by Yan Lianke
Aboard the ship, there was just Mingliang, Mingyao, and Cheng Qing. It was only then that Mingyao removed his snow-white naval jacket and tossed it onto the US coast on the sand table. He then poured his brother and Cheng Qing a glass of water, which he placed on a white plastic table next to the sand table. Then he pulled over three white chairs and placed them around the table and told his brother apologetically,
“If you had come this morning, you would have been able to see us defeat the Japanese fleet and force it to surrender.”
He announced solemnly to Cheng Qing, “The day after tomorrow a fleet of submarines will surround the US mother ship, and it is there that our fate will be decided.” Then, turning toward the large ship and small warships under the setting sun, Mingyao looked anxious, because the fate of any future battles remained uncertain. Owing particularly to the light of the setting sun, his anxious expression appeared to carry a trace of sickness or even death—as though someone, following a major illness, had left the sickbed before fully recovering. It appeared as though his resolution and his confidence had completely disappeared, and instead now he simply looked exhausted.
“You’ve lost weight,” Cheng Qing said, looking him over.
“The final battle is upon us, and I can never sleep.” Mingyao smiled, then handed the two glasses of water to Cheng Qing and Mingliang. “I hear that Explosion’s designation as a provincial-level metropolis will soon be approved?”
Mingliang nodded.
“After it is approved, you will become a ministry-level cadre,” Mingyao said. “This will place you higher than provincial governors and party committee secretaries.”
An expression of delight flashed over Mingliang’s face as he looked at his brother, then gazed silently out at the sea and the naval fleet. In the distance they could hear the sound of fighting and explosions. Several dozen kilometers away, on the far side of an island, fire and smoke were visible.
At this point, Mingyao turned toward Mingliang.
“Do you plan to have Explosion become a nation?”
With a look of surprise, Mingliang stared silently at Mingyao.
“Do you think that one day you’ll go to Beijing and assert control over this entire nation?”
As Mingyao asked this, he gazed intently at his brother.
Mingliang continued to stare in shock. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Mingyao laughed. He then looked away, and back at the sea and his fleet. “Have you really not considered it?”
When he asked this, his voice seemed to drift over from a far distance, as if in a dream.
Mingliang bit his lip, and in his eyes there was a gleam that demanded silence. The two brothers stared at each other for a moment, then they both smiled and the tension between them faded. Mingyao looked over at Cheng Qing and saw that she had turned pale. There was a sheen of terror-induced sweat on her face, so he smiled at her and said,
“You’ll also be promoted. Do you want to be deputy city mayor or deputy provincial governor?”
“Ask your brother.” Cheng Qing shifted her gaze from Mingyao back to Mingliang. “Only he can remember all of those who have toiled without recognition.”
At this point, a pre-dusk silence descended over the field ocean, like the setting sun slipping beneath the ocean horizon. Under the trembling light of the setting sun, that green of the sea mixed with the red of the evening sky. The ocean generated a feeling of agoraphobia, as though that fear were trying to climb onto the ship, onto the deck, and onto their three faces. They therefore stood on deck on the ship’s prow gazing at one another, then gazed out into the distance, where they could see an array of large and small ships, like birds soaring overhead. There were also all of those seamen aboard the ships, waiting for the order to attack. No one said a word; they all let the silence—together with the sound of explosions and fires that intermittently broke that silence—waft over from afar. Finally, as the setting sun was about to sink below the horizon and was lighting up the distant grass in a brilliant flame, Mingliang coughed, then turned to his brother.
“Mingyao, I need your help.
“… There is no one else who can help with this.
“… In less than a week, I need to build an airport that not only would be the largest in Asia, but must be one of the two largest in the world. In addition, I have to build a hundred-kilometer subway line. If I don’t, then Explosion can abandon all hope of becoming redesignated as a megapolis, like Beijing, Shanghai, New York, and Tokyo.”
As Mingliang was saying this, his gaze remained fixed on his brother’s face. He was watching to see if Mingyao would refuse him, or would come up with an excuse to pass him on to someone else. Mingliang had already prepared a number of explanations for why he needed to complete these projects in under a week. All Mingyao needed to do was ask, and Mingliang would immediately recite them until Mingyao was left with no possible reason to refuse or to shirk this request.
But Mingliang had predicted incorrectly. Mingyao did not appear to have the slightest intention of shirking the request. He listened intently to what Mingliang had to say and gazed at his brother’s pleading expression, and when Mingliang was finished Mingyao glanced out at the naval exercises that were just concluding, then in a soft and skeptical voice said,
“You are my brother, so tell me the truth. Is it really possible that you have not considered that, after Explosion has been redesignated as a provincial-level metropolis it might then be redesignated as a sovereign nation?”
Mingyao laughed softly and added,
“Not only can I, in a week, build Explosion the world’s largest airport and a one-hundred- or two-hundred-kilometer subway line, I can even construct several hundred buildings, each of which would be fifty to eighty stories tall.”
