LYRICS

No. 7 Black and White (theme song of the film Black and White)

(Lyrics: Liu Jiming · Music and vocals: MELO)

Arise, you silent working people!
Arise, you suffering multitudes!
The rust of the old factories, the dust of the age
Have bent our backs low.
Those dreams spun out of clever words
Cover up the blood, the tears, the scars.
Justice never fell from heaven,
We must fight to win it!

Don’t listen to the voices of glitter and deceit,
Don’t accept a black and white turned upside down.
Our blood and sweat built towers to the sky,
Yet those who toil have nowhere to rest.
Generation after generation kept on fighting,
Refusing to let their hearts go dark.
Truth will not lie buried in the dust forever,
It will break through the gloom at last!

This is not a stage for the powerful,
It is the battlefield of working people.
Tear apart the lies, tell black from white,
Blaze a trail for all who suffer.
This is not some distant daydream,
It is the ground beneath our feet!
Keeping watch with one heart, passing the spark from hand to hand,
Our ideals will come true at last!

We want no false salvation,
We will not live on the charity of the strong.
The mountains and rivers are in working people’s hands,
We will rewrite the injustice of this world!

This is not a hymn to a golden age,
It is the cry of working people.
Tear apart the lies, tell black from white,
Blaze a trail for all who suffer.
This is not some distant daydream,
It is the ground beneath our feet!
Keeping watch with one heart, passing the spark from hand to hand,
Our ideals will come true at last!

Tear apart the lies, tell black from white,
Our ideals will come true at last!

Translator’s notes

[1] The opening call, “Arise,” echoes the first line of “The Internationale” in its Chinese version. “Golden age” (盛世) is the official term for China’s present era. Black and White is Liu Jiming’s novel, adapted for the screen.

No. 8 Folks Back Home — To My Empty-Nest Village

Back then, when the bell rang, the whole village headed for the hills
Red flags planted on the field ridges, our songs louder than the sun
Hoe beside hoe, shoulder against shoulder
At dusk when work was done, the kitchen fires joined in one great light

The old storekeeper opened the granary, grain piled to the rafters
In the work-point book, your family and mine came out the same
The village school rang with reading, singing of a communist future
The loudspeaker at the village gate played “We Are Marching on the Highway”

Folks back home, the folks of those days
You were one solid sheet of iron, nailed to the beam of the collective
When the wind came, we held it off together; when the rain came, we bore it together
And our backbones never once bent the wrong way

Now the land’s divided, the oxen sold, and people’s hearts have scattered
Each household’s fence grows thicker and longer
The young have all gone south, the old keep watch in empty houses
The square where we threshed grain is full of cars with out-of-town plates, and empty all the same

Ask old Uncle Zhang, he says the fields have all gone to weeds
Ask Auntie Li, she says the kids won’t be coming back
The persimmon tree by the door bore a full crop, and it all fell
Like the vows of those years, turned cold at the first breath of wind

Folks back home, my folks back home
You guard the three mu of land you were allotted
Like guarding three copper coins
Count them over and over, they won’t count back the red-hot days
The days when we all went out to work together
The years when there was something to look forward to

The first year after the land was divided among households, the granaries really were full
But the second year, fertilizer went up
The third year, grain prices fell
The fourth year, the young people said farming’s not worth it, better to go work in the cities

The canals we dug back then still carry water
But no one leads it now, or asks whose field it flows to
The threshing ground we built back then still lies in the sun
Drying now the old age of fewer and fewer people, each alone

Folks back home, my folks back home
In the days of the collective we ate from one pot
Now there are more pots, but each eats alone, and the food’s gone cold
Which step was it that took us the wrong way
And turned a warm and lively village into a cold, empty nest

Folks back home, my folks back home
You say nothing, you just sit by your doors
Watching the sun go down, counting the stars, remembering the crowded years gone by
Like lost children who cannot find the way home

Translator’s notes

[1] The first stanzas recall the people’s communes of the Mao era, when villagers worked the land collectively and were paid in “work points.” “We Are Marching on the Highway” (1963) was one of the best-known songs of the period. Land was divided among individual households from the late 1970s onward. “Remembering the crowded years gone by” echoes Mao’s poem “Changsha” (1925).

