The Reincarnated Giant: Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction Read online

  The audience saw the process by which the bricks were made via animation on a screen: first, the raw materials of cement and brick fragments were mixed together, then fibers from rapeseed stems were added in (when mass production began, wheat straw was to be used), then water was mixed in, and finally a brick-pressing machine using a leverage mechanism molded the material into the “finished product” … the video also showed two bricks taking shape at the same time as well as batches of pressed-out and regenerated brick in the process of drying. The audience also saw that the tactile sense of the regenerated brick was quite different from that of cinder block. It was these bricks that were to be transported many thousands of li to be in the art exhibit that would secure glory for the architect and the country he represented.

  “Regenerated brick is a low-tech, low-cost quality material that everyone can produce if they wish: the materials are available on the spot, and they can be produced either by hand or with simple machinery; they don’t require firing, are fast, cheap, environmentally safe, suitable for any locality, with variable dimensions, extremely adaptable, limitlessly useful, and with no patent impediments.” The image of the architect seemed as if he were delivering an admonition when he explained the implications of “vernacular architecture.” He was a slightly overweight young man, not at all cheerful and would often display a pained expression when he spoke. He did not call his creation “a work of art.”

  In fact, a number of national artistic media had reported on this pioneering work, such as Art World monthly in Shanghai, and had said this: the architect had stressed from the beginning in his accounts of his thinking about his work that it was not an installation made for exhibition but rather a project for the urgent application of materials for reconstructing after a catastrophe.

  But what did he mean?

  No matter what, such statements had the effect of augmenting the artistic value of regenerated brick, and no matter how the architect tried to explain, he himself also came to be treated as an artist (whether he agreed or not). The work was smoothly rolled out at the European biennial and achieved unprecedented success. The audience took note of the fact that in the exhibit hall there was a description of the work appended to the name and brief bio of the architect:

  Material of the work: regenerated brick

  Date of creation: May–June 2008

  Size of the bricks: 330 mm long, 170 mm wide, 110 mm tall

  The brick wall: an exhibition wall two m tall and 15 m long

  Let us now return to the process of making the bricks. Two days after the Shanghai press conference—that is, June 19—the architect finally was able to see the price estimate at the workshop. He then paid the deposit and ordered that three hundred trial bricks be produced by the twenty-second. Just to be safe, however, he also got in touch with the large factory. The owner of the factory received him warmly, their interaction went quite smoothly, and it was agreed that after the samples were decided upon the owner could produce the goods within two days. He made the point that each sample would use the same material for each batch, the reason being to guarantee the accuracy of the proportions of each constituent ingredient. Since the owner was so sensible, the architect paid a deposit on the spot and wrote out inventories for three different composite materials.

  In that day’s diary the architect wrote, “I felt much more relaxed on the way back: double insurance. Everybody thinks we should gamble on this place. This is the conclusion: the communes are more orderly than farmers. Let’s just consider the money placed at the workshop as tuition, and, no matter what, it will provide us with a lot of information and teach us about proper procedure.”

  Following upon this, the work of making the bricks went on at both places at the same time.

  Three days later, the workshop had already made several hundred bricks, and the factory had also made its samples. On June 22, the day set to see the bricks, the architect vacillated: should he go to the factory first, or to the workshop? He finally thought that he should go to the factory first, since his hopes were invested there. Go to the factory first to look at the samples, and if they were all right he would order from there. At any rate he had paid the workshop the whole deposit, and even if he ordered them to cease production, they wouldn’t lose any money; they could sell the bricks they had already made and make their money that way. But he hesitated once again: no, I should go to the workshop first and see what their product is like anyway, and there will be plenty of time to stop by the factory on the way back and place the order.

