What Sun Did

I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.

On the third day of the battle at Guzhen,an officer in Sun Chuanfang的de headquarters wrote out an order on a single sheet of military stationery and walked it across the courtyard to the small farmhouse where Shi Congbin was being held.

的de. A small particle, the most common one in Chinese. Put 的de between two words to mark possession. Sun Chuanfang的de headquarters means Sun Chuanfang's headquarters. You will hear 的de constantly from now on.

The order was three sentences long.

The first sentence identified the prisoner. Shi Congbin, the Anti-Fengtian coalition 的de brigade commander, captured on the second day of the engagement.

The second sentence cited Sun 的de standing directive concerning captured officers of brigadier rank or higher.

The third sentence specified what was to happen next.

The method was beheading.

The location was Bengbu的de railway platform, sixty kilometers north of Guzhen, on the main north-south rail line that ran from Tianjin all the way down to Pukou. Bengbu was a junction station.

Anyone moving between northern and southern China at that moment passed through it.

The body was to be left 在zàiGuzhen, in an unmarked field.The head was to be transported separately, by mounted courier, to Bengbu, and mounted on a pole at the north end of the platform, facing the southbound trains.

Shi Congbin was beheaded that afternoon. He was fifty-eight years old. He had passed the provincial civil-service exams forty 年nián earlier. He had memorized the Confucian classics as a young man.

Whether he was allowed to write a final letter, the record does not say. The record preserves what the order said, the method, the hour, and the name of the staff officer who supervised.

The head reached Bengbu the next 上午shàngwǔ.

A Sun Chuanfang staff officer supervised the mounting. The pole stood at the north end of the platform, set at a height of roughly two meters, in direct line of sight of any passenger stepping off a southbound train.

On the first day, a few hundred travelers 看kàn it.

看kàn. To look at, or to watch. 看kàn it means look at it. You'll hear 看kàn a lot today.

By the second day, word had traveled. Passengers stepping off the morning trains slowed as they reached the north end. Some 看kàn once and walked on. Others 看kàn a long time.

A few made a small bow, the kind a 人rén might make at a stranger's grave.

Conductors began posting station guards at both ends of the platform to keep crowds moving.

By the third day, word had reached the soldiers.

Sun Chuanfang的de standing directive specified that returning soldiers from his own armies were to be marched past the platform on their way south. Officers were required to look.The point of the display was 不bù是shì for civilians.

The point was for the next brigade commander who might consider crossing Sun.

By the fourth day, the head was still on the pole.

在zàiGuzhen, the body was still in the unmarked field. No funeral rites had been performed. No family had been notified.

在zài. At, or in. 在zàiGuzhen means in Guzhen. Put 在zài in front of a place name and you have "at that place."

By the fifth day, civilian travelers were going out of their way to see it. Word had spread to villages along the line. Older 人rén who had served in the late Qing armies came to the platform specifically to look.

Some left small offerings at the base of the pole until the station guards were ordered to clear them.

By the sixth day, a Tianjin newspaper ran a small back-page mention of "an unusual display" at Bengbu. The mention did not name the dead officer.

On the seventh day, the head was taken down.

Sun Chuanfang的de staff did not record what was done with it afterward.The standing order said the head was to be displayed for "such time as the local commander deems sufficient." The local commander deemed seven days sufficient.

What was left, after seven days on a pole on a railway platform in the late autumn of 1925, was not the kind of thing a family receives back for burial.

The Tianjin newspaper ran a follow-up story on the eighth day. This one named Shi Congbin.

It said that he had been captured 在zàiGuzhen, that he had been executed by order of Sun Chuanfang, that his head had been displayed 在zàiBengbu for seven days,and that the body had been left in an unmarked field outside the town.

Newspapers in Anhui province picked the story up over the following week. By early November, a wire copy of the Tianjin clipping reached the courier system that fed the village of Shazigang.

Inside the 家jiā在zàiShazigang, the wooden box under the table held thirty-eight folded telegrams. Eight of them had been received that 年nián. The most recent was dated October fourth.

Shi Gulan had filed it as she had filed every other telegram since she was seven years old.

On the morning the wire copy arrived, no telegram had 来lái in two weeks. Shi Gulan的de mother had begun to ask, quietly at first, and then less quietly, whether the box should be checked again.

The boy on the bicycle reached the front gate at midday.

He did not have a folded sheet of cheap tan-colored pulp. He had a printed clipping, folded once.

The clipping was from a Tianjin newspaper.

Shi Gulan的de mother and brothers were inside the 家jiā. Shi Gulan was alone at the gate. The boy on the bicycle handed her the clipping. She unfolded it once, then again.

The travelers at Bengbu, the soldiers marched past the platform, the older 人rén from the Anhui villages, the newspaper editors in Tianjin: every one of them had 看kàn the story before Shi Gulan did.

The story was already a Sun Chuanfang的de staff officer 的de written order, a Bengbu stationmaster 的de standing instruction, a Tianjin editor 的de page-eight headline, before it was her father 的de fate.

In Episode Seven, she finishes reading the clipping.

That is where we start Episode Seven.