Rock Paper Tiger

by Lisa Brackmann

  Inside the compound are four houses in a row. Sculptures and art supplies litter the narrow courtyards in between. Lao Zhang shares this place with the sculptor, a novelist who also paints, and a musician/Web designer who’s mixing something now, a trance track from the sound of it, all beats and erhu. Not too loud. That’s good. Some loud noises really get to me.

  The front door is locked. Maybe Lao Zhang isn’t home. Maybe he’s already over at the Warehouse for the show. I use my key and go inside. I’ll have a few jiaozi, I figure, leave the rest here, and try the Warehouse.

  The house is basically a rectangle. You go in the entrance, turn, and there’s the main room, with whitewashed walls and added skylights, remodeled to give Lao Zhang better light for painting.

  The lights are off in the studio, but the computer’s on, booted up to the login screen of this online game Lao Zhang likes to play, The Sword of Ill Repute. A snatch of music plays, repeats.

  “Lao Zhang, ni zai ma?” I call out. Are you there? No answer.

  To the right is the bedroom, which is mostly taken up by a kang, the traditional brick bed you can heat from underneath. Lao Zhang has a futon on top of his. On the left side of the house there’s a tiny kitchen, a toilet, and a little utility room with a spare futon where Lao Zhang’s friends frequently crash.

  Which is where the Uighur is.

  “Shit!” I almost drop the takeout on the kitchen floor.

  Here’s this guy stumbling out of the spare room, blinking uncertainly, rubbing his eyes, which suddenly go wide with fear.

  “Ni hao,” I say uncertainly.

  He stands there, one leg twitching, like he could bolt at any moment. He’s in his forties, not Chinese, not Han Chinese anyway; his hair is brown, his eyes a light hazel, his face dark and broad with high cheeks—I’m guessing Uighur.

  “Ni hao,” he finally says.

  “I’m Yili,” I stutter, “a friend of Lao Zhang’s. Is he … ?”

  His eyes dart around the room. “Oh, yes, I am also friend of Lao Zhang’s. Hashim.”

  “Happy to meet you,” I reply automatically.

  I put the food and beer down on the little table by the sink, slowly because I get the feeling this guy startles easily. I can’t decide whether I should make small talk or run.

  Since I suck at both of these activities, it’s a real relief to hear the front door bang and Lao Zhang yell from the living room: “It’s me. I’m back.”

  “We’re in the kitchen,” I call out.

  Lao Zhang is frowning when he comes in. He’s a northerner, part Manchu, big for a Chinese guy, and right now his thick shoulders are tense like he’s expecting a fight. “I thought you were going to phone,” he says to me.

  “I was—I tried—My phone ran out of minutes, so I just… .” I point at the table. “I brought dinner.”

  “Thanks.” He gives me a quick one-armed hug, and then everything’s normal again.

  Almost.

  “You met Hashim?”

  I nod and turn to the Uighur. “Maybe you’d like some dinner? I brought plenty.”

  “Anything without pork?” Lao Zhang asks, grabbing chipped bowls from the metal locker he salvaged from the old commune factory.

  “I got mutton, beef, and vegetable.”

  “Thank you,” Hashim says, bobbing his head. He’s got a lot of gray hair. He starts to reach into his pocket for money.

  I wave him off. “Please don’t be so polite.”

  Lao Zhang dishes out food, and we all sit around the tiny kitchen table. Lao Zhang shovels jiaozi into his mouth in silence. The Uighur stares at his bowl. I try to make small talk.

  “So, Hashim. Do you live in Beijing?”

  “No, not in Beijing,” he mumbles. “Just for a visit.”

  “Oh. Is this your first time here?”

  “Maybe … third time?” He smiles weakly and falls silent.

  I don’t know what to say after that.

  “We’re going to have to eat fast,” Lao Zhang says. “I want to get to the Warehouse early. Okay with you?”

  “Sure,” I say. I have a few jiaozi and some spicy tofu, and then it’s time to go.

  “Make yourself at home,” Lao Zhang tells Hashim. “Anything you need, call me. TV’s in there if you want to watch.”

