Wang Fei and Cao Ming were always arguing about something. Wang Fei’s current girlfriend was a zoology student. She’d met him while carrying out a survey. She asked a hundred students how many times a week they masturbated, and fell for Wang Fei after he revealed that his average was three times a day.
‘We only smoke to mask the stench of your armpits, Wang Fei!’ Ke Xi said. ‘You smell like a fucking gorilla!’ None of us could stand Wang Fei’s body odour.
‘No, you only smoke to hide your bad breath,’ Wang Fei retorted, pointing to Ke Xi’s tobacco-stained teeth.
‘Hey, who’s got the foot odour?’ Mao Da said, walking through the door. ‘Smells like someone’s growing fungus in their socks! Mou Sen, I hope you’ve got a fat wallet. We’re about to start a game of Mahjong. We’re betting with food tokens tonight.’ Mao Da was another guy from my dorm. He always liked to place small wagers on each round of Mahjong.
The dorm was packed now. Shu Tong had to shout to get himself heard. ‘We’ve got many able activists in the Pantheon Society. We should split up into groups tomorrow and try to persuade students from every department to go to the Square. We can prepare banners with slogans calling for freedom of the press, but we’d better not start talking about an end to dictatorship.’
Mou Sen slapped his thigh and said, ‘Great! I’ll go back to Beijing Normal and rouse the workers there! I’ll be like Chairman Mao whipping up that miners’ strike in Anyuan.’
‘Everyone who thinks we should go to the Square, raise your hand,’ Liu Gang said.
Apart from the two Chans and Cao Ming, everyone put their hands in the air.
‘Fine, that’s decided then,’ Shu Tong said, standing up. ‘Liu Gang, I’ll leave you to get in touch with the Qinghua University students . . .’
In the silence, you search for a noise, a tiny hum that might help connect you with the outside world.
Someone is unlocking a bicycle in the yard outside. The noise isn’t coming from the footpath, but from beneath the tree to the right of our building’s entrance. I hear the key turn, but not the prop stand being kicked up.
The bike I bought myself during my first term at Beijing University was stolen after just a month. It happened the day after the Qinghua students’ demonstration. Students had covered the Triangle’s bulletin boards with handwritten posters calling for more democracy. A large crowd had gathered to read them. I squeezed my way to the front, and while I was busy copying the text of a poster into my notebook, somebody nicked my bike. It was careless of me not to have locked it. After that, I had to travel by bus whenever I went home on a Sunday, changing three or four times. And I had a long walk at the end, because the bus stop nearest our compound had been removed to make way for a new building. The old blacksmith’s shop behind the bus stop was torn down too, and replaced by a dumpling restaurant. Two large light bulbs above its doorway illuminated the trampled snow on the pavement and the metal washing-line suspended between two locust trees.
The blacksmith’s doorway used to be crammed with battered sheets of metal, funnels and empty petrol cans. The cans were dark green, and had white foreign lettering on the front and a picture of a human skull on the side. In the summer, the old blacksmith and his apprentice would take their anvil and charcoal furnace onto the pavement, and right before our eyes transform a petrol can into a metal chimney. The blacksmith would cut through the metal of the can with his large scissors as easily as if it were a sheet of newspaper. At the end of each day, the apprentice would take all the tools and scrap inside the shop, leaving an empty patch of swept pavement behind. I’d search that patch for hours, but all I ever found were a few bits of melted lead and some rusty bolt heads. My friend Duoduo cut his foot on a scrap of metal there. It served him right for walking out onto the street in his slippers.
The new dumpling restaurant made the road look brighter and warmer. The old plastic goods factory across the road was still there, but was now also illuminated. During Spring Festival, red light bulbs were hung above its doorway to form the Chinese characters for Happy New Year, and a pink glow would fall on the snow-covered cabbages on the roof of the small shack next door.
When I moved back to Beijing, we replaced our charcoal stove with a hob that runs on gas canisters. We also bought an electric water heater which I fixed to the wall of the toilet. So whenever I came home and wanted a shower, all I had to do was slip a plank of wood over the hole of the squat toilet and attach a hose to the heater. After living in the south for four years, I’d got used to having a shower every day.
