Chief Liu realized that the county seat must have undergone an enormous transformation overnight; not only was everyone bowing and kowtowing to him, but furthermore people were walking around with oracular smiles, as though the bodhisattva had come to this city the previous night and said something to everyone. And whereas the previous day the entire land had been enveloped in mist, now the skies were completely clear. The sun was shining down brightly, and the sky was an expanse of blue, so pristine that it looked as though it had been scrubbed by hand. If occasionally there was a trace of clouds, they would appear as white silk. It was warm, as warm as springtime. If this sort of weather could last another three to five days, the willows and poplars would soon begin budding and the wildflowers would begin blooming, just as they had begun on Spirit Mountain a couple of weeks earlier.
Perhaps this warm weather was some sort of omen.
Chief Liu permitted everyone to crowd around and thank him, and as he proceeded from his courtyard to the county’s government building, the crowd kept growing. Those bowing to him kept increasing in number, as did the elderly people kowtowing to him. In the blink of an eye there were suddenly so many people surrounding him in the less-than-one-li stretch of road that he could no longer continue forward, as if he were a virtual deity who had suddenly emerged out of nowhere.
It turned out that earlier in the morning they had heard that the previous reports that the attempts to purchase Lenin’s corpse had failed were merely rumors, and that the reality was that both the district and the provincial seats had wanted to install the corpse in their respective cities for a few days, and had deliberately created problems for both Shuanghuai and Chief Liu. Now, however, the problems had been resolved, and Beijing was supporting Shuanghuai and Chief Liu. In all likelihood, the plan would be back on schedule within three to five days, and Shuanghuai would be permitted to purchase Lenin’s corpse from Russia and ship it back to Spirit Mountain. Chief Liu, furthermore, had already sent someone to Germany to arrange for the purchase of Marx’s and Engels’s personal effects, and the representative had sent back word that not only had their German counterparts agreed to sell Shuanghuai a pair of Marx’s knitted sleepwear, but in recognition of the villagers’ extreme devotion to Marx, they had also offered to give the villagers Marx’s desk, chair, and fountain pen. They said that Engels’s descendants were willing to give Chief Liu all of the swallowtail dinner jackets their ancestor had ever worn. They said that when Lenin’s cenotaph in Shuanghuai was completed, his descendants would all attend the opening ceremony, and wouldn’t even ask Shuanghuai to pay for their airfare tickets. They said that the descendants of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh said that they were willing to grant Shuanghuai half of their ancestor’s personal effects. They said that Albania’s and Yugoslavia’s current leaders had readily agreed to give Shuanghuai everything that Hoxha and Tito had ever used, and furthermore weren’t asking for a cent in return; they were even willing to send their former leaders’ cremated ashes. They said Cuba’s leaders had agreed even more quickly, saying that they wanted to keep Castro’s corpse, but the people of Shuanghuai could take anything else they wanted. The only remains they could not obtain easily were the personal effects of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung. They said that Kim Il Sung’s son Kim Jong Il was currently the nation’s leader, and was asking for anywhere from a hundred and ten thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand yuan for every pen his father had ever used and every button that had ever fallen from his clothes. They said that if Chief Liu wanted to buy Kim Il Sung’s old revolver, they would have to pay at least nine million yuan for it.
Even at nine million yuan, Chief Liu still agreed to purchase the revolver.
This way, not only could the Lenin Memorial Hall open immediately for business, but by the following year they could set up a display room featuring the ashes, clothing, and personal effects of the other world leaders. This way, Spirit Mountain’s ten peaks would each have a memorial hall of one the world’s ten great leaders, and every day they would attract at least three to five times as many tourists as the Lenin Memorial Hall alone. This would include visitors from neighboring counties, from the district, from the province, from throughout the nation, and even from other countries around the world. Just as foreigners who come to China cannot fail to visit Beijing, if they visited Beijing they would have no choice but to also visit Shuanghuai. In fact, some people might even come to China for the express purpose of visiting Shuanghuai, without even having any interest in visiting Beijing. It was mind-boggling to think how much income that would bring in!
The people said that Chief Liu had already arranged to have Shuanghuai build new roads, and even an airport. They said that in order for Shuanghuai to be able to sell tickets for a hundred yuan each, the county would need to build three to five large printing factories, for the express purpose of printing these tickets around the clock. They said that all of China’s banks were preparing to establish their largest satellite branches in Shuanghuai, so that the county’s residents could deposit all the money they wouldn’t be able to spend. They said that in order to compete for the enormous amounts of money every resident would have in a few years, and in order to encourage everyone to deposit money with them, the banks were jockeying to be the first to give the county a loan to build a highway leading up to Spirit Mountain, both sides of which would be lined with guest houses.
Indeed, the lives of the residents of Shuanghuai had been turned upside down overnight. Their heavenly days were almost here. So, why wouldn’t they all express their gratitude to Chief Liu? Who in Shuanghuai didn’t know how hard Chief Liu worked to purchase Lenin’s corpse? Who didn’t know how hard he struggled to establish the Liven performance troupes?
Who knew, however, that even as he was working to purchase Lenin’s remains, Chief Liu was already making plans to obtain the personal effects of all of these other world leaders? No one had expected that all of these seemingly impossible tasks would be accomplished virtually overnight, that everything would be purchased and would immediately be ready to be shipped to Shuanghuai.
Chief Liu laughed and asked, “Who did you hear all this from?”
The person replied, “From your secretary. If your own secretary said it, how could it not be true?”
Chief Liu’s heart skipped a beat, but at that moment his astonishment was drowned out by the people surrounding him, as they kowtowed to him and crowded around just to say something to him, shake his hand, or have him caress their child’s head. They crowded him to the point that he could barely keep his balance. Indeed, with some people jostling in and others pushing back, in an instant the people surrounding Chief Liu had clogged up the entire roadway. The street peddlers started shouting,
“You’ve knocked over my apple stand!. . You’ve knocked over my apple stand!”
“You’re trampling on my bags of melon seeds!. . You’re trampling on my bags of melon seeds!”
The crowds knocked over the door plank that a peddler had set up as his stand, and the red paper and firecrackers he sold at New Year’s, together with his red couplets, gate couplets, and kitchen god portraits, were strewn all over the ground. The peddler stood to one side and beat his chest as he cried,
“Aren’t you afraid that the firecrackers will go off?. . Aren’t you afraid that the firecrackers will go off?”
All of this was merely so that people could bow and kowtow to Chief Liu, to express their gratitude. People who were out shopping immediately put their things down and walked out of the store. People who were out eating or drinking immediately put down their cups and chopsticks and emerged from the restaurants. They bowed and kowtowed, murmuring words of gratitude. Naturally, they didn’t forget to ask him, “Chief Liu, I hear that next year the street in front of our house will be paved in marble?” They also didn’t forget to ask, “Is it true that everyone will be guaranteed a monthly salary of five thousand yuan?”