The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (6 page)

The two corpse walkers raised their hands over their heads. The soldiers ordered them and the innkeeper to stand along the wall, side by side with the dead body. Since there was no electricity in those days, the soldiers lit the corpse walkers' white paper lantern and began to ask them questions right there on the spot. Piggy said that the whole thing was pretty weird with the room lit so dimly.

LIAO:
Who were the corpse walkers?

LUO:
They were brothers from Shaanxi Province. The older one was thirty-five, stocky and very muscular. The younger was thirty-one, thinner and taller. Their father had been in the profession for many years and was known in the region as
Guijianchou
—warrior that scares the ghost. The two brothers inherited the profession from him at an early age. They said they had tried to be farmers but gave it up because they couldn't make ends meet. When the soldiers pressed them for information regarding the dead woman, the two brothers looked at each other, shook their heads, and said it was a violation of their professional code to disclose information about the dead. The soldiers slapped their faces and pointed their rifles at their heads, shouting: Chairman Mao teaches us, leniency toward those who confess and severe punishment for those who refuse to cooperate. Scared shitless, the brothers both fell to the floor and confessed everything.

LIAO:
Who was she?

LUO:
The deceased was the wife of an officer in the Nationalist army. When the Nationalists were defeated, the officer and his wife ended up wandering from place to place. It was wintertime, and the wife caught pneumonia. On her deathbed she made her husband promise to return her body to her hometown for burial. He bought a wheelbarrow, put his wife's body and two suitcases in it, and began pushing it along the winding mountain roads of Xishenba, where he met the two brothers. The weary officer promised to pay them a large sum of money if they would deliver his deceased wife to her native village. They accepted the deal and carried the woman for two months over the treacherous terrain. When Piggy and I saw them, they were only sixteen kilometers from their final destination.

LIAO:
What happened to them?

LUO:
The soldiers made the two brothers carry the corpse to the county government building. They were locked in a dark room, together with the corpse.

LIAO:
Those poor guys. Corpse walking was quite labor-intensive, much harder than farming. They were not exploiters, but working-class people—the allies of Communism.

LUO:
I agree that corpse walkers were working-class, and if the corpse had been, say, a poor peasant girl, those two would have gotten off easy. But they had committed a double crime: first, they engaged in a business connected with tradition and superstition; second, they were employed by a Nationalist officer. It was considered quite a serious crime to cooperate with an enemy.

Anyway, in the 1950s, it was not uncommon to see people executed after being denounced at a “speak bitterness” session. So after Piggy told me what he'd done to those corpse walkers, fear took hold of me. Soon the village square was packed with gawking spectators. I could see people's heads moving in the slight drizzle. Loud drums and gongs drowned out the chatter of the crowd. Some who couldn't get in climbed up onto the roof of the grain collection station. Country folk seldom got to visit the city and had no access to entertainment all year long. Public denunciation meetings offered free drama for many onlookers. None of them wanted to miss it.

A makeshift stage had been set up next to the grain warehouse. The newly appointed county chief sat behind a long table in the middle wearing a gray suit like Mao's. Next to him were the head of the government Land Reform work team and three soldiers. About a dozen wooden chairs and stools were placed in the front row. They were reserved for the head of the village militia, the chairman of the newly formed Poor Peasant Revolutionary Committee, and several peasant activists. Soon the loud gongs and drums stopped. The county chief grabbed a microphone that occasionally blasted out piercing squeals. He moved his mouth closer: Let's first bring Zhang Kan, the evil landlord, Liu Chan, the notorious bandit leader, and their lackeys out on stage.

I felt somewhat relieved that the corpse walkers were not called. People standing near the stage shuffled around to make way for the criminals: More than ten people were pushed onto the stage. They were wearing tall dunce caps, their hands were tied to their backs, black cartoon boards hung in front of their chests with characters such as evil landlord Zhang Kan, et cetera. Then the county chief raised his right arm and shouted, “Down with the exploiting class and kill the evil landlords and the bandits!” As if on cue, people all raised their right arms and shouted in agreement. After the slogan shouting died down, some poor peasant activists stood up and began to tell dreadful stories about how badly they had been treated and exploited by those landlords before the Communists came. Their testimonies were followed by another round of slogan shouting. Then the soldiers escorted the pair of them and their lackeys out to an open field nearby, and the whole bunch was shot dead on the spot.

LIAO:
What about the corpse walkers?

LUO:
After the county chief announced the execution, people started getting restless and asked: I heard some corpse walkers were arrested last night. Where are they? The county chief wasn't about to let them down. About half an hour later, the corpse walkers were paraded onto the stage. People immediately pushed toward the front, trying to take a good look at these people who were supposed to possess legendary powers that could make a corpse walk. The gathering became quite chaotic and several kids were trampled in the crush. The soldiers on the stage stood up and jumped down into the crowd to help maintain order. They tried to push the crowd back from the stage. The county chief screamed on the microphone: Order, order, don't push. Chaos will create opportunities for our class enemies to stir up trouble.

