Serve the People!

Luckily for Wu Dawang, however, his mother insisted at great personal cost on keeping him in school until he was sixteen.

Thanks to these years of education, he became the accountant for Wujiagou's production team-the collective farming unit into which the Communist government had organized the village.

Time passed, and he reached marriageable age. More time passed, but still no match could be found for him. Just as he was on the verge of despair at his marital prospects, it so happened that the leader of the village production team fell ill before a rush harvest meeting at the local commune, and appointed Wu Dawang as his deputy. At the meeting, the commune accountant, one Zhao, needed someone to help him copy out a list of attendees' names so that he could issue each with expenses (three steamed buns and one yuanz).

So Wu Dawang volunteered.

This chance assignment would change the course of Wu Dawang's drab existence. For, unbeknownst to Wu, although the accountant's wife and children were still classified as peasants and therefore drew their income from the land, Zhao himself was on the state payroll. He therefore qualified as a government official — as a Someone on a social and professional footing with the director of the commune himself.

Zhao was in his midforties and of medium height, with eyebrows drawn so faintly across his broad face they were hardly worth having. When Wu Dawang delivered the list to him, he was sitting in an easy chair behind his desk. He glanced over the document, then looked up at the young man. `What village are you from?'

'Wujiagou.'

'You're very young to be a team leader, aren't you?'

`I'm the accountant, I'm only standing in because the team leader's ill.'

`An accountant, you say? How old are you?'

`Twenty-two.'

`How far did you get in school?'

`Junior middle school.'

`Engaged?'

`Not yet.'

Perhaps because Zhao, as an accountant, had a soft spot for his fellow professionals, or perhaps because he had a bureaucrat's eye for talent, the interview went Wu Dawang's way from there on in. After several glances up at Wu, then back at his list of names, Zhao broke into a smile. `Nice handwriting,' he complimented him, `and in ballpoint, too. Quite the master calligrapher.'

And so it was that the regularity of Wu Dawang's writing hand transformed his personal prospects. One day, long after the rush harvest and planting had come and gone, when the new corn seedlings were already an inch high, the team leader came back from a trip to market with news for Wu Dawang. `The commune accountant Zhao has taken a shine toyou,' he reported, in great excitement. `He's asked me to bring you to see him.'

Wu Dawang accompanied his leader the dozen or so miles to Zhao Village, uncharacteristically well turned out in a new blue jacket and pair of black twill trousers. Although both were borrowed, this getup was close enough to a military uniform to give him an unmistakable dash-and, most importantly, to convince Zhao that here was the very fellow for his only daughter.

It was in his unusually spacious and wellapportioned three-roomed tiled house that the accountant revealed Wu Dawang's new career direction to him. `Before the year's out, Dawang, I'll fix it for you to join the army.'

A career in the military, Zhao said, was not just about education and training. It was also a way into the Party, to commendations; it was the ladder to promotion, to becoming an official. `And once you're an official, you can get an urban registration permit for my daughter- Ezi here — so she can come and live the good life in the citywithyou.' This was every peasant's dream: to leave the uncertain, never-ending toil of farming for the comforts of the city and a stateallocated job.

Wu Dawang progressed amenably through the initial stages of his future father-in-law's plan. Toward the end of the year he left to join the army, and the second major phase of his life began. On the training grounds of the People's Liberation Army, his simple virtues of honesty, industry and patience served him admirably, helping him to negotiate the challenges of the military life. To him, the hard physical exercise dreaded by so many of his comrades was no more punishing than the busy seasons of the farming year. Political study classes-a source of spiritual torture to some — he found no more tedious than the weeks of slack that followed planting or harvesting. Wu Dawang read his newspapers, studied editorials and perused documents in the safe knowledge that at the next meal there would be as many steamed rolls as he could eat, as well as meat. As he wore clothes, slept under quilts and ate food supplied, free of charge, by the government, every day in the army felt like New Year in the village he had j ust left. With a daily life of such luxury and ease, getting up earlier than everyone else to sweep the floor, or staying up later than everyone else to read editorials and note down in his diary all he had learnt and thought for perusal by his superiors, practicing drill on Sundays, washing trousers and socks for his comrades-inarms-all this seemed no hardship at all.

In public, Wu Dawang was careful to ensure his actions spoke louder than his words, and that his capacity for work was matched only by his willingness to embrace criticism. To think hard but say little, to channel ingenuity into practical ends and to blunt intelligence into worthy dullness-these were the survival strategies that Wu Dawang picked up from the veterans around him. Although Wu Dawang had notyet learnt from personal experience that advancing with caution permits a safe retreat, he none the less stuck firmly to this principle in his new life.

After only a year in the army, however, the sky fell in on Wu Dawang's world. His mother was struck down by cirrhosis of the liver and, all too soon, summoned her son back to Wujiagou to attend her deathbed. `If you want to do your duty by me before I die,' the old lady said to him, taking him by the hand, `then getyourself married, here in the village, so I know I'll have a daughter-in-law to tend my grave.'

So Wu Dawang went to see his prospective fatherin-law, who chewed his request over thoughtfully. `Have you won any commendations yet?' he eventually asked.

`No, not yet.'

'Have they let you join the Party?'

'Not yet.'

'Are you likely to get promoted?'

'Hard to say.'

After further meditation, Zhao heaved a long sigh. 'Don't think me heartless,' he said. 'It's just that people have high hopes. It's natural; everyone wants the best for their daughters. You're not in the Party, you've no commendations, no prospect of getting promoted. What kind of life can you offer my little girl?'

Wu Dawang collapsed to his knees, the tears streaming down his face. 'Father,' he begged, 'let me callyou Father. If I don't achieve everything you ask, if I fail to win commendations, join the Party, become an official and move Ezi to the city, if I don't find her a good job and give her a good life, I'll never show my face around here again, not even for my funeral.'

Zhao sank back into deep thought. 'You really think you can manage all that?' he asked at length.

'I'll put it in writing.' And so, on a blank piece of paper, he inscribed the following pledge:

After I, Wu Dawang, marry Ezi, I solemnly promise to do everything within my power to ensure I earn commendations within one year, join the Party within two and become an official within three. If I fail and am consequently unable to move the aforesaid Zhao Ezi to a new home in the city where she can eat steamed rolls every day, I, Wu Dawang, will never show my face, dead or alive, in Wujiagou again. If Ezi permits me to return, I swear to serve her in any way she chooses for the rest of my life. If I utter a single word of complaint I deserve to die in agony.