branch and my chin resting on the other hoof, I settled in to enjoy an enchanting evening performance by the lovely youth. Laying her left hand on Huzhu’s left shoulder and resting her chin on her sister-in-law’s right shoulder, Baofeng gazed at Chang’s thin, moonlit face and naturally curly hair. Although her face was in the shadows, the moonlight revealed the sad helplessness in that look. On the farm even we pigs knew that Chang and Pang Hu’s daughter, Pang Kangmei, who’d been assigned out of college to the county production headquarters, were romantically involved and, we heard, to be married on October 1, National Day. She’d come to see him twice while he was on the farm. Endowed with a lovely figure and bright eyes, and refusing to put on airs as an urban intellectual, she made a fine impression on both the people and us pigs. Each time she came she inspected our production station – after all, she worked with livestock at the production headquarters – and looked in on all the farm animals, mules, horses, donkeys, oxen. I was pretty sure Baofeng knew that Kangmei was slated to marry Chang, whom she had fallen for, and Kangmei seemed aware of Baofeng’s feelings. Around dusk one day, I saw them talking under the crooked apricot tree, and watched as Baofeng laid her head on Kangmei’s shoulder and wept. Kangmei, who also had tears in her eyes, stroked Baofeng’s head consolingly.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the story I’m telling. What I really want to talk about is that radio, a Red Lantern transistor radio made in Qingdao, which Chang Tianhong had given to Jinlong. No one said it was a wedding present, but that’s what it was. And while Chang gave him the gift, originally, Pang Kangmei had brought it back with her when she was sent on temporary assignment to Qingdao; and though Jinlong was the recipient, in fact Pang Kangmei personally gave it to Huang Huzhu and told her how to install batteries, how to turn it on and off, and how to find radio stations. Given my penchant for roaming, I saw it on the night of Jinlong’s wedding. For the wedding banquet, Jinlong had placed it on a table with a lit lantern. It was tuned to the loudest and clearest station he could find. Farm personnel – boys and girls, men and women – gathered round to listen excitedly Everyone felt like touching the obviously expensive object, but no one could get up the nerve to do it. What if they broke it? After Jinlong wiped the sides with a piece of red satin, the people crowded round to listen to a thin-voiced woman sing. What she sang did not concern them. They were too busy trying to figure out how she’d gotten into that little box. I wasn’t
Here’s a rough summary of what happened at two o’clock that afternoon: We’ll start with the sky, which was, for the most part, clear, though there were some dark clouds. Gale-force winds blew from the southeast and served as a key to open up the sky, as northern peasants all know. As the clouds were blown across the sky, moving shadows skittered past Apricot Garden. Then there was the steaming ground, over which large toads were crawling. Finally, there were the people. A dozen or so farm personnel were spraying liquid lime over the still standing pigpens. Hardly any pigs were left alive, and the scene of desolation had thrown the people into a deep depression. They scrubbed the top of my wall with the liquid lime and did the same to the low-hanging apricot branches over my quarters. Was that going to kill off agents of the Red Death? Hell no! What a joke. From their conversation I discovered that, including me, only seventy pigs or so had survived. I’d pretty much stayed put while the epidemic was raging, so I was curious to learn as much as possible about the seventy other pigs that survived. What type were they, and were any of them my siblings? Were there any wild boars like Diao Xiaosan? Well, just as I was exercising my brain over such thoughts; and just as the farm personnel were trying to figure out what the future held; and just as the abdomen of a pig that had been buried burst under the blazing sun; and just as a bird with a brightly colored tail, one that even I, with all my knowledge and experience, had never seen before, flew in low and landed on the crooked, waterlogged apricot tree, which had lost all its leaves; and just as Ximen Bai spotted the bird, whose colorful tail hung down nearly to the ground, and shouted excitedly, her lips quivering, “Phoenix!” Jinlong stumbled out of his wedding chamber, clutching the radio to his chest. His face had lost its color and he looked like someone whose soul had left him. Staring wide-eyed, he announced hoarsely:
“Chairman Mao is dead!”
