Hard Like Water

by Yan Lianke

  For the second objective, we spent half a month engaged in secret activities. We collected seventy-eight incidents, from which we selected fifteen representative examples and printed two hundred leaflets. To maintain absolute secrecy, I went to visit a fellow soldier in a neighboring county 180 li away and printed the leaflets there (the soldier in question worked in the county Party committee’s printing press). These fifteen examples included the following:

  In Jiudu’s Dongqu district, several revolutionary youths hanged the district committee secretary from the city gate tower and burned him alive because he didn’t support their rebellious activities and furthermore was openly cavorting with a young woman.

  In Hongmei’s former school in an area outside the city, an elderly teacher was caught peeping into the women’s bathroom, so students seized him while he was teaching and tied him to the blackboard, then proceeded to pluck out his eyes and feed them to the dogs.

  In the East Datour production team, which was located only six li from Chenggang, the masses discovered that the Party branch secretary had dropped a copy of Chairman Mao’s Quotations into an outhouse cesspool, and that he not only did not immediately fish it out, but he even took half of an adobe brick and used it to force the book, which had been floating on the surface, down to the bottom of the cesspool. However, no evil deed can ever slip through heaven’s net, and eventually the brick disintegrated, and as a result, one day the revolutionary masses were excavating the cesspool and found that copy of Chairman Mao’s Quotations, inscribed with the village branch secretary’s name. Not only did the revolutionary masses remove the village branch secretary from office, they even broke one of his legs.

  Deep in the Balou Mountains, there is a village called Little Stream, where everyone who crossed the bridge was asked to take a box containing copies of Chairman Mao’s Quotations. One female commune member wasn’t willing to do so, so the young person guarding the bridge asked her, “Do you know who Chairman Mao is?” The women thought for a long time, then shook her head, whereupon the young man pushed her into the water and drowned her.

  …

  A twenty-one-year-old revolutionary in the county seat is already a member of the provincial standing committee and the minister of propaganda. He is the youngest provincial-level cadre in the country to have been promoted because of the revolution.

  Zhao Xiaqiu, female, twenty-six years old, is a worker in a factory in the district. After having been received by the political leader, she has already been appointed to the position of factory head, with the support of the factory’s seventy-eight hundred workers.

  In the Majia Encampment commune, which is located twenty-two li from Chenggang, there is an eighteen-year-old student who returned to the countryside to pursue revolution, and after overthrowing the village Party branch secretary, he established a new village branch. Because the revolution has benefits, he has recently become the commune Party secretary, and furthermore may also be appointed county committee member.

  These anecdotes were truly astounding, even terrifying, but also wonderful and joyful. Imagine that there was indeed a twenty-one-year-old who was appointed to serve as director of the county committee propaganda bureau, and a twenty-six-year-old who was appointed to serve as director of a factory with seventy-eight hundred workers. There was an eighteen-year-old who was appointed village branch secretary and member of the commune. Poverty generates a desire for change—a desire to do something, and a desire for revolution. This is how society is—it advances on a daily basis, as people’s thought is continually transformed. At the height of the revolution, you resemble the morning sun, the world is yours; it is also ours, but in the final analysis it is yours. We have no choice but to take action. We can’t be softhearted. When faced with gun-wielding enemies, we will nevertheless find victory. When faced with unarmed enemies, we definitely find victory.

  We distributed those inky-smelling flyers everywhere, then stood at the head of the village, like people possessed. Whenever we saw anyone, we would stuff a flyer into their hand. One person asked, “What’s this?” We responded, “A flyer.” He asked, “What’s it say?” We responded, “If you read it, you’ll know.” He said, “I don’t know a single Chinese character. How am I supposed to read this?” We said, “Ask someone to read it to you, then you’ll know.” Everyone took a flyer and either read it or had it read to them—including the villagers returning from working the fields, those who had spent the morning herding goats and cattle, and the backpack-wearing students returning home for lunch. Some students read the flyers out loud as they walked down the street, as though they were still in their classrooms. An illiterate man went up to someone who was reading a flyer out loud, but just as the man was getting the gist of it, the reader suddenly stopped and turned pale. The illiterate man said, “Quick, finish reading.” The reader, however, put away the flyer and said, “I’m afraid something might happen—something monumental.” Then he hurried home, escaping into his house as though trying to escape disaster.

