Wujiagou “Serve the People!” Wooden Sign

The Wujiagou “Serve the People!” Wooden Sign begins as a battered board bearing a familiar political slogan, but in Wu Dawang’s hands it becomes the center of a private ritual. Carried from the pigpen to the fields and home, it accompanies his labor, shapes his troubled marriage, and finally breaks apart under the kick of a village production-team leader. Its journey makes an abstract political phrase materially present in daily life—and shows how its meaning can be claimed, distorted, and forcibly interrupted.

Appearance and Earlier Associations

The sign is wooden, battered, and marked with “Serve the People!” in black ink. Unlike more formally embellished political displays, it has no attribution to Mao Zedong and no stars, ears of wheat, or rifles. The narrative gives no account of who made it or how it first reached Wu Dawang’s yard; it enters the story when he discovers it while mucking out the pigpen.

The slogan also has a history in Wu Dawang’s military life. Before returning to Wujiagou, he had pursued advancement through a written premarital pledge to Zhao Ezi, promising commendations, Party membership, and eventual official status in exchange for moving her to a city home. After early efforts to earn recognition brought no success, he took a difficult post in the Catering Squad, where his prospects changed: he became a full Sergeant, joined the Party, and received commendations, though promotion to officialdom remained elusive. His military superiors also invoked service to the Division Commander’s household as service to the People. The board’s slogan therefore carries a political language that has already been tied, in his experience, to work, institutional advancement, and personal obligation.

Wu Dawang’s Repeated Use of the Sign

After his return to village life, Wu Dawang withdraws almost entirely from conversation with Zhao Ezi and their son, speaking to them only when his chores require it. The sign becomes a conspicuous presence within that silence. He props it against the pigpen wall and looks toward it as he shovels dung; when he carries manure to the fields, he hangs it from his shoulder-borne carrying pole. During ploughing and sowing, he leaves it at the field’s edge, and when he takes his son out to play, he rests it on a branch.

These repeated placements bring the slogan into the ordinary sequence of work and family life. The sign moves between sites of labor, rather than remaining a formal inscription on a wall. The narrative does not explain Wu Dawang’s full intention in displaying it, but the pattern makes the object more than a discarded board: it becomes a constant accompaniment to his activities and a visible focus for a man otherwise withdrawing from those around him.

Domestic Conflict and the Sign’s Destruction

The sign’s place in the household takes a disturbing turn when Wu Dawang’s son accidentally steps on it after it falls from a branch. Wu Dawang responds by striking the child, leaving red welts on his face. The incident sharpens the family’s concern and helps prompt Zhao Ezi to seek out the leader of the village production team. She describes both the change in their marriage and the sign’s role in it: during Wu Dawang’s first month back he had not touched her, but after finding the board he began placing it at the head of their bed each night, and their sexual relationship changed in a way she experienced as animal-like treatment. The sign has thus become entangled with conduct that alarms his wife and helps turn private distress into a matter brought before village authority.

The production-team leader visits Wu Dawang at the thatched house. When the visitor arrives, Wu Dawang is preparing to build an energy-saving stove to reduce the family’s fuel costs, using skills learned in the army. He has placed the sign on a pile of yellow earth because he needs silt from the courtyard. As the leader prepares to leave, he looks at the board and kicks it away. The rotten wood scatters across the courtyard, and the slogan breaks into fragments that can no longer be read. The destruction is not an abstract dispute about doctrine: it takes place amid an attempted household improvement, after a visit prompted by concern about Wu Dawang’s behavior toward his family.

Political Language, Private Life, and Institutional Change

The sign’s movement through the story links political language to several distinct pressures in Wu Dawang’s life. In the army, service and advancement are bound together: the promise to serve, the pursuit of rank, and the favors that officials can grant shape his expectations for himself and his family. In the village, the same slogan becomes a private object that Wu Dawang carries through work and brings into the bedroom. Its meaning is not settled by its wording alone; it changes through placement, repetition, and the reactions of those who live with him.

At the same time, the institutions that once structured his ambitions are themselves changing. The Division Commander volunteers the division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army, with disbandment to follow. Promotions are cancelled, while a special arrangement is made for Wu Dawang: he is to receive city work and housing, and Zhao Ezi is to be found work as well. The household orderly post he once held is also closed to him; amid personnel instability, he is told not to return to the Division Commander’s home unless pressing business requires it. Against this wider backdrop of reassignment and dissolution, the broken board offers a sharply local ending: a political emblem that had accompanied Wu Dawang’s daily actions is reduced to unreadable pieces in his own courtyard, just as the military order through which he had pursued a future is being dismantled.