China in English: perception is an act of translation. We also use what we cannot understand.

1. Shun's younger brother made some money from exporting knockoff clothing, but refused to share it with his family.  Shun's parents lived well enough, but his father was obstinate and his mother was worse.  They always complained he should do more to care for them.  Unable to make his way in the big city, Shun got a job as a streetcleaner, and was given a green uniform, bamboo broom and trashpail.  When he came to sweep the street, stray dogs and cats called out salutations, carried his broom for him, emptied his pail and returned it.  Fish swimming in tanks in front of restaurants leapt into his hands as he passed.  Frogs hopped in their plastic pails; snakes in cages slowly coiled and uncoiled themselves.  In just one day he received many complaints, and was promptly incarcerated.

2. Liu Heng was unable to sleep for three years.  He insisted on taking his elderly mother's medication, refused to change his clothes and took copious notes on his quotidian activities, in addition to a number of other strange behaviors.  His mother wanted him to visit the hospital, but Liu Heng refused.  He insisted the situation was under control.  His mother then told him her medicine was no longer working and that she needed a new prescription.  He took her to the hospital and asked the doctors to examine her.  They told him she was in good health, but her son was an obsessive-compulsive neurotic insomniac.

3. Zeng Shen went every day to the city landfill.  He gathered cardboard and plastic, bottles and cans, half-empty cosmetics and used consumer electronics.  One day while he was climbing through the mountains of trash, he felt a sharp pain in his heart.  He hurried home to find his mother with a cut finger.  He asked her what happened.  She told him someone had given her unfinished chicken wings from a restaurant, and she had bitten her finger by mistake.  Zeng Shen poured the remaining grease on some rice.  He ate this way every day.

4. Min Sun lost his mother when he was young.  They had come from Taiwan to live on the mainland as his father built up his business.  This business had become successful, and his father remarried a young mainlander, who bore two more sons.  Min Sun's father let her do as she pleased.  Now that this woman had a husband with money, she left her friends and dressed in anything that looked expensive.  She went to her husband's company to instruct the staff, although she knew little about their activities, and nothing about management.  The staff determined she was a threat to the company and contrived a means to get rid of her.  First, they talked with Min Sun about his feelings.  Then they paid his stepmother's domestic helper and Min Sun's instructor to tell his father that he had been sent to school that winter without a hat and jacket like his brothers.  Hearing this filled his father with rage, and he asked Min Sun if it was true.  Min Sun said it was better to have one cold child than three.  These words moved his father to tears.  His stepmother never again dared to be so arrogant.  She recognized she had made dangerous enemies.

5. Zhong You began hauling boxes in a factory.  He then became foreman, section head, departmental manager and ultimately board member, all through connections developed by his parents.  As he sat in the boardroom, thinking about the suppliers and government officials he had to entertain, which ones he needed to meet for golf, which gifts he should bring and whom he would have to go drinking with that evening, he remembered how simple his life had been as a factory hand, and sighed.

6. Dong Yong lacked the funds to bury his father.  He made an oath to a local gangster in order to borrow the money.  After the ceremony, he left to go work in the city.  On the train, a young woman approached him and asked if he needed a wife.  He said yes.  When they arrived, two men from the gang were waiting at the station.  They asked about the woman.  Dong Yong told them he did not know her.  They agreed not to tell their boss.  The three of them sold the woman to a farmer's family from an inland village and split the money.

7. After Mr. Tan made his fortune selling printer's ink, he discovered his parents had immoderate taste.  They rapidly amassed a collection of ceramic statuettes, scholar's rocks, carvings, teatables and other artefacts, to fill the villa he had bought alongside a golf course.  One day, inside a store for expensive medicine, Mr. Tan heard the clerk mention that deer milk was a very good way to improve one's vision.  Since the eyesight of both his parents was failing, he decided to acquire some.  Mr. Tan brought two friends to visit a man outside the city, who maintained a herd of deer which he sold for their meat.  When Mr. Tan discovered one was lactating, he offered to buy it.  The man refused, saying he didn't need the money.  Mr. Tan reiterated his interest at gunpoint, and promptly got what he wanted.

8. Jiang Ge was a bang bang man.  All day, he carried things from place to place.  At night, he and his mother shared part of a walkway under a bridge.  Once a week, the police would move through the area, demanding that anyone staying there offer them a payment.  In order to save money, Jiang Ge would take his mother on his back and carry her with him all night, so she could sleep.  He could not stop to rest anywhere in the neighborhood, out of fear of the police.  In the morning, he returned to work as usual.

9. When Lu Ji was six years old, he arrived at school without his bag.  When his teacher asked why, he informed her it had been stolen.  After class, she took him to the local police station.  The adults discussed how terrible it was to have stolen from a child.  During their talk, Lu Ji found some oranges on a table, and put a number of them in his pockets.  When it came time to leave, they were clearly visible under his blue uniform.  One officer laughed, and asked if he wanted to steal from the police.  Lu Ji replied that his mother was fond of oranges, and he had taken them for her.  The police and his teacher agreed he was a very nice child.

10. Madame Zhangshun had no teeth.  She claimed her hands were too weak to feed herself, clean her face or comb her own hair.  After her daughter-in-law had given birth, Madame Zhangshun observed her grandson growing fat on his mother's milk.  She complained to her neighbors, who contacted the authorities.  The woman refused to nurse her mother-in-law, and was sentenced to eight months in prison.  Madame Zhangshun later proved herself able to handle the arrangement of her own death.

11. Wu Meng made a fortune selling mosquito repellent.  He built a little villa in his home town for his parents, and paid a maid to tend to their needs.  He did not want them to know how much money he had, or where it had come from, so he did not send his company's repellent to them.  He instructed the maid to buy black coils of cheap material that produced a foul-smelling smoke.  His parents were quite satisfied.  They were unaware of any better alternative.

