A few hostile words in the woods nearly turned into a fight between Shaotang and the two men. His temper was already short, and he had a knife in his hand. What angered him was the way they had spoken without thinking. Hide in the mountains and fuck however you want—fuck till your guts burst and your asses split open for all I care. But you don’t get to talk that way about my godson. My kid’s still little. He’s innocent.
In the end, the more softly spoken of the two men covered his crotch and pleaded with Shaotang. “You—you absolutely can’t tell anybody. Just pretend you didn’t see anything, all right?”
The other man, who was broader and stronger, put an arm protectively around his companion and glared at Shaotang with a faintly threatening look, as though afraid somebody might steal his lover away.
Shaotang felt inexplicably awkward. I wasn’t planning to steal your man. Why the hell are you glaring at me like that?
The two men hurriedly pulled their trousers on and fled…
Godfather and godson dressed themselves too, wrapping themselves up properly, then walked back toward the outpost in silence. Just before they entered the building, Shaotang suddenly stopped and warned him, “Xiaobei, nothing happened today, okay? Don’t go mentioning this to anybody later. Don’t tell your dad… I don’t want him thinking I’m taking you around and teaching you bad things.”
Meng Xiaobei asked, “What were those two men playing?”
Shaotang’s eyes showed contempt. “Hah… Two boars in heat, humping at each other’s asses.”
Meng Xiaobei loved getting to the bottom of things. “I’ve seen wild boars and pigs in pens. How come I’ve never seen pigs rub each other like that?”
Shaotang said, “Um…”
Meng Xiaobei continued, “Pig butts are so fat! They eat until they’re full and lie in the pen panting. How would they even rub them together?”
Shaotang let out a Pfft! and burst out laughing, his mood instantly improving. “Fine, pigs can’t do it. And I sure as hell don’t have the ability to find two pigs right now and make them demonstrate for you!”
In Meng Xiaobei’s memories, that was how Shaotang viewed such things at that age. There had been a trace of coldness and disdain in his expression; he thought two men doing that sort of thing was ultimately shameless and something that could not be shown openly. In that particular era, society was still a very long way from the world thirty years later, when BL culture and jokes about men hooking up would be everywhere. Shaotang’s attitude was simply the ordinary outlook of the time. The fact that he did not report those two men to his superiors or the police as “hooligans” already made him relatively decent and tolerant.
Several soldiers were gathered around the stove boiling water and eating. A small radio sat on the wooden table broadcasting the news, and a woman’s solemn, heavy voice came through the speaker.
“The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council announce that at 3:42 this morning, a powerful magnitude-eight earthquake struck Tangshan City in Hebei Province. Buildings and personnel in the disaster area have suffered severe losses. Strong tremors were felt in Beijing and Tianjin, with widespread building collapses. The specific number of casualties is not yet known…”
Elio’s Notes: This is the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, a catastrophic earthquake centered on Tangshan, Hebei, whose effects were also strongly felt in Beijing and Tianjin. The chapter preserves the way the event and its uncertain early casualty reports reached ordinary people through radio broadcasts.
He Shaotang, who had been squatting beside the stove, abruptly set down his large bowl and froze.
He shot to his feet, his mind suddenly going completely blank.
Everyone looked up at him. Xiao Bin asked, “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
He Shaotang sucked in a sharp breath. His face suddenly went pale with anxiety as he snatched up his jacket and strode out of the outpost.
“Xiaobei’s dad is still in Beijing!!!”
…
Shaotang’s unit specialized in military-industrial work as well as guarding against forest, river, and natural disasters, so they had some understanding of emergencies. The moment they heard the report, they knew something enormous had happened. They drove Xiaobei back to the factory, then returned to battalion headquarters to report and remain on standby.
By noon, news of the devastating Tangshan earthquake had spread by radio, factory loudspeaker announcements, and word of mouth through all the sprawling residential areas belonging to the automobile factory. The factory stopped production that afternoon. Large numbers of workers poured into the trade union offices and the factory leadership offices, while a dark mass of people packed the entrance to the workers’ family compound. Everyone was frantic.
The weather in the Qishan mountains was perfectly calm, and they were far from Beijing. So why were all these people panicking? Because many of their homes were in Beijing. That was where they had come from.
Their parents, brothers, sisters, relatives—their homes—were all in Beijing.
That night, Xigou did not sleep. Lights remained burning in thousands of homes.
Communications were extremely poor in those days, and telephone calls could not get through to the disaster region. Official reports were vague and guarded, with no immediate broadcasts of specific casualty figures. Yet every scrap and fragment of information suggested the same thing: this was a devastating catastrophe. Tangshan had been flattened, and Beijing had been affected as well.
