Snake Stories (standard:other, 3713 words)
Author: Mookoo Liang	Added: Apr 05 2007	Views/Reads: 3379/2728	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
I hadn't seen or thought of snakes in a long time. However, when the winter vacation was approaching and my cousin's close friend Chang-Chong suddenly appeared in Wufeng, I was forced to start thinking about those mysterious awful creatures again.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

"Yes," both Shixiong and Shijie replied. 

My interest in those good old days was aroused. I asked Shixiong some
personal questions and learned that he was born and grew up in Nantou 
County, the identical region where I spent my happy childhood. He and I 
had experienced the same lifestyle in those remote villages in the 
mountains many years ago. For example, we were barefooted most of the 
time; we went fishing in the brooks, hunting in the woods; we saw 
different kinds of snakes, and killed some of them. 

I shared with Shixiong and Shijie how I killed snakes. I was proud of
myself when I recalled my "heroic" actions in those years. In fact, I 
had killed a dozen snakes before I was twelve. My principle was: If I 
was not very sure I could succeed in killing a snake in front of me, I 
would rather let it go, quietly. I thought that a snake once hurt by a 
human being would become savage and cruel. It would repay anyone in the 
way a deadly attack! 

"You killed snakes, Mr. Liang?" Shijie asked me, in a tone suggesting
that she didn't believe me. 

"I did. I did!" I said. 

"But you're a very gentle man!" said Shijie. 

"Well, I was not, then." I laughed. 

*  *  * 

Lying on a specially designed single bed, I was receiving the
traditional medical treatment called "wen-jiu" in Chinese. 

My wife, who says that my health needs some sort of maintenance, had
wanted me to come to Shixiong and Shijie for the wen-jiu treatment. I 
was reluctant to come at first, but then I became more and more 
interested in coming. As my wife proclaimed, Shijie and her husband 
(Shixiong) were really the best wen-jiu doers in the Dali-Wufeng area. 
Presently, my wife took the treatment twice a week and I came every 
Monday evening. 

When Shixiong and Shijie were "massaging" me (from head to foot) with
two pairs of jiu-sticks, they kept on chatting with me, on a wide 
variety of topics. 

"How are you going to spend your winter vacation?" asked Shijie. 

"Winter vacation?" I replied. "It's so short---only three weeks plus an
addition week for the Chinese-New-Year holidays. But I'll have to go to 
work all day, you know, except one week just before the 
Chinese-New-Year holidays. During that week I'll have to work every 
morning, and take turns to be on guard in the afternoon." 

"Is it because you are Dean of Students?" 

"Well, besides the school administrators, many teachers are asked to
teach during the vacation as well." 

"So school teaching is now very different from it was in the past,"
Shijie seemed to have understood. 

I assured her and her husband that times had been changing rapidly. "For
example," I explained, "in the past, elementary-school students all 
over the country used the same textbooks, so-called 'standard edition,' 
so everyone was taught the same stories such as 'The old man Yu Gong 
moves a mountain,' 'Sun Shu-ao kills a double-head snake,' and 'The 
story of Yue Fei.' But now, many different versions of the text are 
available. Well, apart from the wider generation gap, people on this 
island appear to have much less in common." 

Shixiong said, "It's a pity for a society to have little 'common
language.'" 

"Mr. Liang!" Shijie put in. "You said your father speaks the Hakka
dialect and your mother speaks Taiwanese. What's the common language in 
your home?" 

"They're bilingual," I said, smiling. "But neither of them speaks
Mandarin or English!" 

*  *  * 

Sun Shu-ao, lived in Chu, one of the well-known "states" during the
Chunqiu period (770-476 BC) in the Chinese history. 

Sun was born in a poor family. His mother, a very kind woman, taught him
to be good and kind to others. When Sun was ten years old, one day he 
saw a snake with two heads crawling on the footpath. He remembered what 
he'd been told: "Whoever sees a double-head snake will die soon in no 
more than three days." The boy was extremely scared and sad. Then, 
suddenly, he found himself obligated to save others from seeing such an 
ill-omened thing. He lifted a stone and killed the creature, which he 
buried deep before returning home. As he wept sadly and told his mother 
the story, his mother comforted him, saying, "You've done a very good 
job! Being such a smart and kind-hearted boy, you'll by no means be 
cursed, anyway." 

