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    <s id="1:1">When we relived our great friendship later in the hotel room, we talked about all kinds of things.</s>
    <s id="1:2">We talked about everything we could have done back then, the confessions I wrote, and even the little Buddha of mine.</s>
    <s id="1:3">As soon as the thing heard people talking about him, he became excited and began to stir.</s>
    <s id="1:4">So I concluded: back then they'd wanted to hammer us but failed.</s>
    <s id="1:5">I was still as hard as ever.</s>
    <s id="1:6">For the sake of our great friendship, I would even run three times around the block, bare assed.</s>
    <s id="1:7">A person like me never cares much about saving face.</s>
    <s id="1:8">After all, that was my golden age, even though I was considered a hooligan.</s>
    <s id="1:9">I knew a lot of people there, including the nomads in caravans, the old Jingpos living on the mountains, and so on.</s>
    <s id="1:10">When you mentioned Wang Er who knew how to fix watches, everyone knew who he was.</s>
    <s id="1:11">I could sit with them by the fire and drink the kind of wine that only costs twenty fen for half a gallon.</s>
    <s id="1:12">I could drink a lot.</s>
    <s id="1:13">I was very popular there.</s>
    <s id="1:14">Other than those people, the pigs in the farm also liked me.</s>
    <s id="1:15">That was because when I fed them, I used three times more bran than others did.</s>
    <s id="1:16">Because of that I fought with the mess chief.</s>
    <s id="1:17">I said, at least our pigs should have enough food.</s>
    <s id="1:18">I always had a lot of friendship, and would have liked to share it with everyone.</s>
    <s id="1:19">Since they didn't want my friendship, I unloaded all of it on Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:20">The strengthening of our great friendship that Chen Qingyang and I did while in the hotel room was of the recreational sort.</s>
    <s id="1:21">I pulled out once in the middle of it and found my little Buddha smeared with blood.</s>
    <s id="1:22">She said, An older woman's insides get a bit thin, don't push too hard.</s>
    <s id="1:23">She also said she'd stayed in the south so long that her hands cracked when she came to the north.</s>
    <s id="1:24">The quality of skin cream had declined and it was no use putting it on her hands.</s>
    <s id="1:25">After saying this, she took out a small bottle of glycerin and applied some to my little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:26">Then we did it from the front so we could keep talking.</s>
    <s id="1:27">I felt like a wedge for splitting wood, lying between her widely opened legs.</s>
    <s id="1:28">In the lamplight, the network of fine lines on Chen Qingyang's face looked like pieces of golden thread.</s>
    <s id="1:29">I kissed her mouth, and she didn't object—that is to say her lips were soft and parted.</s>
    <s id="1:30">She hadn't let me kiss her mouth before, only letting me kiss the line between her chin and her neck.</s>
    <s id="1:31">She said this would arouse her.</s>
    <s id="1:32">Then we continued to talk about things past.</s>
    <s id="1:33">Chen Qingyang said that was also her golden age.</s>
    <s id="1:34">Even though people called her damaged goods, she was innocent.</s>
    <s id="1:35">She was still innocent now.</s>
    <s id="1:36">After hearing this, I laughed.</s>
    <s id="1:37">But she said, what we're doing now doesn't count as a sin.</s>
    <s id="1:38">We had a great friendship, ran away, went on denouncement trips together, and now that we met again after twenty years' separation, of course she would open her legs to let me crawl in.</s>
    <s id="1:39">So even if it were considered a sin, she didn't know where the sin lay.</s>
    <s id="1:40">More importantly, she had no knowledge of this sin.</s>
    <s id="1:41">Then once again, she began to breathe heavily.</s>
    <s id="1:42">Her face turned scarlet, her legs locked me tightly, and her body beneath me tensed while again and again muffled screams came through her clenched teeth.</s>
    <s id="1:43">Only after a long while did she relax.</s>
    <s id="1:44">Then she said it was not bad at all.</s>
    <s id="1:45">After the "not bad at all," she still said it was no sin.</s>
    <s id="1:46">Because she was like Socrates, ignorant of everything.</s>
    <s id="1:47">Even though she had lived more than forty years, the world before her eyes still appeared miraculous and new.</s>
    <s id="1:48">She didn't know why they dispatched her to a desolate place like Yunnan, nor did she know the reason for letting her return; she didn't know why they accused her of being damaged goods and escorted her to the stage to be denounced, nor could she figure out why they said she was not damaged goods and removed the confessions she had written from her file.</s>
