Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [73]
“Follow the highway from Shijiazhuang and we’ll be there,” said Lao Chen, looking at the GPS.
Fang Caodi didn’t respond.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lao Chen.
“I’m sorry,” said Fang Caodi, “but I’m having a premonition.”
“A premonition about what?” Lao Chen asked.
“A premonition,” Fang said, “about that Happy Village I told you about.”
“What about it?” Lao Chen was outwardly relieved it was nothing to do with Little Xi.
“I don’t know,” Fang said, “but I’d like to take a look. It won’t take long, it’s not very far.”
Lao Chen could only agree with him.
They turned off on the side road and headed west on a paved road for about half an hour, and then went into the hills for about twenty minutes on a gravel road. They got out of the car and walked another half an hour on a mountain road until they reached Happy Village.
It was completely deserted. Fang Caodi went into each house one by one. “The villagers didn’t even take their farm tools or kitchen utensils,” he said. “It looks pretty suspicious.”
Lao Chen noticed that all the houses in Happy Village were the typically simple and crude constructions you see in rural North China, especially in Hebei. The peasants of Hebei were not the poorest in China, but Lao Chen believed that of all the rural architecture in China that of Hebei was the most unsightly; they made no stylistic demands, and generation after generation they continued to build crude and simple houses; it was easy to see that the peasants of Hebei didn’t care much about aesthetics. Yet there were colored paintings on the outside walls of every house. The paintings had the flavor of those New Year pictures called nianhua, but their style was much freer, and some of them even exhibited some charmingly sexual poses. In Lao Chen’s present state of mind, he could see feelings of love in the paintings. On one wall was a very colorful life-sized flower. This kind of extra decoration and attempt at adornment was something rarely seen in a primitive Hebei village. These peasants had become graffiti artists, and perhaps Happy Village really lived up to its name.
Lao Chen thought it would be interesting to meet the peasants who had made the paintings, but some other time. “What’s wrong?” he asked Fang Caodi, who was staring blankly upstream. “Let’s go.”
“It’s been less than a year,” said Fang, “and they’re all gone.”
“Don’t ask me to walk another five kilometers upstream,” said Lao Chen. “I can’t even walk one more kilometer.”
“There must be a road,” said Fang Caodi, “that leads to the chemical factory.”
“That road probably comes from the Shanxi side,” said Lao Chen, trying to dissuade Fang Caodi from the trip to the factory he knew he was about to suggest. “I can think of a hundred reasons why the villagers moved, and none of them have anything to do with that factory. You shouldn’t always be trying to find some sort of conspiracy.”
Fang Caodi stubbornly refused to move, so Lao Chen played his trump card. “Old Fang,” he said, “you know that your premonition can’t prevent something from actually happening.”
“Yes, you’re right,” said Fang Caodi, “let’s go.”
Wei Xihong, female, from Beijing, also known as Little Xi; most recent Internet name maizibusi; last-known employment: selling ice-cream bars in the Yellow Emperor’s hometown of Xinzheng in Henan Province; previously employed as a ticket seller in three villages claiming to be the original home of the mythical Pangu. Based on this itinerary, her next stop would be either Mount Shennong, named for the legendary founder of agriculture, or one of the various places that claimed to be where the Great Yu parted the waters and created the Chinese continent.
Indeed, she went next to Jiaozuo, known in ancient times as Huaichuan. There are six old cities in this region, and local legend has it that nearby is the place where Emperor Yandi or Shennong planted the five grains and tasted the hundred grasses. It goes without saying that there are many parks with historical themes in the area, and no shortage