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    <s id="1:1">I did not leave that night—Chen Qingyang caught me and asked me to stay in the name of our great friendship.</s>
    <s id="1:2">She admitted that she'd been wrong to slap me, and that she hadn't treated me well.</s>
    <s id="1:3">But she said my great friendship was phony, and the reason I had tricked her into coming was to study her anatomy.</s>
    <s id="1:4">I said if she thought I was a faker, why did she believe me?</s>
    <s id="1:5">I did want to study her anatomy, but that was with her permission, too.</s>
    <s id="1:6">If she didn't like the idea, she could have told me before.</s>
    <s id="1:7">In any case, slapping me was unfair.</s>
    <s id="1:8">She laughed hard for a while and said she simply couldn't bear the sight of that thing on my body.</s>
    <s id="1:9">It looked silly and shameless, and whenever she saw him, she just couldn't help getting angry.</s>
    <s id="1:10">We didn't have a stitch on while we argued.</s>
    <s id="1:11">My little Buddha still stuck out, glittering in the moonlight as if wrapped in plastic.</s>
    <s id="1:12">I was a little offended by what she said and she realized that too.</s>
    <s id="1:13">So to make peace, she softened her tone and said, "Anyway, he is breathtakingly ugly—don't you agree?"</s>
    <s id="1:14">Standing there like an angry cobra, the thing was indeed homely.</s>
    <s id="1:15">I said, since you don't even want to look at him, let's just forget the whole thing.</s>
    <s id="1:16">I began to put on my pants, but again she said, Don't!</s>
    <s id="1:17">So I started smoking.</s>
    <s id="1:18">The moment I had the cigarette finished, she embraced me and we did it on the grass.</s>
    <s id="1:19">Until my twenty-first birthday I was a virgin, but that night I lured Chen Qingyang up the mountain with me.</s>
    <s id="1:20">At first there was moonlight, then the moon set and a sky full of stars came out, as numerous as dewdrops in the morning.</s>
    <s id="1:21">There was no wind that night either; the mountain was very still.</s>
    <s id="1:22">Having made love to Chen Qingyang, I was no longer a virgin.</s>
    <s id="1:23">However, I wasn't feeling happy at all.</s>
    <s id="1:24">That was because when I was doing it, she didn't make a sound; she simply put her arms under her head and looked at me in a very thoughtful way.</s>
    <s id="1:25">So from beginning to end it was just my solo performance.</s>
    <s id="1:26">In fact, I didn't last too long.</s>
    <s id="1:27">I finished almost right away.</s>
    <s id="1:28">After that I was angry and upset.</s>
    <s id="1:29">Chen Qingyang said she couldn't believe it: I actually had the impudence to display my ugly male organ in front of her, without feeling the least embarrassed.</s>
    <s id="1:30">The thing didn't feel embarrassed either; it just forced its way straight into the hole between her thighs.</s>
    <s id="1:31">Because there is this hole in a woman's body, a man thinks he has to use it, which just doesn't make sense.</s>
    <s id="1:32">When she had a husband before, he did this to her every day.</s>
    <s id="1:33">All the time she kept the question to herself, waiting for the day when he felt ashamed of himself and would explain why he did this to her.</s>
    <s id="1:34">But he never apologized, and then he went to prison.</s>
    <s id="1:35">These were things I didn't want to hear.</s>
    <s id="1:36">So I asked her if she hadn't felt like doing it, why had she agreed?</s>
    <s id="1:37">She said she didn't want to be considered small-minded.</s>
    <s id="1:38">I said, You're a small-minded person anyway.</s>
    <s id="1:39">Then she said, Never mind, let's not fight about it.</s>
    <s id="1:40">She told me to return that evening, and we'd try it one more time.</s>
    <s id="1:41">Maybe she'd like it.</s>
    <s id="1:42">I didn't say anything.</s>
    <s id="1:43">In the foggy dawn, I left her and went down the mountain to herd buffalo.</s>
    <s id="1:44">I didn't go to see her that night, instead I went to the hospital, the reason being: when I got to the cattle pen in the morning, a bunch of people couldn't wait for me and had opened the pen and dragged the buffalo out.</s>
