Howard Goldblatt (Editor) - Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today

" 'Look not upon something that is not proper; act not upon something that is not correct,' " quoted the Professor. "Who cares whether or not he uses the story?"

"I've got a plan that might satisfy everyone," Four Eyes said as he picked up his pad of paper. "Listen to this: 'After I helped Old Chen the pensioner out of his house, I remembered his portrait of Chairman Mao. Of course it would have been impossible to leave that bright and glorious portrait in the fire. So, burning with righteous fervor, I charged back into the sea of flames. The thick smoke stung my eyes so badly that tears blurred my vision; the tongues of fire leaped toward me, but driven by ardent loyalty, I summoned up the courage to forge ahead. When I felt the wall, I looked up and-it was as if a weight pressing up against my heart suddenly fell to the ground-there was no portrait on the wall! I grabbed a quilt from the bed and rushed out of the room.' " Four Eyes was triumphantly smug as he looked around at his three friends. "What do you think?" he asked. "A case of going in like a lion and out like a lamb. You must admit it's a lot more lively."

"But can I really say that?" The Crabman was still somewhat hesitant.

"What's wrong with it? I ask you, if at that moment there really had been a sacred portrait of the chairman in the fire, would you have carried it out with you?"

"Probably, I would have."

"So why are you being such a stick-in-the-mud? Be a little more positive. When it comes right down to it, would you have taken it or not?"

"Most likely, I would have."

"Well, then, I rest my case."

Consequently, this was the statement they gave to the reporter. And so once more, we have proof that these students from Shanghai were not in the habit of being overcome by difficulties.

After the reporter returned to his district, many days passed without incident. And since the villagers spent their days fiercely hoeing the fields of corn and sorghum, they apparently forgot the matter. But the Crabman hadn't forgotten. After all, for him, it had been a personal experience, so his feelings about the subject were quite different from the gossip passed back and forth by mere observers. He sent letter after letter to Shanghai in which he boasted of his achievement to friends and relatives. The Professor could see him consulting the statement Four Eyes had written for him as he wrote these letters.

One day, Four Eyes and the others caught the Crabman completely off guard. He had just finished writing a letter and was standing near the kitchen stove, sealing the envelope with some sticky rice. As you know, some people feel elated after they have accomplished some task at hand. Take, for example, the way the team leader acted each time he got a haircut: he'd get a blissful look on his face, close his eyes, and hum a few bars of his favorite opera. The Crabman said, "Well, for guys like us, whoever has a girlfriend in Shanghai -"

"Whether she's got a job or not," Four Eyes interjected.

Abe Lincoln took up where Four Eyes left off, "A guy like that-"

Now the Professor chimed in, looking quite pleased with himself: "… is truly great!"

The Crabman, who still had the word Shanghai on his lips, registered a shocked look.

On their way to work, Abe Lincoln asked Four Eyes about the underlying meaning in the Crabman's comment.

"It's black and white," Four Eyes explained. "When he says, 'For guys like us, whoever has a girlfriend in Shanghai,' he means he has a girlfriend in Shanghai. 'Whether she's got a job or not' means his girlfriend doesn't have a job. She just hangs around the house, living off her family. In short, it means he thinks he's one great guy. I can read him like a book!"

Four Eyes might have analyzed the man's thoughts a little more thoroughly (maybe he was thinking of doing just that), but at that precise moment someone was running down the path, shouting. It was Shuanzhu, running like a scared rabbit. With one hand, he was holding his book bag tightly against his chest; with the other, he was waving a wad of-no, wait a minute, it was newspapers. If you'd seen the way he looked, you'd have thought he was a paper-boy shouting out the latest hot-news item.

There's no need to tell you, since you've all guessed by now, what was written up in that newspaper. Four Eyes picked up a copy, opened it, and there on the front page was a banner printed in red: LOYAL HEART SEEN IN BLAZING FLAMES OF ROARING FIRE: SHANGHAI HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE RISKS LIFE TO SAVE POOR PEASANT. Why, you didn't even have to read the article. Just looking at the color of the print was enough to make you think of red flames!

The contents of the article were more or less the same as the first draft that Four Eyes had come up with. To be more precise, the first part was exactly the same; just the ending was a little different. Phrases like "burning with righteous fervor," "charged back into the sea of flames," "the thick smoke stung my eyes," "tears blurred my vision," and "ardent loyalty" had all been left in. They had just been changed from the first person to the third person. But there was an added twist after the part that recorded his courageous advance. The article read: "He felt the wall, very carefully lifted the portrait down, and stuffed it under his jacket, pressing it close to his fervently burning heart. Next he turned around, yelled out, 'Long live Chairman Mao,' then rushed out of the building." Sometimes there is no such thing as compromise. Either the "east wind will prevail over the west," as Chairman Mao said, or the west wind will prevail over the east. How could Four Eyes fail to understand this fundamental concept? If you could take a minute to look at our characters now, you'd see that the Professor was scratching his head, Abe Lincoln was muttering something, Four Eyes was wide-eyed and tongue-tied, while our hero, the Crabman, had just plunked his butt down on the muddy ground as if somebody had kicked him in the shins.

Actually, the Crabman was afraid that the villagers would revile him for being such an egomaniac, and for the time being he didn't even dare raise his head. But regardless of what had happened, nobody was going to say anything disagreeable (didn't we already tell you the villagers said they'd seen just about everything?). After dinner, the team leader brought the newspaper over and sat on his heels by the doorstep. Once again, the Crabman was overcome by a sense of guilt and slipped away to hide behind the mosquito netting. Actually, he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion; the team leader had come there to ask one of the students to mark in red the passages in the article that referred to him. You see, since he couldn't read, he didn't know which parts featured him. As Abe Lincoln picked up a pen, he discovered that there really were quite a number of passages to be marked. Of course, the Crabman's exploits were inseparable from the topic of reeducating the poor and lower-middle peasants; so at each mention of poor and lower-middle peasants, how could the article not refer to the Party secretary, the team leader, and the representative of the peasants' association? Four Eyes asked the team leader why he hadn't told Shuanzhu simply to underline the relevant passages for him. The team leader threw down his pipe and swore, "That damned kid! I haven't seen a trace of him since dinner." Actually, we shouldn't blame Little Shuanzhu. Just think, from the time he finished hoeing the field until after dinner, he had already read the entire article to his father twenty times.

Henceforth, there were two famous people in our village. One was the team leader-he tucked that newspaper with all the red marking into his pant pocket, right next to his beloved pipe and his house keys, and took it with him wherever he went. Whenever he ran into a cadre from the production brigade at the commune or someone he was close to-a friend or a relative or even just the neighborhood street vendor-he would take out the article and show him the passages that were marked. And what would he do? He'd silently sit off to one side with a big grin on his face and smugly puff on his pipe.