Li Chengpeng: Untitled About the Future
Author: Li Chengpeng
Only three days have passed, and the moments of discussion in friends' circles have vanished; perhaps the fish's memory lasts only seven seconds, or perhaps high technology has intervened again. Still, I want to say something.
In theory, Chinese people who grew up drinking poisoned milk, receiving fake vaccines, shouldering high mortgages, drinking adulterated oil, and being forced to delay retirement have had all their dreams hammered out. Yet the “chives” (the exploited masses) have always believed they will achieve one final wish: after cremation, to live in a box of their own, historically called the “chive box.” Recent news shows: stop bragging; you think you can live in a chive box, but in fact you will be placed into a fake denture box.
This adds a glorious battle record to the lives of Chinese who have been “chives” all their lives: funeral homes, medical schools, and biotech companies dismember and process the more than four thousand cremated bodies into allogeneic bone material, selling it to the medical and aesthetic industry. Consumables for a lifetime, truly deserved.
In the film “Zhou Chu Eliminates the Three Evils,” a venerable figure advises followers to practice “dan she li” and throw their gold and silver treasures into the cremation furnace, but the furnace has a hidden mechanism, and the venerable figure intercepts a large amount of wealth from the other side of the furnace… At the time it felt terrifying; now I realize the venerable figure was still shallow. The movie we are showing here is: when you stand before the cremation furnace crying “Mom, may you rest in peace,” the other side of the furnace is simultaneously, professionally, calmly clicking and cutting apart your loved ones, stripping skin and flesh, cleaning, irradiating, packaging, cold‑storing, completing legal procedures, and in an operating room becoming a stranger’s fake teeth, fake nasal bridge, fake pelvis.
These past few days, some people maliciously ask: the bones are taken, what about the meat? Imagine the eyes of some old compatriot in a hot‑dog sausage staring at you lovingly; the flavor is heavy. Just now, a Zambian woman who has lived and worked in China claimed that China turned dead human flesh into beef‑like products and sold them to Africa, saying there is photographic evidence. Our government angrily denounced it: this is pure rumor and defamation!
People expressed shock; I am shocked by people's shock. No matter what happens on this land, you should not be shocked. As a genuine Chinese, the most basic quality is not to be shocked by events on this land! Everything belongs to the state; our ancestors once handed the land over to the People’s Communes, now we can hand over our own bodies to funeral homes. What was once called “land reform” is now called “corpse reform.”
In Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” Chichikov goes to farms to purchase the “empty accounts” of dead serfs to make money, delivering a profound speech to the farm owners titled “Every waste is a treasure that can generate profit.” This novel exposing the dark Russian serf system was published in 1842, when the Qing dynasty still ruled. Who would have thought that over a hundred years later… Of course, our country has successfully entered a socialist, well‑off, rule‑of‑law era; stealing corpses and selling them is only the work of a few illegal individuals.
Most Chinese funeral homes belong to public institutions, with income turned over to the state. Some have been restructured into private or state‑private joint ventures but remain under the civil affairs bureau. The Qingdao University Affiliated Hospital that participates in corpse dismemberment is a state unit; Shanxi Aorui originates from the China Radiation Protection Institute; the former allogeneic bone implant material producer China National Pharmaceutical Group is a solid central enterprise… So stealing corpses and selling them is not the moral collapse of a single funeral worker; it is a deeply rooted industrial system. There are 44 bone banks nationwide, such as Shanxi Aorui, so consider this carefully…
When you discover a mosquito in a room, it means a swarm has entered. When an old man finds a corpse‑like smell in his newly installed dentures, millions of elderly have dreamed at night of someone standing at the bedside delivering a prophetic dream.
Suddenly I realized Shanxi Aorui is certified as a “high‑tech enterprise.” When Elon Musk’s high‑tech company launches Starship, our high‑tech enterprise is stealing corpses; when the Starship team studies debris to reduce launch costs, we are figuring out the most economical way to grind bone fragments; when Musk probes the vast universe, we are digging graves in remote wilderness…
A while ago, Zhang Weiwei, flashing his white teeth, said: “The technological gap between China and the United States is not large; in ten to fifteen years, Chinese technology, especially in the starry sky field, will far outpace the United States.” One has to suspect that the two dental implants he uses, made of allogeneic bone, came from a psychiatric patient. I just read an emotional report: “The Pride of Life‑Science Industry – A Record of National Model Worker Li Baoxing.” National model worker Li Baoxing is the protagonist of this corpse‑stealing scandal; adding another national model worker, Shen Jilan from Shanxi, and recalling the need for credentials to go online, the two national model workers together compress a Chinese life’s floating world:
No speech while alive, no entry into a box after death.
