Autumn rain splatters onto the road. The early-morning sky is bright but seems imbued with a cold misery. Director Ma, dressed in a dark blue suit, climbs into his official car. Today the ‘China Dream: Golden Anniversary Dream’ ceremony will take place in Garden Square in the newly expanded Yaobang Industrial Park. This is the most important event Ma Daode has overseen since becoming director of the China Dream Bureau. He reminds himself not to stray from his prepared speech. If he wants to retain his position until retirement, he can’t afford to let his mind wander again. He repeats the five-word mantra his mistress Li Wei taught him to banish his past self from his mind: ‘You’re not me. Go away. You’re not me. Go away.’
Mr Tai, the driver, switches on the radio: ‘Thanks to the new spirit of enterprise fostered by Yaobang Industrial Park, Golden Cow Dairy Company has won first prize in the county’s technological innovation competition …’
‘Turn it down, I want to check my voicemails,’ says Director Ma, flicking through his phone. The first message informs him that Xu An, head of Ziyang Complaints Department, has committed suicide in his office, and that the public have started discussion threads about his death in the comment section of the China Dream Bureau website. Director Ma knows that this kind of negative news item must be suppressed immediately. The second message relays the disappointing news that finance for the China Dream Device has still not been approved. ‘Have we hit a traffic jam?’ he asks, without looking up. ‘Put the siren on the roof.’
‘No, that won’t help,’ Mr Tai answers. ‘Mayor Chen is cycling to work this morning and the road ahead’s been closed for him since eight o’clock.’
‘Oh, yes – how could I forget? The police did a security sweep last night to make sure his route is safe.’ A second later, Director Ma hears a loud siren and sees eight beautiful policewomen on motorbikes drive slowly past. Then Mayor Chen himself appears, pedalling along in shorts and a white Aertex shirt, his plump belly bulging like a penguin’s, flanked on both sides by four more policewomen and followed by an ambulance and a television camera van. The people who have gathered to watch gasp with disbelief and beam with admiration, amazed by his vitality and vigour.
‘What a happy scene – a great example of positive interaction between the leaders and the masses,’ Director Ma says to Mr Tai. Immediately he remembers the euphoric crowd who paraded down this road in the Cultural Revolution, holding aloft huge mangoes made of papier mâché, in honour of the mangoes that Chairman Mao had given days before to a group of Beijing factory workers who had pacified overzealous Red Guards at Qinghua University. The jubilant crowd understood that Mao’s gift of fruit signified the end of the violent struggle. Director Ma pushes that scene out of his mind, looks out through the window again and says: ‘So, Mr Tai, do you think I will have to cycle to work from now on?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mr Tai replies, starting up the engine. ‘Mayor Chen’s just doing this for show. It will be all over the evening news tonight, then he’ll be back in his chauffeured limousine tomorrow.’ He too is gazing at the three policewomen on motorbikes driving in front of them as they follow the Mayor’s cavalcade all the way to White Heaven.
As soon as Ma Daode enters the lift, a long-forgotten quote returns to him: ‘At the first sound of gunfire, I will charge. Today, I will perish on the battlefield …’ Why has that quotation from Marshall Lin Biao wormed its way back into my mind? I remember kneeling on a street, head bowed, in front of a Red Guard who was in a class above me at school, blubbering: ‘I surrender, big brother.’ But the boy next to him still bashed me on the head with a club and shouted: ‘I’ll murder you, you son of a Rightist dog.’
‘Are you dreaming you’re back on the battlefield, Ma Daode?’ Song Bin asks with a mocking sneer. His face always looks sallow and puffy in the morning. Ma Daode has heard that Song Bin’s wife wants to open a branch of the Qingfeng Dumpling Store. ‘Looks like the China Dream really is producing miracles!’ Song Bin says to the others in the lift. ‘Our Director Ma here keeps composing the most wonderful dream poems. Look at this one he’s just posted on WeChat: FORGETTING IS THE ALLY OF REAL DREAMS. / REAL DREAMS ARE THE ENEMY OF FORGETTING. / YOU ARE THE DREAM WITHIN MY DREAM. I AM THE—’
Director Ma flashes Song Bin a frosty smile and walks out through the opening doors. Then he hurries to his office, closes the door, sinks into the black leather sofa and buries his head in his hands.
