Uncle Ming prepared the ancestral rites as he spoke. This "Man-Eating Clam" was a creature of the deep ocean, thousands of years old. What did a thousand years even mean? Even if Emperor Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han hadn't died and had lived until now, they likely wouldn't be as old as this venerable clam. Naturally, one had to pay respects to the Fishery Lord before butchering it—it was a rule passed down through generations of the Sea Wolf fishermen. If you didn't follow protocol, no one dared to lay a hand on it, lest it cost them years of their life force.

Fatty seized the moment to deflate Uncle Ming’s enthusiasm. He suggested that while Captain Ruan Hei saw a person inside the shell, it might not necessarily be a mermaid. There were all sorts of humanoid things in the sea. Places near lakes and seas in China often had old folk tales about clam spirits—mostly old clams transforming into women to lure men. He recounted a tale where an old fisherman splashed water on a clam, subduing and capturing it, to great applause. Therefore, this Man-Eating Clam most likely harbored a seductive clam spirit rather than a mermaid. "Uncle Ming, make sure your old face is clean," Fatty quipped, "you might get a kiss waiting for you."

Uncle Ming knelt before the bronze duck censer to pray. He didn't care that the incense sticks were already extinguished by the rain; he still muttered the prayers devoutly. Hearing Fatty’s nonsense, he turned and scolded him, "You damned fatty, always spewing rubbish! We’ve done plenty of grave robbing and corpse digging ourselves, do you really believe in all this ghostly nonsense? Haven't you always called this… superstition?" After speaking, he ignored Fatty, raised the hooked blade and curved knife prepared for slaughtering the clam, and bowed in homage to the sea, chanting his prayers in the open air.

Seeing that Uncle Ming didn't believe him, Fatty urged Shirley Yang and me to prove him wrong. I told him I had never seen any opera about old fishermen catching clam spirit *young women. These low-brow performances were only staged in seaside fishing villages during the off-season for raising sea life. The actors were mostly from ramshackle troupes, and the dan roles—female characters—had their faces smeared with garish makeup, wearing powder-covered pot lids strapped to their arms like chicken wings, flapping about, even when pretending to be clam spirits. When they tangled and fled from the actor playing the old fisherman, they would exchange suggestive glances and strike seductive poses. The effect was terrible, and there were many young children among the audience…

Shirley Yang had never heard of clam spirits and asked me curiously, "If you haven't seen it, how do you know so much detail? You even know there were children in the audience. How does a clam spirit turn into a woman?"

I replied, "Not having seen it doesn't mean I don't understand it. I know the countryside far too well. Before I joined the army, I had a sacred ideal: to go to the countryside and study the laws of the class struggle there, to provide ample strategic basis for the 'rural encirclement of the cities' plan when we eventually carried out the world revolution. Why should the world revolution take the path of rural encirclement of the cities? Because, in our eyes, North America and Western Europe are the biggest cities, while the suffering regions of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the rest are the countryside…"

"But that's getting a bit off-topic. Let's talk about why a clam spirit turns into a woman. There used to be a legend by Dongdan Lake about a Snail Girl. It said there was a simpleton, utterly poor, with nothing but brute strength, who relied on fishing to support his blind old mother. Because he was so poor, the pot was often empty.

Later, this simpleton caught a large freshwater snail in Dongting Lake and kept it in a water vat at home. It turned out this large snail became a spirit and transformed into a breathtakingly beautiful woman. She provided the simpleton with grain and money, cleaned the house, did the chores, and took care of his mother. Snail spirits and clam spirits are likely cut from the same cloth. The clam spirit took a fancy to this simple fisherman, thinking he was honest, kind, hardworking, and brave—in short, he embodied all the traditional virtues of the working people. In the end, she even offered herself in marriage. Even a fool would accept such a good thing, so the two truly found their match, like a turtle staring at a green bean, and they started a life together. Who knows if the children born from such a union would be monstrous?"

Shirley Yang laughed, "That sounds like a very beautiful folk legend, but it's strange, hearing you tell it, it doesn't sound beautiful at all, but rather a bit ridiculous. Do you particularly enjoy mocking beautiful things?"

I countered, "Then you’ve wronged me again. Is the legend of the Snail Girl beautiful? Beauty is just the surface. But what about the essence of things? Shouldn't the essence behind these beautiful legends make us ponder deeply? There are so many beautiful legends like the Snail Girl. Common people loved listening to them before liberation. Why?

Because the suffering masses sweated blood day and night, yet all the wealth they created belonged to others. Through generations of diligent labor and struggling against hunger and cold, they were still forced to live frugally, scrimping on clothes and food. If they caught a cold or had a minor illness, they dared not stop working; any slackening meant going hungry the next day. Who among the unfortunate wouldn't hope for a beautiful and virtuous wife to fall from the sky, one who could not only conjure rice, money, and national ration coupons like a clam spirit, manifesting whatever they wanted to eat, but who was also devoted to the poor laborer, with no family to rely on, someone impossible to drive away with a broom?

That’s why they were willing to believe these beautiful legends were true. In reality, they were blatant lies, stark naked lies. The nobles and aristocrats of ancient times used these lies to offer the working people a seemingly bright future: 'Work hard, don't cry out even if you bleed, endure the poverty slowly, suffer through the hard times, but you must not steal, must not rob, and absolutely must not rebel. Do not casually question the lifestyle and family background heaven has arranged for you. If you keep toiling like this, a beautiful wife conjured from a clam shell will be waiting for you in the future. You ask what she looks like? Isn't the Empress's consort good enough? But all the beauties in the three palaces and six courtyards combined couldn't compare to one leg of this Snail Girl. Not only is the Snail Girl stunningly beautiful, but she’s also incredibly wealthy, able to sneak out treasures from the Dragon Palace at will. She’s completely devoted to sharing a poor life with a hard-laboring simpleton. They must think we’re all fools!"

Fatty couldn't help but applaud my lecture. "Well said, Commander Hu, you hit the nail on the head! Foreign fairy tales are all about princes and princesses, usually emphasizing the principle of matching status. But stories like this Snail Girl are lethally toxic. Chairman Mao said that thousands of households of nobility are but dung of the past; I say even a toad can eat swan meat! We must dig out all those old, rotten figures who deceive the working masses with lies and let them know that whatever they take from Hu Hansan, they will eventually have to spit it back out!"

Shirley Yang was already speechless from exasperation with me. Hearing Fatty instigate me again to become a Grave Robber Captain, she could only remind me, "You took off your Mo Jin Talisman; how can you be a Grave Robber Captain again? You should just go to America and start a business when we get there."