China and Japan - 1911-1949

China and Japan: 1911-1949

In 1911 China was under foreign rule and had been since 1644 (Qing Dynasty). These people were called the Manchus and came from a region east of Mongolia and north of Korea (north-east of China). The dynasty had survived for over 250 years but it was on its last legs. In a final desperate attempt to retain power the government allowed foreign businesses to rent/loan individual train lines in order to generate capital. This led to protests and rallies in August 1911; you see the Chinese had never allowed for foreign invasion before. They were a country that had kept very much to themselves for thousands of years. So a local regional governor (without the express permission from the emperor), in trying to subdue the situation, had the ring-leaders gathered up and then executed. This wasn’t a smart decision and it ignited a full-scale uprising; within four months two-thirds of China had renounced the Qing dynasty, and by the end of December 1911 the Qing dynasty had shit itself!

http://theqingdynasty.com/qing-dynasty-geography.html

https://www.slideshare.net/jtspag/qing-dynasty-china-19th-century

In its place a local Chinese government was established (called the Republic of China) with Yuan Shi Kai chosen as President in February 1912. However, it wasn’t the only party to be formed during this time. The Guomindang (Nationalists) were also formed in 1912, and the Communist Party was established in 1921. The period of 1912-1914 was fairly unstable with President Yuan Shi Kai trying to subdue potential threats. But when the First World War erupted, Britain, which had been providing some support for Yuan, left to fight in Europe. As a result, Japan, who were hovering in the background waiting for an opportunity (they already occupied German leased Shandong province – east China between Beijing and Shanghai), made threats of war and presented President Yuan with the ‘Twenty-One Demands’; essentially they were a collection of offensive demands that indicated China was to become a protectorate of Japan. With no support, and little chance of success, Yuan agreed to a few of the less belligerent demands. But this made his rule tenuous at best with more and more provinces throughout China considering him an untrustworthy ruler that betrayed China. So they declared their independence and by 1916 the ‘Warlord Period’ had begun. Yuan was dead the following year as a result of what the doctors termed a ‘disease caused by intense disappointment’. We should seriously have that disease term in the West!

The twelve years of the Warlord Period (1916-1928) was one giant shit-storm! As the name suggests, it was extremely violent, with Beijing the top prize because European powers refused to accept any other administration as genuine. China fell into a state of disrepair with communication systems being destroyed and then not fixed. Resources became scarce so warlords fought each other over farming land.

Meanwhile Japan was becoming more offensive so in 1919 over 3000 students marched in Tiananmen Square (called the ‘May Fourth Movement’). It’s famous because it triggered a shift in thinking within the young Chinese and was a catalyst for the founding of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai on July 1^st 1921. Nothing was ever going to be the same again!

The Nationalists were not laying idle and had reached the conclusion that Soviet Russia was the only real friend that China had (a low ranking official called Jiang Jie Shi, also called Chiang Kai-shek, had gone to the Soviet Union for training); and seeing as the new Communist party had similar views to their own they decided to join forces to rid China of the warlords once and for all, and create a socialist state. By 1925 Jiang Jie Shi was the leader of the Nationalists northern army and was tasked with subduing the northern warlords.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek

All was not rosy between the two parties however, and as tensions grew (over several years) the Nationalist forces took up arms against the Chinese Communists. The events that transpired from 26 March to 12 April 1927 in the Shanghai massacre of Communists was the final straw and they henceforth became bitter enemies. Not surprising really when about 50 000 Communists were killed in and around Shanghai and only about 5000 Nationalists died.

As a result of the massacre, Jiang Jie Shi became ruler of the Nationalists and in 1928 they took Beijing (although their main base was in Nanjing); and seeing as European countries recognised the ruler of China as being the one on the throne in Beijing, the Nationalists were officially in charge of the reunification of China with Jiang Jie Shi as the new Emperor. The West were also breathing a collective sigh of relief because they were worried about the potential for a Communist China.

