When someone wants to be something but never succeeds, then that something can become a lifetime obsession. This is why I am drawn to any blacksmith I meet and why the clanging of hammer on anvil stirs me so deeply. It is also why, when I started out as a writer, I wanted to write about iron forging and blacksmiths.

1

Every summer, when the scholar trees were in bloom, Old Han the blacksmith from Zhangqiu County would put in an appearance with his two apprentices. They unloaded their cart under the big scholar tree at the entrance of the village, set up their stall and built the forge. Then the clanging would start up. The first thing they worked on was not an implement, but a piece of pig iron. They heated the metal till it was red-hot, beat it out, reheated it, beat it again, folded it, beat it into a long, flat strip, then repeated the process of folding it and beating it long and flat. Under their hammers, the red-hot iron was like dough in a woman’s hand, they could knead it into any shape they wanted. They beat that piece of pig iron until it became steel. When I was a kid, I saw a sentence that read ‘Well-tempered steel is flexible’ in my brother’s middle-school textbook. I immediately saw the blacksmiths in my mind’s eye, and their clanging echoed in my ears. This strip of steel would be filed into strips by the blacksmith and clamped to the blades of the villagers’ kitchen knives, sickles and other farm tools, to repair them. As long as the tempering was done properly, these steel-reinforced implements sat nicely in the hand and stayed sharp, which meant that the job could be done better and faster. That was why people in our village never went to the marketing cooperative to buy the shoddy tools produced by the farm-tools factory. And that was why Old Han had to come to our village every year. There must be children like me in the many villages to the north-east of Gaomi City, who think back nostalgically to the blacksmiths’ visits every year at scholar-tree blossom time, and remember how we were their faithful audience.

Old Han had two apprentices. One was his nephew, known by everyone as Young Han. The other was called Old Third. Old Han was tall and thin, bald, with a long neck and weepy eyes. Young Han was big and burly. Old Third was dwarfish and squat, with short legs and long arms, built like an orangutan. He was cheerful and talkative, in sharp contrast to the more taciturn Young Han. When they were working, Old Han held the tongs, Young Han swung the sledgehammer, and Old Third worked the bellows to raise the heat. When it was a big job, he also weighed in with a twelve-pound hammer. The three of them made an impressive tableau as they rained down the blows in quick succession. Young Han’s hammer weighed eighteen pounds.

2

My grandad was a skilled carpenter and craftsman, and he was a demanding customer. It was obvious to me that the blacksmiths didn’t like him, and that upset me. Once, Grandad went to them with an axe and asked them to reinforce the blade with a steel strip. He’d had the axe for many years, and the metal had largely rusted away and been absorbed into the wooden handle. Old Han took the axe and looked at it.

‘You call this an axe?’ he said.

‘What else is it?’ Grandad riposted.

‘I’ll make you another one.’

‘I don’t want another one. If you can’t do the job, I’ll find someone else to do it.’

‘Relax, old man,’ Old Third spoke up. ‘There’s nothing we can’t fix, fodder choppers, scissors, you name it.’

‘Can you do embroidery needles?’ Grandad asked.

‘Nope,’ said Old Third. Then he said with a smile: ‘Listen, old man, we’re in the same industry, right? I mean, you’re a carpenter.’

‘It’s one yuan for a new axe, and it’ll cost you one and a half to fix this old thing,’ Old Han said.

‘That’s barefaced robbery!’ said Grandad.

‘Take it or leave it,’ said Old Han firmly.

‘Okay,’ Grandad said. ‘But you better make a decent job of it, this isn’t any old axe.’

‘It’s Lu Ban’s axe, is it?’ Old Third joked.

‘Lu Ban is a folk legend, Guan Er is a real person,’ Grandad said.

Guan Er was my grandad’s name.

Old Third went to the rusty iron plate leaning against the tree trunk, cocked his head on one side, and chalked: guan er, one axe head, add steel, 1.5 yuan.

I piped up: ‘It’s written wrong! The “guan” should be 管 not 官, and the axe should be 斧 not 福!’

No one paid any attention to me.

Uncle Zhao the cowman dropped an old chopper on the ground and said, ‘Old Han, you’re late this year, aren’t you?’

‘No, we’re not, it’s the same day as last year,’ Old Han muttered.

‘I need this fixed, put a steel strip on it. How soon can you do it? I’m in a hurry,’ Uncle Zhao said.

‘Ten yuan!’

‘Are you off your head?!’

‘Ten yuan!’

‘I can’t pay that,’ Uncle Zhao said. ‘I’ll get the team head to come and see you in a bit.’

‘It’ll still be ten yuan,’ said Old Third.

‘Let me find you a wife, Old Third,’ Uncle Zhao said.

