by Yan Lianke
I replied, “Mother, he was the one who committed grave mistakes. First, when he found himself in the grip of a nicotine craving, he had the gall to rip a page out of Chairman Mao’s Quotations and use it to roll a cigarette. Second, when his grandson took a shit, my father-in-law couldn’t find any paper, so he ripped another page out of Chairman Mao’s Quotations and used it to wipe his grandson’s butt … What is Chairman Mao’s Quotations? It is equivalent to an imperial decree, and can you imagine anyone in the past ever daring to disrespect an imperial decree? Who would have dared refuse to kneel down in front of such a decree? Anyone who didn’t do so would be beheaded. Meanwhile, although it’s true that contemporary society is now democratic, and there is no need for us to actually kowtow to Chairman Mao’s words the way one would have done to an imperial decree in the past, does that mean that you’re free to rip out pages from Chairman Mao’s Quotations and smoke them or use them to wipe your grandson’s butt?”
I added, “Coincidentally, the page he ripped out merely contained Mao’s saying Revolution is not a dinner party—because otherwise he would surely have gone insane, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he could have been executed.”
Unconvinced, my mother shuffled her tiny feet forward and took two bowls of rice to her grandson and granddaughter. From that point on, my mother resolved to shoulder all the duties and responsibilities involved in looking after a revolutionary family. Whenever Honghua woke up crying in the middle of the night, my mother would cradle her to her chest and rock her back and forth, and when she saw me emerge bleary-eyed from the side room (by that point I had started sleeping alone there) and proceed toward the east-wing room, she would say, “You should go back to sleep, because tomorrow you have work to do on behalf of the village. If you’re going to be a cadre, then you must be a good one.”
In this sham world, my mother was the greatest and holiest individual I knew. I have no idea how she managed to get Honghua to stop crying in the middle of the night, or how she managed to get Hongsheng to stop grinding his teeth and talking in his sleep. Following her arrival the house was always spick-and-span, and the table, adorned by its portrait of Mao and copies of Chairman Mao’s Quotations—together with the scroll of Mao’s quotations hanging on the wall—was always gleaming. The tatami mats were always rolled up and placed neatly behind the door, and when no one was using the stools, they would always be put away in a corner of the room. When Hongsheng—who at that point was in first grade—got home from school, he would throw his book bag down on the floor of the courtyard or his room, but in no time at all it would magically be hanging from its wall hook where it belonged.
In this way, my mother permitted me to devote myself to the great work of pursuing revolution and promoting production. During the slow winter months, I used cement to rebuild the Cheng Brothers memorial arch, then painted it red and colored the edges. In large, Song-style characters, I wrote, LONG LIVE THE GREAT LEADER CHAIRMAN MAO! on the left-hand side; LONG LIVE THE GREAT CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY! on the right-hand side; and NEW DIVINE LAND horizontally across the top. On the wall of each house in Chenggang I mounted a white board I had made using white lime mixed with fine hair, and then painted one side of each board red and used yellow paint to write, THE CORE FORCE LEADING OUR CAUSE IS THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY, AND THE THEORETICAL BASIS GUIDING OUR THOUGHT IS MARXISM-LENINISM. I sent someone to chop down several willow trees from the banks of Thirteen Li River and sold the wood to raise money for some large Chairman Mao posters and accompanying banners with LONG LIVE THE GREAT LEADER CHAIRMAN MAO! on the left side and LONG LIVE THE GREAT CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY! on the right. We hung these posters and couplets in everyone’s homes, always on the wall across from the main room. At the front of every production team’s work field, we erected a wooden sign that was one square meter in size, and on the side facing the direction where the sun came up in the east, we wrote the popular Three Loyalties slogan: LOYALTY TO CHAIRMAN MAO, LOYALTY TO MAO ZEDONG THOUGHT, AND LOYALTY TO THE GREAT CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. I deployed Party members, Communist Youth League members, youth, and demobilized soldiers, and then paired those who were more advanced with those who were more backward—such that the literate could help the illiterate, the young could help those who were middle-aged and elderly, and children could help their parents. Those who were over seventy years old were asked to try to memorize thirty quotations from Chairman Mao’s Quotations; those who were between fifty and seventy years old were asked to memorize fifty; those who were between thirty and fifty years old were asked to memorize eighty; and those who were between sixteen and thirty years old were asked to memorize at least a hundred. In the name of the revolutionary committee, I notified Chenggang’s schools that when elementary school students were being evaluated, it didn’t matter if their test scores were low, since everyone could be promoted to the next grade as long as they could recite at least fifty of Chairman Mao’s quotations. When elementary school students were being considered for promotion to middle school, in addition to being able to recite fifty of Chairman Mao’s quotations, they also had to be able to recite his Three Classic Essays (namely, “Serve the People,” “In Memory of Norman Bethune,” and “The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains”).