Earlier, a tanker mixing kerosene with cooking oil sparked public anger for a while, then the outcry faded. This seems to be a pattern: anger flares briefly, people become silent, after a few days of latency another incident reignites them, then silence again, then another trigger—much like binge‑watching a horror series. People gradually forget the life burned in a domestic new‑energy car, forget the tragic highway collapse in Guangdong, forget the dam breach at Dongting Lake that drowned many while funeral celebrations waved red flags in a victorious reunion, and few recall the name of the brave woman in the Hangzhou school‑bus attack—her name is Hu Youping.
How many injustices must a Chinese person encounter in a lifetime? Each time, someone shouts in anger, sheds a few tears, which accomplish nothing; the crowd disperses, blood quickly dries in the wind, the cycle repeats, the memory fades, and eventually even the lingering pain becomes numb. In psychology this is called the “Bebop effect”; I suspect the authorities periodically release short‑term pain to facilitate long‑term stability maintenance.
Someone always runs in angry, asking: how could such inhuman things happen, when did the world become like this? Don’t misunderstand; our world has always been like this. Forget middle school history textbooks; don’t think the Wei‑Jin period was only about elegant scholars. During the Eight Princes Rebellion, King Sima Zhuan of Hejian sent General Zhang Fang to war with ten thousand women marching with the army, killing and eating them on the spot; those women were mobile army rations, and no one thought it wrong. When Tang general Zhang Xun was besieged, he killed his concubine to feed his soldiers; histories praised him for sacrificing himself for the nation, and Emperor Dezong posthumously honored “all officials since the reign of Zhi De, whose merits are evident.”
Have you noticed that worship of Huang Chao has become a cyclical social pattern? Recently people praise him for exterminating aristocratic families, ending elite monopolies. The suffering of the lower classes is deep, and the lower classes tend to overthink; in fact, Huang Chao’s two assaults on Chang’an both resulted in massacres of the lower class. He besieged Chenzhou for a year; with hundreds of thousands of troops lacking food, he built hundreds of giant mortars as human‑meat workshops, pushing innocent villagers in when hungry, grinding them into meat paste, historically called “Daomo Village.” That year, dozens of thousands of civilians in the free‑shipping zone were turned into “Huang Chao brand” meat paste.
Suffering never makes a group just and brave; suffering only makes a group evil, collectively rationalizing that evil. The more people eat, the more our ancestors have classified various human‑meat delicacies into grades, even elevating them to theoretical heights, writing several books. For example, Song‑dynasty Zhuang Chuo’s “Chicken‑Rib Compilation” calls an old skinny man “Rao Ba Huo,” a young woman “Bu Xian Yang,” a child “He Gu Lan,” with vivid language. Do not think this was only wartime necessity; China’s greatest medical figure Li Shizhen openly wrote in the “Compendium of Materia Medica” that “human flesh can be used in medicine.” When General Shi Sui lacked grain, he also ate human flesh; after repeated tasting, he concluded “the most beautiful meat comes from a nun with good looks,” meaning beautiful nuns are the best to eat.
All of this is cultural at its core. Stealing a few corpses now is nothing; since ancient times we have taken living people to eat. Li Bai and Du Fu are part of traditional culture; cannibalism is also traditional culture… Lu Xun, I swear I am not deceiving myself. So now when I see someone wildly praising traditional culture without regard, I know that person is either a fool or a villain, while the masses of emperors and ministers sit glued to their TVs, reveling in the glorification of imperial expansion, fantasizing they are also brave warriors, unaware they are merely two‑legged sheep.
Everything is worship of what one thinks and receives; all suffering is self‑inflicted. I offer petroleum to the motherland, I offer bones to the motherland, a chicken three‑way, a sheep eight‑way, adding cremation fees, urn fees, cemetery fees, incense and paper‑money fees… In the end, I become your denture by the furnace, you become his kidney on the road, we exchange bodies, finally achieving an internal cycle. Thinking this way, I am no longer angry; our parents have not died, only reincarnated, reborn… Buddha, I swear I am not deceiving myself.
