Ma Jian - The Noodle Maker

Then one day he joined the crowded ranks of the town’s blood donors, and for the first time in his life, received forty-five yuan’s worth of food rations, a doctor’s authorisation to buy pig liver, and coupons for three kilograms of eggs. Everything he could ever have hoped for in life was granted to him in a single day. When he returned home and whacked the doctor’s authorisation and ration coupons onto the table, his parents and elder sister suddenly saw him in a new light. He soon took over as head of the family. When he was awarded a coupon to buy a Phoenix bicycle for helping a textile factory with its donation quotas, his fame spread throughout the district. Neighbours gathered at his home to chat about his latest successes. Three large factories in the Western District issued him with fake identity papers so that he could donate blood on behalf of their staff. Smaller work units tried to bribe him with wine and cigarettes, hoping he would help them out as well, but he could never be bothered to stick his neck out for them.

After seven years of hard work, Vlazerim is now a millionaire. His pockets are stuffed with awards and prizes from government factories and private enterprises. He has coupons to buy electric fans, televisions, matches, coal, gas and meat. A few years ago, he and a couple of friends set up a Blood Donor Recruitment Agency in a public latrine in the middle of town. They position their desk in the yard next to a pool of urine, and place a plank between the desk and the puddle to protect them from stray splashes. At night they lock the desk to the railings with a metal chain so that no one can take it away. They pay just three yuan a month in rent to the local hygiene board, the only restriction on their business being that they are forbidden to put up a signboard. Most days they are able to pull ten or twenty people off the street and persuade them to join the agency. When the new recruits have finished with the formalities, they walk to the hospital across the road to give blood, then return to the latrine, hand over to the agency half the cash they’ve earned, and take home the rest. The blood donor splits the profit with his colleagues, but always keeps the largest share for himself.

The agency is equipped with all the materials and documents necessary for giving blood. They have piles of paper, official stamps, glue, forged identity cards and passport photographs. If the recruit is underweight, the agency can fill his stomach with drinking water, or attach heavy metal rods to his legs. If the recruit is too short, the agency has four pairs of high-heeled shoes in differing sizes that they lend out free of charge. (A man stole two pairs from them once when they weren’t looking. They had heels three centimetres high — enough for a child of twelve to pass the hospital’s minimum height requirements for prospective donors.)

The friends suck and chew the meat, mashing it to a soft pulp. Outside, everything has turned dark blue. It is the dim, blurry scene that follows sunset. There are lights shining in the high rise buildings; from the window it looks like a starry night sky.

The two men chomp and swallow the food, savouring each mouthful. Their voices are beginning to sound tired.

This dinner cost twice as much as the professional writer’s monthly wage. It’s a proper meal with real meat. The writer ate very little meat as a child. His mother was only able to make soup if he and his brothers happened to pick up a scrap of pork rind on the streets. The blood donor’s background was more privileged. In the re-education camp he boasted that he’d eaten meat seventeen times in his life. But after just one year of giving blood, he could afford to eat twice this amount. Premier Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of opening the country to the outside world and introducing economic reform had set him walking on the road to paradise.

‘In the re-education camp, we were only given meat once,’ the blood donor says. ‘I remember the night before it was served. I lay in bed, unable to sleep. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. The cook was in the kitchen frying the meat, and the smells were wafting all the way up to our dormitory.’

‘I used to worship Gorky at the time,’ the writer says. ‘I also liked those books by Gogol and Hans Andersen that the authorities confiscated from the county library.’

‘You’re looking rough these days. I bet you haven’t left your flat all week.’ The blood donor exhales a puff of tobacco. He can buy six packs of foreign cigarettes for one television coupon. ‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Am I looking yellow and thin?’

‘Just the opposite. You look green and fat.’ The writer opens his electric kettle and watches the eggs boiling away inside. One of the shells has broken, and a strand of yolk is wriggling through the water like a fish. ‘Ha! There’s a disaster looming,’ he mumbles distractedly, remembering the plot of a fable he read the day before. ‘Look at this cracked shell. The sailors are shipwrecked and the king is on the run …’ His face looks even more like a walnut now, although he appears to be smiling. It must be the alcohol swilling through his stomach.

The Party secretary of the local Writers’ Association called him in recently to assign him a new task. He announced that the Party’s Central Committee had decided that the national campaign to learn from Lei Feng — the selfless PLA soldier who dedicated his life to serving the revolutionary cause and the needs of the common people — was due to reach a peak in March. The secretary commissioned the writer to compose a short novel on the theme of ‘Learning from Comrade Lei Feng’.

‘Find me a modern Lei Feng,’ the secretary said. ‘Someone in today’s world who has the same socialist consciousness that Lei Feng had in the 1960s. “Seek truth from the facts”, as our Premier says. Make him come alive on the page, and finish the story with him losing his life while trying to save a comrade in distress.’

The professional writer felt faint as he sat opposite his leader. He tried to keep his eyes open and force out a smile. He knew that this was the expression expected of him.

‘In which year did Lei Feng die?’ the writer asked. He knew very well the answer to the question; he just wanted to give his leader a chance to scold him.

‘Do you really need to ask me that? You’d better think things through, Comrade Sheng. You have obviously not taken Lei Feng into your heart.’

‘The Party is in my heart,’ the writer said.

‘Hmm. Well, now you have a chance to prove that to us. The Party has trained you to wield your pen, and now is your opportunity to wield it. Do you understand? “For a thousand days we train our troops, to use them in just one battle”, as the saying goes. It’s time you paid back your debts to the Party. I’ll leave the details to you. Come and see me if there are any problems. But let me warn you, your work was not up to scratch last year. The titles and contents of your stories were poor, and the political standpoint of the reformers was ambiguous. You should not have placed the senior Party cadres in the roles of the reactionaries.’

‘Last year the newspapers reported that the senior cadres were too conservative, and that the Party wanted them to loosen their reins and let the younger cadres take control of the reform process.’

‘Well this year it’s changed, hasn’t it? Now it’s the older you are, the more reformist you are. “The waves of the Yangtze River are pushed forward from behind”, as the saying goes.’

‘What age should I make my Lei Feng?’ the writer asked, pulling out his notebook.

The secretary paused for a while. ‘You’ll have to decide that yourself But don’t take too long. As we speak, every writers’ association in the country is preparing for this campaign. They’re putting their best writers on the job. Make sure you don’t miss the boat.’ Then he stopped and looked him straight in the eye. ‘If you come up with a good story about a new Lei Feng, the Party organs will send you an application form for inclusion in The Great Dictionary of Chinese Writers.’