The Fat Years
Page 20
All he received in return was a deep silence.
Finally, he calmed himself down, nodded slightly to them to indicate that he would not persist. He turned and walked slowly toward the door.
“Lao Chen!”
Little Xi burst out of the kitchen.
Lao Chen stopped and looked around.
“Lao Chen,” Little Xi said calmly, “let’s go back to Beijing.”
Part Three
EPILOGUE
A very long night, or a warning about China’s twenty-first-century age of ascendancy
The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
THOMAS HOBBES, The Leviathan
Look at
the ants crawling round and round marshaling their troops,
the bees roiling in confused chaos brewing their honey,
and hordes of buzzing flies fighting over the blood.
MA ZHIYUAN, “Autumn Thoughts on a Night Voyage”
All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
DR. PANGLOSS in Voltaire’s Candide
Idealism Chinese style
Hundreds of millions of Chinese lived through an age that witnessed a storm of idealism and were baptized in that flood of idealism. Even though later on their ideals turned to nightmares and disillusionment, and an entire generation of people lost their ideals, still they didn’t abandon idealism.
Fang Caodi and Little Xi had grown up in that turbulent era. They themselves were probably not even aware of the fact that no matter how much the times and the environment had changed, they still retained the strong character of idealism they had learned in their youth.
Even though the People’s Republic of China has been established for over sixty years, China remains a great nation of idealists. The population of China is so large that even though the percentage of idealists is small, if they were placed in some other country, their actual number would be overwhelming.
Just think of all those people currently languishing in prison or under government surveillance—human rights lawyers, political dissidents, promoters of a democratic constitution, leaders of nongovernmental civil organizations, promoters of independent political parties, public intellectuals, whistle-blowers, and missionaries of the underground churches—no doubt all of them are hopelessly incorrigible idealists whom the People’s Republic of China version 2.0 can never cure.
No society can afford to be without idealists—especially not contemporary China.
Of course, contemporary China is fertile soil for realists, opportunists, careerists, hedonists, appeasers, nihilists, and escapists. In this age of prosperity with 90 percent freedom, they’ve found their golden opportunity and are living exceptionally well. In this age, if you are lucky enough to be born into a hereditary Party and government-aristocracy family and your roots are a deep crimson red, then all the heartier congratulations to you. In the future you will have a tremendous competitive advantage and many business resources will be looking to you to cooperate with them. If China has an aristocracy, you are that aristocracy. From the point of view of a Chinese Communist Party that intends to govern China forever, you are one of them and the Party trusts you.
At this point, before our plot takes a dramatic turn, and before we bid farewell to our heroes, let me first build somewhat on the story of three of our characters whose roots are as deeply red as red can be—Wei Guo, Wen Lan, and Ban Cuntou. It goes without saying that they are all riding the wave of China’s age of prosperity; they are big winners under the Chinese social, political, and economic model. I’m not going to spend time relating to you how they catapulted into prominence like leaping dragons and bounding tigers. I just want to tell you I predict that these three are flourishing now and they will continue to be in the ascendant—a rich, many-splendored life awaits them. Is this, perhaps, China’s destiny?
Let us return to Fang Caodi and Little Xi. That the two of them felt like old friends the minute they met and regretted they had not met earlier was wholly to be expected. They had a common language and similar life experiences. Even more importantly, for over two years the two of them had been searching for like-minded individuals, and finally they could prove that “my way is not a solitary one.”
When Lao Chen introduced them, they saw at once that they were indeed like-minded. They then seriously attempted to analyze why, when everyone around them experienced an ineffable feeling of happiness and a mild form of euphoria, they always remained clearheaded and aware. Fang Caodi said the American Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning in 2009 that some common medicines given to treat asthma, such as Montelukast, Zafirlukast, and Zileuton, could cause depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even suicidal tendencies. Maybe the asthma medicines prescribed in China had the same side effects.
Little Xi, however, said that this was pretty strange, because the antidepressant medicines she took should have had the opposite effect. These medicines stimulated the brain to secrete more monoamines like serotonin and norepinephrine, which caused people to become excited. So people like her on antidepressants should not have been able so easily to notice that other people were high. She had read a report stating that mood-altering antidepressants had already surpassed blood-pressure medicines as the most commonly used prescription drugs in America. When over-the-counter drugs were also considered, antidepressants were now the number-one most-used drugs in America. Many Americans who were not really suffering from clinical depression, but who didn’t feel good, whose spirits were low, or who were unhappy in their work, resorted to some kind of antidepressant. Little Xi wondered if perhaps many Chinese people were also taking antidepressants on their own initiative and feeling high all day.
Fang Caodi corrected her by reminding her that no matter how prevalent antidepressants were in China, there was no way that everyone was taking them. The phenomenon they needed to explain was why almost the entire nation was experiencing a feeling of a high, while clearheaded and sober people were so few.
During the entire trip from Henan to Beijing, the two of them exchanged stories of the things they had experienced during the past two years. Lao Chen could only listen until Fang Caodi drove his dust-covered Cherokee into the village where Zhang Dou and Miaomiao lived.
When Zhang Dou heard Little Xi’s voice he thought it sounded familiar. Little Xi also felt that she had seen Zhang Dou before, but could not quite remember where.
That night, Zhang Dou and Miaomiao put up a tent in their yard and gave their bedroom to Little Xi, while Fang Caodi put up a folding cot in his room for Lao Chen to sleep on.
Little Xi had already said she wanted to be with Lao Chen, but she needed a little time to adjust, a hint that she didn’t want to move in and live with him straightaway. Fang Caodi said Little Xi could stay in Miaomiao’s room for the time being, and when the weather was a little cooler, he and Zhang Dou could build on another room for her.
Lao Chen speculated that if for the moment Little Xi didn’t want to move in with him, that didn’t mean she wanted to live for a long time in the countryside. He didn’t, however, push her to decide straightaway; he thought that by staying for a while with Miaomiao and Zhang Dou and having Fang Caodi to talk to, she would avoid the prying eyes of the government, and this was not a bad idea at all.
It was very difficult for an outsider like Lao Chen to anticipate what sort of a powerful fighting spirit might be generated when people like Fang Caodi and Little Xi, who had been without a comrade to share her Chinese-style idealism for such a long time, came together. Not to mention with a strong young man like Zhang Dou as their ally.
After a detailed discussion with Fang Caodi and Zhang Dou, Little Xi gradually began to regain her memory of the first day of that lost month. It was on the eighth day of the first lunar month, after the Spring Festival holiday had ended and people started to return to work, that the television, papers, and Internet reports all carried the same news: the global economy had entered a new period of crisis.
Zhang Dou described how at that point he and Miaomiao had gone out immediately to buy dog and cat food, and a good thing too, because after it ran out there was none available for over a month.
In any system (especially an economic system), if everyone’s activity is duplicated and multiplied so that there is only one sort of feedback without any opposing message, that system will surely collapse, they concluded. Stocking up on food and essentials worked like that. At first everyone was afraid of prices rocketing, so they bought everything, cleaned out the shelves, and stockpiled stuff at home. When everyone did the same thing, the supply was soon insufficient to meet the demand, and then genuine panic buying set in.
It was equally strange that while Beijing’s official Central Television was broadcasting news reports of social chaos all around the world, no one came on to reassure the public that supplies of food and other essentials would be sufficient to meet people’s needs. Fang Caodi said the government could not simply have been so slow to act. He and Little Xi at the time both believed that there was something suspicious about the situation—there had to be another reason for the government’s inaction.
Little Xi remembered that she had phoned around all that afternoon to various intellectuals and media people she knew to see if they had any ideas about what to do, or if they wanted to get together to discuss the situation. Everyone was too busy stocking up on food and other supplies for their own families, and nobody had the time to talk about formulating a response. In the late afternoon, Little Xi and Big Sister Song decided to close the restaurant and go home. On the way home, they noticed how few people and cars there were on the streets, just as after June 4, 1989, and during the 2003 SARS epidemic. They were carrying food back from the restaurant when someone rode by on a bicycle and grabbed a big turnip right out of Big Sister Song’s hands.
Rumors circulated on the Internet, television, and mobile networks, while police car, ambulance, and fire-truck sirens could be heard howling outside. But no night curfew was announced, so people in the courtyard organized their own mutual defense squad.
Little Xi could still not remember the events of the second day. The effort of recalling gave her a headache and made her feel sick.
She knew only that one night when she came home she had shouted, “They’re going to crack down again!” She could not sleep all night and kept mumbling to herself. Early the next morning, she went out into the courtyard to curse the Communist Party, the government, and the neighbors, and shouted that the law courts were all bullshit. She fainted soon after, and when she woke up she was in a mental hospital. This was what her mother told her after she was discharged but, strangely enough, after a while even Big Sister Song could no longer remember any of it.
Fang Caodi said he was in Guangdong at the time, and the state of anarchy lasted for seven days. For the first six, everybody was already terribly frightened because they had heard there was great chaos in various other regions. Fang Caodi had been in those areas, however, and they had not really been that chaotic. But he was given the third degree because he was an outsider. On the twelfth of the month, he slipped away to the border area where Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Hunan come together and stayed in a peasant’s house. Later on, he heard that the fourteenth had been the worst day because a riot, with looting and arson, had broken out. Many local residents tried to escape by going to the county seat, where they heard things were safer. Lots of people received the same message over and over again: “I have just had this news from the highest authorities—the country is in chaos, the government has lost control, take care of yourselves, everybody!”
