The Richest Man

In our town the richest man was Li Wan. Once an army doctor, he was demobilized in 1963. Since then, he had been a physician in the Commune Clinic, where his wife also worked, as a nurse. He had a nickname, Ten Thousand, which referred to the amount he had in the bank. Years before, his nickname had been different: people called him Thousand, because at that time his savings had not yet reached five figures.

Li was a miser. The whole town talked about how stingy he was. There were many anecdotes of him: he used soda ash for toothpaste and soap; he made a rule for his wife that she must not put in more than four tiny dried shrimps when she cooked noodles; instead of buying a packet, he always bought four or five cigarettes at a time; he stored a lot of corn husks at home as toilet paper. Of course, frugality is a virtue. Everybody understands that, just as the last page of a household’s grain booklet reminds us:

From every meal you save a mouthful,
In a year you will have many a bushel.

But with his monthly salary of 110 yuan, almost twice a common worker’s, Li ought to be openhanded. He shouldn’t have haggled with egg and vegetable vendors in the marketplace as if he were buying an ox, and once in a while he ought to do his neighbors a small favor, like giving a kid a pencil on Children’s Day or an old man a stalk of sugar cane at the Mid-Fall Festival. No, he had never done anything like that. He had yet to learn how to give. That is indeed a difficult thing for a wealthy man to do.

In addition, few men can be rich without being arrogant. Li Wan was no exception. Though niggardly by nature, he could be extravagant. He had the best fowling piece—the only double-barreled gun in town, a German camera, and a Yellow River motorcycle. There was another man in Dismount Fort who owned a motorcycle, but that man, a welder in the Harvest Fertilizer Plant, was a fool. He rode the thing only for vanity and told all women who didn’t know him that he was an engineer. In Li’s case, these pieces of property showed substantial wealth. Li allowed nobody to touch his motorcycle and never gave anyone a ride.

Without the distinction between the high and the low, there would be no sorrow; without the difference between the rich and the poor, everyone could be contented. How wise is that ancient saying. The whole town hated Li, whose stinginess and extravagance made people’s lives unbearable. They all agreed that he deserved to be childless.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out, however, the two most powerful mass associations in town, the Team of Maoism and the League of Mao Zedong Thought, tried to enroll Li, not because he was rich but because he had once been a revolutionary officer. Besides, he was a doctor, useful to a mass organization, especially when it resorted to cudgels, swords, guns, grenades, and mines against its enemy. Li refused to join either of the associations, and his arrogance outraged the enthusiastic masses. As Chairman Mao instructs: “If you are not a friend of the people, you are an enemy of the people.”

Naturally some men in the League of Mao Zedong Thought began to think how to punish Li Wan. That was not easy, because Li was from a poor peasant family, was a Party member, and seemed to be red inside and out. Nonetheless they kept an eye on him and assigned a young man, Tong Fei, to prepare a file and collect material against him. While the whole town was busy making revolution, how could they tolerate a man who would ride a motorcycle to the mountains with a shiny fowling piece across his back and hunt pheasants every weekend?

One afternoon Tong came into the league’s headquarters and announced excitedly to the vice-director, Jiao Luming, and several other men, “We got Li Thousand this time.”

He put on the table a white paper ball and began unwrapping it. Then a broken Mao button emerged in front of them. They were shocked to see the Chairman’s neck severed from his smiling face. “Where did you get this?” Jiao asked in surprise.

“Li Thousand dumped it into the trash heap near Victory Restaurant. I saw him do it with my own eyes,” Tong said proudly.

This was a hideous crime. They decided to denounce Li Wan that very evening.

Li left work late that day after treating an injured stonecutter at the clinic. Six men were waiting for him before his house. The moment he appeared at the street corner, they went up to him, saying, “We are here to take you to a meeting.”

“What meeting?” Li licked his upper lip.

“A denunciation meeting for you.”

“For me? I’m not a reactionary element, am I?”

