The Explosion Chronicles (2 page)

1. AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Esteemed readers, permit me to use this Note to clarify a few points. If these thoughts are not to your liking, feel free to curse me but please don’t criticize our other comrades on the Chronicle Committee.

1) I agreed to put aside the novel on which I was working to accept the role of author and editor of
The Explosion Chronicles.
Apart from the fact that I grew up in Explosion, another motivation (or tacit motivation) for this decision was the enormous financial compensation that Explosion City offered me—a sum so large it left me speechless. I hope readers will forgive me, but I really needed the money, just as a man with too much testosterone needs a woman. The mayor sent his secretary to Beijing to visit me. “Mr. Yan, the mayor says you should tell us how much you want, and as long as you don’t claim all of the city’s banks, we are willing to agree to anything.” I was overwhelmed by this offer, and was captivated by the promise of riches. Please don’t
ask me how much I ended up earning for writing and editing this. All I can say is that after completing
The Explosion Chronicles,
I’ll never again need to worry about money—whether it be to purchase a house or a luxury car, or even for reputation and social status.

I therefore agreed to serve as the author and editor of
The Explosion Chronicles.
I spent quite a bit of time and effort on this project, not only for the sake of my readers and for Explosion City, but also to earn the vast sum of money specified in the contract.

2) Before I began work on
The Explosion Chronicles,
Mayor Kong Mingliang and the entire editorial committee agreed to my three requests: (A) That I would use only materials and facts I could trust, and reserved the right to decline any examples or requests people might bring me. (B) Given that I am a novelist and a novelist’s primary significance lies in a process of defamiliarization, I wanted to write these chronicles in my own fashion, and not simply copy the format and narrative conventions of traditional Chinese historical chronicles. (C) I asked that the editorial committee assign me a cute and clever secretary, ideally a recent humanities major.

3) Regardless of how Explosion City decides to print and publish these chronicles, the city and I, as the primary author, will jointly hold the copyright, but if Explosion decides to stop printing the text, I will retain exclusive rights over any subsequent reprintings.

4) The authorial and financial rights for all translations (including translation into traditional characters for Hong Kong and Taiwan editions of the work), adaptations for film or other media, Internet serialization, and other adaptions will be retained by me, Yan Lianke, as the primary author, and Explosion City and the members of the editorial board will relinquish further rights.

And so on, and so forth.

Dear readers, I have recorded all of this, though ordinarily it should not have been made public, just as a gentleman should not
air his dirty laundry. Go ahead and read it, and curse me. Any of you can stand on that arch of chastity and curse me for being a prostitute, a whore, and a novelist completely lacking integrity. You may curse me to death and drown me in an ocean of spittle—but before you bury me, I have but one request, like a criminal sentenced to death who wishes to make a final statement:

Read these chronicles! Even if you read only a few pages, it will be as if you deposited a flower on my grave!

2. THE
EXPLOSION CHRONICLES
EDITORIAL BOARD

Members of the editorial board (listed by the stroke order of their surname):

3. CHRONOLOGY OF THE COMPILATION PROCESS

1. NATURAL VILLAGE

Song dynasty

During the Northern Song, the former capital, Luoyang, was located 350 kilometers from the new capital, Bianliang (present-day Kaifeng); and 70 kilometers west of Luoyang was Gaoyi county, where beneath the peaks of Funiu Mountain the earth’s crust was still molten. The volcano erupted and the smoke did not disperse for several months. At the time, people did not know anything about the earth’s crust or tectonic plates, and so they simply said that the land itself was rupturing and exploding. The people living in the vicinity of the volcano ran for their lives when the ground fractured. Some of them fled to the Balou mountain range more than a hundred
li
away, where they settled down and began farming. This community came to be known as Explosion Village, in commemoration of the
mass migration that had been precipitated by the earth’s fracturing and explosion.

Yuan dynasty

When Explosion Village was first founded, it had about a hundred residents. Because the village had the Yi River in front and the Balou mountain range in back, and because its fields were wide and flat, farmers would often gather there to barter and to buy and sell goods. As a result, the village gradually became a small marketplace.

Ming dynasty

The village’s population grew to over five hundred, with most of the residents surnamed either Kong or Zhu. Many of them claimed to be descendants of Confucius, though there are no genealogical records to corroborate this claim. The village had a custom whereby on market day—which was held on the first, eleventh, and twenty-first of each month—everyone would congregate to buy and sell goods.

Qing dynasty

During the Qing, the formerly prosperous society began to decline, and there were revolts throughout central China. After the Li Zicheng peasant uprising, farmers living in Explosion and surrounding areas were subjected to theft and looting. When the farmers went to tend their crops and livestock, they were robbed. Moreover, at the time there had been a drought lasting several years, as a result of which the wheat sprouts produced no grain and plants produced no flowers. The residents of Explosion couldn’t survive and fled west to Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang provinces. Explosion Village was left virtually deserted and was effectively destroyed.

