Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

the process grew strong and healthy. No more high blood pressure and no more insomnia. He said the sound of drums and gongs energized him; his legs quaked, and, like a donkey spotting its mother, he stamped his feet and snorted through his nose. When I linked his memoirs and my recollection of him wearing the papier-mâché donkey, I understood why that goofy smile had adorned his face. He said that when he followed the beat of the drums and gongs and started dancing in his papier-mâché donkey, he felt himself slowly changing into a donkey, specifically the black donkey that belonged to the independent farmer Lan Lian, and his mind began to wander, free and relaxed, as if he were living somewhere between the real world and a wonderful illusion. To him it felt as if his legs had become a set of four hooves, that he had grown a tail, and that he and the papier-mâché donkey around his waist had fused into one body, much like the centaur of Greek mythology. As a result, he gained a firsthand perception of what it felt like to be a donkey, the joys and the suffering. Marketplaces offered few items for sale during the Cultural Revolution, and most of the hustle and bustle derived from people who had gathered to witness a variety of spectacles. Winter had recently arrived, so the people were bundled up, except for youngsters who preferred the look of thin clothing. Everyone wore red armbands, which were especially prominent on the arms of youngsters in thin khaki or blue military jackets. On the older residents’ black, tattered padded coats, shiny with grime, the armbands were incongruous adornments. An old chicken peddler stood in the entrance to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative holding a chicken in her hand; she too wore a red armband. Have you joined the Red Guards too, Aunty? someone asked her. She pursed her lips and said, Red is all the rage, so why wouldn’t I join? Which unit? Jinggang Mountain or Golden Monkey? Go to hell, she said, and don’t waste my time with that nonsense. If you’re here to buy a chicken, then buy one. If not, get the fuck off!
    The propaganda team drove up in a Soviet truck left over from the Korean War. Its original green paint had faded after years of being buffeted by the elements, and a frame with four high-powered loudspeakers had been welded to the top of the cab. A gas-driven generator was mounted in the truck bed, the two sides of which were lined with Red Guards in imitation army uniforms, each gripping the side with one hand and holding up a Little Red Book in the other. Their faces were crimson, either from the cold or from revolutionary passion. One of them, a slightly cross-eyed girl, was grinning from ear to ear. The loudspeakers blared so loud a farmer’s wife had a miscarriage, a pig ran headlong into a wall and knocked itself out, a whole roost of laying hens took to the air, and local dogs barked themselves hoarse. The first sounds after the playing of “The East Is Red” were the roar of the generator and static from the loudspeaker. They were followed by a melodious woman’s voice. I climbed a tree so I could see inside the bed of the truck, where there were two chairs and a table on which rested some sort of machine and a microphone wrapped in red cloth. One of the chairs was occupied by a girl with little braids, the other by a boy who wore a part in his hair. I’d never seen her before, but he was Little Chang, who’d come to our village during the Four Clean-ups campaign, the one they called Braying Jackass. I later learned that he had been assigned to the county opera troupe and, as a rebel, the commander of the Golden Monkey Red Guard faction. I shouted down to him from my perch up in the tree: Little Chang! Little Chang! Jackass! But my shouts were swallowed up by the loudspeaker.
    The girl shouted into the microphone, and the loudspeaker carried her voice like thunderclaps. Here is what everyone in Northeast Gaomi Township heard: Capitalist-roader Chen Guangdi, a donkey trader who wormed his way into the Party, opposed the Great Leap Forward, opposed the Three Red Banners, is a sworn brother to Lan Lian, Northeast Gaomi Township’s independent farmer who stubbornly hews to the Capitalist Road, and acts as the independent farmer’s protective umbrella. Chen Guangdi is not only an ideological reactionary, he is also immoral. He had sexual relations with a donkey and made her pregnant. She gave birth to a monster: a donkey with a human head!
    Yes!