wrinkled features of Old Zang where he sat on the weathered bench
outside the house, leaning forward slightly on his cane. He was often
up with the sun these days to enjoy the dawn, knowing he would not have
so many more he could afford to waste them. But instead of making him
sad, the thought made him angry.
This day seemed somehow sharper than normal. His clouded sight was
clearer, his hearing keener, and even the wan rays upon his skin felt
somehow more intense than usual.
Old Zang had but recently moved to the village of Daru. A mere dozen
years or so ago, a blink of an eye for a man his age, he had been
forced to leave his real home, which was flooded by the monstrous dam
project that forever altered the face of China's rivers. At
ninety-four, he had outlived his wife, several of his children, and
even a few of his grandchildren, and he did not like it here, staying
with one of the grandchildren he had not outlived. Oh, his room was
comfortable enough, the bed soft--not an inconsequential thing when
one's bones were as old as his--but the village was a mud hole of a
place and not where one wished to depart from the Earth to join one's
ancestors.
On the mainland across the stormy Formosa Strait from Taiwan, on the
coast just north of Quanzhou, Daru was peopled with many elderly
residents, some victims of the cursed dam, such as himself, some who
had actually lived and grown old here. Save for a few younger souls,
fishermen mostly, it was a place of old men and women waiting to die.
Thinking about his forced relocation brought Zang to anger again, and
this time, the rage seemed to fill him with a hot glow, from his feet
to his face, staining red even his thoughts. How dare they do such a
thing? The foolish communists who saw everything in terms of their
immoral philosophy had ruined the country in but half a lifetime. He
had hoped to live long enough to see the children of Mao plowed under,
but he was beginning to realize it was not to be. And this angered him
even more.
He was old, old! He had worked hard all his long life, and what was
his reward? To be shunted to a half-wit grandson's home in a mud hole
village unfit for pigs? It was not right.
Zang gripped the heavy cane tightly, and the veins in his hands stood
out to join the tendons and gnarled arthritic joints under paper-thin
and brown-spotted skin. His rage enveloped him like a silkworm's
cocoon, warming his chilly flesh. No, it was not right!
His sow of a granddaughter, only thirty-four and already so fat she
could hardly waddle, lumbered up the graveled path to stand in front of
him, her doughy hands on her massive hips, blocking the sun. She said,
'Why are you out here again. Grandfather Zang? You will catch
pneumonia! I would be happy if you did and died, but Ming-Yang would
be distressed, and I will not have it!
Get up and come inside, right now!'
The sow seemed fairly angry herself, which was unlike her. Usually she
was merely torpid. Dense as a post and twice as stupid, Zang
reflected, and the best his idiot grandson Ming could do for himself. A