    <s id="1:49">There were all kinds of explanations for these things, but she understood none of them.</s>
    <s id="1:50">She was so ignorant that she had to be innocent.</s>
    <s id="1:51">So it is written in all the law books.</s>
    <s id="1:52">Chen Qingyang said, People live in this world to suffer torment until they die.</s>
    <s id="1:53">Once you figure this out, you'll be able to bear everything calmly.</s>
    <s id="1:54">To explain how she came to this realization, we need to go all the way back to the time I returned from the hospital and left for the mountains from her place.</s>
    <s id="1:55">I asked her to come to see me and she hesitated for a long time.</s>
    <s id="1:56">When she finally decided and walked through the hot noon air to my thatched hut, many beautiful images went through her mind during those moments.</s>
    <s id="1:57">Then she entered the thatched hut and saw my little Buddha sticking up like an ugly instrument of torture.</s>
    <s id="1:58">She cried out then and abandoned all hope.</s>
    <s id="1:59">Chen Qingyang said, twenty years earlier, on a winter day, she walked into her courtyard.</s>
    <s id="1:60">She had on a cotton coat then, and climbed across the threshold clumsily.</s>
    <s id="1:61">A grain of sand suddenly got into her eye.</s>
    <s id="1:62">It was so painful and the cold wind was so cutting that her tears kept rolling down.</s>
    <s id="1:63">She couldn't bear it and wept, as if she were in her little bed trying to cry herself awake.</s>
    <s id="1:64">This was an old habit born with her, deeply rooted, that we are wailing our way from one dream into another—this was the extravagant hope that we all have.</s>
    <s id="1:65">Chen Qingyang said that when she went to look for me, golden flies danced in the woods.</s>
    <s id="1:66">The wind blew from every direction, penetrating her clothes and climbing her body.</s>
    <s id="1:67">The place I lived could be called an empty mountain without a human trace.</s>
    <s id="1:68">The burning sunlight dropped from the heights like shattered bits of mica.</s>
    <s id="1:69">Beneath her thin, white smock, she had stripped off all her underwear.</s>
    <s id="1:70">At that moment her heart, too, was full of extravagant hope.</s>
    <s id="1:71">After all, it was also her golden age, even though she was called damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:72">Chen Qingyang said, when she went into the mountains to look for me, she climbed over a bare hill.</s>
    <s id="1:73">Wind blew in from below and caressed her sensitive parts.</s>
    <s id="1:74">And the desire she felt then was as unpredictable as wind.</s>
    <s id="1:75">It dispersed just like the wild mountain wind.</s>
    <s id="1:76">She thought about our great friendship, thought about how I hurried down the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:77">She also remembered my head of tousled hair; how directly I stared at her when I proved she was damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:78">She felt she needed me, and we could become one, female and male in a single body, just as when she crawled over the threshold as a child and felt the wind outside.</s>
    <s id="1:79">The sky was so blue, the sunshine so bright, and there were pigeons flying around in the sky.</s>
    <s id="1:80">The whistling of those pigeons you would remember for the rest of your life.</s>
    <s id="1:81">She wanted to talk to me at that moment, just as she longed to merge with the outside world, to dissolve into the sky and the earth.</s>
    <s id="1:82">If there were only one person—only her—in this world, she would feel too lonely.</s>
    <s id="1:83">Chen Qingyang said, when she went to my little thatched hut, she thought about everything except the little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:84">That thing was too ugly to appear in her musing.</s>
    <s id="1:85">Chen Qingyang wanted to wail then, but she couldn't cry out, as if someone were choking her.</s>
    <s id="1:86">This is the so-called truth.</s>
    <s id="1:87">The truth is that you can't wake up.</s>
    <s id="1:88">That was the moment she finally figured out what the world was made of; and the next moment she made up her mind: she stepped forward to accept the torment.</s>
    <s id="1:89">She felt unusually happy.</s>
    <s id="1:90">Chen Qingyang also said, just then, she once again remembered the moment she cried without restraint in the doorway.</s>
    <s id="1:91">She cried and cried, but couldn't awaken from crying, and the agony was undiminished.</s>
    <s id="1:92">She cried for a long time, but she didn't want to give up hope, not until twenty years later when she faced the little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:93">It was not the first time that she faced the little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:94">But before then she didn't believe there was such a thing in the world.</s>