  “Oh. Thank you, but… .” Hashim gestures helplessly toward the utility room. “I think I’m still very tired.”

  He looks tired. His hazel eyes are bloodshot, and the flesh around them is sagging and so dark it looks bruised.

  “Thank you,” he says to me, bowing his head and backing toward the utility room. “Very nice to meet you.”

  Chinese is a second language to him. Just like it is to me.

  “SO, WHO’S THE Uighur?” I finally ask Lao Zhang, as we approach the Warehouse.

  “Friend of a friend.”

  “He’s an artist?”

  “Writer or something. Needed a place to stay.”

  He’s not telling me everything, I’m pretty sure. His face is tense; we’re walking next to each other, but he feels so separate that we might as well be on different blocks.

  A lot of Chinese people don’t trust Uighurs, even though they’re Chinese citizens. As for the Uighurs, a lot of them aren’t crazy about the Chinese.

  You’re supposed to say “Han,” not “Chinese,” when you’re talking about the ninety percent of the population that’s, well, Chinese; but hardly anyone does.

  The Uighur homeland used to be called East Turkestan. China took it over a couple hundred years ago, and now it’s “Xinjiang.” For the last thirty years or so, the Chinese government’s been encouraging Han people to “go west” and settle there.

  The government takes a hard line if the Uighurs try to do anything about it.

  Since the riots in Urumqi last year, things have only gotten worse. Gangs of Uighurs burned down shops and buses and went after Han Chinese with hammers and pickaxes. So much for the “Harmonious Society.”

  This guy Hashim, though, I can’t picture him setting things on fire. He looks like a professor on a bender. A writer or something, like Lao Zhang said. Maybe he’s an activist, some intellectual who got in trouble. It doesn’t take much for a Uighur to get into trouble in China.

  “You should be careful,” I say.

  Lao Zhang grins and squeezes my arm. “I know—those Uighurs, they’re all terrorists.”

  “Ha ha.”

  The other thing that’s screwed the Uighurs is that they’re Muslims, and you know how that goes in a lot of people’s heads. THE WAREHOUSE IS at the east end of Mati Village, close to the jiaozi place. It’s called that because it used to be a warehouse. The building is partitioned into several galleries and one big space, with a café in the corner. The main room has paintings, some sculpture, and, tonight, a band put together by Lao Zhang’s courtyard neighbor. The highlight of the evening is the end of a performance piece where this guy has been sealed up in what looks like a concrete block for forty-eight hours. Tonight’s the night he’s scheduled to break out, and a couple hundred people have gathered to watch.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, you could say it’s about self-imprisonment and breaking free from that,” Lao Zhang explains. “Or breaking free from irrational authority of any kind.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, Lao Zhang, ni zenmeyang?” someone asks. “Hao, hao. Painting a lot. You?”

  Everyone here seems to know Lao Zhang, which isn’t surprising. He’s been in the Beijing art scene since it started, when he was a teenager and hung out at the Old Summer Palace, the first artists’ village in Communist China. After a couple of years, the cops came in and arrested a lot of the artists, and the village got razed. That happened to a lot of the places where Lao Zhang used to hang out. “Government doesn’t like it when too many people get together,” he told me once.

  Finally, Lao Zhang gave up on Beijing proper. “Tai dade mafan,” he’d say. Too much hassle. Too expensive. So h
e led an exodus to Mati Village, a collective farm that had been practically abandoned after the communes broke up. A place where artists who hadn’t made it big could live for cheap.

  “You think they’ll bust you here?” I asked once.

  Lao Zhang shrugged. “Who knows? It lasts as long as it lasts.”

  I have to wonder. Because even though Mati Village is pretty far away from Beijing proper, far from the villas and townhouses on Beijing’s outer fringes, people still find their way here. Foreigners, art-lovers, journalists.

  Me.

  And that Prada chick from the jiaozi place tonight. Lucy Wu.

  “Jianli, it’s been a long time.” Lucy Wu smiles and extends her hand coyly in Lao Zhang’s general direction, having spotted us hanging out by the café, behind the PA speakers where it’s not quite so loud.

