Out of the Gobi

by Weijian Shan

  Li Rongtian doubted we would secure the leadership’s support. To my disappointment, Li seemed to have second thoughts overnight, and when I visited him after dinner the next day he was no longer enthusiastic about the project.

  He had, however, drawn some designs on a piece of paper. He said the odds were low that leadership would buy into it, because they did not like anyone with ideas that disrupted the status quo. And, of course, there were challenges. For example: What if it turned out not to be technically feasible? Where would we get the materials? Would the regimental leadership allocate iron, steel, and a diesel engine to Company No. 5, which was, after all, an agricultural company? Li argued that neither the political instructor nor the company commander would be willing to take the risk, no matter what encouraging words they might say about it. Perhaps, he said, it was best for both of us just to accept the facts and resume our primitive backbreaking work.

  I could not steer him away from his skepticism. In fact, I agreed with his analysis about the willingness of the company leadership to get involved. But I argued that if we could demonstrate the technical feasibility of such a project, the leadership might go for it out of self-interest: If this idea worked, they would win praise from regiment headquarters. I just could not give up the appealing prospect of being liberated from the unbearable hardship of making bricks by hand. My own sanity and survival, in some sense, depended on it. Besides, what did we have to lose?

  Li Rongtian held his ground, saying only that he would consider it. I went back to my room crestfallen. After much thought, I decided that I should have a discussion with the political instructor to find out how he would react to such an idea. If I could persuade him to let us try, Li Rongtian would have no reason not to help.

  It was difficult to tell what Instructor Zhang really thought. He tried to appear seriously interested in what I had to report. My dilemma was that I could not tell him just then that this project would require the company to commit some resources. That would turn him off immediately. But I did not want to give him the idea it was easy, either.

  The political instructor did not say anything for a few minutes, as if deep in thought mulling over my proposal. Then he spoke and said he saw no reason to oppose the project. Had I ever seen a machine of this type, he asked me? And how much would it cost?

  I told him that it was going to cost him something. We could not build a machine without component parts. I told him we would need a diesel engine, at least. All other parts had to be cast-iron. It was not going to be a small project. I told him that once the machine was built, it would ensure that we met our production target of 300,000 bricks in two months. In fact, I continued, the machine would be able to produce that quantity in one month. I had heard that a company of the Fourteenth Regiment, near Urat Qianqi, had a machine of this type. I told him that with his permission, I would go there with Li Rongtian to investigate.

  The political instructor said that he would think a bit more and talk with Li Rongtian himself. He then promised to advise us of his decision.

  That evening, I went to bed hopeful of a favorable outcome. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard the howling sound of a sudden sandstorm. It whipped the window violently, making sandpapery scratching sounds as it blew past the panes. Sand and dirt came through cracks in the door and windows, and the room was quickly filled with dust. I found it hard to breathe and covered my mouth with the corner of my quilt. I was glad that I was in bed early so I didn’t have to go to the outhouse in the storm.

  I hadn’t been asleep long before I was startled awake from my dreams by a sound like someone rapidly beating a drum. It came from the roof. I realized it was heavy rain. I pulled the quilt a little tighter around myself. But my thoughts flew to the dried bricks stacked up in the brick field. What would happen to them? I dreaded the thought. I was hoping that the rainstorm would quickly pass. But it lashed the roof and the windows through the night. Knowing that worrying about the bricks in the fields was futile, I resigned myself to sleep.

  The next morning, the rain seemed reluctant to leave. The sky was overcast with thick clouds, but a patch of clear blue on the horizon announced the rain’s retreat. The air, washed clean by the storm, was fresh, mixed with the sweet taste of wild grass. But our bricks . . . I thought. How much of our labor was washed away?