Years later, Sun became a successful man. He took the high post of
lingyin (that is, prime minister) in the state of Chu. And he was a 
good and kind and able official who was highly respected by people. 

*  *  * 

Shixiong, Shijie, and I---all of us remembered the above story, one of
the inspiring stories we had learned in the core subject "Guo Yu" 
(national language) in elementary school. 

We were all from the same background. We had quite a lot to share with
each other. Speaking of venomous snakes, Shixiong and Shijie said they 
had once found a very long yusanjie (banded umbrella snake) in the 
kitchen. I told them that fifteen years ago our study had also been 
intruded into by a guikehua (turtle-designed snake). 

It was early in the morning. My son Tony, a second-grader then, walked
into the study for his schoolbag. He didn't switch on the light. He 
just sensed that there was something moving in the room. "Dad, dad, 
come quick!"---When I heard him call, I rushed into the room and saw a 
guikehua beside the wooden bookcase in the corner. I asked my wife for 
a stick. She came quickly with a rattan cane. But I failed to take the 
snake with that cane because it was thin and soft. The snake crawled 
into a narrow gap between the wall and the wooden furniture. It never 
cropped up again. 

That guikehua's intrusion might have left a deep scar on my son. From
then on, he repeatedly dreamed that he was surrounded by tens or 
hundreds of snakes. 

As for me, my permanent memories include the accident that a guikehua
bit my father on the foot when I was small. (That was my first time to 
help kill a snake. I really hated the guikehua that attacked my 
father!) 

Besides unpleasant experiences as above, I shared something enjoyable
with Shixiong and Shijie. When I was small, my grandmother, an 
excellent storyteller, told me a number of snake stories. She retold 
the local folktale "She Langjun" (snake husband) and the Chinese legend 
"Baishe Zhuan" (Lady White Snake) for many times. These stories were 
familiar to Shixiong and Shijie as well, who regarded them as the most 
beautiful snake stories in the world. 

"What would you say about the serpent in the Bible?" 

"Is Satan the cause of the original sin?" 

Shixiong and Shijie knew that I was a Christian, and they were curious
about how I looked at Satan from my point of view. I was eager to talk 
about the Christian faith, but it was no easy job for me to explain 
such things as "Satan and the original sin." 

As a matter of fact, Shixiong and Shijie were very religious. They were
both devout Buddhists. 

*  *  * 

Here is a Zen story about the snake: 

One day, the tail of a snake said angrily to the snake¡¦s head, "I
should be moving ahead of you." The head replied, "Usually I go first. 
How come you have such a peculiar idea?" Without paying attention to 
the tail, the head kept on going ahead. The tail was unwilling to 
follow; instead, it stuck itself to the trunk of a tree, trying to 
stand up to the head. The head pulled the tail forcefully, but in vain. 
Eventually, the head gave in and let the tail go in front of it. The 
tail was so happy to win the "long struggle" that it started moving as 
fast as possible in the direction that it regarded as "ahead." 

However, the tail failed to see the way ahead---it had no eyes at all.
It led the whole of the snake into a fiery pit just beside the road. 
What a poor snake! It was killed right in there! 

*  *  * 

Shijie raised a question after she finished telling the above story. "Do
you think there was such a crazy snake somewhere?" 

"Of course, this is just a fable," Shixiong smiled. "One of the
interpretations that I've heard is this: You may take the snake's head 
and tail as two kinds of people, one being smarter (or wiser) than the 
other. The leaders of a society should be wise; otherwise the whole 
society would be brought into a dreadful disaster!" 

"I agree!" I quoted from the Bible, saying, "When one blind man leads
another, both fall into a ditch." [Mathew 15:14b, purposely quoted out 
of context.] 

"Another interpretation," Shixiong continued, "sounds more sensible to
me: You may take the head and tail as two different types of mental 
power, that is, good and evil, wise and foolish, healthy and ill. From 
time to time man has some sort of conflict in himself. Am I right?" 

