Hard Like Water Read online

  About the Book

  Hard Like Water is a thrilling story about an erotic affair during China’s Cultural Revolution.

  Returning to his hometown—and his wife—soldier Aijun sees a young woman, Hongmei, wandering barefoot along the railway tracks in the late-afternoon sun. From that moment on, Aijun and Hongmei spend their days and nights writing pamphlets and attending rallies: they are the engines of history. But soon their sexual and revolutionary fervour merge and a crazed new love explodes between them.

  The party bosses are impressed by the ardour of the pair’s work. Emboldened, the couple build a ‘tunnel of love’—to further the revolution, of course, but also to connect their homes for their secret rendezvous. What will happen to their dreams of a life together?

  Hard Like Water is an irresistible tale about sex and revolution, and a compelling drama about the nature of political power—by one of China’s greatest contemporary writers.

  CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  CHAPTER 1 ENCOUNTERING REVOLUTION

  CHAPTER 2 PRELIMINARY REPORT ON WINDS AND CLOUDS

  CHAPTER 3 HARD AND SOFT

  CHAPTER 4 OVERCAST SKIES

  CHAPTER 5 POLICY AND STRATEGY

  CHAPTER 6 REVOLUTIONARY ROMANTICISM

  CHAPTER 7 A NEW BATTLE

  CHAPTER 8 DEFEAT AND CELEBRATION

  CHAPTER 9 PROSECUTING THE NEW REVOLUTION

  CHAPTER 10 THE GREAT VICTORY

  CHAPTER 11 THE WINDS SUDDENLY SHIFT

  CHAPTER 12 A TRIUMPHANT RETURN

  CHAPTER 13 CODA

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Chapter 1

  Encountering Revolution

  1. Using the Reputation of the Revolution

  After I die and things settle down, I’ll reevaluate my life, and specifically the cracks between my speech, behavior, posture, and my chickenshit love. That “tender land” will be an excellent place to reflect on life, with beautiful drifting catkins and bright peach blossoms. Right now, however, they have taken the muzzle of a loaded gun and placed it against the back of my head, invoking the reputation of the revolution. With death lodged in my throat, I have no choice but to soon proceed to the execution ground and wait for the bullet. Laughing at the prospect of death, I’m prepared to cross the bridge that leads to the underworld. Prior to the execution, I drank a bowl of wine, and did not feel a trace of resentment. Hatoyama prepared a banquet for me, with ten thousand cups. Revolution must be like this. I’ll lay down my life in battle, shattering my bones, scattering my blood, and destroying my body and my spirit. In three days or at most a week, Hongmei and I will both be standing on the execution ground, next to the river that runs past the base of the mountain. We’ll both be wearing handcuffs as we kneel at the edge of the pit, after which we’ll return to our tender land. Our remaining time is like the final drops of water in a Shangganling water kettle, each drop as precious as a jewel. My life’s furnace is about to be extinguished, a furnace that ignited mountains and rivers, streams and gullies, and the entire land. It ignited the air and forests, water and women, animals and rocks, grass and footsteps, crops and men, the seasons and roads, as well as women’s wombs, hair, lips, and clothing. The spring river water flows west, as the east and west winds engage in fierce battle. Mother, mother—after your son dies, please arrange for his grave to face east, so that he may view the town of Chenggang.

  2. Painfully Recounting the Revolution’s Genealogy

  Let me painfully relate the story of a revolutionary family …

  It was the first lunar month of 1942, and after a dog barked at night in the town of Chenggang in the Balou Mountains, the Japanese emerged from the village, having gleefully slaughtered the local men. The town therefore found itself with a dearth of men and a surfeit of widows. That was the night my father died, and I was born. On that night, there was a foul wind and a blood-colored rain that fell together with bone-white dragon scales. My father stepped out of his house to summon the midwife, but when he reached the town entrance a Japanese devil stabbed him with a bayonet. My father’s intestines poured out of his abdomen, engulfing the bayonet, soaking the soil of our homeland, and igniting the vengeful anger of our People …

  Comrades, dear comrades! We were once blood-red revolutionaries, and resistors in class warfare. Hey, could you please not interrupt me? I am invoking my identity as a member of the Chinese Communist Party to request that you not interrupt me and that you let me painfully recount my family history.