But the people wouldn't back down. Who could blame them? The older brother and the
cheongsam
-wearing corpse had been tied together, back-to-back. The younger brother was forced to put on the black robe and carry the white lantern and the basket with fake paper money. The scary mask was tied to the back of his head. The older brother had a black sign hung around his neck that said “The Lackey of the Counterrevolutionary Corpse.” When a soldier pushed the elder brother's head down to show regret, the head of the corpse, tied to his back, appeared to look up. We could see her permed hair and makeup. It was quite a frightening but comical scene. People began to ooh and ahh. A woman in the audience screamed: She is an evil fox!

LIAO:
Isn't it taboo to insult a corpse? Didn't people worry about retribution for blaspheming the dead?

LUO:
People were so caught up in the moment that traditions and taboos went totally out the door. It was like a circus. The crowd kept getting rowdier. The excitement was quite contagious. Some younger guys tried to climb onto the stage to touch the corpse. The soldiers wrestled with them, attempting to push them down. It was a real mob scene. Then suddenly we heard a loud crash: the stage had collapsed. People were screaming and falling over one another. One soldier raised his gun and fired at the sky several times before the crowd became silent and under control.

Luckily for the two brothers, their kung fu skills came in handy. They were able to dodge the attacks from the mob and survived with some minor injuries. The soldiers then untied the corpse from the elder brother's back and sent both of them back to the dark room. That night the two brothers broke a window and escaped. They were soon discovered by soldiers on patrol, who chased after them for several kilometers. The elder brother, though shot in the leg, didn't want to surrender. As he stumbled forward up on the mountain, he accidentally stepped on a loose stone and fell into a ravine. After that the younger one was caught without any resistance.

LIAO:
Was he executed?

LUO:
The younger one was allowed to wrap the bodies of his brother and the army officer's wife in straw mats, and he dug a grave and buried them together outside the village. Then he was deported back to his local village with the death certificate of his brother. I heard later that the government charged the elder brother posthumously with “refusing to admit crimes and committing a sacrificial suicide to honor a counterrevolutionary.”

LIAO:
What an ending.

LUO:
But that wasn't the end. Several days later, the village officials had some unexpected guests: the relatives of the Nationalist officer's wife. They had received a letter from the officer telling them to welcome home the body, and they had set up an altar and were prepared to hold a wake. They waited and waited, but the corpse walkers never showed up, and eventually they got word of what had happened at the public denunciation meeting.

LIAO:
What could they do? She had already been buried.

LUO:
The relatives cried and screamed and went all the way to the county chief's office. They begged him to give the body back. Normally, the county chief wouldn't dare meet such a request for a Nationalist officer's wife. But the fiasco at the public denunciation meeting plus the killing of a corpse walker, who was considered a member of the working class, had made him nervous.

He was afraid that the relatives of the dead woman could take the issue to a higher level of government and get him into trouble. So he let them dig up the body. The relatives then hired some professional mourners, who carried the body home. It was quite a procession in the old-fashioned style, which the county officials pretended they didn't see.

It had been a long journey home for that woman. As for the elder brother, it was really sad that someone who had spent his whole life returning the dead to their ancestral homes should end up getting buried in a place far away from his own home.

THE LEPER

A year ago, I met a medical doctor named Sun outside Shimenkan, a village in the mountainous region of Yunnan Province. Dr. Sun used to have a cushy practice at a government-run hospital in Beijing, but in the midnineties he joined China's underground Christian movement, and his religious beliefs eventually cost him his job. Since then, he has been traveling around Yunnan preaching Christianity and offering medical help.

About two years ago, while visiting a tuberculosis patient in Shimenkan, he came across a dilapidated hut hidden in the woods on the slope of the mountain. Intrigued by this lonely dwelling far from town, he decided to find out who lived there. His local guide tried to prevent him, saying that this was the residence of the village leper. Dr. Sun ignored his advice. The hut's thatched roof was blackened by decay, several parts of the clay walls had collapsed, and on a bench outside there sat an elderly couple, astonished at the sight of a visitor. The man's name was Zhang Zhi-en and the woman was his wife. Dr. Sun told me their story and I decided to interview them. After hours of driving on a winding, red-dirt mountain road, I found Zhang sitting in his yard, dozing off in the sun.

LIAO YIWU:
How old are you?

ZHANG ZHI-EN:
I was born in the year of the sheep. So I should be seventy-five this year. This is my new wife. She is a horse—seventy-six years old.

LIAO:
How long have you lived here?