  Something unexpected and miraculous did indeed come to pass. After the three of us on the leadership committee distributed more than thirty of the original two hundred flyers, the youngsters who had been dragged home by their parents and grandparents during the Battle of the Memorial Arch somehow returned to our side—reentering the revolutionary ranks. Cheng Qingsen, Cheng Qingshi, Cheng Qingwang, Cheng Xianzhuang, Cheng Xianmin, Cheng Xianfen, Cheng Qing’an, Cheng Xiancui, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Ren Qizhu, Shi Dagou, Shi Ergou, and Zhang Xiaoshu looked at the flyers, and although they initially appeared alarmed, after reading the flyers they immediately came over and helped us distribute the remaining ones. Each of them took about a dozen flyers, then proceeded to Front Cheng Street, Rear Cheng Street, the village entrance, the canteen, and the school entrance. They tossed out flyers like snowflakes in a blizzard—posting them on everyone’s door and on the nearby date and persimmon trees.

  Chenggang instantly fell into a frenzy, with every family discussing the district Party committee secretary who had been burned alive, the teacher whose eyes had been plucked out, and the Party branch secretary whose leg had been broken. In the streets on that autumn day, along with the sweet scent of ripe wheat, there was a half-black, half-white stench of terror. Someone asked, “Did people really push that person into the water and drown her?” Someone else said, “I know the Party branch secretary of East Datour. Did people really break his leg?” Someone who had a relative in East Datour anxiously ran over and asked what had happened and confirmed that it was all true. Furthermore, when the Party branch secretary’s son heard that his father had used a brick to push his copy of Chairman Mao’s Quotations to the bottom of the cesspool, he asked his father, “Is that true?” His father bowed his head and didn’t answer. The son then slapped his father’s face and kicked him in the rear.

  A deep ideological struggle began to develop in Chenggang’s houses and homes, and clear-eyed villagers noticed the irrepressible force with which the revolutionary flood was sweeping into Chenggang. I knew I needed to borrow the strength of this easterly wind and quickly find an entry point into true revolution. I needed to find the enemy’s throat and heart.

  To put it simply, I needed to find—either from the village branch secretary or from the village head—the words or actions they were using to carry out the revolution, and in this way I would be able to overthrow the Chenggang Party branch.

  Of course, in overthrowing Cheng Tianqing, I would have to destroy the Party branch. Of course, if I wanted to kill Cheng Tianqing and get away with it, I would need firm evidence that he was either a counterrevolutionary or had previously engaged in counterrevolutionary activities. Of course, it wasn’t a problem if I couldn’t find this evidence, because as long as I could dig up some dirt on his immediate relatives, that would be sufficient. After all, on the eve of the revolution, all roads lead to Rome.

  By this point the Cold Dew solar term had concluded, and the hot autumn season had arrived
. The sweet red smell of ripe corn began to drift over to the village from the fields, moving from west to east. The northerly wind would sometimes bring an almost tactile brownish autumn scent, like catkins and poplar blossoms drifting in the street in the early spring. This was the season that was least suited to pursuing revolution. During the revolution’s development in the countryside, its progress was inevitably hampered by the harvest season. The revolution always needed to open a path for the labor required for the autumn harvest, and in the process inevitably paid a significant price. It occurred to me that I should find an entry point into the revolution before the harvest season began, so we would be prepared to strike while the iron was hot and overthrow Cheng Tianqing from his position as emperor of Chenggang.

  I resolved to convene a meeting to address those who made up the backbone of the revolution.

