The Silence of the Toys in Rust Town

Our place here used to have a nickname, the "Unofficial Reserve Base for the World's Toy Factory." Later, officials thought it lacked elegance and changed it in documents to the "Red Star Industrial Demonstration Zone." But privately, especially when spitting foam at the dinner table while reminiscing about the glorious past, everyone still habitually called it "Rust Town." The name fits, carrying a sense of helplessness and滄桑 (vicissitudes/weathered look) like oxidized metal. Rust Town, well, as the name implies, now only rust remains. It wasn't always like this. Back then, the town was like a hyperactive spinning top, buzzing non-stop day and night, specializing in manufacturing happiness for those blond-haired, blue-eyed kids across the ocean – plastic ones, plush ones, battery-operated ones that could sing and dance, you name it.

I, Wang Er (of course, I gave myself this name, it's catchy; my original name was embarrassingly rustic, best not mentioned), am somewhat of a witness. Somewhat, because I never officially worked in the factory. I just ran a herbal tea stall near the factory gate for a while, and later helped transport goods a few times, basically just catching a whiff of the industrial age's exhaust fumes. Back then, the air was thick with the sickly sweet smell of heated plastic and the eternal, monotonous noise of machinery, like a never-ending song, both hypnotic and soul-crushing. The girls' hands flew on the assembly lines, quick as magicians, turning piles of parts into grinning dolls or imposing supermen. Their youth was thus stitched, screwed, and soldered, thread by thread, screw by screw, into that happiness destined for distant shores.

That happiness, they said, was for American kids. Where's America? Far away, farther than our provincial capital, requiring big ships or big planes. The kids there, with skin as white as freshly steamed buns, would clutch the toys we made and scamper around gleefully. Thinking about it, it felt quite surreal, like a strange conservation of energy: our sweat and youth here exchanged for their laughter and joy over there. As for the kids in our own town, they mostly played with mud, marbles, or, if lucky, could pick up factory rejects – the ones missing arms or legs.

Then, everything changed. Like the old locust tree at the east end of town that snapped in half during a windstorm one night, without any warning. The factory, that behemoth that once swallowed and spat out countless plastic pellets and young lives, stopped. First, the orders dwindled visibly, the machines ran for shorter and shorter periods, and the expressions on the workers' faces shifted from numb to worried. Then, a notice came down, talking about "industrial restructuring," "optimization and upgrading" – anyway, a bunch of terms hard to understand, but the core meaning was clear: those toys, once piled high, destined for America, were no longer being made.

Why not? Many theories circulated. Some said they didn't like our quality anymore, though I thought it was fine, better than mud at least. Some said they could make their own now, didn't need us. Others whispered mysteriously that the bigwigs upstairs were playing a grand game of chess, and we small pawns couldn't comprehend it. The town's old scholar shook his head, pontificating, "This is called 'decoupling,' understand? The times are changing." It gave me a headache. Hooking or unhooking, what did I know? I only knew the town fell utterly silent.

That silence wasn't the comfortable quiet of late night, but a dead silence, the huge tinnitus left after the abrupt halt of the machines. We used to complain about the noise; now, this quiet made one's heart pound with unease, feeling hollow, like a chunk had been gouged out of your chest. The factory buildings quickly became rust-streaked. Weeds burst through the cracks in the concrete, growing wildly, as if mocking the brevity of human industrial civilization. Through the broken windows of the workshops, once roaring day and night, now only the wind moaned, sounding like the weeping ghosts of those toys.

The townspeople suddenly found themselves idle. Men either gathered at street corners smoking, staring blankly at the sky, or rode battered motorcycles to farther places to try their luck. Women stayed home, staring blankly at the TV, or complained in small groups, their voices low but filled with resentment and helplessness. Their hands, once so nimble they could paint the most vivid eyebrows on plastic dolls, were now only used for playing mahjong or picking vegetables.

As for me, the herbal tea stall couldn't stay open either; nobody was buying. I started wandering around town like a lonely ghost. Sometimes I'd walk to the edge of the abandoned factory area and peek through the rusted wire mesh fence. Perhaps some toys that never shipped, or rejects, were still piled up in the warehouses. I imagined them stacked in the darkness, their plastic eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, covered in dust. They were once assigned the mission of "ambassadors of happiness," meant to warm childhoods across the ocean, but ended up as industrial waste, forgotten in the rust of their homeland. This situation was more absurd than a Kafka novel.

Once, I snuck into a half-collapsed warehouse. Sure enough, there was stuff inside. A pile of headless Superman bodies, a basket of eyeballs, some dolls with broken arms, smiling with stiff expressions, as if mocking the world. In a corner, I found a relatively intact teddy bear, brown fur, nose slightly askew. I picked it up, dusted it off. It was nothing special, just the most common type of mass-producible industrial product. But looking at it, my heart felt heavy.

It should have had a little owner, perhaps a boy named Tom or Jerry. It would have been hugged, listened to bedtime stories, maybe even dampened by tears on some nights. But now, it could only face me, an idle wanderer in Rust Town, in this abandoned warehouse. Its silence merged with the silence of the entire town.

This silence was more deafening than the roar of the machines before. What was it saying? The end of an era? The shattering of the globalization dream? Or the powerlessness and insignificance of ordinary people swept up in the tide? I couldn't say. If Mr. Lu Xun were alive today and saw this Rust Town, what kind of essay would he write? Perhaps he would see the numbness, the quiet before the outcry, some kind of 'man-eating,' invisible order. And Mr. Wang Xiaobo? He would probably find it all very interesting, full of black humor, worth poking fun at, using a light touch to write about the heavy weight behind the absurdity.

Today, Rust Town still exists. People still live here, just with less light in their eyes, more bewilderment. Children still play, but their toys are simpler, perhaps just stones or twigs picked up randomly. The factory that once produced happiness has completely become a rust mark of history. And those toys that never sailed, they remain silent, like giant question marks hanging over Rust Town, and over my heart. This silence, hard, cold, yet tinged with a unique, cheap sadness characteristic of plastic. It reminds us that some things, once gone, can never come back, no matter how noisy or colorful they once were.