by Yan Lianke
With his clothes under his arm, Mingyao strode out of the war room. After he left, a few people entered and began to clean the shattered plates, bowls, and cups that were scattered over the floor. When they saw the sand table model of the United States, they noticed that Mingyao had repainted in snowy white everything that had previously been painted black. America’s vast mountains, deserts, plains, and cities—including New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Seattle, together with Cleveland and Miami—were painted in Chinese-style funereal white. In this whiteness, every US city, every piece of territory, and every stretch of forest was inscribed with the characters for Offering and Libation, which one normally finds only on Chinese coffins.
Those former soldiers—with some of them having served as civil servants for a major general, and others having served as sentries for lieutenant generals and full generals—cleaned up the plates, chopsticks, and discarded food and scraps of paper that were scattered all over the war room, and realized that something momentous was about to unfold. When they returned home, they took out their military uniforms, caps, shoes, and munitions belts, which they had previously locked away, and proceeded to clean them and place them on the table and the bed.
Mingyao rushed into the county government building and immediately stepped inside the elevator. He hit his head against a half-open window in the hallway and shattered the windowpane. Then he proceeded into the county mayor’s office, where he saw his brother Mingliang discussing with several advisers how to help American investors profit and thrive in Explosion—and how to have them serve as bait to lure large businesses from rich European and Asian countries. Mingyao rushed in and overturned the conference table, throwing teacups to the floor. The water and tea leaves poured across the floor, with porcelain shards sitting in the water like islands in the ocean. “How can you, at a time like this, issue a directive instructing the people of Explosion to bow and give way to foreigners when they meet them in the street?” Mingyao howled, “You are a turncoat, a traitor, a slave! Don’t you know?”
Mingyao kicked a teacup that had somehow remained intact and sent it flying into the wall. “A Chinese plane has been struck by an invading US plane, and the pilot drowned in the ocean, yet the authorities are doing little more than voicing feeble resistance. At a time like this, how can you be sitting here discussing how to help former US soldiers enjoy themselves and make money while in Explosion? … Kong Mingliang, if you were not my brother, I would push you out the window to fall to your death on the concrete ground below!”
Mingyao rushed up to his brother’s desk, grabbed him by the collar, and attempted to lift him. He said, “I want you to send someone right now to go rescind that directive. If you don’t, I’ll immediately arrange for both the county government building and your office to be burned to the ground!”
Mingliang pushed Mingyao away, then slapped his face. “The economy is the nation’s top priority, you know?” He howled, “I’m telling you, all I need to do is give the word, and your mining company will immediately collapse, your assets will be seized, and your accounts will be frozen!”
Mingliang furiously sat back down. “Do you really want to go against your elder brother? Do want to see whether he is able to ruin you, or whether you can succeed in removing him from his position as county mayor?
“Don’t forget!” Mingliang roared as he pounded the table. “If it weren’t for your brother, you would currently have no standing at all in Explosion!”
After everyone had retreated from this confrontation between the mayor and his brother, and all that was left in the room was this fraternal fury, Mingliang laughed coldly and said, “You focus your attention on earning money, but what can you do with that measly amount of money? Can you buy an aircraft carrier? Can you buy an atomic bomb that you could fire at the United States whenever you want? From my position as county mayor, I’m telling you that Explosion is now extraordinarily poor, but if it really becomes rich then I will be promoted to city mayor. China is now extraordinarily poor, but if it becomes rich then it would be able to purchase the US presidency.
“Go home.” Mingliang brushed away the tea leaves and drops of water that had splattered over his clothing. “You should go home and find someone to marry. If you don’t even think about women, then who will you ever be able to love, and what will you ever be able to accomplish?”
Before Kong Mingyao emerged from his brother’s office, he snorted and said, “Are you not going to retract your directive instructing the residents of Explosion to bow down to every American or other foreigner they encounter?” He then declared, “If you don’t, then I’ll retract it for you. I can get those Americans to leave Explosion without even having to utter a single word!” After saying this, Mingyao walked out of the county government building. The afternoon sun shone into the hallway, illuminating his body as he walked away, like a string of shells shot out of a gun. Mingyao’s face was the color of bronze and glowed brightly in the sunlight. It turned out that he had originally rushed into the office building because he didn’t know how to respond to the news of the collision between the US and Chinese planes. Now, however, as he was arguing with his brother, he realized what he had to do in order to resist American imperialism. He virtually ran out of the county government courtyard, and when he reached the main road he ignored everything else as he proceeded toward the company building. He completely forgot that he had arrived at the county government building in a sedan, and that the driver and the car were still waiting for him in the garage.
