Dream of Ding Village (15 page)

Ding Zuizui, nicknamed ‘the Mouth’, had arrived at the elementary school only a few days earlier. After finding out that he had the fever, he had announced to his whole family that he was moving into the school to enjoy his ‘last few days of paradise’. The day his family dropped him off, he had been laughing and chattering. From then on, there was always laughter in the school, and a seemingly endless supply of stories and jokes.

Grandpa’s announcement that Li Sanren was leaving the school and moving back home had given the residents a scare. But after hearing the Mouth tell his joke, they had recovered from their fright and were now in high spirits, smiling and laughing. Some laughed primly, through pursed lips. Others threw back their heads and roared with laughter. A few laughed so hard they actually fell off their stools, dropping their bowls and spilling soup down the fronts of their shirts.

On the day of Li Sanren’s funeral, just two days after his death, his wife didn’t cry. She did, however, ask Grandpa what was the matter with her husband’s corpse. Why did the old devil’s eyes keep popping open, and why wouldn’t his mouth stay shut? Had something been bothering him when he died, and was it troubling his soul?

Grandpa went with her to the funeral tent to take a look, and sure enough, Li Sanren was lying there with open eyes and gaping mouth. His eyes seemed bigger in death than they had ever been in his life; his eyeballs, rolled back into their sockets, were as white as a widow’s funeral cap. Grandpa thought for a moment and then, without a word to Sanren’s wife or any of the others, left the village by himself. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was going, but he knew what he had to do.

Many hours later, he returned with a freshly carved seal inscribed ‘Communist Party Committee, Ding Village.’ It was round and new, and looked very official. He had also brought a small round tin of the sticky red paste used for inking seals. Grandpa put these items in the casket himself, hoping to dispel the loss that had clouded Li Sanren’s final days. After he had placed the village seal in his right hand, and the tin of ink in his left, Grandpa told the former mayor: ‘Look, Sanren, I finally found your seal. No one stole it. It was in the school the whole time. It just fell through a crack in the floorboards.’ Grandpa placed a hand over Li Sanren’s eyes and gently closed them. This time they stayed shut. He did the same with Li Sanren’s mouth, making sure his lips stayed pressed together.

Li Sanren’s eyes were finally closed, his lips pressed shut. With his features in repose, he looked very different. Although his body in its casket was emaciated and wasted, his face was peaceful, even serene. It was the face of a man who had suffered no losses, no disappointments, no regrets. It was the face of perfect serenity.

Let me tell you a bit about my family, about my grandpa and my dad. Let me tell you about the dreams my grandpa had about my dad, and about our family. Dreams for them, and about them; dreams that were miles long and fathoms deep.

My dad had decided to move our family out of the village. Ding Village had become a cheerless and desolate place. A wasteland. It had lost its humanity. Most of the sick villagers had moved into the elementary school, and those who hadn’t now spent their days indoors at home. The streets were deserted; it was rare to see anyone moving about, or to hear the sound of voices. At some point, the villagers had stopped pasting funeral scrolls on the lintels of their doors. Death had become so commonplace, such an everyday event, that people couldn’t be bothered to go around pasting up funeral scrolls, buying fancy caskets or planning elaborate funerals. Some people stopped going to funerals altogether. When a person died, it was like turning out a light. Like extinguishing a lamp or watching a leaf drop from a tree in autumn. The village was a silent and lonely place. As quiet and solitary as a grave. Already, several families had left New Street and moved to the county capital. One family moved even further, to the city of Kaifeng
.

They were leaving in droves, abandoning the village and the fancy new houses they’d built. Ding Village was emptying out. Becoming a wasteland. Losing its humanity
.

