The birds I encountered as a child do not fly anymore. Their wings drag along the ground, slick with putrefaction. I assume that their eyes see the same bedraggled landscape as I do, because I can see in their tired souls that they have finally let go of their former vain convictions that the skies will ever be blue again; that the trees will grow upwards, green will be in abundance and the worms will resurface. China's natural fertility is dead.
    My river, too, is red. All the fish I fished for, and the girl I failed to woo on this once crystalline, slender finger of Amphitrite, all turned to red as the scaly flesh withered and the girl died of blood poisoning. Strange fingers have been growing on the banks of the red river. They are soft and malleable to the touch, glimmering in the orange haze of the afternoon. At noon the red river surges and brings with it bags of silver pelt, blood and flesh; they could be dogs, but the faces are too contorted and soft to confidently identify.

    By dusk, monstrous flaxen lumps tease themselves slowly above the waterline. Many of them appear to have heads and shoulders, molten and withered by the red liquid. All of them travel eastward, in this season travelling towards the setting sun. The horizon burns a pale violet as the sun collapses and gives way to the pockmarked face of the moon. There, it watches the opaque river and its debris until the sun drags itself above the horizon the next morning.
    I am an artist. I take this horrendous landscape and turn it into something vile and fascinating. I take pictures of dripping concrete obelisks and wasted carcasses. I paint women and children with the custard blood of the river on the yellow, moth-eaten card in my small basement. I use the bones of dead Chinese grebes as paintbrushes. I also used their feathers until they became too brittle. I frame my work in my soot-covered house.

    There are still a few people alive out here. Those of us who haven't succumbed to the clasp of black eternity have either been shot or hung by the occasional Administrative Officer visiting the rural villages of Shāndōng Province. Yun-Fat is an infamous Admin, known in East China for his distinct affection for fingernails and eyeballs. Yao-Ming's legacy follows a similar vein, vowing instead by the pleasure of mutilating the genitalia of little girls and boys.
    Of course, there are viable political reasons for both: pulling fingernails and eyeballs out is a social tranquilizer, a psychological tool for quelling rural unrest. Sexual mutilation prevents the proliferation of yet more ugly rural inhabitants across the Shāndōng landscape, thereby permanently reducing the suffering of individuals who will now never exist. Premature abortion is a fantastic breakthrough in the politics of our Province.  
    
    I am a former accountant for an Asian company out in India; after ten years of amassing a considerably worthy amount of money, I bought myself a few luxuries upon my return to China. My return still heralded the pristine lakes, the pretty children and the grumpy but generally content villagers, and with it I bought a bigger house, a cell culturing lab (a distinctly illegal but life-saving investment nonetheless) and an impressive array of artistic equipment. Most of my original materials have been used, and now the landscape forms the most of my tools.

    My general countenance to those in the village and the authorities is an eccentric fifty-four year old artist who does nothing but paint the sick landscape until either completely withers away. Thus far, they have seen no reason to bother me. The children of those few villagers left have however seen reason in destroying many of my earlier works while I was out at the river during the stale summer. The works I considered lesser were stacked or hung around the living space at the front of my house. These suffered the most from the youngster's cancerous restlessness.
    I share my food with no one and watch everyone wither around me. In my age and travels my appearance is much the same as theirs and I take great care in leaving my face unwashed whenever I venture forthwith. It keeps people from suspecting that there's anything more to this eccentric poverty artist than the delusions of grandeur associated with creative types.

    I'm used to writing poetry, but for the last five years or so since the isolation of provincial residents including multi-nationals like me, I have barely written a word. I thought I'd never have to write a word again, I thought that all my photographs and lashes of paint and coal and contaminated water would be my voice. That changed last week when my paintings entered a new phase: life drawing, of sorts.

    I thought I was suffering from the delusions of heatstroke when I saw that an animated cone of foil had appeared on the horizon, trudging down the side of the river with the gait of an astronaut in a cumbersome suit. I blinked three times and picked up a new sheath of card, scribbling with ash-ink the vague proportions of this provincial alien. It stopped momentarily, perhaps to get a look at me on my shabby foldaway chair. An unrecognisable device jutted vertically from the foil-clad person and another longer device clenched tightly in its hand was dragging through the saturated water. They were most likely instruments of measurement.

    The metallic biped approached me and asked me a question in a faintly European accent.
    "Is this the Pinyong River?" Its Mandarin was shaky, and the muffled suit voice blurred any true indication of gender.
    "It was Pinyong River when it still had fish and children and pristine waters. Now I don't know what it is."
    "Please, friend: clarify. Is this the Pinyong River?"
    I nodded and asked the foil person if he was from Europe.
    "This can't be disclosed."
    I asked it if there were any more of its kind around here, but I was provided with the same answer. I was instead charged with the question of relating where the village folk where. I told it that if I guided it to where I and the others lived, I would most likely have my fingernails and eyeballs ripped out. It told me that it wouldn't be going in that direction in the daytime, and it said something about 'amelioration'. The suit kept chopping its hand in the air, saying 'change' as if I hadn't heard it the first time.
    "If you're hearing guns, don't be alarmed. This is change, OK?" it said confidently.
    "Yes, yes. Right."
    