  Cheng Qinglin sent seventeen people the initial announcement of the meeting, and for the location we selected an unpopulated riverbank of Thirteen Li River (the same location where Hongmei and I had planned our original rendezvous). In order to mobilize everyone to critique Cheng Tianqing’s errors and mistakes, I bought seventeen notebooks, seventeen ballpoint pen cartridges, and a box of red stamp-pad ink. I hoped that after I mobilized everyone, they would record all of Cheng Tianqing’s errors and mistakes, and then affix their red-ink handprints to these testimonies. I hoped to use this secret meeting to find a incident of Cheng Tianqing dropping his copy of Chairman Mao’s Quotations into the cesspool, a time when he miswrote the characters for “Chairman Mao” or carelessly said something that at first hearing was completely unremarkable but which, after further analysis, left everyone astounded and shocked. This sort of evidence would be an entry point into the revolution. Chenggang would feel the glow of dawn, and Cheng Tianqing would meet his doom. By that point it was noon and already very hot, and all the villagers were napping. In order to transform those seventeen pen cartridges into functioning pens, I went to my courtyard and broke apart a bamboo broom handle and used a cleaver to carefully cut it into seventeen pen tubes. Then I used string from my shoe soles to fashion them into working pens. Guizhi returned home. She was carrying some machine-made noodles and half a basket of chicken and duck eggs.

  She asked, “What are you doing? That was a brand-new broom!”

  I said, “Listen, you and I are not traveling down the same road. From now on, don’t ever ask me what I’m doing.”

  She stared at me in astonishment. Her face had a green tint, as though she were about to explode, but somehow she managed to control herself. I knew she had something to ask of me. Every time she wanted to ask me to do something, she always made a point of trying to contain her anger.

  She said, “Do you know what month this is?”

  I didn’t look up but instead continued stuffing the empty pen tubes with cartridges.

  She said, “Today is my father’s sixtieth birthday. Did you realize that?”

  I glanced at her.

  “He’s sixty years old? National cadres have to retire when they turn sixty, so how is it that he still retains his position of village branch secretary?”

  Guizhi’s complexion turned a darker shade of green.

  “Are you going to go celebrate his birthday or not?”

  I said, “Revolution is not a dinner party. I don’t have that sort of free time.”

  Tears appeared in Guizhi’s eyes.

  “Gao Aijun, I’m begging you, OK?”

  I stopped what I was doing.

  “Cheng Guizhi, I asked you to prepare a bowl of egg noodles for my mother’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. Why didn’t you do as I requested? But now you are begging me? OK, in that case, I’ll also ask you to have your father make good on the promise he made four years ago, and let me succeed him as village branch secretary. OK?”

  Guizhi fell silent. She stood in the doorway, looking rather pathetic. Perhaps she regretted her lack of filiality toward my mother, or perhaps she felt that her father should make good on his promise to let me serve as village branch secretary. Or perhaps, when faced with conflicts between family and politics, she felt unable to use her position and power as the daughter of a branch secretary. She only knew she was Cheng Tianqing’s daughter, and when she walked along Center Cheng Street, townspeople in their sixties and seventies—or even in their eighties and nineties—would all come forward and greet her. However, she didn’t realize that during the revolutionary period, politics would suppress everything else, and just a drop of political power would be capable of rendering a family’s unequal influence meaningless. Guizhi had only received a few years of education and never read any books. She was a typical rural housewife, who had never heard of newspapers like the People’s Daily or the Liberation Army Daily, nor the journal the Red Flag. When faced with family conflict, she would always come out ahead, but it was inevitable that when her family conflicts became intertwined with sociopolitical movements, she would find herself at a loss. For her, politics was a sacrifice her family offered, the same way that, twenty years earlier in Zhao Shuli’s novel Little Erhei’s Marriage, San Xiangu became a sacrifice in China’s marital revolution, even as Little Erhei and Little Qin were beneficiaries of that same revolution.

  I continued working on those homemade pens that would permit me to lash out in both speech and writing.

