Once Upon a Time in the East

by Xiaolu Guo

  Smells Like Teen Spirit

  It was late, after midnight. I had just returned to my dorm from a concert in an airless basement in the Haidian district of the city. Words were forming in my mind and I had an urge to write. So I sat down at my desk and opened my notebook. But my head was still throbbing with the deep pulse of the bass guitar and the clash of the drums, as if an electric current had lodged itself in my body, impossible to calm.

  The concert, performed by several of Beijing’s young rock’n’roll bands, had been organised to commemorate the death of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, about whom I knew nothing, save for his suicide two days previously, a fact I had only just learned. At the end of the concert, an original recording of Nirvana’s hit ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – which I had never heard before – was blasted out over the speakers. I heard the lines ‘With the lights out it’s less dangerous, here we are now’ and felt deeply affected by the desperation in Cobain’s dry, throaty voice. Instead of feeling depressed about the musician’s death, everyone at the concert seemed energised and excited by it. That was because in the China of 1994, Western rock and punk were so exotic that even a suicide made us feel ‘cool’ and united in the ‘free spirit’. We didn’t care about ‘All workers of the world unite’, we were now galvanised by ‘All angry punk youth of the world unite’.

  When the song finished, I squeezed out of the steamy-hot basement, and into the cold April night. I walked alone, all the way back to the film school. The idea of ‘teen spirit’ spoke to me in a very personal way. I wanted to write about a rebellious teenager in China, chasing after everything that glittered. So that night, I sat down in my dorm and began to write the first page of my very first novel:

  My life began when I was twenty-one. At least, that’s when I decided it began. That was when I started to think that of all those shiny things in life, some of them might possibly be for me.

  I wrote by candlelight, as the dorm’s electricity was already off for the night. But the building was still abuzz with the drone of chatting, washing, coughing, laughing and guitar playing. Our usual manic hour after midnight. No one wanted to go to sleep yet. The multiplicity of sounds was only ever squashed when the dorm supervisor showed up on each floor to shut everyone up. But I was writing, because I had known my character, this young woman called Fenfang, for so long and I wanted more than anything to tell her story. I needed another candle to continue. The three other girls in the room were now sleeping. I stole one from Mengmeng’s desk and pulled a makeshift curtain tight around mine. I could hear the dorm supervisor out in the corridor. But I wasn’t going to sleep. Sleep was merely a form of time-wasting, I would do all my sleeping after I had lain down in my grave. I wanted to be awake in the electrifying night of my thoughts, and let them pour from my pen.

  From then on, I spent almost every night writing Fenfang’s story: the country girl who ran away from home for Beijing and tried to become an artist. I worked on the manuscript for the next seven months. Despite knowing Fenfang intimately, I didn’t know how to write a novel. I had written poems, but they had never been narrative. The novel was still a very new format for us Chinese, since the dominant literary forms then were poetry, essays and short stories. Books were reserved for historical accounts, academic subjects and reportage. The novel – we called it xiaoshuo, meaning ‘little talk’ – was alien to the Chinese literary tradition. To write a book of ‘little talk’ with a continuous narrative arc seemed very Western and modern to me. The main examples that I had by my desk were Salingeresque books, slim but with vivid first-person narratives. And the novels I had loved before coming to Beijing had been Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and The Sea Wall. For all these reasons, from the very moment of starting my novel, I knew that I couldn’t escape first-person narration. I only felt comfortable when the narrator was speaking in my voice. So I let that almost primitive urge take over. By the end of the seventh month, I had finished writing Fenfang’s story. A year later, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth was published by a young house in Beijing, with a first edition of 20,000 copies. I called my parents to tell them it was coming out. My father was very happy and asked me to send at least twenty copies so he could give it to his friends as presents. My mother, as usual, was suspicious about my writing. ‘I hope they’ve paid you enough to live off. Otherwise what’s the point?’ I didn’t report that it was far from enough, but it was sufficient encouragement for me to go on as a writer.

  The day the book was launched in the bookshops, the publisher (who was also a member of the Communist Party) told me: ‘We can’t make money from your type of novel. It has no story! But we hope your next novel will be right for us!’

  I nodded and thanked him for his support. Then, in all sincerity, I asked: ‘What kind of novel would be “right”, in your view?’

  ‘Right? It should have some good murders, some sexual encounters and a great romance. You know, something like Dr Zhivago.’

  His eyes lit up as he spoke. I nodded again, but felt confused. Dr Zhivago was all about the brutality of the Soviet system. I couldn’t write a book about the brutality of the Chinese Communist system, even if I added loads of murders and love affairs. Such a book could never live in China. Nor could such an author.

  The Western Boyfriend

  During my first year at film school, I had little time for men. In fact, I lacked the self-confidence even to consider the men around me as potential lovers. But about the time that I discovered swimming, I also began to thaw, as if the water had woken up some part of me, drawing me to romance. I started tentatively to date some boys in Beijing, but I hadn’t settled on anyone in particular.

