by Yan Lianke
Given that by this point I was already officially the village branch secretary and a Party committee member, I could attend the Chenggang Party committee meetings, meaning that I could record in my leather notebook everything Mayor Wang said and did in these meetings. By early winter, when it was time to plant the wheat, I had already recorded in my notebook seventy-two reactionary things that he said.
He said, “Pursue revolution and protect production, because if production is insufficient, how can you pursue revolution!” (Revolution is primary and production is secondary, so in saying this, is he not inverting the relationship between revolution and production? And if not, then what is the theory of productivity?) He also said, “Woman is a jewel, revolution is a cock.” (This is a classic example of anti-revolutionary rhetoric, but unfortunately this is something Director Li from the town’s department of propaganda related to me, though that asshole would not be willing to write a testimonial or serve as a witness. Furthermore, he apparently subsequently regretted having told me. When I’m appointed mayor, I’ll be sure to teach him a lesson and make him regret his recalcitrance.)
At a mobilization meeting during the busy summer season, as Mayor Wang was talking to the branch secretaries of each of the production brigades, he took Chairman Mao’s saying, If the People don’t have an army, then they don’t have anything, and changed it to, If the People don’t have enough grain to survive, then they don’t have anything. At that meeting, Mayor Wang had several drinks and then went up to a Party branch secretary named Zhao Xiuyu (who was in her forties and very frumpy, and who definitely could not be mentioned in the same breath as Hongmei), took her hand, and said, “Secretary Zhao, you look just like the wife of our second company commander from when I was serving as battalion commander. Like her, you are decisive in action yet as silent as a sealed bottle. Out of all of the production brigade’s cadres, you are the one I trust the most.” (Did they have an inappropriate sexual relationship? If they did, that would be fantastic!)
According to the village’s revolutionary rules, after planting the wheat, we would enter the period of winter rest, at which point revolution and love would both reach a new level. That year, I continued working silently and patiently under Mayor Wang. The reason I was able to maintain my silence is because that year the vast engineering project I undertook for the sake of my love for Hongmei was not proceeding as smoothly as I had hoped. In the process of digging the tunnel, I kept encountering tree roots and other obstacles. After I had dug about a hundred meters, I reached a layer of red clay. Fortunately, that layer of clay, which had a consistency halfway between earth and stone, was only two meters thick, and it took me only three nights to get through it. But what would I have done if it had been ten or twenty meters thick? Would I still have been able to complete our tunnel of love? Even more unfortunately, when I was planning the project, I didn’t make plans for ventilation, but after I had dug several dozen meters I found that the air had become so thin it was difficult to breathe. I considered many possible solutions, such as buying a small fan—but that would have required electricity, and the village frequently had blackouts. I also considered digging an airway in the tunnel, but although it would have been possible to do so, it wouldn’t be very safe. Eventually, I decided that every ten meters or so I would take a semicircular shovel and, from inside the tunnel, punch an air hole as wide as a man’s arm through the ceiling—making sure that the opening of these air holes was located under the foundation of some family’s house or courtyard wall. As you know, house and courtyard walls in western Henan are made of stone and rise ten to thirty centimeters above the ground. If I dug the air holes beneath these foundations, no one would have the slightest idea that they were even there, though the air from above ground would still be able to pass through the openings in the masonry and enter the tunnel. This brilliant design made me realize that I was not only a revolutionary genius but also an engineering genius. I used all the mathematics and physics I had learned, together with all the knowledge and experience gained while serving in the army corps of engineers, and dug seventeen four- to five-meter-deep air holes up through the ceiling of the tunnel. One of the air holes opened under a millstone in the street, another opened into the hollow trunk of an old cypress in front of Cheng Temple, and the remaining fifteen opened under the foundations of walls. Fourteen of the latter holes proceeded very smoothly, and there was only one where I encountered a minor deviation—it ended up opening just outside of the courtyard wall around Cheng Guifen’s house, but fortunately, there was a woodpile over the spot. I used a stone to hide that final air hole and felt sure that by the time the wood in that woodpile was used up, and the owner discovered the opening, he would assume that it had been made by a squirrel, fox, or some other wild animal. Moreover, it was even possible that the branches and leaves from the woodpile would cover it up.
In sum, although our path twisted back and forth, the future nevertheless remained bright. By that point my tunnel was already 250 meters long, and in another dozen meters or so it would reach the empty rear courtyard in back of Cheng Tianqing’s house. Then I would excavate the underground room that would serve as our nuptial chamber. That way, when our desire became unendurable, Hongmei and I could meet in that underground chamber and strip naked. Unencumbered by even a single piece of clothing, we could laugh happily while discussing matters of work and revolution.
