The Explosion Chronicles

by Yan Lianke

  “But why is that?” Mingliang asked.

  “Because the city gets enormous kickbacks,” the other man responded with a smile.

  Mingliang then asked the other man to go notify the factory that he would give an extra 10 percent in kickbacks to all who came to make purchases after suffering a fire—if they ordered ten million yuan’s worth of goods, he would give them an extra million yuan. “I’m not at all concerned that those fuckers might not come to buy our electrical lines and power cables!” Mingliang cursed. Then he told the passerby to relay this message to the factory, while he proceeded alone to the top of the ridge. The factories and workshops lining both sides of the road swept by him like village houses. The leaves of the trees were covered in dust, and an enormous assortment of plastic bags were caught by the branches, so that whenever the wind blew the bags would inflate and make a crackling sound. The mayor looked up at these plastic bags that filled the sky and began to wonder when Explosion could be redesignated as a county. When would the county seat, in recognition of Explosion’s prosperity, be relocated from its current location forty kilometers away?

  Some workers approached and waved to him. “Come have some beer!”

  Mingliang shouted back, “We can drink together after Explosion becomes a county!”

  By the time he reached the top of the mountain ridge, the sun had reached its zenith. On the mountain ridge were a wild chicken and a wild hare looking around, but when they saw the mayor they immediately ran away. Hu Dajun had erected a massive stele for Zhu Ying in what had been the village square, but given that the town was increasingly prosperous and visitors from out of town all wanted to be down by the river, the stele appeared solitary and lonely. Even Zhu Ying herself rarely visited. It was as if this event had never even occurred in her life. The inscription on the stele was so covered in dust that it was virtually invisible. The elders from Explosion Village—meaning all of the old peasants over sixty—wept beside the stele and said, “We don’t have any land, nor do we have anywhere to plant our crops.” They had recently entered their sixties, but appeared as young and strong as the sun at high noon. However, the town’s rising prosperity had sent them into a retirement home, and didn’t permit them to use their hoes and shovels to interact with the soil. They couldn’t get used to this life of not interacting with the soil, so they came to weep at this empty field, which was previously a plot of farmland.

  Zhu Ying’s stele was like a storm wall. Previously, in the land around the stele there had been wheat in winter and corn in the autumn. Every spring, the wheat sprouts grew black, and when they ripened in the summer a fragrant odor would enter the village and circulate to the dining table of every home. But now, no one planted anything. The weeds were as tall as a person, and the wild birds and hares were going in and out, as though this were their heavenly park. Old people gathered there, weeping and wailing, shouting and hollering. On large sheets of white paper they scrawled phrases like RETURN US OUR LAND! WE WANT TO LIVE AND DIE WITH OUR CROPS! and so forth. Some of these slogans were posted on the stele itself, while others were posted as freestanding signs in the middle of the field. The elders shouted and wept, and when they tired of shouting and weeping they ate the food they had brought with them, and then began shouting and weeping again.

  The demonstration was like an uprising. People gathered for three days and three nights, and while there were initially only a handful of people, they soon grew to several dozen, and by the third day there were more than a hundred. Even peasants from Liu Gully, Zhang Peak, and other nearby villages—who had had their land confiscated for mining and road building—all came here to protest. They didn’t realize that their behavior constituted a form of revolution, and instead merely saw themselves as resisting development and post-industrialization. Their simplicity helped create this protest peasant movement, even as it also helped destroy the great peasant movement. By the third day, a dark mass of more than two hundred people had gathered, as those banners with slogans such as WE SWEAR TO THE DEATH THAT WE’LL REMAIN WITH OUR LAND fluttered over the mountainside like flocks of white homing pigeons tumbling down the hill. Mayor Kong stood before the crowd of sixty-year-olds and shouted emotionally,

  “Go home. Aren’t you concerned that you will hurt yourselves from weeping so much?”

  Everyone stopped talking and gazed at him silently.

  “Go home and ask your sons and daughters—and other young people—whether they want to farm the land or make Explosion a city.”

