You can always go down to Huating Road and buy some cheap counterfeit duds for it.
Very funny. You don’t know anything about love. Nothing ever seems to touch you, you’re so cold. You’ve never even given me an orgasm. It took someone else to do that.
Is that so?
I don’t like having to tell you this, but it’s true, I swear.
Who is “someone else”?
That’s not important. The point is that it definitely wasn’t you.
Why are you treating me this way?
Because you’re an idiot. You’ve got a beautiful cock, but you’re a piece of shit who doesn’t know the first thing about love. You’re still a sexy, crazy, poetic, selfish musician, but the girl who lost her head over that guy doesn’t exist anymore. My world and my body always belonged to Saining. I’m such a stupid girl! Out of all the years, and all the nights we spent together, why was it that we couldn’t manage to give me just one orgasm on just one of those nights? Why didn’t you care? You were so full of yourself that you didn’t even think of me as a human being. Had you talked yourself into believing that you could make me come if you’d wanted to? Or were you so stupid that you thought I always came? Or was it just that I played with myself too much when I was a kid and wrecked my body, and now God’s getting back at me? I still love you, but it’s only because the two of us are equally stupid. The problem is that even though we were together all those years, we never really dealt with this problem. Is that your fault? Or was it my own stupidity? Why am I so stupid? I wonder how many people are as dumb as I am. I’m ashamed of it, and sometimes it just makes me want to die.
How was I supposed to know that you didn’t know what an orgasm was? I thought everybody knew.
When I was with you, I definitely didn’t know, and nobody told me either, not even my male friends. Frankly I really don’t care whether or not I come. If I have an orgasm, fine; if I don’t, fine. Fuck me from the front, fuck me from behind—it’s all the same to me. Only the useless are tough, only the feeble can have sexual climaxes, and only a dumb fuck would watch a big-screen television. I figured it all out a long time ago. The problem is that whenever I think of the past, I feel sad. You make me feel so pathetic. You don’t understand love, and you don’t understand my body. Neither of us does.
I think I understand love. When I’ve loved, I’ve never asked for anything in return. I think my love is pure, and it’s simple. I think that means my love is real love. But you’re not like that. You use love to explain everything, and you have many kinds of love. Your love is complicated, and you’re much too physical, so I don’t understand your love. You say you want to die. You’ll never die. Paranoid people like you never die. Apple died, but you, who have tried to kill yourself more times than I can count, you won’t die. I bet you could drink rubbing alcohol and you still wouldn’t die. I bet if you bought a shotgun and tried to do yourself in, the bullets would get jammed. No matter what you tried, you wouldn’t die. You’ll never be satisfied. You use everyone, you’re cruel, and you want everything. You’re a broken-down slut; you’ve slept with enough men to fill an orchestra. You’ve searched for my face at countless concerts. You even took a brainless heavy-metal rocker home with you just because he looked like me. Ten years! And you tell me you’ve never had an orgasm with me. You’re a phony. That’s why you can’t die.
Do you want me to die?
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve wished for your death and imagined how you would look in death. I loved fantasizing about that.
But if I died, where would that leave you? Aside from me, everybody else thinks you’re a piece of shit, a fool who goes through life with his eyes shut tight. Someday you’re going to have spent all the money your mother left you. Someday you’re going to die of cold and hunger. I’m your only friend. Doesn’t it strike you as just a little bit odd? That after all these years you still have only one friend—me? You don’t think of Sanmao as a friend anymore; you say he’s gotten fat and ugly. You have no feelings. You don’t like anyone; you don’t love people.
If you die, I’ll love you forever.
What are you crying about? Our Romeo cried. If you die I’ll always love you, so you’d better hurry up and die, and soon! But we’re alive. And the only reason we’re alive is that we still want to live.
That night, Saining never seemed to stop crying.
He said, I love you, but I’m telling you I can’t love you anymore. You’re a phony. I can’t love you anymore. You’re a con artist.
He said, You’re a first-rate actress. You like anything that’s fake.
