头发的故事 (The Story of Hair)

On a Sunday morning, I tore off an old calendar leaf and stared at the new one, saying, "Ah, October the tenth-today is indeed Double Tenth Day. But there's no mention of it here at all!" An elder gentleman of mine, Mr. N, happened to come to my lodgings for a chat. Upon hearing this, he said to me quite displeasedly, "They're right! If they don't remember, what can you do? And if you remember, so what?"

This Mr. N was by nature somewhat eccentric, often getting upset over trivial matters and saying things that showed a lack of worldly wisdom. On such occasions, I usually let him talk to himself without uttering a word; after he had finished his monologue, that was the end of it.

He said, "What I admire most is the scene in Beijing on Double Tenth Day. In the morning, the police come to the doors and order, 'Hang the flag!' 'Yes, hang the flag!' Most households lazily shuffle out a citizen to hoist a piece of motley foreign cloth. This goes on until evening-then they take down the flags and close their doors; those few who forget sometimes leave the flags hanging until the next morning."

They have forgotten the commemoration, and the commemoration has forgotten them!

I, too, am one who has forgotten the commemoration. If I were to recall it, all the events around the first Double Tenth Day would come to mind, making me restless.

The faces of so many old acquaintances float before my eyes. Some youths toiled and奔波 for over a decade, only to have their lives taken by a stealthy bullet; others failed in their attempts and endured more than a month of torture in prison; still others, harboring great ambitions, suddenly vanished without a trace, their bodies nowhere to be found.

They spent their lives amidst society's cold sneers, vile curses, persecution, and betrayal; now their graves have long been gradually leveling in oblivion.

I cannot bear to commemorate these things. Let's recall something more cheerful to talk about."

N suddenly broke into a smile, reached up to touch his head, and said loudly, "What pleases me most is that since the first Double Tenth Day, when I walk on the street, I am no longer laughed at or cursed."

"My friend, do you know that hair is both a treasure and a bane for us Chinese? Throughout history, how many people have suffered utterly worthless hardships over it! Our ancient ancestors seemed to regard hair lightly. According to penal codes, the most important is naturally the head, so capital punishment is the supreme penalty; next comes the reproductive organs, so castration and confinement are also terrifying punishments; as for shaving the head, it is微不足道, yet one can imagine how many people have been trampled upon by society all their lives simply for being bald. When we talk of revolution, we loudly discuss things like Ten Days in Yangzhou and Jiading Massacre, but in truth, these are merely tactics; to be honest, the resistance of the Chinese back then was not because of the loss of the nation, but because of the queue. After the stubborn people were slaughtered and the old loyalists died自然, the queue was firmly established, and then Hong and Yang stirred up trouble again. My grandmother once told me that in those days, being a commoner was truly difficult-those who kept all their hair were killed by government troops, while those with queues were killed by the long-haired rebels! I don't know how many Chinese have suffered, endured hardships, and perished solely because of this insignificant hair."

N gazed at the rafters, as if pondering something, and continued, "Who would have thought that the suffering over hair would fall upon me." "When I went abroad to study, I cut off my queue, not for any profound reason but simply because it was too inconvenient. Unexpectedly, some classmates who coiled their queues on top of their heads grew quite厌恶 of me; the supervisor was furious, threatening to cut off my stipend and send me back to China. Within a few days, however, this supervisor had his own queue cut off by someone and fled. Among those who did the cutting was one Zou Rong, the author of 'Revolutionary Army', who consequently could no longer study abroad and returned to Shanghai, later dying in a Western prison. Have you forgotten all this already? A few years later, my family's circumstances worsened considerably; unless I found some work, I would starve, so I had to return to China. As soon as I arrived in Shanghai, I bought a fake queue-the market price then was two yuan-and wore it home. My mother didn't say much, but others, upon meeting me, would first scrutinize this queue, and upon discovering it was fake, would sneer and accuse me of a crime punishable by beheading; one relative even planned to report me to the authorities, but later stopped because he feared the revolutionaries might succeed. I thought, since fake不如 real straightforward, I索性 discarded the fake queue and walked the streets in Western attire. As I walked, I was met with laughter and curses all along the way, some even following behind and骂, 'This rash fool!' 'Fake Foreign Devil!' So I stopped wearing Western clothes and switched to a long gown, but they cursed even more fiercely. At this point of desperation, I finally took up a walking stick and fiercely beat them a few times; gradually, they stopped cursing. But when I went to unfamiliar places where I hadn't beaten anyone, they still cursed. This incident saddened me deeply, and I still remember it时常. During my studies abroad, I once saw in a daily newspaper an account of a Dr. Honda who traveled to Southeast Asia and China; this博士 did not understand Chinese or Malay. When asked how he managed to get around without knowing the language, he picked up his walking stick and said, 'This is their language; they all understand!' This angered me for several days, but who would have thought that I myself would不知不觉 do the same, and those people all understood…"

In the early years of the Xuantong reign, I served as a supervisor at a local middle school. Colleagues avoided me as if I were a plague, and officials guarded against me with utmost severity. I felt as though I were sitting in an ice cellar or standing beside an execution ground all day long, all because I lacked a queue! One day, several students suddenly came to my room and said, 'Sir, we want to cut off our queues.' I said, 'No!' 'Is it better to have a queue or not?' 'Not having one is better…' 'Then why do you say no?' 'It's not worth it; you'd better not cut them-wait a bit.' They said nothing, pouted, and left the room; yet in the end, they cut them off. Oh! All hell broke loose, with people whispering指责; but I pretended not to know and let them attend classes with bald heads alongside many queued students. However, this queue-cutting disease spread; on the third day, students from the teachers' college suddenly cut off six queues, and that evening, six students were expelled. These six could neither stay at school nor return home, and it wasn't until over a month after the first Double Tenth Day that the stigma of their crime faded. As for me? Similarly, when I went to Beijing in the winter of the first year of the Republic, I was cursed a few times; later, those who cursed me had their queues cut off by the police, and I was no longer insulted; but I never went to the countryside."

N looked extremely pleased, then suddenly darkened his face: "Now you idealists are clamoring again about women cutting their hair, creating yet more people who gain nothing but suffer! Aren't there already women who have been denied admission to schools or expelled because they cut their hair? Reform? Where are the weapons? Work-study? Where are the factories? They might as well keep their hair and marry into families as daughters-in-law; forgetting everything is happiness, for if they remember notions of equality and freedom, they will suffer all their lives! I want to borrow Artsybashev's words to ask you: you promise the appearance of a golden age to the descendants of these people, but what do you give to these people themselves? Ah, until the whip of the creator strikes the backbone of China, China will forever remain the same China, unwilling to change a single hair! Since your mouths harbor no venomous fangs, why insist on pasting the words 'viper' on your foreheads, inviting beggars to beat you to death?…"

N spoke more and more bizarrely, but upon seeing my reluctant expression, he immediately stopped, stood up, and took his hat.

I said, "Going back?"

He replied, "Yes, it's going to rain."

I silently saw him to the door.

He put on his hat and said, "Goodbye! Please forgive my disturbance; fortunately, tomorrow is no longer Double Tenth Day, and we can all forget."

October 1920