‘Pull the other one, Old Zhao! You said the same thing last year.’

‘Did I say that last year?’ said Uncle Zhao. ‘Well, this year I mean it. There’s a young woman from my wife’s family who’s fair-skinned and tall and has a nice figure. She just has a few eye problems.’

‘That doesn’t matter as long as she can see enough to cook a meal.’

‘She has no problem cooking a meal,’ said Uncle Zhao. ‘She can even see well enough to sew shoes.’

‘Then go and talk to them,’ said Old Third. ‘All I want is a wife.’

Old Han glanced at Old Third and heaved a sigh.

Hundred-Acres Tian turned up next, looking gloomy. ‘I need a sickle,’ he said.

‘And the old one?’ asked Old Third.

‘Don’t have one.’

‘You want a Jiaoxian sickle or a Yexian sickle?’ asked Old Han.

Jiaoxian sickles are narrow, Yexian sickles are wide. Jiaoxian sickles are light, Yexian sickles are heavy. People have their preferences.

‘I want a leftie sickle.’

‘A leftie sickle?’ asked Old Third. ‘What’s that?’

‘A sickle for someone who’s left-handed.’

‘But left-handed people use a sickle with their right hand!’ Old Third objected.

‘Gotcha,’ said Old Han. ‘We’ll make you a leftie sickle.’

Just then, Happy, the village idiot and Liu Laosan’s son, ran along the road stark naked, with his younger sister following behind holding his clothes.

‘Didn’t they get a cure-all woman in to see him last year?’ said Old Third.

‘Cure-all, my foot!’ scoffed Uncle Zhao. ‘She was nothing but a quack!’

Hundred-Acres Tian looked down and said nothing.

‘I told you all last year that real cure-all docs don’t walk around the streets ringing a bell. The family got screwed over, didn’t they?!’ said Old Third.

‘Get to work!’ Old Han said angrily, pulling a piece of red-hot iron out of the forge.

3

The boy squatting under the trees cutting grass left-handed was called Tian Kui. Five years older than me, he was the only son of Hundred-Acres Tian, and had been a classmate of my second older brother. My brother passed the exams and got a place in Madian Middle School, eighteen li away from where we lived. Tian Kui’s marks were better than my brother’s, but he had dropped out of school and spent his time cutting grass.

That was a job that a lot of kids in the village did. I used to do it when classes were over too. We took the grass to be weighed at the production team livestock sheds and earned one work point for every ten pounds. In those days, in the people’s communes, you earned work points not cash, and they were the main way that the year-end distribution to households was calculated too. We used to joke that work points were the ‘family jewels’.

I was not a born grass-cutter. My big sister could cut more than a hundred pounds a day and regularly earned a dozen work points, which was even more than the men. There was one day when I only cut a pound of grass. When I took it to be weighed, I was greeted with shouts of laughter. The cowman, Uncle Zhao, poked the grass with his finger and said, ‘You’re a real model worker!’ From then on, Model Worker was my nickname.

Over dinner that evening, the whole family weighed in with criticisms of their Model Worker.

‘Imagine us having a Model Worker in the family!’ said my grandad. ‘Were you harvesting lingzhi mushrooms or something?’

My father said: ‘You must have been sitting on the ground and picking the grass with your toes. No wonder it took you all afternoon to get a pound of grass!’

My mother said: ‘What were you actually doing all that time?’

‘Stealing melons and jujubes, for sure,’ said my big sister.

I burst into tears. ‘I spent all afternoon looking for grass, but I couldn’t find any!’

‘Tomorrow you’re coming with me,’ said Sis. ‘No running off.’

But I didn’t want to go with Sis, I wanted to find Tian Kui.

Tian Kui spent all his time working in the woods. It was full of graves and he used to go from one grave to another, cutting the wispy tussocks of cogon and themeda grass that grew on them, to sell for forage. I didn’t think these bits were worth bothering with but Tian Kui used to crouch down, or bend low, and patiently shave the grass from the graves with his leftie sickle. Normally, we used our right hand to swing the sickle and gathered the cut grass in our left hand. He cut with his left hand because he had no right hand. He had an iron hook tied to his right arm and he used the iron hook to pull the cut grass together. His hook seemed much more effective than my hand so I gave his leftie sickle a go, but it felt very awkward.

‘Have you always used your left hand?’ I asked him.

‘When I started in school, I held the pen in my left hand,’ he said. ‘But the teacher made me change to my right. I still used my left hand when the teacher wasn’t looking. I wrote faster with my left, slower with my right. Nice with my left, ugly with my right.’

‘My brother said that you were a good student.’

‘Not that good.’

‘Why don’t you take the middle-school exams?’

He pointed with his right hook at a grave in front of him and whispered: ‘There’s a big snake in that grave.’

