a loyal and upright individual who happens to be prudent and farsighted. A man of great allegiance can appear disloyal; a man of great wisdom can sometimes seem slow-witted. For all I know, he could be a pillar in the resurgence of the Great Qing. Hai! I am an insignificant County Magistrate charged with carrying out his superior’s orders, fulfilling duties in furtherance of remaining true to his individual calling. Great affairs of state are the province of the Empress Dowager and His Majesty, beyond the reach of minor functionaries like me.
Now that I had overcome my confusion and was no longer wavering, I was once again in control of my wits and abilities. I issued orders for the three shifts of yayi to keep watch around the clock over Sun Bing, who was bound to a crossbar on the Ascension Platform. Local spectators crowded forward, until it seemed that the entire county had turned out, faces painted blood red in the rays of the dying sun. At sunset, crows flew past on their way to their nests and their families in the golden canopies of trees east of the parade ground. “County elders, friends and villagers, go home, please, there to live your lives in humiliation in the name of this important mission. Heed your Magistrate’s word that it is better to be a sacrificial lamb than to rise up in resistance against the tyrannical forces arrayed before us. Take Sun Bing, your Maoqiang Patriarch, who stands impaled upon a sandalwood stake on the Ascension Platform, as a solemn and stirring cautionary example.”
But the local gawkers turned a deaf ear to my admonition and swept up to the Ascension Platform like waves crashing against the shore. Yayi drew their swords, as if to confront an enemy surge. But the people, though silent, looked on with alarmingly strange expressions, sending an upsurge of panic to my heart. The sun settled in the west in all its redness; the moon’s jade rabbit climbed into the sky; warm, soft rays of golden sunlight merged with cool, refreshing silver moonbeams on the Tongde Academy parade ground, on the Ascension Platform, and on the faces of the mass of humanity.
“County elders, friends and fellow villagers, disperse and return to your homes . . .”
The people remained silent.
All of a sudden, Sun Bing, whose voice had been long stilled, broke into song. His mouth leaked air and his chest thumped in and out, very much like an old beat-up bellows. From his vantage point, he could see what was going on all around him, and for a man like him, as long as there was breath in his body, not even the sorry circumstances in which he now found himself could keep him from singing. It would not be unreasonable to say that this was the very opportunity he had sought. And I realized at that moment that the swelling crowd had no intention of freeing him from his predicament, but had drawn closer to hear him sing. See how they all raised their heads and let their mouths fall open? That was the perfect image of an opera devotee.
The fifteenth day of the eighth month, the moon is bright~~wildwood breezes sweep past the platform at night~~
Sun Bing opened with a sorrowful Maoqiang aria. He had hurled abuse for so long that his voice was hoarse and scratchy, but the combination of that hoarseness and the bloody mess his body had become merged to invest his tune with a chilling aura of solemnity and to confer upon it the power to stir hearts. I must admit that Sun Bing, a product of Gaomi, a small, out-of-the way county, was a true genius, a heroic figure equal to those who appeared in the biographies of Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian. His name will be spoken down through the ages, praised by the masses and memorialized in Maoqiang opera. My subordinates reported to me that in the immediate wake of his apprehension, a Maoqiang troupe formed spontaneously in Northeast Gaomi Township, and that its performances were tied to burial and funeral activities conducted during chaotic events involving the deaths of so many. Every performance began and ended with howls of grief and was tied to the tragedy of Sun Bing’s resistance against the Germans.
By cruel torture my body torn~~this ancient land I tearfully mourn~~
The sobs of the people at Sun Bing’s feet filling the air contained bleak strains of meow, a sign that even in their