“Of course you are. Stop pretending. We all know you smashed the button of Chairman Mao.”

“No, I didn’t! It’s made of porcelain. Dropped to the cement floor by accident.”

It was no use arguing. They grabbed him and brought him to Carter Inn, where the league’s headquarters was. With an upright body, I’m not scared of a slant shadow, Li thought. He had seen actions in the army and knew a few top leaders in the province. Why should he be afraid of this troop of shrimps and crabs? So he followed them calmly and even smoked a self-rolled cigarette on the way.

They brought him into the dining room, where about a hundred people were waiting. In the storm of slogans Li was taken to the front and was made to wear a placard that carried the large words in black ink: “Current Counterrevolutionary.”

The director of the league, Lin Shou, announced, “Comrades, we found this in a trash heap today.” He raised the broken button. “Criminal Li Wan committed the crime. He must have hated our Great Leader all the time.”

“Down with counterrevolutionary Li Thousand,” a middle-aged woman shouted in the crowd, and people followed her and raised their fists. They realized Li differed from them not only in wealth but also in outlook. This further convinced them of his wickedness.

But Li was not easily frightened. He gave them a contemptuous smile and said loudly, “You called me a counterrevolutionary? What a joke. When I risked my life fighting the American ghosts in Korea, where were you? What have you contributed to our country and the Party? Let me tell you, I was awarded a merit citation twice. With these hands I’ve saved hundreds of revolutionaries, who are still my friends.” He threw up his hands that looked like a pair of small fans.

“‘Don’t rest on past glory, make new contributions,’” someone cried out, quoting Chairman Mao.

“Take this.” Jiao slapped Li on the face and said through his teeth, “Go on bragging, I’ll crack your skull. Damn you. You’re a current landlord.”

“Down with current landlord Li Wan,” a man shouted, and the crowd followed him, shouting in unison.

Li was stunned by the slapping and the new phrase which he had never heard before, and he kept his Mongolian eyes low. Yet he managed to say, “I’m not a criminal. It was an accident. I wore the button when I was at work. It fell to the cement floor by itself as I was washing my hands.”

“Who saw it?” Lin asked.

“Nobody, but I swear on my Party membership that every word I said is true.”

“No, he’s lying,” several people said. Li’s calm voice enraged them. Under such a circumstance another man would drop to his knees and beg for mercy, but Li, who had never been to a denunciation, had no idea of the propriety.

Then four men came in with long cudgels and ropes in their hands. They moved to the front and stood on both sides. “Will you admit your crime or not?” Jiao asked.

Though frightened, Li said, “I’ve nothing to admit. I love Chairman Mao and would sacrifice my life for him. How could I hate him? He saved my clan. My parents and grandparents all worked for landlords as farmhands. He is our Great Savior! How could I hate him?”

“Stop pretending,” Director Lin cried. “Facts speak louder than words. Show us how you love Chairman Mao, damn you.”

“Yes, show us.”

“Show us how.”

At once the room turned quiet, all eyes fixed on Li’s fat face, as if they were waiting for him to sing a passionate song, or enact a Loyalty Dance, or do anything that could display that lofty feeling. Outside, a horse started neighing and drummed its hooves on the ground.

Li straightened up a little and smiled. Clearing his throat, he said, “All right, let me tell you something. Four years ago I mailed some food coupons, fifty kilos all together, to Chairman Mao. You all starved in the famine, didn’t you? Me too. But unlike you, I ate a few mouthfuls less at every meal and saved the food coupons for Chairman Mao. Because I love him and didn’t want him to starve like us. This was absolutely true. You can check it with my former army unit. If one word is untrue, behead me.”

The crowd was thrown into a turmoil. Many of them couldn’t help laughing, saying what an idiot Li was and how come he had thought Chairman Mao needed his food coupons, but nobody would say he didn’t love the Chairman. The leaders of the league were confused by the sudden quirk, too, and they couldn’t stop chuckling.

