So she repeated emphatically: "Yes, indeed! Each generation is worse than the last." Otherwise, why should Sixpounder have weighed three pounds less than her great-grandfather and one pound less than her father, Sevenpounder? This was really irrefutable evidence. In brief, there was something radically wrong with the present-day world. Ninepounder's celebration of her fiftieth birthday, she had gradually become a fault-finder, who was always saying that in her young days the summer had not been so hot nor the beans so tough as now. It was the somewhat unusual custom in this village for mothers to weigh their children when they were born, and then use as a name the number of pounds they weighed. Ninepounder had lived to a great age, she was by no means deaf she did nor, however, hear what the child said, and went on muttering to herself, "Yes, indeed! Each generation is worse than the last!" Then, sticking out her small head with its twin tufts, she called loudly: "Old Never-dying!" Her great-granddaughter, Sixpounder, had just come running towards her holding a handful of beans but when she sized up the situation she flew straight to the river bank and hid herself behind a tallow tree. We're going to have supper right away, yet they're still eating roast beans, eating us out of house and home!" "I don't like watching everything going to the dogs-I'd rather die. "I've lived to seventy-nine, that's long enough," she declared.
Ninepounder, who was in a towering temper, whacked the legs of her stool with a tattered plantain fan. That was because they had not heard what Old Mrs. The scholars were rather wide of the mark, however. Some scholars, who were passing in a pleasure boat, waxed quite lyrical at the sight. The women brought out steaming hot, black, dried vegetables and yellow rice. The children raced about or squatted under the tallow trees playing games with pebbles. The old folk and the men sat on the low stools, fanning themselves with plantain-leaf fans as they chatted. You could tell it was time for the evening meal. Less smoke was coming from the kitchen chimneys of the peasants' houses along the river, as women and children sprinkled water on the ground before their doors and brought out little tables and stools. The leaves of the tallow trees beside the river were at last able to draw a parched breath, while a few striped mosquitoes danced, humming, beneath them. The sun's bright yellow rays had gradually faded on the mud flat by the river. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work as well as make derivative and commercial works.
A STORM IN A TEACUP ARCHIVE
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2005). Transcribed: Original transcription from
Source: Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, Published by Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1960, 1972 Storm in a Teacup Lu Xun Storm in a Teacup
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