Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [81]
So then he changed the subject and casually said, “Our Wen County Head Yang is very capable and has a good reputation, no?”
“Little Yang is young and talented. He’s only in his thirties and has a great future,” said Liu Xing, who had just been waiting for Gao Shengchan to mention County Head Yang.
Gao Shengchan understood that Liu Xing was telling him who he should go to—to a young official in charge of the county’s various townships and anxious about his future career.
“Did you know,” Liu Xing said with an upward gesture of his hands, “our mayor of Jiaozuo was transferred here from Fujian? And did you know that County Head Yang was selected for promotion by the mayor? And did you know that at this latest change of government the mayor was promoted again to provincial level?”
He really is my old classmate, Gao Shengchan gratefully thought to himself, and so he’s making everything clear for me. A new mayor has been promoted from outside the province and he will certainly promote some cadres to fill up his staff, but he won’t use men like Liu Xing who were loyal to the former mayor. County Head Yang is a follower of the present mayor, and as soon as the present mayor is promoted and warms his seat at the provincial government he will move Yang to work alongside him. All that the young County Head Yang has to do is to make certain that nothing big happens in the county in the next couple of months and he can be smoothly promoted to serve as a provincial-level official.
In other words, if a mass protest were to break out in the county, regardless of whether it were handled badly or well, County Head Yang’s chances of a provincial-level promotion would be ruined. So County Head Yang was the ideal candidate to be informed about the possibility of such a protest. How could a young and able man like him allow his official career to be put in jeopardy by the actions of a couple of corrupt township officials?
When it was clear Gao Shengchan had completely understood what he was telling him, Liu Xing seemed to experience a pleasing sense of pride; then he stood up and staggered over to the bathroom. Gao Shengchan took immediate advantage of his absence to phone Li Tiejun and tell him to make an appointment as soon as possible with County Head Yang.
Fang Caodi knew that Jiaozuo was an important producer of Chinese medicines such as foxglove (Rehmannia glutinosa), Doscorea opposita yams, Achyranthes bidentata root, and chrysanthemums, so he had already planned to buy some supplies, to cure Zhang Dou’s internal injuries and Miaomiao’s strange sort of idiocy. He got up at four thirty, completed his qigong exercises, and went out before dawn without disturbing Lao Chen’s sleep.
After their long drive the day before, Lao Chen was extremely tired, but he didn’t sleep well all the same. He got up at six and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, but he had to wait until nine before Fang Caodi finally arrived, carrying a big backpack full of herbal medicines. At that point, Lao Chen looked quite annoyed. The two of them left hurriedly and set out for the Warm Springs township.
When they reached the center of the provincial city, Fang Caodi asked a taxi driver if he knew if there was a Christian church called the Grain Fallen on the Ground in Wen County. The taxi driver said it was only a short distance away and told Fang Caodi to follow him and he would take them right to the front door free of charge.
“Isn’t it an underground church?” asked Lao Chen. “How come everybody knows the address and there are Christian spring couplets openly displayed on the front gate?”
“The Henan people have not offended anybody,” said Fang Caodi, “but everybody criticizes them. Look how generous this driver is.”
Gao