Brothers (50 page)

At that point Baldy Li was still reveling in the martyrdom of his vasectomy With the air of one who had made a heroic sacrifice, he grasped Little Guan, held up his medical record, and asked scornfully, "What are roundworms?"

Then he opened his medical record and showed it to Little Guan, specifically pointing out the word
vasoligation
on the front. Little Guan carefully read through the record, constantly complaining about how poor the doctors handwriting was. After he finished, he still didn't know what
vasoligation
meant, so he asked Baldy Li to explain.

Baldy Li perked up and announced proudly,
"Vasoligation?
That means
castration."

Little Guan asked in astonishment, "You cut off your dick?"

"What do you mean by
cut off?"
Baldy Li was not pleased by Little Scissors Guan's choice of words and corrected him. "It was not cut off, it was ligated."

"That is to say," Little Guan asked, "you still have your dick?"

"Of course I do." Baldy Li stroked his crotch with his right hand and added, "It is still completely intact."

Then Baldy Li heroically said, "I originally wanted to cut it off, but then when I thought about having to squat down to pee like a woman, I felt that would be rather unbecoming and therefore decided to have it ligated instead."

Baldy Li patted Little Guan's shoulder, grasped his abdomen, and, waving his vasectomy certificate, slowly limped away. Little Guan stood there laughing uncontrollably. Then, pointing at Baldy Li, he told everyone that Baldy Li had gotten himself ligated, which is to say castrated—although, he then noted for the sake of precision, Baldy Li's dick was still intact. As Baldy Li walked farther and farther into the distance, the crowd around Little Guan kept growing. They excitedly discussed Baldy Li, agreeing that this had been a most entertaining day. What the crowd did not anticipate, however, was that a decade later Baldy Li would single-handedly account for the GDP of the entire county.

CHAPTER 38

B
ALDY LI'S
road to GDP-dom began in Liu Town s Good Works Factory. How could he have known that his early romantic setback was a blessing in disguise? After he had his heart broken by Lin Hong, he went back to the factory and proceeded to produce one profit miracle after another. This was the era when Deng Xiaoping's reforms had just begun to affect the general economy. The more Baldy Li thought about it, the more convinced he became that he was an entrepreneurial genius. If he was able to strike it rich leading a motley crew of two cripples, three idiots, four blind men, and five deaf men, then if he were able to command fifty college graduates, forty M.A.'s, thirty Ph.D. s, and twenty postdoctorate fellows, wouldn't he become as rich as an oil tanker?

As soon as Baldy Li reached this earth-shattering conclusion, he immediately ordered his fourteen loyal minions to put down whatever they were working on and attend the most urgent emergency meeting in the factory's history. A moment earlier he had been on the phone negotiating a new contract for his factory, but as soon as he hung up he decided to resign. He proceeded to deliver an hourlong impassioned speech in which he spent fifty-nine minutes praising his own achievements and the final minute reapproving the two cripples as the factory's director and deputy director. He concluded by sadly declaring that they, the Good Works Factory's workers, had unanimously accepted Director Baldy Li's letter of resignation. Baldy Li tearfully concluded, "Thank you!"