No. 9 That Year, I Was Thirteen

That year I was thirteen, standing at the back of the crowd
I couldn’t understand why the grown-ups were weeping
Their heads were bowed, like crops bent by the wind
And I just kept counting the dark clouds drifting in

Your name was on the first page of the textbook
The teacher said you had changed everything in China
Half understanding, I nodded and recited it back
Like a poem I didn’t quite understand

Fifty years have passed, and at last I understand
Not because you stood on the highest mountain
But because you bent down to grasp the hands of workers and peasants
And sat on the field ridges, eating the same coarse food

Fifty years have passed, and at last I understand
Not because you won this country, or wrote so many essays
But because all your life you kept on asking
Would the working people suffer a second time, endure the old wrongs again

Now I am past sixty
I have walked through factories, through villages, through all the changes
I read your teachings again, every word is blood and sweat
And it turns out every word you said had to do with us

Fifty years have passed, some forgot you long ago
But the seeds you sowed have grown in my bones and blood
I have nothing to offer you
Except to stand as you stood
On the side of the great majority of working people

Fifty years have passed, and at last I understand
Why the grown-ups wept the day you left
They were not weeping for one man’s passing
They were afraid the flame you left behind would go out

Fifty years have passed, and at last I understand
I came to it not early, but not too late
Let me spend the rest of my life as a soldier
And walk on along the road you did not finish, walk on, walk on…

Translator’s notes

[1] Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976, when the author was thirteen. “Suffer a second time” (吃二遍苦，受二茬罪) was a phrase of Mao’s warning against the return of the old society.

No. 10 The New Internationale

Steel surges through our veins, our wrenches tighten lightning
The pulse of the factories shatters high walls, linking every assembly line
Across visas and barbed wire we trade the calluses on our palms
This weightless planet is tilting, it needs ten million hands to set the horizon straight

This moment we raise our wrenches to smash the dark clouds overhead
Welding torches pierce the lies and burn out brand-new stars
The noise of all the world becomes a single thunderclap
Proletarians, proletarians, proletarians are one family
The Internationale shall surely be realized!

Algorithms whip the digital nomads crawling in the cloud
Containers swallow day and night, crushing the same crawling bodies
Your hunger and my bread, broken open, show the same grain
When the tower cranes slice open the night, our shadows are already fixed in each other’s eyes

Let us raise our wrenches to smash the dark clouds overhead
Welding torches pierce the lies and burn out brand-new stars
The noise of all the world becomes a single thunderclap
Proletarians, proletarians, proletarians are one family
Unite, and on to tomorrow
The Internationale shall surely be realized!

Don’t think skin color can wall us off, or accents become a cage
When blood and sweat soak through every contract, our languages understand each other
From Detroit to Dongguan, the assembly line stretches into an alliance
The code resonates in the lines of our palms, waking every sleeping trade

Let us raise our wrenches to smash the dark clouds overhead
Welding torches pierce the lies and burn out brand-new stars
The noise of all the world becomes a single thunderclap
Proletarians, proletarians, proletarians are one family
Unite, and on to tomorrow
The Internationale shall surely be realized!

It’s the lathe, the mouse, the ear of rice, the wrench
It’s the same cough we share once our names are set aside
Let the old world tremble and listen—
We, we, we are one family
Unite, and on to tomorrow
The Internationale shall surely be realized!

Current Chinese slang for overworked, underpaid workers.

No. 11 Ballad of the Beasts of Burden

Five a.m., the alarm goes off, in my dreams I’m still on the line
The time clock swallows my youth and spits out a few crumpled bills
The photo on my badge grows blurrier, like a face the days have crumpled

They say we’re beasts of burden, so beasts of burden we are
We eat grass and give milk, and must smile while they saddle us up
They say profit is the truth, so we deserve the whip
But beasts of burden have eyes too, we can see who rides and who’s on all fours

Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, heads down, pulling the cart without a word
Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, look up, will the sky fall down?

