by Ma Jian
‘No, not at all – I’m just an ordinary cultural official,’ Director Ma replies, closing his drawer. Aunty Shu’s daughter is a dowdy girl who works in the Drum Tower ticket office. He takes a copy of Cautionary Sayings for the Modern World from the crate below him, turns to the title page and writes: BE KIND TO YOURSELF AND YOUR HAPPINESS WILL BE UNPARALLELED. As he scribbles his signature, he hears his wife gently kick the pieces of broken cup from under the bookshelves, out of sight.
The dream of the red tower
On his second day back in the office following his two-week suspension, Director Ma unscrews the flask of Old Lady Dream’s Broth that he prepared as well as he could the night before, takes a large swig, then flings open his window and yells that he wants to fly to Garden Square. Hu grabs him by the belt, tells him to consider the political consequences of such unhinged behaviour, and pushes him back down onto the swivel chair.
Three guards swiftly appear and escort him from the China Dream Bureau to the security department on the ground floor. The peculiar stench of his Old Lady Dream’s Broth drifts through the White House and the Gate of Heavenly Peace and lingers in the air for days. After this unfortunate episode, Ma Daode is diagnosed with manic depression and schizophrenia, and is banned from returning to his office. But he insists he is perfectly fine, and that his temporary loss of sanity was caused by incorrect proportions of ingredients in the broth’s recipe. He vows to find the correct formula through repeated trials, then apply for a patent, return to the China Dream Bureau and market the potion throughout the world under the brand name China Dream Soup.
In today’s trial, he pours a cup of blood from a black cat into an empty Coca-Cola bottle, then adds a wolf’s heart, a slice of ginger that has been soaked for a week inside a corpse’s mouth, and a few drops of the foul-smelling Yellow Spring water he bought from Master Wang for 100,000 yuan. After a good shake, he dips his tongue into the acrid concoction. The taste seems fine to him. All he needs to do now is go to the wild grove, shed a few tears and add them to the bottle; then he can swallow the contents and see what he forgets. He decides to set off at once, but as soon as he steps outside onto the main road, yesterday vanishes from his mind. Terrified he might forget who he is as well, he rushes back inside, writes: MA DAODE, DIRECTOR OF CHINA DREAM BUREAU, on the lid of a shoebox and ties it around his neck with a shoelace. Then he goes back out and sets off again.
The cold October wind fills him with a solitary gloom. He tries to retrieve some memories from this morning. I put on my suit and checked myself in the mirror as I adjusted my tie. It’s blood red. One of my shoes is black; the other is one of the two-toned brogues that belonged to my father. He looks down at his feet. Yes, there it is. Then there was Juan barefoot in the kitchen, sleepily stretching her arms, reminding me to take my medication. Who does she think she is? I won’t touch those bloody pills! Then the phone rang. Was it my daughter? No. Was it that girl, Yuyu, who’s gone to Birmingham University? No – she phoned a few days ago, threatening to come back next year unless I send her more money. Nasty piece of work! Still, she’s not as bad as the estate agent Wendi who reported me to the Political and Legal Affairs Commission. None of that matters any more, though. When my China Dream Soup is in the shops, all those people who mocked me for failing to produce the China Dream Device will have to watch me return to the China Dream Bureau in a blaze of glory.
He walks on with a determined frown. Now that his arse has enlarged in old age, he feels steadier on his feet. All he can see of the people in the distance is a swathe of unblinking black eyes advancing towards him like a sheet of rain. This road that runs from Revolution Boulevard to Drum Tower Street used to be a cobbled lane lined with stalls where farmers from outlying villages would sell their produce, but since Ziyang was promoted from county to municipal status, it has been expanded into a busy four-lane road that connects with the provincial highway. Ma Daode has never walked along it before, as his journey to work follows a more northerly route. But today he wants to go to the wild grove on the other side of Magpie Bridge, and this is the shortest way. He notices a few dilapidated apartment buildings stranded along the new road, their balconies still festooned with colourful laundry, gleaming in the sun. Bearing right into the newly pedestrianised Drum Tower Street, he sees that English-style street lamps have been erected along the pavements all the way to the refurbished Drum Tower at the end. He looks at the hazy mist hovering over the sparkling new paving stones, and remembers how the cobbled streets that used to run through this old district were always encrusted with dirt. This is where Ma Daode grew up. It was along this street that he and his wife Juan used to take their evening strolls. Feeling an itch at the back of his throat, he breaks into a military song: ‘“Forward! Forward! We soldiers face the sun, our feet stamping the earth of the Motherland …”’ It is about ten in the morning now. People are sitting at street-side tables eating corn gruel; shopkeepers are unloading crates of instant noodles and stacking them up outside their shops. A farmer sitting at a nearby table shouts out as he passes: ‘Bit early in the morning to be out promoting the China Dream, isn’t it, Director Ma?’
