The Drink and Dream Teahouse

by Justin Hill

  Da Shan lay in bed for a long while, trying to decide how much his head hurt. He winced when he remembered some of the things he’d said the night before, and laughed when he remembered telling the story about Fat Pan. It took a long time before he dared to open his eyes, even longer before he tried to stand up. When he did his heart fluttered, his head was disorientated, and he could feel gravity pull on his queasy stomach.

  His mother and father were both out. On the stove there was a pot of lukewarm rice and peanut congee. He started heating it up, and got the shakes as he stood there watching it. His brain moved slower than the rest of his head, when he turned or looked up he could feel it pressing against the inside of his skull. Never again, he swore. Never ever again.

  Da Shan sat at the table and slurped his congee down. He couldn’t taste a thing, his skin started to sweat as he ate. He rested his head on the table surface until his green tea had cooled, then he slurped it down and refilled the cup. When Da Shan had drunk three more cups of tea he brushed his teeth and felt a little bit better. He needed ginseng, he decided, and checked to see if his mother had any. He picked through a bundle of unmarked brown paper bags in the cupboard and found some neatly sliced root with the familiar smell and glossy brown surface. He shook out a couple of pieces and began to chew them back to life.

  It was time for a walk. He would rest his eyes in the green countryside, find a quiet spot and sleep. Maybe even dream.

  Old Zhu’s wife had gone to visit Autumn Cloud and Da Shan was out so Old Zhu locked the front door and set off down the lane towards his allotment. It was reassuring to plant seeds, watch them grow. It was something the young could never understand, all they did was knock buildings down to build hotels and swimming pools.

  He squashed a few green flies, picked dead leaves off his tomatoes. He told himself his plants had done well this year as he pulled a weed out by the roots, then he stood up and stretched his back. It was time to go and see what was left of the New Block. See what was happening in the world.

  They’d built the New Block in 1978, celebrating the end of the Cultural Revolution and the end of the Gang of Four and their extremist policies. It was their fault that he and Party Secretary Li had been kept in a broom shed for a year. The Red Guards called their home ‘the cow shed’. They slept on straw and shat in a bucket. He’d got to know everything there was to know about Party Secretary Li in that year: and much of it he admired. Party Secretary Li had been a real comrade: stern and devout to the cause. When they’d been let out for meetings or struggle sessions they’d been led on leashes, like dogs.

  Leniency for those who confess,

  Severity for those who resist! they’d shouted.

  Mrs Cao was one of the worst. Her gang loved to beat up any others. ‘Plead guilty!’ she’d ordered and Old Zhu had pleaded. After his spirit had been broken he’d said anything they’d wanted him to. The first time he’d felt such shame he’d refused to eat their meal of rice gruel. Party Secretary Li had eaten his half and left the other half by Old Zhu. Party Secretary Li had had such integrity.

  After the first time accusing others became much easier. Old Zhu would sign anything they gave him; he even made up stuff. He made up crimes to make up for all the ones he hadn’t realised he’d done. How can we know all the effects of things we do in our lives? If they said he’d done it, he’d done it.

  Old Zhu bit his lip. The first time was always the worst, that was what the whores had said. He’d done it just to stay alive. A voice told him that Party Secretary Li hadn’t been broken: but Old Zhu refused to listen: Party Secretary Li was dead.

  But the People remember Party Secretary Li didn’t break, the voice continued, and he protested about the factory.

  So what? Old Zhu retorted, and the voice had an answer ready: he’ll be remembered, that’s what! He’ll be praised long after they’ve forgotten about you!

  All praise after death is hollow, Old Zhu declared in his head. History is never written by the dead man.

  No, the voice replied, but it’s written about him.

  Old Zhu’s eyes started watering. He used the corner of his shirt to wipe the water away. Virtue’s a luxury for the dead, Old Zhu told himself, being human was the lot of the living.

  When Old Zhu turned the corner at the bottom of the road he let out a sad sigh: where the New Block had been there was black earth striped with track marks; heaps of smashed concrete flooring had been cleared to both sides; towers of stacked bricks stood guard over the workers who dug trenches between the string markers that had been stretched across the ground.

