lacking in courage and the killing spirit. They’ve all been overinfluenced by society’s general mood of love. They’ve all been feminized and sissified and have lost the lofty male spirit of machismo. Sometimes I’m afraid that even I am too loving, too indecisive, and won’t be able to accomplish anything great. I tried my best to stimulate their killing spirit and told them that they must never forget how to hate, must never forget the distinction between the enemy and ourselves. We watched documentary films on the Nanjing Massacre and the Nazi extermination of the Jews, and I encouraged them to imagine how they would systematically massacre the little Japanese devils. Then on one occasion, when we were camped out on maneuvers, I wanted them to kill a couple of stray dogs in order to build up their courage, but they let the bastards get away. I think university students are all good-for-nothing losers.
Finally, one night, I had the chance to put them through their rite of passage.
Every night in my grandmother’s crummy little Wudaokou restaurant, Five Flavors, there is a folk-music performance. It’s a good place for me to keep watch on our young people’s attitudes and thinking. That night all the iron-willed loyal braves were there, but their morale was pretty low and they were frowning into their drinks. Maybe he had had too much to drink, but one of them, from Tsing-hua University, suddenly pointed at a tall young man onstage playing the guitar and said, “Look at that big shit playing the guitar. One look and you know he comes from the countryside.” That Tsing-hua iron-blooded loyal brave also comes from a peasant family, but he hates peasants more than anyone else. He was always saying that peasants are a vulgar social class lower than anybody and nobody should sympathize with them.
I’ve always known that poor people hate other poor people, peasants despise other peasants, and children love to bully other children. “Look at him and his dark skin! He’s disgusting, isn’t he?” said the Tsing-hua student. “The tall guy plays pretty well, though,” said another brave, but another one disagreed with him. “His body language is so crude and his fingers are as thick as rolling pins. And he still wants to play Spanish guitar? Fuck!” “He’s just a fucking peasant!” said the Tsing-hua guy, with anger rising in his voice. All the iron-blooded braves stared at that tall peasant guitar-player in utter disgust. “Maybe tonight we should…” I suddenly thought out loud. They all understood immediately, and one of them said, “Let’s go pick up our weapons.”
We waited outside the restaurant, growing angrier by the minute while that big jerk was still in there drinking and laughing. When he finally came out, we followed him, not knowing exactly how to have a go at him. After a while we came to a bus stop and that dumb prick actually sat down against a wall in a narrow street across from the bus stop and went to sleep. All my crew went after him at once, beating the crap out of him with their clubs until the big bum couldn’t move even a muscle. I was standing across the street thinking to myself, This is the real thing. Tonight we’re going to beat that fucker to death. But just then a Jeep Cherokee drove up, and everybody scattered.
I hesitated for a long time trying to decide whether or not to tell Z about this action because the result could have been either extremely good or extremely bad. If X knew about it, he might get scared, and Y might even reprimand me, but Z probably would think more highly of me if he knew. I decided to take a gamble and tell Z. I told him that I had been inspired by his “love” lecture. I had understood the true meaning of his subtle words and put them into practice. Hate is absolutely indispensable if we want to accomplish great things. What I made clear, but didn’t actually say, was that I could carry out important missions for him. Z listened in his usual way without any obvious reaction and then just walked away. I didn’t hear anything from him for quite a few days, but fortunately events proved that I had understood Z correctly. Today I was made an official member of the SS Study Group. I had bet on the right horse.
Now I’m twenty-four. When I was twenty-two, I formulated my ten-year plan, and have been fulfilling it step- by-step, but I must not get too self-satisfied. What was Chairman Mao doing when he was thirty years old? He was one of the five members of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo. With this in mind, I know that I have to work much harder.
PS: The “SS” in the SS Study Group refers to two Germans (even though one of them was a Jew) whose last names begin with S. The Group started up by studying their ideas on politics, theology, and philosophy, but later on it was no longer of any importance who they were.
PPS: I suffer from one minor annoyance-unfortunately Little Xi is my “mother.” She’s the one uncertain element in the progress of my project. I have to eliminate this uncertainty. If we were still living under Chairman Mao, she would certainly long since have been condemned as a counterrevolutionary element. But our government has grown much too lenient. I asked my superior in the Ministry of State Security to lock her up in a mental hospital for a long time, but he told me not to worry about her. He said everything was under control; and they wanted to let her move around freely to monitor those she came into contact with. I had no choice.
Searching for a lost month
I’m Fang Caodi and I’m making this recording.
I finally found a true brother. His name is Zhang Dou. He is twenty-two years old, from Henan Province, and he lives in the village of Huairou outside Beijing. I’m sixty-five years old, so I have the right to call him younger brother and to occupy the rank of elder brother, ha, ha.
Just like me, he remembers everything about that lost month, those twenty-eight days between the time when the world economy went into crisis and China’s “Golden Age of Ascendancy” officially began. Two years of searching has told me that this is very rare and extremely important.
He also has asthma just like me and has been taking corticosteroids for many years. This has led me to the bold hypothesis that our not suffering from memory loss has something to do with our asthma. Ha! This is wonderful news. It proves that within the boundaries of our nation, there are as many people who still remember what happened that year as there are suffers from chronic asthma. It’s just that they don’t know of each other’s existence. If I can bring together a hundred or a thousand of these asthmatics, then I can prove to all our nation’s people that that month did in fact exist. Ha!
Last Friday evening, I went to Wudaokou to see a friend, and the outdoor equipment store on the ground floor of his apartment building was being cleared out and cleaned. I went in to look around and under a pile of junk I noticed an old copy of the popular liberal paper
That lone issue of the
Even more fortunately, in the small hours after I’d left my friend’s place and hadn’t driven very far, I spotted five or six young men beating up another man who was lying on the ground. When they saw my car, they all took off running. When I stopped the car, experience told me not to get involved, but while I was hesitating, I realized that the young man was gasping for breath, and that was something I am very familiar with. I got out of the car and walked up to him. I saw his arm shaking and then I understood. I reached into his trouser pocket and found, as expected, his asthma inhaler. I shoved it into his mouth, sprayed like crazy a couple of times, and he revived.
Should I continue to help him? I wondered. Suddenly I became extremely curious. What was he like, this kid who took the same medication I did? I’ve had many bouts of this sort of curiosity in my life. You could say that I’ve traveled my whole life’s road on the basis of this sort of curiosity. So I decided to take care of the kid.
He was so big and heavy! I had a hell of a time dragging and lifting him into my car. Finally I got him in and took him to Peking University Third Hospital. I was afraid he would check out and leave the hospital, so I went to see him the next morning. He was still sound asleep. When he woke up in the afternoon, he asked me in a wheezy voice to buy some groceries and take them to his family in Huairou; he wasn’t even afraid that I’d disappear with his money. I decided to do what he asked. I’d wait to see the next card, just like in a poker game. By the third day I