“Be quiet. Attention please,” Director Lin shouted through his hands encircling his mouth.

To the crowd’s surprise, Hou Mengtian, a young teacher in the Middle School, went up to the front. At the sight of this short man in glasses, Li quivered, because he remembered that this man had once wanted to borrow his German camera, but he had refused his request. Hou turned to the audience and said, “Don’t be taken in by him. That’s also a counterrevolutionary act.” He turned to Li. “You think you’re mighty smart and nobody can see through you, don’t you? It’s obvious that you sent the coupons to blaspheme Chairman Mao. You meant to say to him, ‘Look, we are all starving because of your leadership.’”

“No,” Li yelled, “I starved because I loved Chairman Mao!”

“See, how he used the words?” Hou said to the crowd. “He’s blaming Chairman Mao. He starved because he loved Chairman Mao. If he hadn’t loved him, he wouldn’t have starved.”

People remained silent, their faces showing confusion and eagerness. “Damn you, egg of a turtle!” Li cursed the young man.

“Watch your filthy mouth,” Tong Fei cried.

“I can prove my point,” Hou spoke again. “Four years ago he mailed the coupons, then the next year he came here. He thought the leaders in Beijing couldn’t understand his trick? They saw through him. That’s why he, a doctor with the rank of a captain, was discharged and sent here working in our small clinic.”

Li looked blank and began trembling. It was as though he were hit on the head by a hammer, too dazed to respond to what was going on. Tears trickled down his cheeks.

“Comrades …” Hou spoke more confidently. “I suggest that we send someone to his army unit to find out the truth.”

“Oh, we were told Chairman Mao had the same ration! Oh, oh,” Li moaned and burst out sobbing, too overwhelmed to say anything clearly. People were finally convinced that he was indeed a wolf in human skin. Slogans and curses surged one after another. The men with cudgels fell on him.

“Oh, spare my life, ouch! I’m a counterrevolutionary, all right. Don’t beat me!”

“Beat him!”

“Skin him!”

That night Li was jailed in the stable behind the inn, and a group of men went to his home and confiscated all the valuables and his bankbook. From the next day on, the motorcycle and the camera became public property and everybody in the league could use them (that was how dozens of men learned to ride a motorcycle); the fowling piece was committed to the care of the league’s armed platoon. Of course, many of them enjoyed firing it when hunting pheasants and hares in the mountains.

A month later Li Wan was sent to Sea Nest Village to be reformed. Lucky for him, he didn’t labor in the fields. He served as a barefoot doctor there for five years, but without being paid. In the meantime, he wrote over a hundred letters to the Provincial Administration and Shenyang Military Region, asking for rehabilitation.

In the beginning of the sixth year his case was finally clarified. Flighty as he had been, he was by no means a counterrevolutionary. He was called back from the village. All the confiscated property was returned to him, but the motorcycle was already worn out and wouldn’t start, the camera’s lens was missing, and one of the barrels of the fowling piece had been blasted. Yet he got richer, because the bankbook was given back to him; in addition, he received a large sum of salary for his five years’ work in the village. All at once his savings doubled. On the very day when he deposited the money in the People’s Bank, the clerks there began spreading the news in town. Within a week, Li’s nickname was changed to Ten Thousand, of which he seemed to be proud. How unjust the Lord of Heaven was! Li became the richest man again. Just the interest was more than a worker could make. This is exploitation, isn’t it? everyone wondered.

Li simply despised the whole town, unable to get along with anybody. He bought a new motorcycle and a new camera, which was made in Shanghai, though. He had given up hunting but taken to fishing, so he bought himself two steel fishing poles and a large nylon net. These days he was thinking of buying a rubber boat. Still he wouldn’t lend the camera to anyone; still he would give nobody a ride; still he would haggle with vendors in the marketplace and with hawkers on the streets. People went on talking about his stinginess and arrogance. In secret, some were looking forward to another political movement.