  “Luxi,” Lao Zhang replies. He takes her hand for a moment; it’s dwarfed in his. He stares at her with a look that I can’t quite figure out. “You’re well?”

  “Very.” She takes a step back, like she’s measuring him up. “I met your friend Yili earlier this evening. Did she tell you?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I forgot.”

  Lucy giggles. “Not to worry. I knew we’d find each other.”

  I watch them watching each other, like a couple of circling cats.

  “I’m going to get a beer,” I say.

  Back in the main room, muffled thuds come from inside the “concrete” block (I’m pretty sure it’s plaster). Cracks appear, then a little chunk falls out, then more pieces, and all of a sudden there’s a hole, and you can see this skinny, shirtless man covered in sweat, swinging a sledgehammer against the walls of his prison. The room is flooded with a rank smell, which makes sense, considering the guy’s been in the box for a couple of days.

  Everybody cheers.

  I drink my beer. Grab another. The crowd starts to thin out around me. Show’s over, I guess. It’s been almost an hour since I’ve seen Lao Zhang.

  I think about looking for him, but something holds me back. Someone, more accurately.

  She’s got to be an old girlfriend. Except I couldn’t tell if he was really happy to see her.

  “Sorry.”

  It’s Lao Zhang, who has appeared next to me, without Lucy Wu.

  “How was it?” he asks.

  “Okay.”

  He rests his hand on my shoulder. But it’s not a friendly gesture. I can feel the tension in his hand.

  I look behind him and see Lucy Wu, standing over by the entrance to the video gallery, too far away for me to make out her expression, except I can tell she’s watching us.

  “Let’s go,” he says.

  We go outside. I start to turn down Heping Street in the direction of Xingfu Road, toward Lao Zhang’s house.

  “Wait.”

  I turn to look at him. The frown from earlier tonight is back. “It’s better if you don’t come over tonight,” he says.

  I shrug. “Fine.”

  I should’ve figured. No way I can compete with a Lucy Wu.

  “Here.” He digs through his pockets and pulls out some cash. “Some money. For a taxi.”

  I don’t take it. “Why didn’t you just tell me not to come?”

  “I didn’t think… .” He grimaces, shakes his head. “I should have. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know what to say. I zip up my jacket and wonder where I’m going to find a taxi this time of night in Mati Village. Down by the bus station, I guess.

  “Yili… .” Lao Zhang reaches out his hand, rests it gently but urgently on my arm. “Don’t go home tonight. It’s better you go someplace else. Visit some friends or something. Just for tonight.”

  That’s when everything shifts. I’m not mad any more.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  He hesitates. “You know how things are here,” he says. “Anyway, it’s not the first time.”

  “Can I help?”

  I don’t know why I say it. I’m not even sure that I mean it.

  I still can’t see his face very well in the dark, but I think I see him smile.

  “Maybe later. If you want.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THERE AREN’T A lot of places I can think of to go in Beijing at one in the morning.

  I tell the taxi driver to take me to Says Hu.

  It’s eleven thirty now, and it’ll be dead by the time I get there in an hour and a half; I figure I can hang out, while British John closes up, and decide what to do next.

  I forgot it was Karaoke Night.

  People come out of the woodwork for this: expats from the Zhongguancun Electronics District, students and teachers from the Haidian universities, ready to get loaded and give us their best rendition of “You Light Up My Life” or “Hotel California.”

  When I walk through the door, the place is packed, and a rangy Chinese girl with dyed blonde hair is singing “My Heart Will Go On.”

  I almost turn around and leave, but British John has already spotted me. He tops off a pitcher of Qingdao and comes out from behind the bar, beer belly leading his narrow shoulders, face permanently red from too much sun and alcohol.

  “Ellie! Good, you’re here. Rose didn’t show up. Boyfriend crisis. Stupid bint.”

  “I’m not here to work.”

  “When are you ever?”

  “Fuck you,” I mutter. Maybe I’m late sometimes, but I do a good job for British John.

  Some days it’s hard to leave the apartment, that’s all.