Our flat has two bedrooms: one a little larger than the other. When you walk through the front door there’s a narrow passageway that serves as our sitting room. It’s just large enough to hold a small sofa and a tiny fold-up table. The iron bed I’m lying on is too big to fit in the smaller bedroom, and takes up most of the space in this room. If my mother wasn’t so sentimental about it, I would have taken it to the auction room years ago. My brother and I hated the bed because, as soon as you lie down on it, the metal springs start squeaking.
After we bought the gas hob, my mother dumped the old charcoal stove and smoke funnel on the landing outside the front door, next to an old aluminium pan, a stool with a broken leg and a pile of leftover charcoal briquettes.
When I came home, I usually chose to sleep in my brother’s single bed. We’d made a room for him by covering over the balcony outside my bedroom. There was an electric socket near the headrest, so I could plug in my radio and listen to it while lying in bed. I preferred that to watching television.
In 1986, my brother went to study computing at the Sichuan University of Science and Technology. When he lived at home, I used to hate the way he hung around me all the time, but after he left, I felt something was missing. He was almost as tall as me by then, but a little thinner. He had my mother’s wide nose, while I had a narrow, high-bridged one like my father’s.
After Dai Ru left for Sichuan, I became the only person my mother could talk to. Every time I came home, we’d end up arguing. She was approaching her fifties, and probably going through the menopause. In the past, when she gave me a haircut, she used to keep quiet and let me read the newspaper, but now she’d use the opportunity to criticise and nag me.
I remember the row we had on New Year’s Eve 1986. It was the night before our planned demonstration. In the kitchen, I muttered casually that Deng Xiaoping was trying to turn himself into a second Mao Zedong. My mother threw down the bean sprouts she was washing under the tap and said, ‘Deng Xiaoping liberated the Chinese people from the tyranny of the Gang of Four, and has put the nation back on its feet. You should be grateful to him!’
I finished washing the hairtail fish, sat down on the sofa, dried my hands, and said, ‘What do you mean, “liberated”? Who did he liberate? Did he liberate you or Dad? Tomorrow morning we’re going to Tiananmen Square to demand some democracy for the Chinese people.’
I heard a metal spoon drop and my mother shout, ‘Don’t you dare take part in any demonstration! I’ll send the police to arrest you! Have you forgotten that your father spent twenty years in reform-through-labour camps?’
This was exactly the reaction I’d expected. She still smelt of the tomatoes she’d cooked the day before. Every winter she’d buy a crate of cheap tomatoes and simmer them for hours to make a thick sauce. There was usually enough to fill five large jars.
‘The government pays me a salary and has given us this flat. What more could I want? Do you know how many counter-revolutionaries they’ve had to execute in order to achieve the stable society we enjoy today? Do you really imagine that you and your little band of classmates are going to be able to turn this country upside down?’
‘I don’t understand. The Party drove your father to suicide and locked up your husband. Why do you feel you have to defend it? If the Communists hadn’t taken over in 1949, you’d be a rich woman now, living in a big house.’
‘Without the Communist Party there would be no New China. Without the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, our family wouldn’t be having the life we enjoy today.’ She stepped back into the kitchen, wiping her wet hands on her trousers.
‘My father was a professional violinist, but he was made to starve in labour camps for twenty years. You read his journal, didn’t you? You remember that Director Liu, and his daughter Liu Ping, he used to talk about so much? When I was in Guangxi Province I found out they were both condemned as class enemies during the Cultural Revolution, and their bodies were eaten.’
‘If anyone heard you speaking like that, they’d drag you to the execution ground,’ my mother said in a hushed voice. ‘Why can’t you learn from your father’s mistakes? The Party is encouraging people to get rich now. If you’re clever, you can go down to Shenzhen and make your fortune. Lulu’s bought herself a flat down there.’
