by Yan Lianke
When Minghui emerged from his brother’s training gully, he stood on the empty mountain ridge and saw the mountains behind him, shimmering in the sunlight. A loud rumbling sound could be heard coming from his brother’s barracks, which were hidden in the gully, while in front of him, in the hazy city of Explosion, skyscrapers jutted into the sky, like a glimmering sheet of fog covering the earth. Standing between that sound and the bright buildings, Minghui suddenly realized that something was going to happen between his second and third brothers, and that it would be as monumental as an earthquake or a volcano. When he realized how huge this event would be, Minghui’s legs grew limp. He squatted on the mountain ridge, like an ant trapped under an elephant’s foot, as tears began to appear in the corners of his eyes.
II.
Minghui went to tell his sister-in-law Zhu Ying that he didn’t want to serve as bureau director anymore. Many people would be willing to sell their own wife and daughter for the chance to serve as a bureau director in a new city, but Minghui was emphatic that he definitely didn’t want to serve. After finding that he couldn’t discuss this momentous decision with his own brothers, he decided to go see his sister-in-law Zhu Ying. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her for a long time, given that the last occasion must have been his nephew’s birthday party. He had bought his nephew a tree that could be made into a house and plants that could be used for food, together with colorful plastic eggs that could hatch into real birds that would fly off into the sky. As Zhu Ying prepared a tableful of food, Minghui played with his nephew while calculating how many years it had been since Mingliang—after being appointed county mayor and city mayor—had last returned home. Upon calculating that it would take only forty minutes to walk back to the old Explosion streets from the city government building, and a mere ten minutes by car, Minghui was astonished that Mingliang, despite living in the same city, had gone for so many years without returning to see his own wife and son.
“Do you want me to go find him and bring him home?” Minghui asked Zhu Ying.
“He’ll be back,” Zhu Ying laughed. “And when he does return, not only will he kneel down to me, but if I choose to ignore him he will die at my feet.” Upon saying this, Zhu Ying looked outside, then turned back to Minghui. “That day is not far off. I promise you’ll live to see it.”
Minghui couldn’t really understand what Zhu Ying was saying, but he didn’t hear much anger or resentment in her voice. Instead, he heard a principled shrewdness, which convinced him that she was truly extraordinary. He felt that Zhu Ying’s smile was mysterious and inscrutable, so that it was impossible to glean anything useful from it. Originally Zhu Ying and Mingliang had been working side by side, equally determined to make Explosion prosperous. They had been determined to have Explosion—originally a small village that resembled a fallen fruit—become a village committee in charge of overseeing other natural villages. They had been determined to have Explosion be promoted to a town, and even a county. And now, it had in fact become a bustling metropolis. But after Zhu Ying got pregnant and gave Mingliang a son, she rarely went outside anymore and instead spent all of her time at home raising her son. In the end, she had been through a lot. She had given birth to this city, and what she had seen and experienced was in no way inferior to her husband’s experiences. When Minghui went to discuss with her his decision to step down as bureau director, he also went to see his nephew, who was getting bigger by the day. Minghui first went to a department store to buy his nephew a gift, and got him a pear from an apple tree and a date from a persimmon tree, together with a cocoa tree imported from abroad. As long as the cocoa tree was exposed to sunlight, small cocoa beans would grow, and later you would be able to pick chocolate fruit directly from the tree and eat it. He bought a plastic horse, stable, and pasture, and if you took the white horse out to the pasture, its belly would expand and some green grass would disappear. After the horse had eaten its fill, it would return to the stable to sleep, and after a while it would give birth to a tiny foal. The foal would then grow up, eat grass, and give birth to yet another foal. After several days, your home would become a veritable farmyard, and you would become the farm owner.
When Minghui arrived at the front door of the building that was originally the village committee building—and which subsequently became an industry building and was now a nursery school—he saw that there were many parents dropping off their children. He stood in the doorway for a while, but when he didn’t see his sister-in-law and nephew, he proceeded on to his sister-in-law’s house. Mingliang had paid to have the industry building demolished and then hired a Danish architect to design the nursery. All of the nursery’s walls and ceilings were decorated with lively colors and pictures, to look like a Danish town. When Minghui walked past that town, he saw that the pigeons sitting there were also colorfully decorated in red and yellow. The real pigeons were just like fake ones, and the fake ones were just like real ones, but he found this mixing of reality and imitation to be completely unremarkable. He therefore continued to his sister-in-law’s house. Zhu Ying had built what at the time was Explosion’s most extravagant three-story house, though now, compared with all of the modern buildings and imitation European villas, it appeared old and dilapidated. In the entranceway to the two-decade-old house, however, there was a bronze plaque that said CITY HISTORICAL SITE, as a result of which the house and courtyard appeared dignified and distinctive. Explosion’s original main street was now Explosion City’s old city street, and all of the bricks and trees were cultural relics. But among these cultural relics, the old Kong family house and Zhu Ying’s house were particularly prized, and years later they would be designated as museums and the former residences of local notables. Therefore, Zhu Ying continued living on this street—and just as her mother-in-law continued living in the old Kong family mansion, Zhu Ying similarly kept watch over the Zhu family home, which she had built with her own money.