That very night, several hundred workers brought their families and crowded around the brightly lit factory leadership offices, demanding leave to return to Beijing.
More than eight hundred young people had originally come from Beijing to Qishan to clear the land and build the factory. By now, they were all middle-aged.
The leadership said, “We can’t descend into chaos. We cannot lose control. If all of you take leave now, what happens to the projects? What happens to production?”
The workers shouted, “Who the fuck cares about production right now? You think we’ve got the heart to worry about this month’s output and efficiency?! Our homes could be gone!”
The factory leadership tried to calm them. They should patiently wait for news from Beijing. The central government would not abandon them. The military was already carrying out disaster relief. The state would not ignore their families.
Several of the oldest workers, men who had spent more than ten years in the factory, shouted back in grief and anger, “The state has never cared about our families!”
“We’ve been stuck in this valley all these years. The only thing we had left to think about was our home in Beijing! Where is that home now? What happened to it in the earthquake? Are our parents buried under rubble or still alive? At the very least, we have to go back and see with our own eyes!!!”
The crowd was furious and emotional, demanding to return to Beijing. Years of suppressed resentment and grievance poured out completely in the face of the earthquake.
Over the years, batch after batch of educated youths had obtained quotas or used connections and returned to the cities.
Many, many more remained behind, unable to leave, with no hope of ever going home. The passionate idealism of the young people who had once answered the call to serve the nation on the Third Front could not withstand years of hardship, wind, frost, and passing time. Once the flood of change finally broke open a gap, who would willingly remain behind? Who wanted to sink to the bottom and become a sacrifice to history’s whirlpool?…
That was the first time in the history of the Qishan ordnance factory that the workers came close to open revolt.
Nearly all the factory’s young and able-bodied workers gathered on the open athletic field and blocked the entrance to the factory director’s office, waiting for a telephone call from Beijing. Instead, the news that finally reached them was that the disaster in Tangshan had become a living hell, with hundreds of thousands dead.
The officers and soldiers from the neighboring military compound were mobilized once again. Shaotang’s company stood around the open ground with rifles, guarding the perimeter, maintaining order, and trying both to restrain and intimidate the increasingly explosive crowd.
Some people shoved against the soldiers, trying to force their way through the gates of the office compound.
Soldiers braced their rifles against the crowd and shouted, “Stop pushing! Push again and we’ll fire!”
Shaotang was worried about Meng Jianmin’s safety and repeatedly looked back toward Meng Xiaobei among the crowd.
The timing could hardly have been worse. Meng Jianmin had not returned to Beijing in years, yet of all possible seasons he had chosen this one for a family visit and run straight into an enormous earthquake. Shaotang gripped his rifle, his flesh tightening around the cold metal while sweat repeatedly broke out in his palms. Meng Jianmin had always been a man plagued by bad luck. Why did nothing ever seem to go right for him?
Jianmin had taken Meng Xiaojing to Beijing with him. What if something had happened to both father and son?
Grandma Meng was in Beijing too. There were five or six people in that household. Had the apartment building in Balizhuang collapsed? Was everyone safe?
If Meng Jianmin really could not return—if something happened to him—what would his wife here do?! How devastated would Xiaobei be?!
…
Men were not fond of fussing aloud over every worry, but Shaotang had already imagined countless possibilities inside his own head. He even found himself remembering how sensitive and melancholy Meng Jianmin had always been and wondering why, of all things, only a few months earlier Jianmin had entrusted Xiaobei to his care. What the hell kind of coincidence was this?…
Meng Xiaobei and his mother stood in the crowd too, anxious, helpless, and completely bewildered as they waited for news. The entire factory possessed only a handful of telephones capable of making outside calls. That was how isolated the mountain valley was. Ultimately, nobody knew what Beijing looked like now or just how serious the damage had been.
With no other choice, the battalion commander personally went up onto the platform to calm the crowd. According to instructions from the Central Military Commission leadership, he said, Beijing had only been affected by the earthquake rather than struck directly. Damage was limited, few buildings had collapsed, and there should not be heavy casualties. But by this point, without seeing it for themselves—and with no live television coverage—nobody believed him. They assumed it was merely an excuse to prevent the workers from returning to Beijing for disaster relief.
Later, amid the confusion, one of the factory leaders spotted Meng Xiaobei and Ma Baochun in the crowd.
The factory director’s eyes were sunken with exhaustion and his throat was hoarse. Holding a loudspeaker, he pointed from a distance toward Ma Baochun and her son.
“All right! Today is already the thirtieth. We’ll wait one more day!”
“We’ll wait for the workers who are currently visiting family in Beijing to come back!”