  It would be some time before breakfast, so I went to the brick-making ground to see for myself. The road, soaked with the rain, was drenched and muddy, and so was I by the time I reached my destination. Just as I expected, the rainstorm had wreaked havoc on our handiwork. The bricks that we had left to dry were completely destroyed, reduced to no more than little mounds of shapeless clay. The bricks that were already stacked up fared a little better, but the first couple of layers on the surface were largely gone. I felt chilled to the bone, and a sense of futility overtook me as I gazed out on the quiet field. So much of our sweat and hard labor was gone, and so easily. The damage was not distributed evenly. Some fields, like ours, suffered more than others. Those closer to the shack had pieces of sheets and rags covering the brick stacks. Apparently, the people of the eighth squad fought hard against the storm to protect the bricks, but their efforts were clearly no match to nature.

  I walked to the small shack where the eighth squad was staying. Most of them were still in bed. I could tell what an awful night they had had: Every corner of the hut was piled high with dirty, soaking-wet clothes and shoes plastered with thick mud.

  Those who were up told me how they braved the rainstorm to try to cover the stacks of bricks with their own sheets. They knew they were fighting a hopeless battle. There were too few people trying to cover too many stacks of bricks. Once they exhausted all their sheets, they used their own quilts. No wonder some of them were sharing one quilt.

  When I came back from the brick-making ground, it was time for breakfast. I reported to everyone what I had seen on the brick field. Those whose work suffered slight damage took some pleasure in others’ misfortune. Those who heard of severe damage in their field looked quite miserable. But the gloomy mood soon lifted when the platoon leader came to tell us that we did not have to go to the brick fields today. It would not make sense, as the ground was soaked with water. It would take a few days to dry up. We would have political study sessions instead. This was welcome news, as everyone was longing for a break.

  The rainstorm made me even more determined to investigate the possibility of building some kind of brick-making machine that would alleviate our hard work. I went to Li Rongtian’s place to talk with him about my conversation with the political instructor. Li was now quite negative about the whole thing and suggested that I was creating trouble for both of us. I could not persuade him to see the merit of my proposal with my words alone. I felt that he could not appreciate how badly we needed some alternative means to ease our hard labor. With this in mind, I invited him to come with me again to see our work at the brick field.

  Li was noticeably touched when he saw the miserable remains of the bricks lying battered by the rainstorm. When we came back, he went to the political instructor himself.

  That evening the power generator broke down, which happened with some regularity. The time was spent in darkness, but, as luck would have it, the rainstorm also brought us a surprising delicacy: We had some frog meat. Xiaotong had captured several strings of frogs from near Lake Wuliangsu. It had been a long time since we had had any kind of protein, and the frog meat tasted delicious.

  * * *

  The next morning, Li Rongtian came in before I got up. He had already talked with the political instructor, who had agreed to our proposal to investigate the technical feasibility of a brick-making machine. We decided to travel to Urat Qianqi to visit the “making-bricks-with-machines” company of the Fourteenth Regiment.

  The only mode of travel readily available was a tractor-hauled wagon. I dreaded the ride. It was so uncomfortable that, if we took it, by the time we reached Urat Qianqi, all our bones would be shake
n loose traversing the bumpy road. Li and I decided to go to Xishaliang, a big village where we could catch a bus. Though it meant several hours of walking, it would be preferable to the tractor-hauled wagon.

  The journey was not bad. We were chatting as we walked and were in no hurry. We spotted a few people in the distance by the roadside. As we came closer, I noticed that they were surrounding a cow that was lying on the ground. The cow had a bad wound on its hind leg. It was bleeding, and the peasants did not know what to do to stanch the wound. I took a quick look and decided that it must have been the work of Construction Army Corps soldiers, probably inflicted by a sharp piece of metal. Perhaps this cow had strayed into the Construction Army Corps compound. The local peasants would not do such a thing to a cow.

  I offered to help, and Li Rongtian explained to the peasants that I was a barefoot doctor. I asked someone to collect some dried grass, and when we had a stack of it, I burned it to ashes. The ashes I applied directly to the wound, in layers. At first, the cow’s blood was still oozing out. But the bleeding soon stopped. Newly burned grass ash is the best folk remedy to stanch bleeding and reduce the chance of infection. Since it is created by fire, the ash is germ-free.

