Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today by Howard Goldblatt (Editor)

understand. But they detected the subtle odor of gasoline coming from inside the building. "Children playing with fire!" a woman said in Mandarin.
    Afterward, the northerners were on the bridge, looking down at the river, its green-tinged black water flowing silently beneath them. When debris from upriver floated under the bridge, it bumped against the stone pilings. They spotted a little white sheath floating past and smiled at each other. One kept silent, but the other said, "Well, fuck me." They were still watching the river when they spotted a charred little animal float by, lying heavily in the water as darkness settled in, making it disappear from time to time. One of the northerners pointed to it and said, "What was that?" "It looked like a cat," the other one said.
     
    Translated By Howard Goldblatt

Wang Meng – A String of Choices
    It all began with that toothache of mine. In the beginning, it was just a little nagging pain. At the time, I still believed in medicine as a science, in science leading the way on the path to freedom and happiness, that knowledge is power, and all the rest.
    Believing is acting. Never doubting science, I had bestirred myself and sallied forth the night before to stand in line at the you-know-where. Umbrella over my head, galoshes on my feet, and raincoat wrapped around my shoulders, I stood in the line. I don't remember whether it was a starry night or a drizzling night or if it was pouring bucketfuls. The stronger shock to the nerves always drowns out the weaker. (You'll know what I mean if you keep on reading.) That particular dental clinic was famed far and wide for constructing removable root canals under your cavities. It had been written up in the papers for "exemplary performance," and since then the long lines outside its gates had grown even longer. A mountain-climber friend whom I had always admired offered me his tent and suggested that I install myself outside the registry office, right under its little window slot. He also made me a present of compressed biscuits fortified with vitamins and iron.
    A formidable lady doctor, despite the fact that she did not seem to weigh over one hundred pounds, took custody of me and jabbed a needleful of Novocain into my upper jaw without wasting time on preliminaries. She vanished before I had time to make out if her eyes were double lidded. Following on her heels, a creature whom I deduced to be an intern shoved a coldly glistening pair of pliers into my mouth. From the viewpoint of patients, I would propound the view that interns are the fountainhead of all our woes. On this assumption, I deduced with dead certainty that that particular ultra-efficient muscle-rippling athlete was none other than a blasted intern. "Do you feel anything?" he asked.
    I nodded. Would it be toothache if I didn't? Wasn't it on account of this particular feeling that I had undertaken to quarter myself in front of the registry office? Would anyone be spiritual enough to do it just for the sake of the experience? All living creatures are in possession of the senses, so who among the living would own to being so bereft? And anyway, when a formidable medical personage puts such an awesome question to you, what can you do but nod? One of the golden precepts of life is that nodding your head is always better than shaking it. To be more precise, taking into account all aspects of the problem, I might add that if the question hanging in the balance is whether or not to chop off a head, then shake your head by all means, and let the other head stay on. But as a general principle, I'd say that nodding is always better than shaking.
    And thus he proceeded to pull out my tooth. He pulled at my chin, he pulled at my neck, he pulled at my head, he crashed through my cavities. And why not? It is not for nothing that dentistry here is formally categorized as surgery. It refuses to be designated as tooth extraction but must puff itself up as surgery. Under such a heading, it