by Yan Lianke
After dinner the previous evening, the ninth observational delegation from Beijing—which was there to examine Explosion’s qualifications for being redesignated as a provincial-level metropolis—had told Mingliang that within a month Beijing would host its final discussion of whether or not to redesignate Explosion as a provincial-level metropolis on the same level as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and even Beijing itself. The delegates said that the key consideration was not the city’s population or the speed and dimensions of its economic growth, but rather whether Mayor Kong could capture the attention of the experts and the government officials charged with making the decision, because these questions of redesignation necessarily came after discussions of national personnel. They added that by that point it would already be time to eat and, in order to retain the delegates’ attention, he would need to ensure that any further discussion would be at least as appealing as the expected food. He would therefore need to prepare the rhetorical equivalent of delicious dishes and pair them with rare wines—and only then would the officials be willing to put off their meal and continue their discussions in the meeting hall. As the delegates were saying this, everyone was in the meeting hall next to the city government’s dining hall enjoying dinner, and after the delicious meal had ended the investigation team and several people from the city government stayed behind in the conference room. In front of each of them there was a wooden basin, on which seven or eight bottles of Maotai baijiu wine had been poured for them to soak their feet. The room was full of the smell of baijiu. Several one-of-a-kind beauties were also on hand to give the men massages. When the head of the investigation team had been fully massaged, he faced the mayor. Then, with his sixty-year-old feet rubbing together in the baijiu, he said that he had never before used baijiu to soak his feet and that it was making his toes a bit numb.
At that point the mayor gazed at the investigation team, whose gray heads and wrinkled faces were all glowing radiantly. He pondered for a while, then said three things—each of which seemed to be part question and part observation:
“In Beijing, does no one care about women and money?”
He added, “Does no one care how quickly the city is developing?”
He added again, “If I can build a one-hundred-kilometer subway line and the largest airport in Asia in less than a week, is it possible that no one would take an interest?”
When he made this third statement, the eyes of everyone in the investigation team widened, like a row of red lanterns lined up in front of him. “Can you really build a hundred-kilometer subway line in only a week? Can you really build the largest airport in Asia in only a week?” The head of the investigation team rubbed his feet together in the baijiu, repeating these two questions over and over again. Finally, when they were about to leave to board the airplane, he asked these questions again while staring at Mingliang. After Kong Mingliang had escorted the investigation team onto the airplane, he went home to sleep. During the entire eighteen days that he had spent with the investigation team, he had been responsible for everything—even the chopsticks they had used were ones Mingliang had picked out himself and had personally distributed to each member of the team. He was bone tired after escorting this ninth investigation team around for eighteen days, and felt as he had back when he was village chief and was taking the villagers out to the railroad tracks to unload goods. But he was no longer as young as he once was, and rest, recuperation, and quiet were now as important to him as air and water. He slept so soundly that he would have no memory whatsoever of what he had said and what he had done, but as he was falling asleep something kept buzzing in his brain. He could hear people asking him the same question over and over again: “Can you really construct a subway line in only a week?” He nodded several times, while the people kept asking him, “Can you really build the largest airport in Asia in less than a week?” In the end, it was as if everything was decided at that juncture, and as long as Kong Mingliang could build a hundred-kilometer subway line and the largest airport in Asia in less than a week, Explosion’s redesignation as one of China’s provincial-level metropolises would be all but guaranteed. Kong Mingliang lay in his enormous bed, opened his eyes, and saw that the ruby-encrusted hair clip of one of the women from the night before was still lying next to his pillow. He took the hair clip and placed it on his bedside table and reminisced about the woman. Then he sat up, grabbed his clothes, and got out of bed.
He suddenly grasped the thing that was ringing in his head—which was that he had to go see his third brother, Mingyao. In order to construct a subway line and an airport within a week, he would need Mingyao’s help, and specifically he needed Mingyao to offer the services of his soldiers. As Mingliang was about to put on his shoes, he coughed lightly and someone immediately brought over a pair of slippers that had been custom-made by a specialty store in Japan. When he went to the bathroom door, he knocked and someone immediately squeezed out his toothpaste and also placed a disposable towel—printed with a future image of Explosion—next to the faucet. When the faucet was turned on and started producing the sound of running water, the staff in the dining hall began placing all sorts of breakfast food and drinks at Mingliang’s seat at the table.
