Wang Sichuan went silent. The sound that came in response was utterly inhuman. We all heard it: a series of quick bursts of static electricity and a host of indescribable noises, as if someone were coughing very, very rapidly. One after another we each picked up the phone and listened. We had no idea what it might be, but we knew it had to mean something. There was a definite pattern amid the noise.
Now, reader, I know what you’re thinking: Morse code. We all jump to this conclusion because all those foreign adventure movies and novels overstate the frequency with which that simple telegraphic code is used. To be sure, explorers from other countries have and still do employ Morse code as a way to increase their chance of survival, but for us that was an impossibility. Morse code uses the Roman alphabet, and in the China of that era, Russian was the language to learn, from the first day of school all the way through graduation. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that ChineseSoviet relations soured and English became the required foreign language. We only began to learn some elementary English in the reeducation classes we took at the workers’ university once the Cultural Revolution was over. So even if it had been Morse code, none of us would have been able to understand it—we didn’t even know the ABCs.
The noise continued for another forty-five seconds before disappearing again. Wang Sichuan then hung up the phone, though the rest of us remained circled around it, waiting for it to ring again. For the next two hours, it made not a sound.
Old Tang ordered all corpsmen in the vicinity to check the phone line. He then asked Little Zhao, the former communications soldier, just what the hell was going on. Little Zhao explained that hand-crank telephones are in fact a sort of generator and can receive (and send) two kinds of calls: from another telephone or from a routing room. Just crank the lever and the other end of the line will start to ring. Because this phone had just done so, there could only be one explanation: the telephone wire still had power. The indistinct sound we heard was most likely the result of a disjunction between a dry cell that was out of power and a telephone wire that wasn’t. These wires can last for a very long time, but the dry cell was certainly already ruined. And since this sort of telephone can communicate across a relatively large distance, it would be very difficult to estimate where the call was coming from.
The group of soldiers Old Tang had sent to follow the telephone line tracked it for about one hundred feet, only to find that after joining up with the giant power cable, it too extended deep into the sinkhole. This gave Old Tang the basis for a materialistic explanation. The power cable and the telephone wire, he said, had undoubtedly begun to affect one another. When we got here, he’d sent a couple guys to check on the generator. While fiddling with it, they must have somehow enlarged the electrical current, which then penetrated the insulation of the telephone wire and caused the phone to ring. As for the patterned regularity of the noise, it was probably just the sound of static electricity running through the circuit. This felt like a sensible explanation. Wiping the sweat from our faces, we were so relieved we nearly congratulated one another.
Only Pei Qing refused to accept it. Continuing to stare at the phone, he shook his head at Old Tang, his face unfathomable. Old Tang asked Pei Qing what was the matter. Pei Qing looked at us for a moment, then, taking the phone in hand, he began to cautiously rotate the crank, gradually gaining confidence and quickening his pace. Somehow, the call went through! Placing the phone against his ear, he looked at us, brought a finger to his lips, and motioned for silence.
Describing the event later, we would all say this call had been placed straight to hell. The call continued soundlessly for around ten seconds, and I thanked God for not giving us any further scares. Then, once more, the phone released that indescribable noise.
Pei Qing listened for a moment, then brought the phone up so we could hear: that continuous high-frequency cough, no different than before. “Have you ever seen The Eternal Wave[1]?” he asked.
CHAPTER 24
The Eternal Wave
It wasn’t that we were stupid, we just didn’t know what Pei Qing meant. At the time, nobody knew anything about telegraphs except for that di-di-di sound they made in the movies. And you young folks born after the seventies, even if you’d watched a bunch of old movies, would you therefore know, upon hearing a rhythmic series of knocks, that it was some kind of meaningful signal? I doubt it. Thus it was truly incredible to us that Pei Qing could make some kind of connection. Finally, it was Little Zhao who said something. “Engineer Pei, do you mean that the sound we’re hearing is a telegram?”
“Listen,” said Pei Qing. “Do you hear that—pa-pa-pa-pa, pa. It starts over every thirty-four seconds.” He raised his arm and glanced at his watch. “Each time the duration is exactly the same.” He looked over at us. “It’s not a person on the other end of the line. It’s an automatic transmitter on a loop.”
“Are you sure?” asked Old Cat, narrowing his eyes at Pei Qing.
Pei Qing nodded several times, then turned to Little Zhao. “During basic training, did you communication soldiers memorize telegraphic code?”
Little Zhao nodded, chagrined. “But I’ve pretty much forgotten it all.”
“Will it come back to you if you listen to the code?” asked Pei Qing. He gave the phone to Little Zhao and asked us for a piece of paper. I had no idea what was going on, but I took a workbook from my pocket and handed it over. Little Zhao’s brows wrinkled as if he were being forced to do something against his will. With a great show of effort he put his ear to the phone and listened for the code.
To this day I still have that notebook. Here is what he wrote down:
281716530604714523972757205302260255297205222232
After he finished, we stared uncomprehendingly at the string of numbers he’d written. Looking over the numbers once more, Little Zhao stated confidently that it was a message in standard Chinese telegraphic code. Chinese telegraphic code has codes for about seven thousand different characters. Even a professional telegraph operator often needs a codebook to interpret lesser-used characters. What hope was there for Little Zhao, who’d been trained in no more than the fundamentals? Still, he split the numbers into groups of eight, giving him six phrases, though among these he could understand only the most commonly used codes.
Extreme28171653
—06047145
—23972757
Us20530226
Stop02552972
—05222232
Based on these few characters, all we could determine was that the person or people who’d set the automatic telegraph weren’t Japanese. We passed the text around so everyone could take a look, but it was only for show. We merely took it up, moved our eyeballs symbolically, and passed it on, like the text of a long presentation being passed around some basic-level meeting. Only two people—I remember this very clearly—examined the text in great detail. One was Old Cat; the other was Pei Qing. Old Cat scanned it once, his brow wrinkling immediately. Pei Qing, on the other hand, stared at it, biting his lower lip all the while. Then, suddenly, he spoke up: “I think I understand it.”
We all turned to him at once. “My father was our town’s telegraph operator,” said Pei Qing. “When I was little, I would translate messages for him. I’ve probably seen codes for more than a thousand different characters. Now, when I send telegrams, I write the code directly. I don’t need a postal worker to translate it for me.”
1
Released in 1958,