Depending on which side you are on, it was either a good or bad thing that the Shanghai massacre didn’t destroy the Communist party, and they began a rebuild in southern China. Japan also hadn’t gone away and were doing likewise in north-eastern areas of China and Manchuria. Communist officials, including Mao Ze Dong and Zhu De, were recruiting the local peasants in southern China to fight prolonged battles with the Nationalists. Emperor Jiang Jie Shi was forced to employ powerful military commanders to rural posts to keep the Communists quiet. However these men were not always committed to the Nationalist cause and were typically thieving wankers that only cared about themselves. Not surprisingly, this caused the local peasants to view the Nationalists as thieving wankers (like equals like after all), and so they joined the Communists in their thousands. In 1929 alone the Nationalists spent over 50% of their annual expenditure on wars against the Communists and the Japanese.

http://www.notable-quotes.com/z/zedong_mao.html

http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/z/zhu_de.htm

Emperor Jiang Jie Shi was almost able to wipe out the Communists before they broke out on their ‘Long March’ in 1934-1935. Covering a distance in excess of eight thousand kilometres and lasting 370 days (16^th October 1934-20^th October 1935) the Communists escaped their southern base which was no longer safe. Over 100 000 people began the journey, with roughly 80 000 of them soldiers. By the time they reached their north-western destination of Yan’an in Shaanxi province there were less than 8000 left alive. Crucially though Mao Ze Dong was one of those 8000 and he became the Chairman (ruler) of the Communists. This occurred midway through the march (January 1935) in Zunyi. I can confidently say that it would have been much better for China had Mao not survived!

You might think that with such a small number of Communists left that the Nationalists could have crushed them in Yan’an but that didn’t happen, and so their numbers quickly regenerated. Emperor Jiang did order the complete destruction of the Communists but before that could happen Japan got mega-nasty again. More on that shortly!

On a side note, one of the reasons that the Communists were more popular than the Nationalists was because of the way each of the armies and officials behaved. Chairman Mao laid down a military code which consisted of three rules and eight points. These were:

The three main rules:

1)      Obey orders in all your actions.

2)      Don’t take a single needle or a piece of thread from the people.

3)      Turn in everything captured.

The eight points:

1)      Speak politely.

2)      Pay fairly for what you buy.

3)      Return everything you borrow.

4)      Pay for anything you damage.

5)      Don’t hit or swear at people.

6)      Don’t damage crops.

7)      Don’t take liberties with women.

8)      Don’t ill-treat captives.

The Nationalists however allowed their armies and officials free licence to do what they liked to the Communists, the Japanese, but more importantly, to the common Chinese people. They raped, pillaged and plundered to their hearts content, and the Chinese people rebelled by joining the Communists in record numbers, even though this was treason in its most basic form.

On the 25^th November 1936, Germany, Japan, and Italy signed the ‘Anti-Comintern Pact’ (Anti-Communist). New swarms of Japanese soldiers, the dreaded Kempetai (the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo), came down from the north east with the sole purpose of destroying anything Communist, and therefore by default, anything Chinese. I do find this interesting seeing as the ruling power of China at the time wasn’t Communist in nature. I guess the Japanese just figured they couldn’t tell one Chinese from the other so they just killed any Chinese they saw; and they were significantly worse than the Nationalists had been in previous years.

As stated above, towards the end of 1936, after the Communists had set up their base of operation in Yan’an, Emperor Jiang Jie Shi decided to launch a final onslaught against them. His close commanders disagreed because they were more concerned with the debaucheries the Japanese were inflicting on fellow Chinese. They also viewed the Communists as being Chinese, so they were more focused on the Japanese threat than with the Communists. So Jiang Jie Shi’s two closest commanders, Zhang Xue Liang and Yang Hu Cheng, imprisoned him on the 12^th December 1936.

The Emperor was convinced, at gunpoint (which is definitely a good way to convince someone!) to sign a peace treaty with the Communists. He shouldn’t have been too unhappy because the treaty allowed the Nationalists to remain in power, and for him to stay on as Emperor. Also the Japanese were in for a tougher fight because the Nationalists and Communists combined their army’s forces. The only thing the Communists wanted was to establish their own independent government in Yan’an.

https://www.google.com.au/maps/dir/Nanjing,+Jiangsu,+China/Yan'an,+Shaanxi,+China/Beijing,+China/@36.4081252,112.4634515,5.75z/data=!4m20!4m19!1m5!1m1!1s0x35b58c9b668dcd83:0x8ffbb60b79df1b06!2m2!1d118.796877!2d32.060255!1m5!1m1!1s0x366e2402cd87b947:0x925130a66613ae53!2m2!1d109.489757!2d36.585445!1m5!1m1!1s0x35f05296e7142cb9:0xb9625620af0fa98a!2m2!1d116.407395!2d39.904211!3e0

Even with their combined Chinese forces, it wasn’t enough and throughout 1937 Japanese troops seized Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing (the last was a particularly bloody affair with the Japanese raping and/or killing over 300 000 Chinese – most of them innocents!). The Nationalists were in charge of the defence of the cities, and the Communists were in charge of defending the regional areas. Emperor Jiang Jie Shi was forced to flee inland as the major cities were seized and his immense army was crushed. He settled in the remote southern city of Chongqing, but not before an appalling decision to implement a ‘Scorched Earth’ policy. This involved slowing the south-west progression of the Japanese army. He ordered the breaching of the Yellow river dykes, which inundated several provinces. This had the positive effect of making large expanses of land impassable but in the process he effectively drowned (or they died from starvation) millions of the local Chinese peasants. Yes I did say millions and I did say appalling!!

