by Yan Lianke
Minghui’s office was located in the middle of the development bureau’s courtyard, since applicants needed his signature before they could begin the process of requesting forms, completing them, getting approval, and paying the requisite fees, and then they would need his signature again in order to receive their new residency permit and ID. As a result, Minghui’s room was filled from floor to ceiling with gifts, to the point that the gifts forced him and everyone else out of the room and into the courtyard. In the end even the office wasn’t big enough to hold them all, and the gifts were deposited in the development bureau’s courtyard, where the cigarette cartons were piled so high that they reached the branches of an elm tree in the courtyard and the cigarette smoke stained the tree leaves yellow, so that the old elm became addicted to nicotine. For years afterward, someone would need to periodically open a packet of cigarettes and place it under the tree. Without cigarette smoke, the tree leaves would curl up and die. Across from the elm tree, there was a persimmon tree, under which there were boxes and boxes of wine and alcohol. Because that happened to be the season when the persimmons bloomed, all of the persimmons that year reeked of alcohol and anyone who consumed three or more of them would fall over drunk. When there was no more room under the elm tree for cigarettes, and no more room under the persimmon tree for red wine or baijiu liquor, Minghui simply stood in the middle of the courtyard of the development bureau and personally tried to prevent those gift-bearing visitors from entering. He stood on a stool and saw that the line of people who had come to change their residency permits was several kilometers long. The line wove through the square and ended beyond the city limits.
In order to stop these people from bringing gifts, Minghui went to his brother Mingyao’s place and recruited eight young soldiers to stand guard in the entranceway, instructing them to stop anyone bearing gifts from entering the development bureau’s courtyard. The problem eventually began to subside, until finally there was no longer anyone attempting to bring gifts into the courtyard. As the city revised the residency permit of one household after another, the population of Explosion City began to snowball. Within a month, virtually all those whom the directive had indicated should have their residency permits reassigned to the city had done so. At this point, a rumor began circulating that the mayor’s younger brother, Kong Minghui, had developed a psychosis such that if anyone gave him a present he would immediately throw it out the door, and if people stuffed money into his hand he would throw it back at them.
Everyone was dumbfounded.
Everyone knew that Minghui had developed this mental illness.
One person, though, tried to determine whether Minghui was really sick or merely faking it, and one morning he waited at the entrance to the development bureau office, and when he saw Minghui approaching he shouted, “Bureau Director Kong!”
Kong Minghui was bureau director, but he didn’t allow anyone to address him using the honorific title Bureau Director Kong and instead asked everyone to call him by his actual name: Kong Minghui. With this, everyone knew that he really was ill, and furthermore that the illness was quite serious. However, people had no choice but to nod to him and smile, then quickly walk away. When it was time to finish work, the associate directors of the development bureau all watched as Minghui slowly left for the day, and it was only then that they dared come out of their offices and get into their company cars to return home. If they happened to catch up to Minghui on the road, they would have the cars turn around to avoid him. They would also try to avoid those people who would wait on the side of the road every day for Minghui to walk by—as the sight of the mayor’s younger brother walking to work had become a local spectacle. Every morning at seven thirty and every afternoon at five thirty—half an hour before work started at eight and before it ended at six—the city’s residents would crowd around the bureau entrance, standing on both sides of the road, to watch the bureau director who refused to ride in his own car and instead insisted on walking to and from work.
One day, when the crowd of people watching Minghui was unusually large and there was a traffic jam in the square, the mayor happened to drive by. “What’s going on?” Mingliang asked. His driver stuck his head out the window to look around, then reported, “Everyone is here to watch Director Minghui, who has a car but insists on walking to work.” The driver then laughed and added, “Mayor, more people come here every day to watch the bureau director walk to work than go to the square to watch the flag being raised.” Mingliang remembered the time when the four brothers had gotten up in the middle of the night, and how that night he had found an official seal that foretold his current political position. That night, Mingyao had encountered a military truck hauling a cannon, which similarly foretold his current power. His youngest brother Minghui, meanwhile, had encountered a gentle cat, which anticipated his current weakness. Looking though the car window into the distance, Mingliang didn’t say anything else. He watched as Minghui walked over from the other side of the intersection. Minghui appeared thin and frail, and was carrying one of the black briefcases that had been issued to all of the city’s cadres. As everyone watched, he proceeded forward, like a sick cat scurrying out from under people’s feet. He took short steps and didn’t say a word, as he walked away from that crowd of people watching him from a distance. The observers, meanwhile, said regretfully,
“He really is ill.
“… He really is mentally ill.”
As the car passed the crowd standing by the roadside, the mayor gazed at his brother and sighed.