  Guizhi stood in front of me for a while, then took the noodles and the chicken and duck eggs into the kitchen. She brought over a stool and sat down in a shadowy area between the main room and the kitchen. I didn’t know what she was thinking—and had no idea whether she was struggling internally or whether her mind was a complete blank. She sat behind me and, without blinking, watched as I fashioned those homemade pens. The sunlight passed over her face and the shadow passed behind her, until finally the blazing sunlight shone down on her. She, however, didn’t appear to register the fact that her face was drenched in sweat because of the sun shining directly on it.

  After I finished making those seventeen pens, I stood up and stretched. When I saw her sitting there in the sunlight, I felt a rush of kindness (sometimes kindness is a revolutionary’s mortal enemy).

  “The sun is shining directly on you,” I said. “Tell your father to leave well enough alone. Once I become branch secretary, I definitely won’t let him suffer.”

  She retreated back into the shade. Her face was blackish red from the sun.

  She said, “My father is ill and has been for several days now. When he saw those leaflets you printed, he immediately collapsed.” She added, “Gao Aijun, my father is turning sixty, and I want to arrange two banquets for him. You should take this opportunity to go apologize to him. If you do, I promise that from now on I’ll treat you well, and your mother too. I’ll bring your mother down from the hillock to live with us. As long as you treat my father well, I’ll be sure to look after your mother. OK?”

  I stared at her in astonishment. With the humiliation of having to beg me, her face had developed a deep purplish hue I had never seen before. I suddenly viewed her with an unprecedented sense of revulsion, condescension, and pity. I found myself wondering how I could have married such a stupid, ugly woman? How could I have had a son and a daughter with her? How could she presume to use the favorable treatment of my mother as a bargaining chip? How could she claim a sense of filiality that had already been lost and use it to discuss important revolutionary matters? Can these sorts of household methods be used to address revolutionary problems? Can class struggle be resolved with a pair of chopsticks normally used for stirring up noodles? Can the proletariat accept a handful of rice and some beans from the capitalist class as charity? I stared at Cheng Guizhi’s face, then looked down at the Seagull-brand watch on my wrist. Finally, I picked up the pens, notebooks, and ink-stamp box, and walked out the door.

  “Gao Aijun!” Guizhi suddenly stood up and called out to me.

  I stood in the entranceway without turning around.

  “So you don’t plan to attend
my father’s sixtieth birthday?”

  I grunted in assent, then added, “Cheng Guizhi, tell your father that everyone is currently saving up for the revolution. Factories are conserving every piece of coal, and cities are conserving every drop of water. Throughout the country, everyone is adopting an attitude of greater, faster, better, more efficient, in working and promoting production, in order to establish socialism and bring it to a higher level. Chairman Mao said, Diligently build factories, diligently set up stores, diligently develop all state-run enterprises and cooperative industries, diligently establish all other industries—everything must be established in accordance with the principles of diligence. Increasing production, promoting frugality—these have already become the fundamental principles of socialism. As a Party cadre, your father is responsible for several thousand people, yet for his sixtieth birthday he wants to host a big, wasteful celebration? What is the meaning of this? Is this really for his birthday, or is there an ulterior motive?”

  I walked out of the house, but as I was leaving I heard Cheng Guizhi shout, “Gao Aijun, I’ll make you regret this!” At that point I didn’t realize the significance of her threat. Instead, I closed the door behind me and shouted back, “The person who’ll regret this won’t be me but your father.” Then I strode away.

  The noonday alley was a hot sack. The cicadas’ cries seemed to fall from the trees like fried grains of sand, jumping out of the empty sack and rolling around. Someone’s dog stuck out its tongue, and when it saw me it lazily lifted its head, then fell back asleep beneath the tree. It was in this sort of peaceful moment, when nothing out the ordinary was taking place, that Chenggang’s revolution underwent a fundamental transformation and began developing in a productive direction. This was fortuitous, but it was also necessary (necessity is the mother of fortuity).