Gu Mingzheng had gone to the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.
In Beijing, Babaoshan is as famous as Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall. The previous day, when the Islamic and Protestant teams were engaged in the tug-of-war competition, Gu Mingzheng had been sitting near the Protestant team’s spectator stands. Next to the stands there were a couple of Chinese scholar trees, and in their shadows there were some bricks on which people had been sitting. On one brick there was a discarded newspaper, and when Mingzheng picked it up to fold it into a fan, he noticed that in the lower-right corner there was a short obituary and a photograph, below which there were four Chinese characters in bold:
Because Mingzheng shared a surname with the deceased figure in the photograph, he quickly read the obituary. He learned that Gu Dongqiang had been a revolutionary who had served as both governor and minister, and when he died from illness at the age of ninety, he was the last surviving member of the Red Army, which had been active from 1928 to 1937. The obituary noted that during the period of the Eighth Route Army, Gu Dongqiang had served as the army’s underground correspondent. During the War of Resistance against Japan, he was the youngest captain of a guerrilla brigade based in the enemy-occupied areas. During the War of Liberation, he served as the acting commander of the Southwest Theater’s Reinforcement Regiment, and after the founding of New China, he served as county head, city mayor, and provincial governor, ultimately attaining the position of national minister and deputy director of some central committee. This illustrious experience attracted Mingzheng’s attention, and he quickly finished reading the obituary. Then he looked again at the photograph above the text and felt a jolt of surprise, as though his eye had been pricked by a needle. He noticed that the figure in this black-and-white photograph bore a certain resemblance to himself—particularly the thick black eyebrows, long nose, and upturned smile. His hand began to tremble and blood rushed through his veins like water through a tunnel. As Mingzheng was watching the tug-of-war competition, he gazed up at the sky—feeling that humanity was so close, yet heaven was so far, even as the world continued to advance day by day. It was at that moment that he decided to leave the competition site. His first thought as he was departing was that he should go to the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery to search for this Gu Dongqiang who, until a month earlier, had still been alive in the hospital. If only he could locate Gu Dongqiang, he would be as excited as if he had found his own father, birthplace, and home. Therefore, he left the court and headed toward the university’s main gate, and then, relying on a local subway map and a municipal transportation card, he spent an hour and a half making three loops on the subway before finally arriving at Babaoshan in Beijing’s Shijingshan District.
Babaoshan was not nearly as mysterious, divine, and inaccessible as Gu Mingzheng had imagined. Like everywhere else, the sunset left a red glow on the ground, walls, and streets, but as he emerged from the subway station and headed north, he felt as though he were entering another world. However, the pedestrians walking back and forth and the vehicles in the street were just as lively as before, as though they were all heading to the market. Mingzheng proceeded forward, and it was only after passing through a mottled and dusty gate that he noticed something unusual. The courtyard beyond the gate was very large and was paved in cement. The steam rising from the ground almost made him pass out. Because it was afternoon, the hearses in the garage were neatly arranged like coffins, and in the distance there was a series of numbered farewell rooms. The numbers ran from one to nine, each room identical to the others. There was a cypress by each entranceway, and above each doorway there was the couplet: “Born for the revolution, died for the people.” This inscription was brilliant and meaningful, like a bright cloud hovering overhead. It was now time for people to get off work, but Babaoshan was always very hectic in the morning and leisurely in the evening, so the courtyard currently only had a few workers cleaning up that day’s offerings while preparing for the next day’s visitors.
Mingzheng headed over to a car parked in front of farewell room number two. Workers were picking up used wreaths that were still intact and placing them in a truck so that they could be resold the next day, while tossing the broken ones into a different truck. As Mingzheng approached, a young man holding a wreath walked over to him, noted his Daoist robe, and asked, “Do you want something?”
Mingzheng took out his newspaper, which was wet from the sweat of his hand, and showed it to the young man. The young man glanced at it, then silently carried the wreath over to the truck. He exchanged a few words with the worker in the truck, then returned and asked to see the newspaper again. He carefully read the obituary, and asked Mingzheng several questions as though interrogating him.
“What is your relationship to him?”
Mingzheng stared in surprise, unsure how to respond.
“I asked you,” the young man said, raising his voice, “what is your relationship to him?”
Mingzheng said, “I’m his grandson.”
“Where is your residency permit? Please show it to me.”
