The Explosion Chronicles (14 page)

“If our girls and women are already like this, how can our men live in the houses built with the money the women earned, eat the food bought with the money the women earned, and not do anything? We’ll create factories and companies, and as long as you can earn money and become rich, you should be willing to do anything—even kowtow to people or lick the dust from their shoes. As long as you can earn money, then apart from murder and arson there is nothing you shouldn’t be willing to do. There is nothing that should appear
undoable. After Explosion is transformed from a village into a town, the vast majority of you will become factory bosses and company managers. You’ll become national cadres in the town government—you’ll become standing committee members, deputy town mayors, secretaries, and bosses. Every household will have a large truck and a car to use, and even a bicycle for when they go buy vegetables at the market. You’ll drink milk in the morning, and at night you’ll have chicken tonic soup. You’ll have nannies to take your children to and from nursery school. This is what I, Chief Kong, promise you, and this is the direction in which I will lead you over the next few years! If Explosion does not become a town that is as active and thriving as a county seat, then don’t vote for me in the next round of elections!

“You can pull me down from my position as village chief and spit on me, to the point that I drown in your saliva and phlegm, just as my father-in-law Zhu Qingfang did!”

By this point Mingliang was hoarse from shouting, and sounded as though some grass had gotten stuck in his throat. He lowered his head and coughed, and as he was doing so the crowd erupted in applause, which continued until after the sun had set. The applause lasted for eight and a half hours, and many villagers clapped so hard their hands bled, to the point that they used up all of the village clinic’s astringent and cotton gauze.

1. TRANSFORMING THE VILLAGE INTO A TOWN

In the end, the directive to convert the village into a town wasn’t approved.

The directive was sent to the county seat the same way a relative would deliver eggs and pastries, and who knows how much money was spent preparing for this figurative banquet. Zhu Ying even sent several of the village’s most beautiful girls to the county seat to serve as nannies for the political leaders. She sent seven or eight girls in all, but the directive to have the village redesignated as a town remained stuck in a cul-de-sac. Every girl she sent into town ended up being wasted, like cow droppings left in the middle of a field.

Mingliang began to have a sense of despair.

Going from disappointment to despair was like going from one end of the village to another, and had it not been for Zhu Ying’s perseverance and determination, Mingliang would have been tempted to simply kick Mayor Hu Dajun in the shins, saying, “You got to be
promoted from town mayor to county mayor, while Explosion only wanted to be redesignated from a village to a town. All you need to do is call a meeting with the county officials, sign the order, then send it down—but you are simply not willing to do so.”

Kong Mingliang was exhausted and exasperated. By this point, he no longer held out any hope that Explosion would be promoted to a town—but just as he was succumbing to despair, they received news that the directive was about to be approved, because significant molybdenum deposits had been discovered in the Balou Mountains. It was said that the fuses of all of the world’s lightbulbs were made of molybdenum, and consequently without molybdenum the entire world would go dark. While previously the train station in the mountains had only a couple of passenger trains stop there each day, and for only a couple of minutes each time, now the station was being expanded to serve as a transport hub, in order to ship out the region’s molybdenum. Explosion was already on the path to prosperity, but as the residents waited for the village to be redesignated as a town, they became increasingly anxious, frustrated, and exhausted.

That winter, it snowed heavily in the village and in the mountains. In this cold, snowy weather, Mingliang sat in the village board building, his eyelids growing heavy. The previous night he and Zhu Ying had again engaged in nuptial activities, and that mouth of the volcano had virtually burned him alive. When they finished, he exclaimed, “You are a demon incarnate,” and she replied, “I’ll have to hire a maid to wait on you.” He said, “I’ll need to hire an engineer, to redesign the village roads,” and she replied, “When it snows, visitors rarely come to Explosion, and business becomes as frigid as the weather.” Then they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Even after Mingliang woke up and went to the village board, the exhaustion from his nighttime exertions had not been wiped from his eyes.

As in the past, he dozed at his desk and slept for a while. But this time when he opened his eyes, he saw that there were two documents sitting on the corner of his desk. One was titled “Official Reply to the Directive to Permit Explosion’s Redesignation from a Village to a Town,” and the second was titled “Announcement of Comrade Kong Mingliang’s Designation as the Inaugural Mayor of Explosion, Once Explosion Village Has Been Redesignated from a Village to a Town.” Each of the documents was relatively short, but their impact was like that of a dozen trains running into him head-on.

