Drunk on flowers, hitting people, love who loves

Author: Zhou Xiaofeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Fragile emotions, handle with care, like a glass cup—if it breaks by accident, many people will find it, and there will be many, many people who find it. The novel depicts the sensuality and livelihood of urban men and women, from the charming widowed beauty Jin Shanshan to the mischievous heroine Tao Luoxia; from the Mr. who always leaves a way out and uses all double meanings in his words to the man who excels at creating personal myths, Wang Youcui; and even the Dong Guo Mr. who even raises viruses and doesn’t want to kill them. Using a playful and transformative style, he fabricates legendary characters reminiscent of New Stories of the World. Fresh and interesting perspectives further showcase the author’s unique observations and evil-sounding wisdom. The family of double meanings and the past, the lightbulb burns day and night, baking the whole room with a stench. A thick quilt is spread on the big pit, with stains all over the surface. Some small grass roots stretch out from the wall. The lightbulb flashes with a filament that is unbearable to look at. The stool in the corner of the wall, the green bandage has become rough. Once, the lightbulb exploded right in front of him, double meaning jumped in shock, the fragments flew past his face, and a small wisp of smoke rose around the remaining light socket. Double meaning is accustomed to putting his hand under the quilt, touching those warm eggs. Picking them up, holding them up to the light, a patchy shadow appears inside. Three days and twenty-one days, two more weeks, the chicks will hatch. The little lives are soaking and nurturing in the liquid. Then, they are fluffy, with fresh goose-yellow, chirping chirping, using their delicate little legs to the broken eggshells. Holding the chicks, double meaning feels the warmth of a soft body—their weak leg strength kicks, trying to break free from the constraints. Double meaning’s grandmother is an uncommonly tall woman among her peers, with a loud voice and nimble movements. Except for her small feet, she has no old-fashioned woman’s leftover charm. She is not even a kind grandmother. To stop her husband from drinking, she is not afraid to use violence. Double meaning witnessed firsthand his grandmother pinning his grandfather down on the kang, grabbing the broom to beat him with a series of cracking sounds. His grandfather moaned and begged for mercy. His grandmother loves snacks, carefully hiding all sorts of rare treats like cream biscuits, orange juice, tanghulu, etc., afraid someone will steal them. She is also stingy with her grandchildren, rarely leaving anything for double meaning, except for when she is in a good mood, sprinkling a handful of dry shrimp scales into his porridge bowl. In his grandmother’s quilt, double meaning found a whole roasted chicken that had gone stale, the oil seeping through the straw wrapping. In the dead of night, from the direction where his grandmother slept, came a chewing sound, restrained but audible. Crackle, crackle, biting through the brittle bones. Only the sound of biting with closed lips, eating the. Every morning, his grandmother must drink a bowl of egg flower—boiling water poured into beaten egg liquid, without salt or sugar, and drunk hot. The nutritious supplement, his grandmother prepared only for herself, ignoring the young double meaning watching nearby. The egg flower swirled, double meaning thought, one less chick hatched. The family’s economic came from his grandmother. The money she earned from hatching chicks gave her certain privileges, including a separate stove and a bad temper. When his father was in college, he didn’t starve like other classmates. After the difficult period, thanks to the family’s chick business. His father, of course, also shared the surname Double, and the name Yuze. He was also a mischievous child back then, but later, by chance, he was admitted to high school and then college, studying the seemingly mystical physics department. The family that hatched chicks produced a proud college student, truly a blessing from the ancestors. When Yuze first entered college, the heavy smell of chicken manure hadn’t yet washed off his body, but he was already seen as a precious person by relatives far and near. Yuze held an extraordinary position among his classmates—not because of anything else, but first, he had pocket money others couldn’t even dream of; second, he could bring half a class of classmates home to eat hair eggs. College students are usually around twenty, most of them poor, and during a famine, they starved like wolves. Their dreams weren’t of spring dreams but of big steamed buns and flatbreads. Yuze’s kindness earned him a good reputation far and near. Students from other departments envied themselves for not having taken physics back then, so they could have been classmates with Yuze. Hair eggs are chicks that have matured but haven’t hatched. Boiled hair eggs emit a strange and unclean meat aroma. These underdeveloped ones, with their eyes tightly shut in suffering, have blue eyelids covering slightly protruding eyeballs. Their feathers are wet and tangled, and after the feathers are pulled out, dense clusters of meat bumps are revealed. Double meaning always noticed the short eyelashes near the dead chicks’ eyes—he is accustomed to biting the head off first, then pulling the wings that curl to both sides. This is different from his father’s hobby. Yuze loves to chew the chicken heads. The small skulls crackle under the pressure of his teeth, making the tasting experience particularly auditory—Yuze even picked up his son’s vomited chicken head, sucking and chewing it to enjoy the limited juice. To die early, these chicks had no bloodstains. Double meaning remembers that every time a chicken was killed, his grandmother must have prepared a porcelain bowl. The rooster’s neck was twisted awkwardly to one side, and the knife didn’t chop down but moved back and forth like a saw on the neck. The blood soaked the feathers and then flowed into the porcelain bowl. Gradually cooled, gradually thickened. In the end, the blood completely solidified, becoming like a small piece of pork liver. When eating the chicken, Yuze still picked out the chicken head. He loved the sawtooth-shaped comb, and after eating the comb, he would crack open the hard beak and eat the narrow, pointed tongue. The head of an adult chicken is not as brittle as a chick’s, but out of habit, Yuze still sucked it with a sound. When double meaning was eight years old, he witnessed his father collapsing on the bustling street—strangely, he thought of chicken blood. That morning, he sat on his father’s bicycle seat, weaving through the chaotic afternoon traffic. Far away, he saw a vendor—on a large bundle of grass, stuck with sugar-coated haws. He even saw the caramel glow a bright amber. Saliva surged, and he swallowed it down his throat. He felt his father squeeze the brakes, and the bicycle stopped. His father put five yuan into his hand and said, “Go, buy a sugar-coated haw yourself.” Double meaning happily ran to the vendor—in his memory to this day, the vendor had two symmetrical black moles on both sides of his mouth. He held the sugar-coated haw and walked back, clutching the change in his hand. Double meaning witnessed firsthand his father, holding the bicycle handlebars and waiting on the sidewalk, being knocked flying by a car that came out of the corner. And it was flying towards him. His father lay face up on the ground. Double meaning was lost for words. A few seconds later, a tiny ulcer on his lips sprayed a jet of extremely fine, tiny water, only a few centimeters high. After the first spray, a plum blossom bloomed on his lips. The second spray was about twenty centimeters high, like the length of Double meaning’s plastic ruler. After the second spray, it was like a bowl of chicken blood had been overturned. Before the third spray came, Double meaning saw his father’s eyes open for a brief moment, then close—his face became a bright red mask. The blood gushed so evenly, following the contours of his head, spreading on the ground. A bright red sugar-coated haw was clutched in his hand. This was the last gift his father gave him before he died.