  The whole process took about 40 minutes. By the time we were done, the peasants were pleased and grateful. They wanted to get the cow up and walk her back to the village. I suggested that they wait for another hour or so until the wound dried up a bit. They thanked us profusely. Just then, a tractor-hauled wagon passed by. It was their village’s tractor. They were kind enough to stop the vehicle and helped us onto it. Both Li Rongtian and I were amused by its serendipitous appearance: We had taken this road to avoid a tractor-hauler. Yet we eventually ended up on one. Since we spent a lot of time caring for the cow, we were glad to accept a ride.

  After a short but bumpy ride, we reached Sudunlun, where the Fourteenth Regiment was situated. The roads were lined with trees, a rarity in the Gobi. The Fourteenth seemed to be doing much better than we. We saw an auditorium where they would have performances by regiment soldiers. People even seemed better dressed, although they wore the same standard uniforms of the Construction Army Corps as we did. Rongtian and I felt like a pair of country bumpkins riding into town.

  We asked around and found our way to the brick company. As chance would have it, we hitched a short ride on yet another tractor-hauler, this one loaded with coal.

  The brick-making machine was being repaired when we arrived. This gave us a chance to study it and talk with the people, who were friendly and open with their knowledge. We drew some blueprints of the machine and the brick makers described how it functioned and answered all our questions. The object itself was heavy, with large bulky components. As we had expected, the mechanism itself was quite simple. We had not been far off in thinking that it would look like a noodle-maker. We were surprised to learn it was powered by the engine of a tractor, a perfect solution that had somehow never occurred to us.

  This machine could produce 20,000 to 30,000 bricks per day. Looking at the raw bricks stacked high around the machine, we saw immediately they were of high quality. Compared to our bricks fashioned by hand using the ancient method, these were uniform and much more solid, thanks to the heavy and consistent pressure on the machine-extruded mixed clay.

  Then we learned the machine’s cost. It would be about 3,000 yuan, an astronomical figure for us, and that was not counting the cost of the tractor as the power source. Getting hold of a tractor would be a challenge. Our company did not have one, and, in our regiment, they were all kept at the Eleventh Company, which was in charge of agricultural machinery; we would have to borrow a tractor from them. I wondered if our company leadership would be capable of even considering the required investment, although, of course, it was well worth it.

  Meanwhile, I was impressed with the officers of this company. They were warm, modest, and candid with us, without the familiar air of pretentious importance we had become used to with our own leaders. I noted with interest that all the soldiers of the company lived in brick houses, but as leaders of a “brick-making company,” the officers lived in low mud shacks. Rongtian and I had a long conversation with their political instructor, who impressed me as sincere and caring. I could not help but feel respect for the man. It was little wonder that the people we talked to here were happier than we were. Their standard of living was noticeably better. I told Rongtian that I wished we had leaders like this in our regiment. It was a shame that leaders of this type were so rare.

  Then we said goodbye to the political instructor and the others who had helped us out.

  Once alone, we walked around to see more. We visited the Fourteenth Regiment’s shop and were pleasantly surprised to see cookies, milk, and red bean–flavored popsicles there. These were things we had not seen for what seemed like an eternity. We learned that all these goodies were made by the people of the Fourteenth themselves. We bought some, and they tasted excellent by Gobi standards. We concluded that good leadership really made a big difference.

  On our way home, we were lucky to see a horse-drawn wagon driven by a man in his sixties. We offered him a popsicle to give us a ride. The wagon swayed slowly forward, but we were content with not having to walk a long distance. We got off at Xishaliang and ate our last cookies in a deserted, crumbled hut. All the way home we could not stop talking about what we’d seen that day. We both were impressed by the machine and the spirit of the Fourteenth Regiment but discouraged by the cost of our dream machine.