Meanwhile, Japan had seized the entire Eastern and Southern seaboards of China and had also successfully fought their way inland on the train-lines and seized major inland cities and provinces. They were successfully overwhelming the Nationalists troops, but the Communists were an entirely different animal altogether, and the Japanese were unable to seize large portions of the countryside (and their subsequent resources). Why were the Communists able to do what the Nationalists were not? Well it was pretty simple really – incredibly large numbers of Chinese wanted to join the Communists! As a case in point, between 1937 and 1945 the Communist army grew from 90 000 to almost one million.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/

I should probably give you an idea of the populations of the two countries so you can appreciate more clearly what I am saying; in 1940 the population of China was about 550 million and Japan was about 80 million; Japan were effectively outnumbered 7 to 1. Having said that, the Japanese were far superior in their air and naval development and force. Regardless, the Japanese government decided to consolidate the cities and land they had already captured and try to ‘ride-out’ the Chinese. This decision ended up an epic fail (and not the only one Japan would make in coming months); the main reason for this was because the Nationalists and, therefore, by default the Communists, were continually being supported, initially by the Soviet Union, and then by the USA, Great Britain, and France. By 1941 the Soviet’s, Brits and French had stopped supporting China, for obvious reasons – they were neck deep in it with the Second World War requiring all their resources and manpower.

By 1941 Japan were getting desperate. China wouldn’t surrender; the USA were providing more and more support for the Nationalists; the Communists were controlling the countryside; and Japan were running out of money. The government decided to look elsewhere for money and started eying off the rest of East Asia, in particular the oil rich Dutch East Indies, and the rubber plantations and tin mines of Malaysia. The only problem was that the USA war ships were patrolling the area 24/7.

Retrospect is a marvellous thing, which the Japanese government didn’t have in 1941 when they decided that by attacking Pearl Harbour (epic fail number two) they could achieve several positive outcomes with one strike: 1) Remove USA support for the Chinese; 2) rid East Asia of USA warships allowing Japanese warships free reign of the area; and 3) the perceived snowball effect of China surrendering. This clearly didn’t happen in the way that Japan had hoped and as a result both the USA and Japan entered the Second World War. This further weakened Japanese forces and put additional strain on their finances.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Pearl-Harbor-attack

Incredibly, with the Chinese on the brink of victory, the Nationalists changed their tune. Emperor Jiang Jie Shi had decided that Japanese rule was a better choice than Chinese Communist authority, so the Nationalists switched sides and joined the Japanese fight against the Communists. The fragile truce between the Nationalists and Communists was broken forever more. Emperor Jiang didn’t bother passing on this rather important nugget of information to the USA, and so we ended up with the bizarre situation where the USA continued to sponsor the Nationalists in their fight against the Japanese, whilst the Nationalists were fighting with the Japanese. The American government were essentially providing money and equipment to Japan whilst they were fighting Japan.

I’m unsure as to what Emperor Jiang was hoping for with his decision to support the Japanese. What did certainly happen is that most of the population were seeing the Nationalists as turncoats, therefore they were not to be trusted and needed to be overthrown. As a result Communist party membership numbers increased dramatically through this period.

These incredible scenes inside of China were not apparent to the West, and in fact, Allied wartime propaganda hailed Emperor Jiang as the East’s only saviour against the Red Communist China. In further amazing developments (I’m still shaking my head) Stalin believed that Emperor Jiang would be easier to control that Chairman Mao, even though Mao was outwardly Communist, and Jiang, not so much. So Stalin loaned Jiang money and sent his forces aid, and also officially recognised the Nationalists (stationed in Chongqing) as the sole government in China, whilst offering Mao a giant bowl of fuck-all. Also Japanese troops stationed in China surrendered to the Nationalists. In so doing the USA used these troops to support the Nationalists in their battle against the Communists. So enemies become friends!

So essentially what we had was a Nationalist force backed by Japanese troop support along with USA troops, finances and equipment, as well as Soviet finances and equipment, and who also regained Northern provinces vital for Communist expansion. They were up against the Chinese Communist party which had the Chinese populations support. Extraordinarily people power won, but not before the Communists, or the People’s Liberation Army as they were now called, had to again retreat to the country (like they did back in 1927). The Nationalists forces took over the cities as well as Yan’an (the old Communist home base of operations) but these were hollow victories as the Communists left the cities empty and consolidated their forces in the countryside.