  No one said a word, and instead everyone just watched him silently.

  “If you don’t leave, I’ll summon your children to come fetch you!”

  No one said a word, and everyone just watched him silently.

  The silence was like black ink on the faces of those elderly peasants. They had deep wrinkles, which made them appear sedate and powerful. Virtually every one of the peasants had gone gray, and when they stood in the middle of the field, they resembled random pieces of straw. No one responded to Mingliang, and no one wanted to leave the field and return to the newly constructed houses and retirement homes. They knew that Mingliang wouldn’t dare force them to return home and also wouldn’t dare summon the town’s police to drive them away. They had watched him grow up, and even now—when he encountered them individually—he would address them as Uncle and Grandpa. They continued standing there, until suddenly a yellow leaf blew over and passed in front of the mayor, as though it were a message that had been sent out from Mingliang’s brain. At this moment, Mingliang was standing on the base of his wife Zhu Ying’s stele. He gazed down imperiously at those elders who were asking for their land back, then shouted in his most forceful voice,

  “Uncles and Aunts, Grandpas and Grandmas, please listen to me and return home. I will agree to one thing …” Looking down at that sea of expectant faces gazing up at him, the mayor looked as though he had just encountered a drought-stricken piece of land. He said, “In a few years, the nation, on account of a shortage of land, will implement a policy of mandatory cremations, whereby corpses will be placed in furnaces and burned to ashes. At that point, none of you will be permitted to be buried, and instead your weeping sons and daughters will push you into a large furnace, where your flesh and bones will be reduced to ashes.” Mingliang paused and looked again at that sea of dry and hard faces, which all appeared pale with fear, like ashes from freshly cremated corpses. With expressions of terror, everyone turned to everyone else as though searching for something. “How about this …” The mayor stood even taller than before and shouted even louder, “Everyone disperse and return home, now! I promise that after the mandatory cremation policy goes into effect in a couple of years or so, those who go home now will not need to be cremated and instead can be buried, as they would have been in the past. You can all be buried in a coffin with a funeral shroud and have a traditional burial. That way, after you die, you will never have to leave the land and will instead remain with the land for eternity. On the other hand, those of you who refuse to listen to me, and continue insisting that your land be returned—you will be cremated when you die, and your ashes will be stored in a cinerary urn measuring only a few inches in diameter. The urn will be placed on a cement ledge, and you will never be reunited with the land. Whether it be before birth or after death, in this life or the next, either way you have only these two options. So you should consider carefully and decide which one you want.”

  With this, Mingliang climbed down from the stele platform.

  As everyone looked at each other, one of the elders holding a sign that read RETURN OUR LAND! got up and went home, and then everyone else followed him, leaving that empty field and heading back into town. In this way, a significant peasant rebellion developed, like a corpse being cremated.

  3. SPECIALIZED INDUSTRIES

  I.

  Explosion’s flourishing was a result not only of industrial expansion and the corresponding loss of its rural economy, but also of a more specialized developmen
t that produced the scaffolding behind its integrated economy.

  Although the northern portion of Explosion’s main street was virtually silent during day except for an occasional dog bark, by evening it was brightly illuminated with colorful lights, so much so that everything was a blur and no one knew where to go next. There were salons, pedicure shops, massage parlors, and amusement sites. Their names were all hazy, but each had a distinctive flavor. For instance, there was a Mini Hair Salon, Dead Drunk Flower Garden, Come Again, Always Return, and so forth. These names were ones that Zhu Ying had copied down while in the south and in the provincial seat, and had brought back with her.

