by Xiaolu Guo
“Well…You see things from a white English’s point of view. Shame that your English failed to colonise Tibet and China,” I throw back.
“But now Tibet is colonised by the Chinese!” You raise your volume.
“If Tibetan is not with Chinese, then it ruled by British Empire, or American anyway. Because Tibet never really been economically independent! They always need rely on others, rely on powerful government. Since China and Tibet are in the same piece of land, why we two can’t be together?”
“It depends what you mean by ‘together’! It can’t be at the cost of Tibetan culture. And look how many Tibetans you’ve killed…”
“I didn’t kill any Tibetans! No any other Chinese I know in my life killed any Tibetans! In fact, nobody in China wants go to that desert!”
“But the Chinese government killed Tibetans.”
“Yes, of course BBC news only report bad side of China.”
Typical argument 2: (On food)
“It is boring eat with you everyday. You only eat vegetable, no wheat, no pasta, no white rice, no bread, only goat cheese, let alone any fish. Hardly any restaurant suits you. And not very much fun for my cooking either. My parents will say you lose the most joyful thing in your life.”
“Well, you are the enemy of animals. How many animals do you think you have killed in your life?” You fight poison with poison.
“Eating animals is the human nature. In the forest, tiger eats rabbit. Lion eats deer. That’s how the nature works.” That’s how my teacher said in my middle school.
“But you Chinese eat anything, even endangered species. I bet if dinosaurs roamed the forests of China, someone would want to see what dinosaur meat tasted like. How come you people have no sense of protecting nature?”
“But what so different of eating plants? Everything has its life. If you are so pure, why not just stop eating? So you can have no shit?”
“You are impossible to talk to!” You stand up, leaving the dinner table.
Typical argument 3: (On career)
I say I want to be a great English speaker among other Chinese. And I want to do something big in my life and get fame.
“You’re so bloody ambitious. What’s the point of fame? Why not just try to be yourself.”
“Why ambitious is not a good thing?” I ask.
“Well, for a start, it makes you pretty difficult to live with,” you say.
These words hurt me.
“OK, so I have big ambitious, and it ugly. But why you want to show your sculptures to others? You should just make your own thing and never show it to people!”
“I want to show the sculptures to others because I am curious about what they might think. I’m curious about their reactions. I don’t care about being someone big. I don’t care about fame or money.”
“That because you are a white English living in England and you own the property and you have social security. You are boss of yourself, so you have dignity. But I don’t have anything here in your country! I have to struggle to get these things!”
I am almost shouting, but I should not shout in your private property. People call policeman to come anytime in this country.
identity n. 1. the state of being a specified person or thing; 2. individuality or personality; 3. the state of being the same.
identity
I try to be quiet with you in the house. I have been reading books you gave to me. I quickly finished Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales. I loved the nightingale story. It was so sad. Nightingale’s love not being valued by the prince at all. Why beautiful story always is sad? And I loved the selfish giant who has a huge garden too, but the last sentence made me cry. It goes like this: “And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.” I start reading To The Lighthouse. You are right, it is quite difficult for me. On the back it says it is about a middle-aged woman with her eight children in a summer house. Eight children without any husband? It must be a hard book. I holding breath while read the first page. I can’t breathe freely because there are hardly full stops. Virginia Woolf must be a very wordy person. The writing is so forceful, is nearly painful for me to read. I suddenly understand that you must be suffered a lot from me, because I am so forceful and demanding on words too. And even worse, you are forced to listen my messy English every single moment. You are unlucky to be my lover.
I put down the book and leave it for my future reading.
I am being caught by the word “identity crisis” on The Times. I write it down into my notebook. I always want to find this word, now here I encounter it. Now I want think about my own identity, in an intellectual way.
My mother told me: “Your skin too dark and your hair too thin. You don’t look like me and your father at all. You are like your barbarian grandmother!” She said to me: “Look at your big feet. A real peasant’s feet! Nobody will want marry you.”
I hated her, and I wished she could die immediately.
But she is right about this: so far nobody really wanted to marry me.
When I was in middle school, my schoolmates always laughed at me. So I spend time on reading to avoid talking to them. I read Snow White And Seven Dwarfs in Chinese, and I saw my mother is as evil as that stepmother queen. But I didn’t have a snow-white skin and I was just a peasant girl. So there was no prince will come save me and that’s my destiny. Being a teenage I was dying to run away from my hometown, the town which my mother always beat me up and blamed me for everything I have done wrong, the place without my dream and my freedom.
The day when I arrived to the West, I suddenly realised I am a Chinese. As long as one has black eyes and black hair, obsessed by rice, and cannot swallow any Western food, and cannot pronounce the difference between “r” and “l,” and request people without using please—then he or she is a typical Chinese: an ill-legal immigrant, badly treat Tibetans and Taiwanese, good on food but put MSG to poison people, eat dog’s meat and drink snakes’ guts.