ZHANG:
Oh, for many years. I used to live down in Shimenkan at the foot of the mountain. But the village people didn't allow me to get close to them. They said I was contagious. So I just moved up here. Before Dr. Sun visited us, we hadn't talked to a living person for years.

LIAO:
How did you contract leprosy?

ZHANG:
My bad luck started when I accidentally killed a snake. I don't remember what year it was. I think it was before Deng Xiaoping came to power and began to give some land back to peasants from the collective farms.

LIAO:
Deng's economic reform started in the late seventies.

ZHANG:
OK. Early one morning I went to the mountain to dig some herbs so I could sell them at the local market. I used to make my living that way. As I was climbing, one of my feet caught on a piece of rock and I fell. While I struggled to get up, I spotted a wild azalea near my foot. The azalea root is a type of rare herb and it can sell for big bucks. So I took a berry hoe out of my backpack and carefully dug around the plant. It turned out the root was quite fat, worth a lot of money. While I was lost in happy thoughts, a snake darted out from the bushes and wrapped its body around the azalea root. It had rough brownish skin, and I saw that it was what we called a Ma snake. I was startled and began to shake. Before the snake had a chance to attack, I hacked at it with the hoe. I missed its head the first time but cut its tail off. The snake's tongue darted out and it writhed in pain. I aimed my hoe at its head and whacked it a couple more times. When I was sure the snake was dead, I dug out the azalea root and went home.

Soon after, I began to be haunted by the experience. My skin itched and I felt cold all the time. I wore a cotton-padded coat even in the middle of summer. I tried all sorts of herbs, hoping to find a cure for myself. Nothing worked. One day, I went to buy some salt at the nearby market and bumped into the head of the collective farm. When he saw that I was shivering with cold in the summer sun, he asked what was wrong. I said I was possessed by the spirit of the Ma snake.

He was shocked and his face turned ugly. Those Ma snakes are holy creatures. They're dragons on earth! It's a taboo to kill them. You're doomed.

LIAO:
Doomed?

ZHANG:
The collective-farm leader began to spread all sorts of rumors about my disease. Since Ma snakes sound similar to leprosy,
mafengbing
in Chinese, he told people that I was suffering from leprosy. He contacted the local leprosy clinic, but their damn doctor didn't even want to get close to me. He examined me from five feet away and said I was suffering from leprosy. I tried to argue with him. He said, Look at your face. It's as pale as ashes. If you don't have leprosy, what else can it be?

Several militiamen from the village put on face masks and gloves and dragged me to the local leprosy sanatorium. I went through several tests and everything seemed to be normal, but they wouldn't allow me to leave. Instead they assigned me to work in the kitchen, where I ended up cooking for other patients for four years. Eventually the director of the hospital realized that it was against Party policy to lock a healthy person inside a leprosy hospital. So they let me out.

LIAO:
Did you have any contact with leprosy patients while you worked there?

ZHANG:
Of course. We hung out together all day long. It was no big deal. Nothing happened to me. When I got home, the world had changed. Chairman Mao had already died, and Deng Xiaoping had taken over. The commune no longer existed. They'd had a public meeting and distributed all the land to individual households. Since I wasn't around, they didn't leave me anything, not even a piece of dirt. Even if I had been around, they would have told me that I wasn't eligible because I was a leper. So I became homeless overnight—no land and no home. But I didn't give up, and I began to petition the local government. I told those officials: I come from generations of poor peasants. Didn't Chairman Mao say that poor people are the pillars of the Communist society? Why should I have to put up with this shit?

The government offices didn't know what to do about me. Finally, a leader from my village made a proposal: since I was a bachelor and was way past marriage age, he promised to fix me up with a girl from another county. In this way, I could move out of the village and get a wife and some land in another county. Why not? That didn't sound too bad. So I accepted. The girl's name was Xu Meiying. Neither of us was picky. Soon after we met, I thanked the matchmaker, held a wedding banquet, and moved out of Shimenkan. As you know, in the rural areas, women normally move in with the guy's family after marriage. I did the opposite. The locals called me a relocated son-in-law.

LIAO:
Did your wife know about your past at the leprosy sanatorium?

ZHANG:
She had stayed at the same leprosy sanatorium for a while and was also released, like me, because her test results came back negative. Even so, people were afraid to be around her. That was probably why they fixed us up together. Even now, people here are scared of leprosy. If they think you might have it, they'll immediately lock you up in an isolated ward. Over the years, many healthy people have been sent to the hospital because fellow villagers suspected they had leprosy. So Xu Meiying and I turned out to have a similar history. Before me, she had several boyfriends. None of them had a good reputation. None of them made an honest living on the farm. They were either petty thieves or scoundrels. Compared with the other guys, I was a much better catch.