‘How big?’ I asked fearfully, mussing up my hair. We believed that when a snake met a child, it counted the hairs on the child’s head. You had until it finished counting before it stole your soul away. So if you met a snake, you had to muss up your hair straight away.

‘Wanna see it?’

I followed him hesitantly to the grave.

There were several fist-sized holes in the gravestone, and he pointed to one of them.

I held my breath, ruffled my hair, and moved closer. At first it was too dark to see anything, but gradually I made out a huge, fat snake, dark-coloured with white stripes. I couldn’t see its whole length, only a part of it. I felt a chill of fear and crept backwards. I got as far away as I could before I dared to speak.

‘Have you ever seen it come out?’ I asked.

‘Twice.’

‘How long is it?’

‘As long as a shoulder pole.’

‘What . . . what does it look like?’ I asked. ‘Does it have a crest on its head?’

‘Yup.’

‘What colour is it?’

‘Sort of purple-red.’

‘Like a ripe mulberry?’

‘Yup.’

‘Have you ever heard it make a noise?’

‘Yup.’

‘What kind of noise?’

‘It croaked. A bit like a frog.’

‘Aren’t you scared of being here alone every day?’

‘I’ve never been scared of anything, not since my dad chopped off my hand.’

4

I often think back to that hot afternoon when Tian Kui was still a kid with two hands.

We were all at the village pond, on the south side of the village. We’d hung our clothes from the tree branches and were messing around in the water, trying to catch fish.

There were bulrushes and reeds growing in the pond, and we were crawling in and out of them. Suddenly someone shouted:

‘Here’s Happy!’

Happy, the village idiot, only son of Liu Laosan.

He was running naked along the path towards the pond. His younger sister was chasing after him, carrying his clothes.

Happy was seventeen or eighteen years old, with a well-developed body, a dark bush of pubic hair and big genitals. He got to the edge of the pond, stopped, and laughed foolishly.

I honestly can’t remember who it was, but someone shouted: ‘Let’s throw mud at the idiot!’

We scooped up black sludge and threw it at Happy.

A lump of it hit him in the chest. He just stood there, still laughing.

A lump of it hit his genitals. He covered his crotch with both hands.

We howled with laughter. We were having fun.

‘Beat up the idiot! Beat him up!’

A lump landed in his face. Happy covered his face with both hands.

Happy’s sister finally caught up with him, still clutching his clothes. She stood in front of him and a lump of mud hit her on the chest. She burst into tears and shouted at us: ‘Don’t hit him, he’s only an idiot!’

Another lump landed on her head, and she cried: ‘Don’t hit him! He’s just an idiot, he doesn’t understand anything!’

Happy’s sister was called Joy. She was about the same age as my second elder brother, and a very good-looking girl. Happy was a fine-looking young man too. The villagers used to say what a pity it was that he was an idiot.

Joy did her best to shield her brother and got covered in mud herself. She wept and raged at us: ‘You bastards, bullying an idiot! God’ll punish you, you’ll be struck by thunder! You bastards!’

Maybe it was the threat of divine punishment, or because we felt guilty, or were just tired of the game, but we suddenly stopped and scrambled in among the bulrushes and the reeds, some still yelling, others silent.

5

That evening, we were eating dinner in our yard when Liu Laosan stormed in. He was furious.

‘Good evening, Third Brother, you’re just in time for dinner,’ my father greeted him, then said to my sister: ‘Get a stool for your uncle.’

But Liu Laosan spoke to my grandad: ‘Second Uncle, there’s never been bad feeling between our two families, has there?’

My grandad was taken aback. ‘Laosan, what are you talking about? Your father and I are old comrades, we go back years. We were labourers together in the Eighth Route Army, in the Yimeng Mountains. I got dysentery and if your dad hadn’t looked after me, my bones would have ended up in a mountain gully.’

‘Right then,’ said Liu Laosan, and turned to my father. ‘So I want to ask these two boys why they were so mean to Happy and Joy this afternoon.’

‘What?’ My dad leapt to his feet and pointed his finger at my brother and me. ‘What were you two doing?’ he demanded angrily.

We got up and stood in a huddle. ‘We . . . we didn’t do anything . . .’ we stammered.

Liu Laosan began to wail: ‘I must have done wicked things in an earlier life to have a son like him, coming up to twenty years old and running around the village stark naked. He’s a disgrace! I’ve tried tethering him but he escapes. It must be God’s punishment on me. But all the same, he’s just an idiot! If he wasn’t, would he be running around naked? What were you thinking of, beating up an idiot? Joy begged you to stop, on her knees, and you still wouldn’t stop!’

Liu Laosan squatted down, clasping his head between his hands.

