by Xiaolu Guo
So you, a Westerner, ask me again: “What do you think Heaven is like? Assuming you think there is one…”
I recall what my mother thought of Heaven and what my father thought of spring sprouts. I am confused: “Which Heaven? Chinese Heaven or Western Heaven?”
“Is there a difference?” you laugh.
“There must be different.”
“If there are different Heavens, I guess then the different Heavens might fight each other.”
“Fighting is good. Makes Heaven more liveable,” I say.
You look at me surprisely. You know I like to fight. I am woman warrior. I like to do everything through fighting. I fight for everything. Struggle for everything. We Chinese are used to struggle get everything: food, education, house, freedom, visa, and human rights. If no need struggle then we don’t know how to live anymore.
romance n. 1. a fantasy, fiction, legend, novel, story, tale; 2. an exaggeration, falsehood, lie; 3. a ballad, idyll, song.
romance
Friendship endures longer than romance. I often think this sentence in your diary, but when I look in Thesaurus I see so many possible words for romance. Is romance love?
“What is exactly Romance?” I ask you.
“Romance?”
You are thinking hard. Maybe is first time people ask this question to you.
“Well, it’s a complicated word…Maybe romance is like a rose…”
“Rose? What kind of rose?”
We are in garden so you go back in house fetch book.
“A rose like in this poem,” you say, and read me:
All night by the rose, the rose,
All night by the rose I lay.
Dared I not the rose steal,
And yet I bore the flower away.
Poem very beautiful, I want know who wrote it. On book says Anon.
“This Anon very good writer,” I say. “I think I prefer to Shakespeare, much easier.”
You laugh. “Yes, and perhaps even more prolific.”
“?”
“Anon isn’t a person. It’s just what we say when we don’t know who wrote something.”
Annoyed about this Anon, I look round in your garden. There is no any rose, let alone Chinese rose.
“How can you never plant any rose in the garden?” I say. “Every green finger growing rose in this country, as far as I can see. You should have one.”
You agree with me, this time, no any doubts.
So we now have a climbing rose in our garden, against the wall. Is a skinny plant with five green leafs and some annoying thorn. We had argument in flower market because I want buy rose with blossoms, but you rather buy little sprout and wait for its growing.
You use your favourite tool—spade—to dig the hole. “The hole must be twice as wide as the root spread, and two-feet deep…” You measure the hole with the fingers: “The rose has mainstructural canes and flowering shoots, so the canes must be tied or woven into a support to keep the rose off the ground.” You are so scientific. I look at you. Are you romantic farmer?
Then, here, in new world far away from my home, here, under your fruit tree without flowers, you start sing a song, a famous song which I heard somewhere maybe in China before. You voice gentle and almost trembled.
Some say love it is a river
that drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need
I say love it is a flower
and you its only seed
It’s the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live
When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
Then you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed that with the sun’s
love in the spring becomes the rose
If people hears this song, and she doesn’t feel moved—then I think that people must not human.
I love you. And you know I love you. And you love me as well.
You tell me song is from Bette Midler—your favorite. You say you like the strong, rude women. You say all homosexual like Bette Midler, Mae West and Billie Holiday. But Billie Holiday not strong—she commit a suicide.
Two days after, you take me watch documentary films double bill. Two crazy women in one night.
Small cinema on Rupert Street. First one about Mae West, an extremely successful Hollywood star, always make audiences happy and laughing. She is a “No. 1” woman without any “competition” in the world, as she said to media. Sexy, always wearing shining jewellery, flirty, confidently. Even in her eighty-seven years old, she dressed a sexy white dazzling fur coat, and all around by young black bodyguards and cameras. And her face still very beautiful and young even in that age. She the tropical sun, nobody can be more brighter than her.
Second film is Billie on Billie, right after Mae West documentary. First scene in the film is Billie Holiday standing on the stage sadly singing, “Don’t talk about me…”—last appearance on TV before she died. She is a extremely sad face, hopeless expression. From the film I learned her struggled by her childhood, her prostitution mother, her sex abuse when she twelve years old, her drug and alcohol, her poor dignity being a black. Billie Holiday, she is not melancholy, she is hopeless.
“I always fear…” she says in the film. A strange fruit. I want leave the cinema to cry. I feel her pain in my heart. And later on when I think of Mae West again I find her story is so surreal, like fairy story comes from the moon…
I want become Mae West, be her courage, her bravery, her humour, her creativity, her challenging to the world. She live with admiration, rich, and confidence. Men all her slaves; men used by her. I want play that role. But is the reality I am nobody, not even painful Billie, I am just obscure nobody with name starts from Z. Maybe this romance with you put some weight into my life.
physical adj. 1. of the body, as contrasted with the mind or spirit; 2. of material things or nature; 3. of physics.
physical work
For six days now London really hot. Suddenly people almost nudes in street and sit about on grasses chatting. Mrs. Margaret changed to beige suede sandals. I can’t concentrate her lessons in the heat.
