I Am China

by Xiaolu Guo

  “Well, good luck to him.” Bruce curses bitterly.

  * * *

  During the band’s remaining days, Bruce wants to show his hospitality, and invites everyone to stay for a few days at his family home near Boston. “Now it’s holiday relaxation time, you guys must come and have some chill out time with my parents. Free food! No more tipping and hotel service charges!”

  There are cheers, from all except Mu.

  Bruce shows them a photo of his family home. A roomy three-storey house with a garden.

  “A great house, and good feng shui too,” Liuwei praises with a twinge of envy. He is the other member of the band who would have loved to disappear and remain in America.

  “That’s why the American president has the loudest voice! They are paid better and live better than the president of any other continent!” cries Dongdong.

  Bruce shrugs. “Well, if you grew up here you wouldn’t find it so interesting. That’s why I went to China.” He turns to Mu. “Listen, Sister, I can try to organise a reading for you at a Harvard student club. I think those young intellectuals will like your style.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” Mu responds tersely. She’s stopped speaking in full sentences to Bruce now.

  14 LONDON, JULY 2013

  Iona is googling “Harvard University + Sabotage Sister” and it takes her instantly to a blog on the student forum of the Harvard website. The blog is a report about a performance Mu did at Harvard in May 2012, just over a year ago.

  The Friday night poetry reading at the Student Club turned out to be a real disappointment. The advertisement said that the poet—Sabotage Sister, as per her nom de plume—is “A Brand New Voice from the Underground Chinese Poetry Scene.” So we (three Chinese Ph.D.s as well as several M.A. graduates) went along, hoping for a chance to feel a bit nostalgic, a bit patriotic perhaps. But she turned out to be a total cultural prostitute. As soon as she announced she was going to read a Chinese cover version of an Allen Ginsberg poem, “America” it was called, I knew she (and that pretentious band) were Western-ass-kissing people. Let me share with you the beginning of her poem and you can see for yourself:

  China when will you be angelic?

  When will you take off your clothes?

  When will you look at yourself through the grave?

  When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

  China why are your libraries full of tears?

  How ridiculous is that? She would be jailed if she said something like that in China. As I said, a serious disappointment at the very least, and a despicable trashing of Chinese heritage and form at the worst. I find the idea of Sabotage Sister calling herself a poet downright insulting.

  Posted on May 23, 2012. Read Alison Wang Blog here.

  How interesting, Iona thinks, what a difficult end to the tour. The Chinese with their hard ideology don’t seem to evolve much even outside of China. It seems they judge each other as harshly whether they’re at home or abroad. She scrolls down and reads the comments section posted under the article.

  Roosterinboston:

  I don’t agree. She is an honest poet. Just with a pretentious pen name. But she shouldn’t be slapped. That was really rude.

  Xiaotian:

  She deserved the slapping. The security guards should have used catapults and shot stones at her every time she opened her mouth.

  Keeion082:

  Stop being so hypocritical, brothers and sisters. To have a few more sabotage sisters might help reduce the West’s prejudice of China.

  Qingyuan99:

  I am sure that Sabotage Sister is taught and backed up by some Western dude. I bet she still eats rice with chopsticks. But she has forgotten her roots.

  Iona then finds two pages from Mu’s diary, dated 23 May 2012:

  It was the most terrible experience. I wondered what Jian would do if he had faced such an abusive situation. The audiences at Harvard were mainly Chinese students from prestigious government-family backgrounds. Obviously all very corrupt. They got their rich daddies to pay for them to study overseas. I smelt the distinct whiff of strong nationalism the moment I entered the room. As I went onstage, I took a quick glance at those kids—mostly twenty-somethings, cheeks still plump with baby fat, their ignorant but confident faces shining with huge ambition, their eagerness for power radiating from behind their thick glasses. I didn’t feel good at all in a room full of overfed goldfish.

