Authors: Yan Lianke
Chief Liu was exhausted, and needed a good night’s rest. Therefore, he slept soundly for a while.
“If you were home, then why didn’t you answer the phone?”
“I’m sorry, Secretary Niu, I was too tired.”
“The governor called, and all he said was that he wanted the district to send a new Party secretary and a new county chief to Shuanghuai within three days.”
Chief Liu’s mind was in a fog. Secretary Niu asked, “Didn’t you send the documentation for purchasing Lenin’s corpse over to Russia?” Chief Liu replied, “How could we not have sent it? For such a major business transaction, how could we not have sent the paperwork? We even sent two copies of the intent-to-purchase statement, together with duplicates of all of the accompanying documentation.” He added, “After all, Russia is far away, and consequently we are not able to discuss everything face-to-face, but rather had to first send an intent-to-purchase statement.”
Secretary Niu roared, “That’s just great.
. . .
You send someone to the capital with an intent-to-purchase statement together with a separate refusal-to-purchase statement, whereupon the provincial leaders explode with fury, becoming so angry that their intestines leak out.”
Chief Liu knew that he was Shuanghuai’s county chief as well as its Party secretary, but at this point he felt as though he had come up to the edge of a cliff and had nowhere to turn. He added, “Then, what do I now?” Secretary Niu said, “I’ll find you somewhere to go.” He added, “The district just established a new imperial tomb museum, and they moved the tombs of all of the emperors, imperial family, and ministers who were buried in Jiudu, so that people could observe and appreciate them. The museum is a first-tier work unit, and you could be the museum’s director.” After Secretary Niu finished, Chief Liu felt as if he still wanted to say something, but Secretary Niu hung up the phone.
Chief Liu was thereby relieved of his position, and as for what kind of appointment he would be given next, Secretary Niu told him to wait to see what plans the provincial authorities might have. If he was going to be demoted, so be it; as far as punishments went, this was not such a big deal. The important thing, however, was that he still wanted to say something, but Secretary Niu avoided him like the plague and hung up the phone without even waiting to hear what he had to say. The sound of the phone hanging up echoed coldly, like a knife chopping through ice. Chief Liu sat dumbfounded on the edge of his bed, and a long time passed before he realized that he was still undressed. He threw the telephone receiver onto the table as if it were a small whisk broom, and then put on his down jacket. Apart from words associated with the ancient tomb museum, such as “corpse” and “coffin,” Chief Liu’s mind was a complete blank.
As he sat on the edge of his bed staring blankly into space, he didn’t feel the slightest sense of sorrow or unhappiness, and instead merely felt as though everything was unreal, as though he had not yet woken up and these new developments were all just a dream. He wanted to pinch himself to prove that everything was real, and even raised his hand to do so, but at the same time he was afraid that the pinch would confirm that everything was in fact as it appeared to be. Therefore, he lowered his hand again and continued sitting woodenly on the edge of the bed. He gradually sensed something moving in his head, like a breeze blowing away the fog inside. He tried to grasp at the shadows fluttering through his brain, and stared at the wall across from him and thought intently. It occurred to him that although he had agreed to permit Liven to withdraw from society, he had not yet convened a county-level meeting to this effect. Upon remembering the business about Liven withdrawing from society, Chief Liu suddenly stared in shock as a crack opened up in the fog in his brain. This crack developed into an opening, and a bright ray of light shone through it as though a door had just been opened.
Chief Liu emerged from the room.
He wanted to convene a meeting of the county’s standing committee. Given that the new county chief and Party secretary were already on their way to replace him, this would be his final standing committee meeting.
But as soon as Chief Liu walked out of the building, he found that everyone in the city, and even the whole world, was bowing and kowtowing to him. First, the old man who picked up the trash and swept his courtyard every day walked over, smiling. The man was over fifty, and had been cleaning and sweeping the courtyard for more than a decade. He was smiling silently, as though he had just discovered some gold or silver in the trash. He went up to Chief Liu without speaking, then bowed deeply. Only after he had straightened his stick-thin waist did he open his gap-toothed mouth and say, “Thank you, Chief Liu. I hear that after the end of the year, I’ll start receiving several thousand yuan a month for sweeping the courtyard.”
