And as they chewed and swallowed, their faces underwent a hideous change and green lights began to shoot from their eyes. Realizing something was seriously amiss, the man scooped up his rush bag and fled, stumbling away and not stopping till the roosters crowed the coming dawn. Then he looked round him and discovered that he was standing in a wildwood. And when he checked his rush bag all he found was ash. Wise Monk, the barbecuing night market in front of us is an important component of the Twin Cities Carnivore Festival, and should not be a ghost market. But even if it were, would that matter? People these days enjoy nothing more than making contact with ghosts. These days it's the ghosts who are frightened by the people. The meat-peddlers out there all wear chef's hats, and they look top heavy as they busily chop meat and hail customers with their exaggerated claims. Charcoal and meat create a smell that seems to come from a time long ago, from past millennia, blanketing as much as a square kilometre. Black smoke merges with white smoke to form smoky colours that rise into the air and send birds weaving crazily in the sky. Gaily dressed young men and women happily wolf down the meat. A beer in one hand and a skewer of lamb in the other, some take a bite of meat, then a drink of beer and produce a loud belch. Others stand facing one another, man to woman, in a feeding frenzy. More daring couples hold a single piece of meat in their teeth and eat their way closer, until the end of the meat signals the beginning of a kiss, to the raucous delight of people round them. I'm hungry, Wise Monk, and I have a greedy mouth. But I took a vow to abstain from eating meat. I know that what's going on out there is your way to put me to the test, and I'll resist temptation by continuing my narration—
A number of important events occurred in our family round the Spring Festival. The first was on the afternoon of the fourth day of the new year, that is, the day after Lao Lan had dinner at our house, even before we had a chance to clean the tableware and furniture we'd borrowed for the occasion. Mother and Father were having a casual conversation as they washed dishes. Actually, it was anything but ‘casual’, since the talk did not stray far from Lao Lan, returning to him every two or three sentences. Once I'd heard enough, I went outside, where I peeled back the tarp covering the mortar, took out a packet of grease, and, for the last time before it was moved into the storeroom, laid on a protective coat. Now that the family had re-established friendly relations with Lao Lan, I no longer had an enemy. But that didn't remove the need to keep my weapon in good working order, if for no other reason than to remain alert to something my parents said over and over during that talk: ‘No one stays an enemy for ever, and no friendships are eternal.’ That is to say, an enemy today could become a friend tomorrow, and today's friend could turn into tomorrow's enemy. And there's no enemy as savage and full of loathing as someone who was once a friend. That's why it was important to keep my mortar in good working order. If the need to use it ever arose, I could put it into action immediately. I'd never consider selling it to a scrap dealer.
I began by wiping off the old coat of dust-covered grease with cotton yarn. Starting on the tube and moving down to the bipod, then from there to the gun sight and, finally, to the base plate, I cleaned it with painstaking care, reaching into every nook and cranny, including the tube, for which I used a stick wrapped in cotton yarn, back and forth hundreds of times, since my arm would not fit inside. The now-greaseless mortar had a dull, gunmetal-grey finish, and the spots eaten away by rust over the years lay exposed. Too bad, really too bad, but there was nothing I could do about that. I'd tried sanding the rusty spots with a brick and sandpaper but was afraid that I'd scrape off so much metal it would no longer be safe to fire. After removing the old grease, I spread on a