  As I announced I was going to read an Allen Ginsberg cover version of “America,” their faces fell. I started to read, and from the corner of my eye I could see a few Chinese students beginning to shuffle and talk in their seats. Then the room became uncomfortably quiet. I read another two verses … I knew something terrible was going to happen. I was waiting for a bullet, bang, right in my forehead from somewhere in the corner of the room. Or perhaps they would wait until I had left the Student Club and just as I stepped onto the stairs the sniper would fire. But there was no bullet; instead, two big fat Chinese boys jumped onstage and grabbed me. They grabbed my arms exactly like the Red Guards had done to protesters during the Cultural Revolution. The only difference was that these little Red Guards were educated at Harvard, not in the rice fields of home. One of them was screaming at me and spitting all over my face. “Stop licking Western ass. Who do you think you are? Eh? This is Harvard, not some shitty Chinese restaurant where you can spit whatever you want to spit!” Another one spoke in a Beijing accent. “Don’t you love your country? Eh? What kind of image do you want to show the West, eh? Our five thousand years of dignity have been ruined by you!”

  There was a commotion in the hall. As I was being pushed and pulled by these plump bullies, students were gathering their belongings, murmuring in excited whispers to each other and leaving the room. I suddenly didn’t care about the humiliation or the farce of the whole situation: I just wished I could have looked out into that sea of unkind faces and seen the only face I wanted to see. I know he would have smiled up at me, listened intently, listened deeply, applauded loudly.

  In the frenzy I looked around for Bruce. I felt panic swell up all the way from the floor to my neck, hoping the young nationalists wouldn’t chase after me and beat me up. But they couldn’t be bothered to beat up a woman and just hissed at me instead, “Get out of our club! You shameful prostitute!”

  More students followed me as I jumped down from the stage and tried to make a quick exit. They were less aggressive than the fat ones but their words were no less hurtful.

  “Why would you want to read such a pretentious poem?”

  “How dare you change Ginsberg’s America to China? You and he are from totally different backgrounds, what you’re doing is twisting reality!”

  “What is your real intention in coming to Harvard?”

  More accusations. More attacks. Before long my face and hair were soaked with the these rich boys’ venomous spit.

  I cried out: “Can’t you see that what our government is doing is exactly like what the Americans did? They say it’s in the name of people, when they’re only interested in money and power?”

  But my voice was drowned out in the rage of patriotism. Someone slapped my face and screamed at me to shut up. Thanks, old bastard sky!

  I looked up and thought of you, Jian, my darling revolutionary. How you must have felt, all those months ago. I felt a burning sensation in my right cheek; it must have been red with the mark of his five fingers. One against all. Ugly. Disgusting. Not for them, but for me. You used to be punished in that way. I remember when your first manifesto was published two years ago in “New Thoughts,” thousands of young intellectuals read it and applauded, but many more thousands of people were instantly enraged. They wanted to shut you up. They wanted you to deny corruption in the Communist Party, deny corruption in the arts. But you just carried on, until they silenced your voice. And now it’s my turn, my Peking Man. Perhaps in fact I’m really just fighting for you, after all. But it is one against all, and we cannot win. I can find no
where to escape. Not even in America.

  I walked out of the Student Club alone, still with the burn of the slap on my cheek. In the distance I saw Bruce and the band, smoking and laughing by a fountain. I avoided them. I stood behind a tree and burst into tears.

  So this was New England. This was Harvard, and our future—the Chinese Ph.D.s. The highest education for the highest stupidity. Nothing but brown shit stuck in those heads. Nothing but bad ideologies. How much money did those high-ranking government daddies pay for their ignorant sons to be at that school? Twenty-five thousand dollars a year? Plus another thirty-five thousand dollars for bed and board? If their sons and daughters are fed that way, no wonder they end up as idiots.

