by Yan Lianke
For us—as the bravest, wisest, most selfless people, armed with revolutionary thought—there is no obstacle we cannot overcome, there is no peak we cannot climb, and there is no miracle we cannot create. Accordingly, we arrive at the most difficult moment, rise to the most urgent juncture, travel to the most dangerous locations, and undertake the most dangerous assignments. Without blood and sweat, there can be no glory, and without sacrifice there can be no happiness. Without lofty aspirations there can be no great prospects, and without hard work there can be no possibility of success. Revolution starts from a storm, just as the spoils of harvest come after industriousness. Happiness is accumulated from blood and sweat, and bliss is derived from frustration. Hold your head up, walk forward, rain or shine; cross the ravine, embrace hardship, and swear never to lower your head. Advance, the future beckons! Work hard, the red flag lies ahead. Struggle, and the sun will shine forever!
But the problem still remains: Where will I dump those 450 cubic meters of loose soil that I’ll dig up?
I walked around the paulownia tree and saw the irrigation canal that runs all year-round at the base of the Chenggang hill in the Balou Mountains. How many tens of thousands of cubic meters of soil could the canal hold? How much soil could the canal’s water wash away?
Several days later, I made an opening in our family’s courtyard wall and installed a door. Then I built a pigsty on the other side of the door and bought a couple of piglets. In this way, I created a back door and a path—both of which were hidden from view by the pigsty —by which I could access the irrigation canal behind the village.
I began digging one night in the latter half of the fourth month, on a night when the half-moon didn’t appear until after midnight. Needless to say, everyone else was still asleep, and the moonlight illuminated everything inside the village and outside the village with its milky light. I marked out the entrance to the tunnel in a sweet-potato cellar in my rear courtyard, then I collected a short-handled shovel, a pick, a hoe, a couple of rattan baskets, a lamp, a rope, and an iron hook, and took them into the sweet-potato cellar. Next, wearing the white shirt and green pants that I normally wore only when digging for the army, I crawled into the cellar and hung the lamp from the earthen wall. I spit on my palms and rubbed them together, knelt down with the pick, then lifted my arms and brought them down forcefully. When I lifted the pick again, the first bowl-size clump of yellow dirt fell to the ground. The smell of moist soil immediately overpowered the scent of sweet potatoes and decayed leaves that lingered in the cellar. Thanks to the revolution, it had been a long time since I had personally engaged in any heavy manual labor, because since I had become the highest-ranking official in the Chenggang production team, people would even bring fresh well water, grain, and vegetables directly to my house. After a new directive had come down from the town Party committee a half month earlier, even minor tasks like sweeping the courtyard and hanging things on the wall were handled by villagers who came to my house to discuss things. It was as if the villagers regarded it as an honor to work for my family. In the army, I had observed that the orderlies charged with bringing tea to military commanders and washing their clothes always had a proud smile on their faces, and now I noticed that the villagers working for my family always had an affectionate, warm, and even proud smile. I knew I merely needed to give the word, and countless commune members would immediately come to help me extend this passageway all the way to Hongmei’s house. However, I couldn’t do that. I definitely couldn’t do that. Not only would the revolution not permit it, this kind of behavior would inevitably position me in opposition to the revolution and even make me an enemy of the revolution. So naturally I couldn’t let anyone help me, nor could I share my secret with anyone. I was digging a dark passageway, a hiding place that Hongmei and I would treasure in our souls but would never be able to reveal to anyone else. It was a sublime proof of our great and divine love.
