You Are The State

I received an invitation for a field trip to the village where the Communist Party sent Xi Jinping, at the age of 16, to be re-educated for seven years. The opportunity came free of cost, courtesy of the “Foreign Scholars” department of the university that employed me. But several elements of the invitation stuck out.

First, the e-vite was sent out Tuesday at 11 a.m., and the deadline to accept or decline was 5 p.m. that same day. The itinerary included in the invitation was a digitally scanned PDF in handwritten Chinese. Neither I nor Google Translate could decipher any details about the journey. 

Recently, the party had also been actively targeting universities for “Extreme Displays of Hospitality.” Former teachers in my program promised elaborate buffets and gratis luxury trips, but I arrived at an auspicious time. As Chairman, Xi received acclaim for his early victories against China’s “Tigers and Flies”—tigers being oligarchs and high-level officials profiteering off their party stature, and flies the low-level cadres emulating the higher-ups by allegedly syphoning off taxpayer funds for selfish ends. In years prior, State-sponsored feasts, replete with generous portions of sorghum liquor, were the norm, but now they became synonymous with shady backroom deals. According to the Chairman, any such social situations were a key battleground in the fight for party purity. Now, banquets and the like were strictly forbidden, which made me suspicious. Was this free three day field trip, in the middle of a teaching week, not motivated by a spirit of hospitality?

I signed up for the trip. So did the Mormon couples, another teacher from the same liberal arts exchange program of our alma mater, and a Mexican Spanish-language teacher. 

Yan’an, our destination, was hideously grey and cold, yet retained a mythical aura about it—a reflection of the area’s importance during the Second World War. Mao and his reds, having survived the Long March, in tatters but still unified, settled into Yan’an, transforming the area into the party headquarters and applying Mao’s principles in the context of a micro-state. Division of land was first on the agenda, rectifying people, second. For years, the area was surrounded by the Japanese, and intermittently, by the KMT forces of Chiang Kai-Shek. But Yan’an’s mountainous geography gave the fledgling Chinese Communist Party cover, enabling the comrades to survive several difficult years of encirclement. 

This history made the city a destination for present-day party pilgrims, as immediately became clear upon our arrival. The university hosting us had become a pitstop for members striving for promotion. It provided a two-week seminar that involves logical history and logical lessons on the development of Communism with Chinese characteristics. This seminar conferred party cred. Mostly middle-aged, the ambitious apparatchiks all walked from place to place carrying pastel colored portable chairs. We watched them as they marched to dinner.

Our welcome banquet was hosted by Zach, our tour guide for the weekend. An excellent fellow, Zach was a walking encyclopedia of the area. We ate and drank in excess. Eventually, Zach started to talk about politics, prompting one Mormon gentleman to ask about the recent constitutional changes that effectively granted Xi an indefinite reign. Zach was critical of the move, and even my school representative chimed in with a dark joke.

“There was a shopkeeper who loyally kept a portrait of the chairman perfectly aligned each day in his shop,” she said. “One day, however, there was an earthquake, and the portrait fell upside down. When a soldier came to help assess the damage, he noticed the upside-down portrait, and angrily arrested the shopkeeper.” 

But as Zach ratcheted up his criticisms, the representative grew visibly concerned. For many Chinese, the abolition of term limits, intended to “preserve Xi Jinping Thought,” was the ultimate betrayal of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms after the Cultural Revolution. Whether people said it or not, many Chinese saw the spectre of a Mao-like leader, commanding reverence even as dementia set in. 

I steered the conversation towards more rosy developments. After the banquet, my school’s representative whispered in my ear, “I don’t agree with any of what he said.” 

The first morning, we went to see the caves where the party leaders lived during the siege days. While we only got a cursory tour, we watched the pilgrims pause at most stops (Mao’s first cave dwelling, Mao’s second cave dwelling, etc), chairs in tow. Children from a local school, the Young Pioneers in Yan’an, stood at each “landmark,” delivering memorized lectures to us and the pilgrims. The most awe-inducing structure was a ramshackle hall not unlike a settler’s church, pew included, where the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed into existence. In the evening we went to the hotels and drank BaiJiu, sorghum liquor—a mistake, it would turn out, as Zack woke us at 5 a.m. to begin our journey to the site of Xi’s personal reformation. (During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards causing havoc in the cities were shipped to the fields for re-education. Xi was one such Red).  Our convoy came to the security checkpoint at the village’s outskirts, where I waited as authorities cross-checked my passport along every imaginable database for subversives. After being cleared, we were escorted to the central square. 

