His Spleen is Also Red | (vaguely) COUNTRYHUMANS

1.

Part 1: How to Straighten and Stake a Leaning Tree

人之初 People at birth,
性本善 Are naturally good.
性相近 Their natures are similar,
习相远 It is their habits that will change.

- Sanzi Jing, "Three-Character Classics", Wang Yinglin, 13th century.

This book is about a country—that being China—in a certain time—that being the 2oth century. At the heart of this story, though, is merely just one man. A man representing a nation and a people, yes, but frail and breakable like any other of his kind. A man who bleeds red like the rest of us.

This book is about a wiry, dark-haired man with a face full of angles and just enough muscle to slip out of a bar figh. A man who might be completely unassuming at first glance if, perhaps, not for the harsh, weary creases along his face and the troubled frown shrouding his expression.

I can say with near-total confidence that the world has never seen a man so destructive and so insignificant as the one whose life I have decided to document in this book. In the avalanche of the life he led, he never once commanded an army, or invented a miracle, or signed a monumental bill; he didn't even help build a world-destroying bomb, as some others in this book have. This man's life, burning from the inside, might perhaps be no more than one rickety dollarstore match, shining bright and fierce and magnificent—but nevertheless just a little flickering flame. A melodramatic poet, a self-proclaimed revolutionaire, a rusting, ticking bomb running about on spindly wire limbs carrying inside its hatch an incredible mind. A man with a long and exhausting resume. To wet your appetite:

A son; a brother; a nephew. A young upstart; a noble defender; a schoolyard bully. The most passionate, visionary mind of his age, with a heart that bled when he witnessed suffering; a narcissist who thought himself surrounded by greedy, arrogant bigots. Two men have called him their lover; a woman lay awake beside him at night for five years, forcing herself to believe she could say the same. At the end of it all, we are left with a broken body that holds a thoroughly shattered heart. Figuratively, of course. I have reason to strongly suspect quicklime has chewed through all that remains of him, decades ago.

Was it his eruptive personality that led fate in choosing him for his role, or was his countryhood the kindling for his explosive life?

It would be best to start in the beginning. Born in 1899, the last year before the new century, Lin Songwen's first years were simple. He idolised his mother, more than any usual child would. It was in those few years, before his sister was born, when he could not yet form perfect sentences nor understand the pains of poverty and toil, where I must imagine Songwen to be perhaps the most content in his life.

Too early, far too early for any child, Songwen had to trade one part of his family for another. For less than a year, he had two parents and a little baby sister, until, far too quickly, just as he was learning to be an older brother and eldest child, he woke up one morning without a mother. At that age, both Songwen and his sister, Meiyu, were quick to move on, at least superficially. In their heart of hearts, I know they were reaching and searching, wondering where their mother went and grappling with such a loss as only a child could, but as days passed and time kept going on, so did they.

Songwen never truly understood the concept of rules until he grew older—at which point he understood, and was also conscious enough to choose to ignore them—but was at a time in his life where his disregard for order and his talent for rebellious mischief was either unnoticed or excused. One time, out of many similar instances, he dented his neighbour's windowsill with a well-aimed pebble because he'd noticed her fawning over him. The misfortunate girl never noticed the dent, nor would she ever notice, until far too late, his uncontrollable temper that sent him out of his mind, self-absorbed and trigger-happy. But that's all several decades, two world wars and a revolution in the future.