Explore Chapter 6 of '呐喊' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
Mr. N was by nature 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 offering a word of comment; when he finished his monologue, that was the end of it.
"What I most admire is the scene in Beijing on the Double Tenth Day. In the morning, the police come to the door and order, 'Hang the flag!' 'Yes, hang the flag!' Most households lazily send out a citizen who hoists a piece of motley foreign cloth. This continues until night-when the flag is taken down and the doors closed; a few families who forget by chance leave it up until the next morning."
How many old friends' faces float before my eyes. Some youths toiled and struggled for over a decade, only to have their lives taken by a covert bullet; some youths, failing in their attempt, endured more than a month of torture in prison; some youths, harboring great ambitions, suddenly vanished without a trace, not even their corpses known to be found.-
They spent their lives amidst society's cold sneers, vicious curses, persecution, and betrayal; now their graves have long been gradually leveled by oblivion.
"Old chap, do you know that hair is both a treasure and a bane for us Chinese? Throughout history, how many people have suffered meaningless hardships over it!
"Our ancient ancestors seemed to have regarded hair lightly. According to penal codes, the most important is naturally the head, so decapitation is the supreme punishment; next comes the genitalia, so castration and confinement are terrifying penalties; as for tonsure, it is trivial in comparison. Yet one can only imagine how many people have been trampled upon by society all their lives simply for having a shaven head.
"When we speak of revolution, we talk grandly about the Ten Days in Yangzhou, the Jiading Massacre, but in truth, these are merely tactics. Frankly, the resistance of the Chinese back then was not because of the loss of the nation, but because of the queue.
"After the stubborn rebels were wiped out and the old loyalists died of old age, the queue was firmly established, and then Hong and Yang stirred up trouble again. My grandmother once told me how hard it was to be a commoner then: those who kept their hair long were killed by government troops, while those with queues were killed by the Longhairs!
"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 took great offense; the supervisor was furious too, threatening to cut off my government stipend and send me back to China.
"A few days later, this supervisor himself had his queue cut off by someone and fled. Among those who did the cutting was Zou Rong, the author of 'The Revolutionary Army.' He too could no longer study abroad and returned to Shanghai, later dying in a Western prison. You've probably forgotten all this, haven't you?
"A few years later, my family's circumstances worsened, and to avoid starvation, I had to find work, so I returned to China. Upon arriving in Shanghai, I bought a false queue-the market price then was two yuan-and brought it home. My mother didn't say much, but others, upon meeting me, would first scrutinize this queue; when they found out it was false, they sneered and accused me of a crime punishable by beheading. A relative even planned to report me to the authorities, but later stopped because he feared the revolutionaries' rebellion might succeed.
"This matter saddened me deeply, and I still remember it often. When I was studying abroad, I once saw in a daily newspaper an account of Dr. Honda, who traveled through Southeast Asia and China. This doctor didn't understand Chinese or Malay. When asked how he could get around without knowing the language, he picked up his cane and said, 'This is their language, they all understand!' I was indignant for days. Who would have thought I ended up doing the same thing unconsciously, and those people understood all too well....
"In the early years of the Xuantong reign, I worked as a supervisor at a local middle school. My colleagues avoided me as if I were a plague, and the officials guarded against me with utmost vigilance. All day long, I felt as if sitting in an ice cellar or standing by an execution ground-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-wait a bit.' They said nothing, pouted their lips, and left the room; yet in the end, they cut them off.
"Oh! It was terrible; people were buzzing with gossip. But I pretended not to know, letting them go to the lecture hall with shaven heads, alongside many others with queues.
"Yet this queue-cutting disease spread; on the third day, students at the normal school suddenly cut off six queues, and that evening, six students were expelled. These six could neither stay at school nor return home; they struggled on until more than a month after the first Double Tenth Day, when the brand of their crime finally faded.
"Now you idealists are clamoring again about women cutting their hair, and you'll create many more people who gain nothing but suffer!"
"Better to keep it long, marry into a family as a daughter-in-law; forgetting everything is still happiness, for if she remembers talk of equality and freedom, she'll suffer all her life!
"I want to borrow the words of Artsybashev to ask you: you promise the advent of a golden age to the descendants of these people, but what do you offer to these people themselves?
"Ah, until the whip of creation strikes China's backbone, China will forever remain the same China, unwilling to change a single hair on its own!
"Since you have no venomous fangs in your mouths, why insist on pasting the words 'viper' on your foreheads, inviting beggars to beat you to death?..."
N's words grew more and more bizarre, but upon seeing my disinterested expression, he immediately fell silent, stood up, and took his hat.
"Goodbye! Please forgive my disturbance. Fortunately, tomorrow is not the Double Tenth Day, so we can all forget about it."