I spent the entire winter racking my brain in an attempt to establish a fiery-red Three Unifications in Chenggang (which is to say, unifying the entranceway, unifying the household, and unifying the fields) and a process of “using a pairing method, so the entire village, young and old, could learn to recite Mao’s selected works.” I selected the villagers who had memorized more than their requisite number of Mao quotations, and awarded them work points based on how many quotations they could recite (offering them ten points for each extra quote). As for those who couldn’t recite the requisite number of quotations, I made them forfeit work points (deducting twenty points for every quotation by which they missed their assigned target). If anyone was inclined to resist my orders, I would put them in a dunce cap and parade them through the streets (a total of thirty-nine villagers received this punishment). This system of awards and punishments made it such that all the villagers—men and women, young and old, excluding only those who were ill or insane—found themselves in a red-hot environment. As a result, everyone began frantically jumping around like fish in a pot of boiling water, though in the end no one was able to escape. At that point I came to deeply appreciate a certain truth, which is that one’s environment determines everything. Or, as the saying goes, he who stays near the inkwell will inevitably get stained black. You may be a revolutionary in Yan’an, but who can prove that you weren’t a counterrevolutionary agent when you were in enemy-controlled territories? I hoped to create a Red Revolutionary Base—which would be the first in the entire county. I hoped Chenggang could become a new revolutionary experimental plot. As soon as winter arrived, my efforts would yield results, and the revolution would burn in Chenggang’s bitter cold. The walls of the streets and alleyways were covered in revolutionary slogans, and all the elm trees, pagoda trees, locust trees, paulownia trees, chinaberry trees, and toon trees throughout the village were full of revolutionary apples and revolutionary pears (which is to say, thin plastic sheets had been hung from the tree branches and painted with images of pears, apples, persimmons, peaches, apricots, and other fruit, and adorned with Chairman Mao’s quotations).
The sky was full of red banners, the streets were filled with red scent, and the ground was covered with red blossoms. There were red seas and red lakes, red mountains and red fields, red thoughts and red hearts, red mouths and red words. When one person met another, he would first declare, “Fight selfishness and criticize revisionism—Have you eaten yet?” The other person would respond, “Economize in carrying out the revolution—Yes, I’ve eaten.” The first person would say, “We must overcome selfishness and foster public spirit—What did you have?” The second person would answer, “There can be no construction without destruction—I had the same as alwa
ys, sweet-potato soup.” When someone wanted to go into someone else’s home to borrow something, he would enter and say something like, “Serve the People—Auntie, let me borrow your family’s basket.” The other person would respond, “We need to promote the spirit of Norman Bethune—Go ahead. However, it’s brand new, so be sure to take good care of it.” The first person would say, “Quickly and economically establish socialism—I know. Thank you!”