  ‘Whoa!’ Old Zhu called out, but none of them looked up. ‘Whoa there!’ he called again, but they just kept on digging. Old Zhu was about to shout again when the man next to him told him not to bother.

  ‘They’re from Sichuan,’ he grunted. ‘Can’t understand a word you say.’

  ‘I spoke to a boy here after Spring Festival,’ Old Zhu said, ‘he was from Shanxi, I think.’

  ‘They’ve gone.’

  Old Zhu looked at the men working: copper-brown skin, short cropped hair, eyes thin slits high in their faces. Their quiet conversation strange and alien.

  ‘So what are they doing?’

  ‘Digging,’ the man said.

  Old Zhu squatted down next to him. He offered the other man a cigarette. They sat together and smoked. Watched the workers dig trenches just as they had years before. When the future seemed to be so good.

  Old Zhu sat and thought: he still had his health and his wife, his son was at home, the Shaoyang streets were full of cars and motorbikes‌–‌the future has been good. The only problem, he thought, is that it hasn’t been as good as they’d all expected it to be.

  Late in the afternoon Da Shan also went down to the New Block and joined the crowd watching the workers. The sun cooled to red as it slipped down to the horizon, it cast the world in a strange half light that made the people around Da Shan seem unreal. The trenches were about a foot deep now, when one team of workers stopped another began. Picks and shovels and baskets of earth. And strong Sichuan accents.

  ‘Why don’t they hire Shaoyang builders?’ someone next to him muttered. ‘It’s not as if there’s no one here who can dig holes.’

  Da Shan kept watching the workers. ‘Sichuan holes are much cheaper,’ he said.

  It didn’t look like it was going to be a swimming pool. Da Shan wondered what they were going to build, then he decided it didn’t really matter. As long as they were building something. As he stood he felt someone stand next to him, and turned to look who it was. It was Party Secretary Li’s widow. She was trying to peer over heads to see what was going on. Da Shan moved to let her in front of him.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

  ‘They’ve dug up the New Building and now they’re digging foundation trenches.’

  Autumn Cloud nodded. The sunlight broke into yellow spokes as it slipped behind a cloud. It was good they had pulled the New Building down. If there had never been a Space Rocket Factory then her children wouldn’t have left home, and her husband wouldn’t have killed himself. But such was fate. It was all decided by Heaven.

  ‘Did my mother come and see you this afternoon?’ Da Shan asked.

  ‘No,’ Autumn Cloud said, looking worried. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, she just said she was going to visit you. That’s all.’

  ‘Did she have something to talk about?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I was out,’ Autumn Cloud said with a worried face.

  ‘Oh,’ Da Shan said.

  The crowd stood in silence, watching as if their futures depended on it. There wasn’t much to see; it was essentially the same as any other building site. Whatever they were building would appear overnight.

  ‘Are you heading back?’ Da Shan asked Autumn Cloud. She nodded and he tried to take her bags.

  ‘No!’ Autumn Cloud insisted, but after three attempts she promptly gave up and Da Shan wa
lked with her back to her flat. ‘You’re a good son,’ she told him. ‘To come back and look after your parents in their old age.’

  Da Shan half laughed. He wasn’t sure he’d be in Shaoyang permanently. Staying in Shaoyang was like falling asleep; you grew old quickly and quietly in places like this.

  ‘You’re divorced aren’t you?’ Autumn Cloud broke his line of thought.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You should get married again,’ Autumn Cloud tutted. ‘Have a child.’

  ‘I have one.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘She. She’s with her mother.’

  Autumn Cloud shook her head. ‘No wonder your parents are looking so old. They need to have children round them. It keeps them young.’

  Da Shan looked at the old woman and laughed.

  ‘It’s true,’ she insisted.

  Madam Fan had been to Old Zhu’s house but there had been no one at home. She sat on her doorstep all afternoon, waiting. When she saw Da Shan she jumped up and called his name, waved her hands to make sure he stopped.