The Republican period

As people came and went, Explosion became repopulated, and the village once again began to thrive. According to Gaoyi county gazetteers, by this point Explosion had several hundred residents, and given that there were several nearby waterways and transportation was convenient, the town became a market center in the region, with an industrious and upright atmosphere. In the middle of the Republican period, after large coal reserves were discovered in neighboring counties, a railway line was extended to the region, and a train station was constructed only twenty
li
away. Explosion soon lost its former tranquillity and developed quickly, as the natural village was integrated into the modern social village system.

2. SOCIAL VILLAGE (1)

After the founding of new China in 1949, the history of Explosion Village replicated in miniature the pain and prosperity undergone by the nation itself. The village experienced attacks on local tyrants during China’s rural revolution, as well as the shock and ecstasy of the land redistribution movement. There was one incident in which the wife and two concubines of local landlord Zhu were reassigned to three farmworkers. One of these farmworkers was surnamed Kong—he was the grandfather of Explosion’s future mayor, Kong Mingliang—and after receiving the landlord’s second concubine, he took her to bed on the first night. He didn’t dare touch her fairylike body, and instead merely knelt down next to the bed and repeatedly kowtowed to her until the sun rose in the east. Once the concubine saw that he was in fact simple and honest, she pulled him onto the bed, removed his clothes, and told him to lie on top of her. That was the night Kong Dongde, the father of Explosion’s future mayor Kong Mingliang, was conceived, and
so began the prosperous Kong lineage that is the subject of this spectacular
Explosion Chronicles.
Post-Liberation, the land that had previously been assigned to individual peasants was reassigned to local collectives. As a result, Mayor Kong’s grandfather sat at the front of his field and cried his eyes out. He cried continuously for three days and three nights, and attracted the attention of the heads of virtually every other local household. They went to the front of their fields and wept over having lost their land. His wife, landlord Zhu’s second concubine, however, merely stroked her hair and laughed. She laughed for a long time without speaking, and this was the origin of Explosion’s “crying convention” (a more detailed explanation of which will follow below). Later, during China’s Three and Five Overturnings campaign,
*
residents of Explosion Village chopped down trees to make hoe handles and wooden stools, and for this they were sentenced to imprisonment, beatings, and labor reform. This was a startling development. During this period, Kong Dongde accidentally destroyed some farming tools belonging to the collective, and he was sent to prison on charges of having broken the law by harming socialism’s tools. This became the Kong family’s deepest trauma, but it was also what spurred the author of this history to take up his pen and begin writing.

In 1958, China implemented a process of collectivization, and Explosion Village was designated a production brigade under the People’s Commune. This further reinforced the glory and trauma the village shared with the People’s Republic.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, the Kong and Zhu clans were designated as Explosion’s two major factions. Meanwhile, the village’s third major clan, the Chengs, observed these developments from afar but continued to lead a peaceful existence. In Explosion, conflicts between different clans developed into a more general class struggle, and during the years of revolution and fighting, some people died, others were imprisoned, while others lived off the land. Because Kong Mingliang’s father Kong Dongde spent so much time hunched over working in the fields, bird droppings would often fall on his back, and on one occasion these droppings became soaked in sweat and spread out to form what looked like a map of China on his white shirt. Given that he wouldn’t wash his shirt for weeks at a time, this bird-dropping map stayed there for days, until someone finally noticed it and reported it to the village chief. Zhu Qingfang then determined that this was a very serious matter, and reported it to both the commune and the county seat. As a result, Kong Dongde was imprisoned again and sentenced to labor reform. When he was finally released and quietly returned to the village, Explosion was undergoing a new historical cycle.

It was with this that the history detailed in
The Explosion Chronicles
enjoyed a new point of departure.

3. SOCIAL VILLAGE (2)

In early winter, when the air was cold and the ground was frozen, everyone stayed shacked up at home and the trees outside were barren. Sparrows circled under the eaves of the houses, and the entire village was enveloped in peace and tranquillity.

Kong Dongde was released from prison and returned home to the village. He returned surreptitiously, and no one even realized he was back. He spent the next month locked away in his house.
By this point he was sixty-two years old and had been in prison for the preceding twelve years. No one knew what he had endured, or what he had done there. He had knocked on the door of his house in the middle of the night, startling the household and bringing his wife and sons to tears. After this, the family fell silent and, apart from asking him what he wanted to eat or drink, no one said a single word.

He had originally been sentenced to death, and everyone in the village assumed he had already died. In the end, however, he returned alive. By this point his hair was gray and he was as thin as a reed. He sat so still that, had it not been for the slight movement of his eyes, he would have been indistinguishable from a corpse. Indeed, when he lay down, he no longer resembled a living person.

But after half a month of deathly silence, signs of life once again returned to his face. He called his sons over to his bed and made a series of astonishing pronouncements:

“The world has changed. In the future, production brigades will not be called production brigades, they will be called villages.

