by Ma Jian
‘A thousand people were killed in Ziyang. We both fought in the battles. Don’t pretend you have no blood on your hands. The day we attacked the general post office, you stabbed a man called Zhao Yi with a three-pronged spear!’ Ma Daode jabs his chest to show where the weapon entered Song Bin’s victim. Wanting to bring the conversation to a close, he says: ‘Go on, spit it out then! Which department has been on your back? Industry and Commerce, Public Security, Fire Prevention …?’
‘Well, as it happens, it’s your China Dream Bureau. Your online administrators have encrypted the dream I had last night. I asked them to let me access it just now, but they refused. They said it’s a Cultural Revolution dream.’
‘They wouldn’t deny you access just because of that,’ Ma Daode replies. ‘You must have said something to annoy them.’
‘Well, I did tell them I’m the same age as President Xi. I said that he and I were both Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, and were exiled to Yanhe County together …’
‘Ah, no wonder! You’ll be labelled an “overzealous Red Guard” for that! Roping President Xi into your affairs – what a nerve! If you hadn’t worked for the government for so many years, you’d be in serious trouble. What’s wrong with you? You’ve retired already, but you still don’t know how to behave!’
I remember the look of hatred on Song Bin’s face when he terrorised our teachers. He slapped our maths teacher so hard, it sounded like he was swatting a fly against a concrete wall. Her cheek turned bright purple. Ma Daode looks at the new slogan painted on the supermarket’s exterior wall: THE COMMUNIST PARTY IS GOOD, THE PEOPLE ARE HAPPY! and sees, hidden beneath it, an older slogan that says: TO PROTECT CHAIRMAN MAO’S REVOLUTIONARY LINE, FIGHT BLOODY BATTLES TO THE BITTER END!
‘Soon every dream about the Cultural Revolution will be eradicated, though,’ Ma Daode continues. ‘See this bottle of China Dream Soup? If all goes to plan, the nightmares that plague our minds will be swept away and replaced with the brand-new China Dream. You and I will be able to forget past sorrows and forge new futures for ourselves!’ He walks away, then glances back and says: ‘I gave you a set of Sino-Russian Friendship stamps at school. The twenty-two-cent one had a portrait of Stalin. It must be worth a fortune today.’
Indignant at his refusal to help, Song Bin puts his hands on his hips and shouts: ‘What a great memory you have! Come back later and try some Xi dumplings, and we’ll have a proper talk.’
Ma Daode sees a tricycle cart parked near the Drum Tower. He goes over to it and says to the owner: ‘Chairman Mao commanded us to struggle with words, not weapons. Quick, unload all those dangerous bulbs of garlic from your cart and hand them over to the masses.’
‘Think you’re an urban-management officer, do you?’ the farmer sneers. ‘Don’t boss me about. If you want some of my garlic, they’re twenty-five yuan a crate. They’re grown for export to South Korea. A hundred per cent organic. If you don’t want any, bugger off.’
‘Don’t you know who I am? I made that!’ Ma Daode points to the China Dream promotional video playing on the giant screen attached to the Drum Tower. Right now, it is showing his mistress, the young entrepreneur called Claire, getting out of bed in a pink nightgown, opening a window and gazing out at a blue sky.
‘Shut up, you filthy petitioner – you’re a disgrace to the city,’ the farmer says to Ma Daode, pushing him away; then he spits his cigarette stub onto the ground and crushes it out with his shoe.
Director Ma feels trapped between his two selves. Whether he speaks through the one to his left or to his right, he can’t seem to find the right words. He proceeds to the Drum Tower. The ticket office hasn’t opened yet. Without thinking, he heaves himself over the wooden fence, walks through the unlocked door and slowly climbs up the steep wooden stairs.
When he reaches the Drum Tower’s lofty balcony, he gazes out over the city. He can see that most of the old town is now a mass of high-rise buildings. The Monument to the Revolution, county hospital and Cultural Palace were demolished years ago. All that remains unchanged is the Fenshui River that flows sluggishly along the old road to the west. Why did my parents kill themselves? A gentle breeze blows past, lifting some leaves from the square below. He looks down at the two-toned brogue on his right foot. Those shoes are the only belongings I inherited from my father. Why am I wearing one of them now? I remember the day Mao’s earth-shattering slogan TO MAKE REVOLUTION IS NO CRIME; TO REBEL IS JUSTIFIED was painted on the wall of this tower. I took out my notebook and faithfully copied it down. My father was denounced and beaten countless times during the months that followed, but so were millions of other people and they managed not to lose hope. The night I was summoned home, why didn’t my parents warn my sister and me that they were planning to kill themselves? Of course, my father never recovered from the heartbreak I inflicted on him when I told the Red Guards to ransack our home … Ma Daode feels struck with remorse. He wishes he could walk over to his parents now and put his arms around them.
