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

  The architect grew anxious, and all he could do was to give the audience a timely reminder: for the people who were thousands of li from this exhibition, the most urgent matter was to have functional houses to live in. He said that this was one part of the charter agreed upon between humanity and this planet and that has been implemented for millions of years: just look at the stone-age sites at Longgushan, Shandingdong, Banpocun, and Hemudu!

  Regardless, regenerated brick, which had arrived on this earth in an exceptional fashion, had garnered a broad and consistently positive evaluation. In the era of the architect, this sort of thing was actually quite rare. Because any sort of avant-garde work of art, including buildings, whenever it appeared in the sight line of the broad public it elicited great controversy. For example, the constantly in focus Bird’s Nest, Water Cube, and even the Central Television Tower and National Theater, when appearing in the media gaze all were objects of all variety of contradictory discussion. Regenerated brick, however, was different: favorable assessment was widespread and consistent. I’ll give an example here: in a blog titled “Pendulum in Space,” the following words appeared:

  It really inspires admiration,

  Good planning, down-to-earth execution,

  A comprehensive solution and an overall vision of craft, materials, environment, society,

  and economics,

  In comparison, any number of theories look feeble.

  Although I cannot consider “the regenerated-brick plan” to be a complete architectural success,

  But for someone who is an architect, due attention to society, economics, and the environment must be major issues.

  I am afraid that I am not qualified to learn its lessons myself, and all I can do is follow with interest and support the project,

  Plus, in my own field of responsibility, I can introduce it over and over again to my students.

  Low-tech is a strategy to deal with reality,

  Is it that,

  Just because it is deeply concerned with actual reality,

  And because of the specificity and nonreplicability of reality,

  Therefore,

  The product “regenerated bricks” will be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

  Why do I think that!!!??? Really disappointing.

  “Regenerated brick” cannot but remind us of Wright’s concrete blocks,

  From an architectural point of view, I cannot really differentiate them,

  But from their social background and function, I can feel a vast difference,

  Whatever their difference in property, it will require in-depth analysis to find it out,

  However, I still think they share the uniqueness of the backgrounds in which they are set,

  Because of the possibilities of this uniqueness and its suitability,

  It requires sustained and continuous attention!

  This essay made a great effort to clarify something for us, but in fact the relationship between art and society, because of the nature of writing itself, got all tangled up once again. Plus, looking into these materials from another day consumes much time and energy. In the era in which the architect existed a great deal of information was transmitted by the elusive and illusory conduit known as the internet, the veracity of which was difficult to assess. Transmission also implied withering away, sinking into a vast ocean, with a loss of the original meaning that was to be expressed. No matter how great the shock, it would finally revert to quiescence. But why was I so resolutely holding on to this? Mulling it over, perhaps I was attracted by the phrase “its nonreproducibility.” As far as the human species is concerned, the traditional view is that one can exist only once and never return again. So it was with the dinosaurs. As far as we now know dinosaurs have not appeared in any other time or place in this universe. Humans, who have a three-million-year history, are the same case. What we call reincarnation is merely a way of comforting ourselves. If you cannot remember your previous self, then becoming a new person is simply a fruitless effort. Now, however, via a man-made way of recycling through the medium of bricks, there is an attempt to make a structure to render existence endure through countless cycles. How can this not be art?

  Eventually, however, I discovered the true nonreproducibility—it was actually embodied in an important detail involved in the process of making the bricks—that is, the “spraying on of an epidemic prophylactic,” something other industrial activities did not require. When they were sent to the exhibition, however, we didn’t know why it was done, and even in the “Diary of Making Bricks” it was not explained, which seems like a deliberate omission. Although this was but a very short part of the production line, it was a step that could not be left out of the production of regenerated bricks and was really the first step. Perhaps subconsciously the architect did not really wish to create any sort of link between his artistic image (which was his real demand) and that of epidemiologists?

  This “spraying on of epidemic prophylactic” was to use 0.2 percent solution of peracetic acid or 2 ounces (100 grams) of powdered bleach in solution to spray, either by hand or mechanically, on the ruins, basically as a disinfectant. By that time, it was no longer possible to completely clear out the corpses buried in the rubble. I have in my hand a photo of the spraying: a dozen odd slender people, dressed in white prophylactic garb that went to their ankles, wearing masks that revealed only eyes, with black iron tanks on their backs. On the brown debris, their arms like trees and their feet like boats, they formed a fractal image dispersed to the outside, looking like utterly inhuman extraterrestrials, with layers of hazy white fog rising on all sides of their bodies as if a resurrecting fragrance were being dispensed by their flesh. Some people even said that they had seen any number of budding flowers emerging after the spraying, vivid and bright. But flowers themselves cannot really serve as building material. What was actually useful was the even plainer wheat stalks.

