CHAPTER XII

The papers said half a million people were going to take part in the Labor Day parade. A dealer in sheep waiting for a chance to cross the route of march had apparently given up and had tied his small flock to a tree on the close-packed sidewalk. The wool on the sheep was dark and ragged with the dampness of early summer- Five or six of them nosed around on the tiny square of earth under the plane tree- From the look in their apathetic faces they did not really expect to find anything edible and were grazing just for the lack of anything better to do- They paid no attention whatsoever to the people crowded around them. Now and then one of them would turn and glance indifferently at another sheep.
The procession had stopped to allow a dancing dragon to go through its little routine. The dragon's body was just a big white cloth tube with scales drawn on it, and the shop assistants who had been designated to manipulate it for the occasion did it clumsily. The cylindrical white length of cloth was in motion above the head of the crowd, ping up and down in even waves to the furious banging of cymbals. Presently it was pulled straight and poised level and motionless in the air. While it rested, another light blue cloth tube had started to ripple up and down a little distance away, half submerged by the crowd.
Liu Ch'uan stood in line, resting on one leg. He looked at the sheep by the wayside. They were probably on their Way to the slaughter house- Still, he thought he would like to scratch them under the chin.
Then a little boy among the spectators went and squatted before a sheep and chucked it under the muzzle. Liu felt a sudden tie of kinship with the boy. So he was not the only one who wanted to do that.
Up ahead of the front rank of Liu's group were the employees of the Shanghai Optical Company. A man and woman leaned on a little cart bearing a huge pair of cardboard spectacles, they had been pushing. The man turned around and said to the man carrying the company banner behind him, "I'm all dragged out, Chan. You better come and help Miss Hsu push the cart."
"What's the matter?" asked the man named Chan.
"My piles!" the man groaned- "And you know I walked through half the city before the parade even started! Left home when it was pitch-dark-trams not out yet. Had to walk all the way to the shop to assemble. And I live so far off!"
"I used to dread parades too," the woman said. She was scrawny and tall. A small bespectacled face peered out from under her cap. Her Liberation Suit, belted, made long vertical creases like box pleats down her flat chest. Stringy bobbed hair fringed, the back of her cap, still a sign of unusual progressive zeal among the women of Shanghai. To cut off the curly ends of permed hair was for them as momentous a gesture as a Buddhist nun shaving her skull at her initiation.

"I used to complain too," Miss Hsu said. "But it sort of grows on you. It can develop into a habit — parading. Now I don't mind it at all, walking down the street with everybody looking at you," she said, her face aglow for a moment.
"You don't have piles, I guess," Chan said. "I don't mind the walking so much. It's the waiting, standing around all the time." Chan appealed to his listeners. "Why do we have to assemble at six when we don't start out till nine?"
"Next time you remember to bring a little stool," she said. "Sling it on your back, like some of the people from Wing On's store did- Such a good idea!" She sighed wearily. "Ai! It'd been perfect if I'd thought of bringing a stool."
"Well, why don't you sit down on your cart for a while?" Chan said-
"I was afraid all this cardboard would collapse on me," she giggled. But she lowered herself on to one side of the cart and settled back gingerly against the handbar. "Ai-ya! Better than any sofa!" she exclaimed with half-closed eyes.
The procession started to move again. Liu helped a Communications Officer push a small prisoner's van with Comrade Ho huddled inside it, masked and dressed as President Truman. Chang Li as Chiang Kai-shek crouched inside another van, bandaged and plaster-crossed to show the People had defeated him. At the sound of a gong they both crashed up against the bars and pranced around, posturing like Tibetan devil dancers, now threatening, now leaping away frightened. Their bodies dwarfed by their enormous hook-nosed, shiny pink masks that reached down to their chests, they were as jerky and unreal as colored paper cutouts appliquéd, to the drab, crowded scene peddlers carrying baskets threaded in and out of the column, whispering the names of their wares in a low Chant -- long fritters, fritter-twists, sesame rice-flour balls,. buns, red bean cakes. When they could not filter through. the column they marched by its side.
To save money most of the paraders had brought their own food — sandwiches, steamed loaves, hardboiled eggs,, thousand-layered flat cakes, Shantung style. It was hours before lunchtime, but the sight and smell of all the peddlers weaving in and out of their ranks reminded people that they were hungry- Soon throughout the crowd. paraders were taking paper parcels out of their pockets, unwrapping food, offering samples to each other- Chan playfully snatched a sandwich from another clerk who' worked for Shanghai Optical. In revenge the man bit off a good third of Chan's bun. There was a lot of laughter and comments on the quality .of the food.
"Whatever we Chinese do, it always includes eating. a meal together," Liu thought. "Start out in the morning when it's still dark and you think it's worse than a labor detail — all day on your feet. Bring out a steamed bun and it turns out to be quite a picnic after all."
He hadn't been feeling very well this morning and
 had thought briefly about staying in bed. But it was wiser to march in the parade since everybody knew it was much worse to be absent from celebrations like this than to be absent from work. Now, when he started to eat what he had brought, thinking that he must be getting weak from hunger, he  knew he was really ill after one mouthful of the cotton wool bread. He supposed he had. a fever. The scattered talk around him seemed to jump at him, loud and sudden.
"It's drizzling," said the man with piles, looking upward and making a disgusted, phlegm noise in his throat. " Tsao na," he swore. "And I didn't bring my raincoat." I didn't either," Chan said. "If you have it on all the