I filled two baskets with dirt, crawled out of the tunnel, then used the rope to haul the baskets up into the moonlight. Next, I went through the pigsty and out the back gate, following a path down to the irrigation canal at the base of the hillock. By this point the moon had already moved from over the hillock to a new position over the village, and in the moonlight the rafters and eaves of the rear courtyard of Cheng Temple appeared gentle and soothing, as if they were rocking back and forth. In the village streets, you could occasionally hear the sound of a dog or two barking, like a thin sheet of ice sliding down from the sky, whereupon the early summer moonlit sky would appear even more indescribably beautiful. The bright sound of flowing water in the irrigation canal circulated like drizzle under the moonlight. There was wet grass in the fields and under my feet. The frogs and cicadas grew quiet as I walked past, then resumed their light-hearted cries, drowning out my footsteps and the clattering sound of the baskets suspended from my carrying pole. The world became incomparably still, and in that stillness I could even hear the Balou Mountains breathing. It was as if I could hear the wheat stalks absorbing moisture and nourishment from the fields.
I carried the first load of dirt to the banks of the canal, wiped away my sweat, then dumped the dirt into the canal. When I stood up, I saw that the row of red-tile-roofed houses in the main courtyard of the town government complex in the northern end of Chenggang was illuminated in the moonlight, the houses all turned dark purple, as though covered in a layer of dried blood.
I resolved that, within two years, I would dig a 550-meter-long revolutionary tunnel of love, and furthermore I would rid Chenggang of all the obstacles that had been created by my political activities. I resolved that before I turned twenty-seven I would be appointed mayor and would become Chenggang’s primary leader. That night, I dug 0.8 meters of tunnel and dumped nineteen loads of dirt into the irrigation canal. I looked over to the town government’s tile-roofed buildings nineteen times, and nineteen times I repeated my vow. Finally, when the roosters crowed three times and the eastern sky began to be filled with milky white light, I pissed in the direction of the town government complex, then returned home and went to sleep.
Chapter 7
A New Battle
1. The Transformation of Cheng Temple
Three days before the beginning of the Full Grain solar term, I found myself faced with a formidable challenge. The previous day had been the anniversary of the birth of Cheng Yuxiang, the father of the Cheng Brothers. During the day, village life proceeded as usual, but when night fell the village suddenly became very peaceful. As usual, that night I hauled nearly twenty loads of dirt from the tunnel to the irrigation canal, but just as the sun was about to come up, Hongmei and Cheng Qinglin woke me up.
“This is a crisis, a fucking crisis! Last night, someone burned incense and spirit paper in the entranceway to Cheng Temple,” Cheng Qinglin shouted as he lunged toward my bed.
“This is clearly an attempt to challenge our proletariat class with superstitious feudal activity,” Hongmei said as she handed me the clothing I had removed when I returned home a little earlier. “If we don’t immediately put a stop to this deviant activity, we’ll be betraying the absolute authority of our revolutionary committee!”
I understood the seriousness of the situation. If we ignored this development, not only would it demonstrate the weakness of the new leadership—of which I was the center—but it could one day become powerful evidence that the “new red revolutionary base” was in fact a “superstitious tribe.” In fact, it would affect not only Chenggang’s revolutionary committee but the town’s political livelihood and entire future. Without a word, I got dressed and, together with Hongmei and Qinglin, went directly to Cheng Temple. We saw that there were thirty piles of burnt incense sticks and spirit paper in the entranceway. I had heard that whenever Cheng Tianmin went to the county seat to attend a meeting, the main gate of Cheng Temple would always be locked, and therefore these people who had come to burn incense hadn’t been able to enter the temple proper and instead had to burn their off
erings in the entranceway. Upon seeing those rows of ashes and dew-covered incense sticks, I wondered how it was that I hadn’t noticed them when coming back from digging the night before? Did that mean that these people burning the incense hadn’t noticed me either?
Either way, I had to find the people who had burned the incense.
After telling Qinglin to summon a member of the People’s militia to come keep watch over the site, Hongmei and I went to the town government complex to see Mayor Wang, who had just woken up and was in the process of washing his face. We initially wanted to ask him to summon some comrades from the police station to help us solve the case, but after hearing our report he slowly wrung out his towel in the basin and said, “I see that those several mu of land at the front of your village need irrigation.”
Hongmei and I were both unnerved by this response. It was as if we were not pursuing revolution but rather were idle and simply using the revolution to give us some kind of diversion.
