Explore Chapter 8 of "生死场" with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
Wang Po could now sit by the riverbank with a fishing rod. The wrinkles on her face had neither deepened nor lessened. This proved she remained unchanged. She still had to go on living.
In the evenings, the frog-croak by the river was deafening. Mosquitoes rose from the riverside grass, their buzzing regiments pervaded every household. The sun grew fierce in the daytime! It seared people's skin. In summer, the villagers hated the sun as they would a vicious brute. Across the entire field, a massive ball of fire rolled.
Yet Wang Po had always welcomed summer. For summer brought plump, green leaves and lush gardens. Moreover, summer nights could stir the poetic soil of her heart. Then she would begin telling her stories to the summer night. But this summer, she said nothing! She leaned against the window as if asleep, facing the profound sky.
This was the same ordinary June, the season for reaping wheat as last year. Wang Po's family had planted no wheat this year. She grew more sorrowful and withdrawn! Passing the undulating wheat fields with her fishing rod, she idly coiled the line around the rod's tip. Lifting her head to gaze at the high sky, she passed through the wheat fields without a glance.
Wang Po's disposition grew fouler still! She took to drink again. She fished every day. She neither mended nor washed the family's clothes. Each night, she only pan-fried fish and drank wine, drank herself into a wild, reeling drunkenness, stumbling about the yard and the house. Gradually, she began to stagger into the woods.
She had become almost ludicrous now, slumped in the middle of the courtyard like a stone. At night, she had taken to sleeping there.
Sleeping in the yard, she was besieged by mosquitoes, just like ants dragging a rotting fly. She had no spirit left now! No more will to live!
"Mother! I thought you were dead! Your mouth was foaming at the mouth, your fingers were ice cold!... Brother is dead, Mother is dead too, where can I go to beg for food?... When they drove me out, I forgot the bundle I brought, I cried... cried until I fainted... Mother, their hearts are wicked, they wouldn't let me look at you a moment longer..."
The next day, every family brought their wheat to the threshing ground. For the first harvest, people would drink a feast of wine to celebrate. Zhao San had not planted wheat this first year; his home lay quiet. When someone came to invite him, he sat at the others' merry table. He saw their joy, saw them gathering their wheat. His big, red hands became clumsy and conspicuous in front of others! He kept twisting and knotting them together nervously. But no one paid him any heed. The wheat growers talked among themselves.