Rent eats half the month, the boxed lunch goes down too fast to chew
The doctor says you’re under too much stress, but I can’t afford sleeping pills
The boss got a new sports car, says young people have to strive
My neck has a new curve, bent to a standard ninety degrees

They say we’re beasts of burden, so beasts of burden we are
We plow one acre after another, but the land was never ours
They say competition brings progress, so we deserve to be crushed
But beasts of burden have strength too, we just haven’t saved enough to pay our social insurance

Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, heads down, pulling the cart without a word
Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, straighten your backs, will the sky fall down?

My parents were beasts of burden too
The land they plowed now holds tall buildings
But in those buildings there’s no window for me, behind the windows no cup of tea for me
They call this development, it’s just a new way to ride the beasts

I grip the wrench in my hand, my palm is all sweat
My brothers on the same line, their eyes empty and dead
Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, enough beasts of burden can trample a mountain flat
We don’t want the whip, we want a seat at an equal table

Beasts of burden aren’t born, they’re broken
Beasts of burden aren’t mute, they’ve been frightened into silence

Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, tomorrow we won’t pull the cart
Beasts of burden, beasts of burden, we will be our own masters
Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop—
That’s the hoofbeats of the beasts, that’s thunder, and it’s coming

Translator’s notes

[1] “Beasts of burden” (牛马, literally “oxen and horses”) is c
 

No. 12 Ballad of Lying Flat

[Male]
My home is on the edge of a first-tier city
There I have ten rented square meters of spring
On the subway every day I’m pressed flat as a photograph
At the time clock I hand over today and tomorrow

[Female]
My home is in my parents’ old house
There they kept a lifetime of savings
Now it’s all become a fraction of a down payment
And I still have thirty years of debt to pay

[Male]
At the company the boss says we need the spirit of wolves
But wolves eat meat, and I can’t even get the broth
HR says treat the company like your home
But I work overtime till dawn, and my own home no longer knows me

[Female]
From squeezing onto the subway at dawn to coming home to my rented room at midnight
From never daring to get sick to never daring to read my checkup results
I gave all my youth to KPIs
But when I turn thirty-five, they say it’s time for you to go

[Chorus]
Lie flat, lie flat
It’s not that I don’t want to run
It’s that the racetrack rolled itself up into a ladder to the sky
I climbed halfway and found the ladder swaying
Lie flat, lie flat
It’s not that I have no dreams
It’s that even in my dreams I’m paying off my Huabei
And when I wake I’ve still got the mortgage

[Male]
I went to a 985 university, I’ve written ten-thousand-word theses
But my pay slip tells me I’m worth less than a machine
When a machine breaks, someone fixes it; when I break, I carry it alone
This world taught me to strive, but never taught me how to live

[Female]
I painted ideals, I had my love
But the house and the car weighed love by the pound
It’s not that I won’t try, it’s that trying has become a joke
Only when I finally stopped did I hear my own breathing

[Chorus]
Lying flat is not surrender, it’s our last position
Lying flat is not laziness, it’s a protest against the absurd
Back then they sang, “My home is on the Songhua River”
Today we sing, “My dream is above the price of housing”

[Chorus]
What year, what month, can I go back to that hometown
What year, what month, can I find that dream again
No longer a number, no longer a denominator
To be human once, upright and proud, to live one life standing tall

[Coda]
My home… is… on the edge of a first-tier city…
There I have… my… eyes that have not yet gone dark…
Lying flat… is only… so as not to be swept away…
When I’ve rested enough… I will walk… my own road…

Translator’s notes

[1] “Lying flat” (躺平) is the refusal of young Chinese to keep competing in an endless rat race, which is known as “involution” (内卷, literally “rolling inward”; hence the racetrack that “rolled itself up”). “985” universities are China’s elite institutions; Huabei is Alipay’s consumer credit service; many Chinese employers push out workers over thirty-five. “On the Songhua River” (1936) is a famous song of exiles from Japanese-occupied Manchuria, whose refrain asks “what year, what month” they can return home.

