The great relocation of Xi Tie Cheng officially began.
Like snails carrying their shells away from the grass, people packed up decades of belongings and left their hometown for good. The military-industrial factory town would very soon lose its water and electricity, and five thousand households’ worth of lights would go out forever. Viewed from space, one unassuming bright spot would vanish from the earth’s nighttime face — Xi Tie Cheng was about to complete its historical mission and sink into the vast darkness of night and the boundless depths of history.
The first convoy of fifty relocation trucks drove into Xi Tie Cheng and stopped at the doorways of buildings throughout the residential districts. Forty years ago, trucks had brought tens of thousands of military-industrial workers to this land; forty years later, their descendants were leaving this land once more.
Teacher Tong’s truck was set to depart first. Students, colleagues, and old neighbors had come to see her off, standing three rows deep around the truck. Xiao Man, in his work clothes, climbed up and down the truck, checking the ropes again and again and reinforcing the tarpaulin. Teacher Tong, holding back tears, shook hands with everyone one by one to say goodbye. Xiao Man struggled to suppress his choked emotions and finally bowed deeply.
“Xiao Man, call Teacher Tong often. If you get the chance, come visit us in Shenyang,” Teacher Tong embraced Xiao Man. “You will always be my student, and I will always be your teacher.”
The truck finally started moving. Xiao Man waved goodbye while tears ran down his face. Just then a young man approached holding a microphone with “Tie Cheng Television Station” printed on it, with a cameraman beside him pointing a lens at Xiao Man.
“Hello, I’m a reporter from Tie Cheng News,” the young man introduced himself to Xiao Man first. “I’ve come specifically today to cover the Xi Tie Cheng relocation. We just captured you and your teacher’s tearful farewell on film, and I’d like to interview you — is that alright?”
“Sure, but… you filmed me while I was crying?”
“Yes, it was a very moving moment. We’ll broadcast it on tonight’s news — you don’t mind, do you?” the reporter asked.
“Real men seldom shed tears, but today I just couldn’t hold back,” Xiao Man explained. “Alright, I don’t mind. You can broadcast it.”
“Shall we begin the interview now?”
“Do I need to read from a script?”
“This is an impromptu interview — just answer naturally. Why were you crying so hard just now?”
Xiao Man answered: “Sixty years as a military-industrial factory, forty years as Xi Tie Cheng — who could have imagined that ten thousand people would just scatter like this. Teacher Tong is my benefactor; many of the elders of this factory are my benefactors. They watched me grow up from childhood and gave me so much support and help. This place we call Xi Tie Cheng is a community of familiar faces, and especially for children who grew up in the factory’s schools, the feeling for this factory runs very deep. I am very, very reluctant to leave these hometown elders.”
Reporter: “Were you born here? What are your feelings about life in a Third Front factory?”
Xiao Man answered: “Yes, I am a thoroughly genuine third-generation military-industrial factory child — born in the factory’s workers’ hospital, grew up in the factory kindergarten, went to school at the factory’s affiliated primary and middle school, then the technical school, and then entered the factory as a worker. Feelings? It’s hard to know where to start. Every era has its own theme. First of all, let me say I feel tremendously proud — our military-industrial factory once made enormous historical contributions to the nation, though this also sacrificed the youth of two or three generations. The slogan back then was ‘the best people and the best horses go to the Third Front.’ The workers in our factory were of very high caliber, but the mountain region was too isolated and conditions were hard. We were far from the cities and missed many opportunities that the era offered. For example, our factory’s middle school had no liberal arts stream and no arts education — many gifted children had no opportunity to develop their talents, and in the end could only stay and become ordinary factory workers…”
Reporter: “As for the factory’s relocation this time — can you share your feelings?”
Xiao Man said: “What you’re calling a relocation isn’t really accurate — it should be called a dispersal and dissolution. This place will very soon become an empty city. The production lines have stopped, including the factory’s schools and the workers’ hospital, all of which are being abandoned. The doctors and teachers will either be incorporated into local institutions or take their severance pay and work at private hospitals and private schools — these changes are a last resort that no one wanted. Nobody genuinely wants to be dependent on others. As for the workers, there is nothing more to be said…”
Reporter: “Are these your own personal feelings, or everyone’s feelings?”
Xiao Man said: “These are everyone’s feelings, of course. Let me give two examples. First: when the factory’s seven dispersal measures were announced, one old worker went to the task force and said he would choose an eighth option — he’d rather jump from a building than let the factory close. And there was an old worker who was hospitalized and nearly dying who asked to come back to the factory one more time just to see the big chimney blowing smoke. Second: when the factory held a ceremony to mark the shutdown of production, many workers attended carrying photographs of their parents, because this factory was built brick by brick by their parents’ generation.”
Seeing Xiao Man grow more and more impassioned, the reporter said awkwardly: “Could you perhaps offer some more constructive views?”