If you had had a chance to go to the Chenggang production team during that period, you would understand what the “new era’s red revolutionary base” was and who had a “sharp-eyed and clearheaded fighting spirit.” On the day that it was announced that I would serve as the head of the village’s revolutionary committee, forty-five-year-old Mayor Wang called me over to a corner of the conference room after the meeting and asked, “How old are you? Twenty-something?” I replied, “I was demobilized last year, and am now twenty-seven.” Mayor Wang said, “Aijun, you are very awakened and are truly revolutionary material, but let me tell you two things. First, the revolution mustn’t destroy Cheng Temple. After all, following Liberation, Beijing didn’t crush even a single blade of twitch-grass on the wall of the Imperial Palace, and if you destroy Cheng Temple, you will shatter the hearts of all of the Cheng Brothers’ descendants. If you lose the People’s hearts, you won’t receive any help from them. Second, you mustn’t forget that in order to pursue revolution, you must promote production, because the peasants place the highest value on basic sustenance.”
I said, “Don’t worry, Mayor Wang, I understand that we must strive to preserve all facets of our revolutionary cultural heritage. I know that it is only through managing the revolution that we can promote production. Revolution is the premise, and production is the result. Revolution is the condition, and production is the objective.” As I was saying this, Mayor Wang stared at me in surprise, then he patted my shoulder and said, “In that case, you should pursue revolution. The committee has faith in you.” (I didn’t realize that, in saying this, he inadvertently revealed his secret plot to overthrow socialism. Later, however, it was my wisdom that forced him to reveal himself.)
I knew that Mayor Wang didn’t necessarily trust me (after all, he was closely associated with the former mayor, Cheng Tianmin), but he would be left helpless after I defeated him. Hongmei and I wrote a report titled, “An Experiential Document Detailing Chenggang’s Efforts to Learn from Chairman Mao,” discussing the Three Unifications and One Helping One movements that I had created in Chenggang. I mailed copies of the report to the county committee and the county government, as well as to the Jiudu Daily and the Henan Daily. To my surprise, before the county had a chance to respond, the Jiudu Daily and the Henan Daily both published the report on the same warm spring day, and moreover they both added an editor’s note that said, “Chenggang’s experience is a model of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, from which the entire district and the entire province can learn.” In this way, Chenggang became a revolutionary experimental plot from which the entire county could learn.
In the third month of that year, the county government designated the Chenggang production team as a “Red Light Pagoda Brigade” (taking inspiration from the Yan’an pagoda), while I was given the title “vanguard of the peasant revolution.” A red silk banner with these titles inscribed in yellow characters was mounted in front of the production team’s meeting hall. This was proof of our revolution’s first great success.
2. Under Bales of Straw
My revolutionary spirit was in unresolvable conflict with my desire for Hongmei’s body. Every day, Hongmei would appear before me, and because she was beaming with feminine enthusiasm and enjoyed a public role, she was appointed to serve as the production team’s deputy branch secretary. Delighted by her new role, she became even more beautiful and enchanting, appearing as heroic as a magnificent spear made from cherry-tree wood. She certainly wasn’t lacking in feminine beauty or revolutionary experience. On many occasions, we had an unspoken understanding, and we coordinated well. Before every meeting we attended, we would first go to the conference room and, in the time it takes to finish a bowl of rice, we would silently kiss and caress each other. As soon as we heard footsteps approaching, I would immediately return to the dilapidated speaker’s podium (which was positioned on a chair in front of a desk made of willow wood), and Hongmei would begin straightening up the benches. Once the meeting concluded, we needed to wait until there was no one else around to resume that sort of soul-lifting activity, but the production team leader Cheng Qinglin and the militia camp leader Ren Xianzhu always insisted on speaking to us as they accompanied me all the way back to my house. (Class sentiment, marital love.) They kindly and warmly urged Hongmei, “You should feel free to return home, since Tao’er is waiting for you.” Hongmei looked at me helplessly, and I told her, “You should go, and be careful on your way home.” She therefore had no choice but to leave. These fellow revolutionaries were like an unshakable shadow, and they instantly intruded on the love between me and Hongmei. Once, at the conclusion of a meeting, I said, “Hongmei, after everyone else leaves, I want you to stay behind so that we can discuss an important matter.” But after everyone had left, when Hongmei and I had just unbuttoned our clothes, and I had just laid her down on the top of three benches we had placed together, we once again heard footsteps in the courtyard and immediately found ourselves covered in cold sweat.