  There was a boy called Jiang who was studying in the film production department. He was a year younger than me, but tall and broad with a northern build. He knew Beijing like the back of his hand and I found the way he talked about the city really attractive. He told me about his great-grandparents who had been servants at the Qing Dynasty court, and how his father was some high-ranking army official. His family had been living in the Beijing army base before moving to their current high-rise. I remember he wore a waterproof army watch on his wrist, inherited from his grandfather, but clearly a symbol of privilege. I only had a simple pager beeping in my pocket to tell the time. How typical, that I should be drawn to someone who represented the city and the culture I wanted so desperately to be a part of. He was the embodiment of the thing I desired most and that was my great mistake, as I discovered later.

  Our love affair began when Jiang took me to where his family lived, around the Drum Tower in central Beijing. We went to the top, and he told me how it had been built during the reign of Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century. Since then, each emperor had climbed up just like we had to look out across the city and beyond. I was impressed, of course. Once down again, we were submerged in the intensity of life around that area, with its sizzling eateries that lined the road like the ash trees did the streets and alleyways. As we cycled along the street, the white blossoms on the trees gently showered us. I loved being there with this northern boy. Unlike the compound I had grown up in, this was a street of change and importance, filled with the ebb and flow of life. I adopted Jiang’s Beijing accent, too, though I found the slang a bit rude and very male. But the vanity of youth had sucked me into the illusion of sounding cool like a hard-headed northerner.

  A year after we met, I moved into his family home. His father, true to his army officer status, never spoke a word to me. Indeed, he hardly ever said anything to his son or wife. I felt rather oppressed in Jiang’s house. It soon changed the nature of our relationship. Somehow I became a sort of voiceless daughter-in-law in his family. And I certainly didn’t like that feeling. I wanted to move back to the dormitory where I could regain my freedom. And I wanted to talk to and see other boys too. But Jiang was a very jealous person. Very quickly, we began to fight, and he showed his vicious temperament by punching me in the face. The beatings soon became a regular activ
ity, turning everything sour. Sometimes I fought back, but most of the time I had no strength to resist. I let him hit me and all I could do was wish he would die. One day, he convinced himself that I was dating another boy and beat me badly with his army belt. My nose was bleeding. His father didn’t intervene and his mother stood in the kitchen listening to my cries without protest. I imagined Jiang’s father must have behaved the same way to his wife and son. Shortly after that, I ran away. But I was frightened, and didn’t want to go back to the dorm. So I rented a small, cheap apartment near the film school, and divided my time between the flat and my dorm.

  In those days, white boys were rare in China. And they were very popular with local girls as they represented Western civilisation. I was very attracted to them, especially to their coffee-drinking, party-going and what seemed to me a glamorous hotel lifestyle. I met some Western men in the bars and cafes frequented by artists and ex-pats. Paul was one of them. He was a film-maker. In my eyes he spoke and acted with a kind of freedom and curiosity that you couldn’t find in a Chinese man. I decided to go out with him on the first night we met. An impulsive decision, in part a reaction to my violent Beijing boyfriend.

  When we talk about youth we often use clichéd phrases like ‘wild at heart’ or ‘walk on the wild side’, but actually, young and hungry people live in clichés, at least that was the kind of person I was. When I met Paul, it was obvious that I wanted to give myself to him. Give is a word that a young Chinese woman would ‘naturally’ use. Paul was the only one in his group who could speak some Chinese and he was a young, unknown film-maker from Los Angeles with many wild, artistic visions. He seemed to embrace everything new he came across: he used to chat to taxi drivers about his best and worst experiences; to Chinese waiters about their home towns and education; to cooks about how they should make French fries for their customers.

  The only surprising thing to me was that he didn’t like Godard very much, especially the film we were constantly studying in film school.

  ‘Really? You don’t like La Chinoise? Why?’

  ‘It’s silly, don’t you think?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not because I’m an American who grew up in sunny California. I just don’t see the point of the film. Is it supposed to be educational? Or a parody? Or just comic? It’s not even funny.’

  I didn’t want to embark on a discourse on Mao’s revolution or intellectual film-making. I was much more interested in Paul’s life, in the West of which I had imagined hundreds of times through literature and cinema.

  ‘What about you? Which American film-makers do you like, Franny?’ Paul asked.

  At that time, I had adopted the Western name Franny, taken from Salinger’s book Franny and Zooey. It was a vain and pretentious choice, of course, and totally revealed my obsession with the West. I thought the name would make me just like Salinger’s character.

  ‘I like many American film-makers,’ I said. I mentioned names like Billy Wilder, Coppola and Kubrick.

  ‘What’s your favourite Kubrick?’ Paul asked with a smile. He had this very warm presence that made me feel comfortable in his company.

  ‘Hmm, maybe Dr. Strangelove,’ I answered.

  He laughed. ‘I love that one too! It’s Peter Sellers’s best role! But I also love 2001: A Space Odyssey, don’t you?’

  Then he mentioned some new names I didn’t know. It was the mid-nineties and Tarantino had just scored a big hit with Pulp Fiction, which I had found exhilarating.

  Everyone else started to leave but we remained in the bar and looked meaningfully at each other across the table. Then Paul asked: ‘Do you want to come back to my place?’

