Paper Titanic by Jeremy Tse
原文
(Ziu Bao Breaking News) “The Paper Titanic”, a mainstay in the City of—– for nearly half a century, has unexpectedly been incinerated.
According to reports, one of the maintenance employees for the Paper Titanic went to work as usual, only to see a pile of ashes and a smoking stretch of scorched earth in its place. He immediately reported the matter to the police.
The X-Zai Concessions Consortium, the managing firm of the Paper Titanic, has said that it is looking to understand the cause of the fire and will be cooperating with any police or arson investigation that takes place. They have assessed that the Paper Titanic’s flame resistant protective coat was probably damaged by years of exposure to the elements. This went, however, undetected during the recent routine maintenance. Thus, when the fire started early this morning, the entire boat went up in flames.
It is ironic that this is how the Paper Titanic met its demise. At that time, the foreign architecture firm which built it promised to build an “un-burnable ship”. The ship was completely constructed of paper. Except for the flame resistant protective coat, there was nothing but paper–not a single trace of metal, plastic, stone, or other materials. The ship was as good as a real ship, with nothing artificially propping it up. It was exquisitely built. The Paper Titanic was three stories tall, over eighty meters long, and could hold more than two thousand people. It was built in the seventies and when the X-Zai Concessions Consortium purchased it they had a kitchen and a restaurant area installed. They served a Chinese fusion menu and became a popular tourist destination. The Paper Titanic was hailed as the largest paper-constructed dining establishment in the world, attracting thousands of tourists every year. The Paper Titanic’s global status signaled that the economy of the City of—– was on the rise.
Unfortunately, even before the fire, the Paper Titanic was well past its glory days. It bordered the suburbs and was inaccessible via public transportation. Interested visitors would have to hail a taxi or the shuttle bus. There were no other tourist spots or facilities nearby, which meant that people were unlikely to visit more than once. What’s more is that the tourist industry in the City of—– has declined in the past few years. The Paper Titanic’s expenditures were outweighing its profits, and two years prior to the fire it was announced that the Paper Titanic would be closing to visitors. The X-Zai Concessions Consortium and the City of—– government started negotiations, due to the fact that the Paper Titanic was a cultural monument worth preserving. But ultimately, no deal materialized. The X-Zai Concessions Consortium announced that it would regularly dispatch cleaners and maintenance workers, with the hopes that when the tourism industry revived, the Paper Titanic could once again “set sail”.
“It’s a tragedy that this dream has been unable to…” the chairman of the X-Zai Concessions Consortium said in an interview with this paper, unable to finish as he burst into tears.
* * *
In reality, just yesterday the chairman worked with a trusted reporter at Ziu Bao News to draft this press release. He went to bed, with the intention of seeing the ruins for himself in the morning. The reporter would then publish the press release and, having completed his task, receive his payout.
However, sometime in the early morning, the chairman received a call from the manager who was in charge of carrying out this “accident”. He said that the Paper Titanic could not be completely burned. The chairman had no time to get dressed, and rushed to the site in his pajamas.
The sun drenched everything in light and a pleasant breeze gently blew against the chairman’s face, which carried an expression which was anything but. He jumped out of the car and rushed over to the ruins, smelling the odor of burnt paper mixed with melted plastic as he ran. Shreds of blackened paper fluttered around. One smacked him across the face. It felt like a crow’s wing swiping his cheek. Misfortune had arrived.
What stood in front of him was not what he had expected. Although the mast and the detailing of the ship were completely burned away, as well as severe smoke damage to the bottom and the keel, the structure was relatively intact. The outline of the ship was as clear as ever. There was no way to declare that it had been “completely incinerated”.
Faced with certain calamity, the chairman’s tuft of bedhead-tussled hair practically stood on edge. He called the manager over and upbraided him, “This is unacceptable! Didn’t you guys tell me that all you had to do was peel off that protective layer? Didn’t you tell me that this is made of ordinary flammable paper? You told me that the burning point for paper is 451 degrees. And that you would blast it with over 1,000 degrees and practically evaporate it. Why is it still here? I want it gone!”
“Blame those damned foreigners!” The manager tried to explain, “Not only did they put that outer layer of protection, but they snuck in eight level fire resistant paper. We put the temperature far over 1,000 degrees but we could only burn the two outer layers. It’s not our fault!”
“Bah! Who cares who put in the paper? Did you think to actually examine the ship? How were you maintaining the thing if you didn’t even know what it was made of?”
It was at this moment that the manager had to reveal his secret, “Wait, boss…did you really think we were doing any maintenance on this? We don’t understand anything about this ship’s construction. It’s not really in our wheelhouse. How were we supposed to do any repairs? We just made it look pretty on the outside.”
“So the only reason it has stayed up is because it was made well from the start? I just piddled money away for your salary, huh? Supporting you these last ten years.”
Despite the scolding, the manager did not forget his responsibility. He reminded the chairman, “Boss, now is not the time to toss blame at us. We should be coming up with solutions! If people see this half-burned ship, the public will become interested, the foreign media will report on it, even the government will launch an investigation. It will be a lot of trouble. The contract we signed when we took the ship by those uh means is very clear. We need to make sure it’s completely burned away, if not…”
“If not…you don’t understand anything!” the chairman interrupted, his anger not subsided in the least bit, “That contract is a thing of the past! It’s nothing more than gossip at this point!”
“But…uhm…so what should we do?”
“Just don’t do anything! We’ll wait for Big Brother’s call. I just hope he’ll go easy on us…”
In reality, the chairman also didn’t know what to do next. Big Brother hadn’t told him his true intention behind burning the boat: use the reputation of the destroyed Paper Titanic to generate some buzz, sell the land that it once stood on to developers, turn a quick profit, while (and this is perhaps the best part) bring disrepute to the foreign construction company that built it. The chairman just followed an order he didn’t fully understand, so it was reasonable he had no idea how to respond when it failed. He just stared straight ahead and began to feel that his destiny was quite uncertain…
There’s a Cantonese saying, “even the rotted out ship has three kilos of nails”. The meaning is pretty clear: even the sunken ship can be stripped for parts, still has some value. Even though the Paper Titanic had stood for years battling the elements and all the architects who originally built it quit their jobs earlier this year, the plan to burn it down, to leave the earth and disappear the ship, was impossible. In fact, it seems since it could not be done overnight, the blowback will be quite severe.