The phone in his pocket judders. It’s a message from his daughter: YOU SHOULD INVITE BRITISH FAMILIES TO CHINA AND SEND CHINESE FAMILIES TO BRITAIN ON BILATERAL CULTURAL EXCHANGES. IT WOULD BE MUCH MORE MEANINGFUL FOR BOTH SIDES THAN RUSHED VISITS TO THE USUAL TOURIST SITES … She advises him to set up a travel agency and put the idea in motion. Ma Daode wonders whether these exchanges would belong to a China Dream or a British Dream. He notices people on the square looking up at him or perhaps at the huge screen below the balcony. When the China Dream Bureau opened bids to erect a giant screen here to broadcast promotional films and public-service announcements, many businesses vied for the deal, offering bribes of cash and beautiful women, but Ma Daode turned them all down and awarded the contract to his oldest lover, Li Wei, who was in fact the most suitable candidate as she was already renting the tower.
‘Have you gone up there to kill yourself?’ yells an elderly volunteer security guard with a red armband around her left sleeve. ‘Come down at once!’
‘Look at this!’ Ma Daode shouts, climbing onto the balcony’s crenellated edge and pointing at the sign hanging from his neck.
A few people huddle together and begin to talk among themselves:
‘Bet he’s a migrant worker trying to drum up some cash.’
‘No – he’s probably a peasant petitioning the authorities about the demolition of his house.’
‘We should call the police. He’s creating a disturbance.’
The garlic seller walks over and says to them: ‘No, he’s just a madman who thinks he’s a government official. Hey, idiot! If you’ve got the balls, jump!’
Ma Daode clears his throat and launches into a speech: ‘Comrades, battle companions, see this sign? It’s true: I really am the director of the China Dream Bureau, a municipal government leader. But today, I want to speak to you, not as an official, but as an ordinary Ziyang resident. I was born and bred here. For four years I was banished to Yaobang, over there, to be re-educated by the peasants.’ Ma Daode points to the west. ‘Now I work on the fifth floor of that huge government and Party headquarters.’ He points to the north. ‘What is this in my hand, you may wonder?’ He raises the Coca-Cola bottle.
The throng below yells: ‘It’s a petrol bomb! Quick – run!’
‘No, come back!’ Ma Daode replies. ‘It’s not a bomb! It’s a new, improved version of Old Lady Dream’s Broth of Amnesia, which I have named China Dream Soup. In a moment you will discover how it can magically banish your nightmares and replace them with the China Dream. No need for pills or injections, or even the China Dream Device. One sip of this soup and you can make a clean break with the past …’
‘I’ve seen his toad-like face before,’ says a voice in the crowd. ‘He cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Ten Thousand Fortunes Company.’
‘Old Lady Dream’s Broth?’ another man cries out. ‘That’s only drunk by dead souls who need to forget their past lives before they are reborn into new bodies. I’ve never heard of a living
person drinking it before. Go on then, you fool. Take a sip and see what happens!’
‘I will drink it, but before I wipe out all my memories, I want to see my parents one last time,’ Ma Daode says, pointing towards Garden Square twelve kilometres away. ‘My unfilial behaviour drove them to their grave. But I have changed. I have changed entirely, inside and out, down to the very marrow of my bones.’
‘Aren’t you the son of Ma Lei and Zhu Mei?’ an old man in glasses calls out. ‘They were good people, those two. In the Cultural Revolution they were paraded through the streets every day.’
‘Yes, it’s him! The son of the Rightist. He joined East is Red, and could fight with knives, lances and pistols, as well as his bare fists, and was a master of kung fu. I once saw him run straight towards the barrel of a gun. He was fearless!’ The man now speaking is wearing blue overalls and has no head.