No. 13 The People

I count the second hand on the assembly line
He counts the stars from his private jet
I work overtime till three a.m. and can’t get home
One dinner of his eats up ten years of my wages

I pay the rent that feeds his properties
I swipe my Huabei to cover his bills
When I’m sick I don’t dare walk through the hospital doors
He changes a heart the way he changes a shirt

Who are the people, who is mentioned and then forgotten
Whose names are written under the soil, whose are carved atop the pyramid
Jack Ma and I are not the same people
His people are leeks to harvest, my people are drops of sweat

Who are the people, who speaks and who listens
Whose voice shakes the sky, whose voice sinks to the bottom of the well
Jack Ma and I are not the same people
He stands for capital, I stand for breathing

He says 996 is a blessing we should be grateful for
He says young people must strive, don’t be poor wretches
The truths he tells are all written in the cloud
I look down and see the calluses on my hands, the mud on my feet

My father farmed the land all his life
And in old age still sighs over his medical insurance
His children were born in Manhattan, New York
My child is still waiting while we scrape together the down payment on a school-district flat

Who are the people, who is mentioned and then forgotten
Whose names are written under the soil, whose are carved atop the pyramid
Jack Ma and I are not the same people
His people are the assembly line, my people are my mother

Who are the people, who sweats and who enjoys
Whose hot blood is poured into the roadbed, whose wineglass clinks and shatters the stars
Jack Ma and I are not the same people

The people is not an empty word
The people are millions upon millions of me, joined into one collective
The knees that will not kneel, the eyes that will not close

The watch kept forever at the village gate
The lamp down the mine shaft that refuses to go out

If there is only one people
It surely isn’t Jack Ma and me together
The people are grass, are earth, are bricks, are tiles
Are the millions of great hands bent down, and still shining

Who are the people? Let me tell you:
Those who bend, who sweat, whose hands are callused, who cough
They are the people—
And Jack Ma is a shadow in the mirror, riding on the people’s heads
The kind who curses “poor wretches” while claiming “I represent the people”

Jack Ma and I are not the same people
I stand on the ground, he stands on the clouds
Clouds scatter, the ground does not
The people are mountains that will not bow, rivers that rush and roar

Translator’s notes

[1] “996” (working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) was famously praised by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, as a “blessing.” “Leeks” (韭菜) is slang for ordinary people who are “harvested” again and again, as leeks grow back after each cutting.

No. 14 Black Is Black, White Is White

The kiln fire’s last warmth fades the old generosity
At banquets in grand halls, the ropes of fame and gain are woven
How many first ideals are bought and sold at any price
How much sincerity is buried by the vulgar world
A tattered book lies open, the interrogation of the years
A paper cry, and no one pays it heed
The long night weighs heavy, trapping a young man’s heart
Muddy waves surge, turning the world’s black and white upside down

Everyone dresses things up, blurring good and bad
Slickness wrapped around a hypocritical pose
Though layer on layer of mist rises over heaven and earth
There will be a faint light to break the gloom

Black is black, mud cannot wash it clean
White is white, frost leaves no stain on it
Let vanity weave a thousand mazes
Not an inch of backbone will bend
Black is black, falsehood will show its face at last
White is white, the first ideal stays forever new
A hundred years of long road, written in the people’s hardship
The spark is never extinguished, marching on toward dawn

The blast furnace falls silent, and the old fervor too
Under the lamp by a cold window, ideals take root
Some flock to the shortcuts of the powerful
Some stand up straight to face the wind and dust
A humble room keeps a burning faith
A faint cry keeps watch for the truth
Wind and rain may break us, but never change our hearts
Walking alone through a muddy world, holding fast to our ground

Everyone dresses things up, blurring good and bad
Slickness wrapped around a hypocritical pose
Though layer on layer of mist rises over heaven and earth
There will be a faint light to break the gloom

Black is black, mud cannot wash it clean
White is white, frost leaves no stain on it
Let vanity weave a thousand mazes
Not an inch of backbone will bend
Black is black, falsehood will show its face at last
White is white, the first ideal stays forever new
A hundred years of long road, written as time’s testimony
The spark is never extinguished, marching on toward dawn

A table of wine hides a thousand threads of power
A thousand luxuries all return to dust
Good and evil have the years for evidence
Right and wrong allow not the slightest blur

Black sinks to the muddy depths, white turns toward the morning light
The right road runs long, never forget the first ideal

Translator’s notes

[1] The title echoes Liu Jiming’s novel Black and White, which the author has called “a testimony to time.”