Kong Mingliang felt somewhat light-headed. His vision blurred, and he became as dizzy as if he had just slept with Zhu Ying. Beads of sweat—from a combination of fear and excitement—began dripping from his forehead.

The announcement contained only these dozen or so lines. There was also a short appointment letter, which read, “In accordance with the decision by the county board and the county government, Comrade Kong Mingliang is hereby appointed the first mayor of the newly established Explosion Town.” These two documents, both printed in red on white paper, were inscribed with the names of the county board and the county government. They also both had large red stamps from the county board and the county government, together with the signatures and seals of the county party secretary and the county mayor. These two pages, together with the words printed on them, made Kong Mingliang shake with excitement. Reacting as though he were charged with electricity, he trembled for a moment and read them, then trembled and read them again. By the time he read them for the ninth time, he noticed with surprise that the dried-up fern on his desk had suddenly come back to life. The fern had previously withered as a result of the cold, since every time he tried to water it the water would merely freeze at the bottom of the pot. But now, after he had given it up for dead, Mingliang saw that in the blink of an eye the plant’s tiny leaves had begun to turn green. He had no idea what was happening. He tried waving the two documents above the fern, whereupon the plant’s dried-up leaves fell off and tiny new buds emerged. As if to demonstrate something, he then faced the fern and read the documents out loud, and before his eyes the fern produced a cloud of green vapor.

He walked toward a stunted evergreen bonsai sitting on his desk and stroked it with the two documents, whereupon the plant’s branches began producing tiny white flowers, making the village chief’s three-room office resemble a greenhouse. In order to further confirm the phenomenon, Mingliang placed the two documents in the branches of a cycas tree in front of the couch. The tree, which was
as tall as a person and had a trunk as wide as a bowl, had for over three years been more dead than alive, but at that moment the faint sound of summer corn sprouting could be heard from its branches, as though someone were grinding his teeth in his sleep. Mingliang took back the document declaring Explosion a town, leaving only the letter appointing him town mayor hanging from the branches of the cycas tree, as those dried branches gradually turned green like a willow in early spring.

When he placed both pages on the tree roots that emerged from the pot, the cycas burst into bloom.

He then held the documents up to a cockroach that was climbing on the couch, and the cockroach reacted as though it had just ingested poison and immediately fell down. The insect lay on the ground with its legs in the air and its belly turning white, but even in death it continued staring at the two documents in Mingliang’s hand.

With an awkward smile, Kong Mingliang felt a rush of excitement. At this point, his secretary, Cheng Qing, walked in and poured him a cup of freshly brewed green tea. As she was about to leave, Mingliang remarked with feigned nonchalance,

“Explosion Village has become Explosion Town.”

Cheng Qing stopped in her tracks.

“I am now the town mayor.”

Cheng Qing’s face flushed with excitement.

“Are you happy?” she asked, and Mingliang replied with a smile, “I’m delighted.”

“You’re the new town mayor?” Cheng Qing asked with a smile. “Are you really the new town mayor?”

She looked over at Kong Mingliang’s youthful and passionate face and saw him nod. Unsure what she should do to congratulate him, she hesitated, standing there like a rag doll. Mingliang
waved the appointment letter in front of her, and she seemed to wake up and smiled as she took off her jacket and began unbuttoning her sweater. Mingliang waved the appointment letter in front of her a few more times, and she laughed, removing the rest of her clothing. Completely naked, she lay down on the sofa, as the light from her body illuminated the entire room as though it were under the sun.

The new town mayor stared in astonishment.

Cheng Qing had never before been willing to disrobe for him, but now she silently removed all of her clothes and lay down in front of him. Mingliang stared at her as though at a cluster of white flowers floating in water. He wasn’t sure whether she was doing this for him or for that appointment letter. He wanted to caress her body with the letter, to see whether it would turn out to be a mere fantasy. But in the end, he couldn’t restrain himself and, faced with her naked body, he started to tremble uncontrollably. The appointment letter fell from his hand and fluttered to the ground. Meanwhile, she also started trembling as she lay naked waiting for him, filling the room with the sound of her body rubbing against the couch. It was the middle of winter, but the room was very warm and they both began to sweat. “Come here!” she commanded him with a trembling voice. “The village has been redesignated as a town, and you are the new mayor. I should give myself to you.”

