, they came to a courtyard in heavy disrepair, overgrown with weeds, as if it hadn’t been tended to in a long while. Li Shiyi used her sleeve to brush off the dust, moving aside the plank at the front of the courtyard, and moved inwards, towards the rusted and mottled warehouse within the shrubbery, not very large, its shape boxy,^[9] one glance more than enough to take it in. Li Shiyi plucked a key out from the handmuff and opened the warehouse, and bent her body to to get through the short iron door. Tu Laoyao followed after her familiarly, and Li Shiyi felt about and grabbed the coarse hemp rope next to the wall, and the warehouse suddenly lit up.

“He, you put up electric lights!” Tu Laoyao felt at the electrical circuit on the wall.

Li Shiyi narrowed her eyes in response to the light, remaining with her hands in her pockets as she leaned against the wall, and asked him, “In or out?”

Tu Laoyao’s gaze had been caught by the various things packed into the warehouse that were illuminated by the light, and he clicked his tongue twice, already wanting them for himself.

From within her pocket, Li Shiyi felt out a box of matches and with a hiss lit one of them and said, “All of them are from underground.”

Tu Laoyao snatched his hands away in fear, and shot an envious look at the three-coloured glazed clay Tang dynasty dragon-handled vase.^[10][11] Li Shiyi struck another match, the scent of sulfur drifting towards Tu Laoyao’s nose, and Tu Laoyao let out a sneeze, and moved closer to Li Shiyi and tapped^[12] her cheek, shouting, “Shiyi-jie!”

Li Shiyi rubbed her nose and raised her eyes to look at him, and he fished out a small, narrow-mouthed, wide-bodied copper jar from his quilted trousers, and handed it to Li Shiyi, his face wrinkled up, and wailed, “You really have to help this little brother!”

Li Shiyi gazed at the jar he had taken from the crotch of his trousers with revulsion, and said, “Where did it come from?”

Tu Laoyao had never seen Li Shiyi hold out a hand with the intent to get involved, and held it out to her once again and asked, “Take a closer look?”

Li Shiyi took drew her sleeves apart and tapped the wall of the copper jar twice, and said with a glance, “Its age is recent, plus it’s made of copper, so it’s not valuable.”

Tu Laoyao replied, “But that’s not what I had thought, and as soon as I took it and brought it home—”

Li Shiyi furrowed her brows and interrupted him. “If I’d gone in early in the morning like you, I wouldn’t have taken something forbidden home.” They’d been inside for quite a while now, and it wasn’t so cold anymore, and she uncurled her shoulders, sneering, “What, you want to meet someone of the same profession after you die?”

Tu Laoyao drew his neck back, smiling sheepishly,^[13] and said, “Wrong, wrong, it was me who was wrong. But this issue, it really is damn bad luck.” He lowered his voice and added, “Since I brought this thing back home, every night there’s a whimpering sound, scaring my wife, and she can’t even sleep peacefully. I’ve been thinking it over, what sort of master I’ve offended, and I thought, how about I put it back.” Tu Laoyao cast a furtive glance at Li Shiyi.

Li Shiyi put the matches back in her pocket, and drew in a breath through her nose. “You can’t go back once you open the coffin, and the spilled grain can’t be put back—these are the rules of the profession.”

“I know, I know, but it’s because of this that I’ve been dealing with all these problems, I don’t have any other option.” Tu Laoyao clung to Li Shiyi’s sleeve, face twisted like leather that had shrunk in the wash.

“You want me to take you?” Li Shiyi stared at him.

Tu Laoyao hurriedly nodded, and seeing that Li Siyi didn’t respond, darted his eyes about, quickly crouched down, clinging to her ankles, and begged her, “Shiyi-jie, Li-laoban, just Guanyin!”^[14] As he howled, he hit Li Shiyi’s calves, and continued, “That wife of mine, she’s at eight or nine months, she could give birth at any moment, having provoked this sort of disaster now, it’ll destroy my family!”

Li Shiyi struggled for a couple moments, and when she couldn’t break free, dropped her head and said lowly and reprovingly, “Tu Sanping.”^[15]

Tu Laoyao raised his head, and looked at her with eyes that brimmed with tears, and said, “Shiyi-jie, I’m just someone you brought into this profession, and although I’m only willing to take things from small tombs, I’m also carrying on your legacy,^[16] I’m eating what was passed down from your ancestors.”

