by Yan Lianke
Zhu Ying buried her father in the same location where he had drowned in a pool of spit—in the center of the village square. This was a public area where the villagers often ate, so naturally there shouldn’t be a funeral mound there. Everyone discussed this development and reported to the new village chief, Kong Mingliang. When Mingliang came to intervene, however, Zhu Ying said,
“Mr. Kong, you forget that on the night when you came out to follow your dream west, the first person you encountered was me!”
Mingliang stood there and remembered that Zhu Ying had called out to him that night. She now told him in a mocking yet painful tone, “After I bury my father I’m going to leave the village, and I won’t return until you have knelt down before me.”
Kong Mingliang stopped trying to prevent her from burying her father in the middle of the village and explained to the other villagers that the reason he didn’t want to stop her was that her father was a former village official. So they buried Zhu Qingfang on the third day after his death. The people who attended the burial were the same ones who had drowned him in their spittle, and the person who had spat the most was also the same person who worked up the biggest sweat digging his grave. Second Dog had spat at him 106 times, but when it came to digging the grave, laying out the body, lifting and lowering the coffin, and then refilling the grave again, there wasn’t any task to which he didn’t contribute diligently. Furthermore, after Zhu Qingfang was buried, he stood in front of the grave and said,
“I have now repaid my debt.”
It was also Second Dog who used a cart to haul over the tombstone—a meter wide, two meters high, and half a foot thick—from a site several dozen li away. Before they completed the burial process, the Zhu family, in accordance with the family’s conventions and traditions, draped both a clan flag and a national flag over the corpse, and recited an emotional eulogy (people would later learn that the eulogy had actually been written by the Kong family’s Kong Mingguang). After they buried the corpse and removed the red flag covering the gravestone, everyone saw that it had the following inscription:
TOMB OF THE MOST LOYAL OLD COMMUNIST, ZHU QINGFANG.
With this, someone who had been a party member since the founding of the nation penned a coda to that era and disappeared from the village forever. His daughter would go on to become a leading figure in the village, town, and city—though it was unclear whether her fate would be more tragic or glorious than that of her father. The day Zhu Ying decided to leave the village was the seventh day after her father’s death. She bowed in front of the grave, burned some funeral money, then left the village without looking back. She departed with a solemn expression and a hard gaze, but as she passed the entrance to the Kong household she paused and, with a-tooth-for-a-tooth logic, she spat in their doorway. Then she left the village, climbed the mountain ridge, and disappeared. Her parting silhouette was hard and firm, as though she were a tombstone heading out into the mountains.
3. EMOTIONAL ELEGY
In turned out that Explosion Village’s grand plan to have all of the villagers move into tile-roof houses within two years was actually rather conservative. In reality, this process took only six months. Kong Mingliang led the entire village to the mountain ridge to unload goods from the trains, and as a result cash came pouring in like rain. From summer till winter, from the rainy season till the snowy season, the villagers worked day in and day out, rain or shine, so that there would always be someone waiting on the ridge overlooking the train tracks. They had already mastered the schedules of the trains running through the Balou Mountains. For instance, they knew that the trains running from north to south would generally be hauling coal, coke, and lumber, while those running from south to north would haul goods such as electrical cables, cement, and construction materials, as well as oranges, bananas, mangoes, and other fresh fruits that are rarely seen in the north. After half a year, Explosion’s villagers became as disciplined as a military brigade, adhering to a strict schedule dictating when they should come on and off work. They even developed their own terminology and system of distributing profits.
Village Chief Kong Mingliang didn’t permit anyone to utter the word steal. Instead, everyone would refer euphemistically to “unloading.” When greeting someone returning from the mountains, the villagers would ask, “How many goods did you unload today?” “What did you unload?” They would ask those who were leaving the village for the mountain ridge, “Are you going to work?” “Is it your turn to go to the office?” Everyone found this rather amusing. When Kong Mingliang distributed salaries at the end of every month, he began deducting one or two hundred yuan from the salary of anyone who uttered the words stealing or theft, and these words immediately disappeared from the village vocabulary. Later, no one would believe that the villagers had gone every day to steal from passing trains. In a gully located about two li from the train tracks they built a warehouse, which they filled with apples, oranges, electrical cables, coke, toothpaste, cigarettes, soap, and all sorts of clothing and shoes from the south, as well as a vast array of odd products and commodities that were being transported to be sold in the city. Kong Mingliang issued the villagers their monthly salary together with their performance bonuses. Initially, a household could earn several hundred yuan a month, which then became several thousand, and even tens of thousands. When spring arrived, the villagers saw that in the third lunar month on the day when the scholar trees lining the street would normally bloom white, their blossoms were instead all gray, as their former whiteness had become the color of north China’s yellow earth. The paulownia trees’ pink bell-shaped flowers, meanwhile, all became snowy white—as white as snow at a funeral. Everyone was surprised, and people came out of their houses to look at those flowers that had changed colors. At that point, Second Dog returned from the mountain ridge, shouting that someone had fallen and died on the tracks. The villagers immediately ran up to the ridge and stopped paying attention to the scholar-tree blossoms that had turned gray and the paulownia blossoms that had turned white.