After Baldy Li gave his thanks, he sprinted away. His fourteen loyal minions sat there without moving. The three idiots hadn't understood a word of what he had said, and so after Baldy Li left they remained cheerfully oblivious. The five deaf men had just watched Baldy Li's thick lips move up and down, and upon seeing him stop moving his lips and abruptly leave, their first thought was that he had gone to the rest-room. Therefore, they sat and waited patiently for him to return and resume moving his lips. The two cripples looked at each other, not knowing what was going on. Five years earlier, Baldy Li had held a similar
meeting with all of the employees, at which he abruptly dismissed the crippled director and deputy director and appointed himself factory director. This time he was dismissing himself instead and reinstating the two cripples in their former positions. The four blind men stared ahead blankly with their dark eyes. Their minds were much clearer than those of the remaining cripples, idiots, and deaf men, and therefore they were the first to fully realize that Baldy Li would not be returning. One of the blind men laughed, then the other three started laughing as well. The three idiots were jolly to begin with, but upon seeing the four blind men also getting jolly, the idiots, not willing to fall behind, broke out into loud guffaws. The five deaf men couldn't hear, but they could
see
everyone laughing and thought that Baldy Li must have made a joke as he was rushing off in search of a restroom. Therefore, the five of them also broke into guffaws—the three deaf-mutes simply miming. Finally it had dawned on the two cripples who had just been reinstated as factory director and deputy that Baldy Li had quit, but they couldn't understand why everyone was so tickled. The crippled factory director remarked that Baldy Li had always treated them very generously, and therefore he suggested that perhaps it was a bit unseemly for everyone to be so happy at his resignation. The deputy director nodded repeatedly, saying that the director was exactly right and had expressed exactly his thoughts. The four blind men chuckled and asked whether anyone was curious about why Baldy Li would want to quit when things were going so well. Obviously it was because he had been promoted to the Civil Affairs Bureau. The blind man concluded blindly, "Factory Director Li has gone on to become Bureau Director Li."

"You have a point," the two cripples responded.

Bureau Director Tao Qing and the Civil Affairs Bureau didn't learn about Baldy Li's resignation until a month later, by which point the fourteen cripples, idiots, and blind and deaf men had completed all of the work contracts Baldy Li had obtained for them. The two cripples had moved back into the director's office, dug up their old chessboard, and once again spent the entire day playing chess and cursing each other. The remaining twelve workers sat in the workshop with nothing to do. The three idiots remained jolly and oblivious, and the four blind men and five deaf men engaged in yawning competitions.

Everyone started to miss Director Li, and at the proposal of the four blind men and with the permission of the two cripples, the factory's fourteen loyal minions haphazardly made their way to the courtyard of
the Civil Affairs Bureau. Once there they called out, "Bureau Director Li, we have come to see you!"

Tao Qing, who was in the middle of hosting a meeting, leaned out his window and saw the motley band standing in the courtyard, hollering. He was in the process of reading aloud an official directive issued from the Communist Party's central command, and all the commotion outside infuriated him. He threw the document down and said angrily, "This time Baldy Li has gone too far, thinking that he could move his Good Works Factory here to the Civil Affairs Bureau."

Tao Qing then waved at a section chief sitting next to him, telling him to go outside and get rid of them. The section chief became even angrier than the bureau director and furiously upbraided the crowd, "What do you think you're doing? We're in here studying a directive sent down by the Party's central command."

The two cripples—who, having been factory directors, naturally understood the importance of studying Central Party directives—were startled into silence. The four blind men couldn't see a thing, and therefore had never granted much importance to Central Party documents. When they heard the section chief's rebuke, they replied insolently, "Who are you? How dare you speak to us like this? Even Bureau Director Li would never speak to us like this."

When the section chief saw the four blind men leaning rakishly on their canes, he became even angrier, screaming, "Get out! All of you, get out of here!"

"Go in! You go back inside!" the blind men screamed back. "Go in and tell Bureau Director Li that all of the factory employees miss him and have come to see him."

"What do you mean by Bureau Director Li?" the section chief asked, perplexed. "There is no Bureau Director Li here. The bureau director's name is Tao."

"You are lying," the blind man responded.

The section chief didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this, deciding that this was truly a case of blind men speaking blindly. At this point Tao Qing emerged, his face contorted with fury. He didn't catch sight of Baldy Li but roared into the motley crowd anyway, "Baldy Li, get over here."

The four blind men didn't know who it was who had just come out, and therefore continued asking impetuously, "Who are you? How dare you address Bureau Director Li like that?"

"What do you mean, Bureau Director Li?" Tao Qing was also baffled.

"Oh, you don't even know who the bureau director is," the blind men said haughtily. "It is none other than our own former Factory Director Li, who has come to assume directorship of the Civil Affairs Bureau."

Tao Qing looked at the section chief but couldn't understand what the blind men were talking about. The section chief immediately admonished them, saying, "That's ridiculous. If Baldy Li had been appointed bureau director, then what would our Bureau Director Tao do?"