“My grandfather and I were separated when I was young, and I’ve been searching for him ever since.” As Mingzheng said this, he gazed at the young man entreatingly, hoping he would be able to see the resemblance between Mingzheng and the figure in the photograph. However, that young man didn’t pay any attention to Gu Mingzheng’s face, and instead he just laughed and waved the newspaper. “In this area of the cemetery, which is for provincial-level cadres and corps-level officers, someone like you comes every day to search for some lost relative. In the area for prefecture-level cadres and division-level officers, we get one or two visitors every couple of weeks, while in the area for county-level cadres and regiment-level officers, there may be only one visitor every few years.” The young man stuffed the newspaper back into Mingzheng’s hand, then turned and headed toward the farewell room. By this point, the sun was already setting in the west, and the light it produced was like life itself, with the final rays containing hints of warmth and softness. Mingzheng stood motionless like a tree. He wanted to leave, but he also wanted to burn some incense. In the end, he resolved to show the newspaper to someone else. He looked and saw a truck drive up and stop in front of the entrance to farewell rooms numbers four and five. This truck was also collecting and installing wreaths, and Mingzheng headed over to it. He heard someone shouting, “Hey, hey …” and when he turned around, he saw that it was the same young man who had been heading to farewell room number two. This time the young man approached Mingzheng with a much warmer expression than before.
“Are you a Buddhist monk or a Daoist master?”
Mingzheng took out his student ID, turned it to the first page, and handed it to the young man. The ID had its intended effect. The young man looked at it and then gazed at Mingzheng, as a gentle and kind expression enveloped his face like a velvet curtain.
“Are you really a Daoist master?” he asked. “Is it true that the living Buddha from Tibet is also at your religious training center?” Without waiting for an answer, the young man eagerly continued. “Because we interact with dead people every day, everyone here carries around a Buddhist relic. Tomorrow is National Day, and if you can give me a set of prayer beads consecrated by the living Buddha, I’ll help you go to the provincial-level revolutionary households’ columbarium to look for your grandfather.”
This is what they agreed to do.
As though completing a commercial agreement, they proceeded with a negotiation, signing, and fulfillment. Then, as the man was leaving, he recommended that when Mingzheng returned the next day, he should wear his street clothes instead of his Daoist robes. More specifically, Mingzheng should wear a clean white shirt to look like a student or teacher. The next day was October 1, National Day, and Director Gong had invited an expert to come and discuss the history of the Party and the revolution. When Mingzheng returned to Babaoshan that morning, he was wearing black leather shoes, gray pants, and a white shirt. He resembled not so much a teacher or student, but rather a young person from the countryside who had changed his clothes to visit the city and expand his horizons. This time when Mingzheng saw the young man, he was under a tree in front of the funeral parlor. The young man noted Mingzheng’s clothing and smiled, whereupon Mingzheng handed him a rosary bracelet that five monks had caressed until it was shiny. The young man weighed the bracelet in the palm of his hand, as though trying to assess the power of the five monks.
“It’s oak,” Mingzheng said, and the young man nodded.
Mingzheng then accompanied the young man down Funeral Road, and it was only when they reached a small garden at the end of the road that he noticed that it was a peach blossom garden that seemed to occupy a different universe from the hectic world outside. There were rockeries, fountains, green plants, and flowers both seasonal and exotic, and on either side of the stone-paved paths there were neatly trimmed dwarf cypresses and holly bushes. The nearly ripe apples were as large as handballs, and as they hung from the trees, they pulled down the branches until they were nearly vertical. Meanwhile, the fruit-bearing branches of the late-ripening pear trees were sticking straight out. There were also various kinds of melons and other vegetables growing in the areas between the fruit trees.
After entering the garden, Mingzheng stood in shock for a moment. He didn’t think the scenery was particularly nice, and instead he felt a sense of panic, as though he had gone to a Daoist temple and found a sincere and beautiful bodhisattva. He passed through this green area, and up ahead he saw a row of buildings resembling the Palace Museum, with a roof covered in row after row of glazed tiles, like a freshly plowed garden. Behind the buildings there was a mountain that nearly reached the sky, on which the vegetation appeared nearly black. There were several dozen children standing in line in front of the complex and, in accordance with their teacher’s instructions, they were all wearing red scarves. The young man pointed at the group and observed that they were students from Beijing Cadres’ Children’s Middle School, who had been brought there to attend a revolutionary tradition class, and to search for their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The young man added, “If you follow them, you’ll be able to enter the columbarium and look for your own grandfather.”