I hadn’t yet told Hongmei about the monumental project I had undertaken for the sake of her love. Several times when we were out in the fields happily doing that thing, she would caress my callouses and ask with surprise, “Aijun, what’s wrong with your hands?” At one point I almost revealed my secret to her, but instead I simply said, “I was born to be a laborer and develop callouses after doing even just a little bit of physical work.” I wanted to wait until I had extended the tunnel all the way to her house before telling her about my project. I wanted her to stare at me in surprise. Some day, after the revolution had achieved an enormous victory, such as when I’d been appointed town mayor or county committee member, she would be able to follow me and step into the tunnel, touch the mud walls, and sigh about my great love for her. I wanted her to remove her clothes as she walked into that tunnel for the first time, tossing an article of clothing to the ground every five steps, like heavenly maids scattering flower blossoms. In so doing, upon reaching the underground nuptial chamber, she wouldn’t have any clothing left and would simply stand there completely naked. Then, while in that nuptial chamber, we would eat when we were hungry, drink when we were thirsty, and when we were neither hungry nor thirsty we would crazily do that thing. We would do that thing eight times a day, each time for up to three hours straight. The first time she entered that underground nuptial chamber, in the middle of the night, I would want to immediately satisfy my lifetime of hunger and thirst for her, and I would embrace her for three days and three nights, seventy-two hours in all. When we woke up, we would be completely revitalized, and she and I would reemerge from the tunnel and throw ourselves into the fiery struggle, fiery revolution, and fiery life. (Perhaps, on our way out of the tunnel for the first time, we would once again crazily do that thing, as though we were afraid of losing something, and in the light of the entrance to the tunnel, she and I would have simultaneous orgasms.)
However, all these plans were predicated on my ability to finish digging the tunnel and excavating the nuptial chamber. I had already redesigned the nuptial chamber, located four meters directly beneath Cheng Tianqing’s house, such that I would set aside several cubic meters of soil, out of which I would fashion a bed. I would then drill two or three air holes in the ceiling, one of which would lead to the base of Cheng Tianqing’s courtyard wall, while another would lead to the base of the rear wall of his bedroom or the base of his bed. Perhaps through the air hole leading to his rear wall or his bed, I would be able to hear whether or not Cheng Tianqing and his wife did it in bed, and I would be able to hear Cheng Tianqing reveal some secrets rel
ating to the town or the production brigade. However, just as I was about to start digging the nuptial chamber, something intolerable occurred.
After the wheat was planted, I attended a town-level meeting for grassroots cadres, where I ran into Secretary Tian, who was charged with managing documents and keeping records for the town Party committee. Secretary Tian pulled me aside and asked, “Branch Secretary Gao, what did you do to offend Mayor Wang?” I knew perfectly well what I had done, but instead I said, “How would I dare offend Mayor Wang? I’m a staunch supporter!” Secretary Tian said, “If you didn’t offend him, then how do you explain the fact that when the county Party committee organizational bureau was selecting a secretary of the county youth league committee last month, and you were the first of the three people nominated, when the organizational bureau sent someone to town to investigate, Mayor Wang told him that you were flashy but lacking in substance and that you loved to show off but were in fact the epitome of a fake revolutionary.”
I stared in astonishment and immediately dragged Tian to the men’s room outside the meeting hall.
“What else did Mayor Wang say?”
Secretary Tian looked out of the bathroom and replied, “He said you and Hongmei are a pair of revolutionary clowns, and if the two of you ever manage to achieve your ambitions, that will be an occasion for the common people to wail in despair and for the revolution to fall into darkness.”
I asked, “What did the comrade from the organizational bureau say?”
Secretary Tian said, “The comrade from the organizational bureau was the deputy bureau director, and he seemed very disappointed to hear this.”
I asked, “Who is currently serving as secretary of the youth league committee?”
Secretary Tian said, “I hear that they ultimately selected their second choice, who was previously the deputy factory director of a silk factory.”
Facts will prove that the revolution would not be kind to Mayor Wang. He had already impeded historical progress and development, and now he had become a stumbling block for the revolution. If someone doesn’t attack me, I won’t attack them; but if someone does attack me, I most certainly will attack them. This is the international principle of China’s revolution, and this is the fundamental principle for me, Gao Aijun, to enter the revolution.
Accordingly, I locked myself up at home and proceeded to spend three days and three nights preparing a document titled “Ripping Off the Ugly Face of Chenggang’s Mayor, Wang Zhenhai.” It was seventeen pages long and totaled thirteen thousand characters, and its subtitle was “A Ten-Thousand-Word Denunciation of Wang Zhenhai.” The document was divided into the following sections:
The problem of Wang Zhenhai’s reactionary remarks
The problem of Wang Zhenhai’s sexual relations
The problem of Wang Zhenhai’s feudal activities
The problem of Wang Zhenhai’s excess consumption
The problem of Wang Zhenhai’s “theory of productivity”
This document contained material that would capture the attention of Chenggang’s revolutionary masses. In composing it, I deliberately miswrote many characters, then recopied the text in triplicate using my left hand. I sent one copy to the county committee, another to the county government, and the third to the county committee organizational bureau. In the following days, I didn’t even check to see whether there was any response and instead initiated manure-collecting activities for the Chenggang production brigade. I asked that during the winter rest period, every family collect three to five cubic meters of manure and store it behind their houses, and then mix the manure with mud and use it to construct an irrigation canal. Then, every ten days or two weeks, they should bring several buckets of water to fill the trough, so that the vegetation would decompose and ferment, providing nutrients for the wheat that would sprout the following spring.