  Since the street already had these sorts of names and buildings, it occurred to someone to install a bathing room with wood-burning stoves and saunas with electric stoves, where it was said that you could irrigate plants over the fire and everything you would need to take a steam bath would be arrayed in front of you. Everyone therefore went to visit. First it was the men and elders from Explosion who lined up to get in, and once inside they would get undressed and bathe. Then they would enter the sauna and begin boiling water, producing clouds of steam. They would inhale the white clouds of hot steam, and within ten minutes or so their bodies would be covered in sweat, and the dirt and grime would flake off their bodies like plaster off a wall. Their exhaustion from a long day at work would disappear in a cloud of steam, and when they reemerged from the sauna they would be floating like celestial beings. The first building along that street to install this sort of sauna was Zhu Ying’s Otherwordly Delights, and the first person to try it was Kong Mingliang, who at the time was still serving as village chief. When he came out, he was completely naked and said to the men waiting in line outside,

  “It feels like you’ve just entered a woman’s you-know-what.”

  People entered the sauna in small groups, and each group remained inside for about ten minutes at a time. Meanwhile, those waiting outside formed a line that stretched down the street and halfway up the mountain ridge. People wanting to use the sauna had to wait in line from dawn until after dusk. Some people even had to pack travel rations and spend up to three days on the road in order to reach Explosion and be able to use its sauna. Later, there were additional electric saunas and a coal-burning one, so that women could also take turns using them. In addition to the saunas themselves, there were also other services such as massages, pedicures, and sexual services. After people had enjoyed themselves, they would want to drink, have tea, and play mahjong. In this way the most prosperous figures in the world quickly entered Explosion.

  It wasn’t clear whether the mountain ridge began to have mines and miners because Explosion developed this sort of service industry, or whether Explosion developed this sort of service industry precisely because there were mines and miners in the nearby mountain ridge. In the end, however, everything happened virtually overnight. There was a foreigner with a big nose and big eyes who drove from the mines into Explosion. He parked his sedan and swaggered down the street, stopping to buy a plate of dumplings. Because he had too much money, he paid with a hundred-yuan bill for a plate of dumplings that cost only five yuan. When the owner of the dumpling restaurant gave the foreigner his change, the foreigner left the entire ninety-five yuan as a tip. The shop owner stared in astonishment, unable to believe that the world’s foreigners had this custom whereby if you smile at them when they are paying for food, they will give you even more money.

  Explosion’s residents believed every foreigner must own a bank.

  Everyone watched until the foreigner entered the sauna, and only then did people spread the news that a foreigner had arrived in Explosion, describing how he spent money as though he owned a bank. A large crowd arrived, including virtually the entire population of Explosion, and they all gathered in front of Otherwordly Delights. They chatted and laughed as they waited for the foreigner to come out—waiting to see his large nose, blue eyes, blond hair, and hairy arms. But as they were waiting, they gradually stopped talking and laughing, as a stifling feeling began to permeate Explosion. It dawned on them that they didn’t know whether the foreigner was American or European, or what he had gone into the sauna to do. A sauna bath—including the time necessary to get undressed and get dressed again—shouldn’t require more than about half an hour, but this foreigner had already been inside for over an hour. After two hours he still hadn’t emerged, nor after three hours. When he arrived, the sun had been high in the sky and the streets were filled with an autumn warmth like a sauna that had just opened its doors, but everyone waited for the foreigner for so long that the sun had begun to set in the west and he had not emerged.

  The doors to the shop had glass windows in wooden frames, and on the glass appeared the words WELCOME CUSTOMERS, PLEASE MAKE YOURSELVES AT HOME. But behind the glass, a curtain had been pulled shut, preventing people outside from seeing what was happening inside. As a result, the villagers could only speculate about what was going on. By this point, the foreigner had been inside for more than three hours. This was the first Westerner to come to Explosion for business, and there was no telling what kind of practices he had brought with him and was flaunting in front of the villagers. They held their breath as they waited for him to emerge, but they didn’t know why they were waiting or what they would say to him once he reappeared.

  Time became like dammed-up water, pooling between the waiting crowd of people and the newly constructed town streets. It was not until the bright midday sun had been replaced by the red rays of the setting sun that those glass doors finally opened. The villagers’ throats tightened and their hearts trembled as they saw the foreigner saunter out. He was wearing a pin-striped gray suit and a red tie, and his face was as red as pig liver. His hair had been washed and blow-dried, every strand neatly combed from left to right. As the sun set over his hair, the sunlight slid down from his head to the ground or onto the wall. In the crook of his left arm was a young woman wearing a miniskirt and showing off her thin legs and pert breasts. As the two of them walked out, everyone waiting in the doorway stared in amazement, but after the onlookers realized that the woman was not from Explosion, they began throwing clods of dirt, eggs, apples, and baked sweet potatoes at Zhu Ying and the foreigner, shouting, “Whore!” “Slut!” “Swine!” “Shameless!”