Forty minutes later, Mingyao approached the empty plot where his mining company’s central administrative building was being constructed. As he had expected, his troops, soldiers, and militia, together with those soldiers who had withdrawn from the army but had been lured back by the high salaries he offered, were all waiting there anxiously for him. In the army they had been soldiers, squad leaders and platoon leaders, and company and battalion commanders, but after arriving in Explosion’s richest mining company they entered a peculiar half-military, half-civilian lifestyle, where Mingyao might summon them at any moment. After the US and Chinese planes collided over Hainan Island and the US plane landed on Chinese soil without permission, these former soldiers knew exactly what they had to do. They waited a total of ten days, until finally Mingyao emerged from his war room and then ran out of the county government building.
The main street in the county seat was still as crowded as before, full of people buying and selling vegetables. The people in the factories and office buildings were still going to and from work, but behind the mining company building, in a courtyard surrounded by a tall brick wall, there were three reinforced militia battalions with uniformed soldiers clustered together. The soldiers’ military company was their new administrative work unit, and they stood in formation across three basketball courts. Those who had been designated as battalion commanders and company commanders included some who had served as company commanders while in the army, while there were also others whom Mingyao had appointed himself. On this day, they had all been hurriedly summoned by a deputy regiment commander in charge of training, who issued a report that made their blood boil. It turned out that the deputy regiment commander (who had been a battalion commander in the army) saw Mingyao soaked in sweat and facing the training field. He stood at attention, marched up to him and saluted, then announced that the entire regiment had reported for duty and were awaiting their orders. Then Mingyao wiped the sweat from his forehead and flung it to the ground. He collected himself, took a deep breath, and looked out at his forces. He was silent for a moment, and after his breathing had stabilized he began walking slowly toward a wooden stage in front of the regiment. That stage was as large as a house and a meter high. When it was not in use, it was pushed over into the field and covered in a tarp, and when it was needed it was covered in a red carpet.
Now, the wooden stage had been carried to the center of the three basketball courts, and under the midday sun the rug sparkled as
if it were on fire. When Mingyao walked up onto the stage, warm blood seemed to surge from the stage into his veins and then rush to his head. As soon as he got onstage, the thousand-odd soldiers in the audience all stood at attention and saluted him—and as they were doing so, you could hear the swooshing sound as their hands moved through the air, as though a series of lightning bolts were whizzing by. This scene made Mingyao’s blood boil with excitement. He gazed down at the crowd, then gathered his energy to shout to them,
“Comrades!”
The thousand-odd soldiers shouted back, “Commander!”
Mingyao shouted, “Comrades, you have worked hard!”
The soldiers shouted back, “Serve the People!”
Mingyao asked, “Do you all know what happened recently?”
The soldiers shouted back, “Overturn American imperialism! Drive the Americans out of Explosion!”
Mingyao shouted to the troops, telling them that they had spent a thousand days training for this one moment. But this moment of combat ultimately consisted not of fighting the Americans directly but rather of using their own poverty to attack their opponents’ wealth, using their own weakness to attack their opponents’ strength, and using their wisdom to attack their opponents’ stupidity. In short, they proposed to use Explosion’s prestige to attack America’s arrogance and insanity. After everyone had quieted down, Mingyao proceeded to speak for half an hour, as though giving his soldiers a lecture on military strategy. Eventually, he ordered the soldiers to disband and wait for further orders while he summoned all of the cadres at the level of the company or higher to his war room and proceeded to hold another military strategy meeting. In the end, they came up with three basic strategies in response to recent developments:
1) Wait for one’s opportunity, and maintain absolute secrecy.
2) Overcome firmness with gentleness, and use the element of surprise.
3) Swear that they will never rest until they reach their goal.
Two days later, when the county mayor went into the city for a meeting, something happened that left America and the Americans astounded. Those former US soldiers who had come to Explosion to invest in the automobile factory were all living in a European-style villa complex on the outskirts of the city. A two-hundred-meter-wide, man-made river flowed through the villa complex, and the air there was much more humid than in the city. The northern elms were blooming with southern ceiba blossoms. The pagoda tree blossoms were large and red, just like the phoenix tree blossoms that you normally find only in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It turned out that now, in early spring, the wormwood, thatch, and dogtail plants, all of which were indigenous to the area, were blooming like a Vietnamese garden in the middle of summer. In the villa complex there were persimmon and apple trees, which had already begun to sprout mangoes and coconuts. In the center of this fruit orchard was a flower garden, and on the tenth day of the fourth lunar month, the flowers were blooming and the fruit was fragrant. But by the eleventh day of the month, that first group of Americans arrived and enjoyed the local nightlife, and when they woke up after ten o’clock the following morning, they opened their windows and saw that a two-story white canvas tent had been erected in the flower garden. In the center of the tent a rusty chimney rose into the air, and on the side facing the Americans’ villa complex there was the word CREMATORIUM in English, together with the corresponding Chinese characters, 火?场, and below this there were a dozen corpses. The corpses were each covered in a white sheet, and on the sheets were written, in English, the names of President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary, their daughter Chelsea, Secretary of Defense Colin Powell, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate majority leader, together with the names of the commander of the EP-3 spy plane and the other American pilots. Standing at attention behind this group of corpses were all of Mingyao’s troops, dressed in full military uniform. They had solemn expressions and were standing in formation in the garden, trampling on the flowers underfoot. The Americans didn’t know when these Chinese soldiers had arrived in the garden, and neither did they know when exactly the Chinese had built that impromptu funeral parlor with a crematorium inside. When the first American noticed this unusual scene outside his window, a young soldier from Explosion had just pulled down the US flag in front of the funeral parlor. When a second American opened his window with surprise, another of Mingyao’s soldiers lit the US flag on fire. When all of the remaining Americans rushed outside to stand in front of the mortuary, Mingyao—wearing a commander’s uniform, shiny black shoes, and a bright red leather munitions belt—came to the front of the soldiers. Facing an American who had just come running outside, he saluted them and then made a gesture, whereupon two soldiers approached carrying a corpse on a stretcher.