No. 15 Not One Do I Forgive — Written for the 90th anniversary of the death of Lu Xun

You wrote Ah Q, you wrote Hua Laoshuan
You wrote the bun soaked in human blood that could cure no one’s chill
You wrote Xianglin’s Wife, who asked all her life and found no answer
You wrote Runtu, who knelt at last before the incense burner

For the silent majority you whetted a blade of words
You said in two thousand years of chronicles, turning the pages over and over, you saw only
Two words, “eat people,” written neat and square
In the gaps between those respectable characters, every one reeks of blood and salt

Let them go on resenting. Not one of them do I forgive—
Not hiding the sins of sages, not covering for gentlemen, not bowing to power
Only crying out the pain of the insulted
Only calling in the debt owed to the injured
The hypocrisy of the intellectual class, the servility of capital’s running dogs
The queue of the Qing was cut off, but the queue in the mind remains
Sir, you met them with a cold, fierce brow, and did not close your eyes even in death
Because this world has not yet paid back the suffering it owes

You said “Save the children,” you said the future should be different
But those lying in the iron house still pretend to be asleep and deaf
Those lukewarm words of advice, that compromising golden mean
Before a reality written in blood weigh no more than a passing breeze

What you hated was never whether someone stood left or right
But pointing at a scar and calling it beautiful, kneeling and still straightening one’s back with pride
It was the new-style decency and comfort that devours people and spits out not even the bones
It was the silence and submission agreed upon as every head bowed down

Let them go on resenting. Not one of them do I forgive—
Not hiding the sins of sages, not covering for gentlemen, not bowing to power
Only crying out the pain of the insulted
Only calling in the debt owed to the injured
The hypocrisy of the intellectual class, the capitalists’ running dogs past their prime
The queue of the Qing was cut off, but the queue in the mind remains
Sir, you met them with a cold, fierce brow, and did not close your eyes even in death
Because this world has not yet paid back the suffering it owes

Ninety years on, someone asks: why be so unrelenting?
Sir, you say—
If you forgive the evil, who will forgive that night?
Those countless withered bones and dried blood whose names no one can call
They did not live to see the dawn; you kept the moon for them

You have been gone ninety years, your words still burn the throat
Every word a nail, driven into the gates of the age
The insulted are still insulted, the injured still injured
Sir, look—
In this world, one crop of people after another has come and gone
Yet the play is still the same old play
Whether you forgive or not no longer matters
What matters is that we still remember
Why you would never forgive

Translator’s notes

[1] Lu Xun died on October 19, 1936. The refrain comes from his last essay, “Death” (1936): “Let them go on resenting me. I shall not forgive a single one of them either.” The song draws on his best-known characters (Ah Q; Hua Laoshuan in “Medicine”; Xianglin’s Wife in “New Year’s Sacrifice”; Runtu in “My Old Home”) and images: “eat people” and “Save the children” from “Diary of a Madman,” the “iron house” from the preface to Call to Arms, the “cold, fierce brow” from his poem “Self-Mockery,” and “running dogs past their prime,” his insult for Liang Shiqiu.

No. 16 Ah Ying (adapted from the narrative poem “The Nursing Factory Worker”)

2018, the southern rain beats on the tin roof
Ah Ying counts the marks in her heart, like counting the stars
The machines in the workshop never stop to listen
Her baby needs feeding
Her breasts, hidden beneath the workstation, ache in silence

A workmate’s arm was bitten off by a machine
The boss said that’s your own business
No one dared speak, no one dared make a sound
Ah Ying stood up in anger and said, this isn’t fair
She never thought it would bring trouble down on her; the boss threatened to call the police

Ah Ying said, I only wanted an answer for the man who lost his hand
Without an arm how will he feed his family
I said one sentence, how did that become “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”

The time clock swallows every dawn
Ah Ying pinches the blurred fingerprint on her pay slip
Has the wheat back home come into ear and flower yet
She dreams her baby takes the moon for her breast

The police car came, the workers lowered their heads
No one looked at Ah Ying, no one reached out a hand
When she stood up, the chair wobbled
Like the fence of her home that year the mountain flood swept it away

Ah Ying, what wrong did you do
You only wanted an answer for the man who lost his hand
Without an arm how will he feed his family
You said one sentence, and it became “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”