  If you ask me to recount my story, I have no choice but to tell it like this. Only in this way will I be able to make my way out of the mess in which I currently find myself … Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and my revolutionary energy has never flagged. I was born into the old society but grew up under the red flag, having been nursed on the sun’s rays. In 1964, when I was twenty-two, I decided to continue the work of the revolutionary martyrs and joined the army. The army division I joined was devoted to capital construction projects—digging tunnels through mountains and valleys, building railroads under sun and rain. With lofty ambitions, we battled heaven and earth, and with great aspirations, we sought to make our vision of our motherland a reality. Over the next three years, I followed the army regiment through three provinces and nine counties, and was awarded four third-class merit badges, five company-level commendations, and six battalion-level commendations. My dossier became so full of these certificates that there wasn’t room left for even a fart. The revolutionary army was a large school, and I was originally a cadre sprout supported by the company and the battalion. If I had continued to advance in status, I’m sure that by now I would already be a battalion commander or deputy commander, and I wouldn’t need to ask you to post my court judgment and Hongmei’s notice all over Chenggang. I know that throughout the town there will be flyers announcing my execution—in all of Chenggang’s streets and alleys, on all of its walls and trees, and on all of its well platforms and mill houses. The announcements will appear everywhere there are people and will be as abundant as funereal spirit money, fluttering in the wind and blanketing the ground.

  Heaven, oh heaven! Earth, oh earth! This joke is as vast as heaven and earth!

  I hadn’t ever expected that the sun could rush across the sky from west to east.

  Had I known such a thing could happen, I definitely would have figured out a way to remain in the army. Regiment 80911 had wanted to enlist me. In the great year of 1967, our original regiment enlisted soldiers from all over the country, and everyone marched together, with a common goal and a shared objective. But as we attempted to implement communism and create a unified future, this unity fell apart, and part of our regiment was reconstituted into what became Regiment 80911. However, rather than enlisting in the new regiment, I instead asked to be demobilized. My commanding officer said, “Private Gao Aijun, if you transfer to Regiment 80911 and continue there, you’ll eventually be promoted to the level of cadre.” I replied, “I want to return home and pursue the revolution from there.” I was done with the army. For the past four years, I’d been digging ditches, placing explosives, and building a railroad that would one day extend all the way to the next province. But every time we had a personnel shift, we always had to perform a quick march and depart. When we were building a great and glorious railroad to protect the nation, I spent twenty months digging a tunnel through the mountains—for those twenty months I didn’t see anyone, couldn’t return to my hometown, nor did I even go to the market. For those twenty months I didn’t even once smell the scent of a woman. When our regiment
finally emerged from that tunnel, we saw a marriage procession passing by, and immediately our entire regiment stood at attention, everyone’s gaze giving a loud crackle. The new bride’s beauty radiated outward for thousands of miles, illuminating the whole universe. The smell of her fragrance caused the regiment to collapse, as though it were deadly poison. After we reached our destination, the military supervisor and company leader told everyone to seize their spirit in order to search for flaws and to imprison their thought in order to pursue revolution. We then spent the next half month consolidating our spirit, purifying our hearts so they became like sheets of paper on which one could draw something beautiful. It was precisely as my own heart was being transformed into a sheet of paper that I decided to leave the army. I decided that I had already spent enough time in the regiment, and now wanted to return home to pursue revolution. What kind of person did I want to be? Did I want to be an honest person? To tell the truth, I missed my wife and even missed my mother-in-law. Needless to say, this was a tragicomedy created by the regiment’s unique revolutionary conditions.