Seeing the large number of people who have gathered in the square to gawp, Song Bin brings out crates of steamed dumplings from the Qingfeng Dumpling Store, loads them onto a trolley and then, with his wife, wheels it through the throng shouting: ‘Try some Xi dumplings. Pale and plump, soft and tender! Who could resist? Only ten yuan a pair.’
‘Officer Ma, I’m Comrade Chun, reporting for duty,’ a cross-eyed boy cries out from the crowd. Ma Daode looks down at his old friend, and sees that the two bullets that struck him in the shoulder exited through the waist. It must have been a high-calibre machine gun because there is no blood around the wounds.
‘Comrade Chun, when we buried you, I placed two bullets in your hand so that you could avenge your death in the netherworld,’ Ma Daode cries back, feeling the burden of his past weigh heavily on his shoulders. He addresses the crowd again: ‘See, if you don’t drink this China Dream Soup, the past and the present form a tangled web from which it becomes impossible to break free. I’m sure you all have terrible memories you long to get rid of. Well, if you open this bottle of soup, add a few of your own tears, mix it all up and take a sip, your past will vanish as swiftly and permanently as a text you delete from your phone. So, for a life of unbridled joy, drink China Dream Soup!’ Ma Daode sees that the square below is now filled with people, but their faces are blank. ‘Whoever wants a free taste, raise your hand!’ he shouts. A sea of hands rises above the crowd. ‘Wonderful. Now, just think of something sad that happened to you in the past and get ready to shed a few tears.’
‘That’s easy – my wife left me last year to work in a factory in Guangdong, and she refuses to come back,’ says a migrant worker squatting on a street corner.
‘I’ve never cried about anything in my life, but my heart is full of sorrow,’ says a man with a bald patch. Then he crunches a clove of garlic and bites into a dumpling.
‘My newborn son was strangled to death by a family-planning doctor, right in front of me,’ says a woman with a blue hairband. ‘I wept so much, I have no tears left to cry. What should I do?’
‘Borrow someone else’s,’ suggests Ma Daode. ‘Those who have tears, lend them to those who have none. Your reward will come in the next life. Now, let’s all travel back in time to the Cultural Revolution and sing together: “Chairman Mao’s books are my favourite books. I read them a thousand times, ten thousand times. When I absorb their profound meaning, my heart glows with warm joy …”’
‘Your heart may be glowing with warm joy, you bastard, but mine is fucking stone cold! In fact, let me rip out your heart, then we can see how bloody warm it is!’ This boy’s bloodied forehead looks like a smashed watermelon. He’s wearing dirty overalls and a Million Bold Warriors armband. Ma Daode recognises him as a boy he kicked off the flat roof of a building. Yes, I tied his arms back with rope and with one sharp kick sent him flying over the edge. I trudged back home through the snow in his leather boots. The battle continued for days. When I returned a week later, I heard that the Drum Tower had been set alight with petrol bombs. With the help of rebel workers from the Agricultural Machinery Factory and the Red Sword Combat Team, the Million Bold Warriors captured the tower and cut off the escape routes out of the city. Pan Hua was stranded up here on the balcony. After a flaming bottle struck her in the chest, she leapt over the edge and soared to the Yellow Springs, her clothes and hair ablaze.
‘We must put the past behind us, and look ahead, look ahead. That’s why I made this soup …’ Ma Daode answers, struggling to find an adequate response to the young man he killed.
‘Come down, Ma Daode, and open the door for me!’ his mistress Li Wei shouts up to him. ‘I need to get into my office.’ She is wearing a woollen dress and knee-high leather boots. Her long glossy hair looks as though it has just been blow-dried in a salon.
‘Ignore her – she belongs to the Million Bold Warriors!’ Ma Daode shouts down sternly.
‘Don’t pretend not to know me,’ Li Wei replies, craning her neck up to look at him. ‘I’m Li Wei, your oldest lover. Come down right now. I’m renting this building, and if anything bad happens here, I’ll be ruined.’ The giant screen casts a blue light over her terrified face.
‘But my lover is called Pan Hua. At the height of the violent struggle, she leapt from this tower shouting: “Long live Chairman Mao!”’