“… The land will be distributed back to the peasants, who will again be able to make a living.

“… In Explosion, the Zhu and Cheng families have met their end, and now it is time for our Kong family to take over.”

He had married at the age of twenty, and at the age of thirty he started having sons. Now, his four sons gazed at him like a litter of pups that were already grown and ready to go off on their own. Kong Mingguang was the eldest, followed by Kong Mingliang, Kong Mingyao, and Kong Minghui. They stood in a row in front of the bed, beneath which was a brazier of scholar-tree embers, the sweet fragrance of which filled the room and enveloped their faces in a yellow glow. When the gecko on the wall heard Kong Dongde’s soft voice, it turned to gaze at this man who appeared far older than his sixty-two years. The gecko’s clear, tiny round eyes were a combination
of pitch black and pure white. Above Kong Dongde’s head, the gecko wagged its tail like a dog greeting its master, while the gray spider on the eastern wall also heard Kong Dongde’s voice, and when it turned in his direction, it lifted its head and exposed its belly.

“You should all leave,” Kong Dongde said, pointing to the door. His face, which had not smiled for over two weeks, appeared as though it were plated in gold. “You should all leave, and each of you should proceed in one of the four directions of the compass. You should continue forward without looking back, and when you find something you should pick it up—and whatever it is, it will determine your future life-course.”

His sons didn’t say a word, since they assumed their father had gone mad.

However, Kong Dongde repeated these instructions three times, almost as though he were begging them. Finally, Second Brother Kong Mingliang gave his elder brother Mingguang a meaningful look, then led their two younger brothers, Mingyao and Minghui, away from the brazier, the stools, their parents, the gecko, and the spider, as they all hesitantly made their way out the door.

Afterward, everything changed, and the world would never be the same. Following this juncture, the historical chronicles of Explosion entered a new phase.

When Kong Dongde’s sons left, their mother, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her husband, asked, “Are you ill?”

He replied, “I want a bottle of wine.”

She said, “You seem different.”

“Our family will produce an emperor,” he said. “But I don’t know which of our four sons it will be.”

His wife prepared to fetch him some wine and to make several small dishes to accompany it. During the time since Kong Dongde
had returned, he hadn’t even touched her, as though he no longer had any interest in sex. But at that moment, as his sixty-year-old wife was about to leave, he grabbed her from behind and pulled her into bed, so that the bed once again became the site of those nearly forgotten sounds of screams and of clothes ripping.

It was the middle of the night, and the moonlight poured down like water.

The sparrows under the eaves of every house were tucked into their nests, and periodically they would emit a series of chirps and tweets. There was an exaggerated feeling of calm, and the shops that lined the village streets were like tombstones in a cemetery. After Kong Dongde’s four sons left home, they quickly arrived at the main intersection in front of the village. Mingliang said, “Let’s divide up, and each of us can proceed in a different direction. As soon as anyone finds something, he should return here.”

They parted ways and proceeded north, south, east, and west, respectively.

The eldest son went east, the second went west, the third went south, and the fourth went north, like four chicks leaving the nest in the middle of the night. The village was located at the base of a mountain, and the main road ran from east to west, while there was a smaller alley running from north to south. The intersection was located to the east of the village, and therefore the eldest, third, and fourth sons quickly left it behind, while the second son, Kong Mingliang, had to first go back through the village itself. In the depths of night, apart from moonlight, air, and the sound of dogs barking, he initially didn’t encounter anything.

But just as he was losing hope, he heard the sound of gates opening.

The gates in question were located in the village’s only tile-roof gatehouse, which had wide double-paneled willow gates that had
just been painted red. The gates creaked open; they were also red and emitted a pungent smell of fresh paint. This was the home of the former village chief, Zhu Qingfang. After the gates opened, the mayor’s daughter Zhu Ying walked out. She had taken only a few steps when she saw Kong Mingliang—who was a few years older—striding toward her.

They both stopped in surprise.

After a second, they had an exchange that would resonate for the rest of their lives.

Mingliang said, “Fuck, I’ve encountered a demoness.”

“I didn’t expect I would run into you,” Zhu Ying remarked with shock. “Where are you going, in the middle of the night?”

“I was coming here.” In the moonlight, Kong Mingliang gave Zhu Ying a fierce look, then added, “I was planning to climb the wall to your house, to strangle your father and rape you. But now, I’m no longer in the mood.” He turned around and strode down the village road, heading back east toward the intersection where he would meet with his elder brother, who had gone east, and his two younger brothers, who had gone south and north. He walked quickly, but his steps seemed full of sorrow, as if there were something explosive hidden in his veins. Yet in those same veins that seemed as though they were about to explode, there was also something unutterably joyful. He wanted to shout and wake all of the sleeping villagers, but as he was about to do so he heard Zhu Ying call out from behind him,