    <s id="1:45">Everyone was trying to pick out a strong one for plowing the fields.</s>
    <s id="1:46">A local youth called Shan Men Er was pulling out a large white one.</s>
    <s id="1:47">I went over to tell him that the buffalo had been bitten by a poisonous snake and couldn't work.</s>
    <s id="1:48">He didn't seem to hear me, so I snatched the tether from him and he slapped me without thinking.</s>
    <s id="1:49">I shoved him right in the chest, pushing him down on his butt.</s>
    <s id="1:50">Then people began to gather, forming a tight ring around us and urging us to fight.</s>
    <s id="1:51">With the students from Beijing on one side and the country boys on the other, everyone chose a weapon, either a wooden stick or a leather belt.</s>
    <s id="1:52">They argued for a while, then decided not to fight but to make Shan Men Er and I wrestle.</s>
    <s id="1:53">Unable to beat me at wrestling, Shan Men Er began to punch me.</s>
    <s id="1:54">I kicked him into a manure pit right in front of the cattle pen for a shit bath.</s>
    <s id="1:55">He got up, grabbed a pitchfork, and tried to stab me, but somebody stopped him.</s>
    <s id="1:56">That was what happened in the morning.</s>
    <s id="1:57">When I came back from herding buffalo in the evening, the team leader accused me of beating peasants, saying that he was going to call a meeting to denounce me.</s>
    <s id="1:58">I told him that he could take his chances and give me trouble, but I was no pushover.</s>
    <s id="1:59">I also told him that I would get some people together for a gang fight.</s>
    <s id="1:60">The team leader said he didn't want to give me a hard time; it was Shan Men Er's mother who was giving him a hard time.</s>
    <s id="1:61">The woman was a widow, a real bitch.</s>
    <s id="1:62">He said that's the way it goes around here.</s>
    <s id="1:63">Later he said he was not going to arrange a denouncing meeting but a helping meeting.</s>
    <s id="1:64">I could just stand in front of people and do a self-criticism.</s>
    <s id="1:65">If I still didn't agree, he was going to let the widow come after me.</s>
    <s id="1:66">The meeting was a complete mess.</s>
    <s id="1:67">The locals all talked at once, saying that the city students had gone too far—we not only took their chickens and stole their dogs, but also beat their people.</s>
    <s id="1:68">The city students said, That's bullshit!</s>
    <s id="1:69">Who stole your chickens and dogs?</s>
    <s id="1:70">Did you catch us in the act?</s>
    <s id="1:71">We're here to build up our country's borderland.</s>
    <s id="1:72">We aren't some criminals in exile.</s>
    <s id="1:73">Why should we put up with casual slander?</s>
    <s id="1:74">Standing in front of the crowd, I didn't do self-criticism but called them names.</s>
    <s id="1:75">I didn't expect Shan Men Er's mother to sneak up from behind, pick up a heavy stool, and slam my lower back, right on my old injury.</s>
    <s id="1:76">I passed out instantly.</s>
    <s id="1:77">By the time I came around, Luo Xiaosi had gathered a group of city students and was threatening to burn the cattle pen.</s>
    <s id="1:78">He also said he'd make Shan Men Er's mother pay with her life.</s>
    <s id="1:79">The team leader took a bunch of locals to stop them.</s>
    <s id="1:80">Meanwhile, the vice team leader told someone to take me to the hospital on an ox cart.</s>
    <s id="1:81">The nurse said they shouldn't try to move me since my back was broken, and I'd be done for.</s>
    <s id="1:82">I said, My back seems OK and you guys can just carry me.</s>
    <s id="1:83">However, since none of them was sure about whether or not my back was broken, they were all afraid to move me.</s>
    <s id="1:84">So I had no choice but to stay put.</s>
    <s id="1:85">Finally, the team leader came over and said, Go phone Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:86">Let her check his back.</s>
    <s id="1:87">After a short while, Chen Qingyang ran over, with messy hair and puffy eyelids.</s>