  When he arrived at the workshop, the bricks were still wet, so he could not make out their quality, but clearly there was not enough straw, so he wasn’t very satisfied. He thought, it looks as if I’ll tell the workshop to stop production after I’ve seen what they’ve done at the factory. When he arrived at the factory, however, the samples utterly shocked him, since they were completely different from what they had agreed upon. Not only were there not three different composites, of the two there were, it was impossible to tell what their constituents were.

  The architect wrote in his diary, Seeing us lose our tempers, a woman came up and entered the dispute, using the guerrilla technique of raising complete irrelevancies; when she saw our anger pointed in one direction, she would pin us down on another point. She didn’t understand the origins of the matter at all, but her motives were crystal clear: at the end of the day everything had been done as we had wanted it.

  There was another “proprietor” present, and the previous “proprietor” we had talked to looked and spoke more like a “foreman.” One way or the other we came up with the invoice from two days before on which was written the correct proportions, and only at this time did we see him squat down and explain to the workers what was meant by the proper proportions.

  We didn’t want any of them. Now our only hope was with the workshop. Since they had clearly used insufficient straw, I called them on the phone and stressed that I wanted the proportions according to the specifications. Should I call a second time to make sure they got it right? We discussed it a bit and decided not to call, since we feared that if we called again they would add too much straw. My feeling was this: ultimately my tone of voice determined the proportions.

  …

  I was not clear whether the architect, in writing these words, was intent upon using them to one day write something for publication and to use them as an organic part of his work. Neither did I know whether he would revise some of the content prior to publication so as to match it to the work. If these regenerated bricks were like the architect’s children, then would not the diary also have some regenerated significance?

  What one could clearly make out, however, was that the architect’s mood was not calm, and that his initial feeling of exhilaration had completely vanished. Perhaps all of this was something at odds with his original design. Perhaps he had assumed that since the people of the disaster area had endured so much suffering they would necessarily regard his arrival, including the products that he brought, as if it was unselfish assistance and would be full of yearning and gratitude. But looking at it more realistically, that did not seem to be the case.

  At a later seminar, the architect discussed his mental fragmentation:

  “After the disaster occurred, I felt all along the issue of personal identity: when I reached the zone I thought of myself as a volunteer, but as a weak, middle-aged volunteer—I have a bad back so was embarrassed if I carried only light things, but I was not up to lifting anything heavy, which made things very awkward; when I saw buildings that had not collapsed in the disaster zone I could still think of myself as an architect; but when I looked at buildings that had collapsed, I simply wouldn’t dare to admit that I was an architect; moreover, when I could feel my office rocking day after day as I sat in it and many of the things I had collected were smashed to pieces, I felt a bit like one of the victims.”

  As the course of manufacturing brick gradually proceeded this mood became ever harder t
o dispel. Just what sort of person, then, was the architect? This was related to exactly what the architect had come to the disaster zone to do. The question of personal identity gradually came to occupy a preeminent position.

  But what lay behind all of this? It must be said that this was a technical matter—that is, this was the central issue with the regenerated brick. At the time, people proposed all sorts of plans for rebuilding, but in the end regenerated brick was recognized as the most successful, so I think that technical matters played the key role. Like those who proposed using large-scale mechanization and professional companies to carry out the work of clearing the rubble, none of their plans were as good as those of the architect, so his was more readily accepted as a compromise. The architect’s way of thinking was clearly that of an engineer and very simple. At the time it would not ordinarily even have been brought up, but it was only because of these qualities that, after final comparison, it was able to defeat the extravagant wording of the large-scale proposals by showing how much more practicable it was. Thus, its artistic quality was produced by its technical quality—no matter how much the architect tried to turn it into a charitable activity. Regenerated brick was demarcated as a product of artistic activity by the outside world, and there can be no doubt that the architect subconsciously agreed, otherwise he would not have submitted it to the European biennial. In fact, in the architect’s “Diary of Making Bricks,” he used the term “disaster zone” only once. Under such circumstances, the clashes between the architect and the locals were particularly vexing to me. Perhaps the disaster victims had forgotten their personal status much as the architect was not clear about his own.