‘Stop it, Ma Daode!’ Li Wei yells, stamping her feet and beginning to sob. ‘You are the only man I have been with in my whole life. Stop acting like a madman and come down at once.’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t jump,’ says a woman who has just bought some garlic and dumplings. ‘He promised to give me a sip of his China Dream Soup so I can forget the misery of my past. I trust him!’
‘You’re just a little squirt, an East is Red nobody,’ cries the boy with the bloodied forehead. ‘But I’m the Million Bold Warriors communications officer. If you hadn’t kicked me off the roof, I’d be Propaganda Chief of Ziyang by now.’
Ma Daode draws a deep breath of air and savours the delicious scent of pork dumplings and raw garlic. Just a drop of black vinegar, and the taste would be sublime.
‘I don’t care about any of you any more. Once I drink this soup you will all be gone. That other Ma Daode will be gone as well and I will be free at last!’ Ma Daode lifts the bottle to his eyes and tries to shed a tear, but realises he will only be able to cry when he sees his parents again.
His secretary, Hu, calls out from below: ‘I’ve kept this to myself all this time, but I must tell you now. During the violent struggle, your East is Red faction staged an exhibition of counter-revolutionary criminals. My mother was one of your exhibits. You locked her in a wooden cage for days and let visitors jab her with bamboo rods and spit in her face.’ He points to the ghostly figure with long white hair who is standing beside him.
‘I recognise you, old lady!’ Ma Daode says. ‘You worked in the county supply office. But why are you a ghost? We didn’t kill you.’ He remembers that she was a lively woman with tightly permed hair. During a street battle waged against her rebel faction, he raised his stick and prepared to strike her on the neck, but his friends gathered round and said: ‘Wait, don’t kill her. Make her lick a corpse instead.’ So he dragged her over to a fallen comrade and forced her to lick the blood from his bludgeoned face.
‘I’m here to assist the troops,’ says a teenager whose chest is riddled with bullet holes. ‘Don’t worry – it wasn’t you who shot me. We’re all desperate to try your soup, so stop talking about it and give us some!’
‘Which faction do you belong to?’ asks Cross-eyed Chun, walking over to him.
‘I’m a Red Guard from the provincial university,’ the teenager answers. ‘I’ve been deployed here to support the Million Bold Warriors.’
‘Bastard!’ Chun shouts, pouncing on top of him. ‘Let me avenge my death!’ The two youths wrestle to the ground and tear at each other’s clothes and hair.
Ma Daode looks down and sees an East is Red unit line up in front of the Drum Tower entrance to prevent a gang of Million Bold Warriors from breaking in. The two groups stand facing each other, hurling
insults back and forth. Then he looks over to the square and sees thousands of Red Guards begin to flood in from all sides. Caught in the chaotic scrum of people and ghosts, Li Wei sobs: ‘You promised we would never part, Ma Daode! During all these years, my love for you has never waned. Why are my gleaming white thighs and the moist sanctuary between them not enough to keep you by my side?’
‘My heart belongs to Pan Hua, but she died many years ago.’ Ma Daode gazes out at the impenetrable sea of people and, feeling as though he is performing in a tragic ballet, assumes an expression of pained sorrow.
‘I pity poor Juan being married to an unfaithful bastard like you!’ shouts Song Bin’s wife, Hong. ‘May this be the last thing you ever eat!’ She snatches a dumpling from the trolley and tries to fling it at Ma Daode, but it hits the China Dream screen instead, its juice spurting out in an oily mist. As Song Bin grasps hold of her hands to stop her throwing any more, Ma Daode shouts down to her: ‘You’d be better off keeping an eye on your own husband, Hong! Just check the messages on his phone.’ At this, Hong breaks free and punches Song Bin hard in the face, then pursues him through the crowd as he tries to flee.
‘But look, I am Pan Hua,’ Li Wei calls out. ‘My soul is reincarnating into Li Wei’s body so that I can be with you again. After I fell from that tower and was buried in the wild grove, you were the only classmate who visited my grave. That is why I want to return to you.’ As these words leave her mouth, Li Wei transforms into Pan Hua, wearing a faded army uniform and a red scarf around her neck. Only her long glossy hair remains unchanged.
‘But remember that pamphlet the Red Guards wrote called “Crimes of Rightist Ma Lei, husband of a female spy who worked for an English family”? You grabbed one from a pile and copied every word of it into your notebook. You despised me.’ Ma Daode looks over to the White House and the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
