The Explosion Chronicles (5 page)

4. OBSERVATIONAL DELEGATION

Within two years—a mere seven hundred days—Explosion was completely transformed.

In the blink of an eye, the village’s old thatched-roof houses disappeared and were replaced with tile-roof ones. Some of these new houses were built with imitation old-style bricks while others had new artificial red tiles, and the village as a whole smelled of sulfur from all of the new bricks and tiles. The main road running from east to west was repaved with cement and lined with electrical poles, just like a city street.

One day, when the sun was several rod-lengths high in the sky, the county mayor led a delegation consisting of more than a hundred village chiefs and town mayors from throughout the county, and they all enthusiastically drove into Explosion to observe its transformation.
They saw that in front of every house there were flowers, and in back there were pigpens, goat pens, cattle and horse stables, and other corrals and breeding rooms—built with brand-new tiles and filled with livestock that had been rented or borrowed from neighboring villages. The villagers had purchased truckload after truckload of fresh vegetables from the city and placed them in front of the village, then performed a play about going into the city to sell vegetables. At the same time, a few people serving as local “vegetable kings” had spent the first half of the year in the fields next to the mountainside road—erecting a series of large plastic tents and preparing a piece of land for farming, and then planting mid-season and green-season spinach, celery, pumpkin, and bitter squash, to which people in the city had recently taken a liking.

The delegates parked their sedans at the entrance to the village, and the first thing they would do was walk to the village square and solemnly leave a wreath for the martyrs who had given their lives on behalf of Explosion’s quest for prosperity. Only then would they proceed, under the direction of the village chief, Kong Mingliang, to visit each house and observe the new tile roofs and television sets, washing machines, refrigerators, and brand-new bicycles and motorcycles, not to mention tractors capable of bringing in prosperity. At that time, Kong Mingliang was the youngest village chief in the entire county and the youngest prosperity leader in the entire province. Later, when people recalled the arrival of the observational delegation, they felt a surge of pride and smiled like autumn chrysanthemum blossoms.

Mingliang first led everyone to the graves in the middle of the square and kowtowed three times, then explained that everyone who had died for the sake of the village’s quest for prosperity was buried here so that whenever the villagers, their children, and their grandchildren passed through, they would remember the efforts and sacrifices their ancestors made so that they themselves could have better food, clothing, and houses: “Those who drink water
should not forget who brought the water from the well; and when you drink the water, remember its source.” He recited two couplets for the benefit of the county mayor and the delegation of cadres from the city, then led the delegation to one house after another, each of which had been carefully prepared beforehand, and he recounted what hardships each family had endured. Just before the delegation was about to depart, its members visited Chief Kong’s house, and it was only then that the town mayors and village chiefs were truly moved. It was only then that they understood how extraordinarily difficult things had been for Kong Mingliang.

It had never occurred to anyone in the delegation that while all the villagers were living in new tile-roofed houses, Chief Kong’s family would still be in a thatched-roof house built before Liberation. The house had three main rooms and four straw-covered side rooms facing the courtyard. For ages, the house had been located at the eastern edge of the village, giving off a malty scent of fresh thatching.

The observers stood astonished in front of the mayor’s house.

The county mayor also stood there, tears streaming down his cheeks.

A sigh filled Chief Kong’s house like water filling a lake. There was no television, refrigerator, or washing machine in his house, and it had none of the couches that had begun appearing in the village or the wicker chairs that were popular in the city. Instead, there was only a row of ancestral tables and portraits of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, flanked by a pair of red couplets written in gold dust, which read:

Such a simple saying, and such a simple person. The county mayor didn’t say anything, and instead merely wiped away his tears
and drank a bowl of poached eggs the wife of the village chief prepared for him. Then, he led the hundreds of town mayors, village chiefs, and other cadres back to the village, where he watched as the other town mayors and village chiefs all got into their sedans and made their way down the Balou mountainside. It was only then that the county mayor summoned Kong Mingliang over to his car. He stared at Mingliang for a moment, then said something that would make Mingliang’s career take off:

“How old are you?”

