The Fat Years (23 page)

At around six the brothers and sisters of the Warm Springs fellowship finished their evening meal and came to the church with their hearts full of thanksgiving to wait for the witness meeting to begin.

Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun had also just emerged from the county-government building and decided to say a simple prayer then and there on the street to thank the Lord for His grace. That morning at the meeting with the young and able County Head Yang, Gao Shengchan had said what needed to be said as though with the Lord’s help, stating his case thoroughly and in a dignified manner. Although the county head had remained silent throughout, Gao Shengchan was confident that Yang had listened to him attentively. As for how the official would evaluate the pros and cons of this case and what the fate of the church might be, Gao Shengchan left that in God’s hands.

When they left the morning meeting, the head’s secretary had come to find them, and advised them not to go too far and to be ready to be called back; this was a good sign. The two of them waited in a small restaurant near the government building. “Let’s say a prayer,” Gao Shengchan said, taking Li Tiejun’s hand.

County Head Yang conferred with his advisers, and then called the township leader and the businesses’ representative to an immediate meeting. The meeting lasted until after five, then Yang summoned Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun to his office. Yang thought like a bureaucrat, but he was also pretty smart. He knew that Gao Shengchan was trying to force his hand, but he also knew that for the sake of his future career he had to back down somewhat. He informed Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun that the Zhang Family Village land-requisition program was definitely going forward as planned, but, with the good offices of the county government, every family would receive increased compensation for their land. Furthermore, due to a revision in the amount of land required, the land occupied by the homes of the church members was no longer within the scope of the plan. In this way, the business-interest group had been made to give up some of their large potential profits, and the township leaders who had failed to stop corruption had been thoroughly reprimanded; the government’s credit with the people had been maintained and an organized mass protest had been prevented.

As County Head Yang formally escorted Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun to his office door he reflected that when promoted to provincial level he would no longer have to deal with the schemes of these church people. Gao Shengchan, aware that he had achieved his goal, offered up a few words of praise: Yang was a genuine mother and father to the people, he said. And Yang replied that it was the people who were
his
mother and father, and it was his duty, as a mere public servant, to serve them. In this fashion, with a mutual acknowledgment of their insincerity, they bid each other a cool good-bye.

Walking back to the church, Gao Shengchan felt he had accomplished something very good. The rights of his parishioners had been restored, and a direct confrontation between the church and the government had been avoided. His only worry was in facing those of his flock who had been so enthusiastically preparing to mount a protest, especially Little Xi. Nevertheless, Gao Shengchan never wavered as to what was important and what was not.

Meanwhile, Lao Chen and Fang Caodi were sitting in the chapel among the worshippers and looking all around for Little Xi. She was in the kitchen, and while helping prepare refreshments, she was just managing to calm herself after the emotional turmoil of the afternoon—when she looked out and spotted Lao Chen among the faithful, her heart immediately started to race again. She hid behind the door, not daring to enter the chapel. Just then she heard the sound of the Canaan hymn “What Am I?” and felt deeply moved.

Gao Shengchan and Li Tiejun entered the chapel and Gao instructed Li to ask the congregation to settle down because they had something to tell them. Then Gao Shengchan announced the new decision taken by the government on the Zhang Family Village land issue. This decision in favor of the brothers and sisters of their fellowship, he said, was an example of God’s grace, and demonstrated that God had heard everyone’s prayers. Finally, he led them all in giving thanks, shouting, “Thanks be to the Lord!” Some of the faithful were moved to tears of joy. Many of them, however, were there precisely to witness such moving reactions.

When they had settled down again, Lao Chen stood up and proclaimed in a loud voice, “Everybody, I have something I want to say to you.”

Li Tiejun tried to stop him, but Gao Shengchan indicated to Li to let him speak. Gao Shengchan knew that such events could not be prevented by force, but had to be handed over to the Lord for His disposition.

“Fellow countrymen,” said Lao Chen, “I am on the lookout for someone. Her name is Wei Xihong, also known as Little Xi.”

The people stared quietly at the stranger, but did not respond.

“I am a friend of hers,” added Lao Chen.

Still no response.

“If you know where she is,” Lao Chen continued, “please tell me. Please let me see her, because … because I love her very much and I can’t live without her. I hope you … hope you can tell me if she is here or not.”

The entire fellowship of the good people of Henan looked back intently at Lao Chen.

Lao Chen waited with rising emotion, fighting back his tears.

All he received in return was a deep silence.

Finally, he calmed himself down, nodded slightly to them to indicate that he would not persist. He turned and walked slowly toward the door.

“Lao Chen!”

Little Xi burst out of the kitchen.

Lao Chen stopped and looked around.

“Lao Chen,” Little Xi said calmly, “let’s go back to Beijing.”

EPILOGUE

A very long night, or a warning about China’s twenty-first-century age of ascendancy

H
undreds of millions of Chinese lived through an age that witnessed a storm of idealism and were baptized in that flood of idealism. Even though later on their ideals turned to nightmares and disillusionment, and an entire generation of people lost their ideals, still they didn’t abandon
idealism.

