Fujian is Workers' Paradise - TLC 87
Share Article Passing through vibrating unified energy fields Lucky walked home to visit his common-law wife and ghost relatives in Fujian.
The gravity of thinking observed the abyss between rich and poor in China was wide, deep and expanding faster than the universe. Rural annual wages - $1,600. Yearly city wages - $2,600.
Communist atheist leaders prayed economic stimulus incentives and cheap Yuan currency would encourage free citizens to buy rice cookers, plasma televisions, washing machines, microwaves, air conditioners, generators, refrigerators, motorcycles, electric bikes, luxury cars, destroyers, submarines, communication satellites, stealth fighters, Predator drones, labor saving robots and Dream Sweeper Machines.
Rusty loudspeakers squawked:
Consume Comrades. Get with the fucking program.
Lucky fantasied about owning a 4-wheel drive super-duper dream sweeper machine to ferry his merry family to Bursa, Hanoi, Sapa, Vientiane and Banlung animist cemeteries along the Heart of Darkness and renew relationships with Rita writer and Leo cannibal.
Where life is simple. Where gentle people never left their village, the world. No need or desire. Everything I have is here, said a shaman weaving life threads. The world is a village.
Lucky fountain penned Zeynep in Bursa, Turkey a postcard illustrated with an imperial yellow dragon protecting a luminous pearl:
Dear Z,
I walked. I worked. I saved. I got lucky and bought a Flying Pigeon bike at a fire sale from a corrupt wealthy village official.
One-speed black. It got me from home to rice paddies. I reaped what I sowed.
We had a radio in our work unit. The publicity machine blasted Life Is A Party revolutionary anthems 24/7. Accelerate production comrades.
I saved and got a radio for home. My wife was beyond pleased.
She produced our required female child. Miracle. We desired a boy. She got pregnant again. Sex is fun. Responsibility is a duty.
Forced Abortion Committee officials visited at midnight. They screamed NO! It is forbidden. You do not qualify for two children. They tied me up and held a gun to my head. I was forced to watch. They aborted our child and sterilized her. We cried. They laughed, Always Be Closing.
We lost face in the village. Blending in was impossible.
Out of the quest-ion.
She wanted a TV to distract her from sorrow, guilt and shame. Ok, we’ll get a 24” flat screen with a remote. I worked. I saved. We hung it on a brick wall above our aborted fetus in a hermetically sealed glass jar and grainy images of our ancestors eating incense.
How about a new rice cooker, she said. Ok.
How about a used refrigerator, she said. What’s wrong with the plastic orange icebox? You buy cabbage, cauliflower, onions, leeks, turnip greens and fresh ice from writer Rita every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator?
Our neighbors have one. Oh, I see, got to keep up with the Yin- Yang’s. Envy and I scrounged around. I developed connections. Connections in China make the world spin and people feel dizzy. Millions fall down. I remember when you said fall up, Z. I’m still laughing at your insight. Anyway, here it’s whom you know not what you know. Greed is god, I mean good.
I traded twenty kilos of Quality Of Life rice for two brothel chickens from Human Province. I traded the chicks for Burmese teak, rubies and a sharp knife stained with Karen blood. One trade led to another. If you’re not fast you’re last.
Buy dirt sell sky.
I brought luck to others by walking around.
I found a filthy frigid fridge and traded the teak and rubies. My wife was beyond pleased. Wild. We filled it with cheap baby formula. The formula was tainted with a poisonous chemical to increase protein. We didn’t know this small unpleasant fact.
Our girl became sick. Her luck ran out.
Peoples’ Worker’s Hospital #9 said I had to pay BIG money for imported medicine or she’d die.
Life is cheap here.
I sold the fridge, downsized the TV and sacrificed my bike to buy pharmaceuticals.
She’s on life support. Now I walk to see her. It takes forever and a day. Walking makes the road. Bus #11 means legs. Next to an optimistic amputee in Laos or Cambodia I’m lucky to have a leg to stand on.
I dream of rich cities - bright beacons of prosperity with automatic cash machines for consumers like me flashing fake plastic. Dream on sucker. Polluted cities filled with food smells, construction projects, appliances and economic class warfare. I hope against hope for sustainable work and some blind stupid luck.
Party leaders say millions of workers will return to villages on Chinese New Year. To make matters worse six million college graduates flood the job market every June. Three million drown screaming I Need Help!
Radio static flickering radioactive images and disembodied voices order us to stay home. Be quiet. Keep your fat fucking mouth closed unless you are eating. Practice social stability and harmony. Save face. Blend in.
May your life be interesting dear Z and filled with adventure - something that’s going to happen - and magical surprise from the get go.
I remember you saying we will abandon this manuscript with intuitive wisdom and courage, Z. Here it is, here it goes, free as Winter Hawk and Lone Wolf. Thanks:-)
Omar will gift you the manuscript when he passes through Bursa.
If you see Curious dancing with Humor and you will, hug her for me. People need five hugs a day for emotional health.
Love and gratitude with honeyed memories,
Lucky
P.S. You are a miracle.