Ma Daode looks at this farmer’s buck teeth and says: ‘Hey, you’re Gao Wenshe, aren’t you, the mushroom grower from Yaobang Village? You remind me so much of your sister.’
‘I don’t have a sister, and there’s no Yaobang Village either.’ A grain of yellow corn is stuck at the corner of his mouth, and his hair is still flattened where he slept on it.
‘You did have a sister,’ Ma Daode replies, ‘but during the Great Famine, your mother was so hungry, she had no choice but to kill her and eat her.’ Ma Daode feels a surge of compassion as this long-buried memory returns to him.
‘Just bugger off, will you! I don’t have a mother or a sister, and you and your corrupt officials demolished Yaobang Village months ago to line your filthy pockets!’
‘You did have a sister. Her name was Gao Tianmu. I swear on Chairman Mao.’ Ma Daode wants to make the gesture of an oath but can’t remember where to place his right hand.
‘Fuck you and fuck your China Dream!’ Gao Wenshe shouts. Then he jumps up from his seat, rips the sign off Ma Daode’s neck and flings it onto the pavement.
‘Ungrateful bastard! If it hadn’t been for your sister you wouldn’t be alive now. Your mother had to eat her after you were born so that she could produce enough milk for you.’ Ma Daode picks up the sign from the ground and continues towards the Drum Tower. Although he has taken a few sips of the China Dream Soup, not all of his childhood memories have been wiped out. Gao Tianmu’s little face, as pale as candlewax, is still etched in his mind. He remembers the morning they walked to the village school together. She was so hungry, she had to keep stopping to rest, but he still managed to trick her into giving him the baked goose dropping she was clutching in her hand. As her family had run out of food, her mother had resorted to stealing goose droppings from their neighbour’s yard and baking them in the wok to save the family from starvation.
An elderly woman appears in front of him. He recognises her as the old woman who spoke at the Golden Anniversary Dream celebration. ‘You’re the mother of Pan Hua, aren’t you? How sprightly you look today. Have you come out to buy some regional snacks?’ Ma Daode feels wide awake now, and decides that his China Dream Soup gives an even better boost to the brain than coffee.
‘Sprightly? What do you mean? I’m stone cold dead,’ she says, looking deep into his eyes.
‘So you’ve drunk Old Lady Dream’s Broth of Amnesia then?’ he asks. ‘Have you crossed the Bridge of Helplessness yet? You do remember me, don’t you? I’m Director Ma.’
‘Every dead soul must drink a cup of Old Lady Dream’s Broth before they cross the Bridge of Helplessness and return to the mortal world. But when I reached the bridge, Old Lady Dream wasn’t there. An old school friend was ladling it out instead, and he let me cross without drinking any. That’s why I can still remember my past life. I’ve returned to th
e World of the Living to search for my daughter’s reincarnation.’
Ma Daode wonders whether hostess Number 8 from the Cultural Revolution Nightclub might be the reincarnation of Pan Hua after all. ‘Do you think she is here in Ziyang?’ he asks.
‘She won’t have gone far. I’ve worked out she’d be forty by now. I know I will find her.’ The old woman sounds determined.
‘See this concoction here?’ he says. ‘I call it China Dream Soup. It’s a refined version of Old Lady Dream’s recipe. Please try some.’
She gives the bottle a sniff and returns it to him. ‘No, thank you. It smells much more pungent than Old Lady Dream’s Broth.’