  —It would ultimately prove to be of use. I would later have to devote my attention to these words. Did they, however, refer to the achievement at the biennial or to the possibility that the living conditions of the villagers could be improved? Or to both? Of course, logically it seemed to be the latter, but neither seemed to be what the architect was actually referring to.

  In sum, several decades later when I first read the architect’s diary, my heart felt as if it were full of broken wheat straw that had piled up at various depths on my flesh; it was a vague and confused feeling that was difficult to extricate myself from, and all I could do was let my blood slowly dissolve these inexplicable feelings, and all this even though I had not personally been through the catastrophe. In fact, in the era of the architect there were probably not too many people who valued pure technology, since people’s attention was on other matters. But what the architect presented to everyone was actually a sort of technology, and more than that, one that was low-tech, quite contrary to the trends of the time. This was perhaps what caused a number of people that had engaged in postdisaster reconstruction to be so surprised and produced a series of unexpected infelicities.

  In spite of the pressure put on the proprietor and the workers, progress in making the bricks was still less than ideal. Thinking how the number of collapsed buildings in the disaster area reached 5.3 million, that there were more than 50 million cubic meters of rubble, or about 300 million tons, could not but cause one anxiety, not to mention the fact that there was organic waste and polluted water in the ruins growing more putrid by the day and damaging the environment. How to prevent the disaster area from being abandoned? In his diary the architect continued to write of the difficulties he encountered, as well as how he had put forth tireless efforts to solve the problems of that peculiar place in the presence of so many unfamiliar people:

  June 24: I went to the workshop to examine what they had produced—another shock. The ground was covered in white, and from the look of them they were different from the samples we had agreed upon after many days of talks. More cement had been added, but now there was no time. Things did not look good, and yet another woman came out, her combat style completely the same as that at the factory. But now I had some experience, and with a shout from me she retreated. The proprietor of the workshop realized there was some mistake, and even though his intentions had been good, he had done wrong, so his tone was very mild.

  As far as using them was concerned, the difference in external appearance was of no importance, but the samples have to be clearer in transmitting the concept, so the outward appearance is vital. This is the only way it can be done, so the rest of the order must be made in strict accordance with what we had initially agreed upon; the workshop proprietor said that he had finally understood, so I took a chance and ordered another batch.

  June 27: Delivery day. I went to see the brick-making work site. Because I went via another route I got lost and spent two hours wandering around befuddled among fields and houses, asking my way only after having walked two kilometers. By then, I had followed completely different instructions and walked back and forth in opposite directions. I finally got to the workshop at 1:30. And although we were hungry, the actuality of the work site was exciting, such that the road we took getting there became almost a symbol. We were basically satisfied with this latest batch. It seemed as if the frequency of our meetings was much more important than the accuracy of our technical instructions. You thought he understood, and he also thought he understood, but the key was whether or not he understood what you wanted him to understand. Trial production, testing, applying for funds, production, pushing them, communicating onsite … none of these steps could be omitted, and if making a brick was this way, building houses was even harder, since it involved money, local interests, customs concerning both life and manufacturing, and the like; I was full of anxiety about the house building that was to follow.

  Regenerated brick was something that had occurred to me to be worth trying when I was traversing the roads of the disaster zone. At present, at least as far as I was concerned, I have already steeled myself in such basic investigation and communication skills, and what needed to be regenerated was not just the brick but even more our own style of work. If I wanted eventually to be a “barefoot architect” in the work of rural reconstruction, and if I didn’t consciously remake myself, an urban architect used to working from blueprints, I would perhaps not be able to take off my boots.