    <s id="1:88">The first thing she said was: Don't worry.</s>
    <s id="1:89">If you're paralyzed, I'll take care of you for the rest of my life.</s>
    <s id="1:90">Then she checked my back and her diagnosis was the same as mine.</s>
    <s id="1:91">So they carried me to the ox cart and sent me to the hospital at the farm headquarters.</s>
    <s id="1:92">That night Chen Qingyang accompanied me to the hospital and waited until the x-ray of my lower back was developed.</s>
    <s id="1:93">She left after making sure everything was fine.</s>
    <s id="1:94">She said she would come back to visit me in a couple of days, but she never did.</s>
    <s id="1:95">I was hospitalized for a whole week, and once I could get around, I went straight back to see her.</s>
    <s id="1:96">When I walked into Chen Qingyang's clinic, I carried so many things on my back that my pack was overflowing.</s>
    <s id="1:97">In addition to a wok, bowls, a basin, and ladle, there was enough food for two of us to eat for an entire month.</s>
    <s id="1:98">When she saw me come into her clinic, she gave me a faint smile and said, Are you completely recovered?</s>
    <s id="1:99">Where are you going with all that stuff?</s>
    <s id="1:100">I said I was going to the Qingping thermal springs to bathe.</s>
    <s id="1:101">She leaned back languidly in her chair and said, That's a great idea.</s>
    <s id="1:102">The thermal springs might cure your old injury.</s>
    <s id="1:103">I said I wasn't really going to the thermal springs.</s>
    <s id="1:104">I just wanted to stay on the back slope of the mountain for a few days.</s>
    <s id="1:105">She said there is nothing on the back of the mountain.</s>
    <s id="1:106">Better go to the thermal springs.</s>
    <s id="1:107">The Qingping thermal springs were mud pools located in a valley, surrounded by nothing but wild, grassy hills.</s>
    <s id="1:108">The people who built huts on the hills and lived there year-round were usually patients with a variety of diseases.</s>
    <s id="1:109">If I went there, not only wouldn't it cure the pain in my lower back, but worse, I might get leprosy.</s>
    <s id="1:110">However, the lowland on the back slope of the deserted mountain was crisscrossed with gullies and ditches; and fragrant grass grew lush in the sparse woods.</s>
    <s id="1:111">I could build a thatched hut in some deserted spot, an empty mountain with no human trace—gurgling water with fallen petals.</s>
    <s id="1:112">A place like that would help cultivate morality and nourish the inner nature.</s>
    <s id="1:113">When Chen Qingyang heard this she couldn't help smiling.</s>
    <s id="1:114">How do you get to that place?</s>
    <s id="1:115">Maybe I'll go there to visit you.</s>
    <s id="1:116">I gave her directions and even made a map for her, and then went into the mountains alone.</s>
    <s id="1:117">After I got to the desolate mountainside, Chen Qingyang didn't come to see me right away.</s>
    <s id="1:118">The strong wind of the dry season blew endlessly, shaking the thatched hut.</s>
    <s id="1:119">Sitting in a chair and listening to the sound of the wind, Chen Qingyang would look back at what happened and begin to have doubts about everything.</s>
    <s id="1:120">It was hard for her to believe that she had come to these backwoods in a haze, had begun to be called damaged goods for no reason, and then turned into real damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:121">The whole thing was just unbelievable.</s>
    <s id="1:122">Chen Qingyang said that sometimes she would step out of her room and look in the direction of the back slope of the mountain, seeing the many paths winding through the valley and leading deep into the mountains.</s>
    <s id="1:123">My words still echoed in her ears.</s>
    <s id="1:124">She knew that any of those paths would take her to me.</s>
    <s id="1:125">There was no doubt about it.</s>
    <s id="1:126">But the more certain something was, the more doubtful it became.</s>
    <s id="1:127">Maybe the path didn't lead anywhere; maybe Wang Er was not in the mountains; maybe Wang Er didn't exist at all.</s>
