This "loss" kui was deeply inauspicious and dripped with animosity-even though it was probably only a result of momentary carelessness and laziness on the part of the invitation writer.

"I'll give his mother a good sticking!" (See the entry "Stick(y).")

He ripped up the red invitation in a fury.

His intolerance of this word "loss" echoed the intolerance of 1950s law courts for "Song Ziwen," the intolerance of the fighters of the Red Company faction for the two words "Revolutionary Company," the intolerance of the crusading army for the word "Allah." And so began a holy war of language.

He didn't go to the banquet. He gnawed savagely on his own raw sweet potato, as he watched people return from Yanwu's place, wiping grease from their mouths. He was going to call Yanwu's family to account, he told his family. In fact, after he went out he first of all went and sat in Zhihuang's house for a while, than went to the vegetable garden at Fucha's house to nibble on a cucumber, then ended up going to the front of Tiananmen, where he watched some young men play ping-pong, then watched some more young men play a table of mahjong-he didn't dare go looking for Yanwu. He was even afraid of Yanwu learning he'd come to make trouble. How was he ever going to dare make a fuss, if the exterior of the Tiananmen residence alone was enough to make him wet himself? Luckily, as he vacillated away, he discovered that the members of the Yanwu household, who were in the middle of decorating a shopfront, had left an electric drill on the ground; probably when the electricity had been cut off, the workers had gone off to drink tea and had forgotten to pick it up. Yanzao, who just a moment ago had been slapping some underling around, had also disappeared, presumably busy with something else. His sharp eyes darting from left to right, with nimble fingers Kuiyuan stuffed the electric drill up his shirt, scooped up two socket boards while he was at it and slipped out of the main gate; he ran to the sweet-potato patch of his third brother's house, dug a hole, and buried them before he contemplated his next move. He knew that stuff like this could later be sold anywhere.

Slowly, leisurely, he returned home, wiping his sweat and fanning himself, kicking the dog-who yelped in terror-that had followed him along, as if he'd just earned himself the right to kick it like this.

"Anyone'll need his wits about him to get the better of Kuiyuan!" he told his mother excitedly.

"What'll that Yanwu say about it?"

"What'll he say? Everything that happens now's his responsibility!"

But he didn't actually say what would happen, or how he would take responsibility. Seeing him busy removing and polishing his leather shoes, his mother forgot to press him any further on this and went off to make him something to eat. Two married women with children in their arms stood by the door for a while, half-credulous, half-doubting about what would come of the matter, forcing Kuiyuan into repeating a few blusters: "So what if Yanwu has money? When I come looking for him, he'll know about it."

After he'd finished eating, Kuiyuan was unable to sit still at home and went out in search of a television. When he reached the mouth of the road, he discovered the road was blocked by three men, of whom one, Kuiyuan discovered when he peered at them by the light of the moon, was a sidekick of Yanwu's, his manager Wang. Pretending not to have seen them, Kuiyuan tried to squeeze past.

"Where d'you think you're going?" Quick as a flash, Wang grabbed him by the chest: "You've kept us waiting long enough. You going to talk, or are we going to have to beat it out of you?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Still playing dumb?"

"You joking with me, Brother Wang?"

Smiling, Kuiyuan was about to pat the man on the shoulder when, before his hand had gone up, the other stuck his leg out, felling him with a quick rustle over the ground to half his full height, to a kneeling position. Covering his head with both arms, he yelled and screamed out: "Why'd you hit me? What d'you want to do that for?"

He took a punch from a black shadow: "Who hit you?"

"I'm telling you, I've got brothers, I have…"

He took another kick in the back.

"So, who hit you this time?"

"No one, no-"

"No one, eh? That's a bit more like it. Just tell us where the drill's hidden. Before we get really angry."

"I never wanted to make anyone angry in the first place. But that invitation card you sent today just went too far, I haven't told Brother Yanwu yet…"

"What're you talking about?"

"Ah-ah, I said I haven't told Manager Ma yet…" Before the words were out of his mouth, Kuiyuan felt his hair being grabbed by a hand, his head jerked roughly upwards and twisted round to face Wang's big beard. The beard within his field of vision was sharply inclined.

"Still messing around with us?"

"Talk, I'll talk, all the talk you want…"

"Move!"

Kuiyuan felt another sharp pain in his behind.

He led the three men to the sweet potato patch, scratched away at the topsoil with his hands, took out the electric drill and the socket board, and-quite unnecessarily-tapped the dust off the socket board and cast aspersions on its quality: "Poor quality, this is, I could tell just from looking."

"Give us some straw sandal money." The black shadows took the electric drill, snapping off Kuiyuan's watch while they were at it. "We'll let it go for now, but any more trouble from you and we'll have your ears off before we've got another word out of you."

"Righto."

Kuiyuan was completely baffled as to how they'd found him out, but he didn't dare ask. He didn't dare make any kind of a sound until the black shadows had moved off and the sound of their footsteps completely died away; only then did he get up, and weep and curse, with no thought of dignity: "Bastards, bastards, I'll get you all if it's the last thing I do-"

He rubbed his wrist, discovered it to be indeed bare, then groped around in the hole in the ground, but found that too devoid of his watch. He resolved to go and find the village head.

The village head had no time for his stories about Chief Yuan or Unlucky Yuan, about his watch (or the lack of it), for his bawls and wails, did no more than throw him a sideways glance. A fanatical opera addict, the village head went off to Tiananmen that evening to watch a show. Unfortunately there was no good opera that day. A troupe from near Shuanglong Bow took to the stage, singing some cobbled-together drum dances, their operatics, movements, costumes and make-up so scrappy they looked just like a few people who'd gotten together to thresh and dry grain on a stage. They sang utter nonsense, in fact if they ran out of words they'd produce obscenities or bits of nonsense, quite happy just to get a laugh from the audience. A lot of the audience had hurled their shoes at the stage.

Unable to lay his hands on a tattered old pair of shoes, the village head walked out of the theater and headed back home to bed. Suddenly, while on the road home, a banshee cry erupted behind him and two hands grasped his neck, toppling him over forwards. His forehead smashed on some unknown object; stars flashed before his eyes. While he was still trying to get a proper look at who was behind him, to work out what was going on, he felt a sudden chill by his right ear; when he groped at it with his hand, he discovered that side of his head was already quite seriously bereft of his…"Ear-" he yelled out in terror. He heard behind him the sound of clothing being ripped, heard the black shadow behind him bite speedily and squeakily on something, spit it on the ground, jump violently up and down, pick the thing on the ground up again, and hurl it violently, far away in the direction of where people were most densely assembled. All this took place in an instant.