Chapter 41: The Happiness and Pain of Civilization
After six strenuous days, the first vaulted roof was finally complete. To test its load-bearing capacity, Chen Jian stood atop it and stomped vigorously, strutting like a newly enthroned wolf king.
Three hundred pairs of eyes stared at the strange structure, and each saw something different.
Some thought it resembled the full breasts of a nursing mother, which made Chen Jian's presence on top all the more conspicuous. Others saw it as a large, upside-down pottery bowl, or a bulging hill in the distance.
Someone glanced down at his own chest and snickered, which prompted Chen Jian to jump down, lest he be permanently likened to the nipple on the breast.
He asked the young people who had been handing him bricks and mud how much they had learned, but they all just shook their heads. After a long session of Chen Jian's taunts and encouragement, only two of them timidly said they might be able to try.
If you don't try, you will never know if you can succeed. Over the past ten-odd days, Chen Jian had essentially started from scratch, figuring things out little by little.
The finished vault couldn't compare to one made by professional masons, but because of the small span, it was adequate for their needs. The compressive forces of an arched structure meant it was unlikely to collapse inward.
"This one will be for firing pottery, that one for firing bricks. The grass over there is dry, so we'll need to dry the next batch separately."
Chen Jian pointed to the pottery kiln and proposed a new division of labor.
The clansmen agreed that tasks should be divided. For instance, Civet Cat was slow at cutting grass but very fast at laying bricks. Different people required different amounts of time to complete the same job.
Chen Jian decided to assign the same group of people to fire pottery, bricks, and later, charcoal. Only through continuous accumulation of experience and repetition of the same work could their efficiency improve.
The rest of the people would join him in clearing the land for farming. Thus, a difficult choice was placed before the clansmen.
To mix mud or to till the soil, that was the question.
Should they bend their backs to move heavy mud, stirring the dense, sticky clay to shape it into bricks?
Or should they endure the mosquitoes and scorching sun while turning over the black, grassy earth that stretched to the horizon?
Which of the two options was preferable?
If they returned to a life of hunting and living in caves, such problems wouldn't exist. But then, they also couldn't enjoy full meals, sweet milk, and warm kang beds.
From the first day humanity stepped out of the wilderness, they were alienated into laborers within society. The vast majority of people labor only for survival; for a very small minority, their labor and interests are one and the same. Only with the extreme development of productivity can most people unify their interests and their work, making labor their foremost need. This future was too distant to even glimpse.
The happiness and pain of civilization always reside side-by-side. Fortunately, the clansmen had tasted the happiness and had no intention of abandoning the accompanying pain. They stood in twos and threes, choosing their respective places.
Even the visiting guests, after reflecting on the life of their own tribe, felt that this way of life was better.
They hoped that one day they could live the same way. Hua asked Chen Jian how long it would take for his tribe to achieve this life with what they had learned.
Chen Jian smiled and held up two fingers. Of course, Hua didn't think he meant two days, and asked using a newly learned word, "Two months?"
"No, twenty months."
Hua swallowed, too stunned to speak. He couldn't calculate how many days were in twenty months, but he could guess it would be at least until the next time they ate apricots, or even longer.
"But you only took a little more than a month."
The clansmen all laughed. They believed Chen Jian's estimate; if anything, twenty months might be an understatement.
Chen Jian laughed as well, then pulled Yu Qian'er aside and said, "When it comes to building a settlement, she is a better teacher than I am."
Hua looked at the slender Yu Qian'er, shook his head, and said, "I can carry three blocks of mud. How many can she carry?"
"But do you know how much mud is needed for one house? How much wood? How do you transport the wood? How do you distribute the work for maximum speed? How many days will your stored food last? What if your hunters return empty-handed?"
One question after another came from Yu Qian'er in a clear, crisp voice, like summer thunderclaps booming in Hua's ears. He looked back at the finished houses, thinking he had learned everything, only to realize he had learned almost nothing at all.
Chen Jian smiled and stopped Yu Qian'er, who was still talking. He said to Hua, "If you want to live a life like ours, you don't have to start by building houses. Don't build any when you go back. Wait until the next time the apricots ripen. Come back then and see; perhaps the ancestors will guide you on how to live. After all, we all share the same ancestor."
He pointed to his own hair, and Hua nodded obediently, thinking it made sense. Since Chen Jian had said so, he decided he would come back to visit when the apricots were next ripe.
Two days later, Hua and his tribespeople were by the stream, carefully grooming and washing themselves. They tied up their hair, their expressions solemn and serious.
Though they had grown accustomed to everything here, it was time to return home.
A great deal of work had been accomplished in the past two days. Seventeen or eighteen people chose to make bricks, fire pottery, and cut trees for the kiln. A few women who couldn't handle the heavy mud work also went to press bricks. The rest were tying bundles of hay. After a controlled burn of the grassland, they began using hoes to dig up the grass roots, exposing the black soil beneath.
Hua and his people had tried both mixing mud and tilling the soil. Although they were exhausted, they could see the tangible results: mud bricks piled high and a vast expanse of land cleared. They felt their exhaustion was worthwhile.
In the evenings, the weary clansmen would gather to play bone flutes and chat, or men and women from different clans would dance and sing around the fire, their fatigue dissolving with the music.
But Hua's own people had no such nights. All they could talk about was who caught a fish today or who might hunt an animal tomorrow. As for the heart-pounding songs sung between men and women here, that was out of the question—you couldn't very well sing them to your own sisters, aunts, or mother, could you?