The corners of Li Shiyi’s lips turned down, and she said, “You originally made a living guarding tombs, and ran into me while pissing in the night, and followed after me and watched secretly, then later came back to dig it up with a shovel, and you call that carrying on my legacy?”

Tu Laoyao clung to her legs without any concern for her words, refusing to let go. Li Shiyi exhaled sharply, and said, “From in which tomb?”

Tu Laoyao was momentarily distracted, and was unable to wipe away his tears, brows lowered despite his joy as he straightened Li Shiyi’s trouser legs, and said, “That one on the east side, that one on the east side.”

Usually, work would begin at two in the morning, and end at five. In the afternoon, Li Shiyi put her vendor’s stand away and returned home to put away her tools. Tu Laoyao accompanied her for the entire journey, as if he was assistant, into her colourless, bare, tidy little wood house, with only a bed covered in a blue sheet, and a greasy table, and a dust-covered stove that hadn’t been used in many days. Tu Laoyao regarded her guapi hat and said, “In that warehouse of yours, there’s priceless treasures, and you’ve even put up electric lights, and yet it still appears to be wretched.“

Li Shiyi stared at him coldly. “Wealth should not be revealed, especially wealth made from dead people.”

Tu Laoyao thought so as well; with the unrest of the times, the mind was connected to the body by a frail neck, likely to break,^[17] fearing only that with a life to earn, there was no life to spend.

From the planks of her bed, Li Shiyi dragged out a shiny leather case, and from within it, she took out a few sturdy shovels, a pick, a Luoyang shovel,^[18] an axe, and shoved the conveniently-sized items into the bag at the head of the bed, and then searched for a moment for a few white fat candles the length of her hand, and at the doorstep, picked up a few wooden sticks and wrapped them in cloth, dousing them in kerosene, tying them into torches, and finally tied some coarse hemp rope at the top of the bulging bag and tied it to her back. She also took from the table a bowl of half-eaten glutinous rice, wrapping it in oiled paper, and from the hole in the bedstove^[19] took out a few black donkey’s hooves, blew the ashes off them and put them in the bag, took a few small wine cups off the stovetop, a pot whose mouth had been touched with black dog’s blood,^[20] smelling very fishy, and shook it, fastening it to her waist, and rinsed another empty gourd with the water from the pot, and held it in her hand and walked out.

Tu Laoyao watched her leave with a bag in the front and a bundle on her back, turning towards the rear court bamboo fence, plucking a few spicy garlic heads as she passed, placing them between the ox’s firm lips, crouching in front of it and placing the gourd at the ox’s chin. After collecting half a gourd of ox’s tears, Li Shiyi put away the gourd, her work finally complete. Tu Laoyao looked at her, and then looked at the huffing, teary-eyed old ox, and clutched the wooden shovel in his hand a bit tighter.

Just after the sky darkened, Tu Laoyao brought Li Shiyi to that patch of graveyard he’d mentioned in the day, and Li Shiyi cast an eye about, ten blocks lined up, from northwest to southeast, and asked, “That one?”

Tu Laoyao pointed at the southeast corner, and said, “The biggest one.”

Li Shiyi cast a gaze at him, seeing his courage wasn’t much, but his hunger^[21] wasn’t small.

Tu Laoyao followed after Li Shiyi to the front of the tomb, and saw that she wasn’t urgently making her way down, but snapped a couple of thick branches, and sat on one of them, putting the other by her side, came over to her and sat down near her, and, watching Li Shiyi stare blankly at the tomb, couldn’t help but ask her, “Shiyi-jie, what are you looking at?”

Li Shiyi took out a pocket watch from inside her ashy jacket and opened it and took a look, and then said, “We’ll start at eleven o’clock.”

Tu Laoyao craned his neck impatiently to look at her watch, and, rubbing his hands together with a laugh, said, “Pure gold, eh?”

Li Shiyi didn’t pay attention to him, instead taking a candle out of her bag, and lit it at the southeast corner of the tomb, then took out a smoking pipe, packing tobacco into it, and lit a match, and inhaled deeply, holding it in her mouth, then released it, before finally handing it to Tu Laoyao, and said, “Take two drags.”