Around the time Venezuelan people protested presidential fraud, Li Peixia protested online against a county party secretary’s exploitation of herself; when Bangladeshi students protested unfair civil‑service job allocations, our youth fought the exam banks; when Singapore protested an elderly man’s mild food poisoning hospitalization (recovered after three days), we boasted on social media about buying fruit and making ice cream ourselves to avoid fecal contamination. When we all protest the same issue, the methods are always so quirky.
Friends always ask me, what should we do?! I have no answer, no solution! Only miracles can free us from suffering. Lately, everyone spreads rumors of miracles; I am indifferent to believing or not. After Huang Chao came Zhu Wen, after Zhu Chongba came Zhang Xianzhong, the “Ten‑day Yangzhou, Three‑day Jiading” massacres continue.
The chief planner and perpetrator of the massacre, Li Chengdong, was originally a subordinate of Li Zicheng. He surrounded the rebel forces completely and chopped them all into minced meat... The Chinese people are industrious, brave, and kind, and Chinese history is grand and magnificent with heroes emerging generation after generation, yet upon closer look, it always seems unable to get away from human flesh.
The system is of course the source of all things, but if the things in the bone remain unchanged, it is like a rudderless ship. If the exposure of stealing and selling corpses has any significance for the future, it is this: do not be surprised by anything that happens in the future—let alone secretly taking dead people to make dentures or fake bridge bones, even cannibalism should come as no surprise.
Finally, let me tell a story: I was born in Xinjiang. When I was a child, I ate with my father every day at the locomotive depot canteen. Under quasi-military management, dining was divided into different ranks: chiefs ate from small private pots, while ordinary people ate from the big common pot. One day, soldiers from the motor squad hunted a huge argali sheep, saying it was to nourish the chiefs' bodies. But how could the small pot hold a creature weighing nearly two hundred jin? The young soldier carried the argali to the main canteen to stew. That giant iron pot in the main canteen was fully one and a half meters in diameter. The delicious aroma made the mouth of the road builders—who chewed on steamed cornmeal buns and sorghum stalks every day—water constantly. They were migrant workers recently transferred from various inland provinces to build the railway, too numerous and extremely hungry, who were reassigned to join the locomotive depot canteen because the bridge segment canteen was overcrowded. Among them was a young man from Hebei named Xiao Duan, who was particularly unwilling to leave for a long time. The canteen manager, Big Lao Li, had to kick and shove to chase him away.
Xiao Duan was tall, pale, and neat, but a bit eccentric. Before every meal, he would always break off a small piece of steamed cornmeal bun, place it on the table, giggle foolishly, mutter something incomprehensible, and only then start eating. My father said he had been traumatized by love, not knowing whether his girlfriend had died or dumped him...
In short, that day Xiao Duan kept wandering outside the fence of the locomotive depot, giggling foolishly, muttering who knows what. By evening, heavy goose-feather snow began to fall, and soon the houses and the ground turned white. Big Lao Li added plenty of spices to the iron pot, locked the door, and left. His footprints were quickly covered by the heavy snow.
Early the next morning, the snow had stopped, and it was not fully light yet. Big Lao Li hurried to the main canteen to prepare sheep soup for the chiefs. From a distance, he felt something was strange: a line of footprints led straight to the window of the main canteen... Big Lao Li ran over cursing, knowing it must be some road worker driven by hunger to violate discipline, sneaking in to eat mutton and drink sheep soup. Opening the door, Big Lao Li was shocked: that big iron pot was steaming with white vapor, and inside lay Xiao Duan, already boiled tender, still clutching a handful of mutton in his hand...
Big Lao Li started shouting and wailing. At this time, people coming for breakfast arrived, and the road workers arrived as well. People shouted and screamed as they used shovels and iron rakes to fish Xiao Duan out. My father took me to watch from afar in the snow. The crowd was chaotic and agitated, but their movement trajectory closely revolved around that big iron pot. The atmosphere was extremely eerie; I couldn't see clearly what they were doing, only hearing Big Lao Li shouting furiously, "Put it down! You are not allowed to eat! Not allowed to eat! This fucking has human flesh in it..."
That year I was nine years old.
Who knows, as time passes, what will happen in the future.
Will there be an infatuated and hungry Xiao Duan lying in the pot? Will there be a shouting and screaming Big Lao Li cursing, "Put it down, not allowed to eat, this fucking..."?
The title of this article about the future is "Untitled About the Future." If the recent series of events brings any positive significance to the future, I can only say: please keep yourself and your family safe.
Sincerely yours!