The Fat Years (33 page)

He Dongsheng thought of a strange thing that had recently transpired and he just had to talk about it, would not feel right if he didn’t.

“I’m going to tell you,” he said to his captors, “a state secret. Last month a terrorist organization infiltrated a top-secret state-run chemical plant and tried to blow it up. Luckily our security forces were tipped off in advance and killed them all on the spot. The astonishing thing was that those six terrorists were all members of a fascist cell centered on Beijing—they were all students from the elite Peking and Qinghua universities. After we learned their identities, we kept it a secret and reported that they had died in an automobile accident, but not being given access to their bodies, for a while their parents raised a fuss. I’m telling you all this so you will understand that real fascism already has a firm foothold in China. For these university students to know about this secret chemical factory, they would have to have accomplices in the Party, the government, and the army. And these people have their own agenda; they have not been true Communist Party members or socialists for some time, and only ‘fascist’ can describe them.”

“Was one of the dead students named Wei?” asked Little Xi slowly.

“Wei? No,” answered He Dongsheng.

“Are you absolutely certain?” she pressed him.

“You don’t need to doubt my memory,” said He Dongsheng, “and besides Wei is not a common surname. If there was a Wei, I would definitely remember.”

Seeing that Little Xi looked relieved, Lao Chen knew she was thinking of her son, Wei Guo. His heart went out to her.

“How did you come to have advance warning?” Lao Chen asked randomly to change the subject.

“Lao Chen, you shouldn’t underestimate our security apparatus,” said He Dongsheng. “We have eyes and ears everywhere. In general, wherever people gather, we have informants … but then, how the fuck did we miss you three?”

“Why did they want to blow up that chemical factory?” Fang Caodi suddenly asked in all seriousness.

Since he had already told them about the “Prosperity amid Crisis” and the “Ruling the Nation and Pacifying The World” plans, and the nation’s grand international strategy, what else was there that He Dongsheng could not talk about?

“Let me put it this way,” He Dongsheng said. “At China’s present stage of development, the difference between our government and those fascist elements is that we want the people to have a loving and compassionate nature, not a martial spirit. But the fascists want to promote a martial or combative spirit. The chemical manufactured in that factory makes the Chinese people happy and full of love and compassion, and for that reason the fascist elements wanted to destroy it. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He looked directly into Fang Caodi’s eyes.

“Is it the chemical factory near Happy Village in the Mount Taihang region of Hebei?” Fang Caodi asked, following a sudden intuition. “The one that has its own airport?”

“You seem very well informed,” He Dongsheng said, his eyebrows raised. “It seems that there’s been a leak in our security system.”

“What does that chemical factory make that causes the people to feel happy?” asked Fang Caodi, pressing his line of inquiry. “Professor He, you agreed that you would answer whatever question we asked.”

“There’s no harm in telling you,” said He Dongsheng, “and anyway, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If you have never heard of MDMA, surely you have heard of Ecstasy. We manufacture ‘generation N’ of MDMA. It’s mild, nonaddictive, and has no bad side effects. After you take it, you feel really great, you feel like the world is full of love, you want to hug other people and tell them everything, but you’re clearheaded and don’t have any hallucinations, just like I am now.”

“What do you want such a big factory to make Ecstasy tablets for?” asked Fang Caodi, looking puzzled.

“It’s not making tablets,” explained He Dongsheng as though Fang Caodi should know, “there aren’t any tablets at all, and it’s not to sell Ecstasy to other countries. China is a big country, we’re not North Korea, so don’t get the wrong idea. We’re merely producing this chemical for our own use.”

“Just as in Aldous Huxley’s novel
Brave New World
?” interjected Lao Chen, happy to contribute a literary reference.