“Old Worker Meng Jianmin from Workshop One, Section Three—everyone knows him, right? Everyone knows who he is? Meng Jianmin has worked at this factory for years. You all trust him, don’t you?”
“His wife and one son are still here in this valley. He has to come back, doesn’t he? There’s no way he won’t return!”
Everyone in the crowd turned almost simultaneously to look at Ma Baochun and her son.
The factory director shouted himself hoarse through the loudspeaker. “Meng Jianmin’s family-visit leave only runs through the thirty-first! So all of us will wait and see whether he comes back on time. If he returns as scheduled, that means his family is all right! And if his family is all right, then Beijing is all right!”
“If the thirty-first comes and Meng Jianmin still hasn’t returned, then I—I—I’ll take responsibility myself and file a report with the province approving leave for everyone!”
…
Who could possibly have been more worried about Meng Jianmin’s safety than Ma Baochun? Under the gaze of everyone around her, she stood frozen as though someone had stabbed her straight through the heart, unable to speak.
Someone in the crowd angrily shouted, “You’re just stalling for time! What if Meng Jianmin can’t come back?! Who knows what happened to him—what if he’s buried under rubble? Are we all supposed to stand here like idiots and wait?!!!”
The crowd instantly fell silent.
Everyone had been thinking exactly the same thing. Most people simply had not been cruel enough to say it aloud.
“Yeah… Can Worker Meng really make it back?…”
Meng Xiaobei’s black brows and eyes suddenly came alive with ferocity. Two stubborn beams seemed to shoot from beneath his narrow eyelids. He had always been wild, and now profanity burst out of him without warning. “FUCK YOUR DAD!!! Fucking bastard! Why the hell wouldn’t my dad come back? MY DAD IS DEFINITELY COMING BACK!!!!!”
The boy’s wolfish roar stunned the grown men around him into silence. Completely by accident, he had actually helped the factory leadership out of its predicament, and the immediate danger of a riot subsided.
From between gaps in the crowd, He Shaotang stared from a distance at the expression on his Xiaobei’s face.
He could not reach him or touch him.
His heart ached terribly for the boy…
That evening, He Shaotang found a little free time and went to the workers’ family compound, where he knocked on the Meng family’s door.
Xiaobei’s mother’s eyes were red. She had obviously been crying.
He Shaotang offered a few simple words of reassurance. “Sister-in-law, try not to worry too much. I made calls to Beijing and asked around. That whole western side of the city—Fuxingmen, Yuquan Road, the newer apartment blocks built after Liberation—they held up. They didn’t collapse. I’d guess the housing around State Cotton Mills No. 2 and No. 3 held up too. Don’t worry.”
Ma Baochun asked with concern, “What about your family? Everyone at home safe?”
Shaotang nodded. “My family’s fine. The military region says there weren’t many deaths in Beijing. Military information is reliable.”
Only then did half the weight lift from Ma Baochun’s heart. She politely invited him inside to sit for a while, but Shaotang observed proper boundaries and remained outside the doorway. Meng Jianmin was not home, leaving only the wife and children in the house; Shaotang did not want to invite gossip by entering.
After a pause, Shaotang said quietly, “You two get some rest early. I’ll smoke a cigarette by the entrance and then leave. I’ve still got night duty.”
Moonlight spilled silver through the entrance of the apartment building, filling the passageway with the homesickness everyone carried in their hearts, each person holding onto the distant starlight of home.
He Shaotang crouched motionless outside the building entrance, quietly smoking and turning the feeling over inside himself.
Meng Xiaobei came downstairs looking for him. Slowly, from behind, he wrapped both arms tightly around Shaotang’s shoulders. He buried his face against the hollow of his godfather’s shoulder and sprawled across the man’s back, clinging there as though he wanted to place the full weight of his body in Shaotang’s hands.
Shaotang caught Xiaobei by the wrist and squeezed firmly—a wordless comfort between men.
Meng Xiaobei was utterly fearless and would not cry. He remained absolutely convinced that nothing whatsoever had happened to his father or little brother and that the two of them would simply get on the train and come home tomorrow.
What was there to cry about? He was a man already. What fucking use was crying?
Then he saw Shaotang’s eyes suddenly turn red. Beneath the moonlight, moisture shimmered along his lashes. The tiny mole near his lip moved faintly as his mouth trembled, revealing the smallest crack in his emotions. He really had been moved.
Shaotang scrubbed one hand hard across his face, looking slightly embarrassed. Then he smiled at Meng Xiaobei. “I’m the eldest in my family. I never had an older brother. I really did think of your dad as my big brother.”
…
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