Kong Mingliang replied, “I just turned twenty-six this year.”

“Can you lead all of the surrounding villages into prosperity? If you can, I will immediately promote you from village chief to town mayor.”

1. KONG MINGLIANG

Kong Mingliang resolved to lead some neighboring villages along the road to prosperity. The local town and county mayors had agreed that they would help the two villages closest to Explosion to get rich first, and as soon as the annual salaries of those village residents reached a designated level and they were all able to live in tile-roof houses, like the residents of Explosion, Mingliang would be promoted to deputy town mayor, and eventually he would become the town mayor. The villages of Liu Gully and Zhang Peak were therefore administratively classified as belonging to Explosion. Explosion Village had originally been but a single natural village with six hundred residents, but with this reclassification it now included three natural villages, fourteen village teams, and a total of 1,956 residents. The village board decided to erect a two-story building on an empty plot along the bank of the river near Explosion, surrounded by a redbrick wall with an iron gate bearing a heavy sign reading,
THE COMMUNIST PARTY VILLAGE BOARD OF EXPLOSION
, with each character as large as a watermelon.

The village board had already issued each household in those two villages several thousand yuan with no strings attached, thereby permitting the villagers who wanted to raise pigs to do so, and those who wanted to farm to do so. The board also took the young people from the two villages and then led them to another set of train tracks on a mountain about twenty
li
away, to unload goods. The board taught them how they could use an iron hook to grab the coal and coke off the top of the train car as the train was going up the mountain, and if the train car didn’t have a roof and the goods were simply sitting in plain view, they could hook a box, a basket, or a sack of goods. The board also had the young people from Explosion take on disciples, to teach them how to climb onto trains and, after they had unloaded their goods, carefully jump down again.

The most important thing was to make sure that everyone in the two other villages followed the same rules as the residents of Explosion, and signed an oath of secrecy about their practice of climbing onto trains and unloading goods. Once this was accomplished, everyone quickly became rich. Those two villages previously led a bare-bones existence, but in the blink of an eye their lives became opulent. Some households became ten-thousand-yuan households and began building new tile-roof houses.

The residents of Explosion felt as though a severe winter had just passed and spring had finally arrived. When they woke up one night, they found that all the trees in the courtyards, along the village streets, and in the fields outside the village had burst into bloom and were sprouting new growth. The entire world was peach red and lily white. It was said that, because Explosion had been designated a model village, the current town mayor, Hu Dajun, was therefore transferred to the county seat to be the new deputy county mayor.
Moreover, since the current county mayor had overseen the first ten-thousand-yuan household in the entire province, and furthermore all of the other villagers had moved into new tile-roof houses within two years, a photograph of a tile-roof house standing on that poor loess soil and accompanied by an inscription was therefore passed around by the leaders in Beijing, who even took the photograph home with them at night to show to their wives and children. A leader was so excited by the photograph that one evening he ate three extra golden buns and drank an extra half bowl of rice congee. After this, the county mayor was sent to Beijing to report on the glories of the Reform and Opening Up campaign.

In sum, this one event ended up having far-reaching implications. It was as though a window had been opened, which in turn illuminated the entire world. But it was precisely at this point—in autumn of that year—that the speed of the nation’s trains suddenly increased. The residents of Explosion didn’t know how this change had occurred, but suddenly all of the trains—be they passenger trains or cargo trains—no longer huffed and puffed as they struggled up the mountain ridge, and instead they had considerable speed and energy, like an old man who has become young again and walks as though he has been given wings. Now, the trains climbed the mountain as though they were on flat ground, but it was only after five villagers fell to their deaths while unloading goods that everyone finally noticed that the average speed of the trains passing through that region had increased dramatically, to the point that it was no longer possible to climb aboard to unload goods.

