The Audible Annals of Abudan
Chapter-by-Chapter Outline
(42 in total)
Prologue
Donkey’s Hee-haw
Donkeys bray crimson, and their crimson bray has propped up the sky for Abudan in southern Xinjiang for centuries. When Zhang Jin comes home stone deaf from a mine, he finds the village smothered in police sirens.
1
Digging
Two decades of tunneling have left Zhang Jin’s father Zhang Wangcai more animal than man as he strives to inch his way back to their old house in Abudan.
2
A Donkey Goes Missing
Hesenjan’s quest for his lost donkey sends him to a lovely woman’s courtyard and the Qiuci Old Town’s vibrant bazaar, while Abudan villagers are perturbed by sudden braying in the underworld.
3
Sounds from the Paved Road above
Just as Wangcai reaches the doorstep of his old house, his tunneling is halted by alarming sounds of digging close by.
4
At the Smithy
Business booms for Abudan’s last blacksmith Turdi. Everyone is queuing for an oversize ketmen – a hoe with ancient Central Asian origins – to dig the trench for the massive West-East Gas Pipeline Project.
5
The Oil Derrick
Discovery of petroleum nearby has brought few benefits but one paved road, so Yasin the Village Head doubles his efforts to win work for the villagers on the pipeline project.
6
The Tunnel
In his old boss Yüsup’s courtyard, Hesenjan is sent down a hole in the donkey trough, where he’s reunited with his missingdonkey.
7
Cracks in the Tunnel
Yüsup urges his tunneling team to speed up but work quietly as they make a crucial turn at the outskirts of the village near Wangcai’s old house.
8
Subterranean Footsteps
Wangcai hears the other tunnelers turning away, but dares not resume digging toward the old house that embodies so many fond memories. Some 40 years ago, generous neighbors in the all-Muslim village took in the Chinese flood refugee and helped his young family put a roof over their head.
9
Qurban
Led down a shaft blindfolded, day laborer Qurban utilizes all five senses to divine his surroundings as he unwittingly joins Yüsup’s new recruits. But Qurban is an old foe who risks exposing Yüsuf’s tunnel, so they’re all shipped out blindfolded again.
10
Raw Earth
The oddly spellbinding scent of untouched fresh earth – and the precious coinage he discovered 20 years ago – have keptYüsup digging until he found a village buried beneath Abudan, once part of a wealthy kingdom in the ancient Western Regions.
11
The Dog Knows
Back home again, Qurban is determined to uncover the mastermind behind the tunnel where he toiled eleven days in almost total darkness. But his fears grow: Some five years ago, wasn’t a Bad Element caught hiding in a villager’s cellar?
12
The Subterranean Village
Yüsup is haunted by a blond woman and three men in his dreams, their skin fair, eyes azure. They once resided in a millennium-old village that his grandfather and father, hired as guides by foreign explorers, failed to locate.
13
Spades and Ketmen
A ketmen in an ancient Buddhist grotto pulls Wang Jia’s eyes away from the dancing Moonlight Queen. The researcher develops “Ketmenology” based on the hoe still used by today’s Qiuci farmers.
14
Pitch Dark
Abdulla the Dog Master has been Yüsup’s chief engineer for years. The pair relies on their footsteps to measure the progress of the tunnel underground and above.
15
Mice
Wangcai gives a reluctant lesson on getting rich with vegetables to fellow villagers who struggle to make ends meet with maize and wheat. When it comes to tunneling, he learns eagerly from his tiny rodent neighbors.
16
The Mazar
Villagers are indignant that their mazar – now virtually a public cemetery – has barely 500 plots left, but Imam Ghupur, Yasin the Village Head and Yüsup can’t turn down gift-bearing outsiders who want to get into this sacred resting ground.
17
The Donkey Expert
Elqem the Donkey Master introduces Professor Pei to the happy, dignified life that Abudan’s donkeys enjoy, even though their owners are dirt poor.
18
Mouse Poison
As lands outside Abudan are covered in cotton, displaced wild mice migrate en masse toward human habitation, and Abudan joins enthusiastically in Qiuci County’s campaign to exterminate the huge rodents.
19
Iron
Following the Ürümqi Bus Bombings in 1997, public security forces have kept a close eye on rural blacksmiths like Turdi and son, who can turn scrap metal into rickety-rackety tractors, farming tools and more. After all, a forge is a convenient source for the iron shards used in such bombs.
