I said. ‘My mother sent me to invite you to dinner tonight.’
‘Will miracles never cease? Your mother is the world's meanest person. She'll pick up a bone a dog's gnawed clean and take it home to make soup. Why the invitation?’
‘You know why,’ I said.
‘What's the boy's name?’ the fat lady mumbled as she chewed on a piece of dog meat. ‘Oh, yes, it's Luo Xiaotong. How old are you, Luo Xiaotong?’
‘I don't know.’
‘Do you really not know how old you are?’ she asked, ‘Or do you not want to tell us? How dare you talk that way in front of the village head! What grade are you in? Primary school or high school?’
‘I don't go to school.’ I snarled. ‘I hate school.’
The woman laughed for some strange reason, even squeezed out a few tiny tears. I decided to ignore her, for she had terrible table manners. I didn't care if she was a mayor's mother or the wife of the provincial governor or if she herself was a mayor or something even higher.
I turned to Lao Lan and said sombrely: ‘Tonight. Our place for dinner and drinks. Please don't forget.’
‘All right, I'll be there, for your sake. You can count on it.’
The final two contingents of marchers meet on the highway. The one from West City represents the Madonna Fur Coat Factory, famous for all sorts of leather goods. Owning a Madonna fur or leather coat is the dream of young men and women with empty purses. The contingent comprises twenty male and twenty female models. It's now midsummer, but they are all wearing the company's fur and leather products; they approach the reviewing stand from west to east and, at a signal from the group leader, begin to strut as if on a catwalk. The male models have closely cropped hair and wear stern expressions. Their female counterparts, who have dyed their hair in a rainbow of colours, have that special model look as they sashay along in colourful furs and leathers but display no emotion, more wild animals than human. Even on such a blistering summer day, their unseasonal attire produces not a drop of sweat. Wise Monk, I've heard rumours of a fire dragon elixir that allows a person to bathe in a frozen river in the heart of winter. From the looks of it, there is perhaps also an ice-and-snow elixir that allows a person to stroll under the sun wearing a fur coat on one of the hottest days of summer.
From East City comes a float shaped like a medicinal tablet with the words Di-a-Tab in the Song Dynasty calligraphic style, sponsored by Ankang Pharmaceutical Group. What surprises me is the absence of marchers for a company as famous as Ankang. Just a float, rolling down the street like a gigantic medicinal tablet. I know all about that so-called anti-indigestion remedy, which I'd encountered five years before, when I was wandering the streets of a well-known city and saw little flags with Di-a-Tab ads flapping in the wind from utility poles on both sides of the street. I also saw a Di-a-Tab ad on a huge LCD TV screen above the city square: a single Di-a-Tab is released into an enormous stomach stuffed to bursting with meat; it dissolves into a white mist that then emerges from the mouth. The accompanying text, bland beyond belief, read: ‘After eating a side of beef, with Di-a-Tab you get relief.’ The idiot who wrote that obviously knows nothing about meat. The relationship of meat to humans is very complex, and there are only a few people on this earth who understand it as well as I do. The way I see it, the creators of Di-a-Tab ought to be dragged over to the grassy knoll by the Wutong River Bridge—East City's old execution ground—and shot. After eating your fill of meat, you sit back quietly to enjoy the digestive process, a post-gustatory delight. But these idiots come along with Di-a-Tab, which just shows how low the human race has fallen. Am I right or am I not, Wise Monk?
POW! 19
Finally, all the contingents of marchers are in their assigned spots on the grassy field and, for the moment, the highway in front of the temple looks deserted. A white utility van speeds in our direction from West City, turns off the highway when it reaches the temple and stops under a gingko tree. Three brawny men jump out. One is middle-aged and dressed in an old army