Three final factors swung the civil war in favour of the Communists. 1) The government officials put in charge of the reclaimed cities were corrupt, thieving, violent, and repugnant individuals that so enraged the locals that hundreds of thousands of them fled to the country to join the Communists. 2) Manchuria was seized via the surrender of the city of Mukden on the 2^nd November 1948. Nearly half a million Nationalists troops died. 3) The city of Xuzhou was seized on the 10^th January 1949 after a huge battle that lasted 65 days. 600 000 more Nationalists troops perished. The Nationalists never recovered and Chairman Mao Ze Dong officially established the People’s Republic of China on the 1^st October 1949.

To this day I am still perplexed as to how the Communists did it. Emperor Jiang should never have lost. He had more troops, more weapons/equipment, and more international support. It just goes to show that people power can make a difference; even vastly outnumbered people.

This post is another snap-shot from my latest novel titled “We get the world we deserve”.

Love and light to you all

David Hartmann

We Get The World We Deserve - Part 1

We Get The World We Deserve!

A Posthumous Autobiography

By Bill Ferguson

I – ‘Pandora’s Box’ and the sprite ‘Hope’

My strong suspicion is that we get the world we deserve!

I know I can’t be alone in my thinking. For example, I can think back thousands of years to the origins of people’s thinking and read about myths and legends such as ‘Pandora’s Box’ as a fantastic case in point. According to this wonderful myth (there are multiple versions), at the beginnings of humanity everyone was happy. There was no sadness, no anger, no anxiety or fears; just joyful prancing and dancing and singing – all day every day! One day Hermes, the trickster God, was travelling past Pandora’s home carrying a very heavy box. He was sweating and panting and looking quite distressed. Pandora offered Hermes water and food to help him recover and to aid him on his long journey. She also offered to look after the box for him because it looked heavy and cumbersome and he still had far to go. Hermes agreed on one condition – that Pandora was not to open the box under any circumstance. She happily agreed and Hermes went on his way.

Almost as soon as Hermes left, Pandora started hearing noises coming from the box. She asked her husband about it and he told her to stop worrying about it and to come outside to sing, dance and be merry. But Pandora didn’t and stayed near the box listening to the quiet noises. She concluded that they were voices and she became quite distressed at the possibility that creatures were trapped inside the box. Crucially, Pandora stopped being merry and joyful. She wouldn’t go outside; she wouldn’t eat, and wouldn’t sleep. She became completely fixated on the box.

After a few days of this the local community staged an intervention in an attempt to free Pandora from this obvious addiction. I digress, but could this have been the first addiction that humanity suffered from? Regardless, the intervention didn’t work, and Pandora decided that the voices in the box were asking to be rescued; not only that but they claimed they had been unfairly imprisoned and desired to be freed from their jail.

In the end Pandora couldn’t handle the stress anymore and opened the box. Ultimately she had been correct because there were imprisoned creatures, but she was wrong to think that these sprites were nice and deserving of their freedom. You see these creatures had names – and their names were pain, fear, anger, desire, anxiety, envy, sadness, etcetera; all these winged beasts were charged with destroying people’s merriness and joy. The people closest to Pandora were struck first and they either started arguing with each other or began weeping. Upon seeing this Pandora slammed the box shut, but she heard another voice in the box asking to be freed with the others; and that’s when Pandora made her only good decision in days – she reopened the box, and out came hope.

Pandora released 100 sprites into the world that day with only one charged with good; and my HOPE is that the people reading this book are that one in a hundred that the world needs to save us from ourselves. Are you humanities 1/100 HOPE?

But before we get to that you need to know more about me. Prepare yourself though because it aint pretty!

II – Middle Fingers and Black Puddings

Well I finally went and did it… out of spite? A solid middle finger ‘Fuck You’ to the world. I told you so; I told you I was going to do it. Some of you might suppose that it was just my time? That last statement might seem strange seeing as I drove off a perfectly good hill… on purpose! I can still picture the shocked faces of the picnic goers at the BBQ area near the Hassan’s Wall lookout, plus the terrified face of one particular young boy. They can go fuck themselves though because they know nothing about me. And come to think of it, neither do you. I do feel bad about that young boy though… I can’t get his face out of my mind. I do however, need to backtrack just a smidge.