Hotness make you unhappy because you must drive van like oven.
I see you always disappear with that white van. A very old van with a side door sunken and another side door cannot close properly, unless you kick it violently. The front and the back windows always covered by thick dust. It is a peasant van, or a working-class van.
The van is your business method to earn money via delivering goods. You say you can get this job only because you have got a big van.
You drive whole day in that van for delivering. The goods are for somebody’s birthday, party, ceremony, wedding, or any day someone has excuse to consume the money.
You drive from 7 o’clock early morning, till late night. You drive seven days a week. Every day on the road, on those roads towards middle-class big family houses.
You come back home in the dark, without any energy left. Life suddenly becomes bit boring. I find you are a physical man, a labourer, using your hands to survive. While lots people in this world just need use fingers to earn living by clicking computer keyboard.
I never see you sell the sculptures. Nobody want buy a suffered and twisted statue, I guess. If they do, they maybe buy a female nude statue. Once I saw you were making a wooden swimming pool model, as the advertisement for Red Bull company. Another time I saw you were m
aking a huge telephone model for Vodaphone. I heard you saying “it looks ridiculous,” “it is so tacky” while you were making these things. But you got paid. Then one day you stop getting these kinds job. I don’t know why.
“You always say physical work makes people happier, but you are not happy now.” I make some tea and salad for you. It is so late.
“I am too tired. That’s why…” You sit on the chair, by the kitchen table. You hair is messy, covered by the dust.
“Physical work doesn’t do any good,” I say.
“But at least you don’t worry about living.” You sip the tea, the tea is sucking your energy.
“For me mental work better than physical work,” I say. “Nobody wants physical work. Only you, and my parents.” I put the salad bowl in front of you.
You start to eat salad, and the room goes quiet. The white cabbage is very crunchy, and the red carrots are hard too. Your teeth are trying to grind them into pieces. Your face looks uneasy.
In my hometown, we don’t use these two words:
Physical work / mental work
All the work is called “”—scavenge the living. Making shoes, making tofus, making plastic bags, making switches…All these works rely on our bodies. And bodies earn our living back. Now I come to abroad studying English. And I do that with my brain. And I know in the future I earn living from my brain.
You insist physical worker better than intellectual.
“An intellectual can have a big brain, but a very small heart.”
I never heard before that. Why you think of that?
“I want a simple life,” you say. “I want to go back to the life of a farmer.”
Intellectual: “”(zhi shi fen zi)
“” mean knowledge, “” mean molecule. Numerous molecule of knowledge will make up man knowledgeable.
In China, intellectual is everything noble. It mean honour, dignity, responsibility, respect, understanding. To be intellectual in China is splendid dream to youth who from peasant background. Nobody blame him, even in Culture Revolution time and seemed these people suffered, but really was time for them having privileged to being re-educated, get to know another different life.
So if you don’t want to be intellectual, then you a Red Guard too, like Red Guards who beat up intellectuals during Culture Revolution. A Red Guard who living in the West.
I never thought I would like a Red Guard, but I like you. I am in love with you, even if you say you not intellectual.
I not intellectual either. In the West, in this country, I am barbarian, illiterate peasant girl, a face of third world, and irresponsible foreigner. An alien from another planet.
isolate v. to place apart or alone; chem. obtain (a substance) in uncombined form.
isolate
You are not at home again. You have so many social contacts, so many old friends need to see and chat, so many ex-lovers live in the same city as well, and I don’t know anybody in this country. I am alone at home. Dictionary checking, checking dictionary…I am tired of learning words, more new words, everyday. More exercise on tense, make a sentence on the past participial tense, and make a sentence on past conditional tense…So many different tenses, but only one life. Why waste time to study?
The garden outside is quiet. The leafs are breathing and figs are growing. Bees are beeing around the jasmine tree. But I feel lonely. I look that male nude statue under the fig tree. He is still facing down, like always. An enigma. Totally an enigma. Whenever I go to the modern museum, like Tate Modern, I never understand those modern sculptures. I hate them. They seem don’t want to communicate with me, but their huge presence disturb me.
The house is empty. Is the loneliness an emptiness?
I remember my grandmother always recite two sentences from the Buddhist sutras:
She explains it means the emptiness is without form, but the form is also the emptiness. The emptiness is not empty, actually it is full. It is the beginning of everything.
So far, I don’t see the emptiness is the beginning of everything. It only means loneliness to me. I don’t have a family here, and I don’t have a house or a job here, and I don’t have anything familiar here, and I only can speak low English here. Empty.
