the Wise Monk and know what's expected of me: to continue my story. ‘Since there's a beginning, there has to be an ending.’ So I say—
There were only a few people waiting for trains, which made the waiting room seem bigger than it was. Father and his daughter were curled up on a slatted wooden bench near the central heater. Another dozen passengers sat here and there. Warm sunlight filtering in through the dirty windows lent a silvery sheen to Father's hair. He was smoking a cigarette; white wisps of smoke rose from both sides of his face and seemed to hang in the air round his head, as if they hadn't emerged from his mouth or nose but had oozed from his brain. His cigarette smelt terrible, like burnt rags or rotting leather. By then he'd fallen on such hard times that he was reduced to scrounging cigarette butts off the street, no better than a beggar. Worse, in fact. I knew of beggars who lived extravagant lives, who ate good food and drank good wine, who passed their days in the lap of luxury, smoking high-class cigarettes and drinking imported whisky. During the day they dressed in rags and walked the streets and used a number of tricks to get alms. At night they changed into Western suits and leather shoes and headed off to karaoke parlours to sing their hearts out, and then set off to find a girl. Yuan Seven in our village was one of those high-flying beggars. Traces of him could be found in every big city in the country. A man of the world, he'd seen it all and done it all; he could imitate a dozen or more domestic dialects, even a few phrases in Russian. The minute he opened his mouth you knew he was someone special, and even Lao Lan, the supreme authority in our village, treated him with a measure of respect and never dared to show him up. He had a good-looking wife at home and a son in middle school who always received good grades. He proudly admitted that he had families in ten or more big cities, putting him in the enviable position of having a happy home to return to no matter where he was. Yuan Seven dined on sea cucumbers and abalone, drank Maotai and Wuliangye and smoked Yuxi and Da Zhonghua cigarettes from Yunnan. A beggar like that could turn down an offer to be county magistrate. If my father had been that kind of beggar, the Luo family would have been the envy of all. Unfortunately, he was in a sort of limbo between life and death, reduced to smoking cigarette butts off the street.
The waiting room was warm and toasty and seemed to possess a dreamy atmosphere. Most of the travellers dozed as they waited, making the place look a bit like a henhouse. Their belongings, in bundles big and small, lay at their feet, alongside fake snakeskin bags that threatened to burst at the seams. The only ‘hens’ who looked out of place were two men with no luggage except for well-worn faux-leather satchels resting against their legs. They were lying on a bench, face to face, the space between them covered by a sheet of newspaper on which lay a pile of sliced, red-speckled pigs’ ears. Not what you'd call fresh but still good enough to eat. I knew they were from animals that had died—not slaughtered but sick pigs treated to look palatable. Where I come from, it doesn't matter what kills an animal—swine fever, erysipelas or hoof-and-mouth disease. We have ways to make any kind of meat look appetizing. There's no crime in being greedy but there is in being wasteful—that particular reactionary comment was enunciated by our very own Village Head Lan, and the old son of a bitch could have been shot for it. The men were feasting and getting drunk on what people call white lightning, local stuff but sort of famous, produced by Master Liu's family. Who was Master Liu? you ask. I couldn't say. Though no Liu family I knew ever made spirits, unscrupulous individuals distilled them under that family name. The smell alone was enough to kill you. Perhaps it was distilled methanol? Methanol, formaldehyde—China's become a nation of chemical wizards. Formaldehyde and methanol are like money in the bank. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva and watched them hand the green bottle back and forth, sipping and smacking their lips,