‘When I reach the wild grove, I will add some of my tears to it and swallow it in one gulp, and your daughter will vanish from my mind for ever.’ Ma Daode feels a strong connection to this woman, and wants to prolong the conversation.
‘I can see from your eyes that you have a debt of blood,’ she says. ‘You won’t be allowed across the Bridge of Helplessness. You’ll be flung into the River of Forgetting and will spend eternity as a feral ghost.’ Then she turns and walks away.
A feral ghost? Ma Daode can’t believe his ears. What an injustice! I only fought in those battles to defend Mao Zedong Thought. How can I be punished for that? When our East is Red faction and a unit of rebel workers reached the railway station, hoping to make our escape, we discovered that the Million Bold Warriors were already standing on the roof of our train behind two large machine guns. Wives and children of the rebel workers were waiting for us, huddled in a corner. As soon as they saw us, they rushed onto the platform, and were instantly gunned down. Children caught in the crossfire stood gripping pillars, frozen with fear. No one came to take the corpses away. They lay there for days, growing purple and swollen like rotten aubergines. I want to scrub out all those dreadful scenes. But what I want to forget the most is my shameful betrayal of my father. When I see him again, I will fall to my knees and beg for his forgiveness.
Hearing a message buzz on his phone, Ma Daode wishes he could send a text to his father, although he knows full well there are no relatives in his list of contacts. Since his parents died, he and his sister have not even spent one Chinese New Year together. My sister put their copy of Selected Works of Mao Zedong safely in her bag, then gathered together the other belongings the Red Guards hadn’t burned, and set fire to them in the back yard. The letter my mother left for us was written in green ink. Her delicate handwriting sloped to the right, while my father’s sloped to the left. A few months after their burial, my sister moved far away to Xinjiang Province.
HOW I WISH I WERE YOUR MOBILE PHONE: HELD CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST, GAZED UPON BY YOUR EYES, CHERISHED IN YOUR HEART. Who sent this one? Ma Daode wonders. Was it that woman who chose the music for my China Dream promotional video? As soon as he deletes her text, she evaporates from his mind.
On his right, he sees the newly built Rich Family Supermarket. The stone lions flanking the front gates and the horizontal tablet above the entrance give the modern building an air of antiquity. This is where Ma Daode’s family home once stood. He came here last month after it was demolished and the supermarket was being built. He notices that a Qingfeng Dumpling Store has been opened on the ground floor. I used to sleep in a room just where that dumpling store is now, on a cast-iron bed facing south. Our home was a two-storey grey-brick house. The front door and window casements were painted dark red. When my father came home from work, he would sit on a stool in the front yard and read his newspaper, and would only come inside when the lights were turned on and mosquitoes began to swarm around him. The house was damp and the windows were too high up. When the front door was closed, we couldn’t see a thing. Only when my mother was putting water on the stove to boil and calling out to my father would the living room feel a little cosier. After my father changed from being County Chief of Ziyang to a condemned Rightist, the house was divided and shared with two other families. My parents built an attic room in our portion of the house for my sister and me to sleep in. We loved our new smaller home in which the four of us would shuffle about, continually bumping into each other. The LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM slogan I painted on our living-room wall is now daubed over the dumpling store’s front window. Or are my eyes deceiving me? When the Red Guards stormed into our home, they ordered my parents to stand facing the wall, heads bowed. The hand-sewn cloth shoes on my parents’ feet looked out of place in that atmosphere of terror.
I ran about, showing my fellow Red Guards where our family’s bourgeois belongings were hidden. Song Bin, dressed in khaki fatigues and a red armband, dragged my mother’s leather suitcase down from the attic and kicked it open, and out poured relics from the old society: a silk cheongsam, a pair of high-heeled shoes, a necklace, a bracelet and a gold-embroidered leather handbag. The enraged Red Guards hurled these incriminating objects at my mother and shouted: ‘Destroy old thoughts, old culture, old habits, old customs! Destroy the Four Olds and establish the Four News! Eliminate reactionary ideology!’ But then they kicked open the other leather suitcase, pulled out an old family album, and from between its pages fell a faded photograph of my mother with the English family she had worked for.