That evening, when it was time to get off work, the sun shone down feebly on Explosion. Because the elm and persimmon trees and the grapevines in the development bureau courtyard were addicted to nicotine, alcohol, and sugar, if they were not supplied with cigarettes, wine, and candy their leaves would promptly shrivel up and fall off. After the cadres and workers at the development bureau got off work and Minghui was left alone, he opened a pack of cigarettes under the elm tree and tossed some wine and candy onto the ground beneath the persimmon tree and the grapevines. The director of the city’s mental asylum walked over, wearing a white coat, and he looked around and then stood in front of Minghui for a long time without speaking. His hands were clasped in front of his chest, and he seemed as if he wanted to ask Minghui if he could borrow something, but didn’t say a word.
“Do you want something?” Minghui buried several pieces of candy under the grapevines and then patted down the earth with his foot.
“The mayor asked me to take you to stay in the hospital for a few days, so that we could give you a complete exam.”
Minghui stood there speechless, still holding a fistful of candy wrappers. He scrunched the wrappers into a ball, then permitted the director to lead him back to the hospital for an exam.
2. A HISTORY OF CULTURAL DISLOCATIONS
I.
After Minghui’s mother fell ill, Minghui stayed home from work for three days to take care of her. Initially, this did not even appear to be a terribly serious illness, as she was simply running a high fever and talking in her sleep, saying, “I’m going over there, I’m going over there… . Over there is better than over here, over there is better than over here!” After the fever began to subside, she emerged from her room and looked markedly thinner. The house was still the same as before, as was the courtyard. In the courtyard there were the same elm and paulownia trees as before, which would bud in the spring, flourish in the summer, and turn yellow in autumn. Even the ants and other bugs crawling up and down the trees were the same as before. They would pant as they crawled up and would skip happily on their way back down. The spider in the web behind the door was still the same old spider that had been there when the family suffered a setback many years earlier.
“You definitely must not move,” Mingliang had said coldly. “Even if I am appointed emperor, you definitely must not move, so that people from around the country can come here and observe my family’s holiness.”
So his mo
ther didn’t move.
She continued living there.
After Explosion was redesignated as a city, their house was preserved as a cultural relic. The trees that originally lined the streets of Explosion had all been labeled with plaques noting their species and their identification number. A millstone that had previously lain abandoned and forgotten in one of the village alleys had now been rediscovered and excavated, and was written into the city’s cultural chronicles, and a glass enclosure was built around it for protection. The graves originally located in the village square were all relocated to an empty field in the mountain ridge behind Explosion, and it was there that you could find the tombs of the martyrs who gave their lives so that the city could be established. The grave of the mayor’s father, Kong Dongde, was transferred to the center of that new cemetery, and in front of the grave there was a tombstone that read: A PIONEER IN ESTABLISHING THIS CITY. Zhu Ying’s father, Zhu Qingfang, who had that bitter rivalry with Kong Dongde, was now lying—together with his immediate relatives—in this martyrs’ cemetery, and the tombstone at his feet was inscribed with the phrase TOMB OF A PIONEER.
it is said that the mayors of the town and county to which Explosion had belonged when it was still merely a village have now been appointed as city mayor and deputy provincial governor of another province, but they nevertheless each specified that after their death they wanted to be buried in the Explosion cemetery. On their tombstones, they wanted the phrase “This city’s pioneers!” Mayor Kong, however, asked Yang Baoqing—who at the time was the director of Explosion Village’s news production factory, but who by this point was the director of the city’s propaganda bureau—to personally write the former county mayor a letter, saying that when the mayor eventually passes away Yang would erect a statue in this city’s public square, on which he would inscribe the phrase Father of the City. He also wrote the former town mayor—and current city mayor—Hu Dajun, the following brief message:
We look forward to your death, which will be a great honor for us. If you could enter the Explosion cemetery as soon as possible, it would make the people of Explosion very proud!
By this point, Explosion was definitely one of the nation’s great cities.
The entirety of Explosion’s past consisted of reality, history, and people’s memories.
On account of this tension between reality and history, Explosion’s old streets and the new city became divided into two distinct worlds.
The city’s east side, west side, and development zone extended along the river, where new buildings stretched out like a multicolored forest. The glass surface of the buildings made the temperature in the city center always several degrees warmer than in the suburbs. Meanwhile, in the old city area, where there was a street named Explosion Street, there was barely anyone at all apart from a handful of people who came for sightseeing. Even Mayor Kong Mingliang and the city’s richest resident, his brother Mingyao, rarely returned home to this street. It was as if they had already forgotten that they were originally from Explosion Street, and apart from New Year’s or their mother’s birthday, they almost never visited their former residence. They were all very busy as business took off. After Mingguang and his wife got divorced, Mingguang didn’t end up marrying Little Cui, and instead bought an apartment at his school and stayed there. He, too, forgot to return home. As a result, it was left to their mother to look after the household. She would cook for Minghui and wash his clothes, and have him walk to work every morning and then walk home every evening. Minghui continued this practice of walking to and from work until one day his elder brother asked the director of the city’s mental hospital to take Minghui in for an examination, whereupon their mother began running a fever that lasted for three days. To express his filial devotion, Minghui looked after his mother until she was able to emerge from her room. She stood in front of the table like a living corpse and stared for a long time at her husband’s photograph, then turned to Minghui and said,
“How old am I now? I should go find your father and keep him company.
