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did this all mean?
    I recommend that the higher-ups would be well served if they carefully monitor the Musician’s capitalist behavior and tendencies. A single ant hole can cause an entire dike to collapse. We can not permit the Musician’s petty bourgeois feminine sensibility to infect our Re-Ed district.
    4. Old Course , pp. 17–22
    The reason the higher-ups requested that I write Criminal Records was so that I might record all of the discussions and actions of our ninety-ninth to which the higher-ups themselves were not privy. In return, they promised I would quickly be designated a new man and allowed to return home. I therefore proceeded to write down everything I saw and heard. I left some portions of the document in my drawer, and handed over others. The parts I handed over described my contribution and loyalty to Re-Ed, while the ones I left behind in my drawer contained material I hoped to use for a novel after I succeeded in becoming a new man. I didn’t know which of these was more important to me, just as I didn’t know which is more important—the life of an author, or his works. In any event, the key thing was that I could write. I could stand in front of all the criminals, and before they even had a chance to dip their pens in the inkpot, I could use the reputation I had gained from publishing a revolutionary novel to then write my Criminal Records , which would be handed over to the higher-ups. I could also, in front of the higher-ups, use my reputation as the author of this Criminal Records to gather material for my future novels. The Child finds me, above all the others, most reliable. He trusts me just as intimately as he does his own eyes and hands.
    The sowing began.
    No one further raised the question of whether the district’s per- mu grain production would be able to reach six hundred jin . No one opened their foul scholarly mouths to make false, exaggerated, and unscientific reports, or spout antiscientific nonsense. Everyone said, “Science is a turd. Anyone who steps in it will get dirty, so it would be best to bury it out in the field.”
    The land was divided among the different brigades. Each person was assigned about seven mu , and each brigade was given two hundred mu that was a combination of sand and arable soil. The smaller fields were a few mu in size, while the larger ones could be several dozen. Between the fields, there were areas that had become ponds, marshes, lakes, and wasteland. The fields were wedged between these wetlands and wasteland, and for ten or twenty li there wouldn’t be a soul in sight.
    In order to sow all the fields in a single week, the ninety-ninth’s four brigades were divided into groups of seven or eight people each. Those who could sow were assigned to operate the wheat drill and everyone else pulled ropes attached to either side of a plow. Previously, each mu could yield two hundred jin of grain, which came from about half a sack of seed, or about forty jin . But now that each mu had to yield six hundred jin , it would require a 150- jin sack of seed, and the seeds themselves would need to be planted more closely together. At this time of year in the wild plain, the heat had passed but the autumn chill had not yet arrived. The wind, carrying a muddy, alkaline smell, blew in from the Yellow River. Everyone’s faces were cold, but their bodies were warm from pulling the ropes, leaving them soaked in sweat as though they had just taken a bath and then put on their clothes without drying off first.
    Our brigade was located several li to the south of the district. If you were to walk over from a three- li -wide marsh, you would reach a triangular field about fifty mu in size, which was essentially reclaimed wasteland. The soil was plowed, and the new earth was bright yellowish red. The field was surrounded by gray sand and marsh plants. Everyone was sowing and pulling ropes, proceeding methodically from one end of the field to the other, and then turning