The Explosion Chronicles (44 page)

At this point, Mingyao turned toward Mingliang.

“Do you plan to have Explosion become a nation?”

With a look of surprise, Mingliang stared silently at Mingyao.

“Do you think that one day you’ll go to Beijing and assert control over this entire nation?”

As Mingyao asked this, he gazed intently at his brother.

Mingliang continued to stare in shock. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Mingyao laughed. He then looked away, and back at the sea and his fleet. “Have you really not considered it?”

When he asked this, his voice seemed to drift over from a far distance, as if in a dream.

Mingliang bit his lip, and in his eyes there was a gleam that demanded silence. The two brothers stared at each other for a moment,
then they both smiled and the tension between them faded. Mingyao looked over at Cheng Qing and saw that she had turned pale. There was a sheen of terror-induced sweat on her face, so he smiled at her and said,

“You’ll also be promoted. Do you want to be deputy city mayor or deputy provincial governor?”

“Ask your brother.” Cheng Qing shifted her gaze from Mingyao back to Mingliang. “Only he can remember all of those who have toiled without recognition.”

At this point, a pre-dusk silence descended over the field ocean, like the setting sun slipping beneath the ocean horizon. Under the trembling light of the setting sun, that green of the sea mixed with the red of the evening sky. The ocean generated a feeling of agoraphobia, as though that fear were trying to climb onto the ship, onto the deck, and onto their three faces. They therefore stood on deck on the ship’s prow gazing at one another, then gazed out into the distance, where they could see an array of large and small ships, like birds soaring overhead. There were also all of those seamen aboard the ships, waiting for the order to attack. No one said a word; they all let the silence—together with the sound of explosions and fires that intermittently broke that silence—waft over from afar. Finally, as the setting sun was about to sink below the horizon and was lighting up the distant grass in a brilliant flame, Mingliang coughed, then turned to his brother.

“Mingyao, I need your help.

“… There is no one else who can help with this.

“… In less than a week, I need to build an airport that not only would be the largest in Asia, but must be one of the two largest in the world. In addition, I have to build a hundred-kilometer subway line. If I don’t, then Explosion can abandon all hope of becoming redesignated as a megapolis, like Beijing, Shanghai, New York, and Tokyo.”

As Mingliang was saying this, his gaze remained fixed on his brother’s face. He was watching to see if Mingyao would refuse him, or would come up with an excuse to pass him on to someone else. Mingliang had already prepared a number of explanations for why he needed to complete these projects in under a week. All Mingyao needed to do was ask, and Mingliang would immediately recite them until Mingyao was left with no possible reason to refuse or to shirk this request.

But Mingliang had predicted incorrectly. Mingyao did not appear to have the slightest intention of shirking the request. He listened intently to what Mingliang had to say and gazed at his brother’s pleading expression, and when Mingliang was finished Mingyao glanced out at the naval exercises that were just concluding, then in a soft and skeptical voice said,

“You are my brother, so tell me the truth. Is it really possible that you have not considered that, after Explosion has been redesignated as a provincial-level metropolis it might then be redesignated as a sovereign nation?”

Mingyao laughed softly and added,

“Not only can I, in a week, build Explosion the world’s largest airport and a one-hundred- or two-hundred-kilometer subway line, I can even construct several hundred buildings, each of which would be fifty to eighty stories tall.”

As the sun was setting, Mingyao looked out to sea, at the fleet of ships that were systematically coming to shore. Finally, he presented his conditions:

“If you want me to build all of this, then you need to find me five thousand severed legs and ten thousand severed fingers.

“… Without severing that many legs and without cutting off that many fingers, and without thousands of people dying, do you think these construction projects can be completed?

“… If we are going to build these projects, my forces will be utterly exhausted and I will lose much of my fighting power. Mayor Kong, I don’t ask for anything else—I just ask that you celebrate Explosion’s redesignation as a provincial-level metropolis by declaring a three-day holiday—during which time you will give all of the city’s residents three days off. During those three days, you should lend me your city’s residents. I need them for only three days, and afterward I will return every single one of them to you.”

There was a long silence, as the sky began to darken. As the sun was slipping under the horizon, Mingliang and Mingyao, standing on the deck of the ship, made a toast using glasses of water in place of wine. The sun disappeared under the horizon, as though as a direct result of their toast.

