Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [125]
“And then something unimaginable happened that to this day I still cannot fathom: more and more people genuinely forgot those twenty-eight days, and it was not just temporary memory loss, but they absolutely could not remember that time, just as though the whole country had unconsciously erased some painful childhood trauma.
“People in middle age and above had not really forgotten the earlier Cultural Revolution and June 4, 1989. It was just that during these two years of China’s ascendancy, everybody was living very well and very few people had any interest in recalling the Cultural Revolution and June 1989, so those memories just naturally faded away.
“But people were really unable to remember those twenty-eight days. Whether this was related to the water or not, I can’t say for sure. The leaders living in Zhongnanhai have their own drinking water. We don’t drink what the rest of the people drink, although there might have been a few of us without sufficient self-discipline who went around drinking ordinary water, I can’t say for certain. What I can tell you is that most of the leaders in Zhongnanhai can definitely recall those twenty-eight days, and they are also fully aware that the whole nation is suffering from a form of both collective and selective amnesia.
“When I first realized what was happening, I went around sounding out various groups, including mid- and low-level cadres and specialist scholars. Just as I expected, they really had no recollection of that time; it was like they had brainwashed themselves. It was all so strange, but it was definitely true.
“It was for the best that they didn’t remember. The previous leadership group, having the blood of those twenty-eight days on their hands, was very eager for everyone to forget the events of that month. So they started to revise any materials that reported on that time. For example, they ordered that all newspapers in all public libraries should be in digital form only. We totally rewrote the history of those twenty-eight days. Most importantly, we brought the date that China’s ascendancy officially began forward to match the date that the global economy entered the period of crisis and stagflation, thus erasing the historical existence of that week of anarchy and those three weeks of harsh crackdown. No one objected to this distortion of reality, and practically no one even noticed it. Once in a while, when someone in or outside the country mentioned those events, we simply filtered them out. Very soon the new version of things became the only available version. To tell you the truth, even I was pretty surprised: how could the Chinese people so easily forget such events?
“What I want to tell you is that, definitely, the Central Propaganda organs did do their work, but they were only pushing along a boat that was already on the move. If the Chinese people themselves had not already wanted to forget, we could not have forced them to do so. The Chinese people voluntarily gave themselves a large dose of amnesia medicine.”
“Why?” asked Little Xi and Fang Caodi together. “Why did the Chinese people do it? How could they? There must be some explanation.”
“Didn’t I tell you already,” insisted He Dongsheng. “I don’t know!”
Little Xi and Fang Caodi were dumbfounded.
“I’m quite puzzled, too,” added He Dongsheng, seeing that they were all speechless. “Real life isn’t like a detective novel, and everything doesn’t have a perfect explanation. I have to admit this is one big riddle that I can’t solve. It could be that human beings are simply forgetful animals and they long to forget some aspects of their history. It could be that the Chinese Communist Party is just plain lucky. It could be that the Chinese people deserve to be governed by the Communist Party, and sixty-plus years is still not enough. It could be a miracle, or the Chinese people’s common karma. Too bad I’m a materialist, otherwise I would certainly say that it was the Will of Heaven, that Heaven wants the Chinese Communist Party to go on governing.