12. Wang Xiang shipped fish.  He was paid by the government to stock the river and monitor the water quality.  He also accepted payments from a number of factories to ensure their activities did not cause it to deteriorate.  The government wanted the number of fish to increase, so he sent them a higher number.  The government certified the water quality of the river and placed an official limit on the number of fish to be shipped, so he increased both his sales and his price.  His buyers all felt lucky to get what was available.  Every day, he had two big fish packed in ice and sent to his mother.

13. Guo Ju dealt with developers.  When they needed clearance to break new ground,  they delivered gifts to two different accounts: one in the name of his mother, the other his 3-year-old son.  He liked to visit sites the developers were excavating both to remind them of his presence and to watch himself make money.

14. When he was fourteen years old, Yang Xiang got his father out of prison.  The man had been selling the pelts of endangered species on the street.  Yang Xiang went by himself to the local mafia chieftain, and offered a tiger hide in exchange for his father's freedom.  He promised delivery only upon his father's release.  The chieftain threatened him with death if he failed to deliver.  For six days, the mafia boss had Yang followed and even beaten up once, but was unable to learn where he had hidden the skin.  On the night his father left prison, Yang did not tell them where to pick up his payment.  He delivered it himself.

15. When he was seven years old, Zhu Shouchang's mother remarried.  He remained with his father, who pursued a career in one of the big coastal cities.  Many years later, after his father had found him a management position with a foreign corporation, he received a letter from Shanxi that his mother's husband had died, asking him to pay for the ceremony.  He approached his wife and both of his girlfriends for advice.  They all said to forget it.

16. Yu Qianlou's father was sick.  The doctor recommended he should taste his father's waste, to determine whether it was bitter or sweet.  Yu replied he would sooner die, and was sentenced to five years in prison.  The cost of his father's medical care was taken out of his savings.

17. Old man Lai was always popular.  He had a rubber face and could impersonate any radio or television personality, in addition to those around him.  When his land was sold to the city government, he spent his days amusing himself and his friends by cracking jokes and telling stories.  He loved to talk about the lifestyle he would have if only he could sell more land.  Once a month, he would visit his parents at the geriatric care facility.

18. Cai Shun owned a number of mulberry fields.  When the government came to take his land for a factory, his mother convinced an official to halt the process with an offer of fresh berries.  Their best fruits were then given away; Cai and his mother sold the remainder at a cut-rate price and ate what they were unable to sell.

19. Huang Xiang bought an air conditioner for his father's apartment.  He had it fastened to the wall directly above the bed.  Everyone was very impressed that this particular unit produced both hot and cold air; most produced only cold.  Many years later, old man Huang still talked about how good his son was to have given him this.  They had not seen each other for years.

20. Madame Jiang preferred the water from her home town.  She lived in the city with her son Jiang Shi and daughter-in-law, Jiang Pang.  Jiang Shi often had to travel for his work.  When Jiang Pang wanted time for herself, she would tell her mother-in-law she was going back to their home town to visit her family.  In fact, she never went there.  She had another lover from Hong Kong.  Each time Jiang Pang returned, she presented her mother-in-law with a large bottle of water that she said was from their home town.  Madame Jiang was very happy.  Jiang Pang was later found out by her husband after he talked with an old classmate, and learned that the water in their home town had been ruined years ago by runoff from a local factory.  Jiang Shi and his wife agreed not to tell his mother.

21. Wang Pou's mother was afraid of thunder.  After she died, her remains were buried on a wooded hillside overlooking the city.  When he saw thunder coming, Wang Pou would drive to the site to comfort his mother.  The surrounding land was soon slated for development.  Every day, trucks and other heavy equipment passed by the hillside.  When Wang Pou went to visit his mother, he could feel the ground shake as he knelt beside her grave.  He did not visit again until Qingming Jie.

22. Ding Lan's parents died when he was still an infant.  Initially living in an orphanage, he spent his adolescence as an apprentice in a woodcarver's studio, where he learned to carve wooden statues.  He had sexual relations with a girl working there as a cook, and the pair were compelled to leave.  They took some of his carvings and moved to the city, where they shared a small apartment.  Ding Lan sold his work to antique and curio dealers, and the girl found a job in a restaurant.  They later got married.  One day, a curio shop owner found dried blood on the face and hands of one of Ding Lan's statues.  She contacted the police, who visited him and asked about his wife's whereabouts.  Ding Lan said they were divorced, and that she had returned to her hometown.  She had stopped her restaurant job without notice two weeks previously.  One officer noticed blood on the apartment wall.  It came out that Ding Lan had beaten his wife to death for smiling at another man.

23. Meng Zong's mother was very ill.  It was the middle of winter, and she had a deep fever.  She was unable to keep down solid food, and kept asking for soup made from bamboo shoots.  Although these were not in season, Meng Zong managed to find some imported at a local store.  He took them home and prepared soup for his mother.  As she ate it, she repeatedly said how good it tasted.  When she had finished, she went to sleep.  The next day, his mother recovered.  She got out of bed, dressed herself and sang to herself as she tended their small collection of potted plants.  That evening, Meng Zong and his mother had a pleasant dinner together.  She seemed very happy.  After dinner, he helped her to bed, and massaged her feet so she could sleep better.  In the morning, Meng Zong went to his mother's room to check on her before leaving for work.  She never awoke.

24. Huang Tingjian held a position in the city government.  When his elderly mother became incontinent, he moved her to a state-run facility, which he covered with his departmental budget.  He frequently visited her, and the staff all told her how lucky she was to have such an attentive son.  Huang Tingjian was later arrested for having embezzled a large sum of money, half of which he had spent on his habit of gambling.  His daughter remained in the United States, living from her trust fund.