The Garlic Ballads

represent the party and the government?
    “I further believe that the actions of the Paradise County administrator, Zhong Weimin, can be seen as dereliction of duty. As events unfolded, he refused to show his face, choosing instead to make the compound walls higher and top them with broken glass to ensure his own personal safety. When trouble came, he refused to meet with the masses, despite the entreaties of his own civil servants. That made the ensuing chaos inevitable. If we endorse the proposition that all people are equal under the law, then we must demand that the Paradise County People’s Procuratorate indict Paradise County administrator Zhong Weimin on charges of official misconduct! I have nothing more to say.”
    The young officer remained standing for a moment before wearily taking a seat behind the defense table. Thunderous applause erupted from the spectator section behind him.
    The presiding judge rose to his feet and patiently waited for the applause to die down. “Do the other defendants have anything to say in their defense? No? Then this court stands in recess while the panel of judges deliberates the case, based upon the evidence, arguments, and provisions of the law. We will return in thirty minutes to announce our verdict.”

C HAPTER 20

    I sing of May in the year 1987,
Of a criminal case in Paradise:
Police converged from all directions,
Arresting ninety-three of their fellow citizens.
Some died, others went to jail—
When will the common folk see the blue sky of justice?
—from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou on a side street west of the government office building

1.

    After finishing the verse he felt the ground beside him for his canteen. A gulp of cool water moistened his parched, raspy throat. All around him he heard applause and an occasional roar from one of the young voices: “Bravo, Zhang Kou! More, more, more!” Hearing their voices, he could nearly see their dusty bodies and blazing eyes. By then it was late autumn, and the tumult surrounding the Paradise garlic incident had subsided. A couple of dozen peasants, including Gao Ma, who was seen as the ringleader, had been sentenced to labor-reform camps; County Head Zhong “Serve the People” Weimin, and the county party secretary, Ji Nancheng, had been reassigned elsewhere. Their replacements, after delivering a series of reports to local dignitaries, organized a compulsory program for county workers to rake up the garlic rotting on city streets and haul it over to White Water Stream, which flowed through town. Baked by the midsummer sun, the garlic emitted a stench that lay like a pall over town until a couple of summery rainstorms eased the torment. At first the incident was all the people talked about; but farm duties and a creeping awareness that the topic was growing stale had the same effect on their conversations that the rain had on the smell of garlic. Zhang Kou, whose blindness had gained him leniency at court, proved to be the exception. Ensconced on a side street alongside the government office building, he tirelessly strummed his
erhu
and sang a ballad of garlic in Paradise, each version building upon the one that went before.
    … They say officials live to serve the people,
so why do they treat the common folk as enemies?
Heavy taxes and under-the-table levies, like ravenous beasts,
force the farmers to head for the
huls.
The common folk have a bellyful of grievances,
but they dare not let them out.
For the moment they open their mouths, electric prods close them fast…

    At this point in his song something hot stung his blind eyes, as if tears had materialized from somewhere, and he remembered all he had suffered in the county lockup.

    The policeman held the hot electric prod up to his mouth until he could hear it crackle. “Shut your trap, you blind fuck!” the policeman spat out venomously. Then the sparking prod touched his lips, and lightning hit him like a thousand needles. His teeth, his gums, his tongue, and his throat—-bursts of pain shot to the top of his head and down to the rest of his body. A scream tore from his throat, sending chills up his spine. Blood gushed from his withered eye sockets. “You can make me eat shit,” he said, “but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut if I wanted to. There are things inside me that must be said. I, Zhang Kou, am linked forever to the townspeople….”
    “Good for you, Great-Uncle Zhang Kou!” a couple of young fellows shouted. ‘There are half a million