  The gestation period for the regenerated brick that everyone had expected can be said not to have gone particularly smoothly. And as for the architect himself, his rebirth was like a difficult labor. During this time, he, normally ruddy with health and full of energy, turned quite haggard. The conditions in the disaster zone were difficult, water was hard to get, and the architect had not bathed for several days; his body began to smell, his visage had darkened, and he grew progressively thinner. At first glance he didn’t look like a man but rather a rural woman wearied by labor whose body had been weakened by bearing too many children. One night some of the villagers who participated in the brickmaking went to visit him in his tent, and they saw the architect wearing his simple clothes, standing there with his arms by his side, with an unsophisticated cylindrical separator set in front of his feet. His face was as pale as tinfoil, as if he were a ghost and let the yellow moonlight shine brightly into the tent. The architect seemed to be pondering how he had managed to turn himself into a brick, and a brick that would immediately begin asexual reproduction and rapidly produce great numbers of buildings so as to allow any conscious bipeds to move into as soon as they could—this was his only goal, like a calligrapher who wanted to apply the final stroke on a piece of fine paper. He was deeply immersed in his own fantastical thoughts, eyes fixed on the machine in front of him, as if it were another body that belonged to him. So he didn’t notice the entrance of the villagers, although they were in fact the subject of the architect’s work. It can thus be said that there was a profusion of contradictions within. A silly gray smile crossed the architect’s face, as if he were in labor, and an intermittent moan issued forth from his mouth, as if from a swamp. And behind him and the villagers, outside the tent, was a dense blackness, land that, although it had endured grievous wounds, was still rich and abundant and was arrogantly clearheaded as it
casually pressed down upon the bodies of the dead, looking at them as if listening to a joke. The living dared not utter a sound. This was the most mysterious and constrained time of the disaster zone. How could those who had not seen the zone gain any sense of this atmosphere?

  Regardless of the frustrations it endured, the architect’s darling was finally born. I finally discovered that from the standpoint of architecture, there was one key to the work, that it was “simple.”

  —Simplicity, this was highest goal in all artistic pursuit. Although this was the case, this project was destined to undergo a ten-month gestation followed by a caesarian section. After climbing aboard the wagon of simplicity, the work would finally leave the disaster zone far behind, first for an exhibition platform built by Westerners in another time and space; simplicity: it won its expected or unexpected result, and it seemed to have deleted, excluded, forgotten, and taken the time of everything else. Neither from the undifferentiated exhibition, nor from each silent regenerated brick, nor from the wall that had been built up from that brick and met aesthetic standards could the audience actually discern the tribulations the architect had gone through. Neither could they make out his own process of “regeneration,” much less the things that had caused so many people to be immersed in a terrified clamor, to lose so much sleep, or to shed copious tears. It was as if all this had expired or become invalid. After spending his euros to participate in the exhibit, even the architect had the terrified thought—is this real? Under the concealment of the brick wall, the vast disaster zone seemed as if it had become a weak and distant backdrop. This was not a pictorial brick of the Han dynasty, because one could not see the soldiers depicted racing around on it. There were no ranks of plastic bags holding the bodies of students, and the harrowing screams of the parents were also concealed. The homeless dog was not visible, waiting with its injured leg in the rubble for the return of its master. Nor could be seen the dead mother, still protecting her infant under her body, still nursing her child with a now-colorless breast. The teacher who had abandoned his students to rush first out of the classroom could also not be seen: he just happened to be on TV with others debating in a loud voice the question of moral standards. We could also not see the helicopter that crashed in the deep woods, with the corpses of the soldiers slowly rotting in the rain and exposing their white bones. In other words, all the images once indelibly engraved upon people’s minds no longer seemed quite so reliable. In the mirrorlike light cast by the regenerated brick, everything seemed calm and unruffled, and the only thing to be seen was a stream of blond and blue-eyed handsome men and beautiful women, all wearing brand-name clothes, politely and serenely strolling by. Curiosity could be seen in their eyes, as if they were looking at the Great Wall, and they issued sighs of admiration at the identical and undifferentiated bricks, which actually became the most fascinating work of Oriental art at the biennial.