  But can it be said that spraying is also a technology—and because of that made into art? All this was a product of very different times, and one can at present only surmise about it. What we also do not know is what the actual mood of the sprayers was when they were working: could they not also have been schizophrenic? From outward appearance, they looked as if they were engaged in a very earnest dance, like “The Silk Road” ballet, which completely accorded with a shaman’s rite of regeneration.

  No matter what, when the spraying began some of the villagers gathered around to watch; their expressions were hard to describe.

  Of course, the reason for spraying was because of a dead-certain truth about the regenerated bricks, that they were a combination of three things: bodies, rubble, and wheat stalks. But what could be directly perceived at the European biennial were only two parts, debris from the disaster zone and wheat stalks, respectively, which were regarded as the raw materials, which had been neatly filled into two rectangular stone boxes, then set aside beneath the already formed shiny-bright brick wall provided for the perusal of the visitors, who were hard-pressed to pull themselves away. Similarly, these items had undergone a rigorous and delicate process of sterilization before they were shipped to Europe, something not revealed to the visitors.

  —Was it, then, owing to the fact that the work had achieved success at an international exhibition that it later attracted so many more architects and planners, not to mention investors, construction-material dealers, developers, and the like, who all came to the disaster zone to participate in what was always referred to as relief work? But did these people also long to realize their own regeneration? This was particularly the case in the year following, when, after the outbreak of the financial crisis, even more people showed up, almost flattening some of the ruins. Normally they would be accompanied by county or district leaders when they came. These officials were also highly enthusiastic, as if they were receiving meat pies that were falling from the sky.

  “This small-scale semihandicraft mechanization as far as possible employs the handicraft resour
ces that were already extant throughout the locality; they were extremely suitable to the task, easy and convenient to use, can be put into production without the need for a long training period, is are advantageous to the flowering of the whole locality, and to the reconstruction and self-support for the masses in the disaster zone.” At the invitation of the local government, architects had personally returned again and again to the area and had offered these opinions on the manufacture of the bricks, as if to refute the notion that the popularity of regenerated bricks resulted from their having participated in a European artistic exhibit.

  By this time he had already won a number of major international and domestic awards, such as the prize for architecture in media from a major media organization. In its justification for his selection, the prize committee in fact listed his behavior in the category of “social responsibility.”

  The media organization also provided photographs, one of which used a wide-angle lens to shoot the brick-manufacturing scene. On a relatively large flat space among the pale mountains, with the black ruins as background, there were altogether three thousand workers wearing bright red T-shirts that had been distributed to them by the organizers, on the backs of which were printed “Regenerated Brick” in yellow characters in both Chinese and English. In front of each of them was a silver-colored manual crusher, and they were rhythmically swinging their arms in an orderly fashion, dripping with sweat as they manipulated carrying poles in cadence with the architect’s sonorous commands; it was like something from the early Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. The sunlight beat down like innumerable blue dragonflies droning on, while the silent earth was once more brought to seething motion even as it gave off a violent and seemingly familiar, if alarming, shaking.

  Be that as it may, the activity was organized by the village committee and was labeled as “a union of masses and experts,” and it at least embodied a formal sense of mass participation, as if they had all come to support the movement begun by the architect.

  “It looks exactly like the performance at the Olympic opening ceremony,” a reader cried out involuntarily when he first saw the photo. This reader was my humble self.

  I immediately noticed that among the brickmakers, two-thirds were local women. They stretched out their soft, golden bodies, and in their calisthenic-like movements they appeared to be in a semistupor-like condition of overexcitement, as if they had just been sent to the delivery room.

  The photo was of limited size, so the people in it were just really too tiny. But when it was seen with a magnifying glass, the architect, standing in front of the farmers like an orchestra conductor and incessantly bobbing his head, although seemingly in a highly stimulated state, revealed a vaguely depressed look, which lacked any sense of the happiness of one who was about to become a father.

  The local government was quite grateful and had conferred upon him an honorary title, for it was a fact that without the regenerated brick it would have been practically impossible for thousands of people who had lost their homes to be able to move into new dwellings so quickly. And even as the regenerated bricks demolished this impossibility, they also routed the fixed patterns of popular thinking. For example, at the time there were no legal regulations on what “reconstruction planning” was supposed to be. As far as professional planners were concerned, they did not know whether these plans applied to structures or to roads. Were they to be applied to buildings or to blueprints? They knew nothing of any of this. Could you say something could be completed within three months? Once you had regenerated brick, however, suddenly all of these ceased to be problems. Moreover, with “regenerated bricks” being a new type of light, hollow brick made of slag and wheat straw, there was no corresponding national standard for them. But precisely because they were the regenerated bricks upon which everyone had heaped so much praise, they were subject to no strictures, so applying the tests used on hollow concrete bricks was fine. Everything was simplified. The result of these tests turned out to be that the compressive strength was up to standard and could satisfy the demands for sustaining the strength of infill walls.