“Today we will organize people to go irrigate the land,” I said. “But Mayor Wang, the fact that there are people who still dare to burn incense and worship their ancestors is much more consequential than the need to irrigate the land and increase production on that plot.”
Mayor Wang turned and looked at me and Xia Hongmei. His towel paused for a moment over the basin, then he said, “Gao Aijun, don’t you know that I was a professional soldier? When I was in the army, I served as a battalion commander, and now I’m the town mayor. Xia Hongmei never served in the military, so she wouldn’t understand, but you should know how subordinates should address their superiors.”
I said, “Mayor Wang, the revolution doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor. Subordinates should serve and respect their superiors, but it is even more important that their superiors serve and respect the truth.”
Mayor Wang threw his towel into the basin, and the dirty water splattered all over me and Hongmei. “The truth is that if you don’t irrigate your land, production will drop. If production drops, the people will go hungry, and if the people go hungry they won’t follow the Party or pursue revolution.” As he was hollering, blood rushed to his face and turned his cheeks deep purple. I wanted to tell him that the issue wasn’t that if people were hungry they wouldn’t follow the Party and wouldn’t pursue revolution, but rather it was precisely because people were hungry that they would follow the Party and pursue revolution. This has been demonstrated by revolutionary history and is an irrefutable experience and truth. But before I had a chance to explain this, Mayor Wang opened a drawer and took out several pages of a document that had been copied by hand onto letter paper and tossed them at me. Hongmei and I took a look and saw that it was the text of the essay “Reflections on Whether Cheng Temple Is a Residual Feudal Poison or a Cultural Legacy,” which Hongmei and I had sent to the county seat.
Hongmei and I both froze in alarm.
Mayor Wang said, “Go ahead and take it. If the two of you want to destroy Cheng Temple, you will simultaneously destroy the heart of the Chenggang production brigade. Let’s see how you continue to work, be cadres, and pursue revolution after you lose community support.”
Hongmei and I emerged from the town government building.
We decided to teach Mayor Wang a lesson.
Outside the town government’s main gate, there was an area paved in bricks, around which were three paulownia trees. In the cracks between the bricks, there were a variety of weeds and insects. Hongmei took the copy of “Reflections on Whether Cheng Temple Is a Residual Feudal Poison or a Cultural Legacy” and asked me, “How could this have ended up in Mayor Wang’s hands?” I replied, “This simply proves that there is a black thread running through the Party’s internal organization, because otherwise how could this document have ended up in Mayor Wang’s hands?” Hongmei’s face turned slightly pale, as though a ruthless enemy were standing in front of us holding a gun. I asked, “What should we do?” She said, “We can’t let Mayor Wang lead us around by the nose.” Of course we couldn’t let Mayor Wang lead us around by the nose. Just as China couldn’t let Khrushchev lead it by the nose, how could we let a mayor lead us by the nose? When I looked through the leaves of the paulownia trees, I could see sunlight erupting like blood in the eastern sky, dyeing the eastern mountains and half the earth red while illuminating the world and the universe.
When the sun came up, I heard a dark pounding sound like blood vessels exploding. I saw a beehive fall from one of the paulownia trees and, with a snap, all the bees flew back into it. At that moment, I had a revolutionary inspiration. An earth-enveloping vigor emanated from the blood-red light of the rising sun and poured over me. From the fallen beehive I had the inspiration that revolution yields birth and victory, while a lack of revolution yields defeat and death. I gazed at Hongmei’s face and saw traces of her earlier frustration and disappointment in her eyes. I said, “Motherfuckers. The mayor is a cock, and the battalion commander is a cock.” She asked, “Do you dare challenge him?” I replied, “If I don’t, what alternative do we have?” Then there was a period of silence, broken when I suddenly asked, “Hongmei, have you missed me? Do you miss doing that thing?” She looked away for a moment and saw a government cadre carrying a bamboo water bottle into the water closet to fetch some hot water. She watched as he lifted his foot to step over the twenty-centimeter-high threshold to the door of the town government’s main building. She nodded to the cadre, then turned back to me and grunted in agreement. She said, “Aijun, Guizhi is no longer alive. But as long as you want me, I am always willing to give myself to you. As long as it’s safe, we can do it anywhere.”
