Read Online The Four Books by Yan Lianke - Free Book Online

buildings belonging to the fourth brigade, while the second and third brigades lived in buildings belonging to their respective brigades. Each building contained eight rooms, and each room contained four bunk beds, meaning that each room could hold up to eight people. The first brigade’s empty room was used as storage, to keep farming equipment and other items.
    Not everyone was able to post their red blossoms at the head of their bed. Instead, given that every pair of bunkmates shared a simple willow desk, the person sleeping in the upper bunk would post his blossoms on the wall above the desk, while the person in the lower bunk would post them above the head of his bed. This way, it was easier to inspect how many blossoms they had each received. The rooms were several square meters in size, with four bunk beds and four willow desks. They were quite crowded, to the point that everyone would stumble over each other when they tried to walk around. Everyone folded their bedding into neat squares, as they do in the army. The sheets had to be pulled up every day, and when people weren’t using their stools they were placed under the beds. Everyone kept their washbasins next to their stools, and their teeth-brushing cups on the ledges above their bed. Their toothpaste and toothbrushes were all pointed east, with the bristles of their toothbrushes and their toothpaste caps facing upward. The walls had no decorations, other than a portrait of some higher-up, and the coat of whitewash had begun to turn yellow.
    But now there were red blossoms above every bed and every desk. Multiple rows of red blossoms were arrayed there in the dark, giving the room a feeling of vitality, like a ray of light emerging out of the darkness. The people who had just been awarded their first red blossoms seemed almost too embarrassed to post them. But after being awarded three, five, seven, or even eight blossoms, everyone carefully used moist rice to post them in rows over their bed or desk, and then would step back to assess whether or not the rows were straight. In this way, they carefully posted their blossoms just as the Child had directed. They might not have held out any real hope of being able to trade in five small blossoms for a medium-sized one, or five medium-sized blossoms for a large pentagonal star, or of collecting the five stars that would permit them to leave Re-Ed. Even so, no one was willing to throw away their small blossoms or give them to anyone else.
    I myself already had seven small blossoms. I had earned three for saying that one mu of land could definitely yield fifteen thousand jin of grain, and another because our third brigade produced more wheat than the others. The remaining three were in return for the several dozen pages of my Criminal Records that I wrote for the Child. These seven small blossoms were arrayed above my bed, like a comet shooting past my head, such that during the dark days and months that I spent at Re-Ed, I could always look up and see the bright moonlit sky.
    To tell the truth, the Red Blossom and Pentagonal Star system that the Child implemented was a stroke of genius, and it encouraged everyone to enter a self-governing track, as though a herd of horses and oxen were to start plowing the fields on their own accord, without needing to be flogged.
    We irrigated and weeded the fields, repaired the dikes between the fields, and waited for the following year, when each mu of land would yield fifteen thousand jin of grain. We didn’t have any leisure activities, and instead started working as soon as the sun came up and continued nonstop until sunset. At night, we would go back and read those books that we were allowed to read, and count the red blossoms posted above our beds and desks. One person already had several dozen blossoms, which were arranged in neat rows as though there were a fire burning in front of his bed. His blossoms were grouped into clusters of five, with each cluster perfectly