Explore Chapter 17 of '老张的哲学' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
A Muslim doesn't feel the same qualms eating a banana as he does eating pork. Why? That would be downright ludicrous. If you were to simply answer, "Not eating pork but eating mutton is like eating bananas instead of candles made of fish oil," then you'd best ask a good-natured Muslim. Ordinary folks just say "this is tasty" or "that isn't," which never hits the nail on the head.
Long Shugu's parents were a couple who gambled away their money but never their pride, a pair who remained "with hair black to the grave." They lay in their coffins filled with infinite shame, having failed to live up to the auspicious wedding blessing-"to grow old together with hair as white as snow." Though they gambled away every last coin, they still held great hope, for they had a fine son. From childhood, Long Shugu could say what his parents wanted to say and do what they wanted to do. Old Man Long, behind his son's back, often told people, "If a son isn't as filial as our Shugu, that's like a camel dropping a mule-a damned freak!"
Old Man Long put his faith solely in Erlang Shen, the god with three eyes, whose middle eye was specially tasked with keeping watch over gambling dens and showering blessings on the devout-that is, devout gamblers. Old Mrs. Long put her faith solely in the City God. As a boy, Long Shugu had once marched as a red-robed page before the god's sedan chair during an inspection tour. In short, religion seeped into Long Shugu's bones from an early age.
At eighteen, his parents brought him a bride from the Luo Lao Si household in the east city, transported in a brightly embroidered sedan chair. The bride was only seven or eight years older than him and loved him truly like an elder sister. Sometimes when the old couple was away, the young couple also had their share of scuffles. But fights do no harm to love. Through all the tussles, she eventually presented him with a plump, fair-skinned little girl-Long Feng.
On the second day after Long Feng was born, a Taoist priest told her fortune. The priest said she must take the veil and become a nun; otherwise, she would bring harm to her elders. The old Long couple, doting on their granddaughter, could not bear to follow the priest's advice. Sure enough, before Long Feng was three, she had been the death of both grandparents. To this day, neighbors still feel sorry for the old Longs when they see Long Feng!
After his parents passed away, Long Shugu ventured into society. Unfortunately, his society, his government, saw fit to make generals of horse thieves and ministers of cardsharps, yet could find no place for the likes of Long Shugu, who was neither bandit nor rogue. Even more unfortunately, when Long Feng was about eight or nine, his wife also passed away! Her death, according to the doctor, stemmed from an imbalance of the body's elemental forces, with liver qi assailing the lungs. But according to the neighbors, it was because Long Feng had a fate so harsh it could harm ten generations of kin. Otherwise, why would the doctor, knowing it was liver qi invading the lungs, not prescribe medicine to subdue the liver and nourish the lungs?
After losing his wife, Long Shugu still could not find work, so he turned to the Salvation Army, received baptism, and became a convert. Initially, when he embraced the faith, the neighbors were most displeased. They even ignored Long Feng and privately called her "foreign girl"! Later, when Long Shugu became an officer, relatives and friends gradually changed their tune, renaming Long Feng from "foreign girl" to "schoolgirl."
Long Feng is twenty now. No one could call her face ugly, yet neither would anyone call her a beauty. For her ruddy cheeks are never powdered or rouged, her thick brows never penciled with ink, her long, soft hair never pomaded with yellow wax or scented oil. I ask you, can there be a beauty in this world who scorns all paint and powder? What's more, her hands are not hidden demurely in little red sleeves, nor are her feet bound into shapes like giant winter bamboo shoots. I ask you, has the world ever seen a beauty with big hands and unbound feet?
That's all I've been able to dig up about Officer Long. If anyone thinks it's not detailed enough, well, they'll just have to go make inquiries around Drum Tower Street themselves. The old women there can supply you with a wealth of stories-why, they can even tell you how many wives that Taoist priest who told Long Feng's fortune had.