  My wife’s name was Cheng Guizhi, and although the name Guizhi, meaning “cassia twig,” sounds very traditional and refined, my wife was actually all woman—with a woman’s body and a woman’s face. The rosy tint behind the blackness of her face and body was the same color as the cover of Chairman Mao’s Quotations. She was of average height, with a pudgy physique, and when she walked her butt swayed back and forth as though her bloated flesh were attempting to liberate itself and reach the blue sky. Those of you who are familiar with the town of Chenggang will already have heard of her. Her father was the first Party secretary of New China following Liberation, and it was precisely because he was Party secretary that I married his daughter. Before I joined the army, Guizhi gave birth to our son, and the following year she returned to visit her relatives in the mountains along the Henan-Hubei border. At that time, our regiment was digging a tunnel under Peak No. 2 (excavating deeply, accumulating grain, never seeking hegemony) for potential war preparations. One day, I was pushing ballast inside the tunnel, when a new recruit rushed in waving a pickax and shouted, “Gao Aijun, a woman as large as a water barrel is outside looking for you—” I kicked the soldier and replied, “You must remain united and alert, solemn and lively.” The soldier replied, “If you have a friend afar who knows your heart, then even a vast distance can’t keep you apart … The woman waiting outside claims that you are her husband.”

  I stared in shock, then stumbled out of the tunnel.

  It turned out that the woman in question was in fact my wife, Guizhi.

  That night I slept with Guizhi in the regiment’s reception room. That was a tent that was only half as large as this room. On all four sides there were walls made from bricks piled as high as a person, over which there was a tarp. Chairman Mao’s poster was hanging on the wall, and there were several copies of his books on the shelves. The poster was positioned directly over the bed, such that Chairman Mao was able to keep watch over all the relatives and children who came to visit the regiment. Guizhi, however, didn’t bring our son, Hongsheng, with her; instead she came alone. It was a few days before the decisive National Day construction battle, and I said, “We’re very busy right now, why have you come?” She replied, “The wheat has been harvested, the autumn grain has been sowed, and currently there is nothing for me to do at home. If I didn’t come now, when would I?” I said, “Preparations for the defensive battle have reached a critical juncture.” She said, “Hongsheng is two years old and can already run around.” I said, “Your coming here has made me lose face. Just look at you!” She glanced down at her new blue shirt, with its large collar and coarse fabric, and after a moment began to unfasten the buttons she had sewn herself. She asked, “Don’t all peasants look like this?” Then she added, “Now that Hongsheng is already two, I’ve decided I want to get pregnant again, because I want a daughter. That’s why I rushed over here by train and by car to see you.” She explained that she had had an arduous journey, because she had accidentally taken the wrong train and ended up having to spend the night on the floor of a train station. Fortunately, she was equipped with a mouth and therefore in the end was able to successfully make her way here. She said that had it not been for her determination to have a daughter in addition to a son, she probably couldn’t have found the regiment even if her life depended on it, and thus wouldn’t have given me the opportunity to lose face. She asked if I resented her for being ugly, and if so, then why had I proposed to her in the first place? She asked why, if I found her so unattractive, did I impregnate her with Hongsheng?

  As she was speaking, she proceeded to remove her clothes, then sat down on the side of the bed. The room was illuminated by a thirty-five-watt light bulb that produced a light with a golden tint, and when it shone on her it appeared to envelop her corpulent body in a dark red glow. The room was perfused with a feminine scent, like a pink mist. I longed to stare at her naked body. By that point I had already been in the army for two years, and before I knew it, my son was already two years old. I suddenly realized that my memory of Guizhi’s naked figure had grown hazy, to the point that I had almost forgotten what she even looked like. I tore my gaze away from her, but she continued sitting on the edge of the bed for a while, then pulled back the sheets and crawled under them. As she did so, my blood begin to boil, and my throat became as dry as kindling left out in the sun for three years. To my surprise, I found that her breasts were as large and white as a pair of sheep heads, and as she was lifting up the sheets, they swayed back and forth, flashing a pair of hot red lights. As her breasts were covered by the sheets, I was reminded of how, when I was young and working as a shepherd, the sheep would often run through tall grass, and when they jumped up, their heads would briefly emerge before falling back into the grass. Guizhi’s breasts surely hadn’t always been this large, and I remembered how, when she failed to produce enough milk after giving birth to Hongsheng, I’d had to go down to the river to catch some fish for her to eat. What had her breasts been like at that time? It was like when you pick out the best flour, then use what is left over to make some steamed buns—although the latter is still white flour, beneath that whiteness there will inevitably be a layer of blackness. How was it that her breasts had become so large and so white? How was it that she now had two engorged sheep heads for breasts?