  I nodded. We jumped into a taxi. It was a cold rainy night. I found myself in a little brick hutong house with no heating or bathroom. He had rented it from a local because he thought the old alleyways of Beijing were more interesting to live in. There was not much said between us, we just lay in the dark and made love. He was the first Western man I had ever been with, but I didn’t know if I was his first Chinese girl. I didn’t want to know. Our lovemaking was spontaneous. Somehow my body had a different personality with a foreign man beside me. All the old habits from a past built up with Chinese men disappeared. And I felt new. It was the first time in my life I thought love and sex could live together without becoming each other’s enemy.

  My pager beeped an accompaniment non-stop through the night. I knew it was my boyfriend, Jiang, but I didn’t care.

  ‘I’m leaving Beijing next Wednesday,’ Paul said to me early the next morning, as soon as we woke up.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

  ‘Not sure. I’m only here because of this film project. I’ll be quite busy once I return to California.’

  I felt awful and sad. Although I had only met this man a few hours before, I had an absolute conviction that I should belong to him. In traditional Chinese culture, women belong to their beloveds. In my conscious mind, schooled by modern communist ideas about women, there was meant to be no place for it. We had been taught such thinking was utterly feudal and against feminism. Nevertheless, there it was, bubbling up from some inner recess of my psyche. The hidden memory of my body was much stronger than the frequently recited ideas in my head. Tradition, as a kind of deeper, underlying skin, was now in charge. I was convinced that Paul would be the man to show me the world, the enchanting America that I had heard so much about for so long. But this dream of devotion and adventure was quickly shattered.

  ‘There is some chance that I might go to Hong Kong next year for a film,’ he said, as if this information should soothe me.

  ‘But you know that we mainland Chinese are not allowed to go to Hong Kong,’ I told him, with a sense of desolation.

  The next few days, Paul and I stayed together in bed, absorbed in each other’s bodies. Emotionally I found myself tumbling into a new kind of space. It was a kind of love that I had never felt before. I had never known such sensuous surrender. But it was clear that the American was just taking what was here and now. He didn’t expect anything further or deeper with me.

  I skipped two days of film school, pretending I was ill. The day I went back, Jiang caught me after class and threatened me.

  ‘I know what you’ve been up to for the last few days!’

  I didn’t take him seriously. What could he know about Paul and me?

  ‘I’ll chop him to pieces! He’ll never get out of China alive!’ Enraged, he grabbed my arm and it hurt.

  I was frightened. He looked as if he was going to slap me, but at that moment a teacher appeared in the corridor and passed us. Jiang let go of my wrist.

  ‘What a fucking slut! You think you can play me for a fool like that? You think I don’t know you were sleeping with that American producer? I know his name and I know his flight’s departure time. He won’t get out of Beijing, I tell you! Either he dies or me.’ Jiang spat his words out. ‘Just wait, he’ll be a corpse the next time you see him!’

  I was scared about what might happen to me. As I went back to the dormitory, I decided to hide from this crazed man by not going to the canteen or anywhere else he might be. That evening, as I was leaving the school, I received a call from Jiang’s mother. I was very surprised as she had never called me before. Her voice was anxious and urgent. Apparently, she had been preparing pancakes in the kitchen that afternoon, but couldn’t find the knife she used for chopping pork anywhere in the house. One of those typical Chinese meat cleavers, broad and heavy. Her immediate thought was that her son might have taken it, because he had tried to chop off someone’s arm with it in the past.

  ‘Did you see him at the school? Did you see him with the knife this afternoon?’

  My mind was filled with the most terrible images.

  ‘You two were always fighting. He said something a few days ago about you having a new boyfriend. If that’s true, he might have taken the knife …’

  I was shaken by her phone call. I knew Paul would be flying the following morning from
Beijing airport; I was supposed to meet him that night to say goodbye.

  I jumped into a taxi and rushed to Paul’s place. He was packing and cleaning up the house. I told him about the knife and my crazy boyfriend. Paul was surprised, but calm.

  ‘I knew you had a boyfriend, from those pager messages you kept getting. But I didn’t want to interfere, Franny,’ he said. ‘I’m only passing through. I don’t know when I’ll see you again, or if I ever will see you again.’

  I was in tears. These words were an absolute rejection. And I really didn’t want to hear them, even though I knew in my heart that we were not going to be together again.

  ‘But how do I come to California to see you? Don’t you want me to come to see you?’ I begged.

  ‘I don’t think we have a future together,’ Paul replied. Hearing no response from me, he added, ‘We lead totally different lives. Don’t you think?’

  My heart was pierced with pain. I wept. I suddenly hated everything about this short-lived relationship. Fragments of our intense, night-time love and deep morning embraces were running through my mind. Did it mean nothing to him? Perhaps for Paul it was just sex. Pure sexual pleasure. Nothing else. I was one of his sexual adventures in China. That was all. Suddenly, I imagined myself as Madam Butterfly, cutting her throat in front of her heartless American lover. How cheap and stupid I had been.