Yan Lianke - Dream of Ding Village

God only knows where they got so many hatchets and saws. It was as if the whole village had known in advance about the great tree-felling, and had bought in supplies of tools beforehand. The clash of metal rang through the night, punctuated by the snapping and cracking of tree branches. Sounds from the east end of the village could be heard on the distant western plain, and noise from the west end of the village carried to the alleyways in the east. Ding Village was a hive of noise and activity, seething with rare excitement. There was the constant thud of footsteps, carts rumbling through the streets and the sound of voices, as villagers compared the quality of their timber with that of their neighbours. Looks of envy swirled around every pool of dazzling light, and followed in the wake of every glowing lantern being carried down the street.

Even the faces of villagers too sick to work glowed with the excitement of cutting down trees. The healthy villagers worked with enthusiasm, as if it were the big planting or harvest season. All night long, the village was filled with the sound of people working and the sweet scent of timber and sawdust. The conversation that accompanied all this coming and going and hustle and bustle followed more or less the same basic pattern:

‘Wow, you got an elm!’

‘Well, we needed a beam for the roof, so we asked for an elm.’

‘Those pieces of wood look pretty short. What are you going to use them for?’

‘Can’t you tell? They’re the perfect size for shelves.’

Another conversation went like this: ‘Did you hear? Li Wang’s family got the big toon tree at the west end of the village.’

‘Li Wang? I can’t believe it.’

‘Would I lie? It’s because his daughter’s engaged to Ding Yuejin’s cousin, that’s why.’

And so it went. The speaker would whisper some mysterious bit of information, the listener would ‘ooh’ or ‘aah’ in understanding and the two would go their separate ways, eager to pass on the gossip to others.

Grandpa walked the streets dejectedly, pausing before this tree and that, as if paying his last respects before they were all chopped down. He couldn’t help but be reminded of his dream of Ding Village: flowers on the surface, and gold beneath the soil. He wandered the village in a daze, peering around him in confusion. When he reached the village centre, he was surprised to see that even the venerable old scholar tree — so large that it would take three or four people to encircle its trunk — was also marked for demolition. Zhao Xiuqin and her husband Wang Baoshan stood by as her brothers, two stout young men from another village, removed the heavy bell that hung from one of the branches. After they had taken it down and hung it from a smaller tree nearby, one of the brothers scaled a ladder and began sawing at the branches, while the other began digging up the roots.

The last time Grandpa had passed the old scholar tree, it had been safe and sound. Now, in the short time it had taken him to make one circuit around the village, it was besieged by people hacking and sawing and trying to chop it down. Moving closer, Grandpa passed under an extension lead that stretched from a nearby house into the branches of the old tree. In the glow of a 200-watt light bulb, the area around the tree, once the site of village meetings, was as bright as day.

‘Xiuqin, are they really letting you cut down this tree?’ Grandpa called out.

Zhao Xiuqin, sitting in the circle of light beneath the scholar tree, raised her head and blushed uncomfortably. She seemed quite embarrassed that her family had been caught chopping down the oldest, largest and most venerable tree in the village.

‘I never expected Chairman Jia and Chairman Ding to be so grateful,’ she answered with a nervous laugh. ‘I was just doing my job, cooking their favourite meals and making sure they had whatever food or liquor they wanted. But when I mentioned that all the big trees had already been cut down and that this was the only one left, they told me I could have it!’

Amidst the cacophony of trees being felled, Grandpa stood forlornly, remembering his dream of flowers on the plain and gold beneath the surface.

It happened just like Zhao Dequan said it would.

The trees of Ding Village disappeared overnight.

All the mature trees were gone. At first, it seems, there had been some discussion about only felling trees of a certain size, those with trunks as broad as a bucket, say. But when morning came, the villagers woke to find that even the smaller trees in and around the village were gone. Anything that had a trunk the size of the circumference of a bowl had been chopped down for timber. Discarded notices from the village party committee littered the streets like fallen leaves after a windy evening. The spring sun shone warm as usual, but without foliage or the shade of trees, the village felt scorching and unpleasant.

All the mature elms, scholar trees, paulownia, chinaberries, toons, cottonwoods and persimmon trees had been felled, leaving only saplings with trunks barely as thick as a man’s arm. Even these were scarce, as rare as wheat seedlings in an abandoned field. From the moment the sun rose, it began beating down upon the village, scorching people’s flesh.

In the days to come, the villagers would wake from their beds, stand at their doors and gaze with blank surprise at the world outside. They would gaze at the barren landscape and wonder what had happened.

‘Good heavens, would you look at this place?’

‘How did it come to this?’

‘So it’s finally come to this . . ’

The trees were gone. So was Zhao Dequan.

He passed away at about noon, on the day after the big tree-felling. The evening before he died, Grandpa asked Uncle: ‘Do you think you could go to Lingling’s parents’ house and get her red silk jacket? I want to give it to Zhao Dequan.’

Uncle agreed to travel to Lingling’s hometown, a distance of six or seven miles from Ding Village. He could have made the round trip that same evening, but he decided to stay overnight, and didn’t return until the next day. When he got back to Ding Village at around noon, Zhao Dequan was still alive. As he watched Uncle hand his wife Lingling’s red silk bridal jacket, Zhao Dequan smiled, closed his eyes, and quietly passed from this life.

He was still smiling when they put him in the coffin.

Zhao Dequan was buried with his red silken-jacket smile.

Uncle and Lingling moved in together.They lived as husband and wife, brazenly, in plain sight of everyone in the village.

They were like water and sand, seed and soil, yin and yang; like positive and negative magnetic poles. They were water flowing, being absorbed by sand; seed scattered by the wind, taking root in soil; yin and yang coming together as one; two magnets clinging to each other, unable to deny their attraction.

After the incident at the school, Lingling got a beating from her husband, a cursing from her in-laws, and was sent packing back to her mother’s house. As soon as she was gone, Ding Xiaoming’s family set about finding him a replacement wife. Everyone felt that the beating was justified, and that Lingling had deserved it: not only had she brought the fever into her husband’s household, she had cheated on him with his own cousin. It was only fitting that Xiaoming, still in his mid-twenties and uninfected, should kick her out and start looking for a new wife. If he could find a suitable match, he could remarry after Lingling died, or ask her for a divorce and remarry even earlier. Lingling’s parents were sensible people; when they came to Ding Village to pick up their daughter, they apologized to Xiaoming’s parents: ‘We’re sorry we didn’t do a better job of raising our daughter. It’s probably best for everyone if Ding Xiaoming gets remarried. And if you need help paying for the dowry, we’ll give back Lingling’s wedding gifts.’