This was an interesting chapter to look at in light of Ding Village as another way that the environment was degraded during this time, though the environment that was being degraded was that of human capital at the expense of business and profit.

9. Why do you think Grandpa ultimately kills Ding Hui with a stick despite fantasizing about strangling him with his bare hands throughout the novel?

We’re thinking about strangling from the beginning when the narrator uses the image of strangling to convey the resoluteness of the disease:  

“It had spread until it had the village by the throat, and now there seemed no end to the stranglehold.” p 13

It’s not that strangling is commonplace in fact, but it’s basic in its execution. Grandpa has no familiarity with weapons so it’s not what he thinks of when he fantasizes about killing Ding Hui. [Wouldn’t he be of an age to have fought in “The War of Japanese Aggression?” Maybe I missed that.]

Strangling is what’s at hand — forgive the insensitive pun. But it’s not “insensitive” in that it’s touch and feeling and seeing someone close up that makes death by strangulation so personal. You would feel their body warmth and their movement. In a society that doesn’t have much touch interaction it must be even more of an affront. 

Despite all of this, Grandpa is so incensed when Ding Hui interrupts Ma Xianglin’s performance to reveal there’s no cure all medicine that he does lay hands on him. It’s only when his granddaughter shouts that he comes to his senses, interestingly in very violent terms, possibly foreshadowing the final showdown: 

“Grandpa reacted to Yingzi’s cries as though he’d been struck with a blow to the back of the head.” p 54

It’s also interesting that although Grandpa couldn’t go through with strangling Ding Hui to avenge the living (and dead) villagers and to stop his son from doing further harm to their neighbors, he does carry it through and kill him to stop him from disturbing his dead grandson. In his dream Grandpa learns his son’s spirit is distraught. He’s finally moved to action because of a dream of a spirit even though real people are suffering and dying around him. The peace of his grandson seems more important than anything. Or maybe it’s just cumulative. Ding Hui has done so many nasty and greedy things without remorse that maybe it’s just that Grandpa has reached his limit. It’s his son and he feels responsible. He might hate but wouldn’t want to kill some other villager who acted just like Ding Hui. In the same vein, because it’s his family, his grandson, the transgression against his spirit is what drives Grandpa to commit such an egregious act against another family member. 

Grandpa has reached a point where he’s without hope, without a positive life force: “the colour drained from his face.” His family is disintegrating and his community has abandoned him. He just reacts, using a stick so he can strike his son without getting too close or warning him. Even after the deadly blow, Grandpa doesn’t hold his dead son in grief. He doesn’t touch him once. Rather, he’s celebrating and proclaiming to the world that he took care of things and got rid of Ding Hui. But no one really cares. It’s too strange, and too late.