by Bi Feiyu
What is red? What is green? What is ‘the thoughts are red and the sorrows green’? Or, ‘Do you know? Do you know? Red should be plump and green be slim’.
Sha was born with an outstanding memory, which enabled him to recite a great number of poems and idioms even now. In elementary school, his incredible memory had won him the title ‘Little PhD’. But did he understand those poems and idiomatic expressions? No. He understood few of them, and simply parroted the words. That understanding came gradually as he grew older. Just what did it mean to understand? To him it meant he could use something. In the strictest terms, the blind don’t really understand the world, they use it.
The problem was that beauty cannot be used; it must be understood. Sha Fuming was getting agitated, deeply agitated, on top of the distress he already felt. But that was utterly unhelpful, and he needed to get a grip on himself. As he sat in the lounge he fidgeted with his fingers, like a meditating old monk fingering his prayer beads. But he was not meditating; his heart was quietly churning.
Were he and the world connected in any way? They must be. Yes, they were. He was clearly living in this world, and a girl called Du Hong was nearby. But the notion of beauty erected a solid barrier between them, which eliminated the connection. With this unforeseen thought, his heart skipped a beat. An almost audible thump. In regard to the world, Sha Fuming was only a supposition; if not, then the world itself was.
The problem was, beauty had power, with incomparable cohesive force. Conversely, it bestowed motivation, forcing you, coercing you to react. The significance of this was that, what attracted Sha was not Du Hong’s beauty per se, but the director’s exclamation over her beauty, which made Sha gasp in admiration. How could beauty make a man do that? What was the source of its magic?
After racking his brain for a week, Sha could stand it no longer. He found a free moment, and furtively called in Du Hong, pretending to check her skill. Once she was in the room, he shut the door, felt around for the light switch and flipped it on. The light snapped on. It was very dark, as dark as Sha Fuming’s eyes. So why had he turned it on? He thought about that but had no answer. His assessment completed, he said, ‘Very good.’ And immediately had a case of nerves. He laughed, a totally incongruous laugh, which provoked a light-hearted, even glib request. ‘Du Hong, everyone says you’re beautiful. Can you describe your beauty to me?’
‘You’re being funny, Boss,’ she said, as befitted her status. Modesty was the best sign of good upbringing under such circumstances. ‘They’re just joking.’
‘This is not a joke,’ Sha said, no longer laughing. He had turned quite serious.
Du Hong was taken aback. Sha’s earnest tone gave her a bit of a fright. ‘How could I do that?’ she asked. ‘Like you, I can’t see.’
It was not an unexpected reply, but it took Sha Fuming by surprise. More precisely, it caught him completely off guard; he staggered backwards as if stabbed or clubbed. The person in whom beauty was invested could not describe it either, not at all, and that plunged him into indescribable sadness. It was a quiet, fixed sadness, but capable of stirring up a hornet’s nest.
Exhausted, Sha decided to give up, abandoning this thing called beauty, which was like a heresy that could deceive people. Yet he underestimated its power, its temptation and its irresistible allure. It was a whirlpool, endlessly swirling, dangerous but beguiling, sucking him in and drawing him down to the very bottom.
Beauty was a calamity that befell him, gently and unhurriedly.
His stomach acted up again, but it shouldn’t hurt like that, not now, two hours before it normally did.
As he endured his aching stomach, he inexplicably began to loathe the director and that woman. If it had been run-of-the-mill clients who had said, ‘You’re really beautiful, young lady,’ would he have given it much thought? Of course not. But it had come from an artist, and had been invested with a rich literary flair. It was like a public broadcast. They should never have come to the Sha Zongqi tuina centre. Artists are always at fault. Plato was right to banish artists from his Republic. They know how to befog people’s minds. To be sure, he was just venting his confusion. In fact, he was grateful to the director and that woman, thankful for their discovery, for they had given him the gift of a dark, bewitching, but warm springtime.
If spring is here can summer be far behind? He detected the scent of winter jasmine in the person of Du Hong.
But it was still a cause for sadness, for he quickly sensed that the blind must rely upon others’ judgement, even when love is just around the corner. The blind are no different from anyone else; when people are in love, they care strongly about one thing – their beloved’s appearance. But here is where a difference arises: the blind must take to heart other people’s views – like in mathematics where one does the arithmetic step by step until arriving at a solution that seems to be theirs, but is in fact in the public domain. Throughout their lives, the blind are surrounded by comments from others; there is no self, only others, only the director, only directors. And it is through these comments that the blind achieve their love at first sight, that they have their fleeting glimpses of, or brief surprising encounters with, beauty.
Sha Fuming had had one of those surprising encounters, a real one, at the age of sixteen. Still a boarding school student, young Sha had not expected to encounter love on the street.
He could still recall that bright, sunny summer afternoon, the sun shining down on his forehead with such a pervasive intensity that its rays danced on his skin, which seemed to catch fire the moment he emerged from a supermarket; as he walked down the steps, a hand grabbed his when he reached the fifth step. Overcome by shyness, he puckered his lips. Being helped when walking down the street is a common occurrence for the blind, but this hand was different – it belonged to a girl. Feeling the sensation of her skin on his, he underwent a brief internal struggle before yielding to the owner of the hand, oblivious to what this action might lead to. When they reached the corner, he removed his hand and said with an uptight politeness, ‘Thank you.’