20
The Sound of Ketmen
Imam Ghupur performs one of his last duties on earth, and his warning against Yüsup’s scheme to tunnel to the mazar falls on deaf ears.
21
Morphing
Turdi scolds his son Tursun for playfully welding a ketmen with scrap metal, while he forges genuine hoes of exaggerated proportions matching villagers’ high hopes for quick money. Wang Jia notes this as another historic change of shape for the ancient farm tool.
22
The Investigation Team Arrives
Yüsup narrowly escapes discovery when officials and police sweep Abudan for any suspicious digging. Abdulla is glad he kept his own mousy hole separate from Yüsup’s big project.
23
Cover-up
Sensing the gathering storm, Yüsup bids farewell to Imam Ghupur before going down into the tunnel one last time, and entrusts everything to his loyal sidekick Qara Erkek.
24
End of the Road
His work done on earth, Imam Ghupur joins his clan in Allah’s paradise. Abdulla realizes the tunnel is already under the mazar, but the consequences of his miscalculation are beyond anyone’s guess.
25
Footprints
Footprints on the dirt road told old village head Ershidin who was playing slack during the People’s Commune Era. Current village head Yasin leaves no footprint as his butt is glued to an electric donkey – a motorcycle, that is.
26
The Election
With Yüsup’s endorsement, Yasin wins the village head election, a triennial event closely watched by canine and equid alike.
27
Cotton Harvest
Cotton bolls are as good as cash. Locals smuggle bolls under their dresses after a hard day of cotton-picking; pretty young things in makeshift massage parlors welcome huge bags of cotton as payment.
28
Gas Pipeline Trench
Villagers are disappointed that the giant, three-legged cauldron at the county’s new Culture Square doesn’t cook free polo, then try in vain to stop hundreds of excavators from digging the gas pipeline trench in a matter of hours.
29
Donkeys Get It
Donkeys fall quiet uncharacteristically as Yasin announces the latest county policy, but the animals cannot turn a blind eye as their kin are carted away in exchange for tractors.
30
Tractor
“Cranky” Memet, Abudan’s Tractor Master, gives his take on how donkey, sheep and dog perceive Tractor, before he himself is done in by the iron beast.
31
The Donkey Report
With its sharp criticism of Qiuci’s donkey extermination policy, Professor Pei’s report gets under the skin of county officials.
32
The Ten-thousand Donkey Chorus
As if on cue, myriad donkeys break into a final, heroic vocal contest against police sirens at the Old Town’s bazaar, with Abudan’s Donkey Master Elqem at the epicenter.
33
What Were the Donkeys Yammering about?
Officials question Elqem to delve into the mysterious factors behind the “Mass Braying Incident.” Professor Pei is stunned by the county leaders’ enthusiasm for a donkey-free future.
34
The Raid
Police arrive at Abudan for Operation Tunnel Bust, which ends with the violent deaths of Abdulla, Qara Erkek, a soldier and a donkey, before Yüsup’s tunnel is blown up and flooded.
35
Ketmenology
Ketmen specialist Wang Jia is given the cold shoulder everywhere as villagers suspect he’s the snitch who tipped off the authorities about Yüsup’s tunnel.
36
Hollowed Out
Yasin is crestfallen as officials blame him for spreading the rumor that the big pipeline trench dig would be undertaken solely by Qiuci villagers and their trusty ketmen.
37
Fixed Quota
No longer a young man, Turdi the blacksmith feels strength draining from his arms as locals chatter about Yüsup resuming his ketmen work in a distant land called “Afghanistan.”
38
Go Tell it to the Donkeys
To Qurban the new village head, Elqem the Donkey Master relays the donkey’s nightmare: The incessant digging of man and machines will create an abyss that swallows humans and everything else.
39
Breakthrough
Months after Yüsup’s tunnel was destroyed, Wangcai finally decides it’s safe to burrow over head for his old house. But is he really right below it?
40
Homecoming
Zhang Jin returns home to settle down, but when his father proudly shows him the secret tunnel to their old house, the shocked young man realizes his ties to the village are forever severed.
Epilogue
Sounds
Zhang Jin’s compilation of the “Audible Annals of Abudan” brings to mind the one girl he loves, and he decides to abandon Abudan and set out for a life of his own.
Ethnic ChinaLit 
Sounds terrific.
Especially the donkeys chorus.
mark selden
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