The Four Books (12 page)

The Technician looked at those small blossoms, and laughed.

Everyone in the room got out of bed and stood behind him. Even the men and women from the other three brigades heard the news and came over to our dormitory. As a result, the room became so crowded that there wasn’t enough space to stand, and many people had to wait outside, while others peered in through the windows, their necks stretched as thin as winter twigs. The Technician then peeled two of the blossoms off the wall and held them up as the Child had done. “Does anyone want these?” He looked at everyone and smiled. “These twenty-five blossoms, which I earned with my own sweat and blood, are extras. I’ll give them to anyone who can say something that pleases me.”

They stared at him in surprise, just as they had done a week earlier, when he reported he had found a source of iron for smelting. Everyone had stared at him as though he were a mental patient just released from the asylum, but now they treated him like a general who had returned from battle. There was a combination of belief and disbelief in their admiring eyes, as they crowded together so closely that no one could even utter a word.

“Does anybody want these?” The Technician slowly tore up one of the blossoms he was holding in his hand, letting the red scraps flutter to the ground, like tiny butterflies. “Go ahead—I’ll give one of these blossoms to whoever can say something that pleases me. And if you say two things that I find pleasing, I’ll give you two blossoms.”

The Technician proceeded to peel another blossom off the wall, then turned around and gazed again at the crowd. Everyone was staring at him in shock, not knowing whether to believe their eyes. He held up the blossom, but just as he was about to start ripping it to shreds, a comrade from one of the other dormitories jostled his way to the front of the crowd and shouted, “Stop, don’t rip it! You are a hero of our ninety-ninth. I know that you have already helped us locate a source of iron for smelting steel. You are our saving star, do you know that?”

The Technician smiled at the professor who had come forward—then, sure enough, handed him the blossom he was holding.

Others soon followed suit. Upon realizing that they could get a blossom simply for saying something, another professor jostled forward and said, “Technician, we all know that you are completely blameless, and that you are only here on behalf of your advisor. But here in Re-Ed, you have endured hardship and hard labor, and have studied diligently, selflessly working the fields and smelting iron. Don’t you realize that you are a model for all of us?”

The Technician gave him a blossom as well.

At that point, everyone rushed forward and started shouting. One said, “Technician, I’ll miss you after you leave, and will use you as an inspiration to work, study, and reform myself.” Another said, “You are not only the model of models for our ninety-ninth, you are a model for our entire Yellow River Re-Ed region, and even for all of the other Re-Ed districts throughout the country!” Another said, “We’ve really been blind, having wasted our entire lives with mere book learning. Your knowledge, wisdom, and skill in translating language into practice, and practice into results, is something that the rest of us intellectuals who are here for Re-Ed will never be able to achieve or imitate.”

Someone in the crowd shouted, “Everyone must learn from the Technician!” . . . “Everyone must pay their respects to the Technician!” . . . “The Technician is a model and an example for all of us in Re-Ed” . . . “The Technician is the greatest activist and revolutionary among us!” Although these shouts were not as earth-shattering as what one might hear at a mass rally, there were nevertheless people shouting slogans while standing on their beds and stools, while others on the ground lifted their arms in support. While the initial call and the response sounded hoarse, like water flowing through a floodgate that was not fully opened, the Technician was very moved, and he smiled as tears ran down his face. After setting aside three blossoms, he proceeded to peel all of the remaining ones from the wall and, in a fluid gesture, tossed them into the crowd.

As everyone was bending over to retrieve the blossoms, I collected the Technician’s luggage and accompanied him to the canteen, where he exchanged his remaining three blossoms for some dried rations. Then, as though he were participating in a ceremonious opening procession, he picked up the board with the five large red stars and headed toward the entranceway of the ninety-ninth. Radiant with health and in good spirits, he walked under the bright winter sun. Glancing at the Child’s closed door, the Technician bowed deeply, then proceeded to the main gate.

Everyone in the ninety-ninth accompanied him to the district gate to see him off. But as he was accepting the luggage I handed him in the entranceway, he quietly said to me, “Author, of all the people in the ninety-ninth, you are by far the most despicable. I know that it was you who revealed the Scholar and the Musician’s secret, allowing them to be caught. I hope that you will find yourself stuck here undergoing labor reform for the rest of your life!”

I recoiled in shock, and stood, stunned, in the entranceway.

The Technician carried his bulging luggage, together with that board with the five stars, and laughed coldly. Then he began striding down that dirt road leading to the outer world. He disappeared into the distance, without even looking back to bid farewell to the comrades who were all waving him goodbye.

The Technician departed, finally free to return home.

C
HAPTER
6

Two Sides

1.
Criminal Records
, pp. 140–41 (excerpt)

There are two sides to everything. I’ve found that dividing everything into two sides is the best way of understanding the world and addressing problems. For instance, one of the benefits that the Technician’s departure brought the ninety-ninth was that it made everyone believe even more than before that as long as you behave well and make an outstanding contribution to society, you could earn a hundred and twenty-five small blossoms, which you could then exchange for five large stars. These five stars would prove that you have become a new person, and are free to return home. But this turn of events also had three negative consequences. First, it made the people who were still undergoing Re-Ed feel that this was an opportunity to be taken advantage of, and as long as someone seized the moment he could be granted his freedom, even if the darkness of his soul had not yet been illuminated. To some extent, the Technician was this kind of person. Second, the Technician left with an arrogant attitude, as though he were a great hero. He somehow managed to earn his five stars all at once, and it would have been better if he had started by earning small blossoms and remained in Re-Ed, gradually accumulating the necessary blossoms and departing only after having made a positive display. This would have more effectively made everyone realize that Re-Ed must be undergone one step at a time, that qualitative change begins with quantitative change. Third, if the Technician returns to society a new person, becomes enlightened, and acquires an even deeper love for his country, that will prove that the ninety-ninth’s re-education initiative was successful. But if he isn’t careful to guard against arrogance, he will inevitably be sent back to Re-Ed, in which case the ninety-ninth would demand that he be sent back to their district.