Like magic—or like glass shards in a kaleidoscope—the young man suddenly seemed to become a completely different person. After the young man finished speaking, he departed, making Mingzheng feel as though everything that had happened was a result of the fact that the prayer beads he had given the young man had not been sanctified by a real living Buddha. If you don’t foresee my Bodhi tree, I won’t enlighten you; and if you don’t foresee my dark valley, I won’t be your Daodejing. Watching the young man walk away, Mingzheng felt as though he had slipped into a daydream. However, the teacher and students in front of him were indeed real, and he could hear the teacher telling the students to straighten their scarves, take notes, and write a reflection essay after they returned to school. Mingzheng hesitated for a moment, then headed over to them. By this point, the students had already started entering one of the old buildings, so Mingzheng straightened his shirt and joined the end of the group, as though he were a teacher bringing up the rear. As the group entered the building, two students turned and looked at him. They both nodded politely, assuming that he worked in the cemetery.
This wasn’t a Buddhist or Daoist temple, but rather the columbarium of the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery. A few workers were inside, and they watched as the students in their white shirts and red scarves poured in and headed to the elevators. One after another, the two elevators sent the students down to the basement. As the women operating the elevators opened and closed the doors, the teacher and students didn’t utter a single word during the entire process. Mingzheng was part of the last group of students to enter the elevators, and before he’d even had a chance to look at the propagandistic pictures of the Long March and the Eighth Route Army, the elevator noisily came to a stop. The door opened, and the students ran out to catch up with the rest of the group. Mingzheng was the last to emerge, and when he did, he stood in shock in front of the elevator door.
Constructed within a mountain, the columbarium for high-ranking cadres consisted of multiple terraced levels arranged in a semicircle and was as large as a hill, a mountain, or the Great Hall of the People. Each level was half a meter tall, and was connected to the next by four steps. It seemed as though the entire underside of the mountain had been excavated, leaving an empty dome. The inside of the dome was painted silver-gray, like a starry sky overhead, illuminating the entire columbarium in white light, to the point that even the water droplets on the ground were clearly visible. Mingzheng didn’t know how far down the elevator had brought them, but when he looked upward he could see row upon row of tombs and steles, neatly arranged like an army marching toward him. The tombs were made from green marble and were eighty centimeters wide and a meter and a half tall, while in front of each one there was an urn sitting in a foot-high pile of sand and gravel. On each tombstone there was a row of golden, bowl-sized calligraphic characters, with inscriptions like The Tomb of Department Director XXX or The Tomb of Bureau Director XXX. Above each inscription there was a portrait of the deceased that was twice as large as the inscription itself. At the lower corner of each tomb there was a plastic flower, behind which there was another inscription detailing the deceased’s biography and accomplishments in fighting for the revolution.
The columbarium was filled with a gentle humid scent, as the breeze from the air-conditioning blew on people’s bones, and workers were erecting a ladder to replace some bulbs in the incandescent lamps overhead. The students accompanied their teacher along a curved path into the center of the structure, as Mingzheng followed ten steps behind. Then he stood at a fork in the path leading toward the tombs, gazing up in astonishment. He stood somewhat hesitantly next to a curved path with a trash can, and after the students distanced themselves from him, he proceeded alone along a path that stepped up the inside of the mountain. He kept looking at the photographs on the tombstones on either side of him. The tombs on the first ten levels all had flowerpots with plastic flowers, but when Mingzheng reached the eleventh level, he noticed that the tombs now had tile pots with specially grown orchids. Although these orchids were not as eye-catching as the plastic ones, they had the advantage of generating a fresh fragrance that permeated the entire area. At this level, the inscriptions on the tombstones no longer read The Tomb of Department Director XXX or The Tomb of Bureau Director XXX, but rather The Tomb of Governor XXX or The Tomb of Major General XXX. Despite these subtle changes, as Mingzheng kept his gaze fixed on the tombstone photographs, he began to feel as though the nose in one photograph or the chin in another resembled his own. He placed the newspaper photograph in front of one of the tombstone photographs and compared the two, but upon realizing that they were completely different people, he then headed toward the steps. Following a path through the tombstones and looking to both sides, he advanced several dozen meters until eventually he crossed over from one set of steps to another. In this new area he saw the same tombstones, inscriptions, and specially grown orchids, with the only difference being the numbering of the area and the tombstones—like a misnumbered row of seats in a movie theater.