I think the loneliness in this country is something very solid, very heavy. It is touchable and reachable, easily.
The loneliness comes to me in certain hours everyday, like a visitor. Like a friend you never expected, a friend you never really want be with, but he always visit you and love you somehow. When the sun leaves the sky, when the enormous darkness swallow the last red strip in the horizon, from that moment, I can see the shape of the loneliness in front of me, then surround my body, my night, my dream.
Something missing, something lost in my life, something which used to fulfill in my China life.
We don’t have much the individuality concept in China. We are collective, and we believe in collectivism. Collective Farm, Collective Leadership. Now we have Group Life Insurance () from the governments as well. When I was in middle school, we studied Group Dancing. We danced with 200 students as part of the school lesson. We have to dance exactly the same pace and the same movement in the music. Maybe that’s why I never feel lonely in China.
But here, in this place in the West, I lost my reference. And I have to rely on my own sensibility. But my sensibility toward the world is so unclear.
I take out one a book from your shelf, Frida Kahlo. That Mexican woman artist. It is a picture album of her painting, her life, and her terrible illness, being disabled after the bus accidents. So many self-portraits. I thought one painter only does one of these in his life, like one person only have one gravestone. But Frida Kahlo has so many self-portraits, as if she died many many times in her life. There is one called Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns. She has the sharp and heavy eyebrow like two short knives; her eyes like black shining glass. She has the thick dark hair like a dark forest; the necklace of thorns climbing on her neck. There is a black monkey and black cat sitting on her shoulder.
The impression on her face is so strong. I learn that she had to plant metal in her body so that to support her survive from disable. I feel my heart is being penetrated by the thorns she painted. I feel painful.
When I put down Frida Kahlo, I think of you. You love the heaviness of life. You like to feel the difficulty and the roughness. I think you like to feel the weight of the life. You said you hated IKEA, because furnitures from IKEA are light and smooth.
I walk to the garden, staring at your sculptures again, one by one, carefully, attentively, thinking of you with my new eyes. That naked man, without head, stubbornly faces down towards the ground with twisted huge legs. What makes him so suffering?
humour n. 1. an ability to say or perceive things that are amusing; 2. an amusing quality in a situation, film, etc.; 3. a state of mind, mood; 4. old-fashioned fluid in the body–v. to be kind and indulgent.
humour
Yesterday at home we celebrate my birthday. I turn to 24. OK I don’t know when is my real birthday, but passport birthday can be great excuse to have a big Chinese meal.
It is the year of goat. My animal sign is goat too. It is my second twelth year after the year of my birth, which means I am having my most important year in my life, because it is a year I meet my destiny. My mother will say that.
We are having a hotpot birthday party. You say you never eat hotpot meal before. You say it is interesting to see people sitting around a big table and cook food from a steaming pot in the middle.
So there is about six or seven people all together. Some are your friends. Two of them from my English language school. One is from Japan called Yoko. Yoko has very slim cat eyes, and neat cut fringe covered her forehead like a hat. Her hairs has lots different colours like red and green and blue. She looks like punk, or maybe she is real punk. Another one is from Korea called Kim Yan Zhen. Kim has very pale face, and she looks whiter than any white people. These two are famous in our language
school because their English is impossible. Mrs. Margaret say my English even is better than them. I think maybe because when Japanese girl speaks English, people would think she is speaking Japanese. And when Korea girl speaks English, she keeps nod her head and bow her back to show the modest, but without giving anything verbal. But anyhow, they are kind of my comrades, although Korea hates Japanese, and Japanese were not friendly with Chinese. Most important thing, they use very simple words. Yoko sits down and say, “Are we eat?” Kim Yan Zhen looks at the hotpot and asks, “Cook, you?” I like that. I like people speak that way. So we understand each other easily.
It is a meal between East and West, though three Orientals only can speak foreign language to communicate.
It is worship of eating, is the exactly word to describe this.
I make spicy red chilli soup for the hotpot, by putting in gingers, garlic, spring onions, leeks, dried mushroom and chillis to stew the soup. After the soup becomes boiling I put in tofu and lamb. With hotpot, lamb is essential for the soup. It gives the form content. Otherwise hotpot is the interesting form of meaningless. Is a pity that you are vegetarian, and all of your friends are also vegetarians in this room.
While I am cooking the lamb in the pot, you and your friend just look at it, and put the uncooked carrots straight into the mouth. In Chinese, we say the way you cut the meat reflects the way you live. They must be timid people.
Here is the birthday gift from you. Two book. The first is The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde. You say is good book for me to start with, to understand English writing easily. The second one is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You say it can be read later on, when my English becomes very good.
Then Japanese girl Yoko gives me small little box. It is delicate, like perfume box. On the cover it says: