Yan Lianke: Dream of Ding Village

His shouting frightened the poultry. Far from the meeting site, chickens fluttered and squawked. His barking frightened the hounds. A dog that had been lying on the ground beside its owner stood up on its haunches, hackles raised, and began snarling at the director. This in turn frightened the dog’s owner, who aimed a kick at the animal’s belly and shouted: ‘Shut up, for God’s sake! Shut up! You’ll bark at anyone!’

The dog ran off whimpering and with its tail between its legs.

The county director threw down the files he had been holding and slumped in his chair, defeated. A short while later, he left the meeting hall and went to the school in search of my Grandpa.

Although Grandpa wasn’t officially a teacher at the school, he might as well have been. He was certainly the oldest person there. As a boy, he could recite the Three-Character Classic , rattle off the Book of Family Names and calculate birth-dates and fortunes according to the old Yuan dynasty lunar calendar. After the Communist revolution, there was a big drive to stamp out illiteracy in the countryside. The higher-ups opened a small school in the village temple and Grandpa became a teacher there. The first thing he did was to teach his students to read all of the surnames in the Book of Family Names . Next he taught them how to trace the Three-Character Classic in the dirt with sticks. After the higher-ups decided to gather all the students from Ding Village, Willow Hamlet, Yellow Creek and Two-Li Village into the temple school, they sent a qualified teacher to replace Grandpa, who began teaching the new curriculum: the Revised Three-Character Classic , Chinese poetry and civics (‘Our country is the People’s Republic of China and our capital is in Beijing.’) It was after Grandpa stopped teaching that he took on the role of caretaker. He rang the school bell, looked after the grounds and made sure that no one stole anything from the temple.

And so it went on for decades. While the other teachers were rewarded with salaries, Grandpa received his compensation in the form of excrement and urine from the school toilets, which was used to fertilize our family’s fields. Year after year, decade after decade, Grandpa took care of the school and was treated as a teacher, at least by the villagers. Yet when it came to paying salaries, the school didn’t treat Grandpa as a teacher. Only when it suited them: when they were short-staffed or needed someone to teach a class. Then they were only too glad to call him in as a substitute.

That afternoon, when the county director arrived at the school, Grandpa was out sweeping the courtyard. When he learned that the director had come to see him personally, he flushed with excitement, tossed aside his broom and hurried to greet him. At the sight of the director standing at the school gate, grandpa’s face turned an even deeper shade of autumn.

‘Hello, chief! Come on in and sit down.’

‘No time for a sit down,’ the director answered. ‘Professor Ding. . every committee in the province has been ordered to go into the villages and get the peasantry to sell blood. My department has been assigned fifty villages. That is why I’m here today. I called a meeting to mobilize the villagers, but before I could say more than a few words, I ran into a bit of a snag.’

‘Sell blood, did you say?’

‘You’re respected throughout the village, and everyone looks up to you. Since Ding Village doesn’t have a mayor right now, it is time for you to step up,’ said the director.

‘My God. . you want them to sell blood?’

‘The Department of Education has been ordered to mobilize fifty villages as blood plasma resource centres. Ding Village is one of them. If you won’t take the lead in this, who will?’

‘But good heavens, you’re asking people to sell their blood?’

‘Professor Ding, you’re an educated man. Surely you must know that the body’s blood is like a natural spring: the more you take, the more it flows.’

Grandpa stood before the director, the colour draining from his face.

What had been autumn crimson was now as barren as a winter plain.

‘Professor Ding,’ the director continued. ‘May I remind you that you’re a caretaker and bell-ringer at this school, not a teacher. But every time you were nominated as a model teacher, I gave my seal of approval. And as a model teacher, you received award certificates and cash bonuses. Now I’m giving you one small assignment and you refuse to carry it out. Are you trying to show me disrespect?’

Grandpa stood at the school gate in silence. He remembered how every year, when it came time to nominate a model teacher, the maths teacher and the language teacher would vie for the honour. So intense was the competition between them that there could be no consensus, so the school always nominated Grandpa instead. After the county director had approved the nomination, Grandpa was summoned to receive his award certificate and cash bonus. Although the bonuses never amounted to much, just enough to buy two sacks of chemical fertilizer, he still had the bright-red certificates of merit hanging on his walls.

‘Other provinces have developed at least seventy or eighty villages as blood plasma resource centres. If I can’t even come up with forty or fifty, I’m going to lose my job,’ the director pleaded.

Grandpa made no answer. By now, students were leaning out of their classrooms to stare at Grandpa and the director, their heads filling the doorways and windowsills of the school.

The two instructors who had never been chosen as model teachers were watching from the sidelines, with odd expressions on their faces. Both seemed eager to have a few words with the director, but he didn’t even acknowledge their presence.

The only person the director was interested in was Grandpa.

‘Professor Ding, I’m not asking for much. Just talk to the villagers and explain that selling blood is no big deal. Tell them that blood is like a natural spring: the more you take, the more it flows. That’s all you need to say, just a few words on behalf of myself and the Department of Education. Won’t you do this for me?’

‘All right,’ Grandpa mumbled at last. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

‘Just a few words, that’s all I ask.’

Grandpa rang the bell, signalling everyone to gather in the village square for another meeting. The Director of Education reminded him to keep his speech short and to stay focused on the topic: the body’s blood is like a natural spring; the more you take, the more it flows, etc.

Grandpa stood beneath the scholar tree in the centre of the village and gazed at the assembled villagers for a very long time before he spoke:

‘Follow me to the riverbed,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’

Dutifully, the villagers followed Grandpa to the riverbed east of the village. Despite the recent rains, the riverbed was dry. Ding Village had the misfortune to be situated along an ancient path of the Yellow River, and when the river had changed course, Ding Village and the surrounding villages and hamlets were left high and dry. It had been this way for as long as anyone could remember. For hundreds, even thousands of years. Nowadays, the only water in these parts came from the spring rains.

With a shovel in his hand, Grandpa led the procession. The Director of Education and two county cadres followed close behind. The villagers brought up the rear.

When Grandpa reached the riverbed, he searched around for a moist patch of sand, rubbed it between his hands and began to dig a small hole. Before long, the hole was half-filled with water. Grandpa produced a chipped ceramic bowl and began ladling the water from the hole and pouring it on to the sand. Again and again he ladled, pouring one bowl of water after another on to the sand. Just as if it seemed that the hole had gone dry, Grandpa paused. In a matter of moments, the water began to seep in, and the hole was once again full of water.