    <s id="1:95">Chen Qingyang said, facing this ugly thing, she remembered our great friendship.</s>
    <s id="1:96">When she was in the university, she had a female classmate who was as ugly as a devil (or to put it in these terms, she looked like my little Buddha).</s>
    <s id="1:97">But the girl insisted on sharing a bed with her.</s>
    <s id="1:98">What was more, when everyone fell fast sleep, the girl would kiss her mouth and fondle her breasts.</s>
    <s id="1:99">To tell the truth, she didn't have this particular hobby, but tolerated it for the sake of their friendship.</s>
    <s id="1:100">Now, here was this thing baring its teeth and unsheathing its claws, and wanting exactly the same thing.</s>
    <s id="1:101">Then let it be satisfied, which in addition can be a way to make friends.</s>
    <s id="1:102">So she stepped forward, burying its ugliness deep inside her.</s>
    <s id="1:103">She felt unusually happy.</s>
    <s id="1:104">Chen Qingyang said until then she still believed she was innocent, even after she ran away into the heart of the mountains and strengthened our great friendship almost every day.</s>
    <s id="1:105">She said this wouldn't prove she was bad at all because she didn't know why my little Buddha and I wanted to do this.</s>
    <s id="1:106">She did it for our great friendship.</s>
    <s id="1:107">Great friendship is a promise.</s>
    <s id="1:108">Keeping a promise is certainly no sin.</s>
    <s id="1:109">She had promised to help me in every respect.</s>
    <s id="1:110">But I spanked her bottom in the midst of the mountains, which completely tarnished her innocence.</s>
    <s id="1:111">I wrote confessions for a long time.</s>
    <s id="1:112">The leaders always said that I didn't confess thoroughly enough and needed to continue.</s>
    <s id="1:113">So I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life confessing.</s>
    <s id="1:114">Finally, Chen Qingyang wrote a confession without letting me see it and turned it into the public security office.</s>
    <s id="1:115">After that, no one asked us to write confessions or go on denouncement trips anymore.</s>
    <s id="1:116">What was more, Chen Qingyang began to distance herself from me.</s>
    <s id="1:117">I lived a listless existence for a while and went back to the interior alone.</s>
    <s id="1:118">What she wrote in the end, I hadn't a clue.</s>
    <s id="1:119">I lost everything when I came back from Yunnan: my gun, my knife, and my tools.</s>
    <s id="1:120">I gained one thing: a bulging file of confessions.</s>
    <s id="1:121">From then on, wherever I went, people would know that I was a hooligan.</s>
    <s id="1:122">One benefit I got was that I returned to the city earlier than the other city students.</s>
    <s id="1:123">But what was the good of returning earlier?</s>
    <s id="1:124">I still had to be reeducated in the countryside near Beijing.</s>
    <s id="1:125">When I went to Yunnan, I had brought a full set of tools with me: wrench, small vise, and so on.</s>
    <s id="1:126">Besides a set of fitter's tools, I also had a set of watchmaker's tools.</s>
    <s id="1:127">I used them to fix watches while living on Grandpa Liu's back slope.</s>
    <s id="1:128">Even though the mountain was empty and lonely, some bands of horsemen passed by from time to time.</s>
    <s id="1:129">Some of them let me appraise the smuggled watches.</s>
    <s id="1:130">Whatever the value I suggested, that would be the price, the watch would be worth that much.</s>
    <s id="1:131">Of course I didn't do it for free.</s>
    <s id="1:132">So I lived quite comfortably in the mountains.</s>
    <s id="1:133">If I hadn't come down, I'd be a millionaire by now.</s>
    <s id="1:134">As for that double-barreled shotgun, it was a treasure as well.</s>
    <s id="1:135">It turned out that the locals didn't value carbines and rifles much, but the double-barreled shotgun was a rarity to them.</s>
    <s id="1:136">The barrel was so heavy, plus there were two.</s>
    <s id="1:137">I could really scare people off with it.</s>
    <s id="1:138">Otherwise we would have been robbed long ago.</s>
    <s id="1:139">Nobody wanted to rob me or Grandpa Liu, but they might want to take Chen Qingyang away.</s>
    <s id="1:140">As for my knife, I always fastened it on a cowhide belt, and the cowhide belt was always fastened around Chen Qingyang's waist.</s>
    <s id="1:141">She wouldn't take it off even when she was sleeping or making love to me.</s>
    <s id="1:142">She thought it was charming to carry a knife with her.</s>
    <s id="1:143">So you can say that the knife actually belonged to Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:144">As I mentioned before, both the knife and gun were confiscated by the public security office.</s>
