Enbo was turned back early on the fifth day of his journey. On the tenth day, he was back in Ji village. When he pushed open the door of his house unannounced and unceremoniously, his family lifted their eyes as one, obvious surprise on their faces. He gave up an embarrassed laugh and sat down next to the fire.
"Did you eat all your flat-cakes?" his wife asked him.
"They blocked my path. I don't have a permit, and apparently if you don't have a permit you can't just up and go wherever you feel like." Enbo didn't answer her question.
After a brief silence, Grandma Er Chiang added her input:
"Well, what about your flat-cakes?"
"They all fell into a river."
"Did you fall in the river?"
"The flat-cakes, the flat-cakes fell in the river," he replied sullenly, then, in a quieter voice: "deaf old woman."
"You always were fond of falling over when you were little," Er Chiang concluded.
The men of Ji village found Enbo's misadventure a hilarious source of entertainment. Jokes would start with someone saying:
"Fuck, I really feel like going off on a long journey."
This provided the queue for the next participant, who would say:
"Bullshit, you don't have a permit!"
Then, everyone around would roll about in uproarious laughter. Everyone except Enbo, that is. These jokes were often staged in the doorway of the grandiosely named Village Supply and Marketing Cooperative, which in reality was just a section of the production team's storehouse that had a window facing out onto the square. Granted, it wasn't just a window—there were shutters too, but this was the extent of the cooperative. The manager was a Han Chinese man named Yang Mazi, who in the past had been a small-time wandering peddler. His work had mostly consisted of selling needles and thread in mountain villages, where he'd pick up some medicinal herbs and furs for his return journey. Wherever he went, his prized metal abacus went, too. Like Gela and Sangdan, he was a person of unknown background; the only thing the villagers remembered about his arrival was that he was followed not more than a few seconds later by the People's Liberation Army. The army's arrival marked the end of an era of unrestricted travel, so Yang Mazi was stuck there, his peddling days over. He'd already been in Ji village for well over ten years by this point, which was a source of great surprise for him.
Eventually, the commune authorities decided to establish a Supply and Marketing Cooperative in Ji village. For the success of this venture, they needed a manager who was literate and able to handle the accounts. The village leaders favoured the former monk Jamcan Gonbo, but he refused to take them up on their offer. In the end, two people came forward to contest the position: first was Zhang Lobsang, the only man in the whole village with a scales. This came as no surprise to the people of the village. The second contestant was Yang Mazi with his old abacus. Yang Mazi emerged victorious over Zhang Lobsang, so from then on, it was his job to take the village's horse cart to the commune once a month to load up on supplies. On his return, he would open a shop in the window of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative. His customers were the women of the village, who came to buy tea, salt, and a small amount of sewing gear. With business handled, the men would sit down in a circle to drink their monthly ration of grain wine; just over three ounces per man. In the past, the people of Ji village all brewed their own grain wine at home, but nowadays all grain was put in the storehouse as communal property which was eventually taken away on horse carts. When the carts returned, they brought with them the three ounce monthly grain wine ration. Three ounces was hardly worth taking home, so instead the men would sit in a circle outside in the square and polish it off then and there.
Though Enbo used to be a monk, he'd already taken a wife and thus broken the precept against sexual relations. So he reasoned it couldn't do any harm to break another one by having a drink; maybe it would relieve a little bit of the depression that had settled on him of late. Enbo was not a graceful drinker; his face would immediately flush bright red once the first few mouthfuls of wine were in his belly, while beneath his handsome eyebrows, his bright, spirited eyes would rapidly devolve into a mess of red veins, out of which shone a malevolent light. He no longer looked like a follower of the Buddha. Initially, the other men were afraid of the evil glow in his eyes, but Enbo did nothing more harmful than ramble incoherently for a moment and grin foolishly, about what, it wasn't clear.
Today, it was this month's wine drinking day. The drinkers, all men, arrived in the square where they sat down one by one, quickly forming a big circle. The wine was poured into an enamel jug which was decorated with a picture of Tiananmen Gate. By the time the jug had made it once around the circle, the wine it held was gone. Ji counted around twenty families, meaning the alcohol ration was only enough for somewhere between thirty and forty cups in total. For many of the men, this was not enough to satisfy their craving. But for Enbo, ten gulps were perfectly adequate to send him spiralling. Today, Zhang Lobsang was in the seat of honour; when he passed the cup back to Enbo for the second time, he gave a word of advice, too:
"Don't drink too much this time, you're already drunk anyway."
But Enbo paid no attention, and opened his grinning mouth to take a deep swig.
Zhang Lobsang was not impressed:
"Fuck, I know you're drunk already, but don't you have sense enough to stop when you've had enough?"
Enbo's mood took a turn for the worse—he squared up to Zhang Lobsang, the foolish grin gone, and said:
"Maybe if you knew how to stop when you've said enough, I'd know how to stop when I've drunk enough."
Zhang Lobsang jerked his arm up to grab Enbo by the collar; Enbo did the same.