And yes, I will include the part about how I am writing an autobiography when I am dead. And not just a little dead either. That was a seriously high hill and I somehow managed to miss all of the trees on the edge of said hill. I plummeted 1130 metres to the ground below. My Nissan X-Trail deployed its half a dozen airbags on impact but of course they were going to do fuck all for my health and wellbeing. The Nissan essentially turned into a pancake and then exploded for good measure. I’m pretty sure I ended up looking like one of those ghastly things on Scottish breakfast buffets – what are they called again? Ah yes, Black Pudding. Fuck that shit is disgusting. I tried it once – and only once. Well that’s what I imagine I came out looking like after my ‘Middle Finger Fuck You World’ suicide.

But I digress! Where to start? Let’s start with the word ‘life’! Is it possible to have a one word oxymoron? I think so because the simple fact is that as soon as we become life we start to die. So in a sense as we are living, we are also dying. And how do a lot of you actually live during your dying? Do you work hard or play hard? Do you lay in bed at night and smile? Or do you live in regret for things you would have rather seen and done? Do you take life seriously or do you try and stay free-spirited? Who is happier – the person swinging their tanned willy as they peacock (haha… I just noticed the pun!) along a nudist beach? Or the CEO of some high-end investment company working 115 hours a week?

I don’t have the answers for you in case you were hoping I did. I wasn’t that philosophically clever when I was alive and I haven’t suddenly become some Aristotle type black pudding upon my death (from life) either.

So how did I get to this point where I am writing this? And what is the point of writing this? I did caveat this autobiography with ‘we get the world we deserve’ and I doubt I have failed to live (dead) up to my end of the bargain so far. But I must also say that a lot has happened since I became a charred pancake at the bottom of Hassan’s Wall. Experiences that may seem hard to believe no doubt; and that is why I am writing this for you all. If you can grin and bear my crude attempts at humour and my negative view of humanity in general you may just find some diamonds in the rough.

I don’t have a low opinion of all of humanity; just 99% of it. But I also believe that the remaining 1% can save you from yourselves. I also believe that the 1% will be the people that read this autobiography; and perhaps feel compelled to stand up and actively inspire change. It’s what I was saying earlier – you are humanities 1/100 HOPE. The planet won’t cop another 100 years of poor treatment by us humans. It will shit itself… mark my words. In this place I am in… whatever ‘this’ is… I can see all. I can see the past of everyone and everything that has ever come before on our planet Earth. More importantly, however, I can see the future/s. And that wasn’t a typo either because there are multiple futures that humans are gearing themselves up for. Moreover, I don’t know which one will play out. It’s a flip of the coin job, but it’s a coin with 100 sides. And it’s heavily stacked in favour of the house because 99% of you fuckers will have the coin flipping onto a BAD side. There is only one side that has an outcome satisfactory to planet Earth and to the people inhabiting it. That’s right, you heard me correctly, 99 sides of this magic coin are unimaginable horrors and, therefore, catastrophic for the human race as we know it. Take all the disaster movies and novels and combine them into one giant disaster and you still won’t come close. Only a one in one hundred coin toss saves the entire human race; that’s it!!!

Some of the more optimistic of you that are reading this are bound to ask if it’s possible to increase the odds. At this point in time I am unsure but I have seen enough to suggest it is. With any luck I may be able to answer that question with more clarity by the end of this autobiography. This afterlife that I have found myself in doesn’t play by the standard rules of time and space. As you have already been told, I can see into the past as well as the future. Where there was only one past, there are 100 possible futures. What’s interesting is that each of these futures don’t run at the same speed for me as they do for you. They all don’t stay highlighted in front of me either. As significant decisions are made in your world some of the 100 fade to grey and some shine brighter. None of them disappear completely and invariably they will change around slightly, each of the 99 bad options getting their time in the sun. When they shine bright I get to see everything that happens in that alternate future. I see how you will destroy yourselves and planet Earth in every single gory detail. I hear the fighting and the screams; I see the violence and the blood; I smell the death and decay; I feel the anger, hatred, and despair. All my senses get the full load! Those 99 evil sprites that Pandora released into the world are at play here.

I have been in this afterlife – sometimes I call it purgatory, sometimes Tartarus, sometimes just home – for twenty Earth years. But my time is very different to yours. Every time I am compelled to look into the past, or to the future for that matter, that becomes time added on. So let’s say for arguments sake that I spent one year looking into the past and observing all of humanities mistakes, then that is one year added on to the 20 Earth years. So when I combine all of those trips into the past and future I have actually been in this (space?) for almost 960 Earth years.