The Kong family was having dinner. By this time they were living quite comfortably. They had hired a servant to wash their clothes and cook for them, because they didn’t want their mother—whose hair had already turned gray—to work near the stove or go to the river to fetch water. At dinner they had more than enough dishes for seven or eight people, and were eating in their courtyard with the gate closed—treating themselves as though it were New Year’s. When Second Dog suddenly rushed in, he stopped in the middle of the courtyard and then said something that was both brash and yet very ordinary:
“Chief Kong, there’s been another one!”
Kong Mingliang quickly threw down his chopsticks and asked, “Who?”
“Zhu Qingfang’s nephew, Zhu Damin. He is Zhu Ying’s uncle.” As Second Dog was saying this, he went over to the table, picked up an enormous white bun and took a couple of bites, then took Kong Mingliang’s half-finished bowl of soup and guzzled it down. He added, “That fool. After climbing onto the train, he noticed a car that was full of wool suits and designer clothing. He shouted to me, ‘This is it! I’ve found some valuable goods!’ and then began tossing down one box of clothes after another. But by the time he had thrown the ninth box, the train had reached the top of the ridge and was beginning to pick up speed as it headed down again. I was running behind the train yelling at him to hurry and jump off, but he said that he had just noticed a box of red ties, and felt that if they were going to sell Western suits they should pair them with red ties. When he had unloaded that final box and was about to jump off, the train was already flying down the mountain. He fell onto the tracks and his blood spurted out like a geyser.” Upon saying this, Second Dog stood under the paulownia tree in the Kong courtyard, as the snow-white blossoms fell into the soup bowl he was holding.
Everyone in the Kong family stared at Second Dog, who had brought these tidings of death. A smile crossed the father’s face as he got up from the table and walked into t
he house. Eldest Brother Mingguang had a calm expression, as though he hadn’t heard anything, and he proceeded to take a fat but not greasy piece of pork from his soup bowl and, reaching past his mother, placed it in his wife Cai Qinfang’s rice bowl. Only Minghui, who was sitting farthest from Second Dog, dropped his chopsticks in surprise as his face turned pale and a layer of sweat appeared on his forehead.
“What should we do?” Second Dog asked.
Mingliang replied, “Let’s treat him as a martyr.” He reflected for a moment, then said to Second Dog, “Go buy a top-rate coffin and the biggest and thickest tombstone you can find.” As he said this, he picked up an army coat that was hanging on a nearby tree branch and draped it over his shoulders. Then he tore open a steamed bun, placed several pieces of lean meat inside, and headed outside. When he arrived at the home of the deceased, the parents were wailing in grief. They repeatedly draped over the body the clothing that had been unloaded from passing trains—wanting to call their son back into the world of the living. Everyone surrounded the elderly couple and tried to restrain them, saying that although it was true that their son had indeed died, he was actually a martyr. But the couple wouldn’t listen, and they kept trying to rush up to the casket while wailing with grief. At this point, Chief Kong arrived, wearing his army coat as though it were a thick suit of armor.
The crowd opened a path for him.
Zhu Damin’s parents abruptly stopped wailing. They glared at Mingliang with pure hatred, as if they wanted to tear him apart and devour him.
Kong Mingliang calmly made his way through the crowd and lifted the jacket that was covering the face of the deceased. The man’s face looked as though he had been badly beaten. Mingliang turned pale and his lips trembled, but he quickly recovered and, in a brusque but calm voice, told the elderly couple,
“Damin is a martyr. He died for the sake of the prosperity of the entire village.”
The elderly couple stared at Kong Mingliang’s mouth.
“We’ll give him a grand burial. We’ll bury him in the center of the village square, right next to his uncle—who is also my uncle—Zhu Qingfang. From now on, I want the entire village to emulate him.”
The elderly couple looked as though they couldn’t fathom what Kong Mingliang was saying, but the fury in their eyes abated.
“Next month, the village will come together to replace all of its thatched-roof houses with new tile roofs.” Kong Mingliang presented this simply and clearly to the confused elderly couple, saying, “When your daughter-in-law brings her son back from her parents’ home, tell her that I said … for the villagers to build a new house for your family. You won’t have to pay a cent, and the new house will be funded entirely by the village. The village will also cover all of your grandson’s expenses until he turns eighteen. But you mustn’t let your daughter-in-law remarry until your grandson is of age. Do you understand? And if, at that point, she is still determined to remarry, you mustn’t let her take your grandson with her. OK?”
The elderly couple’s sorrow was gradually transformed into delight, and smiles appeared on their faces like the sun coming out. As Kong Mingliang was about to leave the corpse, the couple suddenly knelt down and repeatedly kowtowed, telling him how great he was and how they had never seen such a good village chief. Kong Mingliang turned and said a few comforting words. He urged them not to worry, assuring them that those who died while unloading goods on behalf of the village would be considered martyrs, and their parents would live even more comfortably than their children. He then told the crowd that anyone who needed to go eat should leave, and anyone who was supposed to go up to the mountain ridge to unload goods should leave as well. As for the others who were responsible for burying the corpse, they should remember to collect the clothing off the deceased, wash away the blood, and take the clothing to the warehouse so that it could be sold to the city.