I walked out of the conference room and asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Branch Secretary. It’s me,” a core militiaman named Little Min announced, as he patrolled back and forth in front of the conference-room window.
I said, “What are you doing?”
The militiaman replied, “Our battalion commander told me to stand guard here. He said that the situation was complicated, and that last month a cadre from the Xiaotour production team was stabbed on his way home from a meeting. The battalion commander told me that I should wait for you and Deputy Branch Secretary Xia to finish your examination, and then escort you home.”
Militia battalion commander, fellow soldier, my brother—I wish I could kick you in the groin and slap you in the face! When I returned to the conference room, Hongmei was still buttoning up her clothing and straightening her hair, and her face was covered in cold sweat. That night, we stood in the conference room against a wall positioned between the door and the window and—amidst the sound of the militiaman’s footsteps—silently held our breath as we did that thing. After we finished, however, neither of us felt as though our soul was taking flight or our heart was melting. Instead, we both felt like someone who has no choice but to bathe in a pool of mud, and who afterward feels even dirtier than before and longs to find a clear spring in order to wash off the mud. We sat face-to-face on a pair of stools, holding hands and listening to the rhythmic, dusty footsteps of the core militiaman waiting outside.
Hongmei said, “If we continue like this, eventually we’ll be discovered, which would definitely bury our revolutionary future.”
I said, “Then what do you recommend?”
She said, “Let’s resolve not to see each other like this anymore.”
I said, “That won’t do. That won’t do at all! If we did that, you’d drive me as crazy as Cheng Tianqing.” I added, “Tomorrow, I’ll take you on my bike to that tomb eighteen li away.”
The next day, I took the production team’s only bicycle and arrived half an hour early to wait for Hongmei at our special place outside the village. When we arrived at the tomb, however, we found that it already had a new coffin, and the entrance had been blocked off with bricks and stones. Instead, we went to an isolated field to do that thing. We were not only a pair of great revolutionaries but also a pair of abject adulterers. We were not only a pair of enlightened individuals but also a pair of unwitting decadents. If you calculate carefully, in the days following the success of the Chenggang revolution—as marked by Guizhi’s death and Cheng Tianqing’s insanity—countless nearby sit
es were marked by our joy and our grief, by our nobility and our despicability, by our excitement and our shame, including places as varied as riverbanks, forests, fields, the road to the meeting hall, and the gully for inspecting production. Our revolutionary brilliance shone down on Chenggang’s fields like a giant gaze, and our abject semen flowed through Chenggang’s brooks and streams. Finally, the day arrived when the county’s third-level grassroots cadre convened a revolutionary meeting of our production team to discuss the Three Unifications and the One Helping One campaigns. The county committee’s organizational bureau director came to speak with me, and I was recruited to serve on the town’s Party committee (though without being released from my own production responsibilities). I was delighted. I went to see Mayor Wang and all the cadres and Party leaders who had come to observe us, and escorted them back to the five trucks parked at the front of the village. After the leaders had departed, I found myself unable to contain my excitement over my new success—and my hot magma couldn’t help but erupt. I found myself unable to contain the revolutionary ardor that was searing my flesh.
I summoned Hongmei to the wheat field belonging to the village’s ninth production team. This field was located a half li from the village, and it was surrounded on three sides by other wheat fields and on the fourth side by a hill that was part of the Balou mountain range. We pretended we were going to inspect the Three Loyalties signs at the front of each production team’s field and note the wheat’s growth and the irrigation conditions, but instead we went to the side of the field. Except for someone’s lamb grazing in the distance, no one was around. When we arrived, I stopped and stared at Hongmei. She was wearing a blouse she had selected for the purpose of receiving the cadres who had come to observe the village, and I hungrily undressed her with my gaze.