He wants a few moments of peace to decide what to do about his conflicting selves. Yes, I must kill one of them off. My past self, of course. But how do I eradicate the past? My China Dream Device won’t be in production for months. I can’t wait that long: these two Ma Daodes are locked in combat and will destroy each other before then. As far as I know, only the dead are able to permanently forget the past, when they drink Old Lady Dream’s Broth of Amnesia in the netherworld, before they are reincarnated in a new body. Of course! That’s what I need. I must get the recipe at once … ‘Broth of Amnesia!’ Director Ma cries out, looking as though he’s just woken from a long sleep. ‘Come into my office, Hu! I want you to call Master Wang Lin, the snake-conjurer and Qigong healer, and invite him to this afternoon’s Golden Anniversary Dream.’ When Ma Daode’s protruding eyes are wide open, he looks exactly like a toad.
‘You do realise that Master Wang is a frequent guest of Mayor Chen?’ Hu says with a hint of condescension.
‘I don’t care what you have to pay him, just make sure he comes. Tell him he’ll be my VIP guest.’ Now that Ma Daode has fixed on a plan, his five viscera and six entrails relax. He picks up a file from his desk and skims through it. It’s a report by the head of the Internet Monitoring Unit on the China Dream Bureau’s collaboration with Number 3 Jail. The Bureau pays the jail 300 yuan a month to ensure that a selected group of inmates regularly deletes any negative comments from the Bureau’s website and replaces them with positive ones. Last month, however, two of the inmates attached graphic photographs of crash victims, which they had uploaded from social media, to a short piece about a high-speed train disaster. To prevent such mistakes recurring, the report recommends that the Bureau employs one hundred administrators to regularly check the prisoners’ political records. On the report’s final page, Director Ma writes: I AGREE. SUBMIT TO THE PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT FOR APPROVAL.
At midday, Director Ma’s car pulls up at the exact spot where three months ago the concrete house was demolished. The Buddha Light Temple is still standing, but the rest of Yaobang has been flattened and turned into a temporary car park. Director Ma recalls again the sight of shaven-headed Genzai plummeting to his death in a cloud of concrete dust. Last week, Liu Qi gave Director Ma a red envelope containing 10,000 yuan, hoping he would help get her father, Dingguo, released from detention, as her family could not afford the 150 yuan a day the police charged for his food and lodging. But for the first time in his life Ma Daode refused to take the bribe. He wants to make sure his own future is safe before agreeing to help anyone else.
A few elderly couples who have arrived early climb out of their limousines and go to chat with the welcoming hostesses. The bridal boutique owned by Ma Daode’s new mistress, Claire, has delivered tailor-made wedding clothes and placed them in a pile, ready to be handed out. The Golden Anniversary Dream ceremony is being held here to coincide with the grand opening of the steel bridge over the Fenshui River. In honour of today’s romantic event, the Municipal Party Committee has named it Magpie Bridge, after the legendary bridge spanning the Milky Way where two mythical lovers embrace once a year. The ribbon tied across the entrance to the bridge will be cut at the start of the ceremony.
Director Ma is taken aback by the lavish decorations. The bridge is laid with red carpet and adorned with a huge welcome arch made of baubles and flowers that are even brighter than the blue sky above. Claire has done an excellent job. In fifty minutes’ time, the elderly couples will follow the red carpet under the arch, cross the bridge and proceed into Garden Square, which is festooned with silk garlands and colourful balloons.