The interrogation room was cold as a river in the dead of winter
Ah Ying’s milk seeped out and soaked the front of her shirt
The name of the child not yet weaned lodged in her chest
She didn’t dare cry, for fear it would be taken as evidence

Ah Ying once walked three days and three nights from Guizhou to Shenzhen
From the workshop to the police station takes only two hours
Her legs are bad, she can’t walk that far
But someone keeps pushing her, on and on

2018, the southern rain is still falling
The tin roof is still ringing
Ah Ying’s breasts are aching, full again
And her child, she doesn’t know where

Translator’s notes

[1] “Picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事) is the catch-all criminal charge often used against labor activists and critics in China (see Liu Jiming’s essay “I Cannot Remain Silent”).

No. 17 How Far Is the Road Home (adapted from the short story of the same name)

When I woke I was lying in a hospital bed
My whole body in pieces, my bones like snapped strings
Sun Zhanjun’s club came down on my head and face
Just for stopping to catch my breath, I was made a criminal

The doctor said no money, please leave the hospital
The police rolled down the car window and pretended not to see
How many nights I endured beside the trash cans
Thinking of the Red Army’s march of twenty-five thousand li

How far is the road home
From the brickyard to my hometown, ten thousand rivers and a thousand mountains
I sing battle songs to keep my courage up
But with both legs broken, how can I walk to the end

City folk say beggars are all faking
No one remembers the blood and sweat I shed
A year of labor bought me a crippled body
The train of fate has carried me back to where I began

How far is the road home
From the year’s start to its end, I count the stars and wait
I think of Wukong fanning out the Flaming Mountains
But who will carry my pain for me

When I woke I was lying in a hospital bed
This dream I have dreamed over and over
How far is the road home
Maybe I’ll never reach the end

Translator’s notes

[1] The song recalls the scandals over forced labor in brick kilns that came to light in China in 2007. Sun Zhanjun is a character in Liu Jiming’s story. The Long March of the Red Army (1934–35) is said to have covered twenty-five thousand li; in Journey to the West, the Monkey King Sun Wukong borrows a magic fan to put out the fires of the Flaming Mountains.

No. 18 Mother, Let’s Go Home (rewritten from an early poem)

The city’s towers are stacked in rows like beehives
You are trapped in your cell, grinding away your days
The autumn wind sweeps its chill through the streets and lanes
The tiny room’s too narrow even to turn around in
Eating, drinking, living, all fenced inside four walls
Like a toiling bee, you never stop
Mother, let’s go home

For a handful of chives, a head of garlic
For a crying child, clothes to wash and change
Only when the coal briquettes are delivered downstairs
Do you dare to look out at the distance down the long staircase
The wind is so strong, it has whitened your hair
Clutching half a lifetime of worries, longing for the fields
Mother, let’s go home

The chimney smoke over the plain is waiting for you, waiting for you to settle
The autumn wind is so strong, let me steady your steps
Wind and dust have worn away your years, don’t wander anymore
Mother, let’s go home

Your heart is always tied to the mists and glow of home
You often think back to the old days of tilling the soil
You were a village girl who grew up on the field ridges
Your life’s stories wrapped in bitter wind and frost
Flying a thousand li, never resting from gathering honey
Leaving all your tenderness to your son
Now the hills are full of golden rapeseed flowers
It’s long past time to fold your wings and rest
Mother, let’s go home

The honey you made in half a lifetime, pack it all away
The dust that has settled on your heart, the wind will slowly sweep clean
The city’s hives cannot hold your longing
The open fields of home are where you belong
The autumn wind is so strong, it has whitened your hair
Clutching half a lifetime of worries, longing for the fields
Mother, let’s go home

The chimney smoke over the plain is waiting for you, waiting for you to settle
The autumn wind is so strong, let me steady your steps
Wind and dust have worn away your years, don’t wander anymore
Mother, let’s go home

The beehives are far behind us now
Rapeseed flowers spill across the old ponds and fields
The wind blows softly, sweeping the dust and frost from your heart
Mother, let’s go home

No. 19 Song of the Motherland

They say the flag is a skin of steel
But where the gears bite, something dark red seeps out
On the back of the blueprints we clutch
Are hidden the gauge marks of rusted chains