  The woman quickly retreated back inside.

  The foreigner stared at the onlookers in surprise and babbled something to them about rights and law that they couldn’t understand. Finally, a dust-covered shoe struck him in the face, and only then did he have no choice but to step away from the door. At this point, Zhu Ying stormed out of the building and stood in front of the foreigner, shielding him from the curses and projectiles that were being hurled in his direction. Then she said something that made everyone fall silent:

  “Do you know what Reform and Opening Up is?”

  She added, “Is it possible that you don’t want to grow prosperous?”

  She added, “Don’t forget that it was with the money sent back by your own families’ daughters and sisters that you were able to build your new tile-roofed houses!”

  Everyone was silent.

  In the silence, Zhu Ying personally escorted the foreigner across the street and accompanied him all the way to his sedan, which was parked outside the village.

  II.

  Prosperity is something that needs to be supported every day. Everyone gradually came to accept the activities along that street and to regard them as commonplace. The first thing Kong Mingliang did as town mayor was to pass a law of protection on behalf of the entertainment industry, certifying that not only were these customers engaged in legal activity, but furthermore their activity was supporting the Reform and Opening Up campaign. In this way, their patronage was placed aboveboard with considerable fanfare, and business took off. People surged toward that entertainment street that would come to be known as Otherworldly Delights, just as they would surge into the market on holidays. They treated this as nothing unusual,
particularly given that not only were the girls working there not from Explosion, but they were not even from that county or city. Instead, they were from Sichuan, Guizhou, and Hunan, together with some tall and forthright girls from the northeast. As for Explosion’s own girls, in the interest of preserving their reputation and future marriage prospects, either they went south to earn this sort of money, or else they returned to help Zhu Ying with her businesses—becoming Otherworldly Delights’ supervisors and directors.

  There were also some who tried to open their own romance businesses, but because of the cost of preparations, services, and salaries, they were ultimately unable to compete with Zhu Ying’s. Some of these new businesses ended up closing, while others gamely attempted to carry on. The following year, meanwhile, Cheng Qing opened a romantic establishment called Peach Blossom Spring in an intersection to the north of Otherworldly Delights. She used a building that had previously been a restaurant, which she renovated and rebuilt with a new storefront. The shop provided the same sauna, bath, and massage services as the others, but unlike them her business flourished, as workers from surrounding factories and from the silver and molybdenum mines in the mountains came surging in, day and night.

  Zhu Ying watched this new establishment warily, and one day took the opportunity to go see Cheng Qing. On that particular day, Cheng Qing was in her office discussing something with a foreign client, and when Zhu Ying arrived she discovered that the foreigner was none other than the same man who had visited her shop when it first opened, and who had been beaten by the villagers. She smiled at him and said, “So, you’ve come here? In the future, I’ll give you a fifty percent discount, and if you’re not satisfied you’ll get a full refund.” The foreigner looked at her happily, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Zhu Ying then added earnestly, “You should go now. Today, you can pick as many girls as you want—you can take two, four, or even eight at a time, and I’ll charge you for only one.” The foreigner laughed with delight, added some awkward and stilted words of gratitude, then left Cheng Qing’s office. It was only then that Zhu Ying had a chance to examine Cheng Qing’s office, which was located directly across from the check-in counter, and through the door or window you could see every customer who arrived as well as the girls she employed. Zhu Ying saw several girls pass by in front of the door. Their faces were almost perfectly round, their bodies were slightly plump, and they all had very ample breasts. They looked as if they were under eighteen, and they appeared to be as pure and unaffected as freshly picked melons or fruits.