The second complaint he had was the mincing gait of city women, which he had noticed on his last visit and which he found very offensive to his taste. There were, however, things to be said for city folks. For instance, in Wei they played only a game of dominoes of thirty-two pieces; the only exception was the fake foreigner, who could play mah-jong: but in the city even the little turtles working in the brothels could play mah-jong well. The fake foreigner might be very proud of himself, but when matched against a small turtle in his teens, he would fare no better than would a little demon in the hands of the King of Hell. The listeners were duly impressed by these pronouncements.
"And have any of you seen a decapitation?" Ah Q suddenly asked. "Hai, a grand sight it is to watch the beheading of the revolutionaries. Hai, a grand sight, really a grand sight!" He shook his head appreciatively and sputtered saliva in Chao the watchman's face. In the awed silence that followed, Ah Q looked around and suddenly raised his right hand and struck Wang the Beard on the back of his neck as the latter craned forward in his eagerness not to miss anything, and said, "Zip! like this."
The Beard jumped and withdrew his head like lightning, much to the amusement of the awed listeners. For several days after this he acted as though he had actually lost his head and kept a respectful distance from Ah Q as did everyone else.
Though it could not be said that the position which Ah Q now occupied in the village surpassed that of His Honor Chao, there is little danger of overstatement in saying that it was about the same.
Presently Ah Q's fame invaded the "inner apartments" of Wei. The term may sound somewhat pretentious as only the
