It was a general custom in Weichuang that if the seventh child cuffed the eighth child, or perhaps, the fourth Li child struck the third Chang child, the matter was not taken seriously. Thus it was absolutely necessary that a man of the Venerable Mr. Chao's rank be involved in such an affair before the Weichuangites could perpetuate the event by means of a monument of gossip. As soon as the monument of gossip had been put up, the giver of the blow, having already enjoyed fame, the receiver, deriving it from the glory of the former, also acquired fame. That the error was Ah Q's goes without saying. Why so? Because the Venerable Mr. Chao never was in the wrong! But if Ah Q was in the wrong, why did people seem even more respectful toward him? That is hard to explain. As a matter of conjecture, it may have been that although Ah Q had received a smack for saying that he was the Venerable Mr. Chao's relative, the others may have feared that there might have been some truth in his statement, and so in the end, there was nothing like being more respectful to him in order to be on the safe side. Otherwise, it may have been like the case of the sacrificial bull in the Confucian Temple; that is, although the bull was an animal and in the same class with pigs and