Xiao Man said: “Constructive? Our factory has always been very actively engaged in construction. Deep in the mountains, natural disasters occur frequently — mudslides, landslides, and flash floods happen all the time, and the factory compound has had to be rebuilt every few years. All our Third Front factories have inherent disadvantages — locations in deep mountains mean maintenance and transportation costs are prohibitively high. Everything we do loses money. Of course the poor performance is also partly related to management… Ah, reporter comrade, have I gone off topic?”
The reporter explained: “What I meant was — for the Xi Tie Cheng of the past, could you speak to some… nostalgia and gratitude? And what visions do you have for life in the future?”
Xiao Man said: “As for nostalgia — the honors of the past are behind us now; medals can’t be eaten for dinner. As for gratitude — of course, a child does not disdain his mother for being poor. We do not look down on the factory for its decline and poverty. As for visions of the future — if I must envision something, I suppose my vision is: our next generation need not spend their lives sitting at the bottom of a mountain valley.”
Reporter: “What are your personal plans for the future — do you have confidence?”
Xiao Man said: “My girlfriend and I have just opened a flower shop in the city. The first step is for the two of us to run the flower shop well, then consider starting a family and getting married. I am very confident in our future.”
Reporter: “Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to the hometown elders and folks?”
Xiao Man said: “We will put in even greater effort, and the sooner break free of our difficulties and achieve a breakthrough. May everyone’s tomorrow be filled with more opportunity, and may each person be able to pursue the happiness they seek.”
Reporter: “Thank you for the interview, thank you! That concludes the interview!”
Xiao Man said: “You’re welcome — when will this be broadcast?”
Reporter: “It’ll be on tonight’s Tie Cheng News.”
After parting with the reporter, Xiao Man walked over to Wang the Model Worker’s family at Building Seven to help load the truck, then saw off the truck for Accountant Lü’s family from Building Eight, shaking hands and waving farewell repeatedly, seeing off these old neighbors with words of parting and well-wishes.
On the first day, a total of fifty trucks left Xi Tie Cheng bound for new and unfamiliar places. Xiao Man had been busy all day and didn’t return to his own room until evening. Not wanting to miss the television broadcast, he hadn’t cooked dinner — he just peeled an orange and sat waiting for the program to start.
At half past six, Tie Cheng News began its broadcast: “Today, the chemical factory in the western outskirts of our city began its historic relocation. Since the start of Third Front construction in 1966, the chemical factory has gone through forty springs and autumns; counting from its predecessor before the Third Front construction period, this meritorious military-industrial factory of the People’s Republic has a history of sixty years. A glorious farewell to yesterday, and onward to open up tomorrow — tens of thousands of workers and family members will withdraw in an orderly fashion. Today is the first day of the withdrawal. Please watch the report sent back by our correspondent on the scene.”
The picture then cut to the reporter who had interviewed Xiao Man, who said holding his microphone: “Today we have arrived at the Xi Tie Cheng relocation site. This is the first truck about to depart — the family being relocated belongs to a teacher from the Xi Tie Cheng factory children’s middle school, who is moving with their family to Shenyang. At the scene, we witnessed a very moving moment: this young man is the teacher’s student, and at the farewell he could not contain his emotions and broke into tears. Let us now interview this young man.”
On screen, the reporter asked Xiao Man: “Hello, I’m a reporter from Tie Cheng News. I’ve come today specifically to cover the Xi Tie Cheng relocation. We just captured you and your teacher’s tearful farewell on film — may I interview you?”
Xiao Man: Sure.
Reporter: Why did you cry just now? You were so heartbroken.
Xiao Man: The teacher is my benefactor, and many of the factory’s elders are my benefactors. Especially for children who grew up in the factory’s schools, there is a very deep and special feeling for the factory. I am very, very reluctant to leave the hometown elders.
Reporter: What are your visions for life in the future?
Xiao Man: Every era has its own theme. I feel tremendously proud — our military-industrial factory once made enormous historical contributions to the nation. The honors of the past are behind us now, but may our tomorrow be filled with more opportunity, and may each person be able to pursue their own happiness. I am very confident in our future.
Reporter: Thank you for the interview, thank you!
The next morning, another hundred trucks arrived at Xi Tie Cheng — on this day, a hundred households would leave their hometown for good.
Xiao Man didn’t go to help load trucks. Instead he hurried to the factory’s administrative office building.
The building was empty and hollow. The telephone ringing, the typewriter clattering, the laughter erupting from meeting rooms, the arguments and table-pounding from the labor and personnel office — all of these sounds had vanished entirely. In the long corridor of the administrative building there was only the sound of his own footsteps echoing back. Reaching the third floor, Xiao Man tore off the seal on the broadcasting station door, kicked open the lock, and walked in. The old microphone and playback machine were still there.
“Wonderful!” Xiao Man wiped the dust from the surface of the playback machine and connected the power cord.
Strange — the power indicator didn’t respond. Xiao Man gave himself a light slap on the forehead, walked to the end of the corridor, and flipped the main power switch, muttering: “Heaven, please — let these old machines do their work one last time.”