I moved in and we began to sleep in the same bed. She was about three years younger than I was. When we first lived together, they had just started building this road. That shows you how long ago it was. We farmed together and life was OK.

LIAO:
Did you have kids?

ZHANG:
No. My wife was sick for many years.

LIAO:
I was told that they burned her to death. When did that happen?

ZHANG:
I don't remember exactly. I think it's been ten years. She had met an evil dragon and was possessed by its spirit, and we couldn't find a cure. It all started in the spring. As I was plowing the field, another Ma snake jumped out at me. I didn't want to kill it, but the snake looked so menacing. I was scared and smashed it to death. Soon after that was the Qingming festival, when everyone in the village goes to visit the cemeteries and pays tribute to the dead. My wife visited her mother's tomb on that day. After she came back, we had a guest—a relative of hers from Fumin County. She stayed with us for over three months. This relative gave her some colorful new cloth. My wife made a quilt out of it.

LIAO:
Wait, I'm lost. Let's go back to the evil dragon.

ZHANG:
That night, there was a terrible thunderstorm. Pouring rain. Right before dawn, a big clap of thunder struck. Our whole house shook. Suddenly, the evil dragon appeared along with the thunder, coming down like the lid on a big cauldron. I could see the head of the dragon half-hidden inside the cloud, its tail wagging back and forth over the village cemetery. My wife opened the window and tried to peek at what was going on outside. As soon as she opened the window, I heard a loud scream. I ran in and found her collapsed on the floor. Her eyes were closed and she couldn't say anything. Suddenly she jumped up, screaming like a devil, saying that her head was killing her. Then she lost her eyesight. She also became deaf.

I was terrified and took her to see many local doctors. I spent all of our savings. I forced her to drink every kind of herb that the doctor had prescribed, but she kept getting worse. Nobody knew what had caused her illness. I almost went crazy. News about her illness started to spread all over the village. The stories became more and more dramatic and weird. Everyone in the village began to believe that my wife's illness was an act of retribution for my killing of two Ma snakes. They said I had upset the dragon, and that it had used its magic power against my family as revenge.

I invited the local Taoist monk to set up an exorcism. But the spirit of the dragon was too powerful for him. Then someone introduced me to a blind fortune-teller. He asked me to take him around the house. He sniffed here and there and then left without a word. I never heard from him again. I could tell that Xu Meiying wouldn't be able to live long. I went to talk with her older brother, and then he discussed her illness with the village chief. They both insisted that my wife was suffering a relapse of leprosy. Some older folks in the village even told me that her mother had died of leprosy.

LIAO:
I didn't think leprosy was hereditary. Is it?

ZHANG:
How would I know? I had no idea what to do. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. When Xu Meiying's elder brother showed up, he wouldn't come into the house. He called me outside, and I saw he'd gathered quite a group of people there, including the village chief. Her brother told me that they had come up with a solution that would be good for me. Then, like a school of fish, the village people came to shake my hand, one after another. They all said the same thing: This will be good for you in the long term.

LIAO:
What were they talking about?

ZHANG:
I had no clue. As a relocated son-in-law, I really didn't have much say in village affairs. If I had tried to argue with them, they would have drowned me with their spit.

Anyway, the next morning the whole village showed up. They called me outside and asked me to stand apart and not to move. They took the door off, placed Xu Meiying on the door, and carried her away. Her brother told her that they were going to take her to a hospital. She was too weak to respond. He yelled at everyone to step aside, and they carried her out of the courtyard and down to the foot of the mountain. According to tradition, every household in the village contributed a bundle of wood until they formed a big pile. They tied Xu Meiying to the door with ropes and then put her and the door on top of the pile. Someone poured kerosene, making sure the wood was fully soaked. Then they lit the fire.

LIAO:
Did you do anything to stop them?

ZHANG:
Several guys held me back. All I could see was a plume of black smoke shooting up into the sky until it blocked the sun. Then the flames got really strong. I didn't want to look, but curiosity got the best of me. I craned my neck and stood on my toes. All I could see was a wall of fire. Xu Meiying's body was like a piece of skin that began to curl up. Its color kept getting darker and darker.

LIAO:
I can't believe they set her on fire while she was still alive. Didn't she react?

ZHANG:
She was blind and deaf. She hadn't eaten for days and she was probably already in a coma. Even if she had been awake, it would have been only seconds before she died. The flames were so strong that I could feel the heat from several feet away. The pile collapsed and her body sank into the fire. Then all the young guys threw their wooden sticks into the fire.

LIAO:
What wooden sticks?

ZHANG:
In case Xu Meiying tried to jump up and run away. If she had, they would have beaten her back into the fire.

LIAO:
What a lawless mob.

ZHANG:
What are you talking about?

LIAO:
I'm talking about the people who killed your wife.