The four blind men were speechless as they suddenly remembered that the Civil Affairs Bureau already had a director. One of the blind men, however, remained unconvinced, and suggested, "Perhaps Bureau Director Tao has been promoted to county governor?"

"That's right," the other blind men happily agreed.

Tao Qing was initially furious, but upon hearing the blind men promote him to county governor, he couldn't help but break into laughter like the three idiots. Only then did it dawn on him that Baldy Li was not in the crowd. Spotting the two cripples hiding behind the five deaf men, he pointed at them and said, "You two, come over here."

The two cripples realized that things were not looking good and that the whole business about Baldy Li having been promoted to bureau director must have been a fanciful fabrication on the part of the blind men. They hesitantly came out from behind the five deaf men, one limping in one direction and the other limping in the other, until they finally found themselves standing in front of Tao Qing.

It was then that Tao Qing finally got to the bottom of things, learning that Baldy Li had abruptly resigned a month earlier and that there had been no news from him since. Baldy Li had not discussed the situation at all with his workers but, rather, had simply announced that everyone accepted his letter of resignation. Upon learning this, Tao Qing turned pale and his lips started trembling with fury. He sputtered, "Baldy Li has no respect for organization, for discipline, for authority, or for the masses." Tao Qing was so worked up that, for the first time in more than a decade, he started cursing, "That son of a bitch turtle spawn!"

Tao Qing ordered the two cripples to take the workers back to the Good Works Factory. Upon returning to the meeting room, Tao no longer had any interest in studying the Central Party document and instead turned the discussion to Baldy Li's serious mistakes. He suggested
that Baldy Li be permanently expelled from the People s Government system. The Peoples Ministry unanimously agreed with Bureau Director Taos suggestion, and thereupon printed out an official document to notify the county government of their decision. After affixing his seal, Tao Qing read through it one last time, and said, "In dealing with an obstinately insubordinate person like Baldy Li, we can't allow him to get away with a
resignation.
He can only
be fired."

CHAPTER 39

J
UST AS
Baldy Li was being fired by Tao Qing, he himself was seated at Mama Sus snack shop next to the bus depot. Holding a ticket to Shanghai in one hand and a meat bun in the other, Baldy Li sat there cheerfully. As he bit into the steaming hot bun, squinting his eyes with pleasure, he proudly boasted to Mama Su that, from this point on, he would make his own fortune. Baldy Li glanced down at the ticket in his hand and saw that in about an hour he would be jumping onto the bus to Shanghai. Keeping time by the clock hanging on the snack shop wall, he solemnly counted down the seconds as if he were a rocket about to launch. He waved at Mama Su and said, "In an hour I will spread my wings like a great roc and soar away!"

Immediately after Baldy Li had sprung his resignation like a guerrilla attack, he had retreated to his home and shut his door. Then he spent half a day and half a night mapping out the trajectory Li the Great Roc would take. On the basis of his success at the Good Works Factory, he felt that his new undertaking must begin from a processing business; after he had accumulated some capital he could begin manufacturing his own products. The question was, what kind of products should he process? At first, Baldy Li wanted to enter the same cardboard box business he had pioneered at the Good Works Factory, since it was something he already knew well. After much consideration, however, he reluctantly decided that he had to give up his old business. There were his fourteen loyal minions at the factory to consider, and Baldy Li felt that he couldn't rob them of their rice bowls. Ultimately, he decided to go into the clothing business, and as long as he could secure some orders from some big Shanghai companies, his business would rise like the morning sun.

And like the morning sun, Baldy Li took a world map and strode into Blacksmith Tongs shop. At that point, Blacksmith Tong was the chairman of Liu Town s Private Entrepreneurs’ Business Association. Baldy Li needed investment capital and knew that he would not be able to secure a single cent from the State, so his thoughts turned to Blacksmith Tong. During Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up Campaign,
private entrepreneurs like Blacksmith Tong had become rich. Baldy Li cheerfully strode into Blacksmith Tongs shop and immediately disarmed him by greeting him as Chairman Tong. Tong set down his hammer, wiped away his sweat, and said, "Director Li, please don't call me Chairman Tong, call me Blacksmith Tong—it sounds much more vigorous."