Fang Caodi and Little Xi had grown up in that turbulent era. They themselves were probably not even aware of the fact that no matter how much the times and the environment had changed, they still retained the strong character of idealism they had learned in their youth.

Even though the People’s Republic of China has been established for over sixty years, China remains a great nation of idealists. The population of China is so large that even though the percentage of idealists is small, if they were placed in some other country, their actual number would be overwhelming.

Just think of all those people currently languishing in prison or under
government surveillance—human rights lawyers, political dissidents, promoters of a democratic constitution, leaders of nongovernmental civil organizations, promoters of independent political parties, public intellectuals, whistle-blowers, and missionaries of the underground churches—no doubt all of them are hopelessly incorrigible idealists whom the People’s Republic of China version 2.0 can never cure.

No society can afford to be without idealists—especially not contemporary China.

Of course, contemporary China is fertile soil for realists, opportunists, careerists, hedonists, appeasers, nihilists, and escapists. In this age of prosperity with 90 percent freedom, they’ve found their golden opportunity and are living exceptionally well. In this age, if you are lucky enough to be born into a hereditary Party and government-aristocracy family and your roots are a deep crimson red, then all the heartier congratulations to you. In the future you will have a tremendous competitive advantage and many business resources will be looking to you to cooperate with them. If China has an aristocracy, you are that aristocracy. From the point of view of a Chinese Communist Party that intends to govern China forever, you are one of them and the Party trusts you.

At this point, before our plot takes a dramatic turn, and before we bid farewell to our heroes, let me first build somewhat on the story of three of our characters whose roots are as deeply red as red can be—Wei Guo, Wen Lan, and Ban Cuntou. It goes without saying that they are all riding the wave of China’s age of prosperity; they are big winners under the Chinese social, political, and economic model. I’m not going to spend time relating to you how they catapulted into prominence like leaping dragons and bounding tigers. I just want to tell you I predict that these three are flourishing now and they will continue to be in the ascendant—a rich, many-splendored life awaits them. Is this, perhaps, China’s destiny?

Let us return to Fang Caodi and Little Xi. That the two of them felt like old friends the minute they met and regretted they had not met earlier was wholly to be expected. They had a common language and similar life experiences. Even more importantly, for over two years the two of them had been searching for like-minded individuals, and finally they could prove that “my way is not a solitary one.”

When Lao Chen introduced them, they saw at once that they were indeed like-minded. They then seriously attempted to analyze why, when everyone around them experienced an ineffable feeling of happiness and a mild form of euphoria, they always remained clearheaded and aware. Fang Caodi said the American Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning in 2009 that some common medicines given to treat asthma, such as Montelukast, Zafirlukast, and Zileuton, could cause depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even suicidal tendencies. Maybe the asthma medicines prescribed in China had the same side effects.

Little Xi, however, said that this was pretty strange, because the antidepressant medicines she took should have had the opposite effect. These medicines stimulated the brain to secrete more monoamines like serotonin and norepinephrine, which caused people to become excited. So people like her on antidepressants should not have been able so easily to notice that other people were high. She had read a report stating that mood-altering antidepressants had already surpassed blood-pressure medicines as the most commonly used prescription drugs in America. When over-the-counter drugs were also considered, antidepressants were now
the
number-one most-used drugs in America. Many Americans who were not really suffering from clinical depression, but who didn’t feel good, whose spirits were low, or who were unhappy in their work, resorted to some kind of antidepressant. Little Xi wondered if perhaps many Chinese people were also taking antidepressants on their own initiative and feeling high all day.

Fang Caodi corrected her by reminding her that no matter how prevalent antidepressants were in China, there was no way that
everyone
was taking them. The phenomenon they needed to explain was why almost the entire nation was experiencing a feeling of a high, while clearheaded and sober people were so few.

During the entire trip from Henan to Beijing, the two of them exchanged stories of the things they had experienced during the past two years. Lao Chen could only listen until Fang Caodi drove his dust-covered Cherokee into the village where Zhang Dou and Miaomiao lived.

When Zhang Dou heard Little Xi’s voice he thought it sounded familiar. Little Xi also felt that she had seen Zhang Dou before, but could not quite remember where.

That night, Zhang Dou and Miaomiao put up a tent in their yard and gave their bedroom to Little Xi, while Fang Caodi put up a folding cot in his room for Lao Chen to sleep on.

Little Xi had already said she wanted to be with Lao Chen, but she needed a little time to adjust, a hint that she didn’t want to move in and live with him straightaway. Fang Caodi said Little Xi could stay in Miaomiao’s room for the time being, and when the weather was a little cooler, he and Zhang Dou could build on another room for her.