  15 BOSTON, MAY 2012

  The free holiday begins in Boston, the final week before the band return to China. Mu doesn’t like having to stay at Bruce’s house, although she is given her own bedroom upstairs while the boys have to share a lounge room. She mainly spends her time shopping for pork dumplings and tofu in Newton’s gigantic Chinese supermarket, and cooks Chinese meals for everyone.

  “I want to get away from Boston as soon as possible.” Mu tells her manager at the breakfast table.

  Bruce is surfing the Internet, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt. And he is surprised, even offended, by Sabotage Sister’s request.

  Bruce’s parents are preparing coffee and toast, unaware of their son’s relationship with his Chinese poet. They choose to keep quiet, not to show too much curiosity. His father, a doctor in a downtown clinic, leafs through the Boston Globe, clearing his throat and occasionally mumbling something to his wife as she prepares breakfast.

  “You know the crime rates are going up on the east side. It’s migrant groups. Just won’t assimilate.”

  Mu is stunned to hear this. A pause. “I want to take a train to the north, just for three days, then I’ll be back.”

  “With the band?” Bruce asks cautiously.

  “No. I want to be alone.” She glances at the world cities calendar on the kitchen wall; this month is Shanghai. “We’ll be going back to China together, anyway.”

  Bruce hesitates for a moment; he looks worried.

  “I can come with you and show you around if you like.”

  Now Bruce’s mother is sitting down with a plate of toast and jam. His mother is a Chinese Cantonese, and speaks in heavily-accented English. “What did you just say, Mu? You would like to travel alone? That’s how our young people like to do it here. Alone on the road!” She smiles warmly at Mu.

  Bruce’s father says, “But maybe you shouldn’t hitchhike. Just take trains. And you should book your hotels online before you go.”

  Bruce is worrying about something else. Mu glances at his knitted frown and cuts the discussion short. “I know what you’re worried about. You’re afraid I’ll become a second Lutao and run away with my passport, never to return. No, I don’t think I want to live in America.”

  “You don’t want to live in America?” Bruce’s mother stops mid-mouthful.

  Mu shakes her head. “No. I don’t have a reason to live here.”

  The family looks at her, surprised.

  “But you know, most Chinese want to live in America as soon as they get here,” Bruce’s mother says.

  “Is that why you ended up here?”

  “Well, it’s a long story …” She sighs. “My parents left Hong Kong in the sixties and came here to start a business. I didn’t get a chance to choose. If I could I would have prefered to live in Shanghai, the best city in the world!”

  “And instead you married me, and never went back to your country!” Bruce’s father says lightly and puts down his newspaper.

  “Well, I’m a woman, aren’t I? I must look after my husband and children first!” She speaks defensively.

  Bruce listens in silence and turns to Mu, about to speak, but she gets in first.

  “Now, Bruce, give me my passport.” Mu reaches out her hand to him.

  Several hours later she is on a train heading towards the state of Maine. No more Bruce, no more band members. Mu takes out her diary.

  The cities were behind me. Only roadside petrol stations and drive-in restaurants here. The train passed a few small towns. Lines of shabby houses, old caravans, small motels … I saw a sign in front of a town hall called Denmark; the next town I saw was called Finland, and the next one China! Ridiculous! It must be so desolate to live in a town called China in the state of Maine!

  The train propelled itself onwards, aimlessly, with me, like a worm in a falling apple. The horizon offered no destination, only armies of cars moving on endless highways. I thought of the last time Jian and I broke up. This break-up had really little to do with his being forced out of China last winter. Our split began long ago, in fact, even before Little Shu died. I think our break-up perhaps began several years ago when he started to get famous. I always remembered his words after his very successful Shanghai concert in 2007. He was received in Shanghai Peace Hotel by representatives from the Cultural Bureau. At that time officials still had a neutral attitude to him. As he drank beer after beer, surrounded by cameramen and young female journalists, he said, “Mu, you know the mundanity of women and daily reality doesn’t concern me, only power concerns me.” I asked what he meant by this and he said, “What men value is their power and place in society. Men are political animals first and foremost. And men are easily seduced by it. But maybe it’s our nature to be taken in by all this. Maybe that’s what men really want.” I listened in silence and watched him being grabbed by journalists. I wondered then whether we would make it. And after all these years where is my place in his life? If his mind is set like this, what about our vow to be together FOREVER? When the tour ended we came back to Beijing. A month later, I found out I was pregnant. My doubts of our life together were pushed away. I was excited by the future of a new person joining us and our nearly militant life. But then …

