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From the mind of the Newman Prize laureate Han Shaogong comes the tale of a relationship between a virtuoso peasant musician, Old Yin, who is from the rural settlement of Bianshan Cavern, and the county's orchestra conductor, Mr. Liu, who cannot believe what he hears. Could the extraordinary music Yin composes possibly be his own? Who is this Old Yin? Could he be a living master?
Old Yin had a hump on his back, and sitting too long had bunched up the wrinkled cloth, like a curtain drawn long on one side and short on the other, making his formalwear look very odd indeed.
Old Yin, four bamboo chairs on his back, yawned at the bus stop, saw by the sky it was getting late, asked all over for directions before he finally made it to the cultural center, moaning about the weather and the town the whole way.
Old Yin isn't an easy fellow to describe-for instance, his small head is hard to say anything about other than that it's kernel-like; not much can be said about his thick eyebrows, either, other than that they're like knives; his big ears, though, are like fans or sheets of paper, so that's better. Mr. Liu must have been unaccustomed to seeing such a granular head at the cultural center, so he waved his hands, Get out, get out, no one here wants to buy any chairs. What do you think this is, a market?
Old Yin dug out a slip of paper and gave it to Mr. Liu, which put a stop to his shooing.
"You're Maosan Yin?"
"Uh-huh . . ."
"Maosan Yin from Bianshan Cavern?"
"Uh-huh . . ."
"Wait, don't you have another Maosan Yin over there?"
"We do?"
"That's what I'm asking you."
"In the village they call my big brother Herdsman Kuan, and my other big brother Herdsman Yi, and me I get to be Herdsman Yin. I don't like the name, but what can I do?"
He had an innocent face on his small head.
Mr. Liu looked over the meeting notice, black ink on white paper, properly official, and with nothing else to say brought him into the office. The office doorway was on the narrow side, so...