The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Quotes

“The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“One of the previous possessors of the stone was Chuang Tzu. He had a disciple who spent seven years studying universal energy and then demonstrated his wisdom by walking across the surface of a river and back again, and Chuang Tzu broke into tears. ‘Oh, my boy!’ he sobbed. ‘My poor, poor, boy! You spent seven years of your life learning to do that, and all the while old Meng has been running a ferry not two miles from here, and he only charges two copper coins.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Of course there is a slight chance that somebody might want to give the Celestial Bookmaker a heart attack.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Strangest of all is the professional ginseng hunter, because for him it is not a plant but a religion.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“He was almost gone. The abbot knelt and placed a small jade Buddha in the pawnbroker’s hands and began to pray for his miserable soul. Fang’s eyes opened one last time, and he looked blindly down at the jade Buddha, and he made a truly heroic effort. “Cheap, very cheap,” he sneered. “No more than two hundred….” Then he too was dead.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Considerable thought was given to the shape of the village, on the grounds that a man who built a village like a fish while a neighboring village was built like a hook was begging for disaster. The finished shape was the outline of a unicorn, a gentle and law-abiding creature with no natural enemies whatsoever. But it appeared that something had gone wrong because one day there was a low snorting sort of a noise and the earth heaved, and several cottages collapsed and a great crack appeared the soil. Our ancestors examined their village from every possible angle, and the flaw was discovered when one of them climbed to the top of the tallest tree on the eastern hills and gazed down. By a foolish oversight the last five rice paddies had been arranged so that they formed the wings and body of a huge hungry horsefly that had settled upon the tender flank of the unicorn, so of course the unicorn had kicked up its heels. The paddies were altered into the shape of a bandage, and Ku-fu was never again disturbed by upheavals.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Actually, no money would change hands because ours is a barter economy. The victim would take a credit slip through the door to the warehouse, and Ma the Grub would stare at it in disbelief and scream out to Fang. “Madman! Your lunatic generosity will drive us into bankruptcy! Who will feed your starving brats when we are reduced to tattered cloaks and begging bowls?” Then he would honor the credit slip with goods that had been marked up by 600 percent.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“When Pawnbroker Fang approached Ma the Grub with the idea of joining forces he opened negotiations by presenting Ma’s wife with the picture of a small fish drawn on a piece of cheap paper. Ma’s wife accepted the magnificent gift, and in return she extended her right hand and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger. At that point, the door crashed open and Ma the Grub charged inside and screamed: “Woman, would you ruin me? Half of a pie would have been enough!” That may not be literally true, but the abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Within an hour we had a visit from a gentleman with shifty eyes and an interesting pattern of knife scars where his nose used to be,”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“It was big enough for five village dances and a riot.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Fraud, my children! Fraud and forgery. Dry rot covered with paint and gilded with lies,”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Is it any wonder that our greatest men have lurched rather than walked across the landscape as they hiccupped their way into history?” “Sir, that’s the best autobiography I ever heard!” I said enthusiastically.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“He actually seemed to want an answer, so I shrugged and said, “A superior who inherited the job from an uncle rams a barge pole up his ass.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Immortality is only for the gods,” he whispered. “I wonder how they can stand it.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Ginseng hunters refer to the plant as chang-diang shen, “the root of lightning,” because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt. After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul. It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!’ he bawled. A silly smile was sliding down the side of his face like a dripping watercolor, and his eyeballs resembled a pair of pink pigeon eggs that were gently bouncing in saucers of yellow won-ton soup. To my great credit I never batted an eyelash. ‘Take a large bowl,’ I said. ‘Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei—which means “dry cup”—and drink to the dregs.’ Procopius stared at me. ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better,’ I said. ‘You will be Chinese.’” Li”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“once there was a great king who gazed down from a tall tower upon a gardener who sang as he worked, and the king cried, ‘Ah, to have a life of no cares! If only I could be that gardener.’ And the voice of the August Personage of Jade reached out from Heaven and said, ‘It shall be so,’ and lo, the king was a gardener singing in the sun. In time the sun grew hot and the gardener stopped singing, and a fine dark cloud brought coolness and then drifted away, and it was hot again and much work remained, and the gardener cried, ‘Ah, to carry coolness wherever I go and have no cares! If only I could be that cloud.’ And the voice of the August Personage reached out from Heaven and said, ‘It shall be so,’ and lo, the gardener was a cloud drifting across the sky. And the wind blew and the sky grew cold, and the cloud would have liked to go behind the shelter of a hill, but it could only go where the wind took it, and no matter how hard it tried to go this way the wind took it that way, and above the cloud was the bright sun. ‘Ah, to fly through wind and be warm and have no cares! If only I could be the sun,’ cried the cloud, and the voice of the August Personage of Jade reached out from Heaven and said, ‘It shall be so,’ and lo, he was the sun. It was very grand to be the sun, and he delighted in the work of sending down rays to warm some things and burn others, but it was like wearing a suit made of fire and he began to bake like bread. Above him the cool stars that were gods were sparkling in safety and serenity and the sun cried, ‘Ah, to be divine and free from care! If only I could be a god.’ And the voice of the August Personage of Jade reached out from Heaven and said, ‘It shall be so,’ and lo, he was a god, and he was beginning his third century of combat with the Stone Monkey, which had just transformed itself into a monster a hundred thousand feet tall and was wielding a trident made from the triple peaks of Mount Hua, and when he wasn’t dodging blows he could see the peaceful green earth down below him, and the god cried, ‘Ah, if only I could be a man who was safe and secure and had no cares!’ And the voice of the August Personage of Jade reached out from Heaven and said, ‘It shall be so.’ And lo, he was a king who was gazing down from a tall tower upon a gardener who sang as he worked.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

“Ch’he. Devoid of intelligence, deficiency of wit, silly, idiotic. Also used for borrowing and returning books.”
― Barry Hughart, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox