A Chinese Affair

by Isabelle Li

I said he could not join us because of his accent—he might be Japanese. He said he came from Shandong.

  I decided we needed an audition. Tong told him to act like a dog. Chun did. He crawled on the ground on his hands and knees, wagged his bottom, then chased after Tong and barked. Tong raised his foot in front of Chun’s face to stop him. We all laughed.

  I told Chun to do cartwheels—as many as he could. He rotated sideways, hands to feet, over and over. The quadruplets were counting: ‘Seven, eight, nine …’

  He was nearing the kerb. I could have warned him, but before I did, he had fallen. His forehead knocked on a stone and bled profusely.

  ‘Sis, Sis, Chun is injured!’ one of the quadruplets yelled.

  Yin was walking with one of her cousins from the girls’ school. I had seen them once on a rainy day, in their glass carriage, clapping hands with each other, laughing.

  I felt sick, the same shame I’d felt when my brother saw me eating the cat’s food.

  Yin ran towards us, her green dress and white scarf floating in the air. She took out a white handkerchief and wrapped it around Chun’s head. ‘We’ll take him to our house.’ She took hold of Chun’s hand, which was smeared with blood and dust.

  The quadruplets and I followed behind them. I felt something hot accumulating in my stomach, slowly rising to my throat. The road towards the Grand House seemed longer than ever.

  Yin asked the housemaid to put a basin of clean water on the staircase and she fetched her suitcase with the red cross. She washed the dirt off Chun’s forehead. The wound did not look deep and the bleeding had stopped. She asked two of her brothers to hold Chun’s arms and warned Chun it was going to hurt. Then she wiped Chun’s wound with some alcohol-smelling cleanser.

  Chun’s face contorted. From his tightly closed eyelids, two large tears squirmed out and rolled down. I felt doomed.

  Yin applied a purple liquid to the wound, folded a cotton cloth into a small square to cover it and cut two strips of plaster to secure the cotton cloth.

  Aunty Chen took a wet towel and cleaned Chun’s face.

  Yin and Chun were sitting on top of the staircase, the quadruplets and I standing. Yin looked down at us and we all looked at our feet.

  ‘Chun, tell me, did they bully you?’ she asked.

  My throat was so tight that the top of my head could have burst.

  ‘Miss Eighth …’ Chun took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘They did not bully me. We were playing together.’ He burst out crying.

  ‘I’ll take him,’ I said. Chun gripped my hand and we walked home together.

  That evening, Chun and I found a quiet place near the canal. The sun was still burning and the colourful clouds were bright in the sky. We gathered some loose soil to hold up two incense sticks and lit them. Two thin columns of blue smoke rose in the air. The late summer insects were chirping. The grass was warm.

  We knelt down to face each other, held our hands together and swore to be brothers. Although we were not born on the same day, we would die on the same day. We would endure stabs on our ribs for each other.

  With the cotton dressing still on his forehead, Chun’s eyes were glinting with devotion.

  Morning Drill

  School started in September. The girls’ and boys’ schools were combined. Yin and I were in the same year but different classes.

  At the autumn campfire night, I directed a comic skit about a group of students throwing a Japanese soldier into a toilet pit. Yin led a Russian dance. The autumn sky had millions of stars and the campfire went as high as the tallest trees. The schoolmaster announced that in the spirit of democracy, we would hold an election for the next head of the Student Union.

  The next day, during the morning drill, the candidates went onto the platform to give their election speeches. The older candidates used big words that some of the younger students of my age did not understand. The atmosphere was stiff and formal. Many students were bored.

  It was my turn. I said that our generation was at a critical time in history. No longer the slaves of the emperors and the Japanese, we had become the masters of our own destiny. I gave the horrendous statistics of the sacrifice during the Japanese war and told the story of the atomic bombs. I held out my hand to gesture the eight years of hardship we had endured under the Japanese occupation. The students applauded. I saw tears in Chun’s eyes—his father had been killed by the Japanese. I saw Yin nodding, applauding. I felt a new strength in me. I finished my election speech with the three priorities for our generation: knowledge, freedom and unity.

  Before I knew it, I had become the head of the Elder Light School Student Union.

  I came home that day feeling hopeful, as if the world and I had expanded while everything around me seemed insignificant. I walked into the courtyard. The smell of herbs was thick in the air. Newly made coal blocks had been laid out to dry under the sun. The shovels, axes and the wheelbarrow, which were normally stored in the shed, were all leaning against the wall. The shed door was ajar.

  My mother emerged, hunching her back. ‘Don’t go in there. It’s malaria.’ The bowl in her hand contained brown liquid.

  I walked inside the house and sat on the bed. A pot of medicine was hissing on the stove. My father was lying in bed, smoking, and my sisters were sitting on the bed around the dining table, doing their homework.

  The sun was setting, and very little light sieved through the dusty window.

  I could not remember when I last spoke to my brother. He was grumpy about every trivial discomfort in life.

  My mother stirred the herbs on the stove, and asked one of my sisters to help with mixing the flour to make pancakes, another one to buy bean paste and the last one to pick the shallots.

  My father went out.

  When there were only the two of us, my mother sat down next to me. She said I would soon be the only son and I should work hard to bring her honour. She said my elder sister had died of smallpox when I was a baby. Then she took a gasoline light out to the shed.

  That night, my brother passed away. His body was wrapped in a straw sheet and buried before dawn at the graveyard. Only my parents went to the burial. When I got up, the tools had been packed away and the coal blocks stacked up in the shed.

  208 Letters

  The first day of the winter holiday was very cold. I wore a dog-skin hat, a cotton coat and a pair of mittens. The north-westerly wind was blowing with a whistling sound. It came through my loose collar, along my spine and down my chest. I ran with one hand holding my hat, the other holding my collar.

  At the centre of the courtyard inside the Grand House was a thick layer of ice, black and solid, slightly curved above the ground. Yin was in a fur coat, with a silver foxtail around her neck, holding hands with Cheng to practise ice-skating. Her nose and cheeks were red, and her spectacles had slipped along the narrow ridge of her nose.

  ‘I’m letting you go,’ Cheng said and released her hand.

  ‘No, I’ll fall right away!’ Yin splayed her arms in the air.

  He caught her waist from behind. ‘Bend your legs, shift your weight forward.’

  The quadruplets were standing next to a charcoal stove, all in black cotton coats, dog-skin hats and woollen scarves.

  ‘Children, put your skates on and practise,’ Yin said.

  ‘No, thank you. I’d rather save my bottom for sitting.’ Tong was fumbling with the potatoes on the stove, using a pair of iron chopsticks.

  ‘Hua, are you joining us?’ Yin asked.

  ‘I haven’t got skates.’

  ‘Wear Tong’s. Tong, once we go to Peking, you won’t have the opportunity to skate so easily. It’s not as cold and we don’t have the space.’

  ‘Are you travelling?’ I asked.

  ‘We are moving,’ Yin said, stopping in front of me, still holding on to Cheng.

  ‘Hua, you and I are being left behind,’ Cheng said. He seemed taller, more athletic, or maybe it was his skates.

  ‘But you are coming t
o Peking for uni next year,’ Yin said to him.

  ‘There are good universities elsewhere,’ Cheng said.

  ‘I’ll report you to Uncle Third; you plan to get into mischief and don’t want Dad to keep an eye on you.’ Yin skated away.

  ‘Look, you are skating now,’ Cheng said, clapping his hands in leather gloves.

  Yin skated around the ice rink. ‘I’ve warmed up,’ she said and skated into Cheng’s arms. He held on to her while she took off her fur coat.

  I put on Tong’s skates, which had ‘Made in America’ on the soles. I did it quickly so no-one would notice my toes sticking out of my socks. I walked slowly onto the ice rink.

  Yin skated over and held out one hand encased in a slim sheepskin glove. I reached out my hand in a cotton mitten.

  ‘Watch how I teach Hua to skate properly,’ Yin said to Cheng. ‘Follow me, Hua, left, right …’

  I followed her movements and we glided a few steps steadily. Then I took a bigger step forward and left my body behind. Yin pulled on my hand to keep me from falling, but the effort put her off balance and we fell together.

