China Dream

by Ma Jian

  A group of villagers wanders up, saying: ‘No cars allowed into the village.’

  ‘Tell Secretary Meng to come and speak to us,’ Director Ma shouts, climbing out of the Land Cruiser. Above the doorway of the concrete house is a banner that says LAND DEFENCE LEAGUE WATCHTOWER. He peers through an unglazed window and sees villagers sitting at tables playing mah-jong. During the last month, Secretary Meng has phoned him countless times, begging him to persuade the authorities to save Yaobang. Director Ma did pass on his letter of appeal, but he suspects the developers gave Mayor Chen a huge bribe, because the demolition team are under strict orders today to flatten the entire village. Director Ma feels his courage waver. His heart is thumping wildly.

  ‘Secretary Meng’s ill, he’s at home in bed,’ a young man with a shaven head calls out from the back of the room.

  ‘Let me speak to Genzai then, the commander of the Land Defence League,’ Director Ma replies, sticking his head further inside the window.

  ‘I am Genzai,’ the young man says, walking over to him. ‘Wait a minute – are you Old Ma? How come you’ve got so fat?’ Genzai looks as tall as his father, Old Yang, but his eyebrows and forehead remind Director Ma of Genzai’s drowned sister, Fang.

  ‘Ah, Genzai, it’s you!’ Director Ma says, softening his tone, hoping to ingratiate himself. ‘Your dear father, Old Yang, was like a father to me. He’s well, I hope?’

  ‘Dad told me that since you’ve become a municipal leader, you’ve forgotten about your old friends in Yaobang.’ Genzai strolls out of the fake house and puts a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘“When you drink a cup of water, never forget who drew it from the well,” as the saying goes. Yaobang Village is still very close to my heart, I assure you.’ Director Ma hopes that if he wins Genzai over, the rest of the village will follow.

  ‘Well, tell your friends from the Demolition Bureau to fuck off, then,’ Genzai snaps back. ‘Unless they accept our demands, we won’t let them into the village.’

  When Ma Daode first arrived in Yaobang as a sent-down youth, he stayed in Old Yang’s home for a few months until the new village school was built. It was a small brick house partitioned by mud walls into three rooms. The central room had only a stove, a few farm tools and some wicker baskets, so Old Yang sectioned off a corner of it for him with a bamboo blind. Fang, who was about eight at the time, would often kneel in front of the stove and put water on to boil. Genzai was born shortly after Ma Daode moved in. Today, in his grey shirt and nylon trousers, he looks like a township clerk.

  On the old phone Ma Daode reserves for conversations with his mistress Li Wei, he receives a text from her, saying: EVERY MORNING I WILL SERVE YOU BREAD, MILK AND BOILED EGGS. WITH ME BY YOUR SIDE, ALL YOUR WORRIES WILL BE GONE … He wishes he could turn this phone off and not have to read her messages, but as he lent his other phone to Commander Zhao, he needs to keep it switched on.

  ‘The expanded Industrial Park will be a boon for you all,’ Director Ma says with a big smile. ‘You’ll be given apartments in the new village just two kilometres away, and well-paid factory jobs. Look at the bridge that’s being built. It’s been designed by foreign engineers, and will be the first steel bridge to span the Fenshui River. It will make a splendid entrance for visitors to Ziyang.’

  ‘You have some gall, Director Ma! Yaobang villagers looked after you for four years, but now that you’re an official, instead of repaying your debt to us, you come and tear down our homes! Ungrateful bastard!’ Ma Daode recognises this man. His father was branded a ‘former rich peasant’ during the Cultural Revolution. He visited their home once. The whitewashed walls, spotless brick floor and earthen teapot evoked the simpler lives of times long past.

  Director Ma considers launching into the speech that has been brewing in his mind, but doesn’t want to waste it on such a small audience. He turns to the friendliest-looking man, the elderly postman, and says: ‘Can you ask all the villagers to come out? I have some important things to say.’

  ‘If anyone dares destroy my ancestral home, I’ll fight them to the death,’ shouts a young man in a red baseball cap, standing behind Genzai. ‘The twenty villagers who were arrested last time were supposed to be released today, but there’s still no sign of them.’ Ma Daode knows that this man is an informer. The authorities have promised him that if today’s demolition goes according to plan, he’ll be given the job of chauffeur to the manager of the Industrial Park.

  Director Ma’s old friend Dingguo walks up, a big bandage around his head, and shouts: ‘We don’t need you to mediate!’ In the last clash with the demolition team, Dingguo got struck on the head by a truncheon while trying to stop them from arresting his son. Director Ma knows he needs to get him on side as well. Although Dingguo is four years his junior, his hair is already completely white. Ma Daode remembers how Dingguo liked to tag along with him when he went out for walks and tell him the provenance of every dog in the village.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Brother Dingguo. Let’s try to reach a compromise.’ Ma Daode wants to start off by reminding him that he gave his daughter, Liu Qi, her job in the municipal government.

  ‘There’s no point talking to you corrupt officials,’ says the informer in the red baseball cap. ‘You don’t understand: if we can’t farm our land, our tractors and ploughs will turn to rust.’

  ‘You feast on exotic delicacies now, Ma Daode,’ Dingguo says, ‘but we’re just lowly peasants. If you seize our land, we’ll have nothing left. And how do you expect us to buy a house in the new village with the measly compensation you’re offering us?’ Although Dingguo has deep wrinkles and white hair, when his face scrunches up with anger, he still looks like a child.

  ‘What about all the wads of cash you have stashed under your bed – why not give a few of them to us?’ says a man called Liu Youcai. His grandfather built the red warehouse. After the Communists seized power, his parents donated it to the state and moved into the north-facing outhouse which is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. He is a shrewd little man with a ruddy complexion and dark, hypnotic eyes. As soon as the Daoist temple was built on Wolf Tooth Mountain, he secured a licence to run a fortune-telling stall outside the entrance, and from his earnings has bought himself a Volkswagen estate and a two-storey house with solar panels. Villagers often seek him out for advice and guidance, and before anyone leaves to find work in the city, they always ask him to choose an auspicious date for the journey.

  Liu Youcai casts his eyes over the assembled crowd, waiting for it to fall silent, then turns to Director Ma and says: ‘We’ve been notified that the village will be torn down at noon. No one died last time the demolition team tried to evict us. But if the bulldozers roll up here again, we’ll fight to the bitter end. They’ve sent you here first to sweet-talk us into leaving, haven’t they? If you win this battle, you’ll be made Municipal Party Secretary, no doubt. If you lose, you’ll still keep your job. But if we lose, we’ll become rootless vagrants, and will spend the rest of our lives in and out of jail, vainly petitioning for redress. What might we gain from this deal? At most, some menial factory job in the Industrial Park. But just think what we would lose: the ancient Buddhist temple, the historic Liu Clan Ancestral Hall, the unique black-brick courtyard houses, the thousand-year-old locust tree. Our Liu ancestors chose this site for the village because of its auspicious location, with the mountain range stretching like a protective dragon to the north and the life-giving river to the south. In the last two centuries, the village has produced four eminent scholars and three county-level officials. We have resolved to defend Yaobang to the death, not just to safeguard our own livelihoods, but more importantly, to preserve our heritage and our ancestral graves. So, I’m sorry, Director Ma, but we won’t be taking your miserable compensation fee.’

  ‘Don’t cling to your petty clanship dreams!’ Director Ma replies. ‘Embrace the China Dream, then the Global Dream, and the world will be our oyster. You could emigrate to Europe and live in any castl
e or country estate you want.’

  ‘Think you can fool us with that crap?’ Genzai shouts. ‘Why don’t you bugger off to Europe, and visit your old friend Karl Marx while you’re at it. We know our rights. Remember that speech President Xi Jinping gave last week? See, we’ve painted a quote from it on that wall: ANY OFFICIAL WHO CARRIES OUT VIOLENT LAND REQUISITIONS WHICH HARM THE INTERESTS OF THE PEASANTS WILL BE HELD TO ACCOUNT.’