  Because of this, although the local homes had been destroyed, but based on the architect’s instruction, the shattered tiles and bricks still contained the feelings that had been invested in them previously. Although it was discarded building materials that had been “regenerated” materially, it was also a “regeneration” built on the spiritual and emotional plane following the catastrophe. When the architect said such things, he all but closed his eyes, like a preacher reciting scripture in church, which imparted a warmth akin to a spring breeze blowing in one’s face. There was also an admixture of the floating colors of a lotus pond, but that was something a bit hard to grasp, although in contrast to actual colors and breezes, it had more of the quality of a medieval print. This is of course my perception as a latecomer, so perhaps there is a generation gap involved. He was like the sun god; he had long been in charge of everything.

  The true start of mass production was at the wheat harvest the following May, when considerable quantities of wheat straw awaited disposition. At the time the ruins had not been completely cleared, or perhaps it could be said rather that they had been intentionally left in place. The architect, with disciples clustered around, stood on a hillock of rubble looking down, and all they could see was a golden sea of wheat straw stretching away endlessly. It seemed that only the straw had not been affected by the catastrophe, as if it were so many women who, when the wind sprang up playfully, fell into one another’s embrace, jabbering happily with faintly coquettish smiles on their faces. The straw had already seen its fate once it was collected together, so it happily gathered itself, since it would no longer be burned by lowly flames, turned into gray smoke, and dispersed to the horizon. It yearned to be chopped up neatly and to become raw material for the renowned regenerated brick, to become the most valuable form of solid matter, to continue to adhere to the dazzling but inexplicable earth that also seemed to have an artistic quality to it. A new cycle was thus begun, but one that seemed to approach the eternal. What? The eternal? Yes. This appeared to be the promise of the architect-cum-artist. Would the entire disaster zone also be regenerated because of this? During this short period things were truly beyond normal! It was like a lizard that had had part of its body lopped off that used the full extent of its internal resources of dilapidated flesh and via the mysterious function of genes passed down from remote antiquity to, in the flash of an eye, give birth to a new body.

  But could it endure?

  Perhaps …

  There is a woman here who was among the first group of farmers to respond to the call to make bricks. I don’t know whether she can be considered a member of what the architect labeled “the wives,” but her house collapsed in the catastrophe, and at thirty-eight she lost her husband and child. She had no one to look after her and even thought of taking her own life. Yes, with her husband and child gone, what had she to live for? She loved them; she had been with her husband for thirteen years, and they had been affectionate the whole time. Her child was an only son in middle school, mature and with good grades, who had back then wished her a happy mother’s day. Now, both gone … missing them bitterly, she had one day used a rope to hang herself from the big tree at the edge of the village. She had not, however, succeeded in killing herself but had been discovered and saved by the architect, who was fortuitously passing by on his way to the workshop to press them to produce the bricks. When she was brought down and laid on the ground, she sat stupidly in the ruins, looking at the spectral pale green figure of the architect as if he were an extraterrestrial alien. She could not figure out what it was that had happened and just sat there with her mouth agape and being unable to stand up for the longest time. That night she had a dream in which she saw a path leading to the netherworld, where her husband and child, covered with blood and dust, were laboriously supporting each other as they attempted to move forward. But they could not make any pro
gress, since both of them were bearing several baskets of bricks weighing down their bodies. She was taken aback and said in a pitying soft voice, “If you can’t walk, don’t try, just rest awhile and have a drink of water.”

  This took place that summer. The village committee had already mobilized people to make bricks, but at the time there were not many people volunteering to participate in the work. They didn’t want to do anything, since they no longer had any hope for the future. They spent all day blankly staring at photos of their children. Every day they went to the multicolored ruins, and when people asked them what they went there to do, they replied that they were trying to lead lost relatives back home. Thus, the demonstration samples of the work, no matter how artistic the work was, or how many prizes it had won, or to which continent it had gone and what sort of international sensation it had elicited—none of it mattered to them. They merely passively participated in the brickmaking at the urging or even the compulsion of the chair of the village committee. Six family members of this chair had also been buried in the catastrophe, but he did not move first to save his own family members, rather he immediately organized people to rescue other villagers, with the result that not a single member of his own family was saved. He dried his tears and led the villagers to speedily engage in recovery through production, urging everyone to heed the calls for self-reliance and reconstructing their homes, to go all out and mobilize. In spite of this, the people could not instantaneously summon up enthusiasm and confidence, so they often produced substandard regenerated brick, or even plain scrap. The architect or artist was extremely annoyed at this, since it increased costs, with the disaster victims paying the ultimate cost; how could the ruins be regenerated this way? How could he honor his commitment made at the foreign biennial? Many villagers withdrew from the making of brick under the harsh regulations of the architect, but this woman was one who persevered throughout, because she gradually became aware that that sort of repetitive movement could help her to forget her lost relatives.