of paper on the stool, but his hand shook uncontrollably when he dipped the brush into the ink, and he could not write the sign.
Ultimately, Jiansu was forced to ask the elementary school principal, Wattles Wu, to write it for him. The principal, a man in his fifties who had layers of loose skin on his neck, refused to use bottled ink; instead he had Jiansu make traditional ink on his long ink stone. It took Jiansu an hour to liquefy the ink block, after which the principal picked up a large, nearly hairless brush, soaked it in the ink, and began writing on a sheet of red paper. Jiansu watched as three thick veins rose on the back of the man’s slender hand, and when they retreated, the words “Wali Emporium” appeared on the paper. The characters for the word “emporium” were truly unique and, for some strange reason, conjured up the image of rusted metal. After Jiansu pasted it over the doorway he leaned against the door frame to look up at the sign. This was going to be an unusual shop, he was thinking.
The first week he was open, Jiansu sold only three bottles of sesame oil and a pack of cigarettes. Sui Buzhao was the first customer to step through the door of his nephew’s shop, but he merely looked around. On his way out, he recommended that Jiansu sell snacks to go with cups of liquor straight from the vat. He also urged him to paint a large liquor vat on the wall. Jiansu not only accepted his uncle’s suggestions, he went further by pasting posters of female movie stars on the outside wall. All Wali elders had been in the habit of going over to the local temple to drink, and the painted liquor vat invited nostalgia. As a result, most of his early customers were older, but the younger folks weren’t far behind. The place quickly became a hub of social activity.
One day, after business had started taking off, an elderly woman, Zhang-Wang, who coupled her maiden name with that of her deceased husband, entered with a request for him to begin stocking her handicrafts.
By “handicrafts,” she meant things like homemade sweetened yam-and-rice balls on sticks, clay tigers, and tin whistles, things she had been making and selling for decades, even during difficult times. She also told fortunes, some openly, others on the sly, to make a little extra money. Already in her sixties, she was a chain-smoker; the corners of her mouth were sunken, making her look older than her years. She had a thin neck and a pointed, turned-down chin, and her face was forever dirty. Her back was bent, her legs shook, and she made constant noises even when she wasn’t speaking. But the things she made were of the highest quality. Take, for instance, her clay tigers. She fashioned them so they had the same down-turned mouth as she, giving them an elderly yet proud, kind and gentle appearance, like their maker. And she kept making them bigger and bigger, until some were the size of pillows, toys that needed to be shared by two children at a time. She suggested that they be displayed on top of the Wali Emporium counter on consignment.
With a broad smile, Jiansu stared at the dust that had gathered on her thin neck and chatted with her casually, while she removed cigarettes from a rack and smoked them one after the other, never taking her eyes off Jiansu. He was by then in his mid-thirties, with slick black hair and a pimple here and there. He possessed a long, handsome face, an alert, vigilant face that showed a bit of cunning. Needless to say, he was a favorite of the women. But he was still unmarried, primarily a result of his clan’s situation; no one wanted to marry their daughter to either of the Sui brothers, him or Baopu. Baopu had once been married to the daughter of the family’s handyman, but she had died of consumption early on. He had not remarried.
Zhang-Wang, who knew that Jiansu was neither as open nor as guileless as his older brother, smirked as she looked at him, revealing blackened teeth. He blushed and urged her to say what was on her mind, even jokingly calling her an ugly old woman. When she took a few clay tigers out of her pockets and placed them on the counter, the similarity of their faces made him laugh. Reaching out to touch his bicep and chest, she said, “Aren’t you the strong boy!” When he wouldn’t stop laughing, she reached around and spanked him lightly. With a frown, she said, “You should be more serious when you’re talking to your old grandma!”
“Um,” Jiansu grunted, and stopped laughing. So they began negotiating the price and split for the handicrafts, and while they hadn’t reached an agreement by the time he lit the lamp, the deal was struck before she left.
From then on, Zhang-Wang came to the shop every day to move her clay tigers around on the counter. Sales were up: Many women bought the toys for their children, and if the children themselves came, she taught them new ways to play with them, with a little tiger attacking a big one by banging its head. But, they said, that would quickly lead to cracked heads. “Then what?” “Come buy new ones,” she’d say. As time passed, there was more business than the two entrepreneurs could handle during the day, so they started lighting a lamp and staying open longer. One night a group of old men sat beside the liquor vat drinking and snacking till the middle of the night.
Jiansu often slept with his head down on the counter, and Zhang-Wang delighted in blowing cigarette smoke at his red lips. In his eyes, she was a good assistant, and part of the shop’s success was her doing. “The tigers are our protectors,” she said. He gave the clay figurines, with their downturned mouths, a doubtful look. “Tigers are mountain spirits,” she added. When business was slow they talked about all manner of things, but his uncle, Buzhao, was one of her favorite topics. She’d laugh and show her dark teeth. “That old man is skin and bones, but he still won’t behave himself. When he was younger plenty of pretty girls got their taste of those old bones, including me. He’s never had an unskinny day, but he’s always been good at what he does.
“Do you know why he and Shi Dixin are mortal enemies?” she asked one day. Jiansu stared at her curiously and shook his head. So she took a cigarette from the rack, lit it, and told her story.
“Well, it was all on account of something really small. Back then, before your time, there was a lot more going on in Wali than now. And whenever you find a lot going on you’ll also find men who behave badly. Keep that in mind. When they’re ill mannered, they expend what energy they have on women’s bodies, leaving none for the things they ought to be doing. Men like your uncle, for instance, couldn’t even carry a lump of bean flour weighing three catties; they’d trip all over themselves and drop it, turning it into a pile of snow. Everyone always had a big laugh over that. And those sailors, well, the minute they stepped ashore they were like wolfhounds, their eyes bright red, throwing a fright into anyone who saw them, but once you got to know them they were all right. Your uncle learned how to treat people from those sailors, and that means that the Sui clan has at least one man who doesn’t follow the straight and narrow. That said, he did wind up doing one thing that benefited the people in town. What was that? He brought a dirty, black object to town from a ship. It had a smell somewhere between fragrant and stinky. Some people said it was from a musk ox, with something added. If a local girl’s belly started to grow, your uncle held whatever that was up to her nose a couple of times, and she immediately lost fluids from both ends, which restored her to the way she was before. You can see how much trouble that saved. But damned if Shi Dixin, that big phony, didn’t find out about it and take out after your uncle, who ran straight to the pier, with Shi on his heels. One fleeing, one chasing.”
Zhang-Wang lit another cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nose. “Shi ran like crazy and still he couldn’t catch him. So heaven intervened. Just as your uncle was about to reach the pier, his legs got all tangled up and he crashed to the ground. Weird old Shi ran up and twisted his leg. Your uncle threw sand in Shi’s face and received a second twist in return. Back then there was more sand on the riverbank than there is now, and your uncle’s face was all bloody from scraping on the ground. Curses flew from his mouth, but Shi didn’t say a word. He just picked up a rock and smashed your uncle’s hand with it, which gave him the chance he was looking for to grab that thing. Now, that’s when the real fighting started. They were both covered in blood. Shi Dixin predicted that sooner or later that thing would bring down the town of Wali, but the town’s young men all thought it was great. A knock-down, drag-out fight was inevitable. But then, when Shi felt his strength about to go, he flung the damned thing into the