Chief Liu picked up his trash and headed toward a box of garbage. For a moment, he couldn’t understand what had happened. When Chief Liu arrived at the gate of his family’s courtyard, the old gatekeeper was busy washing his dishes, but when he turned and saw Chief Liu, he immediately dropped the dishes and, shaking the water from his hands, ran out and bowed, saying, “Chief Liu, I should kowtow to you, but I’m too old and am no longer able.” He said, “I really never expected that, despite not having any children, I would one day be able to retire and relax. But now you have constructed a nursing home for the county and announced that everyone over sixty is guaranteed a room there and will receive retirement benefits equal to twice their original salary.” When he finished, the water on his stove began boiling, and he rushed back in.
Chief Liu then went out to the street. To his surprise, upon seeing him, the peddlers who had spent the entire winter selling melon seeds, sugarcane, and winter apples, regardless of whether they were men or women, young or old, broke into broad smiles, and thanked him profusely: “Chief Liu, we are grateful to you. Thanks to you, Shuanghuai now has good fortune, and from now on we will no longer need to stand here in the middle of winter selling melon seeds.” Or, they said, “Thank you, Chief Liu, I never expected that after selling apples for most of my life, I would be able to rest at home when I got old and still have enough to eat and drink.”
A thirty-something-year-old woman crossed the street. She had come to the city from the countryside to sell the tiger-headed children’s shoes she had made, and was huddled against a wall to find shelter from the sun and wind. She timidly came over and, once she was standing in front of Chief Liu, began kowtowing, her face covered in tears. She said,
“Chief Liu, people say that after the end of the year we will no longer need to work the land, and instead every month we will be issued free grain, vegetables, and meat. They say that tourists who come to Shuanghuai will pay several dozen yuan for the tiger-headed shoes I make, so that they can take them home and hang them on their wall.”
Chief Liu realized that the county seat must have undergone an enormous transformation overnight; not only was everyone bowing and kowtowing to him, but furthermore people were walking around with oracular smiles, as though the bodhisattva had come to this city the previous night and said something to everyone. And whereas the previous day the entire land had been enveloped in mist, now the skies were completely clear. The sun was shining down brightly, and the sky was an expanse of blue, so pristine that it looked as though it had been scrubbed by hand. If occasionally there was a trace of clouds, they would appear as white silk. It was warm, as warm as springtime. If this sort of weather could last another three to five days, the willows and poplars would soon begin budding and the wildflowers would begin blooming, just as they had begun on Spirit Mountain a couple of weeks earlier.
Perhaps this warm weather was some sort of omen.
Chief Liu permitted everyone to crowd around and thank him, and as he proceeded from his courtyard to the county’s government building, the crowd kept growing. Those bowing to him kept increasing in number, as did the elderly people kowtowing to him. In the blink of an eye there were suddenly so many people surrounding him in the less-than-one-
li
stretch of road that he could no longer continue forward, as if he were a virtual deity who had suddenly emerged out of nowhere.