    <s id="1:128">A couple of days later, Luo Xiaosi brought several people to the hospital to see me.</s>
    <s id="1:129">No one in the hospital had ever heard of Wang Er, so nobody knew where he had gone.</s>
    <s id="1:130">At the time the hospital was rampant with hepatitis.</s>
    <s id="1:131">The uninfected patients all fled to their homes to recuperate, and the doctors went down to the production team to provide medical care.</s>
    <s id="1:132">Luo Xiaosi came back to the fourteenth team and found my stuff gone, so he went to ask the team leader whether he had seen me.</s>
    <s id="1:133">The team leader said, Who's Wang Er?</s>
    <s id="1:134">Never heard of him.</s>
    <s id="1:135">Luo Xiaosi said, Just a few days ago you called a meeting to denounce him, and the vixen hit him with a stool and almost killed him.</s>
    <s id="1:136">Having been reminded that way, the team leader was even more reluctant to refresh his memory about me.</s>
    <s id="1:137">It just so happened that at the time a relief delegation from Beijing was coming to investigate how the city students were treated in the countryside, especially whether any had been tied up, beaten, or forced to marry the locals.</s>
    <s id="1:138">Because of this, the team leader was even more unwilling to remember me.</s>
    <s id="1:139">Luo Xiaosi then made his way to the fifteenth team, asking Chen Qingyang whether she had seen me, and hinting in a roundabout sort of way that she'd had an indecent relationship with me.</s>
    <s id="1:140">Chen Qingyang then told him that she knew nothing about me.</s>
    <s id="1:141">By the time Luo Xiaosi left, Chen Qingyang was confused.</s>
    <s id="1:142">It seemed many people didn't believe Wang Er so much as existed.</s>
    <s id="1:143">That's what confused people.</s>
    <s id="1:144">What everyone thinks exists must not exist, because everything before our eyes is illusion; what everyone doesn't think exists must exist, like Wang Er.</s>
    <s id="1:145">If he didn't exist, where did his name come from?</s>
    <s id="1:146">Unable to overcome her curiosity, Chen Qingyang finally dropped everything and went up the mountain to look for me.</s>
    <s id="1:147">After the vixen knocked me out with a stool, Chen Qingyang ran all the way down the mountain to see me.</s>
    <s id="1:148">She even cried in public and declared that if I didn't recover, she would take care of me all her life.</s>
    <s id="1:149">It turned out not only did I live, but I wasn't even paralyzed, which was a good thing for me though she wasn't crazy about it.</s>
    <s id="1:150">It was almost as if she'd confessed publicly that she was damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:151">If I'd died, or become paralyzed, it would have then been morally justified.</s>
    <s id="1:152">But I had only stayed in the hospital for a week and then run away.</s>
    <s id="1:153">To her, I was the precise image of someone seen from behind, hurrying down the mountain, a man in her memory.</s>
    <s id="1:154">She didn't want to make love to me, nor did she want to carry on a love affair with me either.</s>
    <s id="1:155">So, without a very important reason, her visiting me would be the act of a woman who was truly damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:156">Chen Qingyang said that when she decided to head up the mountain to search for me, she didn't have anything on under her white smock.</s>
    <s id="1:157">Dressed like this, she crossed a stretch of hills behind the fifteenth team.</s>
    <s id="1:158">Those hills were thick with grass, and under the grass lay red soil.</s>
    <s id="1:159">In the morning the wind blew down the mountain to the plateau, cold as a mountain spring, and in the afternoon the wind returned, full of heat and dust.</s>
    <s id="1:160">Chen Qingyang came riding on a white wind to look for me.</s>
    <s id="1:161">The wind got under her clothes and flowed all over her body, like caresses and lips.</s>
    <s id="1:162">In fact, she didn't really need me, nor did she have to find me.</s>
    <s id="1:163">When people said she was damaged goods and I was her lover, she came to see me every day.</s>