The square has been built directly above the former burial ground. A solitary willow is all that remains of the wild grove. It is an ancient tree with gnarled and jagged branches that stab out in all directions.
Director Ma knows that beneath the concrete slabs around this willow lie the dead bodies of his parents, and of his comrades and enemies who slaughtered each other for the sake of Mao Zedong Thought. Once again he remembers hearing his father mutter wearily: ‘I’m fine – let’s all go to sleep now,’ before flicking down the light switch. As I sank into slumber on the sofa, I could still hear my mother and sister talking: ‘We should wash your father’s feet …’ ‘I’ll boil up some water, then …’ ‘Is there enough in the pot? …’ ‘Yes, there’s enough. Don’t get up …’ Ma Daode smells once more the stench of suicide. When he looks at the ancient willow basking in the October sunlight, he feels his heart grow as cold as the roots clawing into the earth.
As the military band strikes up the song ‘You Are my Walking Stick’, a procession of elderly couples, the women in white wedding robes and the men in red brocade suits, begin to walk hand in hand beneath the ceremonial arch and continue slowly across the bridge. Some of the old women are wearing silver tiaras and red court shoes, like princesses from European fairy tales. Others are hunched over and tottering along on crutches, with thick jumpers over their white robes. The men on their right form a long strip of grey heads dotted with a few bald scalps and black top hats. Their traditional red brocade suits complement their wives’ white gowns in a harmonious union of East and West. One old woman sees a daisy from her floral headpiece fall onto the carpet and tries to reach down to pick it up, but trips on her veil and falls over, bringing her elderly husband down with her. The ceremonial arch stands before them like the gates of paradise. Ma Daode’s eyes moisten as he watches the elderly couples advance towards it. Claire and the women in red air-stewardess uniforms hand each of them a red rose as they pass.
Although everything is going to plan, Ma Daode is breaking into a nervous sweat, not because Claire, Yuyu and his wife are all present and observing him closely, but because since these one hundred elderly couples have begun to parade past him, his other self has started assaulting his mind with slogans and scenes from his youth.
In the middle of the night, my sister and I dragged my parents’ coffin all the way from Ziyang in a rickety wooden handcart. When we finally arrived here, my sister fell to her knees in exhaustion. We dug into the earth below the trees until we reached the water level. The coffin was too heavy for us to lift off the cart. We thought of pulling my mother’s body out and burying her first, but we couldn’t unclasp her fingers from my father’s hand, so in the end we pushed the coffin into the grave with both bodies squashed inside it. The scene replays so vividly before Director Ma’s eyes that he is convinced this place is still haunted by the spirits of the dead.
He slowly climbs onto the podium, then lifts his head to the blue sky and commences his speech: ‘Like the autumn breeze, now warm, now cold, life has its joys and sorrows. Today, though, is a beautiful day. The glorious China Dream has at last become a reality. Look at the magnificent ceremonial arch. It must be the largest of its kind in the world. And look at this multitude of elderly, wrinkled faces, beaming with hope and joy!’ After a brief pause, he bellows: ‘Let the Golden Anniversary Dream begin!’ Thank goodness my past self didn’t mess that up, he says to himself, then repeats his mantra: You’re not me. Go away. You’re not me. Go away …
While the military band strikes up again, leaders from every level of the Municipal Party Committee together with foreign businessmen from the Yaobang Industrial Park take their seats on the podium. The Buddha Light Temple on the opposite bank is encased in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. From a distance it looks like the excavation site of an ancient tomb. Arching above it like a bloodstained rainbow is a red banner proclaiming: THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE THE CHINA DREAM COME TRUE IS TO FAITHFULLY FOLLOW THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY. One elderly couple after another, now accompanied on each side by a child, circles a giant wedding cake encrusted with fondant roses, then steps onto the podium to receive a souvenir badge from Mayor Chen.