After his own father had tried to strangle him, my dad made up his mind to leave. He was going to move his family out of the village, once and for all. But when he sat down to do the calculations, Dad came up short. If he wanted to move his family to the county capital or to Kaifeng, he realized, he’d need a lot more cash. These money troubles kept him awake at night. Early one morning, after a sleepless night spent tossing and turning in his bed, my dad went out into the courtyard and then out into the village. He walked through quiet streets until he came to the western end of the village, where he stood and watched the sun rise. As a new day broke across the plain, it brought with it the bitter scent of medicinal herbs. Dad knew that the smell must be coming from the elementary school, where the residents would already be awake and boiling up their morning doses of herbal remedies. But it was only when he caught sight of the smoke rising from the schoolhouse – those little white plumes of smoke from so many fires and pots of boiling herbs – that his heart began to pound in his chest. It beat against his ribcage as if someone were inside there, poking around and pulling at strings
.

Staring at the smoke rising from the school
,
which now seemed not so white but tinged with silver and gold
,
it had dawned on him, that with so many deaths in the village, with so many people sick and dying, the higher-ups would have to take action, do something to show their concern
.

The government would have to do something for the people of Ding Village. It couldn’t just ignore them. It couldn’t stay silent, blindly doing nothing
.

Because who ever heard of a government that saw and heard nothing, said and did nothing, took no action and showed no concern?

My father was a man born to greatness. He had come into this world to do great things. It was destiny that had made him a
son of Ding Shuiyang, a son of Ding Village, and later, a father to me
.

In the beginning, he had found himself in charge of the blood of Ding Village, and the blood of other villages for miles around. Not just in charge of their blood, but of their fate. In the end, he would find himself in charge of their coffins and graves. Father never imagined that in this lifetime, he would end up responsible for so many things, but he felt compelled to try. It was in this spirit of trial and error that he went to visit a county cadre he knew, not knowing whether or not the meeting would be a success. He was like a man pushing open a door, hoping that the sun would shine in. My father travelled to the capital of Wei county
.

Over the last ten years, the capital had grown affluent, unbelievably so. My father had an appointment with the highest-ranking official he knew: the former County Director of Education in charge of rural development and poverty alleviation, who had since been promoted to Deputy Provincial Governor. He was also the chairman of the Wei county task force on HIV and AIDS. He and my father had had many dealings and negotiations in the past
.

‘Dozens of people have already died,’ the deputy governor said to my father. ‘Why didn’t you come to me sooner? Don’t you know how much I care about Ding Village? You and your father, Professor Ding, should know that Ding Village will always have a special place in my heart.’

‘The county government,’ he added, ‘is providing free coffins to anyone who dies of the fever. Hasn’t anyone in Ding Village heard about this policy? Didn’t anyone explain it to you?’

In the course of their conversation, the deputy governor and my father spoke of many things
.

‘There’s nothing we can do for those who have already died,’ said the deputy governor. ‘But anyone who’s dying of the fever now can submit an application to the county, and as long as their paperwork is in order, they will each receive one black coffin, free of charge.’

‘Now go back to Ding Village and tell them what I told you,’ said the deputy governor, as the meeting ended. ‘By the way, I still miss those spicy mustard greens you grow in the village. Next time you visit, remember to bring some of them with you, the tender ones.’

Grandpa knew that he was dreaming, because he was seeing the sort of things you only see in dreams. He didn’t want to go on dreaming, didn’t want to see these things, but the dreamscape was so peculiar, and the scene so very odd, he couldn’t help himself. Unable to resist, he stepped through the door …

…
And found himself in a large concrete yard, with buildings all around
.

The buildings were all factories, and they were busy making coffins. It was a coffin-manufacturing plant
.

Other than that, Grandpa didn’t know where he was. He knew that he was in a dream, but he had no idea where the dream had transported him. He remembered crossing a flat, desolate plain until he reached the ancient, dried-up path of the Yellow River. Then he was on silted ground, standing in a basin that stretched as far as the eye could see. All around him were sand dunes that rose to the height of small hills that tapered off into gullies and ravines. Through the dunes, he had caught sight of the coffin factory
.