3. MEGALOPOLIS (2)

The super airport that was constructed on the outskirts of Explosion was virtually complete after only three days and two nights. Without anyone realizing it, in the mountains several dozen kilometers outside the city there appeared a runway long enough to accommodate the world’s largest airplanes. People saw that there were reed and bamboo mats in a large clearing, and tall walls made of canvas completely surrounded several mountains. There were also trucks full of soldiers driving into and out of that enclosed section. Everyone assumed that this was a mining operation or a military exercise, and no one surmised that Mingyao was taking his troops to build an airport.

The airport was completed in just a few days.

The mountainside was full of grass and thorns, and all the soldiers needed to do was toss in several dozen bloody fingers and then stomp on them, trampling the grass and thorns until the fingers
completely disappeared. First, they followed the construction plans and used white lime to draw the outlines of the projected runway along the mountainside, then they used soldiers to surround a hill rising up out of the plain. The soldiers each had a rifle loaded with bullets, and after they fired at the hill, the hundreds of bloody fingers, toes, and severed legs buried under that hill made it collapse, as though it were a balloon that had been filled with air. Meanwhile, the runway itself remained perfectly flat. They appointed the most experienced soldiers to go up to the trees on the mountainside and along the edge of the cliff, and bury some more bloody fingers—the precise number being dependent on the size of the tree. Then they would lift their bayonets, aim them at the trees, and shout, “Kill, Kill!” Upon hearing this command, they would thrust forward with their bayonets, and the trees’ leaves would fall to the ground. When the sand and earth began to assume the form of a runway, Mingyao took the army’s battalions and regiments, and combined them to form an enormous phalanx. The soldiers were all wearing leather shoes and, while singing a bright military song, they proceeded to trample the bloody ribs and leg bones that littered the ground. They marched with forceful steps, the sound of their feet resonating between the mountain and the sky. Along the runway there was a one-foot-five-inch-thick strip of concrete reinforced with steel mesh, and the soldiers ended up covered from head to toe in blood.

The division’s military strength lay in loading, aiming, and firing at a mountain blanketed in blood-covered finger and toe bones, after which several new runways promptly appeared on the hillside. Then the soldiers surrounded the biggest hill and placed some antiaircraft guns, machine guns, and heavy-duty cannons around it, then piled up the bones from another twenty-five hundred bloody arms and legs, and just as the troops were about to open fire, the hillside transformed into a gully creating an enormous plain in the middle
of the mountain ridge. Mingyao then summoned all of the troops and had them hold hands and surround the several-hundred-mu plain, and once the earth stopped shaking, they added three to five thousand bloody bones, so that blood was flowing in every direction, making it look like a lake at sunset. Then the soldiers lifted and aimed their rifles and pulled the triggers, whereupon the foundation for the airport’s terminal gradually appeared in that plain, amid the sound of the earth splitting open. The troops then shifted to a different formation to surround the foundation that was rising out of the earth, then they brought over some highly sophisticated and never-before-seen weapon, then they proceeded to remove the layers upon layers covering the weapon, and each time they revealed part of the weapon they would make the weapon bleed a bit, and as they did this the walls around the airport waiting area increased by the height of an entire floor. By the time the weapon was uncovered, blood was flowing, covering the entire earth. The dark muzzle of the gun repeatedly shot at the airport construction site and all of the accompanying facilities, and within an hour the airport’s infrastructure was completed.

Because it is not feasible to build tall structures at an airport, the tallest buildings were only five or six stories. The only exception was the control tower, which was completed in an hour and a half after being shot at by rifles—but even that was only eight stories. The airport’s basic structure was built between noon, when the troops moved in, and the following evening. What was slower and required more attention, meanwhile, was the airport’s furnishings, and the installation and testing of its equipment. For this, the troops needed to use their utmost care and diligence. Throughout the entire construction of the airport’s foundation, Mingyao did not make a single appearance at the site. Instead, he stayed with his staff in a tent on the top of a mountain, consulting blueprints and directing the first
and second regiments on what to do, and the third regiment on how to slowly uncover the precision weaponry. He directed them where they should leave bloody bones, and how many they should use, and instructed them not to immediately take the weapons to the construction site and station themselves there like fools.