After taking several gulps of milk and eating several bites of his favorite pickled vegetables and fried egg, Mingliang did not knock on the table or say a single word to anyone. The workers knew that after eating, the mayor liked to stroll through the garden alone, and therefore they retired to their respective places, to allow him to stroll around in peace. The assistants who didn’t have a chance to retreat in time stood by the side of the road, and as he walked by they would smile and bow, and softly say, “Greetings, Mayor.” By this point the sun was already high in the sky and shining down on the eastern half of the courtyard. It looked as though molten gold had just solidified into an orb with a golden halo around it. As Mingliang was following the corridor under the courtyard’s grape trellis, he found that even though winter was over there were nevertheless several grapevines with branches that were still white and bare. Most of these branches were full of spring greenery, but there was one that seemed about to break off and did not yet have any green buds. Mingliang walked down the middle of the grapevine corridor and looked out. He knew that there were workers standing at his side and behind him, and all he needed to do was cough lightly or stop and turn, and they would immediately appear before him and ask, “Mayor Kong, what do you need?” It was as if they had been standing and waiting for millennia for him to say those words, and now that the opportunity had finally arisen the excitement was clearly visible on their faces. All of this had been arranged by Cheng Qing, who had been by his side ever since they were children in Explosion Village. Cheng Qing was the administrative secretary of the city government and was responsible for looking after Mingliang’ life, work, and talks, and when he felt lustful and wanted a woman, his old passion for Cheng Qing would be awakened. He knew that Cheng Qing was in one of the villas in this courtyard, and that all he had to do was give the word, and in a few minutes she would be in front of him. But at this moment he didn’t want to see her, nor did he want to see anyone else. He simply wanted to walk alone for a while, to consider how to discuss with Mingyao the question of building a subway line and an airport in a single week.
He therefore went for a walk alone.
The sun shone down through the half-green grape trellises, so that one large round golden orb after another appeared over the corridor, like the Olympic rings. A squirrel ran over from the pine trees in the field to one side, stood beneath one of the grapevines, and saw that the mayor had an amused gleam in his eye. This squirrel was one of many that Mingliang had told his worker to bring down from the mountains. In all there were several hundred of them, and they frequently appeared in trees and on the roadside. The previous year Mingliang had been strolling through the courtyard when he happened to remark that it would be nice if this garden had some squirrels, and soon enough there were squirrels
everywhere. Similarly, one night the previous summer he had been walking through the courtyard and it occurred to him that he didn’t hear any crickets, and he asked why there were no crickets. Upon hearing his question, the government promptly sent all of the city’s residents into the mountains to catch hundreds of thousands of crickets and bring them back to the garden. Now, this squirrel ran up to him as though it had some business to attend to. It had a pleading look in its eyes, and when Mingliang walked over to it, it didn’t run away and instead faced him and sat down on the side of the corridor. The benches along the way were made of pine and their red paint smelled like a palace garden, like Beijing’s Palace Garden. However, Beijing’s Palace Garden was as crowded as an anthill, while this city government garden, which was not much smaller, had only Mingliang and this squirrel. Mingliang stood in front of the squirrel. The squirrel quietly chirped at him a few times, whereupon Mingliang squatted down and the squirrel eagerly ran up to him.
Mingliang knew exactly what the squirrel wanted. He glanced over at the field and the forest, and saw that apart from the sunlight and the wind, there was no movement. He thought to himself, “Are there any more squirrels over there? If so, they should come out, because this one is rather lonely.” Then he saw several squirrels in the forest turn around, and their uneasy eyes were like stars in a winter sky. Annoyed by those squirrels that had turned in his direction, he shouted, “I am Mayor Kong and order you to come here. Do you hear me?” Upon hearing his shouts, several dozen gray squirrels ran out of the forest together. The squirrel sitting near the bench saw the group of squirrels approaching and, after wagging its tail at Mingliang, quickly ran to join the others.
Seeing the group of squirrels run away, Mingliang felt a surge of joy. The city government garden was now as quiet as a reflection on the surface of a pool of water, except that there was the sound of the footsteps of the squirrels running through the field and the forest, together with the faint sound of cars in the city and of clouds floating overhead. Standing in that quietness, Mingliang suddenly had an urge to pee on the ground, like a boy. He chuckled, looked around, then stood on one of the benches, as though suspended in midair, and proceeded to unzip his pants and pee onto the ground.
He peed out a city mayor’s piss.
He regretted that earlier that morning someone had already escorted him to the restroom. He wanted his pee to be golden-colored, the way it had been when he was village chief and town mayor, but ever since he became city mayor his doctor made sure that he didn’t have a hint of illness, and even his pee was perfectly clear. He gazed down at this clear pee as it arced through the air and landed in the grass. His pee disturbed only a cricket, which came out and sat in the sun on leaves of grass, shaking the water off its wings.
Mingliang looked at that old cricket. He suddenly pouted and, like an overgrown child, said, “Tell the others to come out.” The cricket hopped down from the blade of grass. “Tell all of the bugs and all of the sparrows to come out …” Mingliang shouted again. “Spring has arrived, so all of you should show yourselves!
“… I am Mayor Kong, and all of you should show yourselves!
“… I am Mayor Kong, and all of you should show yourselves!”