My father picked up a stool and hurled it at the two of us.

‘Come here, kneel down to your third uncle!’ Grandad commanded.

We fell to our knees. ‘Third Uncle, please forgive us!’ my brother begged. ‘We were in the wrong. But we didn’t start it . . .’

‘Then who did?’ our dad demanded, about to throw the stool again. ‘Who was the ringleader?’

‘It was, um . . .’ my brother hesitated.

‘Go on!’ Dad lifted the stool above his head.

‘It was Tian Kui,’ my brother said. ‘Tian Kui was the ringleader . . .’

Dad turned to me and whacked me hard with the stool. ‘You tell me, who was it?’

‘Tian Kui,’ I said. ‘He started it. If we hadn’t gone along with him, he would have beaten us up. He made us do it. He’s stronger than us.’

‘If either of you are lying, I’ll cut your tongues out,’ my father said.

‘We’re not lying,’ my brother said. ‘I broke Tian Kui’s torch. If I hadn’t joined in and beaten up Happy, he’d have asked me to buy him a new one.’

‘Did you hear Tian Kui say that?’ Dad asked me, his tone gentler now.

‘Yes I did,’ I said. ‘He said, “If you don’t join in, I’ll get back at you for that and the torch!”’

‘Brother Laosan,’ said my father, still holding the stool. ‘I haven’t brought my sons up right. I apologise to you. About what happened . . .’

But Liu Laosan said: ‘Brother, forget it, it’s nothing. Nothing will come between our two families, ever. What I don’t understand is why Tian Kui wanted to beat up my son. He’s from a landlord family and we’re poor peasants, but when his grandad Tian Yuan was being struggled against and had his land taken off him, my dad vouched for him. If he hadn’t, the old man would have been dragged out and executed on the spot. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! It’s not right! I need to get a few things straight with the Tians!’

And Liu Laosan stormed out angrily.

I felt something warm on my neck. When I touched it, I saw blood on my fingers.

My father spoke to both of us very seriously: ‘I’m asking you again, was Tian Kui really the ringleader?’

His face in the moonlight had gone as dark red as the iron in the forge.

‘Aren’t you done yet?’ my mother said to him, sprinkling some lime powder on my brother’s head wound. ‘You almost killed him!’

‘Mum, I’m bleeding too!’ I wailed.

‘That Liu Laosan!’ my elder sister burst out. ‘Why’s he using his idiot son to make trouble for other people?’

My father threw the stool to the ground. ‘Shut up!’ he roared.

6

After all these years, I still dream about watching the leftie sickle being made under the big scholar tree at the entrance to the village. It already had its rough shape and was in the forge heating up. No, it was already white-hot and the strip of steel they were going to add to the blade was white-hot too. Old Third worked the box bellows with all his might, his body swaying forwards and backwards as he pushed and pulled on the handle attached to the pull rods. Old Han clamped the leftie sickle with the tongs, gripping them with both hands as he pulled it out of the fire. Then he laid it on the anvil and added the strip of steel to the sickle blade. He picked up a small hammer with a head as slender as a conductor’s baton and dealt the first blow to this brilliantly shining piece of work. Young Han swung the eighteen-pound hammer up, then brought it down and hit the blade in the exact same spot, with a dull, muffled clang, sealing the steel strip and the sickle blade together. Old Third let go of the bellows handle and wielded the second hammer, which whistled through the air as he hit the still-soft metal. The golden flames in the forge and the dazzling white sparks from the anvil lit up their faces, turning them the same ruddy colour as the iron. The three men formed a triangle, and the three hammers fell one after the other, seemingly without pause. There was something irresistibly powerful, even apocalyptic, about the scene. Here was softness and hardness, cold and heat, cruelty and gentleness, all combined. It was like a piece of music simultaneously resounding and impassioned, and lingeringly sweet. This was what labour, creation, life itself, was all about. This was like growing to adulthood, when a young person’s dreams are forged into reality, their conflicting emotions resolved in the heat of life’s challenges.

And so the leftie sickle was done. It was a carefully crafted implement, a truly custom-made piece of work, which displayed the blacksmiths’ skills at their finest.

7

Many years later, the village matchmaker Yuan Chunhua was thinking of introducing Joy to Tian Kui. By now, her father, Liu Laosan, and her brother, Happy, were both dead and she was twice-widowed. She had been married to the blacksmith Young Han, and after he died, she married Old Third. Then Old Third died and she moved back to the village with her kid.

‘People say Joy is jinxed,’ Yuan Chunhua warned Tian Kui. ‘Men are scared to marry her. Are you up for it?’

‘Yup!’ said Tian Kui.

Photograph © Getty Images, Paolo Koch, Forge in the Beijing region, 1965