Five Spice Street

Okay. The writer dropped his research for the moment and followed the gaze of the crowd to Madam X’s new transformation. What was normalization? From the standpoint of the law and of tradition, normalization of male and female relationships = monogamy. Since Madam X already had a husband and hadn’t yet divorced him, how could she normalize her relationship with the adulterous lover? Even if she had said she wanted to ‘‘leave’’ her present husband, that was not at all the same as going through a legal divorce, and there was not the slightest evidence that she intended to go through this procedure. It was said that she ‘‘abhorred’’ this kind of procedure ‘‘from the bottom of her heart.’’ Since she wasn’t going through this procedure and was also wildly involved in adultery, what significance did her normalization have? Did she plan to live with Q for the rest of her life? If we look back for a moment, we will remember that Madam X had been a wanton woman who ‘‘never turned down the men who showed up,’’ ‘‘the more the better,’’ and sometimes she even ‘‘took the initiative.’’ Later, she hooked this Mr. Q, and still later, she announced that she ‘‘was deeply in love with him.’’ But she had overstated it: ‘‘I don’t give the time of day to any counterfeits (other men).’’ It seemed that she would divorce and marry Q, and that she would promptly give up her evil ways and return to becoming a virtuous wife and mother. We have to point out that all through her illicit affair, Madam X had never mentioned ‘‘marriage.’’ Conceivably, she abhors this procedure, too. So we’d better have no illusions or try to bring her into our moral compass. She’d exposed her nature since childhood (‘‘grabbed’’ everything in sight). Now, in her thirties, how moral could she be? Just think about it! She won’t get married, and she won’t bother to get a legal divorce. In other words, she would do whatever she wished-be with anyone she likes, have sex with anyone she wants. This is what she meant by normalization!

There was nothing new at all. Wasn’t ‘‘sexual liberation’’ about just this? Yet, Madam X didn’t seem to be at all about ‘‘liberation.’’

She really scared people with her seriousness. She thought stubbornly: first, she had to normalize the illicit affair with Q by ‘‘leaving’’ her husband (although she didn’t put this into effect, because Q wasn’t taken in). Second, she didn’t have to marry Q legally as long as she carried on the adultery ‘‘in a fair way.’’ That was normalization. Third, she didn’t necessarily ‘‘have eyes for only one person.’’ While having an affair with one person, if another attracted her, she’d happily ‘‘shift’’ right away. (From the beginning, Q could not accept this and often objected. This was one reason they broke up.) At this point, perhaps the readers can’t refrain from shouting: ‘‘Isn’t this the old trick of beggars wrapped in hemp and riding in oxcarts? Those people have lice!’’ X had called a spade a spade and said that she ‘‘liked’’ those beggars with lice. Transposing the concepts of civility and barbarism, she told Q: ‘‘Compared with those people, we are barbarians!’’ Anything that met her needs, she called civility; and anything that stood in her way was barbaric. We can imagine that her future civility was a world of disorder and convulsion. All along, her evil intention was to actualize her ideal blueprint on our Five Spice Street. My dear readers, the new transformation in Madam X isn’t the least bit new! As for her normalization, never mind our elites and ordinary people-even her adulterous lover Q was extremely repulsed by it. That normalization was her invention; it could exist only in her crazy mind. It would be best if she just kept this idea in her brain. Otherwise, she would discover how difficult it was to take even a tiny step. What was new about it? Was it ‘‘new’’ to wear hemp sandals, ride in an oxcart, and be dressed in rags? If she wanted to do it, so what? This had nothing to do with us. But then she wanted to pull Q in and even announced her filthy idea on the street (a certain person calculated that fifty-eight people were contaminated by her. Luckily, Old Meng bore her a grudge because she wanted to occupy his loft, and, with the help of Madam X’s husband’s good friend’s wife, fired a pellet from his slingshot and injured Madam X’s leg. Only this put an end to X’s villainy). Was some other meaning hidden in this stubborn will and perseverance? We should have been on the alert. In half a year she had broken up

Q’s family, while making a big hullabaloo over not wanting at all to tie herself to Q through marriage. She would be satisfied with ‘‘normalization’’ (namely, wearing hemp sandals and riding in an oxcart).