    <s id="1:145">I didn't bring my tools with me when I came down the mountains; I left them on the mountain in case things didn't go smoothly.</s>
    <s id="1:146">By the time I went back to Beijing, I was in a hurry and didn't have time to fetch the tools.</s>
    <s id="1:147">That was how I was reduced to a complete zero.</s>
    <s id="1:148">I told Chen Qingyang that I could never figure out what she wrote in her last confession.</s>
    <s id="1:149">She said she couldn't tell me right then.</s>
    <s id="1:150">She wanted to wait until we said goodbye to each other.</s>
    <s id="1:151">She was going back to Shanghai the next day.</s>
    <s id="1:152">She asked me to see her off at the train station.</s>
    <s id="1:153">Chen Qingyang was different from me in every respect.</s>
    <s id="1:154">After daybreak, she took a cold shower (the hot water had run out), and then began to dress up.</s>
    <s id="1:155">From underwear to outfit, she was a perfumed lady.</s>
    <s id="1:156">I, on the other hand, was a genuine local hooligan from underwear to outfit.</s>
    <s id="1:157">No wonder people took the confessions out of her file but left mine.</s>
    <s id="1:158">That is to say, her hymen had grown back.</s>
    <s id="1:159">As for me, I never had that thing anyway.</s>
    <s id="1:160">Besides that, I also committed the crime of instigation.</s>
    <s id="1:161">We had committed many errors together and since she didn't know what her sin was, it had to be counted as mine.</s>
    <s id="1:162">We checked out and walked in the street.</s>
    <s id="1:163">Now I began to think that the last confession of hers must be extremely obscene.</s>
    <s id="1:164">Those who read our confessions were people with stone hearts and high political consciousness.</s>
    <s id="1:165">If they couldn't bear reading it, it had to be pretty bad.</s>
    <s id="1:166">Chen Qingyang said, in that confession, she wrote nothing but her true sin.</s>
    <s id="1:167">Chen Qingyang said that by her true sin she meant the incident on Mount Qingping.</s>
    <s id="1:168">She was being carried on my shoulder then, wearing the Thai skirt that bound her legs tightly together, and her hair hung down to my waist.</s>
    <s id="1:169">The white cloud in the sky hurried on its journey, and there were only two of us in the midst of mountains.</s>
    <s id="1:170">I had just smacked her bottom; I spanked her really hard.</s>
    <s id="1:171">The burning feeling was fading.</s>
    <s id="1:172">After that I cared about nothing else but continuing to climb the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:173">Chen Qingyang said that moment she felt limp all over, so she let go of herself, hanging over my shoulder.</s>
    <s id="1:174">That moment she felt like a spring vine entangling a tree, or a young bird clinging to its master.</s>
    <s id="1:175">She no longer cared about anything else, and at that moment she had forgotten everything.</s>
    <s id="1:176">At that moment she fell in love with me, and that would never change.</s>
    <s id="1:177">At the train station, Chen Qingyang told me when she submitted this confession, the regimental commander read it immediately.</s>
    <s id="1:178">And after he finished reading his face was red all over, just like your little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:179">People who read this confession later all blushed too, like the little Buddha.</s>
    <s id="1:180">Afterward the public security people approached her several times, asking her to rewrite it.</s>
    <s id="1:181">But she said, This is what really happened.</s>
    <s id="1:182">Not a word should be changed.</s>
    <s id="1:183">They had no choice but to place it into her file.</s>
    <s id="1:184">Chen Qingyang said, admitting this amounts to admitting all her sins.</s>
    <s id="1:185">When she was in the public security office, they showed her all kinds of confessions, just to let her know what she couldn't write in her confession.</s>
    <s id="1:186">But she insisted on writing in this way.</s>
    <s id="1:187">She said that the reason that she wanted to write about it was because it was worse than anything else she had done.</s>
    <s id="1:188">She admitted before that she opened her legs; now she added that the reason she had done it was because she liked it.</s>
    <s id="1:189">Doing something is very different from liking it.</s>
    <s id="1:190">The former warranted going on denouncement trips; and the latter warranted being torn apart by five running horses or being minced by thousands of knives.</s>
    <s id="1:191">But no one had the power to tear us apart with five horses, so they had no choice but to set us free.</s>
    <s id="1:192">After Chen Qingyang told me this, the train roared away.</s>
    <s id="1:193">From that moment on, I never saw her again.</s>
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