Then he learned from his biology teacher that the year preceding the Great Fly Kill had been the year of the Great Sparrow Kill. That year Mao had been advised that there were such-and-so-many wild birds in China and, during its little life, each bird could be calculated to eat at least this-and-that-much grain. Which came to a whole lot. So Mao had edicted that all the kids should go out beneath all the trees where all the birds roosted, and beat clappers all night every night until they roosted no more. After three nights the birds were all dead from exhaustion and irritation. All across China! How very impressive and commendable. Except that, in the season after the birdless year, there were all those flies…
No, the slogan songs no longer brought the old tolling to Yang's blood. He still enjoyed hearing it in his sister's voice but he feared it was gone from him forever, that ring, cold and gone.
But not the wonder, he was glad to say. Not that. For instance, what had all those schoolteachers in all those classrooms all across China done with all those dead flies?
The approach of the Beijing Marathon and its international coverage brought about a relaxation of many edicts and a return to some neglected ceremonies. In the go parlors, waitresses were allowed to dress in traditional servant's gowns and pour tea for the players engrossed over their click-clicking go boards with the elaborated obeisance of old. In the food markets, children could sell cones of nuts and keep their profits, as long as they had personally gathered the nuts.
In Qufu, the small town near Yang's village in Shangong province, a group filed out of the old cemetery. In spite of the solemnity of the occasion, there was about the group an air of victory, of lost grounds regained. Many of the mourners carried unveiled birdcages, a sight forbidden until recently, and some of the women wore heirloom brocade, still musty from so many years secreted away. Yes, victory! For the loved one they had just left behind committed to the keep of the ancestors had not been reduced to the usual wad of yellow-gray ashes and smoke in the wind; he lay in a real grave, and the fresh mound of earth above him glowed like a monument.
Especially in Qufu was this burial sweet. Qufu was the birthplace of Confucius. For centuries the townspeople pointed with pride to inscriptions on family headstones that proved they were direct descendants of the famous philosopher. Then, in 1970 a regiment of Red Guards marched through the town to the ancient cemetery and toppled all those headstones. When they retreated from the cemetery they hung a huge red-and-white banner across the high stone entrance. The words on the banner left little doubt about the Chairman's attitude toward the ancestors:
WASTE NO MORE GOOD EARTH ON THE USELESS DEAD. CREMATE!
Confucius himself was exiled to the purgatory of fallen stars, along with countless poets and essayists who had expounded on his work over the centuries. Teachers like Yang's father who continued to mention the philosopher were stripped of their positions and their clothes and pilloried in town squares as "enemies of the collective consciousness." Many were sentenced to correction farms and the cultivation of cabbages and leeks instead of young minds.
Confucius's contemporary, Lao-tzu, was never officially excommunicated, oddly enough. Perhaps because his work is so scant and so obscure; perhaps because historians have never agreed on his identity, or if he was actually a living person at all. He may have been too much a myth to comfortably condemn.
The procession stopped on the slope outside the cemetery and gathered to admire the birds and speak with old acquaintances and colleagues. One of the professors pointed down the hill. A string of runners were angling off the highway onto the dirt road.
"It's our young warriors!" he cried. "For Beijing. Those two. I have them in class. The two in front!"
He continued to shout and point, though it was obvious to all which pair of athletes he meant; their new uniforms shined like chips of clear blue sky against the dingy gray outfits of their teammates.
When the two front-runners passed the bottom of the hill the excited teacher yelled, "Chi oh, boys; chi oh!"- a slang expression the professor heard around school for "pour on the gas."
Other men applauded and repeated the call, until the sudden display of local pride made the women hold their ears and the birds fly in panic against the bamboo bars of their cages.
It would be Yang's last workout. The trainer had advised him to keep his customary fervor in check. But as always, when he reached this feeble cotton field with its nine grassy pyramids, Yang veered off the packed ruts and went hurdling through the rows. He headed for the tallest of the mounds. He didn't know the name for the huge escarpment, only that it was a feng, one of a multitude of false tombs built centuries ago by sly emperors hoping to thwart desecration by thieves.
He did not look behind him. He knew the rest of the team was far back, some probably still on the avenue, jogging in and out of the swaying buses and bicycles.
The only runner out ahead of him was his friend Zhoa Cheng-chun. Zhoa and Yang had pulled quickly away from the others passing the cemetery. But when he heard the cheering and saw the waving crowd up the hill, Yang had slackened his stride to allow Zhoa to run on ahead.
"Chi oh!" he had urged his friend, pretending to pant with exhaustion. "Pour on the gas."
To have kept up would not have been respectful. Zhoa was nearly four years his senior and already a member of the academy. Zhoa was the hometown hero and the provincial marathon champion. His time of 2:19 was second only to the 2:13 of the Chinese record-holder, Xu Liang. Yang felt he could have matched Zhoa's pace for many more kilometers, but he did not wish to show a discourtesy. He let him run on.
Besides, Yang liked to have this part of his workout to himself. As he left the road he could hear the people at the cemetery cheering for the rest of their school's team, far behind.
His sprint took him past the field girls working to salvage some of the season's rain-ravaged cotton, then along the dirt dike of the irrigation ditch. Without slowing he long-jumped across the shallow coffee-brown stream, his feet churning the air. His landing startled a small hare from the brush along the bank. Yang called after the zigzagging animal, "You too, long ears! Chi oh!" He heard the girls laugh behind him.
He slowed when he reached the steep path at the corner of the feng. It had drizzled again that morning and the worn dirt would be slick. The last thing he wanted to do before tomorrow's trip was slip on the red mud. To soil the beautiful blue warm-ups sent him from Beijing would have been close to traitorous.
The climb made his heart quicken in his ears and brought a light beadwork of sweat to his lower lip. That was good. He did not perspire easily, even in this French-made suit of artificial fibers, and he needed a sweat to flush the poisons and rinse his head. He ran harder.