“I want to be a citizen of the world.” Recently I learned to say this. I would become a citizen of the world, if I have a more useful passport. Ah Mrs. Margaret, that conditional again!
anarchist n. 1. a person who advocates the abolition of government; 2. a person who causes disorder.
anarchist
“What is Anarchist?” I raise my head from Guardian.
We are in “First Choice,” a cheap greasy spoon, forty pence for a cup of tea. We like this kind of places. They don’t ask us leave if consumption less than £1 after one and half hour. I love east London.
You have an Earl Grey tea, and I have coffee. Liquidish eggs flow everywhere on my plate. Kids nearby are crying—two crying baby with one fat mother, no husband again.
Frown gathers on your forehead.
“Anarchists? Anarchists don’t believe in government. They think society shouldn’t have a ruling government. That everybody should be equal,” you answer, slowly.
“Sound like Communist,” I say.
“No. Communists believe the working class can control the power of the whole society, but Anarchists don’t believe in any power. They are very individualistic, whereas Communists believe in the collective.” You stop describing, as some working class man looks at us, stop biting his sausages.
My interests being aroused. I want to discuss more. You are my academy.
“But sounds Anarchist is the end of the Communist, or the advanced Communist. Is target or triumph of the Communism revolution is that, through the revolution wiping out the difference of the classes and eliminating the ruling government. No country boundaries. So the world can be equal. Am I right?”
“Maybe.” You open another page of paper.
“So are you an Anarchist?” I am not giving up.
“I was an Anarchist. But not anymore.” Now you give up your paper, and answer me seriously. “Most Anarchists are in fact bourgeois. They don’t really want to give up any
advantages. They can be very selfish. I don’t think I am that kind of person now. I want to give up material things, and live the simplest possible life.”
The simplest possible life is the most complicated thing to achieve I say to myself.
“So who are you?” This time I really want to know.
“I don’t know. Maybe an atheist. I don’t believe there is a god living in the sky. I don’t believe in Capitalism, but I’m also not convinced by Communism, the way it is now.”
“So do you believe in anything?” I ask.
“Hm,” is your only answer. “What about you?”
“Me? I do believe there is a kind superpower control all our life. It is also the power above the nature. And this superpower human being cannot really do anything to change it.”
I look outside of the window, and I am sure right now in this very right moment there is a mysterious superpower above us, above our cheap café and above our silly conversation.
You point the ad of Donnie Darko in the paper and ask me: “Have you seen this film? The teacher in it says to Donnie: ‘You are not an atheist, you are an agnostic.’ I think you are an agnostic too.”
“What is agnostic?” I am searching my little Concise Chinese–English Dictionary in my pocket.
But after we both look at the dictionary up and down there is nowhere we could find the word agnostic. Maybe this is the word not important to Chinese. Or there is no agnostic in old time of China at all. Or maybe it is a very capitalism word that’s why the authority censored it?
“An agnostic is someone who believes in a spiritual world, a metaphysical world. But he hasn’t found what he should believe in yet…”
“Wait, what is ‘metaphysical’?” I open my notebook.
“Metaphysical means not physical, not real…” A pause, you say: “but I think you might be a sceptic.”
“What?”
Again, I pick up my dictionary and open it immediately. I am in a hurry to learn. I am in a hurry to understand all these words!
While I am burying myself in the sea of words in the dictionary, you say, “Honey, your English is good, but not that good. I have to say.”
The working class man in the nearby table chews his kidney pie, looking at me with enormous wonder. I think I make his day.
hero n. 1. the principal character in a film, book, etc.; 2. a man greatly admired for his exceptional qualities or achievements.
hero
You feel happy again, your mood is like English weather.
You are in the peace, like the fruit tree without flowers in the garden. You are happy because you start to make a new sculpture. So now dirt and mess everywhere in the house. It is like living in a construction site. Clay and plaster and wax and water. Your happiness is from your own world, from your physical object, from the molded male head, male arms, male leg, male attraction…Your happiness is from your masculine world, and in that world you feel everything is under the control.
Your sadness actually is nothing to do with me. Your stress is not really from me. It is from your masculine world, because you don’t feel satisfied with your life as a man. And you might think I am an obstacle in your life. You think your sadness caused by our relationship, by love prison. It is not true. Your happiness and your sadness is from the world that you fight with yourself.
My love to you is like a lighthouse, always searching something special about you. And you are special. But I don’t know if you think me in the same way. You always say things like these to me:
“How did you burn the rice again? A Chinese woman shouldn’t burn rice, you eat it everyday.”
“I spend more time with you than with my friends. Why do you still complain? What else do you want?”…
It seems you don’t treat me as a special person in your life. You treat me as one of your friends. And there is a line you draw between you and me. There is a limit, from your heart, from your lifestyle, which makes love feels like a friendship. You live inside of me, but I don’t live inside of you.