    <s id="1:164">It seemed necessary back then, though.</s>
    <s id="1:165">Ever since she admitted in public she was damaged goods, and I was her lover, no one said she was damaged goods anymore, let alone mentioned my name in front of her (except for Luo Xiaosi).</s>
    <s id="1:166">People were so afraid of this kind of damaged-goods behavior in broad daylight that they didn't even dare talk about it.</s>
    <s id="1:167">As for the Beijing relief delegation sent to investigate the city students' situation, everyone in the local area knew about it except for me.</s>
    <s id="1:168">That was because lately I had been off herding buffalo, which required going out early in the morning and coming back late at night; besides that, I had a bad reputation and no one bothered to tell me.</s>
    <s id="1:169">Later, when I was in the hospital, nobody came to see me either.</s>
    <s id="1:170">When I left the hospital, I went deep into the mountains almost right away.</s>
    <s id="1:171">I saw only two people before my trip, one of whom was Chen Qingyang, who hadn't mentioned it; the other one was our team leader, who also hadn't said anything other than telling me to take a good rest at the thermal springs.</s>
    <s id="1:172">I told him that I didn't have anything (food, utensils, etc.), so I couldn't go to the thermal springs.</s>
    <s id="1:173">He said he could lend me some things.</s>
    <s id="1:174">I told him that I might not be able to return them.</s>
    <s id="1:175">He said it didn't matter.</s>
    <s id="1:176">So I borrowed plenty of homemade smoked meat and sausages.</s>
    <s id="1:177">Chen Qingyang didn't give me the information because she didn't care about it—she was not one of the city students.</s>
    <s id="1:178">The team leader didn't tell me because he thought I knew already.</s>
    <s id="1:179">He also thought that since I took so much food with me I probably wouldn't come back.</s>
    <s id="1:180">That was why when Luo Xiaosi asked him where Wang Er had gone, he said, Wang Er?</s>
    <s id="1:181">Who's Wang Er?</s>
    <s id="1:182">Never heard of him.</s>
    <s id="1:183">For those like Luo Xiaosi, it would have been a great advantage to find me—I could prove that the city students in the area were treated badly, often beaten senseless.</s>
    <s id="1:184">For our team leader, my nonexistence was very convenient, because then no one could prove any of the city students had been beaten senseless.</s>
    <s id="1:185">To me, it didn't really matter whether I existed or not.</s>
    <s id="1:186">If no one came to look for me, I could grow some corn around the place and never leave.</s>
    <s id="1:187">So I didn't really care whether I existed or not.</s>
    <s id="1:188">I also thought about the problem of whether I existed or not in my little thatched hut.</s>
    <s id="1:189">For example, others believed that Chen Qingyang had slept with me and that proved my existence.</s>
    <s id="1:190">In Luo Xiaosi's words, Wang Er and Chen Qingyang took off their pants and screwed.</s>
    <s id="1:191">Actually he didn't see any of it, but the extent of his imagination was that we took off our pants.</s>
    <s id="1:192">And there was Chen Qingyang, who said that I hurried down the mountain in my green fatigues.</s>
    <s id="1:193">It never crossed my mind that I didn't look back as I walked.</s>
    <s id="1:194">Since I couldn't imagine these things, they must be evidence of my existence.</s>
    <s id="1:195">Then there was this little Buddha of mine, stiff and straight, and that was something I couldn't invent either.</s>
    <s id="1:196">I always expected Chen Qingyang to come to see me, but she never came.</s>
    <s id="1:197">By the time she finally showed up, I had learned not to expect her.</s>
    <s id="1:198">I used to believe that Chen Qingyang would come to see me immediately after I went up the mountain, but I was wrong.</s>
    <s id="1:199">I waited for a long time and then decided to give up.</s>
    <s id="1:200">I sat in my little hut, listening to the leaves rustling all over the mountain, finally reaching a state where object and subject were both forgotten.</s>