The power indicator finally lit up, as if rising to the occasion. Xiao Man picked up the microphone to test it: “Hello — hello — hello —”
This time the sound went through. All twenty of the factory’s aged loudspeakers simultaneously boomed out a resounding “Hello, hello, hello,” giving the entire population of Xi Tie Cheng a collective shock. Even those napping at noon were startled awake and pricked up their ears to listen. The convoy of relocation trucks that had already started moving in the residential district slowly stopped again; the people inside stepped off and raised their heads, looking up in puzzlement at the loudspeakers.
Xiao Man placed the tape he had prepared the night before into the playback machine, then opened the window and sat on the windowsill to listen.
The tape began to turn slowly. A lilting prelude drifted out from the loudspeakers, and the song North Wind by Zhang Hao-zhe began: “I stumble in the longing for home, growing from within the unfamiliar, yet the road ahead is still so long. I think of the north, gazing helplessly into the distance. I know — I must not forget…“
The song resounded through the skies over the ten miles of Xi Tie Cheng. People walking on the streets stopped in their tracks; people sweeping their courtyards stopped their brooms; people standing by trucks put down their ropes; those by their windows opened them; those at their dinner tables set down their chopsticks. At this moment, time in Xi Tie Cheng stood still. Only the song swelled and echoed overhead, and tens of thousands of people raised their arms to wipe the corners of their eyes.
“The north wind carries a familiar sound again. In an instant it makes me suddenly feel so cold. As if telling me I have gone too far — have I forgotten the promise we made at the very beginning…”
This was the closing requiem of Xi Tie Cheng factory’s forty years of wind and glory! When the song ends, the people too will scatter — from this day on, the homeland becomes the place one came from!
From founding to flourishing, to decline, to abandonment — forty years.
In those forty years, tens of thousands of people were born here, grew up here, aged and sickened here, married and were buried here. Until one day, the cooking smoke no longer rose, the streets no longer rang with noise, the crowds withdrew like a sudden ebbing tide, and left behind an empty city. The factory directors of before, the workshop supervisors, the postal workers, the butchers, the residents on government welfare, the eccentric and the simple-minded — all were gone. The laughter before, the weeping, the quarrels, the applause, the sound of factory whistles, the ringing of bicycle bells, the broadcast from the loudspeakers — all had vanished, leaving only silence.
After the summer, Xiao Man often returned alone to the desolate factory grounds, wandering and drifting in solitude through the empty city.
He walked along asphalt roads where the surface had been gradually invaded and covered by yellow earth, where weeds had grown up a foot tall through the cracks in the middle of the road, where not a single car had passed and not a single bicycle had passed, and the only pedestrian was himself. He walked from the eastern end of the factory to the western end, and when he grew tired he would lie down in the middle of the road. The road surface was rough and slightly cool, silent in all directions, with only the low sound of autumn insects.
He climbed through windows into various homes. In some, red double-happiness characters on red paper still hung on the walls, not yet taken down. In others, bowls, chopsticks, wooden combs, and children’s square-grid writing notebooks had been left behind on the floor when people moved away. He bent down to pick up a “Model Youth” certificate of merit, brushed the dust from it, and rehung the certificate on the wall.
He walked into the abandoned kindergarten, where morning-glory vines had climbed across the gate, the rusted seesaw had been wrapped in tendrils, and a cricket perching on the swing leaped away. He walked into the abandoned bathhouse, where the bottom of the pool held only a few rotted wooden sandals, and the changing cubicles were thick with spider webs. He walked into the empty, deserted floodlit basketball court and skating rink, where the girls, the soda pop, the sweat, and the hormones of former days had left no trace — nothing but empty silence.
He crawled through a gap in a damaged fence. In the factory buildings, now half buried, machines no longer thundered; only small flowers that had pushed up through the earth and stone swayed in the breeze. He climbed to the roof of the administrative building — once the heart of the factory’s communal life — and at the very top he spread his arms wide as if summoning the thousands of cars that had once flowed in and out at shift change.
He stood in the mornings on the abandoned railway, thinking of the distant crowded city: all those leather shoes hurrying to work, all those roads sorted by speed. In the city, no one would pause to carefully observe a blade of grass stretching upward, an ant making its laborious journey, a cloud rising in the sky, a beam of light fading into dusk.
He leaned at midday on the railing of an empty upper floor as a familiar breeze passed across his cheek, and thought: they say the wind knows the face of an old friend — can this wind have counted the few new wrinkles I’ve gained? He opened his eyes, and saw the breeze carry in a half-yellowed paulownia leaf that settled at his feet.
He climbed the mountain at dusk and looked into the distance at the production zone amid the peaks. The chimneys that had lost their steam and the factory building domes that had lost their lights, like his parents’ generation, aged and silent, their profiles dim, silently merging into the darkness that follows the setting sun. He sat down at the summit, lit a cigarette, and watched the golden crow descend and the jade rabbit rise, the sky filling with stars, the northern constellations blazing overhead, the Milky Way seeming to crackle and spark just above him.
A city of waste and earth — the long channel flows with the moon, going silently into the night. The days of Xi Tie Cheng’s past — all are gone now.