Chairman Mao is dead. Are you joking? Spreading a rumor? Launching a vicious attack? Saying that Chairman Mao is dead is like signing your own death warrant! How could Chairman Mao be dead? Doesn’t everyone say that he could live at least 158 years? Doubts and questions swirled in the people’s minds when the news broke. Even me, a pig, was puzzled beyond measure, finding it hard to believe. But the tears in Jinlong’s eyes and the solemn look on his face told us that the news was true. The mellow voice from Central People’s Broadcasting Station had a slightly nasal quality as it solemnly informed the Party, the military, and people of all ethnic groups in the country of the death of Chairman Mao. I looked up at the sky, where dark clouds were roiling, and then at the trees, with their bare branches, and finally at the clutter of collapsed pigpens, and I listened to the incongruous croaking of frogs out in the fields and the occasional explosion of another ruptured pig’s belly from a shallow grave; my nostrils filled with a variety of foul smells as I saw images of all the strange things that had happened over the course of several months, including the sudden disappearance of Diao Xiaosan and all the mysterious things he’d said, and I knew conclusively that Chairman Mao was dead.
What followed was this: Holding the radio in his hands like a filial son carrying his father’s ashes, Jinlong walked solemnly toward the village. Pig farm personnel dropped what they were doing and fell in behind him, somber, respectful looks on their faces. The death of Chairman Mao was a loss not only for humans but for us pigs as well. With no Chairman Mao there could be no New China, and with no New China there could be no Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm, and with no Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm there could be no Pig Sixteen! That is why I followed Jinlong and the others out onto the street.
Radio stations throughout China were of one voice those days, aided by the finest equipment, so naturally, Jinlong turned the volume on his radio all the way up, and whenever he met someone along the way he announced in a manner and style we’d gotten used to, “Chairman Mao is dead!” This announcement was invariably met with stupefied looks. The faces of some contorted in agony; other people merely shook their heads, and others beat their chests and stomped their feet. All fell meekly in line behind Jinlong, and by the time we reached the village a long line stretched out behind me.
Hong Taiyue emerged from brigade headquarters, but before he could ask what was going on, Jinlong announced, “Chairman Mao is dead!” Hong reacted by doubling up his fist to punch Jinlong in the face. But his fist stopped in mid flight when he realized that virtually the entire village had turned out and saw how the radio in Jinlong’s hands was so loud it vibrated. He pulled his fist back and pounded his own chest, as a shriek of desolation tore from his throat: “Ah, Chairman Mao… you have left us… how will we get through the days to come?”
A dirge began to play over the radio, and the slow, solemn strains had Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, and all the village women wailing piteously Overcome by grief, they sat down in the mud, many of them pounding the ground with their fists and sending water splashing in all directions. Some covered their mouths with hankies and gazed heavenward, others covered their eyes and released grief-stricken cries. As the wails mounted, words followed:
“We are the earth, Chairman Mao the sky – Now Chairman Mao has died, the sky has fallen-”
As for the men, lamentations came from some, silent tears from others. When they heard the news, even the landlords, rich peasants, and counterrevolutionaries came running to stand off a short distance and weep silently.
As a member of the beastly kingdom, who was nonetheless influenced by my surroundings, I was saddened by the news, but maintained my emotional equilibrium. I walked among the crowd, watching and thinking. The death of no other man in recent Chinese history had the effect on people that the passing of Mao Zedong did. Those who didn’t shed a tear even when their own mothers died wept over Mao Zedong until their eyes were red. As always, there were exceptions. Among the thousand or more residents of Ximen Village, when even landlords and rich peasants, who should have held a grudge against Chairman Mao, wept openly over his death, and all who heard the news laid down their work, two individuals neither wailed nor wept silently but kept right on with what they were doing. One was Xu Bao, the other was Lan Lian.
Xu Bao mixed stealthily among the crowd, following behind me. At first I wasn’t aware of his presence, but it didn’t take long to spot that greedy, malignant look of his, and as soon as I realized that his eyes were fixed on my substantial testicles, I felt greater shock and anger than I’d ever known before. At a time like this, all Xu Bao had on