And in that almost 960 years I have only ever seen the one in one hundred HOPE coin toss option shine bright once. And that was just the other Earth day… and that is the reason that I am writing this book. But more on that later. After all, I’ve got to keep dangling the carrot to ensure you read my entire autobiography.

As I stated earlier some of the more optimistic of you are now grabbing onto that one good option and are hoping that the odds can be improved. Or some of you positive humans have decided that this book is a work of fiction rather than an autobiographical non-fiction piece. Regardless, my brief glimpse into the one good coin toss has shown me this. If you work hard for each other, rather than against, then that one percent of you with any hope and sense will multiply. What I am determined to do with this book is inspire that incredibly small percentage of you to grow and expand. My hope is to increase the odds; I want that 1% to grow to 2%, then 5%, and so on. I want you to drive those 99 wicked little fuck-turd sprites back into Pandora’s Box where they belong. Then I want Hermes to come back from whence he came and pick that damn box up and fuck off back to Mount Olympus with it. Lock the damn thing in a dungeon and forget the box ever existed. I have determined in my 960 years of purgatory that life is too precious to waste. I am dead proof (Ha!!) of that!

III – Heaven, Hell and Indeterminatism

I think it’s probably time to head back to my suicide. After all it is gorily fascinating! Plus I’m sure a lot of you are wondering what happens at that last moment of life. Well for starters I was conscious for the entire trip down. My young, and definitely reluctant, passenger was flung off the car fairly quickly and so it was just me, the X-Trail and the Blue Mountains. As I plummeted I didn’t get any childhood flashbacks or anything like that. I just clung to my steering wheel watching the ground rapidly approach. I wasn’t scared or regretting my actions. Sure I felt bad for the young boy and I hoped that he flipped off my car back onto the lookout, but I knew in my heart that I had committed manslaughter. Oh well, justice would be swift!!

At the point of impact everything went instantly black. No white light; no fade to black; no white tunnel. I didn’t feel the airbags deploy; I didn’t feel myself pancake, and I didn’t feel myself burn. Just instant black… black pudding haha!!

I imagine there was some sort of delay before I opened my eyes, but I’m not entirely sure. As I was rousing I figured I was still in my Nissan at the bottom of Hassan’s Wall. I was just starting to chastise myself for fucking something else up in my life. Surely plummeting 1130 metres in order to die was unfuckable??

But then I started hearing noises – human noises. I concentrated on these noises and when I opened my eyes fully I saw that I wasn’t in my car, rather in a moderate sized shopping centre. It appeared to be all on one level and as I looked around I could see people walking along the corridors intently checking out the different shops. The more I took in my surroundings the more I noticed individuals looking at the signs above these shops. Following their eyes I was struck dumb when I saw the closest sign. You see, the words didn’t say ‘K Mart’, ‘JB Hi Fi’, or ‘Target’. This sign read ‘Christianity’. If any of my fellow shoppers had looked my way I’m sure they would have seen a man with his jaw dropping onto the nice arcade carpet. WTF??

Now I appreciate that I’m not that worldly (well I am now but I certainly wasn’t then) but I’m 100% certain I’d never seen a Christian store before; well one that was outside of churches anyway. I recalled a few religious outlets inside churches in Santa Fe, New Mexico when I had holidayed there a few years earlier. But this appeared to be a standard looking shopping mall.

I decided to investigate further so I stood up and wandered over to the Christianity shop. At first glance it appeared to look like any other store apart from the fact that it didn’t seem to be selling anything. There were no shelves, no stock – nothing! It did have a long desk across the middle with three ladies serving three lines of people. Each of the shoppers at the check-out were having, what appeared to be, a discussion. One of these people caught my eye because he elicited an audible sigh, his shoulders hunched and started walking behind the counter. As he progressed to the rear of the shop I (and everyone else for that matter) noticed two doors for the first time. One was red and one was blue and by this stage the suspiring man had reached the red door. My entire body jerked in horror when I saw that the red door had a label and the label read ‘Hell’. The man sighed no more because when he stepped through the door he plunged quickly out of sight. His last noise was like a little surprised yelp a small dog might make when you tread on their tail. The door closed on its own and the shoppers, who had been watching the whole event, went back to looking at their feet.

You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the blue door was labelled ‘Heaven’ and over the next ten minutes or so I saw over a dozen people go through that door, during which only about five went back through the Hell door. The Heaven shoppers floated of course. What was also interesting was that a further ten people were given tickets and walked around the corner avoiding both doors. Following their progress I saw them enter a waiting area with seats and a number board that kept ticking over. When a person had their number called they stood up and walked through a third door with ‘By Appointment Only’ on it. The number on the board read 625 and I let out a surprised laugh when I pictured what would happen to the poor soul who had number 666.