I took her hand. Right there in front of the town government building’s door, which was covered in red paint, under the slogan-filled scrolls that hung on either side of the door, and in the mottled sunlight that made its way through the paulownia trees’ leafy canopy overhead, she threw caution to the wind and—like a dog or pig, a horse or ox—stuck her hand down my pants. When her soft fingers touched my brazen hardness, we both started to tremble from head to toe. We both stepped back as though we had received an electric shock, then nervously looked around.
An old man from the Cheng clan emerged from his house carrying a pail and proceeded to Rear Cheng Street well to fetch some water.
Hongmei and I looked at each other as the white heat on our faces fell clatteringly to our feet.
She said, “Aijun, I’ll wait for you tonight on the bank of Thirteen Li River.”
I stared at her half-white face, as though looking at a nude painting.
She said, “Don’t you want to do that thing?”
I said, “Of course I do, I want it more than life itself!” Then I added, “But the current situation wouldn’t permit it, so we should restrain ourselves. I’ve noticed that as long as I restrain myself and don’t do that thing, I’m always left with an endless amount of energy and vigor—such that I can carry out any kind of revolution.”
I continued, “Going forward, every time we successfully contribute to the revolution, we’ll be able to go crazy doing that thing. We should celebrate revolutionary acts by doing that thing—and that way doing that thing will be much more satisfying than if we did it ten or a hundred times a day.”
She stared back at me the same way that I was staring at her. I didn’t know whether she was looking at my mouth or at my nose (or perhaps she was gazing at me as though I were a nude painting?).
I said, “Today, we’ll lead the masses into Cheng Temple. We won’t worry about the building itself, but we will burn all the Cheng Brothers’ writings stored inside. Then let’s see what Mayor Wang proposes to do in response. Afterward, you and I can meet on the riverbank and celebrate by crazily doing that thing.”
With this hungry longing to do that thing, we resolved to initiate an attack on Cheng Temple. We hoped that the failure of the attack on the memorial arch would become the mother of success and were confident that the subsequent attack on Cheng Temple would have to succe
ed—given that in the early summer period we had already seized Chenggang’s leadership and gained many valuable revolutionary experiences and lessons. We therefore already understood that for the People (the masses), it is only the People (the masses) who are the true heroes, the true creators of history, and the true engine of historical development. I was already extremely clear that once one grasps class struggle, one’s soul becomes deep and profound. I was already extremely clear that revolution is like war.
In fact, revolution is war. A production brigade’s revolution is like a nation’s war, or even a world war. War can bring the people destruction, but if we don’t resist the armed interference and invasion from domestic counterrevolutionaries and international imperialists, and instead willingly permit ourselves to become oppressed or enslaved, then we will be fated to suffer even more destruction, sacrifice, and pain. That is to say, if we permit Khrushchev to lead us around by the nose and let ourselves be manipulated like marionettes by the revisionists—if we remain indifferent to this predicament and turn a deaf ear to it—then we will effectively push our nation to the brink of disaster and destruction. If that happens, our people will be transformed into new slaves, rendering our nation and our people into a different kind of colonial subject. In revolution and in war, the sacrifice of the minority can be exchanged for the security and happiness of the majority, or even of the entire nation. Lenin said, “War makes even the most civilized and cultured nations (or places, such as Chenggang) descend into a state of famine.” However, as a powerful historical process, war is also capable of generating a spectacularly rapid social development. War is a wake-up call for the masses and arouses them by means of an unprecedented amount of pain and suffering. Revolution launches war and war promotes revolution, which is why history can hurtle forward like a locomotive.
