classmates, who, once again, could not possibly have understood me. Not a clue! They might watch TV but cartoons only—never serious programmes, like I did. And never, not in a million years, would they be able to understand world affairs like I did. Wise Monk, even before that year's Lantern Festival, we had a Japanese 21-inch colour TV with a rectangular screen and a remote. A TV like that these days would be considered an antique, but then it was ultra-modern; and not onlu in our village but even in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Lao Lan had sent it over with Huang Bao and, when he took it out of the box, all black and shiny, we were absolutely amazed. ‘It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous,’ was Mother's comment. Even Father, never one to beam with happiness, said: ‘Would you look at that! How in the world did they make something like that!’ Even the Styrofoam packing elicited whoops of surprise from him—he found it incredible that something useful could be so light and airy. It was nothing to me, of course—we'd seen plenty of it on our scavenging route, but we never gave it a second thought because none of the recycling centres would take it. Besides the TV set, Huang Bao brought along a herringbone antenna and a seamless 15-metre metal pole coated with anti-rust material. When we stood it up in the yard it made our house look like a crane amid chickens, towering over the neighbourhood. If I could have climbed to the top of the pole, I'd have had a bird's-eye view of the whole village. Our eyes lit up when the first gorgeous images flashed across the TV screen. That TV raised the standing of our family to a new level. And I grew a lot smarter. Enrolling me in school—in the first grade, no less—was little more than a joke of international proportions. Slaughterhouse Village could boast two individuals who were knowledgeable and well informed: Lao Lan and me. Written words were a stranger to me, but I was no stranger to them, at least that's how it felt to me. There are lots of things in this world that do not need to be studied, at least not in a school, in order to be learnt. Don't tell me you have to go to school to be able to know how to divide eight pears among four children!
My response rendered the teacher speechless. I saw something glitter in her eyes and knew that when they finally spilt they'd be tears. I was proud of myself but I was also frightened. I knew that a student who made his homeroom teacher cry would be seen as a bad seed, although, paradoxically, people would know he had a bright future with endless possibilities. If his development went in the right direction, a child like that was virtually guaranteed an official position; if not, we're talking big-time criminal. But one way or other, he'd be special. Sad to say, but thank goodness, those glittering objects in the teacher's eyes did not spill.
‘Leave the room,’ she said, softly at first, and then shrilly: ‘Roll that fanny of yours out of here!’
‘A ball's the only thing that can roll out of here, Teacher, except a hedgehog, when it rolls itself into a ball. I'm not a ball, and I'm not a hedgehog, I'm human, so I can walk out of here or run out of here or, of course, crawl out of here.’
‘Then crawl out of here.’
‘But I can't do that either,’ I said. ‘If I hadn't learnt how to walk yet, then I'd have to crawl. But I'm a big boy now, and if I start crawling it'll mean I've done something wrong, but since I've done nothing wrong I can't crawl out of here.’
‘Just get out of here, get out…’ She was almost hoarse from shouting. ‘Luo Xiaotong, you make me so angry I could burst…you and that perverse logic of yours…’
In the end, those glittering objects did spill from of her eyes and onto her cheeks and became tears, creating such an abruptly solemn feeling in me that my eyes grew moist too. Under no circumstances was I going to allow the wetness in my eyes to spill out onto my cheeks and turn into tears, not if I wanted to retain my dignity in front of my dimwitted classmates and not lose every last shred of significance in my verbal battle with the teacher.