The factory was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. The ground inside the fence was covered with rows of finished black coffins. Because the coffins were of varying sizes, shapes and thicknesses, they seemed to have been classified into different grades. Chalk markings on the surface of each coffin indicated whether it was ‘Grade A’, ‘Grade B’ or ‘Grade C’
.

It must have been about noon, because the sun had reached its highest point over the plain. Dazzling rays of sunshine streamed through the air like so many golden threads
.
Through the rusted chain-link fence, Grandpa saw shimmering waves of sunlight playing over the sandy ground, rolling over the sand dunes like floodwaters
.

Grandpa stood gazing at the sea of finished coffins, their polished black surfaces gleaming in the midday sun. There were thousands upon thousands, lined up neatly on a stretch of concrete so vast it could have contained an entire village. The head of each casket was adorned with an over-sized Chinese character – one of the traditional ideographs signalling respect for the dead – written in thick gold brush strokes. Each character was the size of a large basin; each brush stoke as thick as a man’s arm. Sunlight reflected from the golden surface, dazzling his eyes
.

Grandpa knew that this was a government factory, manufacturing coffins for people dying of the fever
.

He noticed two large signs, enormous versions of the village funeral scrolls, on either side of the factory gate. They read: ‘We cherish the lives of those taken ill. / May your journey to heaven be peaceful.’ As he’d reached the gate, Grandpa had paused to talk to the security guard. ‘What sort of place is this?’ he’d asked, and had been told it was a coffin factory. ‘Who built it?’ ‘The county government,’ answered the man. When Grandpa had asked if he could go in and take a look around, the guard had said, ‘Of course. We’d never turn away anyone who wants to tour our facility.’

And so, entering the gate, Grandpa had come upon thousands of polished black coffins. They stretched before him like a dark oily lake, each with golden ideographs glittering on the surface like leaping fish
.

As Grandpa moved further into the complex, he heard the rumble of machinery, as loud as thunder. Following the sound, he came upon a cement path that wound its way around a large sand dune. As he rounded the dune, he saw in the distance two long rows of workshops. Dozens of carpenters and joiners, painters and varnishers, carvers and engravers bustled in and out of the workshops. It appeared to be an assembly line of sorts. There was a large piece of machinery
spitting out unfinished planks of wood, which were then assembled into coffins, carved with characters, carried outdoors and placed on racks, where they were painted black and varnished. When the paint and varnish had dried, someone would touch up the characters at the head of each coffin with gold paint. After this process was complete, another worker would classify the finished coffins according to quality and mark them ‘Grade A’, ‘Grade B’ or ‘Grade C’
.

The assembly line moved at a feverish pace. The carpenters and joiners, painters and varnishers, carvers and engravers, even the quality inspectors, were drenched in sweat, joining and painting and carving and checking as fast as they could. None could spare a moment to speak to Grandpa; they simply glanced up at him and went back to their work. Leaving the assembly line, Grandpa moved on to the next workshop. Along the way, he saw a middle-aged man who seemed to be in charge of grading the coffins from A to C
.

‘How can you possibly rank coffins?’ Grandpa asked
.

‘
There’s a rank to everything,’ the man answered. ‘Some people get the wheat, others have to settle for the chaff.’

He walked away, leaving Grandpa standing dumbstruck
.

When Grandpa entered the next workshop, a building constructed of pine boards and steel frames, he saw that the coffins being manufactured here were very different from the ones outside. Examining a dozen shiny black caskets, he noticed that three were made from four-inch-thick planks of paulownia wood, and two were constructed of even thicker planks of red pine. The latter was an extremely expensive timber, prized for its resistance to moisture, insects and rot, but it was rare in these parts. But it wasn’t just the materials that set apart these caskets. It was the craftsmanship. Unlike the simple ideographs at the head of the other coffins, these had characters bordered by elaborate carvings of dragons and phoenixes. The sides of each casket boasted intricately wrought carvings of souls rising from the earth, ascending to the heavens and being welcomed into the Buddhist western
paradise. With their gaudy carvings and gold adornments, the caskets looked like miniature pleasure palaces
.