The girl took back his hand.
‘Let’s go get something to drink.’
Yes, it was a girl, probably sixteen or seventeen. He was sure of that. At that moment, he didn’t know whether he should be happy or upset. Some kind people tend to overdo their charity towards the blind; after helping them, they unwittingly treat them as beggars and try to overwhelm them with their benevolence. He abhorred people like that, and detested that kind of behaviour. So he declined politely.
‘Thank you, but I’ll be late for school.’
‘I’m from No. 14 High School,’ she said insistently. ‘I have classes too, but let’s go anyway.’
He was familiar with her school, which was across the way from his. In the previous semester, the two schools had put on a joint culture and art performance.
‘We can be friends, can’t we?’ the girl asked. She was swinging her arm, making his swing too. His face felt funny, probably what is known as ‘turning bright red, ears and all’. He turned his face away.
‘I have classes this afternoon, but thanks anyway.’
The girl brought her lips to his ear. ‘Let’s cut class together, what do you say?’
Over the next few days, he finally managed to find an idiom that described how he had felt at that moment; it was like a thunderclap on a clear day, one powerful enough to shake his core. He had always been a good student, had never been late for school, let alone cut class. But now things were different. A girl extended an invitation, a fetching one at that: . . . cut class, what do you say? . . . cut class together, what do you say? Let’s cut class together, what do you say?
He was sorely tempted, could not make up his mind. It was clear that something alluring lay hidden behind this thunderclap on a clear day, and that was mainstream society. No one knows how it began, but the blind stubbornly held on to a belief that mainstream society was wherever sight existed. But on this day, what lay behind the thund
erclap was not merely mainstream society, but an alternative corner of that society – mainstream but alternative. He was raring to go; from somewhere deep in his heart emerged a sense of curiosity for adventure and the courage to fight.
They went to a bar on Changle Road, where, clearly a regular, the girl ordered a cold soft drink like a professional. As a first-time bar customer, Sha was besieged by a myriad of sensations – he was excited, to be sure, but also somewhat uneasy, and troubled by a sheepish fear. But mostly he did not want to look stupid in front of a girl. Luckily his head was clear, which enabled him to keep assessing the situation and commit everything to memory. It took about ten minutes to loosen up, a change that was manifested in his speech; the more he talked, the more confident he became. Yet in the end, confidence eluded him, and unavoidably that too was manifested in his speech; he began to talk more and more, virtually non-stop. He began talking about the ambient music at the bar, a minor trick of his, for he knew he must direct their conversation to what he was good at. Gradually he was able to dominate the topics and therefore control their conversation. Like most youngsters their age, they relied upon memory, not understanding, so he peppered his speech with many idioms and, of course, axioms. Using idioms and axioms, he was expansive on the connection between music and the soul, and so on and so forth, until he suddenly realised that the girl had been quiet for some time. Maybe she’d lost interest in what he was saying, so he stopped, or, more precisely, came to a screeching halt.
As if sensing something, the girl said, ‘I’m listening.’
To show she really was listening, she grabbed his hand and placed both their hands on the table. ‘I’m listening,’ she repeated.
He had been holding his hands, palms in, between his knees, which were clamped tight. Now, she had pulled his left hand out and laid it on the table, along with hers, his palm down, hers palm up. Then her fingers found the spaces between his and interlocked them. This was a new situation for him, unseen and far beyond anything he’d ever imagined; the possibility that two unrelated hands could form such a simple yet complex relationship had never occurred to him, like an intricate design, with every finger and every space serving a function. Solid, stable. His hand, though, felt weak and began to tremble. Internally, there were choppy seas, as he experienced a strange clash between his low self-esteem and self-confidence, making his mood rise, then fall, up and down, well in place one moment, and off in the distance the next. Slowly he regained his equilibrium, as the talk turned to Tang poetry, his forte. His outstanding memory also came into play, as he could recite lines; he would talk, adding a few lines of poetry, and talk some more, with a few more lines included. They were simply chatting, but he talked with authority, for he could cite his sources; he was, in a word, well grounded. As they say, the display of learning is in one’s demeanour. Sha Fuming’s talent showed through, and he was affected by his own intellectual attributes. He talked on, with all his references and interpretations. But he was not confident enough to be sure she was listening. She was; she laid her other hand on top of his. Now his hand was sandwiched between her two tiny palms. He didn’t dare open his mouth, afraid that his heart might come leaping out.
‘What’s your name?’ the girl asked.
‘Sha Fuming.’ He stretched his neck and swallowed before telling her what each syllable meant. ‘Sha as in huangsha, yellow sand, fu as in guangfu, to recover, and ming as in mingliang, brightness. How about you?’
She decided to find a more creative way to reveal her name than just saying it. She took an ice cube out of the glass, pulled his arm over and wrote three characters.
