Realizing Zheng Chen hadn’t fully understood, the principal added, “Not Director Feng. The director of the national Ministry of Education!”
Assembling the graduating class was not as hard as Zheng Chen imagined, and it wasn’t long before the forty-three students returned to their school, spurred by an urgent notice when they arrived to register at their high schools. The children were overjoyed at this reunion of their disbanded class.
Zheng Chen and the children waited in their classroom for around half an hour, unsure of what was to happen. Eventually a coach and two cars pulled up outside and three people got out. The principal introduced their leader as Zhang Lin, and said they were from the Central Extraordinary Commission.
“Extraordinary Commission?” said Zheng Chen.
“It’s a newly established agency,” Zhang Lin said without elaborating. “The students in your class will be away from their families for a while. We’ll assume responsibility for notifying their guardians. Since you know the class pretty well, you’ll come along. There’s no need to take anything. We’ll leave at once.”
“What’s the hurry?” Zheng Chen asked in surprise.
“Time is of the essence.”
Carrying the forty-three students, the coach left the city headed west. Zhang Lin sat next to Zheng Chen, began examining the student register as soon as he boarded, and stared straight ahead without speaking once he finished. The two other men did the same. Zheng Chen noticed their solemn expressions but felt awkward mentioning it. The atmosphere infected the children, who said little along the way. They passed the Summer Palace and continued westward toward the Western Hills, and then traveled a ways down a forested road farther into the mountains until they entered a large compound whose gate was guarded by three armed sentries. In the center of the compound was a cluster of buses identical to theirs, and groups of children disembarking. They looked roughly the same age as her class.
Zheng Chen had just stepped out of the bus when she heard someone call her name. It was a teacher from Shanghai she had met once at a conference. She took stock of his charges: clearly another class of middle school graduates.
“That’s my class,” the teacher said.
“You came from Shanghai?”
“Yes. We were notified late last night, and spent the night calling up every house to gather the children together.”
“Last night? How’d you get here so fast? Even a plane would take longer.”
“Charter plane.”
They stared at each other silently for a moment, and then the Shanghai teacher said, “I don’t know anything else.”
“Neither do I,” Zheng Chen said. She remembered that the Shanghai teacher was in charge of a pilot class in the Ministry of Education’s character program. Four years ago, the ministry had launched Project Star, a large-scale education experiment for which classes were chosen in major cities across the country to adopt instructional methods well removed from the mainstream; the program was primarily intended to foster children’s overall competence. Zheng Chen’s class had been one of them.
She looked around her. “These all seem to be Star classes.”
“That’s right. Twenty-four in all. Around a thousand kids from five cities.”
That afternoon, staffers gathered more information from the classes and drew up a detailed register for each student. The evening was mostly unplanned, so the children phoned home and told their families they were at summer camp, even though the summer was over.
Before daybreak the next morning, the children boarded the buses and set off again.
After a forty-minute drive through the mountains, they reached a valley ringed by gentle slopes. Come autumn the hills would be ablaze with red, but now they were still green. A stream ran down the valley floor, shallow enough to cross with trousers hiked up. The children exited their buses and gathered in an open area beside the road, a thousand of them in a big group. One of the leaders stood on a boulder and began to speak.
“Children, you’ve come here from all over the country. Now let me tell you the purpose of this journey: We’re going to play a big game!”
He clearly was not someone who frequently interacted with kids. His manner was severe, nothing of the feel of a game, but his words prompted rustles of excitement among the children anyway.
“Look,” he said, pointing at the valley. “That’s where we’ll play. Each of your twenty-four classes will be given some land around three to four square kilometers. That’s not a small plot! Every class will use that land—now listen—every class will establish a little country!”
That last line seized the children’s attention. A thousand pairs of eyes focused on him.
“The game will last for fifteen days. For fifteen days you’ll live off the territory you’ve been granted!”
The children cheered.
“Quiet down and listen. These twenty-four territories have been stocked with necessities like tents, camp cots, fuel, food, and drinking water, but these goods haven’t been equally divided. One territory, for example, might have more tents but less food; another might be the opposite. But be certain of one thing: the total amount of provisions on these territories is insufficient for so many days. You have two avenues at your disposal to obtain provisions:
“First, trade. You can trade your own surplus materials for those in short supply. But even so, your little countries won’t be able to last the full fifteen days, because the total quantity is insufficient. This means:
“Second, engage in production. This is your country’s primary duty and chief activity. Production means opening up undeveloped land on your territory, and then planting seeds and irrigating them on the cleared land. It’s not feasible to wait for grain to grow, of course, but based on your land clearing, sowing, and irrigation figures, you’ll be able to obtain equivalent food from the game’s directorate. The twenty-four countries are distributed along this stream, which will serve as your water source. You’ll use that water to irrigate your cleared land.
“You’ll choose your own national leaders, three paramount leaders to share power equally. They will jointly exercise the highest decision-making authority. You will set up your country’s own administrative organs, and make all the decisions for your country, development plans, foreign policy, and so forth. We will not interfere. Citizens have free mobility; you can choose to go to any country you think best.
“Now we’ll divvy up territory for you. First thing, choose a name for your country and report it to the directorate. The rest is up to you. I’ll only tell you that the game has very few rules. Children, the fate and future of these countries is in your hands. I hope that you’ll make your little countries flourish and grow strong!”
It was the grandest game the children had ever seen, and they raced off toward their own territories.
Zheng Chen’s class followed Zhang Lin to their territory, an area surrounded by a white fence straddling the riverside and a slope, with tents and various provisions neatly stacked where the two met. The children ran on ahead to tear through the supplies, and then Zheng Chen heard exclamations of surprise as they crowded round. She hurried over and made her way forward through the children, and what she saw left her momentarily stunned.
On a square of green canvas lay a neatly arranged row of machine guns.
Although she was unfamiliar with weapons, she was still certain they were not toys. She bent down and picked one up, felt its heft, caught a whiff of gun oil, saw the cold blue glint of its steel barrel. Three green metal boxes sat next to the canvas; a child had opened one to reveal gleaming golden bullets inside.