“I know what you’re trying to say,” said He Dongsheng a little defensively, “but we were not at all influenced by him. We have an Office of Stability Maintenance staffed by specialist scholars who conduct research on ancient and modern techniques for maintaining stability both inside and outside China. One of the scholars was working on British materials. You know that young people in Western countries like to drink and party wildly on New Year’s Eve, and when they get drunk they often cause trouble. Just look at their soccer games—the British fans are very unruly. For the last few years of the twentieth century, though, when Ecstasy became popular, New Year’s Eve violence suddenly decreased. It turned out that after those British youths took Ecstasy, they just wanted to dance around bobbing their heads, to listen to music, embrace each other, love everybody, and pour out their hearts to everybody around them. This is the effect MDMA or Ecstasy has on people, and it’s very different from the effects of alcohol or other hallucinatory drugs. Alcohol messes up people’s minds, and releases their animal instincts. Psychedelic drugs cause hallucinations and interfere with normal social communication. Our Office of Stability Maintenance had the Harbin Institute of Technology make up some pure samples of MDMA. At first they didn’t know what it would be good for; they just wanted to experiment.

“Then, when the Politburo was studying the ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis,’ one of the standing members was worried that the crackdown was going to make the people depressed and passive. That would have a negative impact on the people’s enthusiasm just when we were trying to implement the second set of our new economic-reform policies. He wondered if there wasn’t some substance that would make people feel good and positive, but without any violent tendencies that would disrupt our harmonious society. There was a spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security at the meeting who had trained at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He had been studying the American drug problem, and he jokingly said that we could have that sort of effect on society only if everyone in China took methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine, or MDMA—Ecstasy.

“That’s how it started and the more we discussed it, the more we thought it might just work. One standing member said he’d never imagined there was anything like it in the world. The chief ingredient for the manufacture of MDMA Ecstasy is sassafras oil, or safrole. You know what country produces the most safrole in the world? China. What a perfect coincidence.” He Dongsheng would have slapped his thighs, but his hands were still tied up. “Both Western and Chinese researchers have found that ingesting a small amount of MDMA is not harmful to human health, and they have not discovered any dangerous long-term side effects either. Since we could use it to make everyone in the country happy and thus improve our national stability, why shouldn’t we do it?

“Didn’t I say ours is a government that can accomplish big things? Once we said we’d do it, we did it. We built a well-managed high-spec factory in Hebei to turn out a product of scientifically guaranteed quality. Then we added MDMA to all our drinking-water reservoirs and to cow’s milk, soya milk, fizzy drinks, fruit juice, bottled water, beer, and rice wine. Except for some very isolated areas, we covered over ninety-nine percent of the urban population, and over seventy percent of the rural population. Everyone drank such a small amount that it was totally undetectable in a standard urine test. People would never know they drank it, and it would only make them experience a mild euphoria. This was only a small supplementary program in support of our economic-reform project. The real success of our ‘Action Plan for Achieving Prosperity amid Crisis’ was due to the correctness of our overall grand strategy.”

As the others listened to He Dongsheng, they broke out in a cold sweat.

“No wonder we’ve all been feeling a small-small high!” exclaimed Lao Chen in a burst of relieved enlightenment.

“Exactly,” said Fang Caodi, “over ninety-nine percent of people in the cities are high all day, every day!”

“How could you do this to the people without letting them know?” asked Little Xi a little disingenuously.

“Almost everything the Communist Party does, it does without informing the people,” replied He Dongsheng. “It’s always been that way. Many other countries put chemicals in their drinking water. In Hong Kong they put fluoride in the water to prevent tooth decay. It’s all for the people’s own good.”

“Your policy,” said Little Xi, “is designed only to keep the people ignorant so they won’t complain and just let you get away with everything.”

“That was precisely our goal.”

“Once you’d achieved your goal,” asked Lao Chen, “why didn’t you stop?”

“With things going so well, why would we stop? What’s wrong with having the whole population happy and maintaining a harmonious society? China today has the highest happiness index in the world. Religious believers are rapidly increasing while domestic violence and the suicide rate for rural women are noticeably declining … What’s wrong with all that? And besides, we really don’t dare to stop now. If we do, the people might grow unhappy. Some foreigners who’ve lived in China for a long time begin to feel very strange when they go home. They don’t feel as happy as they did in China, and they always want to come back. We have a great many international friends like them! When other foreigners criticize China, they stand up and defend us, telling their compatriots that if they went to live in China for a while, they’d see that the Chinese people are the happiest in the world.”