As the sun was setting, Mingyao looked out to sea, at the fleet of ships that were systematically coming to shore. Finally, he presented his conditions:
“If you want me to build all of this, then you need to find me five thousand severed legs and ten thousand severed fingers.
“… Without severing that many legs and without cutting off that many fingers, and without thousands of people dying, do you think these construction projects can be completed?
“… If we are going to build these projects, my forces will be utterly exhausted and I will lose much of my fighting power. Mayor Kong, I don’t ask for anything else—I just ask that you celebrate Explosion’s redesignation as a provincial-level metropolis by declaring a three-day holiday—during which time you will give all of the city’s residents three days off. During those three days, you should lend me your city’s residents. I need them for only three days, and afterward I will return every single one of them to you.”
There was a long silence, as the sky began to darken. As the sun was slipping under the horizon, Mingliang and Mingyao, standing on the deck of the ship, made a toast using glasses of water in place of wine. The sun disappeared under the horizon, as though as a direct result of their toast.
3. MEGALOPOLIS (2)
The super airport that was constructed on the outskirts of Explosion was virtually complete after only three days and two nights. Without anyone realizing it, in the mountains several dozen kilometers outside the city there appeared a runway long enough to accommodate the world’s largest airplanes. People saw that there were reed and bamboo mats in a large clearing, and tall walls made of canvas completely surrounded several mountains. There were also trucks full of soldiers driving into and out of that enclosed section. Everyone assumed that this was a mining operation or a military exercise, and no one surmised that Mingyao was taking his troops to build an airport.
The airport was completed in just a few days.
The mountainside was full of grass and thorns, and all the soldiers needed to do was toss in several dozen bloody fingers and then stomp on them, trampling the grass and thorns until the fingers completely disappeared. First, they followed the construction plans and used white
lime to draw the outlines of the projected runway along the mountainside, then they used soldiers to surround a hill rising up out of the plain. The soldiers each had a rifle loaded with bullets, and after they fired at the hill, the hundreds of bloody fingers, toes, and severed legs buried under that hill made it collapse, as though it were a balloon that had been filled with air. Meanwhile, the runway itself remained perfectly flat. They appointed the most experienced soldiers to go up to the trees on the mountainside and along the edge of the cliff, and bury some more bloody fingers—the precise number being dependent on the size of the tree. Then they would lift their bayonets, aim them at the trees, and shout, “Kill, Kill!” Upon hearing this command, they would thrust forward with their bayonets, and the trees’ leaves would fall to the ground. When the sand and earth began to assume the form of a runway, Mingyao took the army’s battalions and regiments, and combined them to form an enormous phalanx. The soldiers were all wearing leather shoes and, while singing a bright military song, they proceeded to trample the bloody ribs and leg bones that littered the ground. They marched with forceful steps, the sound of their feet resonating between the mountain and the sky. Along the runway there was a one-foot-five-inch-thick strip of concrete reinforced with steel mesh, and the soldiers ended up covered from head to toe in blood.
The division’s military strength lay in loading, aiming, and firing at a mountain blanketed in blood-covered finger and toe bones, after which several new runways promptly appeared on the hillside. Then the soldiers surrounded the biggest hill and placed some antiaircraft guns, machine guns, and heavy-duty cannons around it, then piled up the bones from another twenty-five hundred bloody arms and legs, and just as the troops were about to open fire, the hillside transformed into a gully creating an enormous plain in the middle of the mountain ridge. Mingyao then summoned all of the troops and had them hold hands and surround the several-hundred-mu plain, and once the earth stopped shaking, they added three to five thousand bloody bones, so that blood was flowing in every direction, making it look like a lake at sunset. Then the soldiers lifted and aimed their rifles and pulled the triggers, whereupon the foundation for the airport’s terminal gradually appeared in that plain, amid the sound of the earth splitting open. The troops then shifted to a different formation to surround the foundation that was rising out of the earth, then they brought over some highly sophisticated and never-before-seen weapon, then they proceeded to remove the layers upon layers covering the weapon, and each time they revealed part of the weapon they would make the weapon bleed a bit, and as they did this the walls around the airport waiting area increased by the height of an entire floor. By the time the weapon was uncovered, blood was flowing, covering the entire earth. The dark muzzle of the gun repeatedly shot at the airport construction site and all of the accompanying facilities, and within an hour the airport’s infrastructure was completed.
Because it is not feasible to build tall structures at an airport, the tallest buildings were only five or six stories. The only exception was the control tower, which was completed in an hour and a half after being shot at by rifles—but even that was only eight stories. The airport’s basic structure was built between noon, when the troops moved in, and the following evening. What was slower and required more attention, meanwhile, was the airport’s furnishings, and the installation and testing of its equipment. For this, the troops needed to use their utmost care and diligence. Throughout the entire construction of the airport’s foundation, Mingyao did not make a single appearance at the site. Instead, he stayed with his staff in a tent on the top of a mountain, consulting blueprints and directing the first and second regiments on what to do, and the third regiment on how to slowly uncover the precision weaponry. He directed them where they should leave bloody bones, and how many they should use, and instructed them not to immediately take the weapons to the construction site and station themselves there like fools.
