In Shanbanqiao there was an old resident named Feng Hao, known to all as Mad Feng. He often wandered through the lanes in an oversized, tattered Mao jacket and loose straw sandals. Around his neck hung a dozen or more senior bus cards from neighboring counties and towns, the farthest reaching all the way to Mianzhu. If anyone asked, he would jut out his chin and say, “I use them when I go strolling.” Neighbors also often saw him ambling home with half a jin of rice noodles from Shifang or a bowl of pepper-numbing chicken from Ya’an in hand.
One year, an old friend of Mad Feng’s came to visit and stayed at his house for two days before leaving. Mad Feng’s face turned dark. He fetched brushwood into the room and told the neighbors, “Every bamboo thing in my house has to be burned at once. There will be thick smoke in a moment, but don’t panic. Nothing will happen.” The neighbors were horrified and tried to stop him. “These are old buildings,” they said. “The floors are wooden and the hallways full of flammables. You absolutely cannot light a fire.” Mad Feng paid no attention. Before long a great blaze rose up, sparks flying and black smoke billowing so thick it could be seen from outside the compound. Yet before the fire brigade even arrived, the flames went out on their own. Every bamboo chopstick, basket, and strip in the room had burned to ash, but everything else remained untouched, not even smoke-stained. Half a cigarette in the ashtray by the bed was still sending up a thread of blue smoke.
Another time, some children were selling little crucian carp they had caught in the Sha River at the mouth of the lane. Two city enforcers came over and, without a word, overturned the basin. Fish flopped all over the ground. Mad Feng was furious. He blocked their way and cursed them roundly. One of the enforcers, unable to contain his anger, struck him with a flashlight, drawing blood from Feng’s cheek and arm. Mad Feng sneered at one of them and said, “You hit me fifteen times. You have fifteen days left to live.” To the other he said, “You hit me twice. That earns you two more years.” The pair laughed him off and left. Two weeks later one of them died of a sudden illness. The other, terrified, came to Feng’s door and knocked his head to the ground in apology, but Feng ignored him completely. No one knows what became of him in the end.
During one of the neighborhood censuses, Mad Feng died two or three different times. On one occasion his body had already turned blue and begun to rot, and the coroner was just about to move him when he drew a long breath and came back to life. The community workers were frightened nearly out of their souls every time. Later people heard that Mad Feng had returned to relatives in Langzhong. Not long after, he died there for good. His grave lies not far from the tomb of Lord Huan.