Mingzheng saw the teacher and students in the distance, and could faintly hear the teacher telling the students to go look for the tomb of their grandfather or great-grandfather, or their grandmother or great-grandmother. The teacher told the students to “search for traces of your ancestors and follow the path of future revolutionaries.” When Mingzheng saw the students fan out in search of their ancestors, he felt a hole in his heart. He stood among these tombstones with a vast sense of loss, as though searching for a needle in a haystack, and only after the students had dispersed into the wilderness like mushrooms did he finally pick himself up and head forward. After climbing another eight levels and thirty-two steps, he discovered a new secret. It turns out that on the lowest ten levels the deceased were all department-level officials, on levels eleven to eighteen they were all provincial-level officials and major generals, on levels nineteen to twenty-four they were all vice-ministry-level officials and lieutenant generals, and on levels twenty-five to twenty-eight they were all ministry-level officials and generals. What about above the twenty-eighth level? Would the deceased interred there all be national leaders like emperors and prime ministers?
Mingzheng wandered among the tombs with a mounting sense of excitement and shock. Alternately ascending and descending a few steps, he proceeded upward from the provincial and lieutenant-general area, ultimately reaching an area where not only were there real orchids in front of the tombs, but now each tomb had three or four flowerpots. In this area, the florists had managed to coax the plants into producing white and red blossoms whose fragrance wafted past your nose like a delicate thread. The steps here were no longer bare stone, but rather were covered in red carpet, with mahogany railings on either side. As Mingzheng continued climbing, what surprised him most was not that the titles of the deceased had become more elevated, nor that the size of the tombs and the number of flowers had increased in accordance with the titles of the deceased, but rather that the people appearing in the rare and luxurious photographs—regardless of whether they were graying or already fully gray, balding or already completely bald, whether they wore glasses or not, had a round or square face, a fat or thin face—all invariably bore a certain resemblance to him.
Standing in front of the funeral portrait of a deputy minister, Mingzheng had just noticed that the nose of the white-haired figure was just like his own—light yellow, sharp as a blade, and smooth as though it had just been polished. Just as he was wondering whether this deputy minister might be his own lost father or grandfather, he saw a lieutenant general’s portrait right next to the deputy minister’s portrait. It was positioned in the center of a tombstone that was one meter wide and one and a half meters tall. As Mingzheng viewed the photograph through the plexiglass frame, he felt the figure was looking at him as though he wanted to speak to him and reach out to him. As he was becoming excited by the figure’s look, Mingzheng noticed with alarm that there was a black mole over the lieutenant general’s right eye. He looked at the newspaper photograph, then quickly put it away and instead took out a card-sized photograph of himself. Although the backdrop of his portrait was Mount Laojun and the temple where he had lived for twenty years, which made his figure appear small by comparison, he was nevertheless able to make out the black mole over his right eye. His own mole was smaller than that of the lieutenant general, but it was in exactly the same location. Mingzheng reflexively caressed his mole, then touched the one in the photograph. As the cool glass pushed his warm finger away, he placed his own photograph next to the other one and noticed that not only his mole but also his features and skin tone were almost identical to those of the lieutenant general.
Mingzheng stared in shock.
He became convinced that he was in fact the lieutenant general’s grandson. He circled around to the back of the tomb to check the lieutenant general’s biography, résumé, and accomplishments. Beginning with the first sentence, “Zheng Rengui, from Hong’an County in Hubei Province, born on August 1, 1921,” he proceeded to read the entire inscription, including the description of how, during the Long March, the lieutenant general had climbed a snowy mountain, and how, while in Yan’an, he learned how to weave cloth and plant corn. He learned how, during the War of Resistance against Japan, the lieutenant general engaged in guerrilla warfare and bombed many buildings. He learned how, during the War of Liberation, in the battle of Menglianggu in Shandong, the lieutenant general led a battalion and engaged nationalist troops in trench warfare until the battalion’s more than three hundred men had all been killed and the lieutenant general himself had been hit by three bullets and fallen unconscious into a river of blood—though, fortunately, reinforcements arrived and he was rescued … When Mingzheng reached this point in the biography, he felt a chill run down his spine. He returned to the front of the tomb and once again placed his photograph next to the lieutenant general’s. He now felt that his skin tone and the shape of his face actually were not very similar to the other man’s after all. After repeatedly comparing the two faces, he eventually decided to go to another area of the columbarium to continue his search. Perhaps he’d be able to find his grandparents in the area for national leaders and officials?