A second later I heard them howl: ‘Down with the female spy, Zhu Mei,’ and my mind exploded. I knew I was doomed. In a manic rage, they ransacked our home, flung everything they could into a heap outside and set light to it. To prove my commitment to the revolution, I picked through burning pesticide bottles, paraffin lamps, mirrors and shoehorns, and pulled out from the flames a mimeographed pamphlet on the policies of Chairman Mao and the first newsletter from Red Sun Secondary School which Song Bin had given me, put them carefully into my bag and walked away under the contemptuous gaze of my classmates and neighbours. Being the son of a Rightist was bad enough, but being the son of an agent of Western imperialists was unforgivable.
I was expelled from the Red Guards the following morning. But I didn’t lose heart. Instead, I resolved to learn the Quotes of Karl Marx off by heart and throw myself into the revolution with greater zeal. When East is Red took me under their wing, I cut all ties with my family and devoted my entire being to Chairman Mao. Although I did occasionally sneak home for some food and a good night’s sleep, I never uttered another word to my parents, not even on the last evening we spent together just before they killed themselves.
Passers-by begin to surround Ma Daode and point at him. ‘Is he on his way to petition the China Dream Bureau?’ one man asks. The supermarket security guard standing by a stone lion says: ‘If you want to buy something, go inside – don’t just stand here blocking the entrance.’
Ma Daode points at the ancient stone tablet above the door, and shouts: ‘Tear down that feudal artefact at once! Eliminate old ideologies and old customs of the exploiting class!’ Feeling unsettled, he looks down at the sign he is holding that tells him he is Ma Daode, Director of the China Dream Bureau. But which Ma Daode am I? After a brief hesitation, he hangs the sign around his neck again.
Song Bin walks out of the dumpling store and says: ‘Coming to “mingle incognito with the masses”, are you, old friend? Wonderful! Step inside and try some of our President Xi dumplings.’
Director Ma has no choice but to shake Song Bin’s hand. ‘Your wife’s very clever to have opened a branch here, just as the China Dream era is kicking off,’ he says. ‘I hope she makes a success of it.’
‘You think Hong opened this place? She hasn’t a clue how to run a business! Truth is, with all these officials being had up for corruption and womanising lately, I thought I should take early retirement, just to be on the safe side. So this dumpling store is my little escape route! You’ve done well, though, Daode. Out of all of us from Red Sun Secondary School, you have climbed the highest. But it can’t have been easy. There are so many regulations to comply with these days, aren’t there? So much red tape!’ Song Bin flashes a knowing smile, and Ma Daode understands at once that he’s hoping to wangle a favour.
Devious bastard. Wants me to get some government department off his back, does he? He’s always just looking out for himself. In the violent struggle, he avoided most of the bloodiest battles by hiding in the Million Bold Warriors headquarters, making mimeographs of their weekly reports.
‘I did rise high, but it didn’t last,’ Ma Daode replies. ‘Like a live crab immersed in boiling water: as soon as I turned red hot, I was dead.’ In his pockets, Ma Daode is clutching his phone with his left hand and the bottle of China Dream Soup with his right. He longs to extricate himself from his former classmate.
‘Everyone gets knocked down now and then,’ Song Bin continues. ‘Think of your father: just because his hairstyle was like Chairman Mao’s, Red Guards accused him of plotting to supplant the Great Helmsman. They sheared off all his hair and paraded him through Ziyang. I remember him being marched down this very street. I joined the crowd in shouting: “If Ma Lei doesn’t confess his crime, we will destroy him.” I should really reflect on those times, when I have a chance. Anyway, it sounds like the China Dream Bureau is making great strides. I hear it’s taken control of all the local websites and social media platforms. Seems like Hu is doing a good job of holding the fort in your absence.’
‘You ransacked our home, Song Bin,’ Ma Daode says, staring straight at his monkey-like face. ‘Right here, where we’re standing now. You persecuted my mother and father so brutally they took their own lives. Your Million Bold Warriors slaughtered three hundred East is Red members. This road was a river of blood. Have you forgotten everything?’
‘But East is Red murdered five hundred of us! And remember: you were the one who told us to search your house. You led us here yourself. I swear on Chairman Mao I never killed one person. Not one.’ When Song Bin closes his mouth, his thin lips disappear.