Tu Laoyao obediently took it and took an abrupt drag, and said, perfectly contentedly, “No wonder you said this was how your family made money!”

“As long as there’s the taste of tobacco in your mouth it’ll do.” Li Shiyi furrowed her brows and watched the flickering candle, the smoke in her mouth curling out as she spoke. As Tu Laoyao watched her, her ugly face became sly and strange in the smoke. Then Li Shiyi blinked, and saw the candle was rocking in the wind, before it fell over with a pa, and she stood up and took the pipe from Tu Laoyao’s lips. “This tomb can’t be touched, let’s go.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: Baozi (包子) is a steamed Chinese bun, filled with either meat, vegetables, or a mixture of both.

[2]: The term laoban (老板) is used both as a term of respect and an address for a shop owner, vendor, or other superior in business.

[3]: A guapi hat (瓜皮帽, guapi mao) is a type of Chinese skullcap commonly worn during the Qing dynasty by men, which takes its name from its resemblance to a half of a watermelon rind.

[4]: The term used is 棉手闷子 (mianshou menzi), with 棉手 coming from 棉手套 (mianshou tao, cotton-quilted mittens).

[5]: The terms used in this passage are 水烟 (shui yan), tobacco smoked in a water pipe/hookah, versus 旱烟 (han yan), tobacco smoked in a long-stemmed pipe.

[6]: The word 十一 (shiyi) is the word for eleven, and as the eleventh child, this has become the name others call her.

[7]: The term jie, shortened from jiejie (姐姐) is an address for an older sister or older women of the same age range generally. As used here, it is a suffix attached to the given name to indicate familiarity and closeness.

[8]: Dog skin plasters are a type of herbal plaster made with dog’s skin smeared with herbal medicine, used to treat various types of diseases. In the text, Qi Xiao Huangshu uses 狗头膏药 (goutougao yao), though the more common term is 狗皮膏 (gou pi gao).

[9]: The term 四四方方的 (sisi fangfang de) refers to a house or building being boxy, from 四方形 (si fang xing).

[10]: The tri-coloured glazed clayworks such as these are known as Tang Sancai (唐三彩) for their commonness in the Tang era. They often used green, brown, and white, though other colours were also used.

[11]: The term used is 灯笼瓶 (denglongping) which, as far as I can tell, is a type of vase with dragon handles.

[12]: QXHS uses 舔 (tian) in the raws, which means to lick or lap, but I…cannot imagine that is the meaning she was going for, nor one that particularly makes sense, so I have translated it as “tapped” instead.

[13]: The term 赖 (lai) can be used to indicate a reneging or going back on one’s words.
 

[14]: Guanyin is the Buddhist goddess of mercy or compassion. She is also known as Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit, meaning “[the one who] looks on or hears the voices of the suffering”.

[15]: 三平 (sanping) is Tu Laoyao's given name, while the name Tu Laoyao simply indicates that he’s the youngest child.

 

[16]: 承衣钵 (cheng yibo), the Buddhist practice of the favoured disciple inheriting their master’s cassock and alms bowl, is used to refer to inheriting a mantle or legacy.

[17]: The best translation I can come up with for 脑袋瓜子都是拴裤腰带上的 (naodai guazi dou shi shuan kuyaodai shang de), literally “mental capacity all tied to the waist of the pants”. As far as I’ve been able to find, it’s a reference to the way that farmers would use cheap, flimsy materials like cloth or hemp rope to tie their trousers around their waists—materials that would often break, causing their pants to fall.

[18]: The Luoyang shovel is a type of shovel with a curved metal portion, appearing as if half of a cylinder, historically used by grave robbers, though in modern times it is used as an archaeological tool. The shape of the shovel allows the user to insert it into the ground, and, when brought back up, see whether or not there is anything of value in the area.

[19]: The 炕 (kang) is a type of bedstove historically used in Chinese homes.

[20]: Dog’s blood (狗血, gou xie) is used to ward of spirits. This usage in film has led to the rise of the term being used to describe melodramatic, contrived, or otherwise cliched events.

[21]: The term used in the raws is 胃口 (wei kou), literally appetite, which is used in the metaphorical, so I’ve taken the liberty of translating it into the more metaphorical “hunger”.