But after the basic construction was completed, Mingyao walked around the construction site, then immediately directed the members of this army unit to polish their weapons directly in front of the control tower, then run to the middle of the runway. He ordered them to sit there studying and reading that day’s issues of
National Daily
and
National Modern Technology News.
He also told a few military engineers to meet in the airport’s instrumentation building to discuss some technical details and review some reports from the United States, Japan, Germany, and England. After the army had completely demilitarized from its former status of war-readiness, as the men were reassembling the various weapons that they had dismantled and cleaned, they simultaneously assembled the airport’s instruments and machinery. After all of the weapons were put away and covered up with clothing, by the time they finished using the first five thousand bloody fingers and ten thousand severed toes, the airport’s furnishings were already completed and ready for use. As the sound of reading, studying, and singing resonated from the terminal to the tarmac, and on to the fields and mountains beyond, all of the airport’s electronic equipment was assembled and installed.

When they needed to paint the inside of the airport, Mingyao told his troops to take the multicolored—but predominantly red—flags that they normally used for celebrations and wave them in the air, whereupon all of the different-colored paints that they needed would suddenly appear.

When they needed to build an expressway linking the airport to the city center and to its environs, Mingyao ordered several tanks
to proceed side by side from the airport to the city, sprinkling blood on the ground behind them, and an expressway materialized like a ribbon fluttering in the wind.

In five days’ time, both the airport and the subway were completed. Once Explosion had the world’s largest airport and a subway line extending in all directions, and once it had more than a hundred buildings, each of which was several stories tall, there would be no reason why Explosion should not be considered one of China’s major metropolises. Overnight, Explosion would become one of China’s megalopolises.

1. PRELUDE TO TRANSFORMATION

Zhu Ying had never been so busy. It was as if she had spent her entire life preparing for this moment. She had not returned home for three days in a row, being unable to leave her work at the women’s vocational school. The school was located in the urban fringes to the west of the city, hidden in a willow and poplar grove and removed from both the countryside and the hustle and bustle of the city proper. But in the courtyard hidden in the willow and poplar grove, the masson pines and spire cypresses in front of every building were full of fiery red roses and phoenix flowers all year round, as though they were covered in rosy clouds. But if you looked from the distant road or fields, in addition to willow branches, poplar leaves, and a surrounding wall that was only intermittently visible, there were also security guards whom Mingyao
had sent there to guard the entranceway, together with a sign that read
EXPLOSION VOCATIONAL SCHOOL.
But no one knew what the students were actually studying there, who was teaching them, or even what courses they were taking. They were all girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty, with pure and blank minds and bodies, like sheets of blank paper. But after they stayed at the school for three to five months—or, in some cases, for six to twelve months—their minds and bodies were no longer blank, and in their pockets they had deposit books and gold or silver bank cards, and their heads were full of countless things, as they became the most desirable nannies in the entire city.

The school had already graduated thirty classes of nannies, or a total of 1,568 students. They were taken individually by a couple of older girls named Little Qin and Ah Xia to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and countless seaside resort cities. As in planting beans or gourds, the girls were assigned to various business and were selected by different households. Meanwhile, Ah Xia and Little Qin, working as manager and general manager of their company, made countless phone calls every day, kept a registry of the girls’ clients, and cursed the girls who had not succeeded in finding men to corrupt. Noting the occupation, position, income, and social connection of the girls’ clients, they compiled a detailed inventory, and when it was complete they would send it back to Zhu Ying.

The following month, thousands of economists, urban reconstruction experts, and important members of the national development committee arrived in Beijing to discuss and vote on whether Explosion should be redesignated as a provincial-level megalopolis. Kong Mingliang and all his cadres from throughout the city were staying in Beijing hotels, as if his entire city government had relocated to the capital. They worked day and night to try to build roads and bridges to facilitate Explosion’s transformation.

For three days and three nights, Zhu Ying had not eaten a bite of food or gotten a wink of sleep. Instead, she locked herself in her three-room office in the women’s vocational school, plotting how to entrap those men having relationships with their nannies—calculating which of them were in Beijing and which of them were elsewhere, which of the men were important figures in government agencies or public companies, and which of them were the secretaries or drivers of political leaders. She researched the ancestry, background, position, and experience of the men, parents, and children who were being waited on by these young nannies—basically trying to find anything that could be potentially usable. Zhu Ying reorganized all of their names, telephone numbers, and photographs, placing the useful ones on the table and pushing the less useful ones to the side. From the useful pile in the center of the table, Zhu Ying drew one or two flowers below the name of each of the girls, depending on the occupation and status of the men that girl had slept with. If one of the men was either a department or a subministry director, or was the parent or in-law of the director of a government ministry, Zhu Ying would draw four or five flowers beneath the maid’s name. Finally, she reorganized the nannies’ names based on how many flowers she had assigned them, then copied them into a separate registration form.