  I pick up a rag and start wiping down tables.

  Says Hu is an expat bar on the second floor of a corner mall next to an apartment complex, above a mobile phone store. It’s dark, furnished in cheap plastic-coated wood, with dartboards, British soccer posters, and jerseys on the walls. Old beer funk mixes with that bizarre cleaner they use here in China, the one that smells like acrid, perfumed kerosene.

  I work here a few shifts a week. That’s plenty.

  I don’t mean British John’s a bad guy. He’s not. He’s hinted about hiring me to run this place so he can start another business, making me legal and getting me a work visa, which god knows I need.

  But doing this?

  “And my heart will go on and on!”

  I duck behind the bar, pour myself a beer, and swallow a Percocet.

  Between pouring drafts and mixing drinks, I think about what happened in Mati Village.

  Lao Zhang has to be in some kind of trouble, but what? The central government doesn’t care much about what anybody does, as long as they don’t challenge the government’s authority. Lao Zhang’s not political, so far as I know. He doesn’t talk about overthrowing the CCP or democracy or freedom of speech. Nothing like that. He talks about living a creative life, about building communities to support that, places that encourage each individual’s expression and value their labors—the opposite of the factories and malls and McJobs that treat people like trash and throw them away whenever they feel like it.

  Maybe that’s close enough to freedom of speech to get him in trouble.

  But why am I in trouble?

  You’re a foreigner, you cause problems, usually they just kick you out of China. Which, if I don’t get my act together, is going to happen anyway.

  He told me not to go home tonight.

  Maybe it’s not the government, I think. Maybe it’s gangsters. Or some local official Lao Zhang pissed off. A back-door deal gone wrong.

  And then there’s Lucy Wu. Ex-girlfriend? Undercover Public Security Officer?

  He should have told me what was going on.

  My leg hurts like a motherfucker, even with the Percocet, so I start drinking Guinness, and I end up hanging out in the bar after we close, drinking more Guinness with British John, his Chinese wife Xiaowei, an Australian named Hank, and two Norwegian girls. One of them, the taller of the two who looks like a supermodel, is a bitch. She keeps going on about the evil
s of American imperialism. “It was American imperial aggression that created the desire for a Caliphate,” and “The Taliban was a predictable response to American imperial aggression.”

  British John keeps giving me looks, like he thinks I’m going to lose it.

  “Hey, we need more music,” Xiaowei pipes up. “What should I play?”

  “You choose, luv,” says British John. “As long as it’s none of that fucking awful Korean pop.”

  Xiaowei pouts. She loves Korean pop, which as British John points out, really is fucking awful.

  “Reggae!” shouts Hank the Australian.

  “It was America’s criminal invasion of Iraq,” the Norwegian chick drones on. She’s kind of drunk by now, too. “Everyone involved is a criminal. You know, Falluja, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, these are war crimes… .”

  Hank and the other Norwegian girl, meanwhile, have gone over to the jukebox, draped over each other like partners in a three-legged race. “Redemption Song” booms over the speakers.

  “These soldiers, they killed innocents, and you Americans call them heroes.”

  “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up?” I finally say. I’m not mad. I’m just tired. “You Norwegians are sitting on top of all that North Sea oil or you’d be making deals and screwing people like everyone else. Plus, you kill whales.”

  Supermodel straightens up. Actually, she looks more like a Viking. All she needs is a spear. “Norway contributes more percentage of its income to foreign aid than any other country. While you Americans—”

  “Oh, it’s wrong to kill whales,” Xiaowei says, her eyes filling with tears. “And dolphins. They are so smart! I think they are smarter than we are.”

  “Darts, anyone?” British John asks.

  I END UP crashing at British John and Xiaowei’s place, finally dragging myself off their couch the next day around noon to make my way home.

  Of course, I run into Mrs. Hua, who is hustling her kid into their apartment, him clutching an overstuffed, greasy bag of Mickey D’s.

  “Somebody looking for you,” she hisses, her little raisin eyes glittering in triumph. “You in some kind of trouble!”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  “Foreigners,” she continues. “In suits! You in trouble.”