  At dinner back in our barracks, everyone wanted to hear what we had seen at the Fourteenth Regiment. A bleak mood prevailed when they heard the price tag, and HaBai summed up the collective feeling by calling our political instructor “a bowl of fake millet.” “He may give you all the nice words in the dictionary, but he won’t do anything if he has to lift a finger,” HaBai observed.

  * * *

  I kept thinking about how we could present our findings to the political instructor. There was a movie showing at a nearby company that night, but I was distracted and came home before the feature. In the dim light of a kerosene lamp, I jotted down a few thoughts to prepare to negotiate with the political instructor. I felt like I was preparing for an examination that would determine our future, even though the chance of success was slim.

  Cui Xianchao came back before the movie was over, too. He tried to soothe my anxiety over the machine. He said I should not worry about something that I did not have any control over. “You’ve done your best,” he said. “Man proposes and God disposes. Have a good night’s sleep. If the political instructor doesn’t want to do it, just pretend that you never had the idea.”

  I read an article in the Reference News before I went to sleep. It was called “Agricultural Revolution in the United States” and described in some detail the technological level of American agriculture. Relative to our experience as farmers, it might as well have been science fiction. I was wondering why capitalists controlled such advanced technologies, and why it was so difficult for us to mechanize our work. Perhaps it was because we had too many people. If there were not so many people, the leadership might think harder about using some machines.

  I went to sleep, not knowing what tomorrow would bring.

  In the end, we didn’t get the machine.

  * * *

  It was back to hard labor. We continued to make bricks, while the eighth squad was busy rebuilding the kiln. In two months, we had enough sunbaked bricks ready. The kiln was ready to be loaded and fired. The company invited a kiln master to direct us. Some of us were designated as kiln operators, including myself. We worked in shifts of three or four hours each after the fire was started.

  The kiln needed to be loaded first, with about 40,000 unbaked bricks. The goal was to position them inside the kiln for optimal heat flow. Each brick had to be placed with minimal or no contact on its two flat surfaces with another brick. The bricks were stacked on top of each other on their sides. Rows of bricks were staggered horizonta
lly and vertically. If bricks were placed too close to each other, some might not be thoroughly fired and baked. If they were too far apart, 40,000 bricks could not fit into the kiln. It had to be perfect. With the help of the kiln master, we got the hang of it quickly.

  The kiln was loaded from the bottom first, accessed through the stoking tunnel, which we would later use to feed coal into the kiln. As the stacks of bricks rose, that entrance was soon blocked. Then people had to carry the bricks to the top of the kiln by climbing a slope of packed earth we had built. Through the opening on top, we would hand the bricks a few at a time to someone inside the kiln, who would in turn pass the bricks down a line of people until they reached the operator who would place them in the right places.

  The company dispatched a women’s platoon to help us. The surface of a brick was rough, like sandpaper. We used our bare hands to handle the bricks. Most of us did not have work gloves. It would not have mattered anyway because a new pair would have worn out in less than an hour handling these bricks. Unlike working with a shovel, our hands did not form calluses handling bricks. Instead, our skin would simply abrade off. I noticed that even before the loading of the kiln was completed, the lines and wrinkles of our palms and the pads of our fingers were worn clean away. If we had to make a fingerprint, it would have been a smooth surface with no lines.

  When the stacks of bricks rose to the top of the kiln, the bricks in the last layer were placed close to each other to form an inner seal. We would put earth over the top layer of bricks to fully seal the kiln, leaving only a few small holes, some of which served as chimneys and others allowed us to observe the conditions within the kiln once it was going. After the kiln was sealed, it was ready to be fired. We used coal to fuel the kiln. Inner Mongolia was a coal-rich province, although we rarely had enough coal in the wintertime. The coal mines were far away from where we were, so coal had to be shipped in. We used a handcart to bring coal next to the mouth of the kiln inside the entry tunnel. Then we used pieces of wood to start the fire, to which we added coal.