Is China going to collapse? This was a question many had been asking for years. Will the Chinese government lose control? Fang Caodi had traveled all over the country, in the western regions, the central plains, and elsewhere, and he had always told everyone, “Relax, there’s no way for the disaffected to join forces; China will always experience small disturbances, but never complete chaos; the disturbances will be local in nature and will never spread to the whole country.”
During those seven days, however, the people felt like they were in purgatory; every day was too long, and by the seventh day they had put up with as much as they could stand and were about to go to pieces. As you can imagine, various criminal elements were keen to do their worst, so the population felt terrorized. There was almost mass hysteria. It looked as if total anarchy would soon break out—a fight of neighbor against neighbor to protect one’s life and property. People had just one hope in their minds—that the machine of state would soon go into action.
Fang Caodi had also begun to think by then that if the situation didn’t improve soon, China really would collapse into total chaos.
On the eighth day of the troubles, the fifteenth of the first lunar month, a small detachment of the People’s Liberation Army entered the township where he was and received an enthusiastic welcome from the populace.
Zhang Dou said this was the way he had heard it, too. On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, two years earlier when the People’s Liberation Army entered Beijing to restore order, the people of Beijing turned out in full force on the streets to welcome them. That afternoon the Public Security Bureau, the armed police, and the People’s Liberation Army issued a joint communiqué that a crackdown had begun. Zhang Dou didn’t have a Beijing residence permit and didn’t dare go out on the streets; instead, he hid out at home for three weeks.
Little Xi wondered whether she herself had actually gone out to welcome the People’s Liberation Army troops. Then she really must have lost her marbles. Maybe it was because she heard a crackdown was coming that she lost control of herself and went berserk that afternoon.
Fang Caodi told Little Xi that once the crackdown started, any suspicious person would have been locked up. He himself was turned in by a peasant and taken to the local Public Security Bureau, where he was almost sentenced to death. Luckily for him, there had been a young female judge who stood her ground against her colleagues and insisted that they handle his case on the basis of the law and the constitution. She had saved his life.
Little Xi wept profusely that night as she recalled in sorrow everything she had been through. The crackdown of 1983, and the People’s Liberation Army tanks rolling into Beijing in 1989 to suppress the students, had frightened her to death and left her with an immense feeling of frustration that called into question her life choices and her abilities. But now she felt she could sense her original vitality returning. From her online disputes with those middle-aged “angry youths” where she expressed her own opinions about the government, to defending peasants’ land rights with the fellowship, through to listening to Fang Caodi tell his story of a young female judge who argued strongly for right and justice, Little Xi felt that she was growing stronger and stronger, that she had finally found her true self again.
Whose idealism is the most radical, Fang Caodi’s or Little Xi’s? The answer is Little Xi’s. What do we mean by radical? The original classical meaning of radi
cal is root (from the Latin radix), to find the essential root of something. Fang Caodi has a plain and simple sense of justice, of working on behalf of Heaven’s Way; added to his naturally stubborn character, this sense of justice spurs him on to search tirelessly for that missing month. Little Xi’s sense of justice is more abstract, more philosophical. The socialist and internationalist education that she received as a child engraved the bright words equality, justice, friendship, and mutual aid firmly on her heart. She really didn’t understand the hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party. In college she studied the Roman and Napoleonic law that was taught again after the Cultural Revolution ended. During the 1980s and 1990s she was baptized in the tide of Enlightenment values such as Reason, Liberty, Democracy, Truth, and Human Rights. Both romanticism and rationalism made deep impressions on her, and she adopted the idealism of a typical contemporary Westernized Chinese intellectual. Although her idealism is not without its blind spots and intrinsic limitations, due to all of the above, we know that Little Xi is more radical, and hers is a radicalism that will remain steadfastly loyal to the end.
Think about it. What was it that sustained Little Xi for the past few years as she underwent such great suffering and social marginalization? We have already read how she was the female host of an intellectual salon in the 1980s and 1990s. During those years, she mainly listened to the views of prominent personalities of the time, and very rarely offered her own opinions. In the last two years, though, when the intellectuals appeased the government or were “harmonized,” Little Xi rose up in opposition and threw herself into solitary combat. Without a backward glance, she argued strongly for truth and justice, expressing her opinions on the Internet. This process forced her to clarify her own thoughts and use rational arguments to state her case in the face of her opponents, who used emotive language, rhetoric, populism, and even violence. She’s become increasingly dispassionate and clearheaded. We should not, therefore, make the mistake of thinking that Little Xi is still the weak legal clerk-secretary with a sense of justice that she used to be, or a Petöfi Club salon woman, or an unemployed and helpless mother who cannot even control her own son, or a crazy woman who scurries around like a frightened animal. She is already an obscure but genuine public intellectual, though she would never consider herself as such. This is her armor, her vocation, the air she breathes to live, her loveliness and her repulsiveness. She is willing to endure the greatest suffering, hardship, and personal humiliation as long as it brings her closer to the truth.