  ‘Da Shan, Da Shan,’ she panted in her excitement, ‘I’m so glad to see you!’

  She didn’t look glad at all. Da Shan could feel his hangover return a little as she flapped like a bat. She led him by the elbow off the path, still flustering as she began to talk to him in a confidential tone. ‘My daughter says that you walked her home last night,’ Madam Fan began.

  ‘Yes,’ Da Shan said cautiously.

  ‘How was she‌–‌I mean‌–‌did she seem strange to you at all?’

  Da Shan stood still and thought. It was hard to say. Above his head the leaves vibrated on the cicada’s single note. A mosquito buzzed in his ear and made him feel nervous. ‘I think she fell over,’ Da Shan nodded at last. ‘I remember that. She was crying.’

  ‘Oh.’ Madam Fan patted Da Shan’s arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said and then hurried home, her heart bubbling with excitement. Da Shan had seemed very reticent. Maybe something had happened, she thought. Something to make Peach so emotional. What a clever daughter!

  What a very clever daughter indeed!

  The foundation trenches got deeper and deeper as the summer heat continued. At night the men used spotlights and continued working in the dark; as the pale yellow dawn spread the men changed shifts and slept. Day and night pickaxes swung, baskets of dirt were carried up and tipped out at the side of the site. The men worked so hard that even the rats felt weary as they chewed through the piles of rubbish behind the kitchens.

  One day one of the workers got hit on the head with a pickaxe and he made a strange gurgling sound as the other workers pressed in close to have a look. There was blood on the floor and a strange white goo that made some people feel sick. A crowd of workers and onlookers carried him to the meal tent while a boy ran off to get a taxi.

  The taxi pulled up five minutes later, screeched to a halt and was instantly caught up by the cloud of dust that had chased it up the road. The driver jumped out, coughed out the dirt and asked what had happened. When he saw the man’s head he refused point blank to have a bleeding man in his car. The other workers started shouting in their harsh Sichuan accents, they gesticulated wildly and became so threatening that in the end the driver gave up arguing.

  ‘It’s all right for you to make noises,’ he shouted at them all as he pulled off, ‘but it’s my car that gets covered in blood!’

  A crowd watched the taxi screech down the road, its horn blaring as people jumped out of its way. The red brake lights came on as the car hit the market, and the horn sounded again, for a long time, then it disappeared out of sight. The trauma of the event kept the crowd chained to the spot, as if something else had to happen; but the workers went back to their holes and one by one the other people dispersed.

  The next day the workers were wearing blue plastic hard-hats. They didn’t stop to answer any questions, just dug and shovelled and carried baskets of earth and tipped them over the side. One rumour said the man had died; another said he’d lived but he had lost the power of speech; someone who had a relative who worked at the hospital claimed he wasn’t dead yet, but that he soon would be.

  ‘We’re all guests on earth,’ one of the old women’s gossip-club declared that afternoon as they all sat under their tree, ‘whether we outstay our welcome or not.’

  The others nodded and grunted in agreement, but weren’t sure exactly what she was implying.

  Or who she was implying it to.

  The next day Da Shan decided to visit the temple again. He pushed through the crowded pavements into the centre of town and out the other side. At the gateway of Central Park he stopped, there was a woman with a Guess Your Weight Machine that flashed red lights and said in a computerised voice, ‘Welcome‌–‌Melcome.’ Da Shan paused to have a go but the lady was talking to a man who repaired watches and cigarette lighters and she didn’t look up or notice him.

  He kept going up to the park gate, bought a ticket and walked up the steps that led to the East Pagoda. There were tombs along the way in the shape of mini-pagodas, for virtuous nuns who had lived here. There used to be a nunnery at the top of the hill. The nuns had all been beaten up and married off when he was a boy. He remembered laughing at them as their faces were painted and they were dressed like brides and made to marry the monks. Everyone laughed then, whether they found it funny or not.

  The nunnery had been reopened in 1985: an official government licence was framed on the wall next to the entrance. Official Site of Buddhist Worship, it said, by Authority of the Government of Shaoyang Prefecture. And a red official stamp.

