The Fat Years (18 page)

The following day, Lao Chen took Fang Caodi with him to see Hu Yan explaining that if he wanted to know the real situation in China, he could do no better than ask Hu Yan. “Nobody knows more about the lower strata of society than she does,” he told him. “If Hu Yan says she has not heard of something, then that something does not exist.”

“When I remember something,” Fang Caodi said peevishly, “no matter what anybody says, I won’t forget it.”

Lao Chen also had another important reason for seeing Hu Yan. A few days earlier, she had sent him an e-mail with a report about research on Chinese Christian underground churches, and he wanted to ask her what she thought about
maizi busi,
“the grain does not die.”

Over lunch, Hu Yan explained what she was working on: helping the government draft policies for the administration of agricultural cooperatives and rural financial institutions, and investigating the social effects of the circulation of goods and capital in rural areas.

“If you sum it up simply,” Lao Chen asked, looking for a straight answer, “is the situation in the countryside getting better or worse?”

“Of course there are still problems,” answered Hu Yan, “but overall we’ve entered a period of positive feedback.”

Having asked for and received this conclusive answer, Lao Chen was perfectly satisfied and content. He’d visited several cities in China and he knew that first-, second-, and third-level cities were all extremely prosperous, even county-level cities were all developing very nicely. The urban people were living well and the government’s goal of a moderately good standard of living had been easily achieved. What Lao Chen was not so sure about was the rural situation. He had visited only villages near major cities and had never lived in the proper countryside for any length of time. Every so often he would phone Hu Yan and ask her if the rural situation was getting better or worse, as if he were making a long-distance call home and gaining peace of mind on hearing that things were indeed improving. Secure in the knowledge that the rural situation was now better, Lao Chen told himself that on the whole China was constantly improving, and so he could go on living his good life with a clear conscience. As far as asking for the details of the positive feedback Hu Yan had mentioned, Lao Chen didn’t need information overload; he would leave that to the experts.

“Professor Hu,” Fang Caodi asked, interrupting Lao Chen’s musings, “what do you think about the time between when the world economy entered a new period of crisis and China’s Golden Age of Ascendancy officially began?”

Hu Yan looked like she didn’t quite understand what Fang Caodi was saying.

“I mean that month in between,” Fang went on, “twenty-eight days, to be precise.”

“The front page of the
People’s Daily
reported,” Hu Yan said very patiently, “that the world economy entered a period of crisis and China’s Golden Age of Ascendancy officially began on the same day. That was the day that the American dollar lost one-third of its value in one go, and the Chinese government announced its New Prosperity Policy, or NPP. Everybody knows this. I don’t know, Mr. Fang, how you arrive at this twenty-eight-day figure.”

Fang Caodi was silent, and Lao Chen thought to himself, Old Fang, this time there is nothing you can say.

Lao Chen asked about the report Hu Yan had written on her research on the Christian underground church movement.

“We recommended,” Hu Yan said, “that the central government desensitize the question of religion—that is, abandon their sensitivity to religion. We advised the government not to treat it as a question of ‘the enemy versus us,’ or not even as a ‘contradiction among the people.’ They should normalize the question of religion—that is, they should regard religion as a normal part of life. We should learn a lesson from previous policy and not make another mistake like the 1999 suppression of the Falun Gong.”

“They absolutely should not,” Fang Caodi chimed in, “they absolutely should not make that same mistake, it would be too evil.”

Hu Yan nodded her agreement.

“Hu Yan.” Lao Chen finally came to his main question. “What do you think about the words
maizi busi,
the ‘grain does not die’?”

“I’m not too familiar with the Christian Bible,” said Hu Yan, “but I think this statement is from the Gospels, something like ‘the grain that falls upon the ground does not die.’ All Christians are aware of this passage. There is an underground church in Henan Province that is called the
luodi maizi,
the Church of the Grain Fallen on the Ground.”

“Where in Henan?” Lao Chen asked quickly. “Find the exact location for me, will you?”

“No problem.”

After they had parted from Hu Yan, Fang Caodi said, “Professor Hu is a good person, but she is not one of us.”

“Thank God,” said Lao Chen, “that there are still people in the world who are not like you.”

“I could tell from her expression,” Fang Caodi said, “she was so happy. And as I expected, she didn’t know about that lost month.”

“Fang Caodi,” Lao Chen urged him, “forget all about that so-called lost month. It’s not worth it. Life’s too short; just look after yourself.”

Fang Caodi didn’t answer. Lao Chen knew that no matter how clever he was, he could never change Fang Caodi.

Once they were sitting in the car, Fang Caodi said, “Lao Chen, do me the honor of coming to Miaomiao’s house to have dinner with Zhang Dou, Miaomiao, and me, okay?”

Lao Chen didn’t much want to go there, but since he might need his help to find Little Xi and he didn’t have anything else to do, he agreed.

His acceptance pleased Fang Caodi. “This whole area,” he said, pointing to Chang-an Boulevard as he started the car, “used to be full of out-of-town petitioners come to state their grievances to the government. I once went over there specially to see if I could find any people like me among that big crowd of people. What do you think happened? There isn’t even a single petitioner anymore, and the shacks they used to live in on the Southside have all been demolished. At first I was thinking maybe that friend of yours was hiding there.”