‘Shenzhen is a capitalist haven, but a cultural desert. The only thing people think about there is money.’ I realised that my mother hadn’t taken in what I’d told her about Director Liu and his daughter. The story was probably too horrible for her to contemplate. I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else, apart from Mou Sen and Wang Fei.
‘You should start reading the
People’s Daily
editorials every day. If you don’t keep up with the latest developments, you’ll get into trouble.’ My mother raised her eyebrows and returned to the kitchen again. The vegetables in the wok were burning.
After supper, my mother let out a loud belch and said, ‘Your great-uncle in America has sent another letter asking whether you still want to go there to study. His son, Kenneth, has agreed to be your sponsor. I think it would be best if you left the country as soon as possible.’
‘My English still isn’t good enough. I’ll wait until I’ve finished my PhD.’ I didn’t check the expression on her face. I knew that it was she who really wanted to go to America. When my father was cremated, she placed her favourite foreign-landscape wall calendar inside his coffin. Since then she has built up a large collection of calendars featuring foreign landscapes or monuments. She buys four or five a year. In the living room, there are calendars of the Paris Opera House and Louvre Museum, and in the toilet there’s a three-year-old one with scenes of the English countryside. She once told me that the reason she married my father was that he’d promised they would travel the world together and lay flowers on Marx’s tomb. I know she still longs to go abroad and fulfil his wish to have his ashes buried in America.
Although my mother always gave me a good meal when I went home, I only went back about twice a month. As soon as I arrived, I wanted to leave. I much preferred the communal life on campus.
When my father didn’t have much longer to live, he began reminiscing about his student days in America. I always took a few magazines to read when it was my turn to sit at his bedside. He liked talking about his white-haired violin teacher who owned three dogs. The teacher and his wife would often invite him over for lunch at the weekends. The first time my father went, he didn’t realise that Western meals have several courses. When the soup was served, he assumed that this was the entire meal, so he filled himself up with five slices of bread from the breadbasket. Then, to his dismay, the main course arrived, and he had to eat his way through a huge plate of steak, potatoes and fried onions. Just when he thought the meal was over, a large slice of cake was placed before him, covered in a chocolate butter cream. On his way back to his lodgings, he had to stop and lie down on a bench. For the next three days, he couldn’t eat a thing.
‘They were so good to me,’ he said. ‘If you ever make it to America, you must promise to visit them. But perhaps they’ll have passed away by then. Who knows? Anyway, this is the address. I know it off by heart.’ Taking short gasps of breath, my father wrote the address down in my notebook. He hadn’t lied to me. He really could write in English.
He told me about the time he gave his final graduation concert. It was freezing outside, and his fingers were so numb, he couldn’t pick up his bow. But American universities have central heating, even in the toilets, so he was able to go to the men’s lavatory and warm his hands on a radiator before his performance. He played the Brahms Violin Concerto that day, and was awarded the highest grade.
He told me he’d returned to China shortly after he graduated and was immediately accepted into the orchestra of the National Opera Company. Their playing style seemed stiff and spiritless, and after five years as their principal violinist, he felt that his musicianship had deteriorated. ‘I played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with them countless times,’ he said, gazing sadly at the window. ‘Then one day, I heard on the radio an American recording of the concerto, and realised that for the past five years, I’d been playing it like an automaton. The day I returned to China, my spirit died.’
I leafed through the magazines while he talked, only looking up at him when he asked for a drink of water or told me he needed to go for a piss.
At the time, I still hated him, and longed to free myself from the stigma of being the son of a rightist. I’d spent my childhood like a bird without feathers, unable to flap its wings and left to scuttle about on the ground.
On that last day of 1986, I waited until my mother fell asleep before pulling out of my bag a piece of red cloth I’d bought, and the characters
BEIJING UNIVERSITY SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
that I’d cut out of paper. I was going to sew the characters onto the cloth to make a banner, but I was afraid that the noise might wake my mother, so I decided to take a needle and thread from her sewing box and make up the banner the next day.
I went to bed, but was too excited to sleep. So to pass the time, I thought about A-Mei. I remembered lifting her long skirt and seeing her soft toes, each capped with a smooth nail, clench for a moment, and then relax.