He said, I’ll never be able to love you again. You’re pathetic. You’ve always been so enigmatic and such an expert at deception.
He also said, I’m sorry.
I felt remorseful and afraid. Perhaps all we have is our innocence and confusion, and to lose these would be to lose everything. What the hell had we been up to all those years? That night, I obliterated all of the good that we had shared in the past. I destroyed it all.
Stars were twinkling brightly overhead, and maybe the clouds were white. We were losing ourselves because the moon had been extinguished. And another substance was bringing light to humanity, red clouds in the east.
I was crying too.
Saining said, I’m so sad. And I said, I feel sad too.
Saining went out.
I watched the early-morning light as it filtered through the curtains and scattered. In the past this was the hour when we made love, and at this moment it was as if I could see his face, like that of an angel, flashing in and out of view among the ordinary people down in the street. This was the loneliest time of day for him, and the most anxious. It was the time I felt the most moved by him. At night, when we got totally fucked up, our greatest fear was of being jostled around among those calm and virtuous morning faces. Honestly, he just liked to have a good time. He was completely clueless about everything, but at the same time, he understood everything. He was a child, but a child with a world of his own. Saining said that idiots were actually his favorite kind of people. He didn’t find them pathetic at all. On the contrary, he thought that they were free, because they would take anything of value and smash it to bits. And they didn’t care.
One morning several days later, Saining went out into the courtyard to play violin. As I listened to him playing the violin and watched him from behind, it suddenly struck me that this man had truly loved me and that he truly didn’t love me now. I thought about the first time we’d met. Outside, it was pouring rain, and I’ve long since forgotten what music was playing. Nor do I remember what made me look at the overgrown boy who was swaying there, swaying from side to side, and smiling at nothing in particular. An oversize white short-sleeved T-shirt and multicolored pants made of corduroy. The pants were really baggy, like a skirt, but they were obviously pants. He was by himself at the bar, rocking from side to side, a glass of whiskey in his left hand, while his right hand swung back and forth. And as I watched his legs, his footsteps moved him toward where I was sitting. He was wearing a pair of light blue sneakers. The soles were very thin, and these shoes made him seem to stumble as he walked. His hair was long and glossy and perfectly straight—the tips brushed his shoulder blades. His face was very pale, and although I couldn’t see his features clearly, I was certain that he was smiling. Still, I didn’t know whether or not he was looking at me. I kept eating my ice cream. A little while later, I noticed a man’s hand, with a whiskey glass in it, just to my right. It was a large hand with sturdy fingertips, and I knew at a glance that he bit his nails. I bit my nails too. His hair tumbled down right in front of me. I smelled its fragrance, and I looked up and saw him. I swore it was the face of an angel! He had on a strange smile, and the naked innocence in his eyes threw me off balance. And ever since that night, I’ve never been able to take my gaze away from the face I saw in that moment. Perhaps that’s why I’m still alive today, because I believe in that face. I trust it.
Out of the blue, Saining announced that he was going back south to get our dog.
I said, It’s only a dog. It’s a child that will never grow up. It’s like an idiot—do you understand the meaning of the word
idiot?
Saining was drinking cough syrup as I spoke. He said, The way this medicine feels as it rolls down my throat is just like saying good-bye.
You’re gonna say that love is Romeo and Juliet
But you’re talking about a book
You’re gonna say that love is the angels in the Sistine Chapel
But you’re talking about a painting
You’re gonna say that love is what your neighbor feels for Maria
But you’re talking about a story
’Cause I want to know
If you ever felt it
The tornado inside
The earthquake inside
But you can’t tie down all the dishes in your cupboards
There’s a seaquake inside
But you can’t find a thousand life vests to save you from drowning
’Cause I know
Love is drowning
It’s pain and light, thunder and magic, it’s a joke!
Has it ever happened to you?