When Mingzheng reached the ministry-level area, one level higher, his pace slowed. There was no fundamental difference between this area and the vice-ministry-level one, except that these tombs were somewhat larger—the same way that, before they died, the people buried here also lived in larger houses. The flowers and steps in front of the other tombs, together with the circular path and its moisture-resistant rubber red carpet, were all made to the same specifications and by the same brands—with the only difference being the area’s spaciousness and the materials used for the tombstones. The tombstones in the ministry-level area were not made from domestic stones brought in from a Fujian quarry, but rather had been imported from a special mining district in Australia. The material used for the vaults was even finer than in the preceding level, and the granules in the surface of the tombstones were smaller than grains of rice. Mingzheng didn’t know that the main difference between these different kinds of stone lay in their water resistance, nor was he interested in the fact that the marble used for the ministry-level tombs could be carved like jade into utensils and jewelry. Instead, he simply searched the ministry-level tombstones for a photograph to which he could compare his own. He decided that if he was unable to find his own likeness among the ministry-level tombs, he would continue his search at the twenty-eighth level and above. The higher he proceeded, the closer he got to the emptiness and solitude of the mountain peak, and the area of each level became smaller, even as the size of the tombs themselves continued to grow. What would it be like above the twenty-ninth level, or the thirty-second?
Mingzheng continued making his way upward, until he was more than halfway up the mountain. How many levels remained in the top third of the mountain? Whose tombs were at the very top? Could there be an area for national leaders? Given that on every level there were cadres and officials who resembled him, could there also be someone resembling him among the national leaders on the highest levels? Might he be a direct descendant of some national leader? Perhaps he was a former leader’s grandson, or even great-grandson? He felt like a lucky star located far from the center of a family compass; or perhaps he had been exiled altogether, to become a Daoist hiding out in the mountains?
Mingzheng resolved to continue making his way upward until he found someone who resembled himself among the national leaders at the uppermost level. He climbed from the twenty-fifth level to the twenty-sixth, where he saw a row of five ministry-level tombs, including three ministers and two army generals. He inspected them one after another, assuming that he most likely wouldn’t find anyone who resembled him more than the lieutenant general on the twentieth level. However, just as he was about to proceed to the twenty-seventh level, he noticed that, on a tomb located next to a cement column connecting this area to the one above it, there was a female minister smiling in his direction. He slowed down and went over to examine her photograph with curiosity. Standing in front of that ministry-level section of the columbarium that was one-third as large as the tug-of-war court, he walked past an area with flowers and recently watered soil. He didn’t see a resemblance to the woman, but in the left-hand corner of her one-foot-two-inch-tall photograph, there was a smaller photograph of a man. The latter image, which was only a few inches tall, buffeted Mingzheng like a typhoon. With a square face, large eyes, a straight nose, and lips that were caught between a smile and a frown, the figure looked just like Mingzheng’s father.
Once again, Mingzheng stared in surprise. After a while he went around to the back of the tombstone and read a mysterious inscription:
Lin Cuiling, born in June of 1921 in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, ultimately appointed to a ministry-level position. During the Long March, she was the Red Army’s youngest female soldier. Her entire life, she sang, danced, and fought. After New China was founded, she never married. As one of China’s first generation of foreign diplomats, she accompanied national leaders when they visited foreign countries, conducting hundreds of negotiations. She was praised by Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai as “a Chinese flower blooming on the world stage.”
The inscription concluded with this florid line, which was as brief as an epiphyllum bloom.
Mingzheng stood behind the tombstone, staring at that short inscription that ended with the phrase “a Chinese flower blooming on the world stage.” He wondered—if she had been a ministry-level figure, and furthermore never married, then what was her relationship to the man in the photograph attached to the left-hand side of her funeral portrait, who resembled Mingzheng? What was the man’s name? What had been his occupation and position? What were his birth and death dates? Although Mingzheng had hoped that this “Chinese flower blooming on the world stage” could be his grandmother, he realized that something wasn’t quite right. Although the woman never married, there was nevertheless a man’s photograph where her husband’s portrait ordinarily would be, and furthermore, this man—whose name and occupation remained unknown—bore an uncanny resemblance to Mingzheng himself. This made Mingzheng eager to leave the twenty-sixth level and ascend directly to the twenty-seventh. Even so, he remained oddly and obsessively convinced—for no real reason—that this man must be his father, grandfather, or some other close relative.
Mingzheng wanted to find someone to confirm the name, age, and origin of this man next to this ministry-level woman. He looked around and saw that the workers who had been replacing the incandescent bulbs were now heading back down the mountain with their ladders, tools, and electrical cords. One worker waved to Mingzheng and shouted, “Hey, you there! Come carry this ladder.”
Mingzheng headed over, but after taking a couple of steps, he suddenly thought of something and shuddered, then quickly turned and headed back down. He proceeded faster and faster, to the point that soon he was half running and eventually he could even hear the weight of his entire body pounding down on his knees as he ran.