The Fat Years

Macau were no longer coming to buy houses or holiday there, the factories had shut down, the peasant workers had to stay in the countryside rather than return to work in the city, and university graduates could not get jobs. I had been cooking for a baked-squab restaurant for only a few days when I was let go. I didn’t care, I could just enjoy myself. On the eighth day of the first lunar month, I noticed that the Southern Daily and all the other papers at a newsstand had the exact same headline: ‘World Economy Entering Period of Crisis.’

“Everybody was feeling worried, the atmosphere became extremely tense, and my landlady came looking for me. ‘Did you register at the police station before you moved in?’ she asked. ‘What kind of age are we living in?’ I asked. ‘Do outsiders have to register to live in Zhongshan?’ She retorted that if I didn’t register I couldn’t stay, and I said she was violating our contract. At this point the neighbors came over-the local authorities had told them to. They actually said that my landlady could pay for me to stay in a small inn, but I could no longer stay in their courtyard, and they made me hand over my room key immediately. I asked for my deposit back and told them I’d move out.”

“What point are you trying to make?” asked Lao Chen, growing impatient.

“Paranoia,” said Fang Caodi, “it was like that for at least a week. Everybody said China was going to fall into chaos, the machine of the state was nowhere to be seen, the situation was approaching anarchy. It was lucky the peasant workers had not come back to the city, or there would have been serious trouble. But I should never have left Zhongshan. If a city like Zhongshan was that tightly wound up, I should have known that the farther inland I went the worse it would be. As I made my way over the hills, I felt like a mouse crossing a busy street and I acted quite recklessly. I still wanted to go sightseeing, to visit Jinggangshan, Mao Zedong’s revolutionary base in Jiangxi, as well as Mount Longhu. When I passed Shaoguan and came to the outskirts of a town called Meishang Fork (where the three provinces of Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi meet) the bus was stopped and everybody had to get off. Outsiders were not allowed to enter the town. We were not stopped by police, but by a temporary detachment of townspeople. I slipped away and stayed in a peasant’s house-until two days later when I was picked up by the Public Security police. The peasant had turned me in because the People’s Liberation Army had already begun a general crackdown.

“Then they discovered,” Fang went on, “that I was carrying an American passport. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be Chinese when I came back from the U.S., but it’s a hell of a lot harder to regain Chinese citizenship than it is for a Chinese to become an American citizen. So I’d registered myself in Beijing as a corporation and hired myself as a manager; I renewed my contract regularly, and so I had a work permit. Once in a while I went to Hong Kong or Macau, but I could return and live indefinitely in China.

“Back to my being arrested. There was a six-person joint hearing in an office of that Public Security Bureau. There were two Public Security police, two prosecutors, and two judges. One of the prosecutors was a formidable older woman, and one of the judges was a very young woman.

“ ‘Look at you,’ said the female prosecutor, ‘you don’t look like an American. Say something in English for us.’ I recited a section of Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the Wind,’ and I did it quite fluently.

“But the prosecutor was not having any of it. ‘You’re obviously Chinese. You can’t fool anybody by pretending to be American. Why would an American hide in a peasant’s house? What the hell is an American doing here anyway? There aren’t any tourist attractions or investment opportunities here. You look like an American spy to me.’

“ ‘Captured foreign spies are to be executed,’ said the male prosecutor.

“ ‘You have no objections?’ the female prosecutor asked, looking at the young female judge.

“ ‘He can’t be executed,’ said the young female judge.

“ ‘Why not?’ asked the male prosecutor. ‘We’re supposed to punish criminals severely and rapidly.’

“ ‘If we capture an American spy,’ the young judge said, ‘we are supposed to report it to the higher authorities.’

“The two prosecutors immediately responded that that would take too much time.

“ ‘Then let’s pass sentence,’ said the male prosecutor.

“ ‘You can’t pass sentence,’ said the young female judge.

“ ‘Why can’t we pass sentence?’ asked the male prosecutor. ‘The Americans sent a spy over here, and we Chinese are not happy. Isn’t that so?’

“ ‘You can be unhappy,’ the young female judge countered, ‘but you can’t be stupid. If he’s a spy, we have to report it to the higher authorities; if he isn’t, we have to let him go.’

“ ‘Americans no longer have extraterritorial rights,’ said the male prosecutor.

“ ‘It has nothing to do with extraterritoriality,’ said the female judge. ‘It is not a crime for a Chinese person to carry an American passport in China-and that’s according to our own Chinese law.’

“The two prosecutors looked very unsettled at what the young judge was saying.

“ ‘Comrade,’ the female prosecutor said, ‘stop arguing. You know perfectly well you’re wasting police time. They worked so hard to arrest this guy and now you want to let him go. This is a waste of our group’s time, too. And furthermore, you’re interfering with our work schedule. At this rate we won’t be able to reach the target set by the higher authorities.’

“The other prosecutor nodded in approval, while the two Public Security officials and the other judge had yet to open their mouths.

“ ‘I can’t worry about that,’ said the stubborn young female judge, ‘I operate on the basis of our national laws. If he’s a spy, report him to the higher authorities. If he’s not a spy, set him free.’

“The female prosecutor stared fiercely at the young judge. She was so angry she was about to explode, but the men just bowed their heads in silence. I was stunned. Then the female prosecutor shouted, ‘Get him out of here!’ and they escorted me off the premises. My life and freedom had been saved. Even in a deserted little town like that, China has outstanding talent like that young woman. Even if it’s just for her sake, I cannot allow the world to forget what happened during that lost month.”

Lao Chen was moved by Fang’s story and longed even more for Little Xi.

“I knew,” Fang Caodi continued, “I couldn’t keep running around wildly; if I was picked up again, I might really be executed. There was a Daoist temple near the town, and when I recited the names of a few old Daoist monks I’d heard of, the old monk there let me stay. Some other time I’ll tell you about my monastic seclusion and the practice of inedia. You’ve heard of inedia, haven’t you? It basically amounts to fasting. Would you believe that I can practice inedia for fourteen days? We could have a competition and see who can practice it for the longest time…”

“Forget it,” said Lao Chen, looking at a text message, “you win already. I can’t stand missing a single meal. Finish your story. I need to talk to you about something.”

“I wanted to practice inedia in the temple for twenty-one days,” Fang went on, “but when I reached the fourteenth day, the old monk came in with a bowl of gruel and told me that I should go outside and see what was happening in the world. What he said made sense, so I went back to the county seat, where the atmosphere was still extremely tense, and the papers announced that there was no end in sight to the crackdown. Fortunately, transport was running again, and so I went to Zhangzhou in Jiangxi. It was eerily quiet. People were avoiding each other’s eyes in the street, just like in Beijing after June 4, 1989. At the beginning of March, the evening papers announced that the crackdown had come to an end, and the following day all the papers carried the same headline: ‘China’s Golden Age of Prosperity Has Officially Begun.’ Now everyone was smiling and taking to the streets to set off firecrackers. So you see, there were twenty-eight days between the time the world economy entered a period of crisis and China’s Golden Age of Ascendancy was officially announced. The nation went from potential anarchy and terror to the comparatively lesser fear of a police crackdown. China’s Age of Ascendancy was not announced until after the crackdown, and not, as everybody today says, on the same day that the world economy went into crisis. That’s the end of my story, Lao Chen. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I’ve had a text message from Hu Yan. She says the Grain Fallen on the Ground underground church is in Jiaozuo in Henan. Old Fang, let’s take a trip to Henan.”

2. THE FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE OF SEVERAL PEOPLE