The Four Books by Lianke Yan

Author:Lianke, Yan [Lianke, Yan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Planting Crops

1. Old Course, pp. 381–86

In the spring, the residents of the ninety-ninth returned from the riverbank because they needed to spread fertilizer and hoe their wheat fields. The Child had once again gone to attend a meeting where the higher-ups demanded that the district make good on the per-mu amounts they had promised during the previous year’s harvest season, and when he returned to the ninety-ninth, he took out his gun, oiled it, and left it to dry in the sun. Then he put a bullet in the chamber, and placed the gun on a cloth-covered tray. With the Theologian following behind him carrying the tray and the gun, the Child walked past each building, and whenever he saw someone, he would ask,

“Are you confident we’ll produce ten thousand jin of grain per mu?”

The person would look surprised.

“If you are not confident that you can meet the quota, then just take this gun and shoot me right here and now. I just ask that you shoot me from the front, so that I’ll fall forward when I die.”

The person would look first at the Child, then at the pistol on the tray the Theologian was carrying. Then he would nod to the Child and say, “As long as the others are confident, I am definitely confident as well.” The Child would smile with satisfaction, and from under the cloth covering the tray would remove a fist-sized pentagonal star cut out of slick paper, and hand it to the person. The Child wasn’t distributing blossoms anymore, and instead had begun handing out pentagonal stars. Whoever acquired five stars was still permitted to return home. People were no longer as obsessed with earning red blossoms and red stars as they had been when they were smelting steel. But there also wasn’t anyone who said they didn’t want a large star, or who would accept one only to rip it up or throw it away. They would accept the stars in a very restrained manner, pretending they didn’t care about them at all, while in reality they would carefully place them in one of the books they were permitted to read. I knew that many people, such as the Scholar, the Physician, and the criminals who had mastered the black sand steel-smelting technique, would act very dismissive when publicly accepting one of these stars, and would toss it onto a table or their bed. As soon as they found themselves alone, however, they would carefully hide it where no one would easily find it.

As the Child was awarding each pentagonal star, he would ask,

“Do you think we can produce ten thousand jin of grain per mu in our experimental field? If we can’t, you should shoot me. I just ask that you shoot me in the chest, so that I’ll fall forward when I die.”

Everyone responded that it could be done, and that they would work with the Child to make it happen. They even said that not only would it be possible to produce ten thousand jin; even fifteen thousand jin should be within reach.

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