Sha Fuming felt the ice on his arm. It formed characters, one stroke at a time. It was a singular feeling, utterly refreshing. The temperature of what the girl was using changed the act of writing into one of engraving, as in the idiom, engrave on the bones and inscribe in the heart. Sha Fuming’s back straightened almost imperceptibly. He felt like shutting his eyes, afraid that his eyes would reveal his confused mind. But he didn’t, he kept them open and fixed on the space ahead.
Feeling playful, the girl asked in a loud voice for him to say her name. ‘Tell me, who am I?’
Sha Fuming pulled back his arm and sat quietly for a long moment before saying, ‘I . . . can’t read.’
That was the truth. He spoke and understood Chinese, but his was a special language, more precisely, it was Braille. He had not studied written Chinese for even a day, though he could recite the entire Three Hundred Tang Poems from memory.
She laughed, thinking he was joking. ‘Yeah, sure. You can’t read, you’re illiterate.’
No one can afford to joke when he is trying to shore up his confidence. ‘I’m not illiterate,’ he said soberly, ‘but I really can’t read.’
His serious look introduced such gravity to their conversation that she scrutinised his face. ‘How can that be?’ she said, finally believing that he was serious.
‘I learned Chinese Braille.’ In order to make himself clear and move their conversation forward, he asked the girl her name. Then, picking up an ice cube, wrote her name on the table, using a pattern of dots to spell Xiang Tianzong.
Xiang Tianzong looked down at the seemingly random but somehow orderly dots on the table. That was her. It spelled out her name. She studied the dots from every angle. What a strange language. They had been conversing, but he had been using a foreign language. How intriguing, how interesting, how fun was that! This was a romantic scene she could not have asked for. Covering Sha’s face with her hands, Xiang exclaimed, ‘You are so cool!’
Sha Fuming understood the implications of tone as well as he understood the connotations of language; he recaptured his self-assurance from her tone, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have his face in her hands. He stiffened his neck and coughed. He felt like laughing, but didn’t want the girl to see, so he stopped. It was hard, requiring all the self-control he possessed. Laughter can be something good, but it can also be something bad, depending on the situation. There are times when laughter can lead to a loss of dignity. Under no circumstance would Sha Fuming allow himself to suffer a loss of dignity. Regaining his composure, he began to speak, but this would be no ordinary chat; rather, it took on the air of a formal lecture.
‘It’s a very young language, invented by someone called Huang Nai. You’re probably unfamiliar with his name, but not his father, a famous revolutionary in China’s recent history, one of the leaders of the 1911 Revolution, Huang Xing. Huang Nai was Huang Xing’s youngest son, born after the death of his father.
‘In his youth, Huang Nai loved football, a game that cost him the use of his right eye when struck by a kicked ball. Then in 1949, a detached retina in his left eye ended his sighted days altogether.
‘Our beloved Premier Zhou Enlai was particularly concerned over Huang Nai’s disability. In 1950, our beloved Premier Zhou sent Huang Nai to the Soviet Union, or more accurately, the former Soviet Union. But it was too late; there was nothing they could do for him.
‘Total darkness taught Huang Nai the true significance of the light, and the thought occurred to him that the nation’s tens of thousands of blind people were in need of an ideal form of writing so they could study culture and exchange ideas. But the two forms of writing for the blind in use in China then both had deep flaws, so Huang Nai vowed to create a completely new form.
‘In 1952, after countless trials and errors, and improvements, Huang Nai created a system of writing for the blind based on the Beijing dialect and pinyin spelling, which the Ministry of Education approved the following year and promoted its use throughout the country.
‘Now that they had a writing system, all blind people suddenly had eyes. Many became teachers, writers and musicians. After much hard work, a young blind woman in Zhengzhou was tapped as a TV show host.’
Sha Fuming wasn’t talking, he was parroting what he had heard countless times in class. With the exception of the former Soviet Union, something he added at the last moment,
every word was a product of memory. But how could he be content just reciting what he had learned?
He continued, ‘China’s writing for the blind is actually pinyin, or Latinised spelling. In the wake of the May Fourth period, many scholars called for the Latinisation of the Chinese language. Unfortunately, it never happened. If it had, the time we spent learning the language could have been cut in half. Only the blind have persevered in the use of Latinised Chinese, which is actually quite scientific.’
Having said what he truly wanted to say, Sha Fuming knew it was the right moment to stop. Time to let her say something.
‘How do you know so much?’ she asked emotionally.
Sensing the admiration in her voice, Sha felt himself expand like a balloon; it made him feel wonderful, like walking on air.
‘We just follow our own path and let people say what they want,’ sixteen-year-old Fuming said. Sensing he could have given a better answer, he added earnestly, ‘I study while other people drink coffee.’
The background music in the bar lingered and coiled like floating gossamer, imbuing a romantic sentiment that refused to disappear, and it was this romantic atmosphere that prompted Xiang to make an inappropriate move. Taking his hands in hers, she pressed them against her cheeks, so that they were cradling her face. He held his hands still, not daring to move, straining to remain still, so she swivelled her neck to allow him to complete the stirring and shocking act of stroking her face.