The village museum was populated mostly with a gallery of Xi sightings, with some identical pictures mounted in multiple corners. I wondered why the curators considered empty space more embarrassing than repeat pictures. The museum also displayed a graph showing a steady rise in average income, with a massive spike in 2012, the year Xi became Chairman. 

We and the marchers were taken on a comprehensive tour through this village. Each stop on our tour featured an anecdote involving Xi. I envied the marchers’ chairs, but not their imperative to furiously take notes on how the leader ate apples under this tree in this very spot. I found the tour excruciatingly boring, half-expected the guide to highlight Xi’s preferred outhouse. But a student from my university who had accompanied us was deeply moved by the scenes. She came from a village just like this one, and seeing its development gave her hope in the future of China—and the fortunes of her family. Maybe Xi’s successor would be sent to her village for some class re-education, so that village, too, could prosper.

I was particularly moved by one story. During his re-education, Xi became well respected in the village, and so one day the locals decided to pool in their funds to buy Xi a car, the first in town. Xi, embodying the communist ideal, decided to break the car down and use the engine as the basis for a noodle-making machine, one that everyone in the village could enjoy. 

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My own re-education started soon after the field trip, as I left my teaching job and returned home to Oregon. Increasingly, America resembled China. The Coronavirus had catalyzed a burgeoning State’s Rights movement to consolidate State power. Capitalizing on widespread fears of libertarian-minded anti-maskers, the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted for American Circumstances Party swept the 2024 United States election on the promise of Freedom from Speech. Now, the State had successfully contained the virus in the Western Hemisphere, and with most anti-maskers converted or “isolated,” it was moving on to its next enemy. 

One day I received a text: 

Hello! We are reaching out to you to inform you that we know you were a follower of Trump. While we respect the past views of all humans, since the future demands cooperation unlike any other in our planet’s history, we must unite! If you participate in a re-education course, sponsored by the Confucius Institute, any past mistakes will be forgotten! If you don’t, we will still educate you! But we will remember your hesitation to willingly participate!

Respond: I mean, I followed @TheRealDonaldTrump, not the man himself…

My objections were no use. And I was conscripted into “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted For American-Capitalist Mindsets Reeducation Class.” I complied, wrote my essays, established my daily rhythms. 

One day after class I returned to an empty house, perfect for some VR lovemaking. Strapping on the visor is a rare lux. The level of immersion means each sense, typically attuned to signs of intrusion, can focus on the sensual. Walk-in terror plagues traditional self-pleasure. Ears need to be perked, eyes ever-so peripherally vigilant for any suspicious door-handle movements. But when the visor’s strap can be whipped out, when you know no one else is gonna be coming, in or out, it’s bliss.

Booted up, I realized I still haven’t updated the software to include the Situation Creation Program. Kinda creepy, the ability to scan a photo and render your fantasy-partner into a sexy 3D puppet, a threshold I’m not willing to cross yet. 

I wonder if I’ve been made a fantasy-victim, that’d be kinda cool. 

The phone beeped.

“Congratulations! You have been noticed! As an acknowledgement of your existence, you are hereby invited to the Pan-National Information Output Bureau’s Provincial Offices. Given the sensitive nature of this announcement, you are expressly forbidden from forwarding this e-vite to any other citizens. Please reply with ‘yes!’” 

I did not generally seek to be “noticed.” Presumably someone had read my latest essay, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Brother,” having intercepted it in transit to the teacher’s inbox. But the text said “you,” not “your work,” as in me, I’m being noticed, brewing worry. 

Under rule of The Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Adapted for American Circumstances Party, the cameras were virtually everywhere, so the only real way to maintain “anonymity” was by offering your body to the State’s gaze, 24/7. Only if you weren’t “seen” by one of the million CCTV’s would the State start looking for you specifically. But being watched is different than being noticed. Soon after the Party took power, someone strolling down a city block could look up to find faces displayed on LED screens mounted on each building’s surface. The State implemented the practice to shame jaywalkers, replaying the security camera footage of the criminal in question on all surrounding screens.

