A translation of the first 2000 characters of 《废都》 Fèi Dū, Abandoned Capital by 贾平凹 Jiǎ Píngwā.

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In 1980, a strange affair occurred in the city of Xijing. One day, two good friends were bored and went to visit Yang Guifei's grave, the consort of a Tang Emperor. They saw many sightseers grabbing handfuls of mud from the tomb and carrying the dirt away in their arms. They were perplexed and made some inquiries among the visitors to the tomb.

They learned that since Yang Guifei was an incomparable beauty, if you take the dirt from her tomb back home and put it in a flower pot, anything that grows from it will be grow incredibly colorful and exceedingly beautiful. So, the two friends resolved to gather some for themselves, and packed two sacks with dirt from the tomb. They stored the dirt in an old black ceramic basin, waiting for good seeds to plant in it.

The black basin sat forgotten for a few days, until a green shoot unexpectedly emerged from the soil. The shoot grew and grew and, in a month, it filled the pot. But this wasn't just any old plant—it was unique. Nobody knew what variety it was.

They carried the plant into the city, to the Yun Huang Temple, to consult the old gardener but even he didn't know what it was. Coincidentally, Master Zhi Xiang walked by while they were consulting the gardener. The two friends asked him, too, but Master Zhi Xiang only shook his head.

One of the friends said, I heard that the Master can tell fortunes, so why not ask him how many branches this plant will have? The Master asked another person to give him a character. He had the gardener's shears in his hands, and randomly said, er (耳, ear). The Master considered it and said, This plant is very unique. It will have four branches. Its appearance in the world will be brief. It will be killed, by you.

After the plant bloomed, the Master was proven right. The shape was like a peony and also like a rose. The bloom of one branch was red, another yellow, a third white, and the last purple. It was incredibly beautiful. Once word of it spread, there was a steady flow of admirers arriving everyday.

Naturally, the two friends were proud. One treasured the plant so much that he set it on a table beside his bed, and personally watered and fertilized it. One day he got drunk, woke up at midnight, and suddenly felt he should go water the flower. But he took the hot kettle off the kitchen stove by mistake and poured the boiling water over the flower, killing it. The man was sick with regret and smashed the basin. He fell ill, unable to get out of bed for a month.

Although this affair was unique, it was just a pot of flowers, nothing more. Not so many people knew about it. It eventually faded from memory. No one realized that that summer another, even stranger affair would affect everyone in Xijing. This was noon on June 7th in the Chinese calender.

The sun was still red. It kept shining on everyone, as it always had, and nobody bothered to look up at the sky. In the streets of the city, everything was the same as it always was. All the officials rode in cars. And people with no position, but enough money and no wish to push onto public transit, took taxis. But who was the VIP coming through the city that day? Police cars led the motorcade with horns blaring like a child’s cries. All the cars, taxis, and buses had to slow down and detour off the main route, which disturbed the natural rhythm of the river of bicycles moving up the road. Only those moving on foot could continue walking up the road.

I step on your shadow, you step on my shadow. The shadow feels no pain, isn't even there. Suddenly, the color of the shadows shifted from dark to light, even more light, and then were gone. A person without a shadow doesn't seem like a person at all.

Someone scratched their ass and rubbed their face their face. Someone looked up at the sky, by chance, and exclaimed, Four suns! Everyone lifted their heads and looked up. Four suns in the sky. Really. They were all about the same size. Couldn't tell the age or the gender. Joined together they made a shape like the character 丁. There are solar eclipses and lunar eclipses but there have never been four suns in the sky at the same time. People thought maybe their eyes were playing tricks on them and looked again.

The suns weren't red anymore but white, white like a welder's torch. White like what? Nothing that's ever been seen before. In complete darkness, nobody can see anything. In complete light, the same?

All the vehicles sat still, just blared their horns. People ran wild in the streets. In this kind of hazy situation, people feel like they're not on the street anymore but in the cinema and the projector's broken down and the screen is blank, just the soundtrack playing. The feeling spread through the crowd.

Quiet fell on the people of the city, dead silence except for someone on the city wall trying to play one last sound on the xun, a type of flute. All his strength was used, like the wind hitting the corner of the wall, making the turn and disappearing. People seemed disdainful of the man with the xun, smiled a bit, and suddenly realizing the reality of the situation, were frightened by the deadly quiet and screamed. People became hysterical.

This strange affair lasted for about half an hour and then the suns in the sky became one again. When people slowly realized their own shadows were back on the ground, they looked down at them and then at the sky and some of them felt ashamed of their terrible behavior and ran without knowing where they were going, trying to escape. The crowd was as chaotic as an ants' nest, with no traffic cops in sight.

Instead of cops on the traffic island in the middle of the road, there was an old man, sitting, relaxed. He had a dangling eyebrows and a dirty face. He looked at the busy people with no emotion. The staring made people uncomfortable and eventually angry. They called, Where are the police? Where are the police? A cop named Su came running, putting on his helmet at the same time. He cursed the old beggar that was occupying his place, Pi! Pi is the rudest curse in local dialect.

After hearing this, the old man wrote on the traffic island with his finger, “避.” This is a very elegant old word, which rhymed with the officer's curse word. Then, he slowly laughed and a big group of people from the crowd laughed with him. When he made his way off the island, people could see that his clothes were made of a banner. The banner was from the people who came to burn incense at the Yun Huang Temple. On the chest was printed, ANY WISHES. With his two legs set apart, the rough seams were visible in his clothes. On the left side of his ass, WILL BE. On the right side, FULFILLED.

The old man didn't feel ashamed. He said a rhyme and later it was spread throughout the whole city. It was this:

First level, servants of the nation.

Above it all, enjoying life, nothing to do.

Second level, keeping on the good side of the boss, speculating but carefully.

Third level, contract workers: meals, gambling, girls, then reimbursed.

Fourth level, the landlords, making money while sitting at home.

Fifth level, the workers of the legal system, making money from plaintiff and defendant.

Sixth level, the surgeons, pockets full of cash envelopes.

Seventh level, actors and actresses making money with a twitch of their ass.

Eighth level, propagandists, eating the occasional banquet.

Ninth level, teachers, who wouldn't recognize exotic delicacies.

Tenth level, the masters of the nation, who behave themselves to emulate Lei Feng.

After this ballad emerged, some people analyzed it and said the beggar couldn't possibly have been a beggar. At the least was a teacher, for he had a teacher's ability to create this kind of rhyme—and in the ballad, the beggar aggressively censured the other classes of people but only talked about injustice against teachers. But in the end, who was the beggar? Nobody bothered to find out.

That year Xijing appointed a new mayor. His family was from Shanghai but his wife was a native of Xijing. For the past decade, each mayor appointed in Xijing has had it in their mind to accomplish great things in this ancient capital, but in the end, they all ended up the same, making miniscule improvements. They were only bureaucrats that came and went....