He tiptoed toward her. He removed his outer coat and his padded jacket as though they were a pile of straw and cotton, and threw them to the floor. Just as he was about to caress her, her body seemed to give him an electrical shock, causing his fingers to recoil. But this shock passed almost immediately and, given that he was already married, he immediately knew what to do.

And, without any hesitation, he proceeded to do it.

Her body was as tender as if it were filled with water, and was completely different from Zhu Ying’s. Unfortunately, at that moment he failed to live up to expectations, and although the conditions were perfect, the performance was as brief as a one-act play in which the coda begins as soon as the curtains open. It was as if everything concluded before he even knew what was happening. He felt somewhat depressed to think that he was already the town mayor—and no longer merely the village chief—and yet it had still been so quick. He got up and put on his clothes, and as he was debating whether or not to see a Chinese medicine doctor for his condition, he noticed that Cheng Qing was curled up on the red leather couch, her face pale like a pile of leaves after an autumn frost. Her forehead was covered in sweat and strands of wet hair. Her pants and socks fell off the couch as though they felt aggrieved.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“It hurts.” Cheng Qing hugged her knees and then, with a smile, offered an unexpectedly poetic line: “Mayor Kong, you have deflowered me.”

As Kong Mingliang was in the process of putting his pants back on, he directed his gaze toward the area between Cheng Qing’s legs and immediately froze. The area was all red, and there was the smell of spring. Kong Mingliang didn’t say a word but suddenly felt feverish from head to toe, and his member once again grew engorged. He climbed onto Cheng Qing, and they did it again on the couch. The first time he had been very rushed, as though he were anxious to escape through a crack in a door. This time, however, he was not rushed, and instead he used the skills that Zhu Ying had taught him. He acted as though he were opening the door to his own house and returning to his own home, where he could fetch whatever he wanted. Finally, exhausted, he rolled off her—and it was only then
that he could confirm he was, in fact, the new town mayor. There was a difference between being town mayor and being village chief, and there was also a difference between the member of a town mayor and that of a village chief. Satisfied, he watched her, as a radiance extended across his face. He asked once more,

“What’s wrong?”

“You’ve deflowered me again,” she replied with a smile, her face resembling a golden sunflower.

“Do you want me, as town mayor, to do anything for you?”

“I’d like you to rent me a house in the town square; I’d like to open a store there.”

He had assumed she would be more ambitious and would ask to be appointed deputy town mayor, party committee member, factory director, or manager of one of the town’s industries, but instead she simply wanted one of those buildings in the town square. This made him feel disappointed but also comforted. In the end he agreed to give her the building rent-free and let her run whatever business there she wanted. He treated this as his gift to her, upon his being appointed town mayor.

“Really?” She gazed at him with a look of surprise.

“I am the town mayor, and what I say goes,” he declared. Then he picked up the appointment letter and read it to her again, and they both burst out laughing. Still laughing, they walked out of the office and saw that the sky was once more filled with snow. Amid these snowflakes that were as large as goose feathers, the two paulownia trees in the courtyard of the village board building, which had been bare, suddenly burst into bloom, with large, red, bell-shaped blossoms. Staring at the snowy sky and the paulownia trees full of red blossoms, Cheng Qing cried out in delight,

“God, the paulownia trees are blooming in the middle of winter! Just a moment ago, both trees were completely bare.”

Mingliang said, “Now that the village has been redesignated as a town, this courtyard of the village board building will become a grand courtyard of the town board.”

2. FAMILY GOVERNMENT

Mingliang returned home at midday, and his family’s delight exploded over their faces, the house, and the courtyard. The snow did not reach the top of people’s feet, and when they walked their footsteps sounded as though they were treading on fried fruit chips.

Initially, Kong Dongde and Zhu Ying had not been willing to speak to each other, and Kong Dongde had refused to acknowledge Zhu Ying as his daughter-in-law. One day when no one else was home, Zhu Ying had bowed to him and called him Father. Kong Dongde stepped backward in surprise and continued retreating until his back was against the wall. She then went up to him and bowed again, saying, “If you don’t acknowledge me as your daughter-in-law, I will kneel before you, and will continue kneeling until I die!”