Country Driving [123]
The family’s changes seemed especially hard on Cao Chunmei. In the beginning, the pressure of loans and investment weighed on Wei Ziqi, but now business had been stable for two years. He took pride in his rising status—there was a new confidence to the way he moved around the village. But in Sancha a woman rarely occupies that role, and for Cao Chunmei, more customers only meant more work. On busy weekends she rarely left the kitchen; most mornings she woke up to a stack of dirty dishes from the previous night’s guests. She gained little pleasure from the new income, and her contact with outsiders was fleeting. The most important thing they had taught her was religion, but even Buddhism provided uncertain solace. She hated the killing of fish and animals at the restaurant—in the past it hadn’t bothered her, but the more she read about Buddhism, the more she disliked the butchering. If Wei Ziqi was around, he handled this work, but there were times when he was in Huairou on business.
Cao Chunmei told me that she prayed for forgiveness during her morning offerings at the shrine. In the family, she was the only member who didn’t undergo Party-monitored criticisms, and unlike the others she couldn’t take the easy way out, saying that she didn’t work hard enough. Her self-criticisms were sincere: she felt incredible guilt about the meals she served. “If I have to kill a fish or a chicken, I pray for them,” she said. “They’re innocent; they had a good life, but I killed them. So I pray for their souls to be released from purgatory. If I don’t pray for them to be released, then I’m afraid that their souls will come back to punish me.”
She also worried about other spirits around the home. These are old countryside beliefs, older than the recent resurgence of Buddhism, older than the brief fascination with Falun Gong, older than even the Communist revolution. Villagers speak of snake spirits, fox spirits, rabbit spirits, and weasel spirits; any of these animals can inhabit a home and turn it good or bad. Certain individuals have the gift of understanding this world, and the villagers call them mingbairen: clairvoyants. In the old days, a famous clairvoyant lived in Sancha, and people often traveled to see him. If a visitor arrived, the clairvoyant held his wrist, felt his pulse, and spoke in detail about the animal spirits that affected him. Back then, the clairvoyant lived near the Shitkicker’s childhood home, and the boy used to pour tea at the great man’s rituals. But it all ended during the Cultural Revolution, when the Communists intensified their suppression of religion. Eventually, the clairvoyant passed away, and the village was left without a seer.
But religion, like some traditions, began to recover during the Reform years. The crackdown on Falun Gong was an anomaly, and it occurred because the government perceived the organization as a political threat. For the most part, the Communists allowed individuals to seek out faiths, and during the late 1990s and early 2000s the religious climate became more vibrant. Quietly the clairvoyants began to reappear, even in Sancha. Some villagers believed the Shitkicker had such powers—they had rubbed off during his boyhood contact with the local seer. Occasionally a person went to the Shitkicker for analysis, but Cao Chunmei preferred to go elsewhere. She knew a clairvoyant in Huairou who was famous for his gift, and early in 2006 she visited him. He told her that a fox spirit was active in her home, and he advised her to erect a shrine. And so a new ring of incense appeared in the main room, joining the two Buddhist statues, the feral pig fetus, the Johnnie Walker, the infrastructure calendar, the Ming-dynasty cannons, and the photograph of Denver.
A fox spirit can bring unhappiness to a family, and it was true that Cao Chunmei and Wei Ziqi