As I was looking away I was attracted to some movement from the waiting area. A man that looked in his 30’s was sneaking towards the Heaven door. I looked around and it didn’t appear as if anyone had noticed other than myself. He managed to reach the blue door and as he opened it he launched himself through. Having already seen quite a few people float through that door I was expecting the same but instead, two things happened. The first was a siren sounded, and the second was the blue door changing to red, with the red door changing to blue. As you can probably work out for yourselves, the man didn’t float and instead plummeted. If I wasn’t already convinced that I was in the wrong store, this final act of visual and morbid fascination sealed it for me. I looked away and wandered down the mall.

Next to the Christianity outlet was the ‘Atheist’ shop. This made me smile even more when I pictured just how unhappy the Christians would feel knowing they were sharing a wall with Atheists. I walked further and saw ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Daoism’, ‘Indigenous’, ‘Greek/Roman Gods’, and ‘Norse’. I saw ‘Jewish’, ‘Egyptian Gods’, ‘Shinto’, ‘Sikh’, and even saw one called ‘Justice’. I liked the sound of that one! When I observed the structure of the single story mall a little more holistically I deduced that there were about fifty stores down either side with some seating in the middle of the corridor dividing the two sides. The arcade was busy but not in an overwhelming way. You could walk around easily enough without bumping into anyone. Most of my fellow shoppers appeared to have a purpose, actively looking at the signs and then striding confidently towards their religion/philosophy of choice.

Now I had never been a religious fellow when I was alive. Most religions and philosophies had some very interesting things to say but invariably I found them flawed in some manner or other. So as I wandered the arcade I didn’t feel drawn to any particular sign. The strongest tug I had felt was for the Justice and the Atheist shops but the way the other people were striding purposefully to their shop of choice I figured I hadn’t found what I was looking for. The next store had ‘Agnostic’ on the sign above it, and I got a stronger tug which drew me to that side of the mall. But when I looked next door and saw the ‘Indeterminate’ shop I knew I had reached my destination. It described me perfectly; I had always been a bits and pieces kind of guy when it came to religious/philosophical beliefs. Several of my Aunts/Uncles and acquaintances had informed me that it meant I worshipped the Devil. I smiled again when I realised just how wrong they had turned out to be. All this smiling started to hurt my face and it occurred to me that this was possibly the most I had smiled in years. This thought pulled me up quick smart and I went from being quite a happy chappie to a brooding depressed man in seconds. I sunk to my knees on the plush arcade carpet and physically sobbed. I cried for the poor boy I killed; I wept for my fucked up life and I bawled over why everything had to have been so hard. If life had been even slightly better I probably would have trudged on; persevered with my pathetic existence until something good finally happened. Because that was the crux of it. I had always believed that life would turn around for me. The worm would turn; it had to didn’t it? Otherwise what was the point to/of life? As far as I was concerned my life had been Hell. If Hell actually did exist in the Afterlife (which apparently it did after what I just observed – well for some people anyway!) then how could it be any worse that what life had given me? Up until the day I topped myself there had always been a small part of me that believed it would get better. I had always believed this because I had decided early on in my life that if you were a good person then good things would happen in return. I felt this not because of some karmic intervention; not because of some Christian doctrine that suggested if I treated others well then I would be rewarded by being treated well in return (one would argue that Confucius/Kong Fu Zi had coined that Golden Rule centuries before Christianity decided to steal it because they felt it suited their purpose – fucking mainstream religions)! The only reason I did it was because the statement ‘felt right’. Something about it resonated with me, and no matter how far removed the world was from that statement I still held onto it as my statement of fact. I still do, which is one of the reasons for writing this book.

Anyway, as I crouched there on the plush matting (nobody paying me any mind) it suddenly occurred to me that most of the people that knew me would be surprised that I drove off a perfectly good hill. I might have been an angry man but I never came across as a mad suicidal man. Only the few psychiatrists and some old friends that I had entrusted would know the truth; that I was one seriously fucked up individual! And life had made me that way; moulded me over 45 years into the perfect antipathy of self. And whilst I knew that my few acquaintances (I didn’t have any friends – I was too much of a prick) and family would be surprised they would also struggle to find anything nice to say at my funeral. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother with a service. Just cremate me and be done with it!

You might find it hard to fathom that I didn’t have at least a few friends, but as I said earlier, anyone that spent significant time with me knew I was busted; a festering sore on planet Earth. A cancer that needed to be eradicated before it multiplied. That was why I had no friends. Anyone that saw the real me ran screaming into the distance hoping that I hadn’t terminally infected them with my cancerous poison. So yeah, I would definitely be cremated and disposed of with the least amount of effort possible.