An elderly man who has been chosen to speak on behalf of the participating couples says into the microphone: ‘Honoured guests, I am eighty-one years old, and my wife here is seventy-six. We have walked through life together for fifty-two years. On our wedding day, we had a simple meal with some close friends and received one bed, two bedspreads, three jin of pumpkin seeds and four jin of sweets – and that was the end of it. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that when we reached our golden anniversary, we would be treated to such a sumptuous, Western-style wedding. If only our daughter were here, everything would be perfect.’
His wife, dressed in a dazzling white gown and with pink rouge on her cheeks, walks over to the microphone and interjects: ‘I am overwhelmed with emotion. We always dreamed of giving our only child a grand wedding like this. Since she died, my husband and I have suffered years of grief. So we can’t believe our good fortune that today we are able to participate in this beautiful, romantic ceremony.’
His eyes welling up, Director Ma walks over to these two kind souls and says: ‘My dearest mother and father, you have woken up inside the China Dream and have returned to me at last!’ Then he pinches himself and says: ‘What I mean is: you may have lost your only child, but don’t be sad, because now you are parents to us all!’ Before asking this couple to speak today, he checked their political backgrounds to ensure that they are both reliable Party members.
When the old man slips a gold ring onto his wife’s wrinkled finger, she cries out: ‘My dream has come true!’ and the crowd bursts into applause.
Director Ma raises his microphone again to say: ‘Let us thank the relevant leaders for allowing these parents to realise their China Dream, and thank our foreign sponsors for their generous support. Fifty years ago this place was a mass grave filled with nameless bodies, but today it is a Garden Square on which we celebrate golden anniversaries! The China Dream eradicates all dreams of the past and replaces them with brand-new dreams! As I look out at your smiling faces, I can’t help think of my own mother and father who lie buried in the ground beneath us. Sadly, the relentless struggle sessions they were subjected to proved too much for them to bear, so they are not able to join us today.’ As more tears fill his eyes, he tries to snap back to his senses. ‘Of course, the past must be buried before the future can be forged. Only then can our dreams come true. Only then can young people experience the beauty of love …’
‘Our daughter was murdered in the violent struggles of the Cultural Revolution,’ the old man says, his voice ringing out like a bell. ‘I’m so sad she’s not here to share this day with us.’
‘What was her name?’ Director Ma asks through the screeching microphone, looking searchingly into the man’s eyes. He thinks he belongs to the Municipal Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference.
‘Her name was Pan Hua. I am Pan Qiang.’ The old man points to the name badge on his lapel. Every eye in the audience focuses on him.
‘I don’t believe it!’ Director Ma gasps. ‘Dear comrade, I knew your daughter well! The last time I saw her, she gave me her copy of the Little Red Book. I still have it in my drawer. We have … s-s-so much … to talk about … I …’ Director Ma stutters and stalls, struggling to express all that he wants to say. Before he has reached the end of his sentence, two security guards jump onto the podium and order him to step down. When his feet touch the ground, he suddenly catches sight of his parents’ bodies. They are not under the ancient willow after all, but further away, nearer the river. He remembers now that when he and his sister were digging the grave, it was so dark they could barely see a thing. It was only after they had buried the bodies and walked some distance through the grove that the moon briefly emerged from the clouds and he caught sight of this willow’s jagged branches stabbing the night air.
Chief Ding takes over proceedings. ‘Dear compatriots and elders,’ he says. ‘Why are we promoting the China Dream? For a better tomorrow! And today’s Golden Anniversary Dream is one further step along our path. Now, let’s continue with the ceremony. The band will play us a final song and then the Ziyang Dance Troupe will perform their new ballet, The Qingfeng Dumpling Store. After that, you will all be invited to take your seats at the wedding banquet.’
A man in a white suit appears on the podium and sings: ‘“Your smile is as sweet as blossom opening its petals in the spring breeze …”’ Director Ma is placed in the back of a police car. As it speeds off towards Ziyang, he rests his head on the window and listens to the Golden Anniversary Dream fade into the distance.