“… I don’t want to live any longer. I should go find your father and keep him company.”
One morning three days later, the early summer sunlight was shining down on the courtyard, and the city’s buildings at the base of the mountain were shimmering like ripples in a pond. Their mother slept for a while; then she dressed herself in the sort of clothing one would give a corpse and wandered out of her room. The nanny was in the kitchen heating some milk for her. At this point, Minghui was about to go into work, but as he was washing up he discovered that after his mother recovered from her illness, she was no longer the same person she had been three days earlier, but rather now there was a thick death veil over her face. He didn’t know what she had endured during her illness, but she suddenly looked like someone who had died and come back to life. Her skin was dried up, her face was sallow and wrinkled, and she stood there like an old ghost cut out of gray and yellow paper. She stood in front of her husband’s ghostly photograph, then used her sleeve to wipe away the dust on the photograph’s glass frame. She mumbled to herself, “I’m going to go find you! … I’m going to go find you!” It was as if her husband were inside the glass stamping his feet as he waited anxiously for her.
When Minghui heard this, he froze.
“I just want to die.” His mother then heard a sound behind her and turned around. Looking at Minghui, she said, “Your father is over there stamping his feet and waiting for me.”
“Then I’ll stay home every day to keep you company.” Minghui added, “After all, I don’t want to go to work anymore.”
His mother stared at him without saying a word, as her eyes lit up.
“I’ll stay with you for the rest of our lives.” Minghui added, “I don’t want to work one more day at the bureau.”
When his mother heard this, her sallow complexion became a little rosier, and she began to look more like a living person. Then, the sunlight streaming into the room became as bright as a mirror. The sunlight shone in all directions, and even illuminated the corner behind the door, which had been shrouded in darkness for thousands of years. At first, the old spider behind the door could not adjust to the sudden brightness and stood motionless in the sunlight. But eventually, after it adjusted, the spider danced happily across its web, which bounced up and down like a trampoline. The old hen that walked in lay down beneath the spiderweb for a while, and left behind a nest with five blood-veined peacock eggs.
Just like that, Minghui decided not to go to work anymore, and not to serve any longer as bureau chief. When he went to discuss his decision to step down with his eldest brother, the latter simply said, “You should discuss this with your second brother.” When Minghui went to discuss his decision to step down with his second brother, Mingliang, he first had to make three appointments with his brother’s office manager, Cheng Qing, and only then could he meet with his own brother. When Mingliang heard Minghui’s decision, he was furious, saying, “You piece of shit. You’re the youngest bureau director in the entire city. Don’t you realize that?”
Mingliang added, “How many more days does our mother have to live? She has money and a nurse, so if we designate her a Mother of the Nation, we will have fulfilled our filial obligations.”
When Minghui went to discuss his decision to step down with Mingyao, he was able to meet with him very promptly. At the time, Mingyao was in a hidden gully several dozen li outside the city limits, where he had erected quite a few basic military buildings and had recruited countless retired soldiers and militiamen. He was training them and paying them a monthly salary. They were wearing military uniforms, and every month they would perform a military parade on a specially constructed concrete training field. On the eastern side of the training field there was a reviewing platform, which had been constructed to conform to the contours of the mountain ridge. The parade ground was located in the gourd-shaped gully on the other side of which there were military barracks. This was the trainin
g field, and under the scorching sun of the eighth lunar month they had lit a fire inside the gully, and the rivulets of soldiers’ sweat gushing out of the gully converged in a ditch and then continued to flow out of the gully. Mingyao was wearing a military uniform and was standing on the review platform under a parasol, watching the troops march back and forth in front of him. The magnificent military music coursed through the troops’ feet and chests, like steam in a steam engine. After Minghui arrived, Mingyao brought those military exercises to an end. Minghui stood on the edge of the platform and watched as one squad after another passed by on the way to the barracks, as the troops’ chants caused the platform to tremble under his feet. The rhythmic sound of their footsteps resembled the excavation machines that could be heard throughout the city every night. After waiting for all of the troops to pass, Mingyao walked over and smiled at Minghui.
Minghui said, “I don’t want to be bureau chief anymore.”
Mingyao looked over at the final military company that had passed by him and shouted, “Hey, Third Company Commander, let’s post some sentries at the entrance to the gully. No one should be allowed to enter this training area without my express permission!”
Minghui said, “I want to stay home with our mother, but Second Brother won’t let me.”
Mingyao gazed intently at Minghui, then snorted. “Sooner or later, Second Brother will need to listen to me.”
“But you’re so busy.” Minghui looked at Mingyao and added, “I’m leaving, and won’t be eating here with you.”
Mingyao patted Minghui’s shoulder and said, “After I succeed, you’ll be able to become a general or even a commander if you want to.”