Chapter 15

Main text Chapter Fifteen Antique Market

Pangzi has a family heirloom jade pendant that he always wears; this jade was given to his father by a commander of the Northwest Field Army. Back then, that commander led his troops into Xinjiang and wiped out a band of bandits at the Niya Oasis; this jade was the bandit leader's personal item. Although called a jade pendant, its shape doesn't really look like one; its design is ancient and strange, with some chaotic patterns carved on it, resembling a map or perhaps writing, and I don't actually know what it's used for.

Pangzi has shown me this jade many times; my family used to have quite a few antiques, and when I was little my grandfather told me a lot of knowledge about metal, stone, and jade ware. However, I can't tell the value or age of this jade.

Pangzi wanted to sell this jade to get some startup money for business, but I stopped him; this is what your father left for you, so if you can avoid selling it, don't sell it. We're not at the point of having no options; if worst comes to worst, I'll ask my family for money—anyway, my parents have been issued a lot of back pay.

The two of us saw an empty spot by the road, so we parked our tricycle there and bought two bowls of stewed offal with baked wheat gluten to eat as lunch.

Stewed offal with baked wheat gluten is a soup made by simmering pig offal; it contains mainly large intestine and such, with chopped baked wheat gluten soaked in it, costing over one yuan per bowl, both economical and affordable.

I put too much chili in this bowl; it's so spicy that tears and snot are pouring out, and I'm sticking out my tongue and panting.

After eating two bites, Pangzi said to me, "Lao Hu, I originally wanted to bring you out to make a fortune these years, but I didn't expect the national economy to have been revitalized; the situation isn't just slightly good, it's wholly excellent. Unlike when I first started vending, there weren't more than three stalls selling pop music cassette tapes in all of Beijing. I feel like I've dragged you down—your father was already a division commander before retirement, enjoying deputy municipal-level cadre benefits. You'd better go back and have your family's old man pull some strings to get you a position in a government office, so you don't have to suffer alongside me."

I patted Pangzi's big belly and said, "Brother, I also want to tell you something from the heart: if I really wanted to go work in a government office, I could go anytime, but I don't dare. Do you know why? I'm afraid—if I stay still in one place, my mind can't think of anything else; it's full of my deceased comrades, who keep flashing before my eyes. Seeing them makes my intestines feel like they're about to break. Now we're rushing around east and west, doing small trade, which can distract our thoughts onto something else; otherwise I'd really go crazy."

After so many years in the army, I didn't learn anything else, just how to raise morale. I comforted Pangzi: "We're not really suffering now—don't we still have stewed offal to eat? Think back to when I was in the Kunlun Mountains; that was real hardship. One Spring Festival, everyone missed home, and many new recruits secretly cried. The division commander saw that this was still okay, so he quickly had the troops make a batch of dumplings to improve the rations. Those dumplings, you might not believe this, but the Kunlun Mountains had no vegetables at all—vegetables were more expensive than gold—while meat was plentiful, so the dumplings were nothing but meatballs. The altitude was so high that water wouldn't boil, so the dumplings were undercooked, and the filling inside was red. Can you imagine what that tasted like? I still ate seventy or eighty of them, almost bursting my stomach; I was starving. Those years I hadn't eaten any cooked food, and I craved it terribly. The next day I had someone send me to the hospital because I couldn't digest it; my stomach felt like a sheet of iron. Do you remember what it says in Red Rock? On the eve of revolutionary victory, it's always the coldest. Our business can't always be like this—cassette tapes aren't selling well, so we can sell something else. Just as Chairman Mao said: if Mount Lu won't let us up, we'll go to Jinggang Mountain; if the People's Liberation Army won't follow me, I'll go find the Red Army."

I turned on the recorder, and the two large speakers immediately blasted out music.

Because the recorder is rather broken, the sound quality is terrible; even the most beautiful song played from it sounds like hitting a broken gong.

But Pangzi and I don't find it hard to listen to; anyway, it's better than our own singing. After my thorough yet accessible ideological education work, Pangzi's mood brightened; he tapped his calves to the rhythm, raised his voice, and shouted: "Take a look, have a look—Hong Kong and Taiwan original edition, big clearance sale of arm‑chopping, leg‑cutting, making a profit despite a loss!"

Passersby and nearby vendors all gave us curious looks. Next to us was a man selling antiques at a street stall; he came over, greeted us, and when he smiled a big gold tooth showed. Da Jin Ya took out cigarettes and handed them around to us two.

I took the cigarette and looked at it: "Hey, not bad quality—American cigarette, Marlboro."

Da Jin Ya, while lighting my cigarette, said: "Sirs, selling pop songs at the Panjiayuan Secondhand Goods Market—no one else in all of Beijing could have thought of that; you two are truly first‑rate."

I took a big puff of smoke, exhaling two white streams from my nose; this American cigarette really packs a punch. I looked up at Da Jin Ya and said: "Don't use that to needle us; we two are just hiding from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, we ended up here by accident, and we'll leave after a short rest."

As it turned out, after a bit of chatting we found we weren't strangers; Da Jin Ya's family is from Hainan Island, and earlier they had been stationed in Yunnan. His father's generation settled there when the PLA went south. Our families' roots are all in the Third Field Army—when you ask where someone's hometown is, the elders are from certain columns and columns, certain divisions and regiments, so our connections aren't distant.

However, Da Jin Ya's father wasn't a cadre; he was a civilian skilled in grave‑robbing. Later the Nationalist Army conscripted him, and during the Xu‑Beng Campaign—that is, the Huaihai Campaign—his unit defected and joined the PLA, and he remained a cook in the army. On the Korean battlefield his legs were frozen and ruined, leaving him permanently paralyzed. After the Reform and Opening Up, he moved from Hainan to Beijing and dealt in antiques and curios to make a living.

It's better to listen than to speak; he tells it well. What's a grave‑robbing artisan? Isn't that just a tomb‑digging thief? Others might not catch it, but since I was raised by my grandfather from childhood, he's told me plenty about these things.

Experts stretch out their hand and they know whether there is one. Going deeper, I asked Da Jin Ya: "Did your old master ever work as a Mojin Colonel, and did he ever dig up any well-preserved corpse?" (Big zongzi is a piece of slang circulated among grave robbers; just like mountain bandits cannot directly say they kill and set fire when talking among themselves, they also have a set of secret jargon. Zongzi refers to corpses in the tomb that are relatively well preserved, not rotted; touching a big zongzi means you have run into trouble, referring to unclean things like zombies, evil spirits. Dry zongzi refers to corpses in the tomb that have rotted down to just a pile of white bones; and there is also meat zongzi, meaning the corpse has many valuable items on it.)

Da Jin Ya, upon hearing this, immediately showed me solemn respect, insisting on inviting me and Pangzi to Dongsi to eat mutton hot pot, and to discuss in detail. So the three of us each packed up our things and hurried off to Dongsi together.