  I asked, “Guizhi, is Hongsheng still nursing?”

  She turned and said, “Of course. Even if I were to smear my nipples with chili sauce, he would still nurse.”

  I then felt I understood why her breasts were so engorged, as seductive as sheep heads. I said, “Do you want to get pregnant again?”

  She replied, “If I didn’t want to get pregnant again, why do you think I would have traveled thousands of li to come here?”

  I began to remove my clothes. If I tugged at the bottom of my military coat, I could unfasten five buttons at once, as easily as unzipping a zipper. That was one of the first lessons that a new recruit had to learn, so that when defending against a sneak attack by American imperialists or Soviet revisionists, soldiers would be able to instantly go to sleep and instantly get up again. I stripped off my clothes, and as I was diving into bed, Guizhi suddenly sat up and turned off the light. Just as she was doing so, that pair of sheep heads poked up again through the grass, and my hands reached out as though I were trying to grab one. Afterward, however, I didn’t immediately do it with her. After all, I was her husband, and she was my wife. Our bright red and resplendently luminous marriage certificate guaranteed our right to bear children and enjoy conjugal pleasures. However, I hadn’t touched a woman for two years, to the point that I had virtually forgotten what a woman felt like, and therefore I first needed to caress her from head to toe. I caressed her hair, her face, and her shoulders—which were calloused from carrying a shoulder pail every day. I caressed her breasts, which seemed to have become even more engorged than before, and her belly, which was as soft as cotton. She
lay there motionless, permitting me to touch and kiss her—but just as my lips and hands were about to reach her lower regions, she exploded. Screaming as though she had suddenly realized that the person lying on top of her was not her husband, she wriggled out from beneath me and turned on the light.

  She left me sitting in the middle of the bed, with half the bedsheets still on the bed and the other half on the floor.

  She said, “Gao Aijun, you are a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, and the entire nation looks to you as a model. How is it that you leave home for two years and suddenly become a hooligan?!”

  I stared at her in astonishment.

  She exclaimed, “If you want to conceive a child, you should go ahead and do so. But why are you feeling me up? When you touched my head and my face, I could tolerate it, but then you began rubbing your hands all over my lower body. What are you, a soldier or a hooligan?!”

  The lamp in the room was as bright as the sun. She stood at the foot of the bed, her complexion as green as fresh vegetables. The room was drowned in her humiliation. I stared at her for a moment, then developed an urge to get down from the bed and kick her. I wanted to kick her voluptuous breasts and her wide and soft belly. In the end, I didn’t do so, and instead simply stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. I felt as though I were choking on something caught in my throat and was so desperate I wished I could spit out my own tongue. There was a chill in the air, and even though it was still the ninth lunar month, here in the mountains it got so cold at night that you would wake up freezing. My fellow soldiers from the construction regiment were sleeping in a building several dozen meters away, and the sound of the sentries’ footsteps drifted over like the chopping of a boat’s oars on the surface of a lake. I could hear the sentries changing shift. One said, “Password?” The other replied, “Defeat the American imperialists.” The first one then exhaled and answered, “Protect the homeland.” With this, they changed shift, and the night reverted back to deep silence.