  The quadruplets laughed so much that one of them burned his finger and threw a sweet potato in the air.

  Cheng pulled both of us up.

  Yin was laughing too, her chest rising and falling under her red woollen sweater. ‘Hua, will you visit us?’

  ‘I will when I join the army,’ I said, ‘and before then, I’ll write.’

  I did not want to skate anymore. I stood together with the quadruplets and calculated. It would be four years before I could join the army, and if I wrote Yin one letter each week, it would be a total of 208 letters.

  I stood in the north-westerly wind with a sweet potato in my hand. I made a promise to myself: I would write 208 letters, one letter a week, and if I were sick, I would make it up the following week. If I wrote one letter short, I would not deserve any happiness in the world.

  Blue Lotus

  Crystal. Call me Crystal.

  Only when my friends insist do I tell them my Chinese name. I endure the distorted pronunciation and compliment their first attempt: ‘That’s good, Tim. You ought to learn Chinese.’

  ‘I started Japanese once but didn’t keep going.’

  ‘Find a Japanese girlfriend and you’ll feel compelled.’

  ‘They do say the best way to learn a foreign language is through pillow talk.’

  So the conversation flows, away from my name. I straighten my back, feeling confident and anonymous again.

  People give me good-hearted advice: ‘You’ve got to be yourself. Why don’t you use your Chinese name? It’s very special.’

  I do not want to be special. I am not an exotic bird and have no interest in showing off my plumage.

  I am Crystal, perfect in structure and form, hard and clear in every molecule.

  I pulled my luggage through the automatic door and stepped into the arrival hall.

  ‘Xueqing!’ My brother waved at me. With his athletic build, bald head and red singlet, he stood out in the crowd like a cactus on fire.

  All around us were men holding up passenger names and hotel names on cardboard; taxi drivers, hands in pockets, surreptitiously soliciting customers; and anxious families waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. People talked at the top of their voices, competing with the broadcast from overhead speakers.

  A handsome man in a crisp black shirt and silver tie took my suitcase. My brother introduced him as Biao. His gaunt face looked out from behind his hair, like that of a nocturnal animal, waiting for the right moment to strike. He gave me a powerful handshake and retreated into vigilance.

  We walked out to the car park. The familiar air replaced the stale cigarette smell. I half closed my eyes in the dusty sunlight.

  ‘Which part of China are you from?’

  ‘Northeast, further up from Beijing.’

  ‘Is it close to Szechuan?’

  ‘No, it’s near North Korea and Inner Mongolia.’

  ‘What is it like?’

  ‘My hometown is situated on the Great Northeast Plain, with fecund black soil. Our tomato and zucchini are twice as big as the ones here, and our shallots can grow as thick as a baby’s arm. Our rice is so flavoursome that you can eat it on its own.

  ‘In spring, the fruit trees blossom all at once, and you feel surrounded by clouds of pink and white. In summer, the willows burst against an azure sky like green fireworks. In autumn, the gold leaves of the poplars shimmer with metallic light. In winter, the temperature plummets to minus thirty degrees celsius. We have double-glazed windows and central heating, so it’s warm and comfortable inside the house. But if you were to wee outdoors, your urine would hit the ground in an arc of ice.’

  ‘Wow, when are you going again?’

  ‘I haven’t been home for a while.’

  I climbed into the back seat of my brother’s van and sank into the broken upholstery.

  The city had sprawled, new apartment blocks now sprouting like clumps of mushrooms after the rain. Some buildings had air-conditioning units hanging outside the windows and colourful laundry on the balcony. Some had no signs of occupancy. Others were skeletons, steel bones without the concrete flesh.

  I commented on the rate of new development.

  ‘If they had used our bricks, they could have saved a lot of money on electricity,’ my brother said from behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Are you still involved?’ I asked over his shoulder.

  ‘The bricks don’t sell, although they are lighter and provide better insulation. Everyone goes for low cost and no-one cares about quality. Now the poor village is left with an open quarry.’

