Yan Lianke - Lenin's Kisses

At present, the most important consideration was how to raise enough money to fund the trip to Russia to purchase Lenin’s remains. The district informed Chief Liu that it would help provide half of whatever was needed, but that Chief Liu would have to find the remaining half himself. Over the preceding several months, Liu had raised as much as he could, yet had managed to secure only a small fraction of the total amount. He worried himself sick about how to go about obtaining the remaining funds to be able to take someone to Russia to negotiate a price and sign a contract for the corpse.

Further Reading:

1) Full.DIAL. Fullmeans “entire,” and full facemeans one’s “entire face.”

3) Inside.DIAL. Means “in the middle of,” “in the center of.”

5) Afoot.DIAL. Means “under his foot.”

7) Peak.DIAL. Means “highest” or “most.”

9) Astep.DIAL. Means “walking.”

11) Field ends.The front or sides of a field.

13) Black oil.Asphalt. Because it is black, locals call asphalt “black oil.”

Chief Liu, together with his secretary and the township chief, had been on his way to Spirit Mountain, where construction on Lenin’s Mausoleum had already been under way for three months. The ground in front of the mausoleum had been broken, and the bricks and stones for building the structure had been brought up from the plateau below. But the work group had taken the pair of Hanbai jade tablets erected at either end of the plateau and placed them on the walls of the provisional latrines that had been erected for the construction site, and as a result they had become splattered with urine and excrement. Spirit Mountain was under the jurisdiction of Boshuzi township, and consequently Chief Liu had asked the township chief to take care of the situation.

The township chief had ordered, “Take the Hanbai jades down from the latrine walls.”

The head contractor replied, “This is just temporary, and besides, what are you worried about? We’ll rinse them off afterward, leave them as good as new.”

The township chief said, “I’ll fuck your mother, that’s what I’ll do. This is some of the Han jade that we’ll be using for the mausoleum.”

The head contractor said, “There’s no need to insult my mother. When we were building a bank in Jiudu, we almost used gold bricks to build the bathroom.”

The township chief said, “I will fuck your mother. Are you or are you not going to take them down?”

The contractor said, “You really don’t need to talk about my mother. The county chief has overseen all the plans, and any changes would have to be approved by him.”

The township chief then spent the entire day driving down to the county seat to negotiate with the county chief. When he arrived, Chief Liu was animatedly cursing the mother of a man from Singapore. The man’s mother had died. She was from Shiliu Village in the western part of the county, and many years earlier her son had joined the army and been sent somewhere in Taiwan. For a while it was unclear whether or not he was even alive. Years later, it turned out that the son not only had survived but had gone on to become a successful businessman in Singapore. It was said that he became so rich that he could construct a building out of bricks made from actual cash.

Despite all of his money, however, he couldn’t transfer his mother’s remains to the coast from the village where she was buried. His sister went to take a look, as did his brother, together with many other relatives who owed him favors. But given that the mother had already died, it was determined that her remains had to remain in the village. The people in the county told her son that she had passed away two months earlier. By this point the son was sixty years old, and although he was a man, he often wore the sort of floral outfits that resembled a jujube tree covered with tropical bananas and mangoes. As soon as the son returned to Shuanghuai, Chief Liu himself had gone to the Jiudu train station to join the visitor’s honorary escort, and the entire ride back he enthusiastically regaled the visitor with descriptions of the fabulous plans the county had made. When he finished, he announced, “We plan to buy Lenin’s corpse from Russia.”

The Singapore visitor was astounded. “Is that even possible?”

Chief Liu laughed. “With money, anything is possible.”

The visitor reflected for a moment, and then observed sadly that his mother had passed away. While she was alive, she had not been able to enjoy even half a day of happiness with him, but now that she was deceased, he wanted to give her a magnificent sheng burial. He had heard that a sheng burial wasn’t necessarily very expensive, and all that was needed was some bricks and stones with which to construct the tomb. The problem, however, was that theirs was only a single family in the village; it would seem just too desolate if there weren’t other relatives to help carry the coffin. He said, “Chief Liu, if you can find me another filial son, I will donate ten thousand yuan to the county, and if you can find me eleven filial sons, I will donate a hundred and ten thousand yuan. This should help you make up some of the funding you need to buy Lenin’s corpse.”

Chief Liu asked, “And what if I find you a hundred and one filial sons?”

“Then I’ll give you a million and ten thousand yuan.”

“And if I find you a thousand and one filial sons?”

The visitor replied, “Then I’ll give you ten million and ten thousand yuan.” He then added that regardless of how many filial sons the county managed to provide, the most he would be able to donate would be fifty million yuan, because if he were to give more, it would cut into the financial backbone of his business. Fortunately, with that fifty million yuan, the county would have a total of about a hundred million yuan, and if it could raise a hundred million, the higher-ups would contribute another hundred to bring the total to two hundred million — with which the county would surely have enough to negotiate an agreement to purchase Lenin’s remains.

Chief Liu placed all of his hopes on this visitor from Singapore, and on the day of the mother’s burial not only did he come up with more than seven hundred residents of Shiliu Village — including both men and women, young and old — all wearing filial caps and gowns, but he recruited more than a thousand additional filial sons from neighboring villages and townships. In this way, he organized a filial procession consisting of more than two thousand people. The caps and gowns were all prepared at the township level, for which every store throughout the township and indeed the entire county sold all the white cloth it had in stock, and garment factories worked around the clock for seven straight days. Even then, there were some people in the procession who were not able to obtain clothing for the occasion. It was agreed that those who did receive funeral garb would be allowed to keep it, and after washing it they could use it as regular clothing.

The resulting assemblage didn’t resemble a funeral procession as much as an endless sea of white-clad mourners descending the mountainside like a cloud of mist. They trampled the wheat sprouts on either side of the road, and walked all over the hill on which the grave was located. Their wailing scared off all of the crows and sparrows on the mountain; the birds dispersed like clouds in the distant sky. After the funeral, the visitor returned to Singapore, and the money he had promised disappeared without a trace. As a result, all the owners of the fabric stores and heads of garment factories went to Chief Liu demanding payment.