Yan Lianke - The Four Books

If they found a rice bowl with a metal rim, they would confiscate that, too.

If they found a wooden chest under someone’s bed with a metal lock and latches, they would pry off the lock and confiscate it. Then they would toss this scrap metal into a wicker basket and drag it to the furnaces. After visiting each brigade’s tool shed, they would calculate the number of people and the amount of land belonging to the brigade, and would leave one hoe or shovel for every two people, but would take everything else to the furnaces.

By the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, after the criminals had smelted all of the available iron, they sat silently around the extinguished furnaces. No one spoke, and no one was playing cards or chess. Because there wasn’t enough food, and because they couldn’t even take their newly smelted steel and exchange it for additional food, at noontime everyone just received one or two wheat buns and half a bowl of soup, and by evening they stopped cooking altogether. Instead, they crowded around the furnaces without moving, watching the smoke and flames from the steel-smelting furnaces in other Re-Ed districts and villages in the distance. Everyone remained paralyzed until the sun set and the fire in the furnaces finally went out, and a winter chill blew over from the river. At this point the Technician, who hadn’t said a word for several days, suddenly stood up and shouted,

“What sort of prize will I receive if I find new iron resources for smelting steel?”

The Technician became extremely animated, as though he were helping everyone toward the light. He shouted, “If I find new resources, it will be as if I am able to reclaim your food that was confiscated. Will each of you then give me one of your blossoms?” He added, “In return for reclaiming your food, all I want is for each of you to give me a blossom. Do you agree?” As he said this, he gazed at his comrades, who were standing or squatting around the furnace. He saw that no one wanted to speak, and instead they were watching him as though he had gone suddenly insane. The Technician looked one last time at the people standing and squatting around the furnace, then turned and headed toward the entranceway to the district courtyard.

He marched quickly in search of the Child.

5. Old Course , pp. 139–45

A cataclysmic event shook the ninety-ninth.

The day after the secret meeting between the Technician and the Child, when the district was still sound asleep, the two of them suddenly left together. When they returned a week later it was also early morning and everyone was still in bed. It was as if a set of rules had been suspended while the Child was away, and everyone became more relaxed. They would sleep soundly all night, and sometimes wouldn’t get out of bed until the sun was already high in the sky. When the Technician returned, some people were cuddled up in their blankets, while others were hidden under their covers secretly reading some forbidden book or writing letters or journal entries. The sunlight was already flowing in through the windows, while a sparrow would fly back and forth and periodically alight on the window ledge. In the dead of winter, the rows of buildings resembled rows of coffin vaults. It was at this point that hammerlike footsteps were heard coming from the entrance to the men’s dormitory. Then the Technician slammed the door open, appearing in the doorway. Everyone looked over in surprise and then quickly sat up in bed.

The Technician stood there — his tall, thin body planted in the entranceway like a flagpole. But what surprised everyone the most was that he was holding a wooden board, on which was pasted a white sheet of paper with five pentagonal stars, each as large as a man’s fist. The stars were cut out of the same sort of glossy slick paper as the red blossoms above everyone’s bed. The Technician shouted,

“I’m sorry, but I have to leave now. I’ve already become a new person!”

A red light flickered over the Technician’s face, which was stained dark from smelting steel. When he held up the wooden board with the five large pentagonal stars, it happened to catch the sunlight streaming in through the windows, making the five stars appear as though they were burning bright. Everyone stared at the Technician and his wooden board, as though they had just opened one of the furnaces and been confronted with a burst of flames.

They were shocked by the sudden appearance of these five stars. At the time, no one knew what had happened in the ninety-first. The Technician proudly walked over to the innermost bed and leaned his wooden board against it. He climbed onto the bed and used a piece of twine to tie up his bedding with a few efficient gestures, then hopped back down again. From beneath the bed he pulled out a wooden chest that had been stripped of its locks and latches, then placed the useful contents of the chest into a travel bag and tossed aside useless things like old shoes, tattered socks, and old notebooks. In the blink of an eye, he packed everything he wanted to take with him, but when he was at his desk collecting some books and pens, his hand suddenly paused. He saw that, in addition to the five stars — which were equivalent to a hundred and twenty-five small blossoms — on the wall above his desk there were still the original twenty-five small blossoms he had painstakingly earned.

The Technician looked at those small blossoms, and laughed.

Everyone in the room got out of bed and stood behind him. Even the men and women from the other three brigades heard the news and came over to our dormitory. As a result, the room became so crowded that there wasn’t enough space to stand, and many people had to wait outside, while others peered in through the windows, their necks stretched as thin as winter twigs. The Technician then peeled two of the blossoms off the wall and held them up as the Child had done. “Does anyone want these?” He looked at everyone and smiled. “These twenty-five blossoms, which I earned with my own sweat and blood, are extras. I’ll give them to anyone who can say something that pleases me.”

They stared at him in surprise, just as they had done a week earlier, when he reported he had found a source of iron for smelting. Everyone had stared at him as though he were a mental patient just released from the asylum, but now they treated him like a general who had returned from battle. There was a combination of belief and disbelief in their admiring eyes, as they crowded together so closely that no one could even utter a word.

“Does anybody want these?” The Technician slowly tore up one of the blossoms he was holding in his hand, letting the red scraps flutter to the ground, like tiny butterflies. “Go ahead — I’ll give one of these blossoms to whoever can say something that pleases me. And if you say two things that I find pleasing, I’ll give you two blossoms.”

The Technician proceeded to peel another blossom off the wall, then turned around and gazed again at the crowd. Everyone was staring at him in shock, not knowing whether to believe their eyes. He held up the blossom, but just as he was about to start ripping it to shreds, a comrade from one of the other dormitories jostled his way to the front of the crowd and shouted, “Stop, don’t rip it! You are a hero of our ninety-ninth. I know that you have already helped us locate a source of iron for smelting steel. You are our saving star, do you know that?”

The Technician smiled at the professor who had come forward — then, sure enough, handed him the blossom he was holding.

Others soon followed suit. Upon realizing that they could get a blossom simply for saying something, another professor jostled forward and said, “Technician, we all know that you are completely blameless, and that you are only here on behalf of your advisor. But here in Re-Ed, you have endured hardship and hard labor, and have studied diligently, selflessly working the fields and smelting iron. Don’t you realize that you are a model for all of us?”