The grain fallen on the ground does not die
Fang Caodi had been all over, north and south of the Yangzi, and as he drove his Jeep Cherokee at high speed along the G4 highway, overtaking every car he came to, he told Lao Chen about some of the strange and fascinating things he had witnessed.
Fang Caodi said there was a place called Happy Village in the Mount Taihang area of Hebei; everyone in the village was exceptionally happy, but the media had been repeatedly ordered not to report this. Probably because upstream from the village was a huge, secret chemical factory. After he heard about it from a reporter in the provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, Fang Caodi went directly to Happy Village. Everyone in the village really was smiling and extraordinarily friendly. They all looked pretty healthy, too. The men wore flowers in their hair, and there were old women sitting around, bare to the waist and sunning their droopy breasts; they didn’t seem to mind at all when strangers walked by. It was a spectacle virtually never seen in China. He followed the river upstream from the village, and after about five kilometers he saw a huge chemical factory with a wide-perimeter barb-wire fence and warning signs all around it. There was no way to get any closer, but he could see small planes flying in and out of what looked like a private landing strip.
Lao Chen listened to Fang Caodi; he didn’t dare say a word, even though he felt like it, for fear that Fang Caodi would take his attention off the road. He was driving so fast and talking so much that several times they came very close to an oncoming vehicle. Lao Chen vowed that, if he arrived in Henan alive, he’d give thanks to God
Lao Chen didn’t want to die before he had found Little Xi. If he were to die in an accident, he hoped it would be while holding her hand, and facing their last seconds of life together. If he were to die a natural death, he hoped that Little Xi would be sitting at his bedside watching over him. He wanted to grow old with her. But now she was almost definitely living in her own personal hell, unable to see any way out. He had to give her hope, had to end her loneliness, had to do everything in his power to bring her out of her shell, so that she wouldn’t feel so exhausted.
He took a bite of one of Miaomiao’s cookies. Outside the window was the unending North China Plain, and inside his heart was full of unending love; he never imagined he could feel this way at his age.
Driving south from Beijing past Baoding, but before they reached Shijiazhuang, Fang Caodi pulled over to the side of the highway near a slip road.
“Follow the highway from Shijiazhuang and we’ll be there,” said Lao Chen, looking at the GPS.
Fang Caodi didn’t respond.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lao Chen.
“I’m sorry,” said Fang Caodi, “but I’m having a premonition.”
“A premonition about what?” Lao Chen asked.
“A premonition,” Fang said, “about that Happy Village I told you about.”
“What about it?” Lao Chen was outwardly relieved it was nothing to do with Little Xi.
“I don’t know,” Fang said, “but I’d like to take a look. It won’t take long, it’s not very far.”
Lao Chen could only agree with him.
They turned off on the side road and headed west on a paved road for about half an hour, and then went into the hills for about twenty minutes on a gravel road. They got out of the car and walked another half an hour on a mountain road until they reached Happy Village.
It was completely deserted. Fang Caodi went into each house one by one. “The villagers didn’t even take their farm tools or kitchen utensils,” he said. “It looks pretty suspicious.”
Lao Chen noticed that all the houses in Happy Village were the typically simple and crude constructions you see in rural North China, especially in Hebei. The peasants of Hebei were not the poorest in China, but Lao Chen believed that of all the rural architecture in China that of Hebei was the most unsightly; they made no stylistic demands, and generation after generation they continued to build crude and simple houses; it was easy to see that the peasants of Hebei didn’t care much about aesthetics. Yet there were colored paintings on the outside walls of every house. The paintings had the flavor of those New Year pictures called
Lao Chen thought it would be interesting to meet the peasants who had made the paintings, but some other time. “What’s wrong?” he asked Fang Caodi, who was staring blankly upstream. “Let’s go.”
“It’s been less than a year,” said Fang, “and they’re all gone.”
“Don’t ask me to walk another five kilometers upstream,” said Lao Chen. “I can’t even walk one more kilometer.”
“There must be a road,” said Fang Caodi, “that leads to the chemical factory.”
“That road probably comes from the Shanxi side,” said Lao Chen, trying to dissuade Fang Caodi from the trip to the factory he knew he was about to suggest. “I can think of a hundred reasons why the villagers moved, and none of them have anything to do with that factory. You shouldn’t always be trying to find some sort of conspiracy.”
Fang Caodi stubbornly refused to move, so Lao Chen played his trump card. “Old Fang,” he said, “you know that your premonition can’t prevent something from actually happening.”
“Yes, you’re right,” said Fang Caodi, “let’s go.”
Wei Xihong, female, from Beijing, also known as Little Xi; most recent Internet name
Indeed, she went next to Jiaozuo, known in ancient times as Huaichuan. There are six old cities in this region, and local legend has it that nearby is the place where Emperor Yandi or Shennong planted the five grains and tasted the hundred grasses. It goes without saying that there are many parks with historical themes in the area, and no shortage of jobs in the tourist trade. She didn’t, however, immediately look for employment, but wandered around somewhat distractedly because Jiaozuo brought back some deeply personal memories.
She thought of her first posting as a judicial clerk-secretary in that county-level court. And of the pressure on her to agree to all those executions. The examples her colleagues brought up to sway her were of Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Luoyang, all of which towns had executed forty or fifty people. Even a backwater like Jiaozuo had executed thirty people. When Little Xi visited Luoyang, Kaifeng, and Zhengzhou, the events of the 1983 crackdown never entered her head. But when she went to Jiaozuo the events of that year appeared right before her eyes.
Those events had changed her life forever and proved she was not cut out to be a judge in the People’s Republic of China.
Little Xi stayed in bed for two days in a small inn in Jiaozuo before coming to a decision. She resolved to rid herself of the ghosts of the 1983 crackdown. In the early morning of the third day, she took a small bus toward Wen County, Jiaozuo, and went to the Warm Springs township. She walked around aimlessly until she passed a big house where the front gate was open and a number of friendly-looking, elegant people were milling around in the yard.
There was a spring couplet pasted on the gate. The top line read: “Heaven bestows the Tree of Life / Faith, hope, and love abide eternally.” The bottom line read: “The Spring of Life gushes from the earth / Body, mind, and soul dedicated completely.”
Is this a home church? wondered Little Xi. Aren’t they supposed to be underground? How can they be so open?
At that point, the people in the yard disappeared into the building, leaving only one middle-aged man standing by the gate looking at Little Xi. He took a few steps toward her, and she saw that he was lame. “Please come in,”