time, it's too hot. This weather can get awfully hot when the sun comes out- And it's such a bother to carry any-  thing when you're tired- After ten miles one catty gets to be ten."
"Might have known it was going to rain," the other man grunted- "Ever had a parade when it didn't rain?"
Chan did not answer. It was a standing joke that it always rained on parade days ever since the Communists ,came. The Study Unit had already pointed out to them that this was an acute form of Change of Weatherism as it obviously implied that Old Heaven was not on the side of the Communists, so they could not possibly last long-
An apprentice carrying a dancing lion on his back walked with bowed head and hunched shoulders, holding the paper lion by its front paws. Its rotund pale green body looked ridiculously long, the way it hung down straight from the boy's back, its round rump dangling ,close to the ground. The paper-tasseled tail dragged on the wet, dark brown asphalt. But the boy was tired and he no longer cared.
Everybody was past caring now. Paper flags were carried tilted back, resting on shoulders. Men spat on the ground and sauntered lazily with dragging steps like beggars hired to carry wreathes and mourning banners in a funeral procession. A young boy noticed it too, whims-pored it to the man beside him and there were snickers as they turned to look at the large, fern-bordered portraits of Stalin and Mao being carried like portraits of the dead in a funeral procession.
It rained harder when they reached the crossroad where there was a Comfort Station. At the sight of the company banner the workers in the station started to shout, "Our respects to the comrades of the Shanghai Optical Company! Came on, straighten up, comrades! Comrades of the Shanghai Optical Company, we salute you!"
"Really does something to you, doesn't it?" Miss Hsu burbled- "A real pick-me-up."
The drenched paper flags had become pink and green tatters but all the flag poles now stood erect. The people at the Comfort Station, who were shop assistants and shop-girls themselves, dipped enamel mugs into huge earthern jars and handed out of cold tea in the rain-
The column proceeded. A woman among the spectators suddenly stepped forward under a big black umbrella. "Hey," she said, and thrust a raincoat into Chan's hand.
"Yieh!" somebody exclaimed in surprise- "If it isn't Mrs. Chan bringing him his raincoat!"
"Hey, Chan! Your missus really takes good care of you, eh? Just dotes on you, it looks like. Been standing here waiting in this rain, scared that you'd get wet." There was a babe of laughing voices.
"As faithful as Meng Chiang Nu- Going all the way to the Great Wall to bring her husband winter clothes."
Chan said, blushing, "Cut it out! No point to it, all this leg pulling — an old married couple like us!"
He held his bamboo stick under one arm while he struggled into the raincoat and buttoned it as he walked- The black umbrella had moved away swiftly, disappearing down the street. The column had, gone another block and all his colleagues had stopped teasing him. But Chan was still protesting, "There's nothing between us, no feelings at all- Never have anything to say to each other when I get home."
Nobody answered. They were cold and wet and very tired. The man with piles was the only one who muttered, "Hadn't been giving me any trouble for some time now. Couldn't even feel them — almost forgot them. I just knew something like this would happen!"
"Ah, cut it out! What's the point — pulling my leg,