  ‘We’ve heard Ziyang and Zigong have dispatched a hundred armed officers and eighty riot police here today. But we’re not afraid. We have the support of President Xi Jinping himself!’ This man shouting from the roof of the fake house is Guan Dalin, the sales manager of the Industrial Park’s concrete factory. He can finish a bottle of rice wine at one sitting, and is the only man in the village to have succeeded in marrying a woman with an urban residency permit.

  Director Ma feels suffocated and out of place, like a swan trapped in a hen house. In his entire career, he has never faced such hostile defiance.

  ‘We’ve prepared for this battle,’ says Genzai. ‘We painted a huge portrait of President Xi yesterday. It’s on the roof up there. When we unfurl it over the house, let’s see if the bulldozers dare come near us. Did you know that President Xi spent seven years in this province as a rusticated youth?’

  ‘He was sent to the north of the province – he has no connections with anyone down here,’ Director Ma replies. ‘Have you heard about the violent struggle phase of the early Cultural Revolution, before the Red Guards were disbanded and expelled to the countryside? Back then, even death was no escape from the horror. That red warehouse over there was crammed with bodies. Green-bottle flies were drawn by the stench and clung to the bricks in such big swarms that the whole building turned dark emerald. There were corpses strewn everywhere. Fellow compatriots, I saw it all with my own eyes. I saw two kids from opposing factions both yell “Long Live Chairman Mao” before shooting each other in the head. We mustn’t repeat the tragedies of the past. More than three hundred Red Guards and rebel workers lie buried in the wild grove over there.’ Sensing that he is sinking into the past again, Director Ma stops talking and closes his mouth.

  ‘The “culture rebellion”, or whatever you call it – we know nothing about that,’ says the young mushroom farmer, Gao Wenshe, his buck teeth glinting in the sun. ‘All we know is that this is our village, and if anyone tries to kick us out, we’ll fight to our last breath.’

  Director Ma turns to a young man with a pierced nose, dressed in black jeans and a black shirt, and asks: ‘What’s your name? I haven’t seen you before.’

  ‘Don’t ask – I’m not from around here,’ he replies, waving his mobile phone dismissively.

  ‘His mother, Juduo, has been a great help to us,’ Genzai says. ‘She moved to Zigong a few years ago to teach in the secondary school. Since the government sent us the compulsory eviction order, she’s come back many times to educate us about land requisition laws.’

  ‘Juduo’s your mum?’ Director Ma says to the young man in the most genial tone he can muster. ‘I knew her well. She likes to sing revolutionary operas, doesn’t she? I remember at the mass meeting held to condemn Heroes of the Marsh as a bourgeois novel, she sang that beautiful line: “I have more uncles than I can count, with hearts that are loyal and red”.’

  ‘How dare you talk to me about my mother, you fat pig,’ the young man snarls with contempt. ‘We’ve got buckets of manure here ready to feed you and the other swine you’ve brought along.’ The crowd bursts into laughter. Ma Daode wants to laugh as well, but when he thinks that in less than two hours all of these people will be arrested, injured or beaten to death his jaws clench with fear.

  ‘Juduo is one of the twenty people who were arrested last time and are still locked up in jail,’ says Liu Youcai, his dark eyes no longer sparkling.

  The crowd continues to swell. Director Ma’s phone keeps vibrating, but he’s afraid to answer it. He has no idea what to do next. At noon, the mobile phone signals will be blocked. He knows he has been dispatched here purely for show, so the government can claim it was willing to negotiate. But whether he persuades the villagers to evacuate or not, Yaobang will still be demolished.

  He lights a cigarette, sucks deeply and looks over to Wolf Tooth Mountain and the field that stretches to the dark woods at its foot. One evening, after ten hours of hard labour, our gang of sent-down youths gathered at the end of that field to pledge our undying allegiance to Chairman Mao. Juan was trembling with exhaustion, and inadvertently dropped her copy of the Little Red Book. Knowing her life would be in danger if anyone noticed her let this sacred collection of Mao’s thoughts fall into the mud, I quickly scooped it up and returned it to her. Fortunately, there were so many red flags and buckets about, no one noticed. That night, she came to my bed, told me she had left a glove in the field and asked to borrow my torch. I went out with her to help her find it, and to thank me for saving her life earlier that day, she led me into the dark woods.