It had been years since Lao Chen had given any thought to all those out-of-town petitioners, but he was sure of one thing: even if there still were petitioners there, Little Xi would not be one of them. That area was close to the prosecutor’s office and the law courts, and Little Xi would stay far away so as not to be seen by anyone who knew her.

Fang Caodi continued rattling on about everything under the sun while Lao Chen more or less ignored him. In fact, he would not have agreed to dinner if he had known Fang lived so far out of Beijing.

When they arrived at Miaomiao’s house in Huairou, Fang Caodi introduced him to Zhang Dou, Miaomiao, and their pack of dogs and cats. Then he took Lao Chen into the living room. The four walls were lined with metal shelves on which were piled newspaper clippings, magazines, and other miscellaneous junk. In the middle was a desk, a folding chair, and a camp bed.

“Lao Chen”—Fang Caodi pointed to the newspapers and magazines—“these things are all the evidence I’ve collected for over two years. They prove what really happened during those twenty-eight days. You’re an intellectual. You’ve spent your whole life seeking truth and beauty. You’ve struggled to uphold what is true … you ought to be able to understand all the work I’ve done on this. Take a good look at it while I fix our candlelit dinner.”

Lao Chen was left standing by himself, grudgingly, in the room. Miaomiao came in and put a plate of chocolate cookies on top of the desk for him and then abruptly left.

Lao Chen was feeling bored. He popped a cookie into his mouth, and picked up a few out-of-date periodicals and a couple of small local newspapers, which he flipped through at random. He really couldn’t see how Fang Caodi could discern the true facts of history in them. He went on to look at odd half-pages from editors of the
Southern Weekly, Southern Metropolis Daily,
and
China Youth Daily,
and incomplete issues of the
Caijing Magazine, Southern Window,
and
Asia Weekly.

Lao Chen recalled that everything had been calm in Beijing during that period, there had been no big disturbances; if there had been even one, it would have left some impression on him. From the so-called evidence that Fang Caodi had collected, it would seem that there had been some sort of unrest in other areas of the country, but that was nothing unusual. China is so big that it’s not unusual for there to be some kind of turmoil somewhere every day, he thought. He never looked for that kind of news, and even if it did catch his eye, he would just skip over it. China is such a big country, there are so many things one doesn’t know about. These little bits and pieces of evidence collected by Fang Caodi don’t explain anything. In fact, to say that one whole month has gone missing isn’t strictly accurate, it’s just that people’s recollections of that month are different, he insisted to himself. Furthermore, if you deliberately looked for bad things happening in China, you could find plenty of examples. If you looked only for good things, you’d find a whole panorama of them. Big countries are all like that. Look at the United States or India. What’s so unusual about China? The most important thing today is that the world economy has fallen into a period of crisis everywhere, except for in China.

Little Xi, where are you? I hope you can put the past to rest, and return to the good life of the present. If you want to live with me, then we can live well together.

Perhaps it was due to the chocolate cookies, but Lao Chen began to feel better, and he became even more firmly resolved to locate Little Xi.

As the early-spring evening fell, the atmosphere of their outdoor candlelit dinner was very conducive to happiness. Fang Caodi cooked dish after dish and piled them on the table. He invited Lao Chen to taste them first and asked Zhang Dou to play his Spanish guitar for atmosphere. Nearby in the yard, Miaomiao began dancing with her dogs and cats.

Lao Chen had a few mouthfuls and thought each dish tasted pretty good. “What part of China are these dishes from?” he asked Fang Caodi.

“Chop suey vegetables,” said Old Fang. “Look closely, I’m using Sichuan peppers, Hunan black bean sauce, Guangdong shrimp sauce, Thai lemon grass, and our own coriander, sweet basil, lemon leaf, and leeks. They’re all organic. We just pick ’em and eat ’em. And we fertilize them with our own and the cats’ and dogs’ poo.”

Conversation over dinner was pleasant, and what was most surprising to Lao Chen was when Fang Caodi told him why he admired him so much. Lao Chen had always thought it was because his literary style impressed Old Fang, but Fang Caodi said it was because of something Lao Chen had once said, though he couldn’t remember it. In 1989, when Fang Caodi allowed himself to be interviewed, he insisted that he was genuinely clairvoyant. When he’d seen the military blockade on the road to the Summer Palace in 1971, he’d known the Mao Zedong–Lin Biao incident had happened. When he’d looked out of the window of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions onto Nathan Road and seen a man jump to his death across the street, he’d known that something was about to go wrong in Hong Kong, and, sure enough, the Hang Seng Index collapsed from seventeen hundred points to only slightly over one hundred. In that American commune in 1975, when his hippie friends were beating on pots and pans to celebrate the end of the Vietnam War, he’d had a vision of refugees swarming out of Vietnam, and, of course, his vision became reality. As he went on talking and talking, Lao Chen had interrupted him and asked, “What’s the significance of these premonitions? Did they change anything later?”

“Lao Chen,” said Fang Caodi, “with that one question you woke me up from my dreams. When I thought about it, my powers of premonition that I thought made me different from other people never had the slightest influence on the world, and never even changed my own fate. They really didn’t have any significance at all.” From that time on, Fang Caodi no longer considered his premonitions to be of any importance and no longer put himself under any pointless pressure. This was all due to that one question of Lao Chen’s. From that he knew that Lao Chen was an extraordinarily talented person.