  It is a moonless night. 11.40 p.m. Mu arrives at a roadside motel. All she wants as she enters the small room she’s paid for in cash is a long dreamless sleep.

  16 MAINE, MAY 2012

  Took bus to Bar Harbor. I am on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no more road for me to go on. And on the other side is another foreign land where the ideological Peking Man shelters. Peking Man, where in Europe are you? I wish you had been at my Harvard reading to see how they treated me. Would it not make you disillusioned for good, and fed up with politics? Well, I’m fed up. Enough is enough. Too much ideology for a brief life. I do not want to bear all this.

  I’ve slept a lot since I’ve been here. I hear the sea roaring, the waves from the other side of the ocean calling me, but I don’t even have the energy to step out of the room. Curtains are heavily drawn. I don’t even bother to get up to eat.

  I feel hollow. Inside me is total hollowness. My heart holds nothing. There is no one in this country I am willing to devote my life to, nor could I dedicate myself to this culture. The fact of my being here is the fact of being singular: there is no longer a collective self within me. That’s where I am now.

  Drifting in America is like drifting without weight, like drifting without carrying an ID card or a key. Yet I am so used to walking around with my ID card and my key, like I do at home in Beijing. Now that I am in a lifeless brand-new motel room, nothing is required except money. That’s how it is. If you want to fill the empty closet you must buy stuff.

  Perhaps America is a place one has to discover for oneself and to live for oneself. Westerners believe in individuality—“Be yourself and live for yourself”—whereas in China we are taught to live for others and for the state but not for ourselves. And even if it is good and valid to “live for yourself,” the problem is, what if one hasn’t got oneself? What if one is born with the mission of not living for oneself? In America they don’t understand that not every person is an individual. Most of the time I feel we are just a tiny particle within a collective body. You have to go with the collective. With it, yo
u are everything. Against it, you don’t exist. Like Jian: he is non-existent now, a non-person person.

  And me? I feel reduced to nothing here. Perhaps it is possible to live without yourself in China, but not in the West. Unless one invents oneself.

  Yes, unless one invents oneself!

  SIX | TALKING TO SATIE

  yuan shui jiu bu liao huo.

  Distant water won’t help extinguish the nearby fire.

  HAN FEI ZI (PHILOSOPHER, 281–233 BC)

  1 LONDON, AUGUST 2013

  From: Iona1982@gmail.com

  To: Jonathan.Barker@applegate.co.uk

  Subject: Translation update

  Dear Jonathan,

  I hope this email finds you well, and that you received the tranche of translation I sent you. I’d love to know what you think.

  I heard from your assistant that you have collected more information about Kublai Jian in the last few weeks. That’s great to hear, as there seem to be lots of gaps. I’ve already translated a fair amount from Mu’s diaries, but I don’t yet see how her material can connect tightly to Jian’s. It would be great to know more about him—do you know anything about his music?

  I’d also love to know how you envisage using this material for a future publication. If you’ve got time, it would be great to meet up for a coffee and a bit of an update. I feel like we have a lot to talk about.

  My best wishes,

  Iona

  A few hours later an email pops up on Iona’s computer:

  From: Jonathan.Barker@applegate.co.uk

  To: Iona1982@gmail.com

  Subject: RE: Translation update

  Dear Iona,

  Great to hear from you. Let’s definitely meet up.

  I’ve attached a scan of a letter from Switzerland which came my way. It might illuminate a few things, perhaps. It was written in French but one of my colleagues has done a rough translation.