Quickly, from behind a rockery in a corner of the corridor, in the middle of a cluster of bamboo plants, he entered the main room of his five-suite courtyard, where several dozen secretaries, gardeners, electricians, plumbers, security guards, and other workers suddenly stood up. Everyone stared in alarm at Mingliang, who was simply standing, and no one could understand what was happening. The workers weren’t sure whether they should rush toward him or wait until they had figured out what he was doing before deciding whether they should go or not. Therefore, they remained frozen in their original positions, with a look of terror on their faces. By this point the sun had almost reached its apex and was radiating bright yellow light. The warmth of the fifth lunar month was like the beginning of summer, and the walls of the surrounding buildings were lazily lounging about, as though they were a group of men squatting in the sun. Only after they heard the mayor shouting angrily did they express any surprise or excitement. Some magpies flew over, alighting on the tree branches and chirping excitedly. In no time, the garden’s sparrows had also returned and landed on the grass and the tree branches, chirping up a storm. The squirrels also came running back from where they had been hiding in the depths of the forest and were scurrying up and down the trees in front of Mingliang, their fluffy tails even wider than their bodies. The crickets were also summoned back by the mayor’s fury and the warmth of the sun, and thousands upon thousands of them were standing or lying down on individual blades of grass. Some of them extended their wings and began to chirp, whereupon hundreds or even thousands of crickets began to chirp in unison. The entire city government building courtyard was full of the happy chirping of crickets and singing of sparrows. Mingliang couldn’t see the grasshoppers, but their singing was interwoven with the chirping of the crickets, as though they were sopranos leading a chorus.
Butterflies also playfully flew around on that noisy spring day.
Those secretaries and other workers all retreated. Kong Mingliang now stood on a stone in the middle of the garden and was moved by what he saw around him. He had a smile on his face, but tears kept running down his cheeks. Explosion was his. The entire world was his. Even the insects and sparrows listened to him. With a smile, he swallowed his tears, then repeatedly gestured for the secretaries, security guards, and workers to retreat even farther to where he wouldn’t be able to see them, and regardless of what he might say, they shouldn’t come back out again. Next, he hopped down from that stone, looked at the sparrows and insects that were flying around him, then sat in the grass like a child and watched the large black crickets crawling over his feet and legs. He then watched a pair of green grasshoppers singing together as they sat on the chrysanthemum blossoms in front of him, together with a pair of orioles that sang as they flew around. The scent of grass and flowers flowed into his nostrils and through his body like a warm stream, making him feel more relaxed and at ease than he had ever felt before. He knew that not only was this two-thousand-mu municipal garden all his, the city government building and all of Explosion also belonged to him. “I’m the mayor, don’t you know?” he quietly asked the black cricket sitting on the end of his shoe. “Explosion will soon be redesignated as a provincial-level metropolis, don’t you know?” As he asked this, he saw that the crickets and grasshoppers sitting on the blades of grass, together with the magpies perched in the trees and along the roof of the corridor, all suddenly grew quiet and stared at him with a contented expression. He then very gently and very slowly shook his foot, until the crickets and grasshoppers perched on his shoes and legs got off. Then he stood up, straightened his clothes, cleared his throat, and said to all of the insects assembled before him,
“You should retire. I want some peace and quiet.”
He then shouted to the sparrows, magpies, and gray orioles,
“You should leave. I want some peace and quiet.”
He then shouted at the squirrel in front of him, as well as at the hedgehog and the badger that had run into the garden from somewhere, and said, “Get out of my way. I want to try to establish a construction headquarters here for building the subway and the airport. I want to personally oversee the process of constructing the subway and airport in less than a week. Within ten days, the largest airplanes in the world will be taking off from and landing in the new Explosion airport. I will arrange for national cadres to take the first flight into Explosion, and then take the subway from the airport directly to the hotels that I will construct for them.” The mayor shouted to the sky and the earth, “All animals, birds, and insects should leave now. This entire courtyard is going to be demolished!” As he was shouting, the rest of the garden fell silent, reverting back to its original state. A large flock of sparrows and magpies flew away, leaving behind only a handful standing around. It was unclea
r where the squirrels, crickets, and grasshoppers had gone, as they left behind only a soft humming noise. A silence covered the land. An emptiness also covered the land. There was no one else in the garden other than Mingliang. The sun, which was now directly overhead, had gone from yellow to fiery red. Mingliang’s forehead and back were covered in sweat, which made him feel even warmer and cozier, as though his chilled body was gradually being immersed in warm water.
From this empty garden, Mingliang glanced at the quiet buildings around him, then began walking toward the pond in the distance. About three hundred meters from the red corridor, beyond the man-made garden, there was a pond and an uncultivated field. The pond was several dozen mu in size and was about three feet deep. The reeds were almost half as tall as a person, and there were also waterbirds, fish, and snakes. Even though he lived there, this was the first time Mingliang had come out here. At that point the workers were in the process of planting some grass around the pond, but when Mingliang said to leave, they left the pond the way it was. There was also a wilderness area, but Mingliang wanted to build a headquarters for his airport and subway construction projects, so that a building could arise from the embankment like a flock of birds or locusts suddenly taking flight. The building would be like one he had seen in Beijing, which looked like an oversize goose egg. He had already decided how the building would be furnished, so that it would resemble the ministry office building he had seen in Beijing. Inside, the walls would be covered in milky white wallpaper, which would emit a jade-like glow. Having already planned this out in his imagination, Mingliang picked an empty area next to the pond and then stood there. Facing the sun, he looked through the pond reeds, and after he had decided on the proposed location for his building, he slowly closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said to himself,