Golden Age by Wang Xiaobo

Author:Wang Xiaobo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astra Publishing House

* * *

1 A hutong is a small alleyway in a Chinese city.

2 Liao Zhai is a collection of classical stories by Pu Songling. They are fantastical tales also implicitly criticizing societal issues. Many have been adapted to film and TV.

6

THE NEXT DAY, IT WAS the biology lab’s turn for sanitation duty. In the past, I never paid attention to it as long as there was a mountain of toilet paper in the stalls. This time it was different. I needed to make sure everyone was impressed. I got to school early to drag Xu out of bed and started sweeping.

There were about thirty departments of various sizes occupying our building. Each department was on rotation for sanitation duty. When it was the president’s turn, he would scrub the toilets personally. The school wasn’t winning hearts and minds, so he had to work hard if he ever wanted to win over any hearts and minds. If Wang Er wanted to go on the straight and narrow path, he would have to go down this way too. After scrubbing the toilets, I used some of the waste acids from the chemistry lab to make every bathroom implement glisten. Then, it occurred to me that it wasn’t enough just to clean the bathroom, I also had to let everyone know who had done it. I got hold of large sheets of red paper so that I could write a couple of slogans down. The one over the men’s room door read:

“Welcome to the toilet!—Biology Lab.”

Above the urinal, I posted “Step forward, please—Biology cordially invites you to.”

On the back of the bathroom door, it read, “Farewell. We know you will come to miss this immaculate environment, but unfortunately it is time to work. When shall you return? Adieu from the Biology Lab.”

The slogans inside the stalls were even more spectacular. In the men’s room, it read, “Big marbles, small marbles, they all drop into the jade bowl” and “A heart as pure and white as virgin ice in the jade vase.” In the women’s bathroom, it read, “Our front gate and courtyard are overgrown with weeds, but a path has been cleared today in your honor.” Above their door was a banner that read “Gazebo of Dark Fragrances.” As for Wang Er’s calligraphy, nice would have been an understatement. If I added up all the paper I’ve used studying the masters’ engravings, it would have weighed dozens of kilograms. Just as the bathroom was starting to look like a calligraphy show, the president stormed into the biology lab and harped, “Did you write all that stuff in the bathroom?”

“Yes, sir. Do you think they are prizeworthy?”

“Prize my ass! The committee on higher education will be arriving for an inspection. You have ten minutes to clean everything up!”

Pasting up slogans was easy but scrubbing them off turned out to be hard. The committee on higher education arrived before I was finished and laughed their assess off. A green vein on the president’s forehead went rat-a-tat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.