Minghui rang the doorbell.
He rang the doorbell again.
Finally, someone arrived to open the door. When it swung open, he saw that a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl was standing there. She was wearing a translucent silk shirt and shorts that were so short that they reached only the top of her thighs. Minghui was startled by her white jade-like thighs, flirtatious features, and carefully painted eyebrows and lipstick. He stepped backward, thinking that he had come to the wrong house. But when the girl saw Minghui step back, she smiled at him and asked,
“Who are you looking for?
“Come inside,” she added.
After he entered, she closed the door behind him. Then, like a host, she led Minghui to Zhu Ying’s living room. It was there that he saw Zhu Ying standing in the middle of the room, and in front of her was a row of girls all wearing the same outfit and with the same makeup as the teenage girl who had opened the door for him. They looked at Minghui in surprise. They all had flirtatious expressions and were red hot, as though they had suddenly met the man of their dreams, as though they wanted to devour him with their gaze. Minghui stood in the doorway, his forehead covered in sweat. He immediately dropped the gifts he was holding, and as he was reaching down to pick them up, he looked around for his nephew.
“He’s gone to the nursery.” Zhu Ying accepted the packages Minghui was holding, then said to the girls, “This is my brother—you can go upstairs now.”
The girls reluctantly tore their gazes away from Minghui. Laughing and chattering, they all ran upstairs. Their footsteps on the stairs sounded like drumbeats. One girl’s red high-heeled shoe fell off, and several hundred-yuan bills flew out. As she was gathering the money, the other girls burst out into peals of laughter. Eventually, Zhu Ying glared at the girls, and only then did they quiet down. After the girls left, Zhu Ying turned back to Minghui and said, “Come in. They’re all students from my women’s vocational school.”
Minghui woke up from his daze and entered Zhu Ying’s living room. On the couch, there was the thick smell of girls’
perfume and body odor. Between the couch cushions, there was a red hair clip with crystal and diamond pendants, which one of them had dropped. Zhu Ying pointed to the couch and said, “Please sit.” Minghui, however, did not sit on the couch, and instead he pulled over a chair. Then he looked away from the couch and saw that on the wall there were several pictures of his second brother, Mingliang. Beneath the portraits, Zhu Ying had written in red pen: MINE TO THE DEATH!!! The three exclamation marks that appeared at the end of the phrase resembled the string of grenades that Minghui had seen at his third brother’s place. Then he noticed that on the wall next to him there were several more portraits of his second brother, below which was written a similar phrase: YOU AND EXPLOSION COULD ALL BE MINE, followed by a similar string of three exclamation marks. Then he looked into the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the wine cabinet, and the pantry. The walls in each of these rooms were just like the walls of the staircase he had just walked up. Everywhere Zhu Ying would usually go around the house, the walls and the furniture were all plastered with photographs—both in color and in black-and-white—of Second Brother as a boy, as an adult, getting married, and working, and also speaking at various meetings, cutting ceremonial ribbons, and shaking hands after being appointed city mayor. All of the photographs had similar phrases scrawled over them, followed by the same three exclamation marks. The old photographs had been reprinted, while photographs of him as city mayor had been cut out of magazines and newspapers. The result resembled a photography exhibit of the mayor’s life. After Minghui saw all of these photographs, he didn’t know why his sister-in-law had posted them everywhere. He finally turned back to Zhu Ying, who smiled and said,
“I was afraid that if I didn’t post these pictures, I might forget what your brother looks like.”
Her eyes grew red and bitter.
“He’s so busy that often he doesn’t return home for years at a time.”
Finally, Zhu Ying wiped away her tears, then smiled confidently and said,
“He will return soon. He will soon return to see me. He wants to transform this midsize city into one of China’s largest metropolises—a megalopolis as big as an entire province. He wants Explosion to become a top-level metropolis directly under central government rule, like Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. He wants the officials in Beijing to agree with his plan. After all, hasn’t he been giving them gifts all this time? What has he not given them? Eventually, he will realize that giving material gifts is not as effective as distributing students from our women’s vocational school.” As Zhu Ying was saying this, she glanced upstairs, then wiped the smile from her face. She said, “I’ve already selected two hundred students for your brother, and eventually plan to have several hundred. When your brother needs them, he will have to come back and ask me—he will need to ask me to give him these several hundred beautiful female students, so that he can send them up to Beijing. At that time, your brother will come back to ask for my help, and if I decline he won’t be able to elevate Explosion into a provincial-level metropolis. He will have no choice but to kneel down and bang his head against the wall, begging for my assistance.”
Zhu Ying smiled and drank some water, then passed Minghui a pear she had picked from the persimmon tree. Minghui didn’t eat the pear, but when he accepted it he noticed that his sister-in-law had deep wrinkles around her eyes. In the blink of an eye, her previously tender skin had aged dramatically, and she looked as though she had aged several decades in the course of just a few years. She now appeared middle-aged and resembled not his sister-in-law but rather Explosion’s city mayor or the provincial governor—looking as though she had already undergone countless trials and tribulations and could handle anything thanks to her age and experience. Minghui once again looked around the room at the portraits of his brother, then looked upstairs at all of the girls Zhu Ying had prepared for him.