“Not everyone has the same reaction,” said Fang Caodi. “There are four of us here who have never been controlled by your drugged water.”

“I’m telling you,” said He Dongsheng, “this is a good drug, but it’s only a minor drug. There’s no way it can control people. It just changes their feelings a bit. Whatever the people have to do, they can still do it. Our follow-up studies indicate that over ninety-nine percent of people have the same positive reaction, but perhaps there is an extremely small number of people who for some reason or another don’t have any reaction. It’s good enough that the great majority feel happy, because any minority will have their emotions influenced by the majority. Of course, there are some exceptions among the exceptions. I can see that you all belong to the extremely small minority made up of an extremely small number of people who remain unhappy. Just like me! I deliberately don’t drink our Chinese water or other beverages, just to experience what it feels like to see everybody else high when I’m sober. But today I ‘fell off the wagon,’ as the Americans say. The effect is best the first time. Just look how much I talked after I drank a couple of glasses of your tap water. I’ve talked so much … including telling you all sorts of things I never should have.”

“When did you start putting Ecstasy in the water?” the hitherto silent Zhang Dou suddenly asked. “Exactly what day was it?”

“The exact day is very clear,” answered He Dongsheng, beginning to cough. “It was the last day of the three-week crackdown. On that day, the water works of all first-, second-, and third-level cities and all provincial cities put it in the drinking water at the same time. That was because we were going to officially announce the start of China’s Age of Ascendancy the next day and we had to properly calibrate the people’s emotions.”

“I’ll kill you, you bastard!” shouted Zhang Dou. He sprang onto He Dongsheng and pressed He’s feeble body down into the chair with the full weight of his hulking frame. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!”

The others frantically tried to pull him off, but Zhang Dou was too strong and they couldn’t restrain him.

“Zhang Dou, let him go! Are you mad?” the three of them shouted.

He Dongsheng was making choking noises. His face had gone a deep red.

“He hurt Miaomiao! He’s the bastard who poisoned Miaomiao!” shouted Zhang Dou with his hands closing around He Dongsheng’s throat. It looked like he was going to choke He Dongsheng to death right there in front of them.

Suddenly Miaomiao gave a big scream. Zhang Dou loosened his grip on He Dongsheng and turned to look at her. Miaomiao was standing in the doorway with a plate of cookies in her hand; she was glaring at Zhang Dou. Zhang Dou climbed off gingerly.

He had almost murdered their hostage, and the other three were very shaken. He Dongsheng, rescued from the grip of death, still had not caught his breath and was struggling to speak.

“He’s the one who poisoned Miaomiao,” repeated Zhang Dou. “Miaomiao started to act strange, like she was sick, the day the crackdown ended, and it was all because they put that shit in the water.”

“You’re mad! You’re all stark raving mad! You …” gasped He Dongsheng hoarsely. For a moment he thought he’d just dare them to kill him and get it over with, but his logic took hold and he decided that daring these kidnappers to do such a thing might not be in his best interests.

Lao Chen was still the most cool-headed. He approached He Dongsheng with a glass of water, but He Dongsheng looked away. “I’ll untie you so you can drink some water, okay?” Lao Chen said gently.

He Dongsheng was somewhat moved. Lao Chen loosened the rope. “What just happened was unplanned,” he said, “whether you believe it or not. The roosters are just about to crow and then it’ll be light. Your long dark night is about over. Just be patient a little while longer, all right? Do you have any more questions to ask?” Lao Chen addressed the other three while he helped pour water into He Dongsheng’s dry throat.

“Yes. I almost forgot,” said Fang Caodi. “That lost month. Or, strictly speaking, that lost twenty-eight days. Professor He, the one week of anarchy and the three-week crackdown that you just told us about—except for the three of us and you, everyone I’ve asked about it doesn’t remember that time. Lao Chen, you don’t remember either, do you?”