Fugitive and Outlaw

When I was a high school kid, I was reading Zhang Da Chuan (張大春)'s book about the outlaw gang living in the mountain yet close to the city and farm in northen China. Their survival depends on looting the villiage and pass-by travellers. They are originally farmers. But farming cannot meet their end's need becasue of draught or wars or heavy tax. They are fugitives in some ways. I fell in love with those rustic, awkwardly simple, countrified and blunt language and their humurous attitute toward the bitterly harsh condition of life.

(Um... Beijing is somehow like that, but living in the city is another matter). The people were not educated, all they know is to rob or obtain wealth by threatening of violence. The group is bounded together by being honest and fair within a group. They nickname "going to the prison" as "going to school", in which those felons would learn the meaning of life (or a better skill to rob).

Just got another book, 我和我的土匪奶奶, setting in the similar era (from the time Chin dynasty collapsed before communist took over China). A female looter picked up a dying baby in one of her trip outsite their base, the little kid was raised into a leader of the gangsters. It is really too bad that I cannot translate the funny bits and pieces of this book into English. Not only you would have to read Chinese but you would also need to have enough sence of humor to appreciate the beauty of how Chinese survived in such an envrionment.

I did feel sad as I turn a page, "I am one more page closer to the end of the book :-((".