    <s id="1:201">I listened to the mighty air currents surging over my head, and just then a wave rose from my soul, as flowers bloom in the midst of the mountains and bamboo husks fall from the shoots and the bamboo stands up straight.</s>
    <s id="1:202">When the wave receded, I would rest calmly, but I wanted to dance while the wave was at its peak.</s>
    <s id="1:203">Chen Qingyang arrived at my thatched hut precisely at that moment and caught sight of me sitting naked on the bamboo bed.</s>
    <s id="1:204">My penis was like a skinned rabbit, red, shiny, and a foot long, frankly erect.</s>
    <s id="1:205">Panicked, Chen Qingyang immediately screamed.</s>
    <s id="1:206">Chen Qingyang's search for me could be summed up as follows: Two weeks after I went into the mountains, she went up the mountains to look for me.</s>
    <s id="1:207">It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but she took off her underwear, like women who sneak out for sex at midnight, and wore only a white smock, walking barefoot in the mountains.</s>
    <s id="1:208">She crossed a sunlit meadow, entered a dry gully, and walked for a long time.</s>
    <s id="1:209">Even through the maze of gullies, she didn't make a single wrong turn.</s>
    <s id="1:210">Later she emerged from the gully, walked into a valley facing the sun, and saw a thatched hut that seemed newly built.</s>
    <s id="1:211">If there had been no Wang Er to tell her the route, she wouldn't have been able to find such a tiny hut in the vast, wild mountains.</s>
    <s id="1:212">But as she entered the hut and saw Wang Er sitting on the bed, his little Buddha stiff, she was frightened into screaming.</s>
    <s id="1:213">Later Chen Qingyang said she just couldn't believe everything she had experienced was real, because something real needs to have a cause.</s>
    <s id="1:214">Yet at the time she just took off her white smock, sat beside me, and stared at my little Buddha, thinking he was the color of a burn scar.</s>
    <s id="1:215">Just then my thatched hut began to shake in the wind, streams of sunlight leaked through the roof and spattered her body, like stars.</s>
    <s id="1:216">I reached out my hand and touched her nipples, until her face flushed and her nipples turned hard.</s>
    <s id="1:217">Suddenly she woke from her trance, her face blushing with embarrassment.</s>
    <s id="1:218">Then she embraced me tightly.</s>
    <s id="1:219">It was the second time that I made love to Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:220">When we first made love, many details puzzled me.</s>
    <s id="1:221">Not until much later did I finally figure out how much she had really taken to heart being called damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:222">Since she couldn't prove she wasn't damaged goods, she consented to becoming damaged goods, like the women caught in the act and summoned on stage to confess the details of their adultery.</s>
    <s id="1:223">The confessions would reach a point when the audience, unable to restrain themselves, their faces twisted into hundreds of masks of lust, would shout, Tie her up!</s>
    <s id="1:224">Then someone would rush onto the stage and bind her into the loops of a five-petal knot with thin hemp twine.</s>
    <s id="1:225">She stood like this in front of the crowd, submitting herself to all the shame and insults.</s>
    <s id="1:226">That didn't bother her at all.</s>
    <s id="1:227">She wouldn't have been afraid of being stripped naked, strapped to a millstone, and thrown into a pond; nor would she have feared being forced to dress up, like the wives and concubines of wealthy men, their faces covered with water-soaked yellow paper, sitting upright until they smothered to death.</s>
    <s id="1:228">No, these things wouldn't have bothered her at all.</s>
    <s id="1:229">She was not the least bit worried about becoming actual damaged goods, which she much preferred to being damaged goods in name only.</s>
    <s id="1:230">What disgusted her was the act that made her damaged goods.</s>
    <s id="1:231">When I made love to Chen Qingyang, a lizard crawled out of a crack in the wall and crossed the ground in the middle of the room, moving intermittently.</s>