“Does he want to have Explosion promoted again?” Minghui asked. “When will it become a provincial-level metropolis?” Finally, he placed the pear he was holding on the table.
Has my brother truly gone mad? Minghui asked himself.
“I don’t want to serve as bureau director any longer,” Minghui said out loud, as he stood up and looked as if he were about to leave. He had originally come to discuss with Zhu Ying his decision to step down as bureau director, but now, upon hearing that his brother intended to transform Explosion into one of China’s provincial-level metropolises, Minghui suddenly made up his mind and therefore no longer had any need to discuss the matter with Zhu Ying. It was as if his brother’s decision to transform Explosion into a provincial-level metropolis had reinforced Minghui’s own decision to step down from his current position as the city’s youngest bureau director. Sunlight was streaming in and shining on Zhu Ying’s face and shoulders. Her face came to resemble a dust-covered mirror. Minghui took one of the gifts he had brought with him—a plastic pasture and stable set—and created a green pasture in front of him. This endless expanse of pasture stretched all the way to the base of the mountains. It was as if he and his sister-in-law were the only two people left in the entire world. They stood there in that endless expanse of pasture, and Zhu Ying gazed at him as though she were looking at her own brother and son.
“Do you really want to step down as bureau director?” she asked him in surprise.
“… Have you discussed this decision with your elder brother?
“… You should remember that night when you were still young, that night everyone in Explosion Village emerged from their homes to see who or what they would encounter. The first person I ran into was your second brother, which is why I was fated to spend the rest of my life married to him. After your brother found an official seal, he was fated to serve as village chief, town mayor, county mayor, city mayor, and provincial governor. Did you really encounter a cat that night? If you didn’t, then you shouldn’t be so indecisive now, treating major events as though they were completely inconsequential.
“… Did you really first encounter a cat that night?
“… Think carefully. Perhaps it wasn’t a cat but rather something else?”
When Minghui emerged from Zhu Ying’s house, the girls upstairs crowded up to the windows to wave good-bye. Minghui looked upstairs, then quickly turned away. Zhu Ying came out to see him off and stood in the courtyard under a chinaberry tree watching him. Because some crows had deposited melon seeds under the tree, there were melon vines crawling around it, and there were loofah melons, yellow melons, bitter melons, and summer squash. There was also a watermelon as big as a man’s head. Minghui stood under the tree next to a melon, as Zhu Ying urged him to think carefully about what he had encountered that night, saying that once he was sure, he would know what he should or shouldn’t do in this life, and specifically whether or not he should step down as bureau chief. The courtyard was filled with a strong smell of melon and wildflowers. There was also the sound and smell of cars driving up and down the streets of Explosion. Zhu Ying finally told Minghui, “When you have time, you should take me to the cemetery to weep. It has been several years since we last went.”
III.
When Minghui left Zhu Ying’s house, the sun was directly above the eastern entrance to the old village street. When he had arrived there the shadow from that tree in the middle of the street filled the crevices in the wall surrounding the house, and now that he was leaving, the tree’s shadow was once again in the same crevices. He had said a lot in his sister-in-law’s house and had sat there for what seemed like ages, but the sun didn’t appear to have moved at all. Time was frozen. As he gazed down from the hillside at the old streets during that period of frozen time, he saw a tide of people in Explosion bottled up like water behind a dam as they attempted to go to work. Here in the old street, however, everything was extremely peaceful, as the young people had all gone into the city. The people who had rented houses along the old street had also gone to work, leaving behind only the houses, various cul
tural relics, and the sunlight and tree shadows. Minghui stopped under this tree and looked at the cracks in the wall and the stationary shadows. At this point another cat emerged from behind the tree.
The cat ran along the courtyard wall, then disappeared.
Minghui’s heart skipped a beat, as he recalled that night many years earlier. The moonlight had flowed like water, as all of the village’s mothers and fathers dreamed the same dream, and they all let their children leave home to see what would be the first thing they would encounter or pick up. That night, he had left home with his three brothers, and they had parted ways in the square. Minghui’s eldest brother had gone east, his second brother had gone west, his third brother had gone south, while he himself had proceeded north. Along the road he had seen many walls and trees, together with moonlight and a cat. The cat meowed, then ran under a willow tree, heading south—climbing over a wall and then running off toward the houses. At that point, Minghui had sat under the tree, just as he was doing now, and turned his gaze away from the direction in which the cat had scurried away. He knew he should go back and meet up with his brothers, and wanted to tell them that the first thing he had encountered had been this cat. But just as he was about to leave, he saw that under the same willow tree there was a dusty and tattered book. He picked it up and leafed through it. It was a well-thumbed, wire-bound almanac, the pages full of saliva stains from someone wetting a finger to turn them. There was also a musty smell coming from the volume. In that era, every household would have had one of these almanacs, which would have contained a sixty-year table correlating traditional lunar dates with modern solar ones. The almanacs would have been printed with the twenty-four solar terms and the weather, and after every several dozen pages there would have been a page with an explanation of how to calculate the reader’s trigram fortune.
