Name?
Happy Liu.
On your ID card, it says your name's Hawa – how did Hawa turn into Happy?
I changed my name. Everyone calls me Happy Liu now.
"Happy" are you? Hawa Liu!
You've got to call me Happy Liu, comrade.
Happy Liu?!
Yes, sir!
You know why I'm handcuffing you?
Because of this dead body?
Make a proper confession!
I shouldn't have been getting on the train carrying my friend's body.
Well, if you know that, why did you do it?
He had to go home.
Where's home?
Near Qingfeng Town in Shangzhou.
I'm asking about you!
Right here. I'm from Xi'an.
Uh?
I'm from Xi'an.
Really?!
Well, I should be from Xi'an.
Tell the truth!
I am telling the truth.
Then what do you mean by "should be"?
I really should be, comrade, because...
It was 13 October 2000, and we were outside the barriers at Xi'an Railway Station East. The policeman was taking a statement from me. It was blowing hard, and leaves floated down from the gingkos, catalpa and plane trees at the edge of the station square, covering everything with brilliant reds and yellows.
Never mind the baijiu liquor, I blame the white cockerel. We always believed that if people died away from home, their spirit might get lost on the way back. So you had to tie a white cockerel to the body. The cock was supposed to help Wufu's spirit get home but in the end it wrecked everything.
The cock weighed two pounds, two-and-a-half at most, but the woman selling it insisted it was three pounds. I lost my temper. That's rubbish! I said, I can tell the weight of anything! Do you know what I'm buying it for? (Though of course I didn't tell her that.) The old bag kept shouting: Put it on the scales again, you can put it on the scales again! So then the policeman stopped pacing up and down and came over to see what was going on.
He saw the roll of bedding tied with rope. What's that? he asked, jabbing it with his baton. Noisy Shi went as pale as if he'd had a bag of ash emptied over his head. Then the stupid fucker opened his big mouth, and said it was a side of pork. Pork? went the policeman. You wrap pork up in a quilt?! He carried on poking and the corner of the bedding roll began to come undone. That was when Noisy Shi dropped the bottle of baijiu and scarpered. What a coward! The policeman immediately pounced on me, and handcuffed one of my wrists to the flagstaff.
Could you handcuff my left wrist? I asked with a polite smile. I pulled a tendon in my right arm digging ditches.
This time, the baton jabbed me in the crotch, and when a man's jabbed in the crotch it goes numb. Don't joke around! he shouted. So I didn't joke around.
My eyes felt sticky, as if they were full of goo, and everything looked blurred. But I didn't panic. I had to stay calm whatever happened.
Continues in issue 19. Order now.
Translated by Nicky Harman from Gaoxing ("Happy"), published by The Writers Publishing House
