A Biography of the Old Drunkard

-by Yuan Heng Tao

The Old Drunkard – no one knows where he comes from. N

or has he told anyone his name. Since he’s always drunk, I call him the Old Drunkard. Each year he travels between north and south China. He wears a seven-brim hat and embroidered robes; he has high cheekbones and a broad jawbone. His beard hangs down to his belly – to look at him, you’d think he was a ferocious general.

He is perhaps fifty years old or so, but has no companions or followers. In his hand he carries a yellow bamboo basket. He spends the entire day dead drunk and seems asleep even in broad daylight. The stench of his boozy breath can be smelled a hundred paces away. He walks the streets looking for wine and, in a short while, he has drunk at over ten wine shops! – yet he seems no drunker than before.

The Old Drunkard does not eat a grain diet; he eats only centipedes, spiders, toads, and any sort of insect. The children in town are terrified of him – they grab whatever vermin they can find and offer these to him to eat. Wherever he walks, over one hundred people can always be seen trailing after him and staring. If anyone insults him, he rattles off a few words, some of which inevitably touch upon an intimate secret of that person, who then runs away in fright.

In his basket, the Old Drunkard always carries several tens of dried centipedes. If asked why, he says: “When it’s cold, you can still get wine, but you can’t get any of these.”

When Bo Xiu told me about this man, I thought the whole thing was an exaggeration, so I invited him to my house for a drink. The boy servant found more than ten verminous insects and offered them to him. He swallowed all of them alive! Each little bug he would dip in his wine cup, as one dips chicken in vinegar, and then he would wash them down with wine.

As for the centipedes, which were five or six inches long, he would pick up each one with cedar needles, remove their pincers, then place them, still alive, in his mouth. The red legs could be seen moving frantically between his whiskered lips: all of us got goose flesh just watching! But the Old Drunkard was obviously enjoying himself, chewing away with relish, as if he were dining upon essence of bear or suckling pig.

When he was asked which delicacies were his favorite, he replied: “Scorpions taste wonderful, but unfortunately you can’t get them down south. Centipedes are second best and of the spiders, I prefer small ones. But you shouldn’t eat too many ants, because they’ll make you depressed.” Then I asked what benefit he derived from his diet, and he said: “None! I do it just for fun!”

After this, the Old Drunkard and I became quite close. Whenever he came, he would crouch down on the stairs, call for wine, and drink away. If anyone treated him like an honored guest, he would immediately show his displeasure. He talked on and on about many strange subjects. Every so often, something he said would be truly mysterious, but he would not answer any inquiries about it, and if I repeatedly questioned him, he would purposely change the subject.

One day I went out with my uncles, and we were speaking about the beautiful sights at Gold Mountain and Mount Qiao, when we met the Old Drunkard along the road. My second uncle mentioned that in a certain year he had climbed Gold Mountain. The Old Drunkard smiled and said: “Could it be that the military adviser so-and-so was host, and the secretary so-and-so went along?”

My uncle was astonished, but when the Old Drunkard was asked how he had come to know these things, he did not answer. At a later time, someone managed to take a quick look into his basket and saw something like a certificate of official appointment in it. He claimed that the Old Drunkard had been an official in the area, which seemed to make sense.

The Old Drunkard’s behavior was truly bizarre. He had no fixed home. At night he would stay at an old shrine or beneath the eaves of the city gates. He was constantly repeating the words: “All dharmas return to the One – where does the One return?” whether moving about, staying in one place, sitting, sleeping, or conversing. If anyone asked him why, he would not answer.

Once when I was on my way to an official post, I saw him again at Shashi, but I do not know where his is now.

Yuan Hung Tao (1573 – 1619) was one of the major poets and essayists of the late Ming dynasty, a time of decadence and confusion, but also one of considerable artistic brilliance. Yuan himself, who said, “The good poet learns from the panoply of images, not from writers of the past,” was one of those rarest of creatures, a true individualist.