    <s id="1:232">Then suddenly startled, it fled quickly, disappearing into the sunshine outside the door.</s>
    <s id="1:233">Just at that moment Chen Qingyang's moans flooded out, filling the entire room.</s>
    <s id="1:234">I was scared and stopped, leaning over her body.</s>
    <s id="1:235">But she pinched my leg and said: Hurry, you idiot!</s>
    <s id="1:236">I sped up and waves of vibration passed through me as if from the earth's core.</s>
    <s id="1:237">Afterward, she said she had fallen deep into sin and karma would catch up with her sooner or later.</s>
    <s id="1:238">When she said that, the band of flush was fading from her chest.</s>
    <s id="1:239">At the time we hadn't finished our business yet.</s>
    <s id="1:240">So she made it sound like she would only be punished for what she had just done.</s>
    <s id="1:241">Suddenly a shudder traveled from the top of my head to my tailbone and I began to ejaculate wildly.</s>
    <s id="1:242">Since this had nothing to do with her, perhaps I would be the only one punished for it.</s>
    <s id="1:243">Later Chen Qingyang told me that Luo Xiaosi had looked for me everywhere.</s>
    <s id="1:244">He went to the hospital, and people there told him that I didn't exist; then he went to our team leader, who also said that I didn't exist; finally, he went to Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:245">Chen Qingyang told him that since everyone said he didn't exist, maybe he didn't.</s>
    <s id="1:246">She had no problem with that.</s>
    <s id="1:247">When he heard this, Luo Xiaosi couldn't help crying.</s>
    <s id="1:248">I felt very strange after I heard her words.</s>
    <s id="1:249">I shouldn't come into existence simply because a vixen hit me, nor should I stop existing because she hit me.</s>
    <s id="1:250">Actually, my existence was an indisputable fact.</s>
    <s id="1:251">So I became obsessed.</s>
    <s id="1:252">To prove the indisputable fact, I went down the mountain the day the relief delegation arrived and took part in the delegation's hearing.</s>
    <s id="1:253">After the hearing, the team leader said, You don't look sick at all.</s>
    <s id="1:254">I think you'd better come back to feed the pigs.</s>
    <s id="1:255">He also arranged for people to trail Chen Qingyang and me, trying to catch us in the act of adultery.</s>
    <s id="1:256">Of course, it was not easy to catch me because I walked so fast.</s>
    <s id="1:257">No one could successfully track me.</s>
    <s id="1:258">However, this got me into a lot more trouble.</s>
    <s id="1:259">By then I began to realize that it was really unnecessary for me to prove my existence to others.</s>
    <s id="1:260">When I fed the pigs for the production team, every day I had to carry buckets of water.</s>
    <s id="1:261">It was really a tiring job, and impossible to slack off.</s>
    <s id="1:262">The pigs would squeal if they didn't get enough food.</s>
    <s id="1:263">I had to chop tons of vegetables and cut piles of wood.</s>
    <s id="1:264">Originally there had been three women to do the job, but now the team leader assigned it all to me.</s>
    <s id="1:265">I found that I could not manage three women's work, especially when my back hurt.</s>
    <s id="1:266">I really wanted to prove that I didn't exist then.</s>
    <s id="1:267">At night Chen Qingyang and I would make love in my small hut.</s>
    <s id="1:268">In those days, I was full of respect for the task, enthusiastic about every kiss and caress.</s>
    <s id="1:269">Whether it was the classical missionary position, or man-from-behind position, man-from-side position, or woman-on-top position, I performed them in sober earnest.</s>
    <s id="1:270">Chen Qingyang was very satisfied with my performance, and so was I.</s>
    <s id="1:271">At those moments, I felt it was unnecessary to prove my existence.</s>
    <s id="1:272">I drew a conclusion from these experiences: never let other people pay attention to you!</s>
    <s id="1:273">Beijingers say: Better a thief should steal from you than keep you in mind.</s>