’Cause you’re gonna write a story where you’ll be Juliet
’Cause you’re gonna paint a thousand blue angels playing harp
’Cause you’re gonna jump into that river of yours
And get soaked to the skin
Get to drown together
Get to cry together
Get to hold hands together
Get to get lost in her arms
And I’ll be there
In the audience
Learning an Eastern patience, and the patience of the fisherman
Until my turn comes
I am a ditch where water has collected after the rain, my name is Mian Mian, and this story is not the story of my life. My life story will have to wait until I can write nakedly. That’s my dream.
Right now my writing just falls apart.
Right now the real story has everything to do with my writing, and nothing to do with my readers.
My CD player is always spinning around, like inexhaustible hope. My ears bring me this perfect world. Perfection has always been in the present. This remembered world is mine, I possess it, and it is everything to me.
Right now it’s early in the morning, on April
21
,
1999
, and the only thing that’s clear in this shattered piece of candy is the poem I received last night, in a note left for me. It has a sweet name, “I’ll Talk to You Tomorrow.”
This time, he didn’t go away. It’s as if he really likes Shanghai. Maybe our eyes will witness the last dawn of this century together.
But we don’t know for certain where we are. He’s a person, and I’m a person. That proves that we aren’t really so far apart.
Altered, my life plays at several speeds. The mortal guitar goes on weakly, trying to express everything with some sort of tonality, trying to use one thing to stand for all things.
No matter how hard I try, there’s no way I can become that plaintive guitar. No matter how hard I try to make up for my mistakes, the sky will not give me back the voice that I once offered it. I’ve been defeated, so writing is all I have.
Sometimes we have to believe in miracles. The voice in my writing is like the reverberations of a bottle breaking at midnight. Listening over and over to the Radiohead CD I stole from a friend, on this uniquely pure and stainless morning, at the age of twenty-nine, here at S. I come to the end of this piece of candy.
SHANGHAI,
1995-99
Mian Mian lives in Shanghai and works as a writer and nightlife promoter. She is the author of two books, the story collection
La La La
and the novel
Candy.
She has become a cultural icon to a generation of Chinese youth who value her authenticity and honesty in portraying the new face of contemporary China.
Andrea Lingenfelter has translated such novels as
Farewell My Concubine
and
The Last Princess of Manchuria
as well as film subtitles and poetry. She lives in Seattle.
CANDY
A NOVEL
MIAN MIAN
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR OF
Candy
Mian Mian talks with Jonathan Napack of the
International Herald Tribune
“So many young people are getting lost,” Mian Mian says. “I want to show them how freedom is exciting but also dangerous.”
Mian Mian, thirty, is perhaps China’s most promising young writer. Her stories deal with issues—sexuality, drug abuse, China opening to the world—that touch the core of her generation’s experience. Too young to remember Mao’s collectivist dystopia, they know only today’s disillusioned consumerism and see self-definition, rather than nation building, as the focus of their lives.
Last year the Chinese government gave her its ultimate award: It banned her books, along with those of her nemesis, fellow Shanghai chronicler Wei Hui. Willy Wo-lap Lam, a former columnist for the
South China Morning Post
who is called China’s Walter Winchell, says an enraged President Jiang Zemin personally recited to the Politburo one passage, a description of casual sex with a young Westerner.
But with “banned in Beijing,” an irresistible sales pitch, for all the wrong reasons, translations are finally hitting the bookshelves:
Tang
(or
Candy
) appears next month in France, from Les Bonbons Chinois, Editions de l’Olivier, and in
2003
in the United States, from Little, Brown.
Mian Mian’s stories tend to circle around the years she spent in Shenzhen in the early to mid-
1990
s, the most lawless and chaotic time in that notorious border town’s short history. Running away from her native Shanghai at age seventeen, she drifted into the city’s nightlife scene, falling in love with a series of feckless musicians and acquiring a serious heroin habit along the way. With the help of her parents, she returned to Shanghai in
1995
, went into rehab, and started to write. “There are no old people in that city,” Mian Mian says of Shenzhen. “Everyone was so young.”