When they first started talking about the business of treating his old man like his grandson, the work team didn't understand. A few days' investigation, however, produced a rough outline of the affair. At one point, a startling piece of news had secretly spread around Maqiao: apparently, Xi was in fact more than a hundred years old. He'd taken a Western elixir of life and lived to a ripe old age in the pink of health, his face glowing with youth. The old man who followed him around wasn't his dad at all, but his grandson, who, stubborn by nature, hadn't obeyed the family rules and had refused to drink the precious Western potion, thereby turning into a desiccated old prune. Some were flabbergasted by this piece of news. Eyeing Xi with new respect, they timidly approached his door to make inquiries. The old chap in the Xi household was as rough as they came, and couldn't utter a single intelligible word. Long Stick Xi wouldn't say too much either, but once, when he came up against someone who wouldn't be put off, when enough bowing and scraping had been done, after Xi had hedged a while, then, finally, with great reluctance, he said he didn't really remember how long he'd actually lived, but the emperor had changed a few times, he'd seen everything, nothing surprised him. As he said this, he told the old man to go to bed. His listeners heard very clearly that he didn't call the old man Dad, but said "laddie" instead, his tone definitely that used for dismissing those of a younger generation.

Maqiao people were naturally very interested in an elixir of life. Some offered money, meat, and wine to beg for the treasure from Xi. Some even offered up their wives, because Xi said people's physiques were not the same, sometimes the male element was too weak, and he needed to add a woman's "three peaks"-that is, saliva, breast milk, and vaginal fluid-into the elixir, because only this would gather up the yin to balance the yang, making the elixir effective. Of course, this was very complicated and needed a lot of careful research, something he was most unwilling to do. Sometimes the seeker of elixir got it wrong time and again, and the "three peaks" sent over were useless, but after the man begged abjectly, he'd finally relent and agree to help him out, calling on him to sort out a replacement. He'd shut himself up with the man's wife and pull down the mosquito net, making the bed wheeze and creak in a highly disconcerting way. Since this greatly sapped his energy, normally he'd be forced to charge even more for it.

When this kind of thing started happening more and more often, talk began to spread among the people involved. First, angry suspicions gradually formed in the minds of the women; subsequently, the men also started to pale with fury, but they didn't know quite what to say. Shortly before the work team went into the mountains, a little girl was dispatched by her mother to get to the bottom of the Xi mystery. When she came back, the little girl reported that as soon as outsiders weren't around, Xi called the old man "Dad"!

This meant that Xi had all along made his dad pretend to be his grandson in front of other people, he was not one hundred years old at all, and he had no elixir of life!

"The swindler." The head of the work team understood, and nodded his head.

Another cadre said, "whatever he's swindled you of, money, grain, women, just let us know-we'll settle accounts with him."

Though they were spitting with anger, the men would talk only in vague terms, wouldn't spell things out in detail. The work team saw their difficulty, thought things over and over again, and at last came up with a solution: they got someone highly learned to mull it all over until he finally concluded that Long Stick Xi was guilty of moral bankruptcy plotting with landlords and tyrants colluding with bandits forcibly resisting land reform illegal commerce, and so on, producing a list of crimes ten items long which, in conclusion, made him a counterrevolutionary carbuncle who should be tied up double-quick.

"So, d'you actually have an elixir of long life?"

"No, no, I haven't." Long Stick Xi trembled all over before the work team. His arrogance had completely evaporated and snot was streaming from his nose.

"What did you sell them?"

"A… aspirin."

"Why'd you lie like that?"

"I… I… a counterrevolutionary stance, moral bankruptcy, plotting with landlords and tyrants…" He'd memorized the list of crimes item by item. Not one word was incorrect.

"Got that?"

"I've got a good memory, I don't like to blow my own horn, but-"

"Cut it out! This is your criminal record. You have to confess honestly."

"I confess, I confess."

The work team sent him to the county seat under escort. A member of the People's Militia was responsible for the escort, but he must have eaten something funny on the way, because he started vomiting yellow, then green and black bile; he vomited till you could see the whites of his eyes-quite extraordinary, it was. Long Stick Xi knelt down and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, then found a bucket of water to sluice out his guts. When his condition had stabilized a little, he carried him on his back all the way to the county seat and handed him over, together with his gun holster. Of course, he also handed himself over. Apparently, people later on asked him, why didn't he take this opportunity to flee? He said, I couldn't run away, I just couldn't, I wanted to remold myself, escape the dung heap, serve the people.

His law-abiding behavior while under escort was taken into account when the government judged his case, and his sentence was reduced by two years, after which he was sent to some farm for labor reform. Some people also said that the above version of events was incorrect, and that he didn't serve any part of his sentence; a senior officer took a fancy to him, bailed him out, and sent him to some mountainous mining area where he could make use of Xi's medical skill. Other people had seen him in teahouses in the county seat drinking tea. He had by then cut off his long hair and shaved his head. Oddly enough, his speech was not in the slightest bit rough any more. When he'd talked himself into a state of self-satisfaction, he wouldn't be able to resist some private boasting: in order to get off lightly, he'd first poisoned that soldier escort, then saved his life, thereby reducing his sentence by two years, and so on.

I don't know how near the truth this version is.

His old dad soon died. The signs of their roughness also soon disappeared from Maqiao, leaving only those few random words, like "tincture of iodine" and "soda," which so surprised me all those years later. Of course, he also left behind in Maqiao at least three sons, all three with that receding chin particular to him, who will appear in some of my subsequent entries, and who will be the focus of later stories about Maqiao.