You said Frida Kahlo is one of your heroes. Of course I knew that. I knew that from your book shelf. I knew that because I knew your heroes are always in pain, and died of young.
In nobody’s London Fields, I sit on a chair, and read about Frida Kahlo again. I want understand you, and I want understand your twisted nude lying on the ground of your garden.
Frida, her body falling apart when she was alive. Her bones were being smashed by the bus accident. Death had been eating her everyday until one day nothing is fresh left. Again I see your naked man lying down on the ground. Your twisted statue, how similar to Frida’s body in her painting.
In your world, I am losing my world. In your pain, I am losing myself. Everything makes me thinking about you, only about you and your world. I am like a wallpaper stick on the wall of your house, looking at you and decorating your life. “Don’t bury me, burn me. I don’t want to lie down anymore,” Frida lay on the bed and said to her husband. She could not move one inch. A negotiation between her and the devil. My life compare with hers, is nothing.
freedom n. 1. being free; 2. exemption or immunity, e.g. freedom from hunger; 3. the right or privilege of unlimited access.
freedom
I say I love you, but you say you want to have freedom.
Why is freedom more important than love? Without love, freedom is naked. Why can’t love live with freedom? Why is love the prison for freedom? How many people live in this prison then?
schengen space
The “Schengen space” is the territory constituted by the countries which are members of the Schengen agreements. The following countries are today active members of the Schengen agreements: Austria–Belgium–Denmark–Finland–France–Germany–Greece–Iceland–Italy–Luxembourg–the Netherlands–Norway–Portugal–Spain–Sweden. The aim of the Schengen agreement is to allow free circulation of people within the territory of the member countries.
All foreigners who are legally resident in one of the Schengen member states can make short visits without a visa in any other member state, provided they travel with their valid passport, which must be recognized by all the Schengen states, and a residential permit issued by the authorities of the country of residency. Since the UK is not a member of the Schengen agreement, nationals who are not exempted from visa requirements by the Schengen member states, and who reside permanently or temporarily in the UK, need a visa to enter the Schengen space.
“Have a look at this,” you say. “If you got a visa to go to France, you could go and see all these countries.”
You pass to me leaflet.
I read carefully terms of the “Schengen Agreement.” I don’t know where is Luxembourg, where is the Netherlands, Norway or Finland, and I of course don’t know where is Greece. I thought Greece is in Rome. After I check the European map, I read it again the terms. I understand wherever I want to go I need visa, but I still don’t understand what is “Schengen.” Me, a native mainland Communism Chinese, a non-EU member and non-British passport. For visa application I need prepare my medical insurance paper, my financial document (thanks that I have a free accommodation here from you, so I save lots of money from my parents prepared for my renting).
“So much trouble, I don’t want to go,” I say. “I want stay in Hackney with you.”
You look serious. “I think you should see a bit of the world without me. After all, you’ve never been to the sea.”
“So, you take me.”
You only smiling. “I think it’s important you go by yourself.”
When visa arrive I am still doing research on European map, trying to understand where is where, like Poland is next to Germany, and Romania is above of Bulgaria. But I couldn’t find Luxembourg.
“Don’t worry. Just buy an unlimited Inter-Rail ticket, then you can take the train to wherever you want in Europe,” you say to me, very experienced.
“Unlimited?” I am so excited to know this.
“Yes, you�
�re under twenty-six, so the ticket will be cheap. You’ll get to see the whole of the Continent.”
“Continent? Where is that?” I ask.
“You’ll know where the Continent is when you come back.”
You talk to me like I am your child. Maybe I am like idiot in front of you. Maybe you love the idiot.
You take out some old maps from your bookshelfs. There is map of Berlin, map of Amsterdam, map of Venice, map of Madrid…You blow the dusts on these maps, and put in my bag.
“Now they are useful again, after all those years sitting on the shelf,” you say.
“But all these places must be changed from the time you went,” I say, thinking of map of Beijing every month being changed.
“It’s not like China,” you say. Then you take a novel called Intimacy, author Hanif Kureishi, and put into my bags too. “This is for you to read on the train.”
You sit down on the chair, having tea, and looking at me packing.
I already feel lonely when I put my shirts into the rocksack. Is that all you want? Want me away from you?
Paris is the capital and largest city of France, in the north-central part of the country on the Seine River.
paris
I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain and their pancake is crêpe. Pain and poison and crap. That’s what they have every day.
“Du pain?”
The man serves me in a small brasserie nearby Les Halles, with some bread on the little basket.
“Non. Je ne veux pas pain!” I answer. I learn this from French for Beginners by Michael Thomas.
But one minute later, he comes back with a small basket of pain again, asks me:
“Encore un peu de pain?”
“Ça sufficient!” I say, wiping my mouth, stand up.
No more pain in my life.
Only rice makes me happy.