"You can say that again, Shixiong!" I was excited to hear him comment.
He was a good interpreter of Zen stories. He must have got an intimate 
knowledge of Buddhism. 

Suddenly, Shijie had a special idea. "If there were such a crazy snake
[as in the Zen story], it would be suffering from 'split personality.'" 


"Well, it's hard to say!" Shixiong responded, "But suffering from some
sort of mental disorder, anyway." 

*  *  * 

My wife had told me that Shixiong and Shijie were very devout Buddhists.
Indeed, they were strict vegetarians, eating neither meat nor fish. 
They lived very, very simply. They held fast to the religious 
disciplines that teach them to refrain from tan, chen, chi---that is, 
greed, anger, and stupidity. 

I found some similar teachings in the book of Proverbs, and I remembered
St. Paul's teachings on faith, hope, and love---called "xin, wang, ai" 
in Chinese. I told Shixiong and Shijie that according to St. Paul, 
"love" is the greatest of the three. 

"Mr. Liang, what's sanwei-yiti?" Shijie asked me to explain the Trinity.


"It refers to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spririt." 

"When I was small, I often heard my mother say sanwei-yiti. She talked
about it quite often, but I haven't understood it up to now." 

I was surprised to learn that Shijie was from a semi-Christian family.
Actually, she was a daughter of her aboriginal parents. She converted 
to Buddhism when she got married with Shixiong. (My wife says she 
converted to Christianity just for me!) 

"No matter what kind of religion you follow," Shixiong seriously said,
"follow it with all your heart and with all you mind. In this way, 
you¡¦ll gain, or accomplish, a perfect life: a life of zhen (truth), 
shan (goodness), and mei (beauty). Am I right?" 

I didn¡¦t say "I agree," but I agree to pursue a true, good, and
beautiful life. I argued that such a zhen-shan-mei life could be 
diagramed as a triangle, with three "corners" representing "zhihui" 
(wisdom), "aixin" (love), and "jiankang" (health) respectively. And I 
formulated my ideas in a few words: "Without wisdom, one cannot find 
the Truth; without love, one cannot see the Goodness; similarly, 
without health, one cannot enjoy the Beauty." 

It was one of the most wonderful evenings that I'd ever had. Shixiong,
Shijie, and I had another long and happy "free chat" while they were 
doing the wen-jiu treatment on me. I thought to myself: They had been 
improving my "health" to some extend. How about my "wisdom"? And how 
about my "love"? 

Suddenly I thought of a very good story written by Jesse Stuart
(1906-1984). 

"I enjoy reading short stories very much," I said. "You know what I like
best among all I've read? The story is entitled 'Love' and it's about 
snakes..." 

*  *  * 

When I retold Jesse Stuart's "Love" to Shixiong and Shijie, I changed
the story's narrator "I" (the first person) into "the boy" (the third 
person). 

One afternoon, a boy and his father walked around the new cornfield to
plan a fence, so as to keep the cows from eating or trampling the young 
plants. Their dog Bob walked in front of them. When they heard a ground 
squirrel whistle somewhere nearby, the father made Bob go to take it, 
for ground squirrels are also harmful to corn. 

The father kept asking Bob to kill the ground squirrel. However, when
the boy and his father ran to the place where Bob was jumping and 
barking, they did not see any ground squirrel, but a snake. "It's a big 
bull blacksnake," said the father. "Kill him, Bob! Kill him, Bob!" 

Bob was jumping and snapping at the snake. He knew how to kill a snake.
He had killed twenty-eight copperheads that spring. But the boy didn't 
want to kill the snake. He said, "A blacksnake is a harmless snake. It 
kills poison snakes. It kills the copperhead. It catches more mice from 
the fields than a cat." 

Apparently, the snake didn't want to fight the dog. It wanted to get
away. Why had the snake come from the chestnut oak woods over the bank? 
Why was it crawling toward a heap of black loamy earth at the bend of 
the hill? The boy wondered. And then he discovered that it was not a 
bull blacksnake, but a she-snake. (A female blacksnake has a white 
patch on her throat.) 