What was worse, Zhu Qingfang’s daughter Zhu Ying returned to the village just before autumn. When she had left two years earlier, she was wearing simple clothing that she, as was customary in Balou, had sewn herself; but now she was decked out in imported clothing that cost thousands of yuan. Her shirt, pants, scarf, and shoes
were all printed with English words that no one in Explosion could understand. Most remarkable was the unbuttoned gray duffle coat she wore everywhere, which had a bright red foreign logo stitched along the outside of the left sleeve. She swaggered through the village, giving everyone she saw cartons of cigarettes and boxes of chocolates she had brought back from the city.

In so doing, she was issuing Explosion a challenge and a promise.

She was issuing Kong Mingliang a taunt and a confirmation.

What Kong Mingliang found completely incomprehensible was that without having gone through Explosion’s village board, and without using the board’s certificate or seal, Zhu Ying had somehow received from the county a certificate for a homestead, and that autumn she proceeded to build, on the edge of the village board’s land, a three-story house that was an entire story taller than the board’s own buildings. The board’s buildings were made from bare bricks, while the outer walls of Zhu Ying’s house had a layer of white ceramic tiles. The windows of the village board’s buildings were made of plain glass, while Zhu Ying’s windows were tinted red. The day that Zhu Ying’s house was completed, five villagers trying to unload goods from a train fell to their deaths within five minutes, and after those five martyrs were buried, Zhu Ying suddenly appeared in the doorway as Kong Mingliang was sitting alone in his village board office, staring blankly into space. Zhu Ying was smiling brightly and was leaning against the door, her wool duffle coat sitting high on one shoulder and low on another, like a department store mannequin whose clothes have not been arranged properly. At that moment, the sun was setting in the west and the entire village was quiet.

Kong Mingliang’s office was as large as a conference room, with an enormous desk and a leather swivel chair, and on the desk were
a telephone and an envelope containing some document, which he had deliberately placed there in order to display his authority. Behind a sofa were a palm tree and an ingot tree that the mayor had bought in the county seat market, while the floor was made from floral-patterned bricks and had water marks left behind by the mop. In Zhu Ying’s eyes, however, all of this appeared very rustic and lacking in authority. She stood in the doorway with her back to the setting sun, staring intently at Kong Mingliang, who looked at her in astonishment. She laughed softly and asked,

“Are you anxious? Don’t you know how to earn more money?”

This was the first time since her return to the village that she had come to see him, and the first time he had spoken to her so close up. He therefore simply looked up at her and stared. She walked into his office and stood in front of his desk, and in a soft but painful voice she said,

“The trains are faster now, and if you keep trying to steal from them, countless people will die. You could end up transforming the entire village square into a cemetery.

“… If, within the space of a year, you are unable to make Liu Gully and Zhang Peak as wealthy as Explosion, you shouldn’t even think of becoming town mayor, the current town mayor shouldn’t think of becoming county mayor, and the county mayor shouldn’t think of relocating to the city to become city mayor.

“… I, however, have a way to make those villages rich. I can make them so rich that by next year every family will be living in a tile-roofed house.”

The setting sun shone in through the windows, and those two rooms were filled with a red glow, as though a flame were jumping around before his eyes. Mingliang heard Zhu Ying’s Balou-accented speech, which carried a hint of urban inflection. He looked at Zhu Ying’s face and noticed that she was prettier than she had been when
she left. At that time, she had been as pretty as a village flower, but now she was as beautiful as a bonsai plant or a carefully groomed balcony flower. Between her eyebrows, which somehow had become very long and thin, there was a seductive hint of evil.

“How will you make them rich?” he asked her.

“First you’ll have to marry me,” she laughed. “I’m twenty-three, and you’re twenty-seven. So it’s time for both of us to get married. Outside, I could easily marry someone far better than you, but you were the first person I saw that night the people all followed their dreams, so I have no choice.”

Mingliang stared at her for a long time, then suddenly laughed and asked:

“Do you think I don’t know what you were doing while you were away? … You were working as a prostitute, as a whore! Do you think I don’t know?”