  The command to MAKE THE CHINA DREAM COME TRUE AND FIGHT TO THE BITTER END TO DEFEND OUR HOMELAND on the red banner hung across the road is very familiar to Director Ma, as this is what he and his staff are urged to accomplish when they turn up for work every day.

  The fierce sun has reduced the earth to a fine powder that shrouds the road. Whenever a motorbike passes, a cloud of yellow dust lifts into the air. Director Ma decides the time has come to give his speech. There must be a hundred villagers here now. A small group has wandered over to the Land Cruiser to gawp at its luxurious interior and chat to the man from the Demolition Bureau. Director Ma climbs onto the roof of a crushed car, raises a loudspeaker Hu has handed him and says: ‘Fellow countrymen, my name is Ma Daode. I spent four years here in the Cultural Revolution, working in the fields and teaching in the village school. And before that, during the Great Famine, I lived here with my parents for six months. I cherish these mountains and rivers as much as you do, and I applaud your determination to protect them. I haven’t come here today to force you to evacuate – that’s not my job. No, I have come simply to warn you that the demolition team will arrive at noon. If you resist, you will have to suffer the consequences: destitution, homelessness, even death. But if you leave peacefully and accept voluntary resettlement, there will be a hundred jobs made available for you in the expanded Industrial Park. It will be the China Dream of National Rejuvenation in action! Fellow countrymen—’

  ‘Stop trying to swindle us!’ shouts Dingguo, enraged by the treachery of his old friend. ‘The village was promised seventy million yuan compensation, but we’ve only received nine hundred thousand. That works out less than a thousand yuan per person. If you take our land, how do you expect us farmers to earn a living? In the first phase of the Industrial Park’s expansion, forty villagers were given jobs, but half of them have been sacked already. This second phase will be just another empty promise.’

  ‘What right do you have to slap land acquisition notices on our ancestral homes?’ an old woman in the middle of the crowd shouts, waving her walking stick in the air.

  ‘Well, half of you signed the voluntary resettlement contract,’ Director Ma replies. He knows that the village was built by the venerable Liu family when it moved down from Shanxi Province. The Liu Clan Ancestral Hall has a Song Dynasty stone plaque engraved with the poem: ON THE ANCIENT ROAD, WE BID FAREWELL TO THE LAND OF PAGODA TREES. / A THOUSAND LI DOWNRIVER, THE WOODS ARE IMBUED WITH FEELING. / BELOW THE RAIN-DRENCHED WOLF TOOTH MOUNTAIN, WE SET UP HOME.

  ‘But if you forcefully evict us today, everyone who signed will lose their right to compensation,’ complains a young man. ‘What a stitch-up!’

  ‘The government’s been colluding for years with crooked developers,’ says a woman holding a bag of shopping. ‘Look where it’s got us! The Fenshui River has turned the colour of black tea – it’s filled with dead fish. When we irrigate our fields with it, all the seedlings die.’

  Director Ma feels his throat tighten. ‘New gr
een guidelines forced us to close the concrete factory – that’s why those workers were laid off. But the second phase will focus on hi-tech, so the new jobs will be secure. If you want a better life, you have to let go of some things. We’ll pay you a fair price for your land, but don’t expect any money for the fake houses you’ve cobbled together on those fields.’

  ‘Those shacks in Yiniao didn’t have windows the government still paid compensation for them,’ the sales manager Guan Dalin shouts down from the roof.

  ‘Your new village will be built over there, at the foot of Wolf Tooth Mountain,’ Director Ma says, pointing into the distance. ‘The plans have been approved. In just two years’ time, you’ll be able to go to your jobs in the Industrial Park, then travel home on a bus, enjoy a hot shower and watch television in your brand-new apartments. You’ll be living the China Dream!’ Director Ma is gesticulating so passionately, he almost loses balance.