The girl named Fragrance worked at Zhu Ying’s side like a secretary, grouping all of the girls’ names together based on the number of blossoms they had been assigned. As Fragrance was copying down these names, her wrist began to ache, and she could smell a faint plum and osmanthus scent coming from the registry. Later, her wrist became red and swollen, as that faint plum and osmanthus scent became increasingly pungent, and the entire room came to be covered in flower blossoms and petals. She paused for a moment to look at the petals on the floor and noticed that Zhu Ying, who
had not rested for three days and three nights, had fallen asleep at the table amid all of those forms and photographs, as her breath wafted over like flowing water. Fragrance looked in the direction that breath was coming from, and saw that a lock of black hair on Zhu Ying’s forehead and face was gradually turning gray. First it was just a few strands, but then it was an entire clump, and furthermore it appeared as though the hair was simultaneously drying out—as though a clump of white hemp was on her forehead, below which her face quickly aged.

Fragrance immediately stood up from the table. The pen she was holding fell, striking the flower petals on the ground.

“Miss Zhu,” she cried out. “Quick, wake up!

“… If you really get old and ugly, will Mayor Kong ever come back to you? And if he doesn’t come back to you, will you be able to make good on everything you have promised us?” Fragrance initially said this in a gentle voice, but she became increasingly alarmed, until finally, just as she about to shake Zhu Ying awake, Zhu Ying slowly opened her eyes, lifted her head, and looked at Fragrance and around at the registration books that filled the room. She rubbed her eyes, smiled, then tucked the clump of gray hair behind her ear. Looking at Fragrance under the light, she asked,

“How many days have you not slept?

“… Do you know how many five-blossom nannies we have in Beijing alone?

“… Fragrance, Kong Mingliang is about to fall from power and will soon beg me to take him back.”

As Zhu Ying was saying this, she stood up from the table. She wanted to get a drink of water and say something else to Fragrance, who was standing right in front of her, but as soon as she saw Fragrance’s body and face her mouth immediately tightened and her smile disappeared. She saw that Fragrance—who had been working
with her all these years, tending to the vocational school’s admissions, finances, records, expenditures, and training—must be in her thirties, and yet her face didn’t have a trace of wrinkles or even a single mole. Instead, she was still a tender girl, with a thin waist and firm breasts. People could see at a glance that under her clothes her breasts were so firm that she didn’t need to wear a bra.

Zhu Ying asked, “My God, how is it that you are so well preserved?”

Fragrance said, “Can you really arrange for the mayor to fall from power?”

“… Little Sis, can you tell me how I can stay young like you? If you do, I’m willing to give you half of everything I own.

“… I can even give you two-thirds of everything I own.

“… Either this month or next month, our meritorious service will be completed and Kong Mingliang can die at my feet. Afterward, what had previously belonged to the Kong clan will instead belong to the Zhu clan—which is to say, it will belong to me. When that day comes, what will you want?

“… I’ll give you whatever you want. As long as you tell me how you keep your face so wrinkle-free and your breasts so firm, I’ll give you anything you want. But you must tell me, how can a woman stay forever young? How can she keep her breasts firm when she is in her fifties, sixties, seventies, or even eighties? How can she keep her face wrinkle-free and prevent her hair from going gray?”

Then Zhu Ying poured Fragrance a glass of water, and as she was taking it to her she kicked those useless maid records and flower petals lying all over the floor. After she put the glass in front of Fragrance, she asked her again, and as she was waiting for an answer Fragrance stared back at her with a frightened and skeptical expression.

“Can you really prevent Explosion from being promoted to a provincial-level metropolis?

“… If Mayor Kong returns to your side and becomes your husband again, will you give me a bigger and better reward than Little Qin and Ah Xia?

“… If I don’t want anything else, can you really arrange for me to see the mayor’s younger brother, Mingyao, again? Can you arrange for us to get married and live happily ever after?”