I’ve said that I’m a revolutionary, political, and military genius, and this denunciation of Mayor Wang certainly proved all that. On the sixteenth day after that ten-thousand-word document shot like a cannonball from the town’s mailbox to the county seat, I asked Hongmei to copy it over again and send three more copies to various different county-level departments, with the author listed simply as “A Chenggang Revolutionary Cadre.” Another ten days later, I asked Hongmei to make more copies, now using her left hand, and once again send it out in triplicate. That winter, under a variety of names, I sent out that document in triplicate nine times, twenty-seven copies in all (sometimes the document was slightly altered, using different subtitles), such that in the end, every county office and important official in the area had received a copy of this ten-thousand-word denunciation.
In the end, around the Lunar New Year, the county sent over a revolutionary investigation group, and the group leader turned out to be a former regiment commander who had stayed on to work in the county after the army implemented local military control (or what was known as the Three Supports and Two Militaries policy). This regiment commander worked in the town hall for three days and three nights and spoke with every cadre (this was an old tradition of military cadres). The investigative group that he brought from the town hall circulated through Chenggang’s streets, seeing that the piles of manure were all arranged into neat rows. He kicked off the dried mud that was covering one of these piles, and immediately a warm, moist, and savory odor of decay surged out, sending the smell of grassy manure that had been fermenting all winter into his nostrils and those of every member of the investigation group.
On that day, the former regiment commander walked into the Chenggang production brigade.
He asked, “Is your name Gao Aijun?”
“Yes.”
“Have you served in the military?”
“Was the officer able to determine this from my name?”
“I never judge people based on their appearance, nor do I make assumptions based on their name. However, I noticed that your production brigade’s piles of manure are arranged into neat rows, and someone who has not served in the military wouldn’t ask people to do this.”
I laughed.
He asked, “You were given the county’s label of ‘revolutionary vanguard,’ were you not?”
I laughed again, acting very bashful.
“How do you understand the relationship between revolution and production?”
I said, “If you want to conscientiously implement revolution, it is necessary to stimulate production. If production does not proceed, people will likely view revolution as merely empty words. If production proceeds, however, the revolutionary flag will wave in the wind wherever it is planted.”
The former regiment commander’s eyes lit up, and he stared at me without blinking.
“Gao Aijun, tell me the truth—was it not you who wrote that ten-thousand-word denunciation of Wang Zhenhai?”
My eyes opened wide.
“What ten-thousand-word denunciation?”
He continued staring at me and asked again, “Was it really not you who wrote it?”
I said, “Commander, have you completed your investigation? What did I write? Mayor Wang committed some mistakes, and it is true that I have critical opinions about him. For instance, his theoretical ability is not very advanced, he often curses, and he’s too tolerant of the feudal, superstitious activites in our Chenggang production brigade. I have previously shared these opinions with people in the county government, but you cannot, on account of this, arrive at conclusions without having completed the requisite investigations. As Chairman Mao once said, ‘Without investigation, there can be no freedom of speech’—”
The commander interrupted me. “During the three days I’ve been in Chenggang, I’ve spoken with more than twenty people. Everyone who sees me immediately becomes very nervous, and you are the only one who appears bold and straightforward and doesn’t hesitate when you respond.” The commander suddenly paused and then changed the subject and asked me, “How old are you?”
I said, “My age und
er the lunar calendar is twenty-eight.”
He said, “Oh … that’s not very old.”
I said, “A revolutionary warrior is a brick who can go wherever he is needed.”
With this, we ended our conversation. We had walked only half a li, but in that short span of time, my demeanor had managed to win over a county head and Party secretary with more than twenty years of experience, as well as a company or battalion commander. I was calm and collected, thoughtful and rational, and able to answer his questions easily and fluently. In this way, I was able to give the county head—who had just been demobilized from the army and assigned to work in civil service—a deep and very positive impression.
How could he not make use of the sort of talent that I embodied? How could Wang Zhenhai possibly impede my promotion and stop the wheels of history? As it turns out, I would soon be appointed Chenggang’s first deputy mayor. Needless to say, this would be the most important move of my revolutionary career.
Chapter 8
Defeat and Celebration
1. The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains
In old China there was a parable known as “The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains,” the story of an old man who lived on a mountain in the north. In front of his house’s front door, which faced south, there were two mountains blocking his way—one of which was called Taixing Mountain, the other Wangwu Mountain. The old man decided to direct his sons to dig up these mountains with hoes, but a wise man who observed this simply smiled and said, “This is truly foolish, for it is impossible to dig up these mountains.” The foolish old man replied, “After I die, my sons will carry on the project, and after they die, there will still be my grandsons, great-grandsons, and so forth. Although these two mountains are indeed very big, they aren’t getting any bigger. Every time we dig up a bit, there will be that much less of the mountains left, so why can’t we eventually level them completely?” God was deeply moved by this response, so he sent down two immortals to carry the two mountains away.
