Dream of Ding Village Read online

  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?

  2

  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.’

  3

  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.

  Further on, Grandpa came upon an even larger casket propped on two benches. Four engravers, one on each side of the casket, were embellishing the panels with scenes of ascending souls and heavenly greetings, as well as even more elaborate depictions of heavenly and earthly paradises. A team of artists was highlighting the scenes with generous amounts of silver and gold, giving the casket an even more sumptuous appearance. Yet another engraver had the casket lid propped against a wall, and was carving scenes of joyous feasts and glorious homecomings populated with an impressive multitude of children, grandchildren and other descendants and relations. The smiling children, handsome men, beautiful women and dignified elders were incredibly life-life, each tiny figure carved to perfection, down to the smallest detail. The dancing girls and maidservants that attended the occupant of the casket on the occasion of his glorious homecoming were lithe and sensuous, beautiful beyond description, like the palace women of some bygone imperial dynasty. The artisans displayed a solemn, almost pious, devotion to their work, as if the casket were not destined to be buried underground but placed on display in a museum.

  When Grandpa stepped forward for a closer look at the work of the five engravers, he was astonished to see that the casket was constructed entirely of cedar. Not only that, but cedar of the finest sort; each panel was a separate, seamless plank of wood. Grandpa stood silently before the casket, gazing in breathless wonder at the carvings of golden dragons and silver phoenixes, palatial gardens and pleasure palaces, villages and hamlets, luxuriant fields, flowing rivers and towering mountain ranges. One panel featured a carving of a heavenly banquet table complete with packets of Great China brand cigarettes, expensive bottles of Maotai liquor, whole roasted chickens and plates of the rarest fish to ever swim the Yellow River. There were mahjong tiles and decks of poker cards laid out, should the occupant of the casket fancy a game of chance, and nubile servant girls and stout retainers standing by, should he prefer to be fanned or massaged.

  Even more oddly, the artisans who had carved this masterpiece, this vision of paradise, had filled it with a television set, washing machine, refrigerator and an array of gadgets and household appliances that my grandfather had never laid eyes on. Next to this wealth of modern conveniences was a traditional Chinese building, above whose half-moon door someone had inscribed the words ‘People’s Bank of China’.

  The engravers’ meticulous attention to detail and total devotion to their work made it seem as if they were crafting not a funeral casket, but an image of the Buddha. Fine beads of sweat clung to their foreheads; their eyes, distended from the constant strain on their vision, bulged slightly from their sockets. They wielded carving tools of various shapes: some were long, thin blades, while others were crescent-shaped or slightly angled, or looked very much like the razors used for scraping callouses off the bottom of one’s feet. The movement of their blades sent pale golden curlicues of cedar drifting through the air and fluttering to the ground. The floor was covered with a thick carpet of cedar shavings, as numerous as grains on a threshing room floor or petals in late spring. The fragrant scent of cedar swirled through the room and into the air outside. Grandpa wondered for whom the casket was being made. None of the sick villagers he knew could afford such a lavish casket, this burial fit for a king. Taking advantage of a brief lull in which one of the engravers stopped to sharpen his blade, Grandpa said: ‘It’s a beautiful casket.’

  ‘That’s our finest model, the Dragon,’ answered the man, looking up at Grandpa.

  ‘Oh, it has a name?’ Grandpa glanced over at the casket made of pine. ‘What’s that one over there called, the one where people are being greeted into paradise?’

  ‘The Phoenix.’

  ‘And the paulownia, with the carvings just on the ends?’

  ‘The Lion King.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Grandpa, although he didn’t. ‘Who’s the Dragon casket being made for?’

  The engraver raised his head impatiently and stared at Grandpa as if he’d asked a question he shouldn’t have. After loitering in silence for a little while longer, Grandpa decided to leave. As he exited the workshop, leaving behind those exotic caskets, he saw that the sun had already shifted to the west of the sand dunes. Despite the winter sunshine, there was now a distinct chill in the air. No longer did the black lacquered coffins – with their assigned ranks of A, B and C – seem like a dark and shining lake. They were more like a battle formation, a battalion of coffins.

  A large truck parked to one side was loaded with a mountain of black coffins. Several workers were carefully balancing the last few on top. Down below, a supervisor shouted instructions to the men who were loading the truck, telling them to make sure the coffins didn’t bump or scrape each other, and watching to see that they wrapped each one in straw matting before it was loaded on to the truck. The supervisor, dressed in a short blue-padded coat with a collar of fake fur, gesticulated wildly as he barked orders to his men. His speech was crude and loud. Grandpa thought his voice oddly familiar, the sort of voice that he might hear at home in Ding Village.

  Curious to find out who was speaking, Grandpa turned around to look. Sure enough, it was a familiar voice fromhome. The supervisor was none other than my father, Ding Hui. After a moment of shock, Grandpa began wading through the sea of coffins towards his son. By now, the men had finished loading the coffins on to the truck and securing them with rope. They and my father hopped into the truck just as the driver started the engine. With a burst of exhaust, the truck rumbled through the factory gate, leaving my grandfather far behind.

  Grandpa stood on the exact spot where the truck had just been parked. As he watched it disappear, he shouted his son’s name. ‘Hui . . . Come back, son! Hui . . . !’

  *

  Then Grandpa was awake.

  When he woke from his dream, Grandpa was surprised to see my father standing at the foot of his bed, whispering, ‘Dad? Dad?’

  He told Grandpa about his visit to the county, and explained how the director of education in charge of rural development and poverty alleviation had been promoted to deputy governor in charge of the county task force on HIV and AIDS. He told him how the deputy governor had asked him to pass on his warmest wishes to Grandpa, and how he’d also promised to provide every fever patient in Ding Village with a bottle of cooking oil and a string o
f firecrackers so that they could enjoy Chinese New Year in style.

  Grandpa sat dazed on the edge of his bed, staring at my father and remembering his dream. He felt as if he were still in the coffin factory, still immersed in a dream.

  4

  Chinese New Year came and went.

  There was the usual big celebration on the first day of the lunar year, and the usual smaller celebration on the fifth day.

  Then something unusual happened. Something unexpected.

  Over New Year, many people had gone to visit relatives living outside the village. In the course of these visits, they had learned that the Wei county government was providing free black-lacquered coffins to the families of people dying of the fever. They also learned that these coffins were being manufactured in a special factory somewhere on the outskirts of the county capital. They lived in the same county, they had the same disease . . . So why, the residents of Ding Village wondered, should they settle for a cheap bottle of cooking oil and a few firecrackers, when other people were getting coffins worth hundreds of yuan?

  It was a good question. They decided to ask my dad. He’d negotiated the deal, so he seemed like the one to ask.

  A few weeks after New Year, Zhao Xiuqin and Ding Yuejin went to see my dad. When they arrived, just after breakfast, my dad was digging up the soil in a corner of our courtyard. It was the same corner where our chicken coop and pig pen used to stand; that is, until the villagers poisoned our chickens and pig. Now that he had no animals left to feed, Dad had decided to tear down the walls, dig up the soil and turn it into a vegetable patch where he could plant spicy mustard greens. Beside a mound of broken bricks, the newly turned soil was dark and muddy, a rich black muck created from years of chicken and pig droppings. You couldn’t ask for a better place to plant mustard greens. The soil had the warm familiar stink of a well-fertilized field or vegetable garden. Having stripped off his cotton jacket, my dad was hard at work turning the soil when Zhao Xiuqin, Ding Yuejin and some other villagers arrived at his gate, clamouring to know why sick people in other villages got fancy coffins, when all they got was a bottle of lousy cooking oil.