    The bizarre biped shook my hand and trundled back up the river. I sat there for another hour, my hands empty of grebe bones and my sheaths of card empty of substance. I sat there and thought about the visit and recalled that I hadn't seen anyone since then who wasn't a legal murderer or a wasted provincial resident.
    I sat there and thought that for the last five years, all I had experienced was some tiny insignificant little corner of Shāndōng Province. No trade, no travellers, no Europeans, no Jiangsu, no Anhui. My drawings were now filled with this new metallic texture, this exciting alien beyond the veil of authority. Some semblance of redemption took hold in my heart, because I was not wasted to the soul like the rest of the villagers. I suppose my constant drawing was a way of getting things done. Justice through paint: it was trivial but wholly important to me.

    The first gunshot echoed through Xingyao early in the morning just two days after the foil-clad visitation, half an hour before the eastern winds picked up and carried with it the fine green sand from DERRIC-T1. I planned to stay inside all day and culture more food. That changed when a thin female pounded on my door, crying for help. I ignored her pleas for half an hour. I checked through every window to affirm to myself that the girl was alone, locked the basement with the culture lab and brought out a clean pistol. While I was checking the windows once more, she caught sight of my movement and went to the window, pleading me to let her in. Fuck it, I thought, and unlatched the door.

    She slid through the gap and shut the door. One side of her body was covered in the fine green sand, and in the darkness its toxicity glowed reprovingly. It wanted me to shut her outside and let her die alone, that kindness would invite death to my own door – or that I already had. I ran upstairs with my hands to my nose and mouth, drenched a towel in a vat of purified rainwater and flung it at her.
    She gasped at the stunning lightshow on her body and in a fit of panic removed her clothes down to her underwear.  She rubbed the affected skin raw. I told her to stay there, hosed her down with ice-cold water and provided her with a clean towel. She moved to the side, silent and miserably curious as I washed the floor where she stood. I got her to fling the sand-covered towel outside and I hosed her down one more time. We disposed of three towels and a full set of clothes that day. She sat wrapped in a towel on my small chair while I searched for some appropriate clothes, cursing my sudden fit of mercy.

    "Are you from Xingyao?" I asked. Yes, she replied.
    "Were you kicked out of your house?" I asked. Yes, again.
    "Parents or Admin?" The latter, she said. Her face broke and tears studded my concrete floor.
    "Did you see any silver people?" Her yellow teeth pushed past her lips as she choked out her  answer through the tears. No silver people, but sunburnt people in yellow gear.
    "Did you see guns?" Plenty, she replied. They shot my parents.
    
    That's all I needed. As the DERRIC cloud blew past, I braved the outside and stuck my head through the window facing the direction of the mostly dissipated sand. Chinese soldiers were advancing towards my house, marching in tandem with three of those European suits and a cumbersome vehicle.
    Its roof donned a great metallic parabola, revolving on a thick trunk and spraying water ten metres or so in every direction. The soldiers were soaked. I felt an urge to run out and meet them, but I stayed with the dressed girl. I expected her to run out and plead them to find her parents, but she only stood there, forlorn and damp.

    Two of the soldiers knocked on my door. I opened it, waiting for some response, perhaps to be greeted, shot, congratulated, imprisoned or extradited – I had no idea. They were soaking wet and looked positively irritated.
    "Xingyao resident?" Yes, I said – what else would I be?
    "You are now under the jurisdiction of the Subsidised Ecological, Industrial and Rural Amelioration project. Any attempt to breach or interfere with SEIRA jurisdiction will be met with punishment and extradition under the EU. This includes both the residents of Shāndōng Province and the relieved Administration Officers. You will be temporarily moved to a safecamp until the chemical treatment has reached safe toxicity levels."
    "What about the PRC?"
    "Too complicated to discuss now. Is there anyone else in the house with you?"
    "A teen, female. She was forced out the house by Admin."
    "Admin has been dealt with. Two bodies have been found; the child is required to secure their identity."
    "Then all this you're doing right here," I said, overcome with some confusing, drunk thoughts, thinking unclearly – "All this is too late. You own those towers, you own that filth." I pointed at the Europeans in their stupid suits. "You're not making this right by stopping it, even if that's all you can do. You own that rubbish, you killed nearly everyone."
    They've probably heard this speech a dozen times on the way here, but I was shaking with anger. I was less detached than I thought.
    "You can tell the men in power their companies killed us and more money won't make this right. China is a desert, thanks to you. We used to be overpopulated. China is the biggest desert in the world, and the sparse few of us left are madmen like me and orphan girls like her."


    ***

    I came back during autumn, two years later, and the first leaves that fell had enjoyed a healthy season of chlorophyll green. The air smelt of soft, earthen things, accompanied by a sweet orchestra of grebes relishing in the fresh waters and larger birds inhabiting the trees, harking the end of a summer whose veil of grass, flowers and fruits mostly covered its scars. I cried aloud as I discovered my house, my home, covered in trees.
    On the inside, a timeless explosion of blue, luminescent mould had propagated itself beyond the basement – I couldn't even see the door past the neon fur. I had left the culture lab on and the furry stuff had eaten all the paintings I had left in the living room. It had yet to reach the upper floors, however, where I left many of my finer works – including the very first portrait of the foil-covered European.

    I left the house that day with tears in my eyes and a bunch of old, slightly mouldy paintings in the back of my car. The man who painted those pictures seemed to die the day he left that house and entered the camp. Experience and time makes strangers of us all.