Because whenever someone falls, he must climb back up from where he started.

I firmly believe that a proud person like him will—and, indeed, should—always return to Re-Ed.

C
HAPTER
7

The Exodus

1.
Old Course
, pp. 187–97

The Technician’s departure gave everyone a taste of hope. Everyone became extremely active, completing their tasks with considerable vigor. People in their sixties acted as though they were thirty again, while those who were in their forties and fifties acted as though they were teenagers. Everyone got out of bed and began sweeping the floor, going to the kitchen to chop wood and cook food, and cleaning the furnaces. The Theologian and others would hide the remaining axes and saws under their beds, so that when people wanted the tools they wouldn’t be able to find them, and consequently would have no choice but to run around in circles in their house or out in their courtyard.

Everyone knew that the Technician had received his five stars, and his freedom, because he had managed to find a new source of iron by the river. He had led the Child out to the river, and from somewhere produced an old magnet. He then ran the magnet back and forth across the beach, whereupon the black grains of sand all rushed up to the magnet, like children reuniting with their parents after many years of separation. This black sand was originally mixed in with the ordinary sand, but could be separated out with a magnet, like children standing on each other’s shoulders. The Technician and the Child used the magnet to collect the black sand, and dumped it into their pockets. In the areas where the river would overflow in the summer, there were deep veins of black sand lying exposed along the riverbanks.

Together, the Technician and the Child quickly gathered a large pile of these grains of black sand.

They dug a small steel-smelting furnace right there on the riverbank. They used a long flat stone to construct a second level inside the furnace, and used clay to smooth out the middle of the stone. Then they piled the black sand onto the clay and lit a fire beneath the stone, so that the fire would smelt the iron while at the same time emerging through the fissures in the clay to heat the surface of the furnace. After burning furiously for four days and four nights, the furnace did in fact produce a small lump of steel. It was shaped like a wicker basket, and looked as though an enormous black nest of dough had rolled out of the furnace. We don’t know how excited the Technician and the Child were, standing alone on that desolate riverbank. We don’t know what they said, or what they agreed upon. It was only later that the people of Re-Ed learned that the Technician and the Child took that pioneering bread-roll steel ingot and walked a full day and a night back from the riverbank. Upon their return, the Child didn’t give the Technician, who had studied chemistry and material physics, small red blossoms, but instead awarded him five large stars. As the Technician was posting the red stars on the wooden board in the Child’s room, the Child stopped a mule cart on its way to deliver smelted steel to a neighboring district. The steel in the cart was wrapped in red cloth, and the part that was not wrapped had a red couplet pasted to it. The top part read, “Overturning heaven and earth, to become faster and more economical,” and the bottom part read, “Shooting the earth and the moon, to catch up with England and surpass America.” The Child also used red cloth to wrap the steel that he and the Technician had smelted out of the iron they found, then he rode the mule cart to the town headquarters.

The Child went to the headquarters to report the good news and claim his reward.

The Child stayed overnight at the headquarters, and by the time he returned to the ninety-ninth, the Technician had been gone for two days. When the Child returned, he not only brought a cart filled with rice and flour, together with two bowl-sized red silk blossoms; he also brought the Technician an even larger red silk blossom. The Child planned to host a commendation meeting, as he had seen others do, in which he would pin the blossom to the Technician’s chest and then publicly declare that he was now a new man. By the time the Child returned, however, the Technician had already left.

Back in the ninety-ninth, everyone, without needing to be asked, had swept the courtyard, wiped down the doors and windows, and in the doorway someone posted two enormous red couplets that had an even more sublime inscription: “Overturning heaven and earth, using their ocean-like granaries to laugh at the Western nations; shooting the moon and the sun, as the steel piles up so high that it nearly reaches the sky.”

When the Child returned, he stood in the doorway, gazing at those couplets. After appearing to understand their meaning, he looked at the thick wooden door, which had repeatedly been washed, together with the sandy ground in front of the door, which had been swept clean and then sprinkled with water to keep down the dust that splattered across the floor like images in an atlas. While the terrain had been very uneven, it was now as smooth as a mirror and covered in bright sand and sparkling water. The bright sun hung warmly in the sky like a firelight. The Child returned, and everyone went to the entranceway to meet him, dividing into two groups as though they were meeting one of the highest of the higher-ups. When the Child’s cart came to a stop, they began applauding.

The Child stood up in the cart, the excitement on his face mixing with the brightness of the sun.

“Where is the Technician?” the Child asked the crowd.

“He’s gone,” someone replied. “Yesterday he collected his five stars and left.”

A look of surprise and displeasure appeared on the Child’s face.

Observing the changed condition of the entranceway and the courtyard, the Child’s look of surprise faded. “Now that he has left, he can no longer accept this blossom,” he observed regretfully. He waved the silk blossom back and forth, a smile shimmering on his face like a butterfly. He grinned and looked at the cart driver and the bay horse that was pulling the cart full of rice and flour. The Child then returned to his building to retrieve that small wooden box, reemerged, and stood behind the horse, shouting,