This immersive comparison led them all to the same conclusion. Squatting by the stream, looking at his reflection, Hua solemnly inserted a wooden stick into his bound hair, already looking forward to the next time the apricots turned yellow. Chen Jian had said that by then, perhaps the ancestors would show them the way.
After finishing their preparations, they picked up their wicker baskets and bid farewell to the people here.
The old grandmother and Shitou gave Hua some food for the road and sent greetings to their kinsmen.
Chen Jian reminded him once more that he needed plant seeds, as many as possible, and that he would trade anything for them. He told this to everyone who left, so Hua and his tribe already knew and had memorized which seeds to look for.
There would be plenty of acorns in the autumn, so they wouldn't need to use those seeds for food. They could certainly be exchanged.
With everything settled, they followed the Grass River, beginning the step-by-step journey home.
With food in their baskets, there was no need to hunt along the way, which would save a lot of time. Hua believed his clansmen would be overjoyed to receive the clay pots, bowls, bows, arrows, and stone axes.
After walking a long distance, Hua turned to look back at the village in the distance, where people were already bustling with activity.
There were new changes every day, too many surprises to count.
When he arrived, there had been a field of cut grass. Now, a winding ridge of earth hundreds of paces long snaked across it, growing longer each day. The once-empty hillside was now home to a pottery kiln puffing white smoke, firing dozens or even hundreds of pots and bowls daily, with fewer and fewer of them breaking. The gourds that had been wilting when they came had been watered back to life, their long vines now wrapping around support poles to form a wall of emerald green.
For a moment, Hua even entertained the thought of not leaving, of just staying here. He liked this kind of life.
He was startled by this terrible thought and slapped himself hard. The weight on his shoulders was not just clay pots but the expectations of his tribe—and his relatives.
"What will it be like when we come back?" one of his companions wondered.
"Grass seeds ripen quickly," Hua replied. "We'll know when the time comes."
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he thought of warmth and maturity, and took another happy step forward.
He felt he could talk about this experience with his clansmen for a long, long time, and those who came with him could prove he wasn't bragging. Perhaps, the next time the apricots ripened, his people could also live such a life.
Lowering his head, he inadvertently saw his own shadow. The shape of his bound hair was distinct, and he nodded firmly, believing that day would surely come. He was the same as them; they all shared an ancestor.
Every step brought him closer to his loved ones, and the basket on his shoulders seemed much lighter. Before they left, Yu Qian'er had given him some small pottery lambs. She had heard that Hua also had several younger sisters. She had made these herself, so they were hers to give away freely.
Hua imagined his sisters' happy faces when they saw these toys, and he smiled.
"My sisters will definitely fight over this little pottery lamb. But when the apricots turn yellow again, we'll be able to live like that. I'll shape a few for them myself, and make them bigger. Oh, and when the grass seeds are ripe, I'll trade some for a bone flute and learn to play it well…"
Lost in thought, he couldn't help but shout toward the distant mountains where his relatives lived in their cave.
The clansmen around him let out similar cries. They knew they were still too far away to be seen, but they wanted their families to know they were coming home.
Their continuous shouts merged into a single roar, like the Grass River during a flood. It scared away the birds but received no response from their tribe.
"Maybe they're out picking green peaches?" Hua thought.
As he crested the final hillside, he saw no trace of his clansmen. Instead, a few wolves watched them from a distance.
Hua's heart sank. He threw down his basket, grabbed a stone axe, and rushed down the slope with his companions.
The wolves cowered and fled. A foul stench wafted from the cave. Hua smelled it and collapsed to the ground, his legs unable to support him.
After a long time, he called out to his wailing tribesmen, took a stone axe, and walked into the cave where he had once lived.
Countless flies buzzed up into the air. Hua nearly tripped over something. He took a deep breath and looked down. His sister lay at his feet, her hands outstretched as if she had been crawling. Her back and abdomen had been torn open. A massive wound gaped on her head—not from an animal's bite, but from the crushing blow of a stone tool.
Dense white maggots writhed on her body, and a trail of blood stretched out behind her small form. The exposed flesh had begun to decay, covered in a layer of gray mold, her skin sunken.
With trembling hands, Hua steadied himself against the stone wall, his body shaking as he took in the scene inside the cave.
The place where he was born and raised was gone forever.
Next to a shattered clay pot lay the corpse of a clan elder. Beside him was his younger brother. A charred tuber still sat in the ashes of the fire pit.
Blood had soaked into the stone floor, leaving traces of a struggle. A broken, featherless arrow lay on the ground, tipped with an animal bone arrowhead. It was not from their tribe; their arrows had feathers.
Most of the corpses in the cave were elders and children. Everything he had been looking forward to had been reduced to nothing. Several blood-stained footprints led out of the cave. All the useful items were gone—even the broken clay pot had most of its fragments taken.
Several broken stone axes lay on the ground, bound in a way his tribe did not use. Dark, dried blood stained their edges.
Frantically, Hua picked up one of the broken axes and rushed outside. He raised it high and smashed it against a rock again and again, shattering it to pieces, until his strength gave out and he collapsed on the ground, sobbing loudly.
The remaining clansmen climbed the tallest trees, howling into the distance, frantically calling the names of those whose bodies they had not found. They called over and over, long into the night, until their voices grew hoarse and the branches beneath them snapped.
The cries of seven or eight survivors echoed through the valley, turning familiar names into disembodied sounds that drifted over every place they had once picked apricots and dug for fern roots. But there was no reply.
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