“Sorry, I don’t recognize you,” he replies.
“Won’t you try one more time?” the laughing one responds, his voice soft and high-pitched like that of some homosexual.
“Sorry, I can’t,” he repeats gently.
The laughter bursts into long waves, and this time, he recognizes the big fat face, round like the dumplings eaten by truck drivers in the north. Chairman Man, the most powerful man under the eastern sky. He has not seen him for a long time, therefore he is a bit confused. Actually, Chairman Man, born in the year of the Snake, two years after him, a man full of demonic plots leading China’s Cultural Revolution, is still alive. More precisely, he is conducting the most terrifying campaign of elimination ever seen in the history of humanity. This extraordinary emperor has displayed all kinds of acts to awe the people with his championship mettle, the most well-known being swimming across the Yangtze River. Why is he now appearing as a ghost? Why is he borrowing the features of some resident of the underworld? Curious, he strains his eyes to look at the face opposite him and slowly starts to make out the features of the king of the north. Chairman Man’s face floats in space, his eyes squinting with joy, his lips turned up to provide the melody of a provoking smile.
“Greetings, Comrade,” says his visitor from the north.
He interrupts: “Where did you come from, Great Older Brother?”
“I am great indeed, but I am no brother of yours. And don’t call me Comrade either because my once brilliant patina is faded. That other one is dead and he turned into a decomposed corpse a long time ago.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Chairman Man asks most condescendingly. “Thank you. If that would please you. Oh, all the diplomatic forms you know by heart! Oh, the Western cheese gives out a smelly scent to the nose!”
Chairman Man starts to laugh louder, and this time he shows two rows of small and yellow teeth like those of some rural woman who lacks hygiene and is lazy with her grooming. His eyes squint small in a look that both teases and despises:
“You are very polite…the useless and fake politeness of the white men. Me? I challenge all protocol, step on all opinions and customs. I impose my own rules on everything.”
He starts laughing even louder, and now a foul smell comes out of his wide opened mouth. Normally, Chairman Man never opens wide his mouth. When he speaks or laughs, he opens it just to the degree he has calculated. Everybody knows that Chairman Man never brushes his teeth, believing that the tiger has its strength because it never brushes its teeth. Maybe he thinks such mimicry will bring him saintly power, make him a champion like some strong wild animal. The only difference is that, usually, a tiger opens its mouth really wide when it yawns as well as when it roars, while Chairman Man acts in reverse. Is that some mysterious artifice that only he understands?
Ending his provocative laugh, the great helmsman from the north continues:
“The word ‘comrade’ is dead and dead with it are all those past formalities. Between you and I, what remains forever is the emperor of China and the vassal of Vietnam. A rock cannot turn into a blade, even if people call it so. Only idiots believe the magic trick that turns white paper into a dove. I thought you were smarter than that.”
“‘At seventy,’ our ancestors taught us, ‘if one is not yet blind or crippled, one does not boast of being good.’ Everyone can still make a mistake before standing in front of the grave.”
“Humility — whether it is sincere or fake — is only a game of those without talent or who have short necks and small throats. Throughout history did you ever see any powerful emperor who was reserved in front of his people? Maybe you would remind us of the Sage Kings Yao and Shun? Those two imaginary ghostly corpses were invented to comfort dirt-poor scholars. Yao and Shun — they are no different from communism. Just votive paper clothing that people burn to please the ghosts. Those alive can’t wear it. Just things to play with or to fool the people. As toys, they are not without purpose. Just as farmers use rakes in the paddies and sickles to cut the rice when ripe, we use these special tools to lure the people to where we want them to be and to force them to do what we want them to do. Communism is much better than Cao Cao’s plum orchard.”
“This I know well, because you called the soldiers ‘Red Army comrades’ when you needed them for the Long March. Then you called the farmers your ‘peasant comrades,’ ‘pillars of the revolution,’ ‘the future launchpad of the nation’ when you needed them out in the fields to shout, to chase away the birds like half madmen or wooden puppets…When you forced them to pull up the rice stalks and feed the pigs water buffalo manure, or abandon the rice fields to the wild and dig pits to make iron, they were sung as ‘the class of saintly peasants,’ as ‘humanity’s progressive force.’ With such a clever way and with such beautiful words, you carried out the most crazy and cruel games, games that no former lord or king had ever dared attempt. Those lessons I remember very clearly. Because we once followed you and we had to pay a price, though that price was less than the one your people had to pay.”
“The people? Just wooden pawns on history’s chessboard. Whatever they do must contribute to the game. When they are no longer useful, just throw them in the fire as kindling.”
“Yes, this I know. Millions of Red Army soldiers eventually became firewood when they no longer had a place in the game. Also, this same lesson I learned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution up north, in your country. Many times has China’s history applied this slogan: ‘In military matters, it’s OK to sacrifice soldiers’; but with the scale of the Cultural Revolution, you will become the greatest gangster in that history book.”
“No brutality, no heroic greatness! Don’t you forget this.”
“I won’t forget. Maybe I lack the capacity. From my position, I would be terribly shocked to see our people eat corpses or fight each other over food…Sometimes I have doubts, I don’t have enough courage to believe what is happening right before my eyes. Don’t you know that the peasants in many Chinese cities are dying of starvation; that in those places, people eat grass like buffaloes and wild pigs; that families exchange the corpses of their loved ones so that they won’t eat those dear to them?”
“The race of humans is a race that eats its kind. This has occurred regularly in the history of mankind and of China. Have you forgotten the story of Wu Song, who inadvertently ate a dumpling filled with human meat?”
“No, I have not, but that story, I thought, happened thousands of years ago. And with people having struggled to make progress, they have left such savagery behind them. The border between man’s barbarism and civilization stands at the abolition of cannibalism and incest.”
“Really, you are a good student of some blue-eyed and high-nosed teacher. All kinds of reasoning can lead students by their noses. Me, I don’t believe in any kind of reasoning, other than what I create.”
“You exaggerate. It was thanks to Stalin’s support that you got your throne.”
“Did I get Stalin’s support or did I use him to build a throne for myself as, in the old days, Egyptian pharaohs used the slaves to build their pyramids? Either way, it’s true. It’s called the art of using one’s tongue here.”
“Chinese history has no lack of devious people. But you must be its most extraordinary example.”
“I don’t look backward; neither do I look forward. I am the only such animal on this planet. There is no second.”
“I agree. As far as cruelty and the degree of fooling around with the victims, you are tops. When you forced peasants to the fields to scream at the birds or to become amateur steelworkers, or when you indifferently look at them eating grass or each other, you unite those two traits into one.”