and no end to it!" Chan said happily, obliviously. Nobody else's wife had waylaid them with a raincoat- It had given him much face.
Liu looked at him. Liu could never get over the way life around him went on as usual, after what he had seen out in the country- These people here were hardly touch¬ed yet by the change of government- Maybe life was a bit harder with longer working hours and all the added chores, like meetings and parades; still they were able to
carry on much as before and find comfort in the texture of life ltself. Nothing as big and sweeping as Land Reform
had swept over them yet- But how long would it be before it was their turn? Then Liu wondered if he wasn't feeling sorry for them because he was envious- Even if their time
was borrowed and running out, that did not make their lives any less real.
This was the season for sunny showers. The sun came out and the rain flashed silvery white against the blue sky for an incredibly long glorious moment- Then it stopped and the pavements quickly dried. Liu's clothes dried on him. The sleepy pressure of the warm sun on his back was vaguely disagreeable and made him shiver- He knew he'd had this coming for a long time. Like all men who are seldom sick, he had just ignored it at first, then, when it didn't go away, he suddenly grew panicky. He felt as heavy as a corpse as he dragged himself along, doubled up over the handbar of the cart. Hot needles of sweat
pricked through the thick swollen numbness that coated him.
The long golden day seemed as endless as the road. In moving westward the procession had come to the res- identical districts. People began to sidle off and desert when they came near their homes- With typical Chinese logic they reasoned that it was not such a serious offense to desert now, since it was already late afternoon. And

curiously enough, their unit leaders apparently shared this view and "kept one eye open and one eye closed," as the saying went. The ranks gradually thinned out and the ground was strewn with discarded paper flags.
Liu said to the Communications Officer next to him, "I'm sick- I'm going back to the hostel- Tell the unit
leader I'm sick-"
It was very quiet as soon as 'he turned down the side street. The noise of the gongs and cymbals and 'brass bands, already growing faint, emphasized the sunny silence. The only vehicle on the empty street was a big pushcart manned by soldiers of the Liberation Army, parked in the middle of the road. The chubby troopers looked more Japanese than Chinese except for their black cloth peasant shoes- They waited, leaning on the pile of sacks on the cart, their faces turned toward the main road. Liu had heard that they had been told to keep their distance with the local people in order to maintain their dignity. They never once glanced in his direction though he was the only moving object on the street-
He passed a steamed bread stand with no keeper in sight. The pyramid of cup-loaves was covered, by a piece of greyish cloth. He was feeling better now. But somewhere inside himself he was holding still, waiting for the wave of sickness which he knew would soon return-
All the shops had hung flags out over the main road. Here on the side street only one shop, a cigarette and candy store, had two flags hung out above the signboard in the approved fashion. But between the crossed flags where the twin portraits of Stalin and Mao ought to be, they had hung — probably for reasons of economy — two identical portraits of the same girl, Liu Mei-yu, a one-time Peking Opera actress whose picture had been used as a trademark on Beauty cigarettes for the last thirty years. The familiar pink-and-white face smiled down from the

large color prints, the kind that were given free to retailers. She wore a band around her head in the pre-war western style, and her hair made dipping waves in the center of her forehead.
The little shops huddled between grey brick houses and alleys which had. fanciful names written in large faded gilt characters on the grey cement arched entrances- An occasional hanging room bridged the mouth of an alley. All the houses looked so secure in their protective dinginess and commonplaceness. Their air of permanence exasperated Liu.
The pushcart of a cloth vendor was parked by the roadside, making a more or less stationary stall. Nobody was around. A baby lay sleeping on the cart between two tall stacks of cotton prints. It was a lovely day. As he walked along a familiar feeling came over him, the sadness of youth swinging free; having nothing and nobody, and with nowhere to go.