It turned out that earlier in the morning they had heard that the previous reports that the attempts to purchase Lenin’s corpse had failed were merely rumors, and that the reality was that both the district and the provincial seats had wanted to install the corpse in their respective cities for a few days, and had deliberately created problems for both Shuanghuai and Chief Liu. Now, however, the problems had been resolved, and Beijing was supporting Shuanghuai and Chief Liu. In all likelihood, the plan would be back on schedule within three to five days, and Shuanghuai would be permitted to purchase Lenin’s corpse from Russia and ship it back to Spirit Mountain. Chief Liu, furthermore, had already sent someone to Germany to arrange for the purchase of Marx’s and Engels’s personal effects, and the representative had sent back word that not only had their German counterparts agreed to sell Shuanghuai a pair of Marx’s knitted sleepwear, but in recognition of the villagers’ extreme devotion to Marx, they had also offered to give the villagers Marx’s desk, chair, and fountain pen. They said that Engels’s descendants were willing to give Chief Liu all of the swallowtail dinner jackets their ancestor had ever worn. They said that when Lenin’s cenotaph in Shuanghuai was completed, his descendants would all attend the opening ceremony, and wouldn’t even ask Shuanghuai to pay for their airfare tickets. They said that the descendants of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh said that they were willing to grant Shuanghuai half of their ancestor’s personal effects. They said that Albania’s and Yugoslavia’s current leaders had readily agreed to give Shuanghuai everything that Hoxha and Tito had ever used, and furthermore weren’t asking for a cent in return; they were even willing to send their former leaders’ cremated ashes. They said Cuba’s leaders had agreed even more quickly, saying that they wanted to keep Castro’s corpse, but the people of Shuanghuai could take anything else they wanted. The only remains they could not obtain easily were the personal effects of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung. They said that Kim Il Sung’s son Kim Jong Il was currently the nation’s leader, and was asking for anywhere from a hundred and ten thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand yuan for every pen his father had ever used and every button that had ever fallen from his clothes. They said that if Chief Liu wanted to buy Kim Il Sung’s old revolver, they would have to pay at least nine million yuan for it.
Even at nine million yuan, Chief Liu still agreed to purchase the revolver.
This way, not only could the Lenin Memorial Hall open immediately for business, but by the following year they could set up a display room featuring the ashes, clothing, and personal effects of the other world leaders. This way, Spirit Mountain’s ten peaks would each have a memorial hall of one the world’s ten great leaders, and every day they would attract at least three to five times as many tourists as the Lenin Memorial Hall alone. This would include visitors from neighboring counties, from the district, from the province, from throughout the nation, and even from other countries around the world. Just as foreigners who come to China cannot fail to visit Beijing, if they visited Beijing they would have no choice but to also visit Shuanghuai. In fact, some people might even come to China for the express purpose of visiting Shuanghuai, without even having any interest in visiting Beijing. It was mind-boggling to think how much income that would bring in!
The people said that Chief Liu had already arranged to have Shuanghuai build new roads, and even an airport. They said that in order for Shuanghuai to be able to sell tickets for a hundred yuan each, the county would need to build three to five large printing factories, for the express purpose of printing these tickets around the clock. They said that all of China’s banks were preparing to establish their largest satellite branches in Shuanghuai, so that the county’s residents could deposit all the money they wouldn’t be able to spend. They said that in order to compete for the enormous amounts of money every resident would have in a few years, and in order to encourage everyone to deposit money with them, the banks were jockeying to be the first to give the county a loan to build a highway leading up to Spirit Mountain, both sides of which would be lined with guest houses.
Indeed, the lives of the residents of Shuanghuai had been turned upside down overnight. Their heavenly days were almost here. So, why
wouldn’t
they all express their gratitude to Chief Liu? Who in Shuanghuai didn’t know how hard Chief Liu worked to purchase Lenin’s corpse? Who didn’t know how hard he struggled to establish the Liven performance troupes?
Who knew, however, that even as he was working to purchase Lenin’s remains, Chief Liu was already making plans to obtain the personal effects of all of these other world leaders? No one had expected that all of these seemingly impossible tasks would be accomplished virtually overnight, that everything would be purchased and would immediately be ready to be shipped to Shuanghuai.
Chief Liu laughed and asked, “Who did you hear all this from?”
The person replied, “From your secretary. If your own secretary said it, how could it not be true?”
Chief Liu’s heart skipped a beat, but at that moment his astonishment was drowned out by the people surrounding him, as they kowtowed to him and crowded around just to say something to him, shake his hand, or have him caress their child’s head. They crowded him to the point that he could barely keep his balance. Indeed, with some people jostling in and others pushing back, in an instant the people surrounding Chief Liu had clogged up the entire roadway. The street peddlers started shouting,