Several Americans stood directly in front of the crematorium with shocked expressions. As they watched, Mingyao slowly pulled back the white sheet and revealed a real corpse, in full makeup, underneath. The corpse was large and tall, and was dressed in a suit, with short hair and thick eyebrows. Its face looked exactly like Bill Clinton’s, and even its tie was the same one that Clinton liked to wear. The Americans stared in surprise. When the American standing in front of the group first saw the corpse, his arms froze and he fell back a step. He swayed from side to side and looked as though he were about to collapse, but was supported by a couple of his companions. With a hard, eerie smile, Mingyao pushed the Bill Clinton corpse aside and pulled over the Hillary corpse, followed by the Chelsea corpse. Finally, he brought over the corpse of the pilot of the US spy plane. He slowly lifted the white sheets covering each of them, as though removing an article of clothing, so that the Americans could see the made-up face of each corpse. Each of them looked exactly like an American. At this point, the cremation began. The mortuary workers turned on the electricity and opened the gas pipe leading to the furnace, then transferred the first corpse—which was the Bill Clinton one—from the stretcher to the crematorium cart. Mingyao told the Americans to take a final look, before he slowly pushed the cart into the crematorium. The door to the crematorium was as wide as that of a warehouse door and was directly facing the Americans standing outside. Two mortuary workers dressed in white uniforms—including one who was outside Mingyao’s line of sight—pushed a button, and the door clanged open and a flame shot into the oven and immediately filled the furnace with fire. A wave of heat surged out of the crematorium, pushing back the people standing outside. After this, another mortuary worker slowly pushed the Clinton corpse into the oven, then closed the inch-thick iron door.
Above the crematorium there was a series of sunlit clouds moving across the clear sky, such that the soldiers, the Americans, and other onlookers standing there alternated between being covered by clouds and enjoying a cool breeze, on one hand, and being baked under the blazing sun and engulfed by hot air from the crematorium, on the other.
The news that twelve corpses had been cremated, including those of the US president, Bill Clinton, and the First Lady, Hillary Clinton, permeated every corner of Explosion. Immediately, the residents of the city and the surrounding rural regions all crowded around the villa complex. To prevent a disruption of the ceremony, Mingyao and the troops held hands and surrounded the crematorium. The people who had come to watch began shouting noisily, and those who couldn’t see proceeded to climb atop a rockery, fruit trees, and the roofs of the foreigners’ villas.
Someone was leading chants that included “Overturn American imperialism!” and “Kick the Americans Out of Explosion!” Initially the chants were rather chaotic, but they quickly became quite rhythmic, as though the thousands of citizens had suddenly become soldiers. But just as these chants were reaching their peak, everyone suddenly became quiet, and the only thing that could be heard was the sound of muffled breathing. After thirty minutes, the crematorium button was pressed again. The gas nozzle closed and the flame died down. The Bill Clinton corpse had already been reduced to ashes and was ready to be removed. A soldier wearing a white gown brought over an u
rn made from white marble, and the lid was printed with Bill Clinton’s name in both Chinese and English, together with his official portrait. The soldier opened the urn and let the American businessmen look inside, inviting them to verify the quality of the materials and their workmanship. Then he went to the opening in the back of the furnace, where one mortuary worker was holding a wooden box while another was using a small shovel and a metal broom, designed expressly for crematoriums, to sweep up the ashes. After they finished, they brought the wooden box to the front of the crematorium and proceeded—right there in front of the Americans—to dump the ashes into the urn labeled with Bill Clinton’s name.
There was a thighbone and a vertebra that had not been completely reduced to ashes and were too large to fit into the urn. The mortuary workers looked to Mingyao, who was standing beside them, and asked, “What should we do?”