The Shaanxi Opera: A Novel by Jia Pingwa

Author:Jia Pingwa [Pingwa, Jia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2023-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Mid-Star’s father might have claimed his body would somehow be preserved after his death, but he never really built a coffin and kept on making his predictions. His claims didn’t amount to much, but mine did. When I planted that poplar branch I’d taken down from the roof of the shack, I said, “You must live!” And that branch grew, and the green buds on it sprouted into leaves. I sat under my tree and sang a few lines from A Chance Meeting.

As I sang, I looked up out of the gully at the sky overhead where the big bird glided, and the clouds seemed to float up and away from it. But while I was singing, the gingko tree in the courtyard of Freshwind Temple was weeping. That’s the truth.

Lotus Jin, who was sitting alone at a desk in the village government offices drawing up Freshwind’s family planning program, heard clattering and went out to look. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the gingko tree had a layer of moisture on its bark. She looked closer and saw that the source was the leaves on one branch of the tree. She found it unusual, so she called over some people from the dirt yard in front of the opera house. They frowned and agreed that this tree was suffering from the same haunting as the big poplar out at New-Life’s orchard. The rattling poplar in the orchard was a ghost clapping its hands, and now the gingko was weeping. Someone asked if it might be an omen that it was going to be a bad year for Freshwind. Lotus Jin was stunned. At first, she decided not to tell Pavilion about it. But the tree kept weeping for three days.

The gingko had stood there for several hundred years. Villagers relied on its feng shui when they planned where to build their houses. When the tree started to weep, there was inevitably talk that this was a bad omen for the most recent session of the Two Committees. Pavilion, Goodness, and Lotus Jin decided that they must do their best to preserve the ancient gingko. The folk remedy for saving ancient trees involved watering the gingko with vegetable oil. The village government didn’t have the fifty jin of vegetable oil required, and it would be yet another expense that they could not afford. It was Goodness who came up with the idea of collecting the oil from the villagers.

Goodness went looking for Mid-Star’s father, who had begun spreading his own ideas about the tree. An ancient gingko in a temple yard must have long ago become a spirit, so if the tree spirit was sick, it would certainly repay everyone who donated oil to save it, whether they gave one liang or ten jin. Mid-Star’s father was the first to donate, giving half a jin of oil and tying a red string around the trunk of the tree. When the villagers saw a stingy bastard like Mid-Star’s father donating oil, they pitched in, too.

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