At this point, as everything fell quiet, the window lit up. The red silk window curtains of this fifth-floor office were covered in the fresh scent of spring flowers and of spring. Drifting in through the curtain, some willow catkins and poplar blossoms were floating through the air and fell to the ground with a swishing sound, with the force of raindrops. The ultralight catkins landed on the registration book listing the nannies by number of flowers they were assigned and the names of the men they had snared, but since the writing in the registration book was smudged and illegible, the room was therefore filled with the smell of salty tears. Furthermore, a catkin happened to fall on the name of a department director from Beijing—and the name and phone number, which were both a mixture of ink and tears, disappeared altogether. As all of this was unfolding, Zhu Ying stood there stiffly, watching the ink from the names and telephone numbers disappear, as her hair turned completely gray.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?” Fragrance asked repeatedly as she stared at Zhu Ying’s gray hair, then noticed that several dozen new wrinkles had appeared on Zhu Ying’s face. It was as if Zhu Ying had aged precipitately, and even her back had gotten hunched over. “With respect to the question of whether or not Explosion will be promoted to the status of a metropolis directly under the jurisdiction of the central government, Kong Mingliang already knows who will be voting and he is confident that he can guarantee that at least half of the experts will vote in Explosion’s favor.” As she
mumbled to herself, Zhu Ying’s complexion turned sallow and pale, and sweat poured down her face until the entire room was filled with her sweat and her look of desolation. She stood motionless, looking down at the registration book with the names of those nannies and those men that had not yet gotten completely blurred away. After a while, once her tears had begun to subside, Zhu Ying licked her dry, cracked lips and then went over to open the curtains that had not been opened for several days, letting sunlight shine in on that room full of tears and desolation.

“What day is today?

“… Is it morning or afternoon?

“… Does the train for Beijing leave this evening at eight ten or at nine thirty?”

As she asked these questions, Zhu Ying looked out the window. In the courtyard of the vocational school, the sun was shining down on the lawn and on the surrounding buildings like a formfitting gold veneer. The lawn was as large as a ball field, and the green grass imported from Europe was growing rapidly, creating a thick carpet. There were many pigeons and peacocks wandering across the lawn, and the girls who had not yet been sent to Beijing all came out of their rooms. Some of them were sunning themselves on bamboo mats, others were lounging on bedsheets that they had placed on the ground, while others were sitting there putting on their makeup. Makeup cases, a set of eyebrow pencils, and hand mirrors were sparkling in the sunlight. There were also a couple of beauticians who specialized in placing tattoos on girls’ breasts, backs, wrists, and ankles, and even their private regions. The beauticians were in their forties and were wearing white lab coats, and because there was ample sunlight, they took their table out into the courtyard. They covered the table with a white surgical sheet and told the girls who wanted tattoos to lie down naked on
top of it. Then they placed the box of tattooing equipment next to the girls, and, to help the girls cope with the pain—though in reality it wasn’t actually that painful—a towel was rolled up so that the girls could bite on it as they lay there and looked at all of the photographs of tattoos hanging in front of them.

It was not just one or two girls who wanted tattoos, but rather one or two dozen. They loitered in front of the tattoo table, sunning themselves as they waited their turn, like naked beauties on the beach. Zhu Ying opened the window and looked out at the beautiful girls on the lawn. She saw those half-naked and fully naked nannies waiting for their tattoos. She saw that one girl walking under the window had taken off her shirt and was wearing a pair of athletic shorts and sneakers, and resembled a tornado as she walked past. However, on her back where her bra straps would have been, she did not have a butterfly or flower blossom tattoo, like the other girls, but rather had a tattoo of a book. Zhu Ying could see the book’s title as clearly as if it were a flower tattooed on her own fingernails.

The book’s title consisted of four words:
New Unabridged Chinese Dictionary.

Zhu Ying had no idea why this girl would want to have a dictionary tattooed on her back. Watching the girl pass beneath the window, Zhu Ying noticed that several Chinese characters were falling out of that dictionary, like tiny black beans. She could smell the girl’s perfume as well as the sharp odor of beans. After the girl passed by, the pigeons, peacocks, orioles, swans, geese, and sparrows on the lawn all flew over and began pecking at those beans and at those Chinese characters that had fallen out of the dictionary tattooed on the girl’s back. Only then did Zhu Ying turn around, after standing there biting her lip, and say in a soft voice,

“Fragrance, we don’t have any other alternative. You should take these eight hundred students from our women’s vocational school
and escort them to the capital. You should book all available seats on this evening’s eight-thirty train.

“… You should use every one of these eight hundred girls on the academicians, professors, and experts listed in the second flower registration book. Tell the girls that whoever manages to snare an expert or a professor will be awarded five or eight hundred thousand yuan, and if they manage to bed an academician they will be awarded at least one million or one-point-two million yuan. If this academician turns out to be one of the organizers of the voters, the girl who snares him will be awarded at least two million yuan.