  We drove by vacant blocks of land with signboards marking the future addresses of new housing estates: Europa—the Perfect European Lifestyle with Modern Interior; Les Champs Parisiens—the Masterpiece of High Grade Villas in a Romantic Garden Setting. Cranes with safety mottos on the side stood high like dentists’ pliers, determined to pluck something out of the pale blue sky.

  ‘What about the lightning arrestor business? All buildings must be lightning proof.’

  ‘It’s usually a subcontractor responsible for lightning arrestors, and if he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t pay us. This is called triangle debt. They owe you money, and you have to buy them cigarettes. So the best business is debt collection.’

  Along the highway were strips of young poplars in muted green, recoiling from the noise and the wind stirred up by passing vehicles. In the distance, factory chimneys belched burning ash and yellowish black smoke, while electric towers shouldered high-voltage powerlines into the grey smog on the horizon.

  Biao was sitting in the front and looked back at me curiously. After a prolonged silence, he asked, ‘Have you had an accident?’ His broad accent was as conspicuous as his question.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Nobody wears a seatbelt here.’

  I unbuckled the belt, which left a diagonal black stripe on my white top.

  Biao laughed.

  ‘You’ll get heat stroke if you don’t take that tie off,’ my brother said.

  ‘It’s a matter of international image—we have an Australian delegate here,’ Biao said, looking back at me again, exposing his sparkling white teeth.

  ‘In Australia, people wear T-shirts, shorts and thongs in summer,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ Biao opened his eyes wide.

  ‘He’s put on his best outfit for the occasion, modelled on the Hong Kong gangsters,’ my brother said.

  Biao undid his tie, folded it and packed it into a plastic bag. He then took off his shirt, straightened it and hung it over a coathanger on the side of the window. Before he put on a T-shirt, I saw a long wound, roughly stitched, on his tight abdomen, still red and raw.

  We turned off the highway into the industrial district of our city. ‘People call the Steel West District “Holiday Resort”, because many state-owned factories have closed down,’ my brother said.


  In the street market pedestrians ignored traffic lights, bicycles rode on any side of the road, and ten empty taxis hovered on a roundabout.

  My brother stopped in the middle of the road. Biao gathered his stuff and jumped out, flashed his teeth at me one last time, then disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I sat down next to my brother, taking Biao’s seat.

  ‘He received a life sentence for manslaughter when he was fifteen. Luckily, there was a fire at the prison’s chemical plant. He broke into a control room to turn off the switches, which prevented a major explosion. His sentence was reduced to seventeen years.’

  ‘How did he get the wound on his abdomen?’

  ‘We went chasing after a debt. Biao took out his knife. But the bastard was still playing hardball. So Biao unbuttoned his own shirt and sliced himself open. He then took out his medical box, applied some antiseptic, and started to sew himself up. He even whistled! The fucker agreed to pay after just a few stitches.’

  ‘He seems nice.’

  ‘He’s on cocaine and is courting a Russian prostitute. I got him to help with the soccer betting but there’s been a crackdown. He won’t last long.’

  My brother had aged. His face bore a new coarseness, a shadow of impatience, a mask of anger, obscuring his true expressions.

  In my memory, he had been fixed at the age of seventeen, extremely good looking, his body in perfect proportion, his eyes an unusual bright yellow, and his long hair rebellious and carefree. For a while he had pimples, and every night he washed his face with sulphur soap.

  When I was a child he used to hit me. It always started with his slapping the back of my head, twisting my arms, scratching the mosquito bites that had already healed, or grabbing my head to lift me off the ground, which he called ‘pulling the radish’. I fought back, kicking him wherever I could reach.

  My brother would hit me and forget about it. He spoke to me as if nothing had happened. But I would sulk for a long time, responding to his questions or jokes with silence. Would I have felt differently if I had known he was going to be put in prison for seven years?

  ‘Don’t tell Dad, but I won’t come to Australia. What am I going to do there?’ he said before we turned into the hospital. ‘I can’t go anywhere as long as they’re alive.’