  Da Shan read the notice then stepped inside. A grizzled old man with a silver cataract in one eye sat by the door. He stuck out his hand and demanded money for a ticket.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ Da Shan said.

  ‘You have to get another one,’ the man declared. His cheeks were hollow, his left ear had a tear in it and his surplus-issue army coat was patched and ragged. He reminded Da Shan of a shaggy old dog as he gave him a one-yuan note. The man smoothed the note out with a callused thumb, put it in his drawer. He carefully tore off a ticket, handed it over to Da Shan who handed it back.

  ‘You haven’t torn off the stub.’

  The dog-man took the ticket back and folded along the perforations, broke into a fit of coughing that ended with a gobbet being spat out of the door. The green lump rolled itself in the dirt, lay inside its jacket of fine dust. Da Shan waited as the man tore along away the stub, then held out his hand.

  ‘Thanks.’

  The temple had been smashed up in 1966. They’d piled the statues on a bonfire and burnt everything they could find: clothes, books, religious hangings. The new statues were made of papier-maˆche´, their arms were too long, their elbows bent in the wrong direction. Guanyin had a severe look, her clothes were painted with red gloss paint that had dripped onto her knees. She had three double chins and if you stood looking straight at her left eye it had a definite squint.

  ‘For another yuan you can have your fortune read,’ the man offered, his blind eye disconcerting.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Da Shan stared at the offerings in front of the statue for a while then sat in the shadows. He had a jam jar full of tea in his bag, and a cold steamed bread bun. He chewed slowly, took a mouthful of tea, then chewed again. The first time he’d come here was with Liu Bei a few years after the temple had been reopened. The quiet hillside was a place where lovers would meet. They’d held hands and talked here. He half expected to see himself and Liu Bei sitting in a corner, laughing; but all there was was a half-blind old man, three burning incense sticks and a ludicrous statue.

  Da Shan took a book of local history and flicked through the pages. It had been written in the Ming Dynasty and listed twelve natural scenic spots in Shaoyang. There was a poem for each.

  One summer he and Liu Bei had tried to find them all, but of the twelve now only five remained. The last one they’d been to was White Cloud
Temple. It’d been early on a Sunday morning and they’d arrived so early that the blind beggars were still asleep along the path. They turned round a bend to a cleft in the mountain where there was a forested hillside, a stream, and a Buddhist nunnery with a grey tiled roof furred with moss and lichen.

  All the others were just names without places, existing only in memory. There was Shehu Mountain, that was more lovely in snow as the sun congealed from the mist; Celestial’s Cave; and the Mysterious Sands Ferry, that he and Liu Bei had guessed must be down by the Black Dragon Bridge. The poets said the sight of red pavilions reflected in green water was the most lovely of all Shaoyang’s scenic spots.

  Twilight colours fade in the mist, the poem went,

  The oar’s splash shattered the water.

  Da Shan remembered something Liu Bei had told him over a meal of mutton dumplings, that China wasn’t mapped by lines on maps but by lines of verse. Dig under the concrete, the factories and endless high-rise and you didn’t find pottery, but poetry.

  He shut the book and looked around the temple. It was here that he and Liu Bei had come for their last night together; before they gave themselves up to the police. It was a day after the tanks had driven into Tiananmen Square. The demonstrations Da Shan and Liu Bei had organised had dissolved when the news from the capital spread. They’d gone into hiding, waited to see what would happen. The news was bad. Counter-revolutionaries were being rounded up and arrested. The same would happen to them.

  They hadn’t made love, they’d been too tired and frightened to kiss. Liu Bei had cried because of what she’d seen on the television and Da Shan had held her through the night. He hadn’t cried. He thought he was being strong. ‘Whatever happens,’ he’d told her, ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’ And he’d squeezed her tight. She believed him; and he meant it. He meant it even after he’d got out of prison and left. Even after he’d married he’d still meant it.

  Da Shan shut his book. He stood up and walked out into the light. The old man was sitting on the steps, sunning himself and spitting more gobbets of phlegm into the dust. He grunted something as he left, but Da Shan kept on walking.