Then, they offered the deceased, Zhu Damin, a most solemn burial.
On the ninth day of the third lunar month, the villagers were permitted to take a day off. Apart from one person who remained in the mountains to keep an eye on the warehouse, everyone else stayed home—including the villagers assigned to unload goods from the train hauling imported cigarettes (each carton worth several thousand yuan). The entire village attended the funeral, as though they were attending a wedding ceremony and banquet. The Zhu family used the biggest, deepest, and most expensive coffin they could find, and the smoothest and most transparent marble slab for the tombstone, on which they engraved in bowl-size characters: TOMB OF THE MARTYR ZHU DAMIN, WHO WAS A MODEL FOR THE PURSUIT OF PROSPERITY. Then they set off fireworks. Everyone in the village who was younger than the deceased put on mourning apparel and began wailing, while everyone who was older dressed in black and carried a small paper blossom. The coffin was draped in a national flag, and the area in front of the grave was covered in wreaths and elegiac couplets. Even Mingliang’s elder brother Mingguang wrote an elegy, which Mingliang read aloud to the entire village:
Comrade Zhu Damin was born in 1956, and as an infant he lived through the Great Leap Forward and the famine of the Three Years of Natural Disaster. Later, he lived through the Cultural Revolution, during which he never had enough food to eat or clothes to wear. When presented with the opportunities offered by the Reform and Opening Up period, he worked diligently and was willing to endure hardship as he exerted himself on behalf of the village’s enrichment plan. In the end, he died in the line of duty when he was only twenty-eight years old. He was regarded as a national hero, and as a paragon for how to get rich… .
The elegy went on and on in this vein.
Kong Mingliang read the elegy solemnly and sonorously. Although he spoke with a heavy Balou accent, and more specifically with an Explosion accent, the residents of Balou nevertheless were very moved by his words. As they were burying Zhu Damin’s coffin, tears started streaming down their faces, but afterward they began grinning enviously. They continued until the sun was high in the sky, whereupon it turned out that the silver blossoms on the old elm tree next to the grave had all changed to the color of black jade. With this, they collected their tools, gazed at the sky, and remembered that at noon there would be a train hauling mushrooms, enoki, and hericium from northern China to dinner tables in the south. At the thought of how a case of wild hericium could sell for several thousand yuan, or how sometimes they could even find a case or two of gastrodia tuber or wild ginseng, they quickly dropped their grave-digging tools and rushed to the mountain ridge.
With this, the village quieted down again, since only children and the elderly were left behind.
In the village square, first there appeared the grave of Zhu Qingfang, who drowned in spit, followed by graves of those who died unloading goods from trains and fighting over unfairly distributed items. Wild grass appeared on all of those graves, and on Zhu Qingfang’s grave there even appeared several wildflowers. Before long, there were sixteen graves in the square, located on both sides of the road, so that the people of Explosion would always have to walk right through them.
4. OBSERVATIONAL DELEGATION
Within two years—a mere seven hundred days—Explosion was completely transformed.
In the blink of an eye, the village’s old thatched-roof houses disappeared and were replaced with tile-roof ones. Some of these new houses were built with imitation old-style bricks while others had new artificial red tiles, and the village as a whole smelled of sulfur from all of the new bricks and tiles. The main road running from east to west was repaved with cement and lined with electrical poles, just like a city street.
One day, when the sun was several rod-lengths high in the sky, the county mayor led a delegation consisting of more than a hundred village chiefs and town mayors from throughout the county, and they all enthusiastically drove into Explosion to observe its transformation. They saw that in front of every house there were flowers, and in back there were pigpens, goat pens, cattle and horse stables, and other corrals and breedi
ng rooms—built with brand-new tiles and filled with livestock that had been rented or borrowed from neighboring villages. The villagers had purchased truckload after truckload of fresh vegetables from the city and placed them in front of the village, then performed a play about going into the city to sell vegetables. At the same time, a few people serving as local “vegetable kings” had spent the first half of the year in the fields next to the mountainside road—erecting a series of large plastic tents and preparing a piece of land for farming, and then planting mid-season and green-season spinach, celery, pumpkin, and bitter squash, to which people in the city had recently taken a liking.
The delegates parked their sedans at the entrance to the village, and the first thing they would do was walk to the village square and solemnly leave a wreath for the martyrs who had given their lives on behalf of Explosion’s quest for prosperity. Only then would they proceed, under the direction of the village chief, Kong Mingliang, to visit each house and observe the new tile roofs and television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, and brand-new bicycles and motorcycles, not to mention tractors capable of bringing in prosperity. At that time, Kong Mingliang was the youngest village chief in the entire county and the youngest prosperity leader in the entire province. Later, when people recalled the arrival of the observational delegation, they felt a surge of pride and smiled like autumn chrysanthemum blossoms.