Gradually the sadness subsided and I composed myself. I stood and walked to the Indeterminate store. Unlike the Christianity shop which had about 100-150 people in the lines and waiting area, this shop only had about 20 people. This was still more than the ‘Scientology’ outlet which only had one person in it – I couldn’t quite believe that Tom Cruise had died. Of the twenty or so individuals, some were lined up and some were lurking at the fringes of the shop entrance. They appeared to be unsure if they were in the right shop or not – they were definitely at the right shop I thought and smiled again. I lined up behind five others – there was only one check-out chick.

As I waited patiently for my turn I looked around. The first thing I noticed was that there was only one door as opposed to the two doors present in the Christianity shop. Instead of Heaven and Hell labels, this door had a picture as well as a sign. The image was of a blindfolded woman. She was holding a set of scales in one hand and the other hand was dragging what appeared to be a ships rudder. The sign on the door asked the reader ‘What is your Fortune?’ – Very interesting!

Similar to the Christianity shop there was a waiting area but only about ten people were seated; there was also a second door off to the right hand side. Before I could contemplate this further I reached the front of the line.

“Are you deserving?” asked the lady, perhaps unsurprisingly.

I pondered the question and replied. “Yes and No!”

The check-out chick looked me over. Her eyes were piercing. She gave me a number and pointed to the waiting area telling me to take a seat and wait for my number to be called.

I found a seat that allowed me to view the ‘fortune door’ as I had coined it. The lady that had been immediately behind me in the queue was directed to that door. Upon reaching it she went to turn the handle but appeared to receive a small electrical shock from the doorknob. She retracted her hand quickly and stared at her hand and then back at the door. Her mouth opened wide in shock and my eyes bulged as I saw the statue on the door begin to move. The blindfolded figurine appeared to be weighing up something, and as the penny dropped (in my mind), it became crystal clear that the effigy was weighing up the ladies fate. The right side of the scales dropped and the door opened. The lady stepped through, neither plummeted nor floated, and the door closed behind her without me being able to discern what her fate ended up being.

As I pondered this outcome it became clear to me that in this store, it was not for others to see what our fate was. It was Indeterminate upon our arrival and remained Indeterminate to everyone in the shop, apart from the person whose fate was ultimately determined.

“As it should be” I mumbled to nobody in particular. At this point my number was called and I rose from me seat and walked over to the door without the effigy. I opened the door and stepped inside.

IV – The ‘Best of Men’

The room had a simple layout. It was painted white and had a white desk with two white chairs. It also had a door at the far end of the room. I was directed to the seat on the left and I sat and waited for whatever was to come.

I didn’t have to wait long before the door at the back of the room opened and out stepped the ‘Best of Men’. I had known him as Grandpa when he had been alive and here he was standing as lifelike as any person that had ever stood before me, even though he had died twenty years ago.

“Grandpa” I yelled as I jumped up out of my seat and ran to him giving him a huge hug. After about ten seconds he gently pulled back and gave me a hand shake and rested his other hand on my shoulder. Typical Grandpa! He never was much of a hugger. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face and Grandpa was also smiling but not with his eyes. His eyes were sad – very sad. This pulled me up short and I asked if everything was okay? “Look Bill, there’s no denying that it’s great to see you but in reality this conversation should not be taking place.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Grandpa stares at me with those sad eyes and waits for it to tick over for me. “What? Because I am dead?”

Grandpa waits. He was always so good at this when he was alive. He liked to see if you could figure out complicated (or even simple) puzzles without him just giving you the answer. It clicked for me. “It’s not just that I am dead but that it was self-inflicted isn’t that right Grandpa” although I knew I had worked it out so it was essentially a rhetorical question.

“Well done Bill” he said. “But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. At least we have you on the right track though. Please take a seat” and Grandpa sat at the spare seat to the right of the table. “Before we get to the main reason for my sadness I need to explain a few things. No doubt you are keen to find out what this place is, why you are here, and even why I am here for that matter. This will all be discussed in due course. What I need from you first Bill is something everyone that travels through here needs to do. I need you to give me a rundown of your 45 years on Earth please. In so doing you can be reminded of your time on Earth and this often helps to clarify a few things for you; in particular why you’re here and why you did what you did to yourself.”

“I can do that Grandpa”. And so I did!

If you like it so far please let me know and i can send you more. My email address is dahartmann8@gmail.com

Love and light to you all

David Hartmann