But after the basic construction was completed, Mingyao walked around the construction site, then immediately directed the members of this army unit to polish their weapons directly in front of the control tower, then run to the middle of the runway. He ordered them to sit there studying and reading that day’s issues of National Daily and National Modern Technology News. He also told a few military engineers to meet in the airport’s instrumentation building to discuss some technical details and review some reports from the United States, Japan, Germany, and England. After the army had completely demilitarized from its former status of war-readiness, as the men were reassembling the various weapons that they had dismantled and cleaned, they simultaneously assembled the airport’s instruments and machinery. After all of the weapons were put away and covered up with clothing, by the time they finished using the first five thousand bloody fingers and ten thousand severed toes, the airport’s furnishings were already completed and ready for use. As the sound of reading, studying, and singing resonated from the terminal to the tarmac, and on to the fields and mountains beyond, all of the airport’s electronic equipment was assembled and installed.
When they needed to paint the inside of the airport, Mingyao told his troops to take the multicolored—but predominantly red—flags that they normally used for celebrations and wave them in the air, whereupon all of the different-colored paints that they needed would suddenly appear.
When they needed to build an expressway linking the airport to the city center and to its environs, Mingyao ordered several tanks to proceed side by side from the airport to the city, sprinkling blood on the ground behind them, and an expressway materialized like a ribbon fluttering in the wind.
In five days’ time, both the airport and the subway were completed. Once Explosion had the world’s largest airport and a subway line extending in all directions, and once it had more than a hundred buildings, each of which was several stories tall, there would be no reason why Explosion should not be considered one of China’s major metropolises. Overnight, Explosion would become one of China’s megalopolises.
CHAPTER 18
Great Geographic Transformation (2)
1. PRELUDE TO TRANSFORMATION
Zhu Ying had never been so busy. It was as if she had spent her entire life preparing for this moment. She had not returned home for three days in a row, being unable to leave her work at the women’s vocational school. The school was located in the urban fringes to the west of the city, hidden in a willow and poplar grove and removed from both the countryside and the hustle and bustle of the city proper. But in the courtyard hidden in the willow and poplar grove, the masson pines and spire cypresses in front of every building were full of fiery red roses and phoenix flowers all year round, as though they were covered in rosy clouds. But if you looked from the distant road or fields, in addition to willow branches, poplar leaves, and a surrounding wall that was only intermittently visible, there were also security guards whom Mingyao had sent there to guard the entranceway, together with a sign that read EXPLOSION VOCATIONAL SCHOOL. But no one knew what the students were actually studying there, who was teaching them, or even what courses they were taking. They were all girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty, with pure and blank minds and bodies, like sheets of blank paper. But after they stayed at the school for three to five months—or, in some cases, for six to twelve months—their minds and bodies were no longer blank, and in their pockets they had deposit books and gold or silver bank cards, and their heads were full of countless things, as they became the most desirable nannies in the entire city.
The school had already graduated thirty classes of nannies, or a total of 1,568 students. They were taken individually by a couple of older girls named Little Qin and Ah Xia to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and countless seaside resort cities. As in planting beans or gourds, the girls were assigned to various business and were selected by different households. Meanwhile, Ah Xia and Little Qin, working as manager and general manager of their company, made countless phone calls every day, kept a registry of the girls’ clients, and cu
rsed the girls who had not succeeded in finding men to corrupt. Noting the occupation, position, income, and social connection of the girls’ clients, they compiled a detailed inventory, and when it was complete they would send it back to Zhu Ying.
The following month, thousands of economists, urban reconstruction experts, and important members of the national development committee arrived in Beijing to discuss and vote on whether Explosion should be redesignated as a provincial-level megalopolis. Kong Mingliang and all his cadres from throughout the city were staying in Beijing hotels, as if his entire city government had relocated to the capital. They worked day and night to try to build roads and bridges to facilitate Explosion’s transformation.
For three days and three nights, Zhu Ying had not eaten a bite of food or gotten a wink of sleep. Instead, she locked herself in her three-room office in the women’s vocational school, plotting how to entrap those men having relationships with their nannies—calculating which of them were in Beijing and which of them were elsewhere, which of the men were important figures in government agencies or public companies, and which of them were the secretaries or drivers of political leaders. She researched the ancestry, background, position, and experience of the men, parents, and children who were being waited on by these young nannies—basically trying to find anything that could be potentially usable. Zhu Ying reorganized all of their names, telephone numbers, and photographs, placing the useful ones on the table and pushing the less useful ones to the side. From the useful pile in the center of the table, Zhu Ying drew one or two flowers below the name of each of the girls, depending on the occupation and status of the men that girl had slept with. If one of the men was either a department or a subministry director, or was the parent or in-law of the director of a government ministry, Zhu Ying would draw four or five flowers beneath the maid’s name. Finally, she reorganized the nannies’ names based on how many flowers she had assigned them, then copied them into a separate registration form.