Binu and the Great Wall of China Read Online Free PDF

slope watched as Binu returned with a gourd in her arms and a frog hopping along behind her. They laughed at the sight. ‘Binu, Binu, why are you carrying that gourd? Where is the horse you hired? And why are you bringing a frog home with you?’
    Binu was used to being mocked by her fellow villagers, but the frog found the malicious attitude intolerable and bounded into a pond to escape. Binu continued to walk home again, alone now. As she passed unperturbed below the slope, lifting up her wet skirts with one hand and clutching the gourd with the other, she felt as if she were passing a grove of stupid mulberry trees. She could sense the biting, venomous glares of the young Peach Village women, who, now that autumn had passed, were no longer friendly and caring. Their men had all gone up north, leaving behind a lonely, empty village, and these women were faced with a cruel and unforgiving world. Binu had become used to living in isolation, and to the way the Peach Village women looked at her with cold, questioning eyes. The husbands of both Jinyi, a mushroom reborn as a woman, and Qiniang, who had come from pot ashes, had been taken the same day as Qiliang, yet these women were unwilling to travel north with her. Possibly, the prediction of the Kindling Village sorceresses had instilled in them a fear of dying on theroad while searching for their husbands, and they were afraid of coming back as a mushroom or a pinch of pot ashes. Binu was unafraid. She had picked the last gourd from the mulberry tree and brought it home, intending to find a good spot to bury it and bury herself. Her lack of fear seemed to cast doubt upon Jinyi’s and Qiniang’s chastity and love for their husbands, inciting their wrath. So when Binu passed by Qiniang’s shack, Qiniang came running after her to spit at her; and when Binu passed by Jinyi and smiled, she was rewarded with a spiteful glare and a contemptuous taunt, ‘Who do you think you’re smiling at, madwoman?’
    Binu ignored the hatred directed at her by others, because it was nothing compared with the love she felt for Qiliang. Back home she prepared the gourd for washing. First she removed the lid of the water vat; the ladle was missing. ‘Who took my ladle?’ she shouted.
    ‘The pig herder, Sude, took it,’ someone outside replied. ‘He said that, since you are going to Great Swallow Mountain, he would take your ladle for his own use. He would have an extra ladle for the house down below when he returns in a day or two.’
    ‘In that case, if he’s so smart,’ said Binu, ‘why didn’t he take my water vat too?’
    The person replied, ‘Didn’t you bring a gourd homewith you? After you cut it in half and scoop out the insides, you’ll have two more ladles!’
    Binu refrained from revealing what she had in mind for this last gourd. Why should she, since they would only laugh at her, saying: Do you think that burying a gourd will save you? You’ll still die on the road and be unburied! She bent over to check the pumpkins behind the water vat, and discovered that only two of the five remained. ‘Who stole my pumpkins?’ she shouted.
    ‘There’s no need to say it like that,’ the person outside replied. ‘Stolen indeed! You are going to leave, after all. You can’t eat all those pumpkins, and you can’t take them with you, so why not give them away?’
    After calming down, Binu moved the two remaining pumpkins outside. ‘I might as well put them out here myself,’ she said, ‘then you people don’t need to continue being tempted by what belongs to me. Qiliang grew these pumpkins, the plumpest and sweetest in all of Blue Cloud Prefecture. Whoever wants to eat them, go ahead, but remember that they were grown by my Qiliang!’
    After giving away her pumpkins, Binu had knelt on the floor and begun cleaning the gourd when a distant nephew, Xiaozhuo, whose head was covered with scabies, burst in through the door and shouted, ‘What do you think you’re doing,