The father insisted on killing the snake. "A snake is an enemy to me,"
he cried. "Kill it, Bob!" Bob obeyed him and took the snake by the 
throat. He cracked her long body like an ox whip in the wind. Then, 
something hit against the boy's legs like pellets. They were the 
snake's eggs! 

The boy hated to see Bob kill the beautiful mother-to-be snake. He was
sorry for those immature eggs (slung from the snake¡¦s body). "Well, 
Bob, I guess you see now why this snake couldn't fight," the boy said 
with a sigh, "It is life. Weaker devour the stronger even among human 
beings. Dog kills snake. Snake kills birds. Birds kill the butterflies. 
Man conquers all. Man, too, kills for sport." 

On the way home, neither father nor son spoke. Their dog, walking ahead
of them, looked rather tired. Then the sun was setting, a lark was 
singing, and the red evening clouds floated above the pine trees on 
their pasture hill. The father stood beside the path. His black hair 
was moved by the wind. His face was red in the blue wind of day. His 
eyes looked toward the sinking sun. 

"And my father hates a snake," the boy thought. He thought about many
things, including how women would fight to save their children. 

The next morning the boy and his father returned to the cornfield. Bob
didn't go with them. In the place where Bob had previously killed the 
snake, the boy saw something. It was moving, like a huge black rope 
winding around a windlass. It was the bull blacksnake. 

"Take a good look at him!" the boy said. "He is lying beside his dead
mate. He has come to her. Perhaps he was on her trail yesterday." 

The male snake had trailed her to her doom. He had come in the night,
under the roof of stars, as the moon shed rays of light on the 
quivering clouds of green. He had found his lover dead. He was coiled 
beside her, and she was dead. 

The bull blacksnake lifted his head and followed the father and son as
they walked around the dead snake. He would have fought them to death. 
"Take a stick," said the father, "and throw him over the hill so Bob 
won't find him." The boy took a stick and threw him over the bank into 
the dewy sprouts on the cliff. 

*  *  * 

"What a lovely story!" Shijie cried. "Is it true that a bull blacksnake
would accompany its partner that way?" 

"I believe so," I replied. "When I was small, one afternoon, my father
was bitten by a guikehua on the foot. The snake was next to the kitchen 
door of our thatched cottage. We killed it on the spot. That was my 
first time to help kill a snake. You know, my father told us to be very 
careful the next few days. He thought another guikehua (the dead 
snake's partner) would probably appear soon. It was true! Four or five 
days later, my grandmother found another guikehua in the bathroom." 

"Incredible!" Shijie turned to Shixiong, saying, "Venomous snakes also
know about love." 

"So they do," Shixiong said. "But there are different types of love in
this world. Some are instinctive reactions, such as a simple desire for 
food and drinks, and some are more complicated feelings...Well, 
forgiveness is another form of love." 

Shixiong's comments were comprehensible. 

I told Shixiong and Shijie that my pastor, Chen mushi, had mentioned
four levels of love, the highest level of which is God's "unconditional 
love"---called "agape" in Hebrew. 

*  *  * 

But I didn't say anything about my cousin's friend Chang-Chong at all.
He is running a brand-new snack bar in Wufeng, only 500 meters away 
from my house. Since my cousin introduced him to my family and me 
before this winter vacation, Chang-Chong has frequently invited us to 
his snack bar, and he has also visited us several times. 

According to my cousin, Chang-Chong has been a mysterious man. Though
looking handsome and gentle in his 40's now, he was jailed for ten 
years. "Was he a murderer? Did he sell something illegal?" Even my 
cousin could not tell the whole story. I learned from Chang-Chong 
himself that he had recently divorced his wife "to make her have a 
peaceful life" and that many years ago he hid himself somewhere in 
Puli, in Nantou County. 

"I've wasted lots of my days," he concluded. "But from now on, I'll be
pursuing a new and meaningful life!" 

"May your dream come true. I'll pray for you as well." I said. 

In private, I told my son and my wife to be cautious about the
relationship between Chang-Chong and us. And I silently prayed that 
Chang-Chong would not be a "chang chong" (a long worm; or a snake).    
<The End>


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