    <s id="1:274">You should never let other people keep you in mind.</s>
    <s id="1:275">After a while, the city students in our team were all transferred to other positions; the men landed work at the candy factory, and the women got to teach at the agricultural middle school.</s>
    <s id="1:276">I was the only one left feeding those pigs.</s>
    <s id="1:277">According to them that was because I was not reeducated enough, but Chen Qingyang said it was because someone kept me in mind.</s>
    <s id="1:278">This "someone" might have been the military deputy on our farm.</s>
    <s id="1:279">She also said the military deputy was a jerk.</s>
    <s id="1:280">She used to work in the hospital, but when the military deputy tried to grope her, she gave him a big slap, and afterward, she was sent down to the fifteenth production team to work as a team doctor.</s>
    <s id="1:281">The fifteenth team's water was bitter, and there wasn't much to eat either.</s>
    <s id="1:282">She got used to it after a while.</s>
    <s id="1:283">But it was clear from the start the military deputy just wanted to make trouble for her.</s>
    <s id="1:284">Chen Qingyang said that the military deputy would definitely not go easy on me, perhaps I would be kept-in-mind half to death.</s>
    <s id="1:285">I said: What can he do to me?</s>
    <s id="1:286">If things get really bad, I can simply run the hell away.</s>
    <s id="1:287">What happened later all started there.</s>
    <s id="1:288">That morning, right at dawn, I went down the mountain to feed the pigs.</s>
    <s id="1:289">As I passed the village well, I saw the military deputy at the well stand brushing his teeth.</s>
    <s id="1:290">He took the brush out of his mouth and talked to me with a mouth full of froth.</s>
    <s id="1:291">I thought he was very disgusting, so I left without a word.</s>
    <s id="1:292">Shortly afterward, he ran to the pigpen and shouted at me: How dare you walk away from me like that?</s>
    <s id="1:293">I kept silent as I heard the words.</s>
    <s id="1:294">Even when he accused me of playing dumb, I still said nothing.</s>
    <s id="1:295">After a while I walked away again.</s>
    <s id="1:296">The military deputy came to our team to do some grassroots investigation and then stayed.</s>
    <s id="1:297">According to him, he wouldn't give up until he made Wang Er talk.</s>
    <s id="1:298">His visit could be accounted for in two ways: one was that he came down to our team for the investigation, but when he met someone like me who played dumb with him, he got pissed off and decided to stay; the other was that he came down to our team not for investigation, but to pick on me, after hearing that Chen Qingyang and I had a love affair.</s>
    <s id="1:299">Whatever brought him to our team, I made up my mind to stay mute.</s>
    <s id="1:300">He couldn't do anything about it.</s>
    <s id="1:301">The military deputy had a talk with me, asking me to write a confession.</s>
    <s id="1:302">He said that the masses were very angry about my love affair with Chen Qingyang.</s>
    <s id="1:303">If I didn't confess, he would mobilize the masses to deal with me.</s>
    <s id="1:304">He also said my behavior met the criteria for my classification as one of "the bad elements," and I should be punished by the proletarian dictatorship.</s>
    <s id="1:305">I could have defended myself by saying I didn't have a love affair.</s>
    <s id="1:306">Who could prove I did?</s>
    <s id="1:307">But I just stared at him, like a wild boar, like an idiot, like a male cat staring at a female one, until his anger vanished under my stare.</s>
    <s id="1:308">Then he let me go.</s>
    <s id="1:309">In the end, he still couldn't get anything out of me.</s>
    <s id="1:310">He wasn't even sure whether I was a mute or not.</s>
    <s id="1:311">People told him that I wasn't a mute.</s>
    <s id="1:312">He couldn't be sure since he had never heard me speak a single word.</s>
    <s id="1:313">To this day, whenever he thinks of me, he still can't figure out if I am mute or not.</s>
    <s id="1:314">It makes me very happy whenever I think about it.</s>
  </p>
</text>