Zhu Ying shuddered, and she said, “If you don’t agree to marry me now, then next time you’ll have to kneel down and beg me, but even if you do, I still won’t marry you.” Upon saying this, she turned around and stalked out. Her footsteps were as light and poetic as they had been when she walked in, and her maroon high heels clicked along the floral-patterned yellow brick floor. For an entire year, until she left again, that sound of her high heels would periodically echo in Kong Mingliang’s head when he was thinking of something else, or even just staring blankly into space.

2. CHENG QING

Cheng Qing, who by this time was almost seventeen, was working as a secretary for the village board. Her responsibilities included wiping down the tables, mopping the floor, notifying people when it was time for meetings, and pouring water for the village chief.

As Zhu Ying walked out of the village board courtyard, Cheng Qing stared at her red leather shoes and resolved that she would also buy a pair and click her heels like Zhu Ying as she walked into and out of the village board building. But just as Zhu Ying was leaving, Cheng Qing noticed that the village chief’s face had turned orange, as though he was dehydrated from having sweated too much. She hurriedly grabbed a thermos of boiled water and went to pour him a glass, but when she entered the room she saw that his face was now as green as a spring bud. His eyes, however, appeared to be shrouded by an acute sense of loss. By this point the village chief had already turned away from the window and was gazing at Cheng Qing’s face, as though looking at a girl he had never seen before.

Cheng Qing went up to pour him a glass of water.

He grabbed her hand and asked in a trembling voice,

“Are you seventeen yet?”

“Not yet.”

Cheng Qing took a step back, pulling her hand from the village chief’s grasp, then dashed out of his office. As she entered the courtyard, she heard him yelling after her, “Do you think you’re as capable as Zhu Ying? … Go look at your brother’s grave—I can arrange it so that not even weeds will grow there!”

Cheng Qing stared blankly in the courtyard, and after Mingliang’s voice faded she left the premises. To the south of the village board building there was a small forest, and from there she took a path that looped around behind the building. As she was heading home she saw a house, recently built by a family surnamed Yang, which was as large and beautiful as a temple. She saw a family surnamed Zhu, who wanted their son to go to become an electrician, and his mother would go to the village chief’s house every day to bribe him with spinach, celery, hens, and eggs—to the point that she ended up giving him virtually everything they owned. When
Cheng Qing saw the Zhu family’s mother, the mother also saw Cheng Qing and smiled. Cheng Qing smiled back, but when she arrived at the graveyard she stopped smiling and remembered what the village chief had said. Her brother, having been one of the first martyrs to die while unloading goods from the trains, was buried in the southwest corner of the village square. It was because of her brother’s death that she had been hired to work as a secretary for the village board. The villagers and the village chief felt they should look after her, given that she was after all the sister of a martyr. Every day when she went to work, she had to pass by this square, and where there had previously been only one grave—that of Zhu Ying’s father, the former village chief—now there were several dozen. She had long since grown accustomed to this scene, so that walking through these graves was like walking through her own house, and she usually couldn’t be troubled to look around. But on this day, as she walked through the graveyard she was startled to notice that apart from several new graves with wreaths and bare soil, all of the older ones—which were really not that old, since the oldest of them was only three years old—had already become overrun with weeds and wildflowers, as though they had been painted in an assortment of different colors. White and red flowers, together with dark, dark yellow chrysanthemums, were blooming happily over the graves, singing and dancing, and even the bees and butterflies were hopping around, shouting and laughing. However, Cheng Qing also noticed that over her brother’s grave there were no bees and butterflies, and instead the grave was as bare as a slab of stone on a barren wasteland. She stood staring into space and then began walking toward her brother’s grave. As she approached, she saw that on the graves around her brother’s, the plants—including wild chrysanthemum and mountain asparagus, together with some white jasmine blossoms that the villagers had planted—were all
green and blooming, and the air was filled with a strong scent of osmanthus blossoms. Spring was over and summer had arrived, and even though jasmine blossoms elsewhere had already withered, over these graves they were still blooming brightly and seemed to have no intention of admitting defeat.