But the State’s new method was more sinister.  Now the screens displayed faces, but with no context, no crime. These faces brought profound pedestrian unease. Was this person a hero or a villain? What were us law-abiders supposed to do if we saw them in real life? 

“I have questions”—send.

“Please reply with: yes!”

“Yes!”—send.

“Congratulations! You have been noticed! As an acknowledgement of your willingness to co-exist with the State, you are hereby entitled to know more details!”

I was summoned to a cubicle on The National Information Output Bureau’s fourth floor. The building was a T, each floor dedicated to its own truth. The fourth was for “Entertaining Truth.”

“So what’s the gig?”

“You’ll be part of the team for The State Is You, our new outreach platform. Our partners in Military Intelligence developed a world-wide override on all satellite feeds, and in effect this means we can interrupt any screen’s display—E-books, phones, laptops, VRs, anything—and broadcast an emergency message, in the case of jihadi nuclear apocalypse. 

“The State wants to test the override, so they’ve decided to make a mandatory program from 5:30-6:00 across all platforms. At half past five, every day, we will show an informational, educational, and entertaining set of clips all in the hopes of inspiring our citizens to continue their cooperation with the State.”

“Propaganda?”

“Exactly!”

“Cool, I’m excited, what’s my role?”

“You’ll be in charge of producing the clips of citizens in your district zone. We want dailies of average citizens, normal people, in a segment that will be titled “Who’s the State?” How are they adapting to de-nationalization? How worried are they about global jihad?”

“Quick Q: normal?”

“We are looking for interesting stories, so don’t rule out any non-conformists. We want their voices heard. And their retina’s scanned. Sound good?”

“Swell.”

I smiled and signed the contract. On my way out I passed by a beggar. He had no sign: appeals to charity could be interpreted as accusing the government of negligence. But his eyes pleaded. His message was clear. 

My first assignment began with an email from Nasty Ice agreeing to meet up. Ricky was a middle-school acquaintance who I liked for his utter ignorance of the fact that he was white, color-blind to the fullest. 

We drifted after 8’th grade, when his father got arrested, double homicide over a sour deal. It was fun to see his burgeoning rap efforts on Facebook through the years though, as he rotated through pen-names like Honky Fire and White Surprise (he woke after Ferguson), before settling on Nasty Ice. The key to objective reporting: let interviewee feel no judgement. Let them be comfortable. Lull them into speaking with no reservations. How to do that? Giggle at everything they say, smile, show you get them. What you giggle at though, whether mocking or in agreement with what’s said, that’s up to you. You could be in on a whole different joke, but who’s to know? 

“So why Nasty Ice?”

“Well, it’s two things. First, it’s like a legacy thing to the OG Vanilla. You know, I gotta pay my respects to the greats, Em, Mac, both Miller and ‘klemore, both of em, all of em! So yeah, I got the reverence shit on lock, but I also just like my Natty Ice. You know, they got their forties, I’m trying to get Natty up as our drink d’jure. I thought, I’m getting big now, pretty big, but White Surprise don’t got no product attached to it. And I’m sitting there, drinking my Natty, and I’m like, damn, Natty got no celeb sponsor. So I make myself Nasty Ice, cause my spit nasty, and I think I can get this sponsorship thing happening, you know, we gonna be on cans, commercials, everything. That’s that, that’s Nasty Ice.”

“Well, you’re already sponsored by the State. Can you explain what it means to be a state-sponsored rapper?”

“Oh yeah man, the State! They been hooking it up, all the drugs I want, everything, alls I gotta do is mention some vocab they got on a list, and bam, I get on USTV 4 every two hours. You see my new song, “Comply or Die?” Nah? They wanted some tune to promote the gun confiscation program, so you got me and all these police shooting up rednecks in the video. You know, it’s not g, but I don’t really care, long as the money there.”

“You also got a song titled ‘Sand-N-word-Killa’, do you have any reservations on that word?”

“Whats wrong with sand-nigga? I’m not using that Voldemort word, this a whole other word. This one dashed. Whole other word. Plus the State told me that these anti-Muslim lyrics help encourage the whites to join the State’s Terror War.”

“War on Terror?”

“Same shit. Look, I’m Muslim too, praise be to Allah, but fuck it, I’ll say what I want if I get money for saying it.”

“You’re cool with me quoting you, yeah?”

“I don’t give a fuck, but what’s this for anyway?” ▩

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