Of course Wu Yuhua's mother didn't want to offend the whole village. Before long, she nervously opened up the door to the centre of the house. But Wu Yuhua still stayed hiding in one of the side-rooms. Her feelings at that moment were very complicated. She didn't know what to do, now that the situation had escalated to such an extent. Surrounded by the hubbub of the chattering women, there was a subtle change in her feelings towards this man who was pursuing her so doggedly. Bit by bit she started to remember how he had given the speech and the military training, and suddenly she wanted to see how he looked. She stood by the latticed window, put some spit on her little finger, and used it to make a little round hole in the paper pasted onto the window. But all she could see was a never-ending stream of women's buttocks.
The women of Wuliang streamed in ceaselessly. Some were passing on messages, some were kindly but firmly telling her what she ought to do, others, who thought they could speak standard Mandarin, were "translating" . The women's buttocks climbed one by one over the wall of the house, carrying messages back and forth between the man and the girl. In the transmission, Wuliang's women put a lot of creative work into the messages, according to their own understanding. They omitted what ought to be omitted, added what needed to be added, and "translated" each sentence by soaking it in honeydew. It was as if they tried to use one key to unlock a door, and when it didn't work they tried another key. They kept on trying as four hours passed. In the end, even Wu Yuhua herself wasn't sure exactly which of these keys had stirred her heart. By the time she silently consented for the main gate to be officially opened and the guest received, it was time to light the oil lamps.
Night fell, and Cai Guoyin, who had stood outside the gate for four hours, was finally able to have a bowl of "chicken soup" . Into the bowl of tea and brown sugar went six poached eggs. Drinking the soup meant that he would have to move in and join his bride's family. There was also a whole raft of other folk customs and rules of etiquette. He agreed to all of them.
Finally the two had their first real meeting. Under the dim light of oil lamps, Wu Yuhua lowered her head. She felt terribly confused, although she stole a few glances at him. But there was only a sliver of lamplight, it was too dark. Her view was blocked by the ten boxes of sweets on the table. She still didn't get a very clear view of Guoyin's face, she could only see half of his cheeks, which could be described as "resolute" . Originally all she had known was that he was a soldier who had resisted the Americans in the Korean War, and even now, all she knew was that he was a soldier. You could say that a temporary fashion—the adoration of soldiers—played the most crucial role.
Through a verbal agreement, Guoyin moved into Wuliang as an adopted son-in-law. People say Wu Yuhua's wedding was most magnificent. Back then, she was the first girl in Wuliang to drive to her wedding in a Jeep. The Jeep set out from her front gate and made a circle around the village, with a crowd of people following, before returning. After making this circle, Captain Cai Guoyin became an old uncle of Wuliang.
His salary then was ninety-eight yuan a month, which meant he was in the highly-salaried class. But with the helpful assistance of a host of enthusiastic planners from the village, he followed all the local customs in organising the wedding, and spent almost all his savings. Apart from buying the dowry gifts, he paid for the Wu family to lay on a wedding buffet: three fattened pigs, ten carts of tofu, nine-hundred kilos of bean noodles, fourteen baskets of steamed rolls, alcohol and cigarettes … Everyone in Wuliang, young and old, gorged themselves.
And that night, as the moon became the brightest lamp in the village, almost the whole village went round behind the house to eavesdrop on the bridal chamber, as is the folk custom. In the lustrous moonlight, they waited to hear the sounds of what in standard Mandarin dialect you could call "sunning" : fucking. But they waited until the dew started to form, and still they heard nothing.
Finally they heard a noise. It was Wu Yuhua's weeping-loud, clear sobs.
The sweetness was short-lived.
Uncle and Wu Yuhua hadn't been married long before they started to argue and fight. They fought almost all their lives. Their water jar had to be replaced countless times, because they cracked their heads on it when they fought. Apparently, in fight after fight, Wu Yuhua asked him over and over, "What was it you liked about me?" Uncle always replied with silence, and gave no answer. Or perhaps his silence was a kind of answer.
His soldier's demeanour was gradually chipped away and erased by living in Wuliang. According to the gossip of the women, at first he used to go out to the reed marshes to call out military drills. As the sun went down in the west, standing alone at the edge of the great endless marsh, facing a host of reed catkins swaying in the wind under the orange sunset, he would shout out the whole of the artillery drill ceremony, starting from "Attention! …" . It was like a lion roaring.
But after he had taken those three "kidney beans" off his own shoulders, he was nothing. Life in Wuliang went from bad to worse for him. The women, standing on the stone rollers as they flattened bamboo strips, often teased him and treated him with contempt. For example, they would curl their lips and say they had seen him sneak down to the village commission shop to pick up old cigarette ends. Or once when he went to the fair in Guanzhuang, the women noticed he was wearing a pair of trousers that opened at the side. He had bought them for Wu Yuhua as part of the dowry when they got married. They stood high up atop their rollers, and when they saw him, they said, "Old Cai, you're hardly taller than these rollers. What do you do in bed? Do you take her? Or does she take you?"
