Five Spice Street

We elites have made mistakes. We have decided to correct our weaknesses. To start we can use a back thrust, or it’s also all right to say that we will turn our guns backwards and shoot. We’ll aim at Dr. C. Having stripped off his mask, we see the original. How can he be considered a major scholar or a philosopher? Someone carefully identified him and remembered that years ago he was a peddler selling quack medicine at the Five Spice Street intersection. Later, he changed his identity and bored his way into the ranks of our elites. Does this suggest that we’re a bunch of fools who mixed up a peddler with a philosopher and social elites? Here, we must emphasize a little something: his ‘‘sudden change of identity’’ didn’t occur overnight, but only after assiduous study-after exerting the strength of a peasant in a field of books. Lapping up information without digesting it, he finally reached the high level that he occupies today. At first everybody respected his erudition. He was very good at suiting his actions to circumstances and saying whatever people wanted to hear. Knowing we didn’t like compliments, he might not compliment us. He just refined our thoughts. As soon as we stated our opinions, he immediately followed up with his, expounding reasonably, causing you to be delighted and to accept him as a comrade, as a most beloved friend and confidant. After many years of hard study, this damn medicine peddler changed and became erudite and multi-talented. If it hadn’t been for this unfortunate incident, who would have remembered his origins? Hadn’t he been on the same footing with us not long ago? One bad element among us had purposely praised him, wanting him to ascend so that he himself would skyrocket ahead! That bad element had also tried to climb to the roof of the thatched cottage and participate with C in the swindle of the dialogues with the gods. It was only because the rafters were rotten and couldn’t support the weight of two people that he had to give up his plan. During those forty-nine or sixty-four days, he waited under the roof. If there was the slightest sound from above, even a fart, he would announce this to others and say that he was ‘‘the old philosopher’s proud disciple’’ and that he ‘‘was almost united in one body with the old philosopher.’’

All the elites believed their greatest weakness was that they didn’t learn enough from history; they suffered from amnesia. It was only eight years ago, or maybe twelve years ago, that this C had been a medicine peddler: how had we forgotten? While the tune he sang to peddle fake medicine was still in our ears, how could we forget and blindly worship him? It was as if we were purposely forgetting, or as if we considered his squalid background part of his glorious struggle. After recognizing this, the elites decided to have meetings in the dark room once every three days instead of once every five, and in urgent situations, once a day, in order to exchange views and summarize them in a timely fashion and to guard our homeland as tightly as an iron pail that ‘‘would not allow even a mosquito to fly in.’’