This is not a lead-gray outline on a map
It is the roar of the grinder devouring flesh and blood
When the nation’s outline melts away in the ledgers
We are our own frontier

In the textbooks, bronze war chariots
Drive through the factory carrying gilded shackles
Every grain of steel sand interrogates the stars:
Who defines the weight of the motherland

The land remembers every sower’s fingerprints
But the granary is bound only in the shape of tax bills
When the chimneys learn to sing hymns of praise
We tear out our ribs for torches to light the way

This is not a garment sewn by ties of blood
It is a riverbed where molten iron scours away the classes
When every passport curls at the edges in the fire
We become boundary markers on the move

(“Workers have no country / the country is the knife of rule / when the chains melt into new coordinates / anvils all over the world forge the dawn”)

Our lungs are bellows
Hammering history into the shape of a question mark
On the back of every steel stamp we engrave:
“Here the motherland—is growing”

Translator’s notes

[1] “The workers have no country” comes from The Communist Manifesto.

No. 20 I Am an Old Rifle of the Post-Revolutionary Age

My great-grandfather’s lawsuits yellowed in the rains of the Republic
My grandfather’s opium pipe put out its last starlight
My uncle’s New Fourth Army uniform hangs from the beam of the old house
The steelyard of land reform weighed grain, and weighed the changes of the world

I am the son of a lower-middle peasant, an old rifle of the post-revolutionary age
The half bowl of millet my mother pressed on a beggar fed the kindness in my heart
My father’s cold looks could not hold back the weight of class, thicker than blood
This is not a book, it is magma rising from under the earth

A reader in Shanxi folded its pages into her daughter’s dowry
The night wind of Shaoshan turns over its million words
Hugo’s candle lights up Dickens’s foggy harbor
Márquez’s ice melts and flows in the Yangtze

(Annie Ernaux’s Nobel lecture, in the original French)

“I am not writing
I am mending clothes
for the insulted and the injured”

This is the floating wealth the landlords dropped as they fled
It is the smiles that broke out on the faces of poor peasants and farmhands during land reform
When the printing press turns every story into a specimen
I fold each page into a paper boat and set it in the heart of the future

My great-granduncle wrote petitions for the poor
My mother’s brother was blind
My father’s temper was like fire in the twelfth month, ice in the seventh
The shepherd’s-purse flowers of the third month always rise from cracks in the stone

I will keep my promise—
To stand forever on the side of the oppressed
To be an old rifle of the post-revolutionary age
Never to surrender!

Translator’s notes

[1] The song looks back on the author’s family history and on the writing and reception of his novel Black and White. “Lower-middle peasant” was a class label assigned during land reform; the New Fourth Army was a Communist army in the War of Resistance against Japan; “floating wealth” (浮财) was the movable property of landlords confiscated during land reform. One Hundred Years of Solitude opens with the discovery of ice. The three lines attributed to Annie Ernaux paraphrase the spirit of her 2022 Nobel lecture rather than quoting it.

No. 21 Where We Return (theme song of the television series The Human Realm)

The sound of the river flows over the road we came by
Whose footsteps linger in the wind and rain
The diary of that year, its hurried hand
Records an unfinished chronicle of springs and autumns

On the muddy road, through shade and sun
Someone looks up to count the stars
Who buried seeds deep in the soil
And raised a torch above the hills

So many rises and falls in this human world
Who is sowing hope in the fields
Through the long, long night, holding fast to the dream in our hands
Waiting for the redemption of spring wind and rain

In the human realm black and white cross
Pain, too, bears witness for time
Ask not success or failure, go against the current
Only because there, where the lamplight is dim, someone sings and weeps

Rough waves, a single boat
Bones of iron, silence is a roar
At the crossroads overgrown with thorns
The first ideal is the only North Star

Looking back at the rough road we came by
The green hills that fill our eyes are where we return
The river still flows east
The one on the bank has grown white-haired

Oh~ oh~
The river still flows east
The one on the bank has grown white-haired, grown white-haired

Translator’s notes

[1] “Where the lamplight is dim” (灯火阑珊处) echoes a famous line by the Song poet Xin Qiji. The Human Realm (《人境》) is Liu Jiming’s novel, adapted as a television series.