Chinese Literature

I'll bring it to the Administration myself after the harvest. Thanks for

coming. It’s our duty to pay...” Yun-pu replied, smiling. Unless the dykes were repaired, it would not be possible to prevent a flood next year.

The chia chang* also came to contact Uncle Yun-pu in the name of the director of the Security Bureau. ‘Uncle Yun-pu, you pay 8.40 dollars security tax this year. The Bureau has already sent down a notice.”

“Why so much, Chief?’

“We're collecting for two years. Did you pay last year?”

“Oh! Last year! All right, I'll send it over by and by.”

“There’s also a patriotic tax of 5.72, and an anti-communist tax of 3.07 dollars.”

“Oh! And what are these taxes for, Chief?”

“Bah, old man, you’re so old you’re quite muddle-headed. Are you still in the dark at a time when the Japanese have already reached Peking? The money will be used to buy arms to save the country and to fight the communist bandits, stupid!”

“T know, I know. ... I —T'll send it over.”

Uncle Yun-pu was not worried, was not going to let such petty sums of money bother him. He would reap a huge harvest and in four or five days his pockets would be lined with gold. What was there for him to worry about?

VII

Yun-pu now felt that his disobedient eldest son was his one great disappointment in life. Whenever work reached a critical stage, Li-chiu was always absent from home. This made Uncle Yun-pu so mad that he would pace the room in fury. He could never find out what his son did outside. The lad would go out early in the morning and would not come back even by midnight. The sound of threshing had begun all around them and their grain was already so ripe and golden that it would fall off by itself unless it was reaped soon. ‘That dog, away from home all day. He doesn’t care how urgent the work is at home.”

Now he was forced to go out and hire a team of harvesters. He cursed roundly as he walked towards the main dyke. The sun was just right. It would indeed be a pity not to get the grain reaped and threshed. Ordinarily, when Li-chiu was home, the father and sons could have managed as a three-man harvesting team. But with Li-chiu away, Uncle Yun-pu had to go to the dyke and hire professional harvesters who came from outside the locality.

Most of these harvesters came from Hsianghsiang and around there.

*Head of ten households under the Kuomintang regime,

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