Lao Chen speculated that if for the moment Little Xi didn’t want to move in with him, that didn’t mean she wanted to live for a long time in the countryside. He didn’t, however, push her to decide straightaway; he thought that by staying for a while with Miaomiao and Zhang Dou and having Fang Caodi to talk to, she would avoid the prying eyes of the government, and this was not a bad idea at all.

It was very difficult for an outsider like Lao Chen to anticipate what sort of a powerful fighting spirit might be generated when people like Fang Caodi and Little Xi, who had been without a comrade to share her Chinese-style idealism for such a long time, came together. Not to mention with a strong young man like Zhang Dou as their ally.

After a detailed discussion with Fang Caodi and Zhang Dou, Little Xi gradually began to regain her memory of the first day of that lost month. It was on the eighth day of the first lunar month, after the Spring Festival holiday had ended and people started to return to work, that the television, papers, and Internet reports all carried the same news: the global economy had entered a new period of crisis.

We all suddenly felt we were facing imminent disaster, they recalled. A roller-coaster ride of varying accounts appeared on the Internet and mobile phones. In the beginning, everybody cursed America for its runaway inflation and for the overnight 30 percent drop in the value of the dollar that caused the Chinese people to lose a vast amount of their hard-earned foreign-exchange reserves. Then we heard that the southern factories had closed down, the peasant workers could not return to the cities to work, and the Chinese economy was really going to collapse this time. Next came the news that the price of gold had risen to $2,000 an ounce, that the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets had completely shut down to avoid further losses, and that martial law had already been declared in Xinjiang and Tibet. The atmosphere in Beijing changed instantly. Office workers headed for home, causing a huge traffic snarl-up, while gossip of all kinds continued to circulate. By the afternoon, the people’s response was to start stocking up on food and everyday essentials.

Zhang Dou described how at that point he and Miaomiao had gone out immediately to buy dog and cat food, and a good thing too, because after it ran out there was none available for over a month.

In any system (especially an economic system), if everyone’s activity is duplicated and multiplied so that there is only one sort of feedback without any opposing message, that system will surely collapse, they concluded. Stocking up on food and essentials worked like that. At first everyone was afraid of prices rocketing, so they bought everything, cleaned out the shelves, and stockpiled stuff at home. When everyone did the same thing, the supply was soon insufficient to meet the demand, and then genuine panic buying set in.

It was equally strange that while Beijing’s official Central Television was broadcasting news reports of social chaos all around the world, no one came on to reassure the public that supplies of food and other essentials would be sufficient to meet people’s needs. Fang Caodi said the government could not simply have been so slow to act. He and Little Xi at the time both believed that there was something suspicious about the situation—there had to be another reason for the government’s inaction.

Little Xi remembered that she had phoned around all that afternoon to various intellectuals and media people she knew to see if they had any ideas about what to do, or if they wanted to get together to discuss the situation. Everyone was too busy stocking up on food and other supplies for their own families, and nobody had the time to talk about formulating a response. In the late afternoon, Little Xi and Big Sister Song decided to close the restaurant and go home. On the way home, they noticed how few people and cars there were on the streets, just as after June 4, 1989, and during the 2003 SARS epidemic. They were carrying food back from the restaurant when someone rode by on a bicycle and grabbed a big turnip right out of Big Sister Song’s hands.

Rumors circulated on the Internet, television, and mobile networks, while police car, ambulance, and fire-truck sirens could be heard howling outside. But no night curfew was announced, so people in the courtyard organized their own mutual defense squad.

Little Xi could still not remember the events of the second day. The effort of recalling gave her a headache and made her feel sick.

She knew only that one night when she came home she had shouted, “They’re going to crack down again!” She could not sleep all night and kept mumbling to herself. Early the next morning, she went out into the courtyard to curse the Communist Party, the government, and the neighbors, and shouted that the law courts were all bullshit. She fainted soon after, and when she woke up she was in a mental hospital. This was what her mother told her after she was discharged but, strangely enough, after a while even Big Sister Song could no longer remember any of it.

Fang Caodi said he was in Guangdong at the time, and the state of anarchy lasted for seven days. For the first six, everybody was already terribly frightened because they had heard there was great chaos in various other regions. Fang Caodi had been in those areas, however, and they had not really been that chaotic. But he was given the third degree because he was an outsider. On the twelfth of the month, he slipped away to the border area where Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Hunan come together and stayed in a peasant’s house. Later on, he heard that the fourteenth had been the worst day because a riot, with looting and arson, had broken out. Many local residents tried to escape by going to the county seat, where they heard things were safer. Lots of people received the same message over and over again: “I have just had this news from the highest authorities—the country is in chaos, the government has lost control, take care of yourselves, everybody!”

Is China going to collapse? This was a question many had been asking for years. Will the Chinese government lose control? Fang Caodi had traveled all over the country, in the western regions, the central plains, and elsewhere, and he had always told everyone, “Relax, there’s no way for the disaffected to join forces; China will always experience small disturbances, but never complete chaos; the disturbances will be local in nature and will never spread to the whole country.”