by Val Wang
“You’re a very beautiful girl,” he said.
I jolted out of my reverie, annoyed at his clumsiness. Beauty wasn’t the point. Art was. We were artists. Equals. I was eccentric and messy, just like him. We were connected by something loftier than looks, I was sure of it.
“Hey, do you know my cousin Xiao Peng?” I asked.
“Who?”
“I mean Xu Peng,” I said. Xiao Peng meant “Little Peng,” a name only the family called him. “He took classes at the Film Academy.”
“Oh . . . Xu Peng!”
“You know him, then.”
“No, never heard of him.”
I realized that Xiao Peng had probably met Zhang Yuan only a few times, if even that. By being American, I had leapfrogged him again. That odd look he had given me when I told him I’d met Zhang Yuan had probably been envy. But in a way I envied him. He had grown up in that old house in the old city. He knew all its hutongs by heart. The cookie-cutter suburbs where I had grown up were not a place you could really call home. The arbitrary curves of its streets were not worth memorizing or returning to. In a strange way, I had inherited my parents’ condition: exiled from the motherland and searching for a place to call home. Even the middle-class American upbringing they had provided couldn’t protect me from those questions, from that past.
“What’s next for you?” I asked Zhang Yuan.
“I’m going to be shooting a feature film soon, a big one.”
“About what?”
“A girl who goes to jail for seventeen years for killing her sister and then is released and comes home for New Year’s. This is the first film I’m doing officially.”
“What does that mean?”
“My script had to be cleared by the censors. It’s already been approved.”
“Did they cut much?”
“Not too much. We even have permission to shoot inside a women’s prison.”
“Where?”
“Tianjin.”
“I lived in Tianjin last year!”
“Perfect then. You should come visit the set.”
• • •
The next day I sat down at my computer in the office to write the Crazy English story. I stared out the window at the smokestack belching out lacy black puffs. The winter sky was a pallid industrial gray with only a bright smear where the sun should have been. You have a home here now. Meeting Zhang Yuan was further proof that the city wanted me to stay. You’re a very beautiful girl. I couldn’t get his words out of my mind.
I could see down into a schoolyard where elementary school students wearing identical tracksuits were standing in razor-straight rows doing synchronized calisthenics, their arms all outstretched like Christ. They were slowly and silently drawing tiny circles in the air in near unison as if underwater, or hypnotized. They were lead by their gym teacher Lao Li, the guy who doubled as our night watchman. Sue said she had come in early one day and caught him with a lady caller, who he claimed had come to “borrow a book.”
Jade teetered in on platform shoes. “How was your date yesterday?” she asked with a suggestive lift of her neat, thin eyebrows.
“You mean my interview?” Something about Jade made me want to say or think the exact opposite of her.
“What-ever,” she said. “Did anything interesting happen?”
“We talked about making films and New York and, you know, life.”
“That’s it? Did he pay, at least? You know my philosophy: I just think, ‘What can he do for me?’”
• • •
The next week, my phone at work rang. It was Zhang Yuan again. He invited me to a bar to make sure I had all the material I needed for my article. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I had already finished and that most of the parts involving him had been cut.
We met that night at the Pretty Bird Club, a former underground bomb shelter that had been converted into a fairy wonderland nightspot, complete with little wooden bridges, swings hung from the ceiling with rope, and hidden nooks shaped like tree trunks. When I arrived, I was surprised to find he was not alone.
He had brought his friend Xiao Ding, a film producer who spoke impeccable British English, to make sure there were no misunderstandings between us. It had the opposite effect. Xiao Ding was a proper-looking man with rimless glasses and thin hair pasted to his forehead. Instead of carrying a satchel made of leather or canvas, he toted around all his belongings in a plastic bag. I felt as if we were being chaperoned by Zhang Yuan’s tax accountant.
We all chatted politely for several hours. At the end of the night I exchanged business cards with Xiao Ding and we all parted coolly. I felt confused—had I imagined all that had passed between Zhang Yuan and me during brunch? Was his interest in me all business?
In any case, we began talking on the phone every few days. My ideas about making a documentary were on hold; finding comfort and connection were much more urgent tasks, and he was the first person I’d found in Beijing whom I could really talk to. In return, he flung outrageous invitations my way: He would fly me out to a Crazy English shoot in Ürümqi in the far west of China, or out to Rome (which wasn’t New York, he said, but wasn’t too bad) where he would be doing postproduction on his next film, or would get his driver to bring me to Tianjin to visit the film set. The world was opening up in unforeseen ways. I fantasized madly about these trips, but any details beyond the setting—a desert hideaway, the Forum at dusk—were left fuzzy. They floated distantly on the horizon, where things always look better.
I kept my relationship with Zhang Yuan a careful secret from my relatives, who called occasionally to check up on me. If they had known what I was doing with a married man—whatever it was I was doing—they would have alerted my parents in the States, no doubt provoking an international incident of epic proportions.
• • •
When my phone rang at home on a Sunday evening, I knew right away who it was. My parents always called on Sunday mornings, their time, before my mom went to teach Chinese School and my dad to play tennis in the courts next to the school, as they had been doing since before I could remember. I instantly pictured the classrooms of Herbert Hoover Junior High School and heard the droning sounds of Tang poems or ancient folktales being read in unison. Their calls were always filled with the latest gossip from their circle of friends, usually news about their children, who was going to what medical school, that type of thing.
“Hello?” A pregnant, international long-distance pause followed.
“Hi, Val!” said my mom, then my dad. They always got on the phone together. My stomach tightened at the sounds of their voices.
“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”
“Everything is good at home. How are you?”
“Fine.” I never confided my thoughts to them and I imagined their horror if I told them the truth about my life. The loneliness. The strange love affair. Even this apartment would even have upset them.
“How’s your job?”
“Great! I’m starting to research this story about the government forcing American companies to take down their billboards on this avenue for the fiftieth anniversary—”
“Okay, okay,” said my dad. Extremely frugal, they always cut me off once they had gotten the main gist of what I was saying. They seemed to call just to know that I was still alive.
“When are you coming back home?” asked my mom.
“I’m not really sure. I sort of like it here. There’s a lot to write about and—”
“No, no, no,” my dad cut in, with his favorite phrase. “Why don’t you go to graduate school?”
“We can help you with the tuition.”
“I’m not really sure what I would study. I’m kind of doing what I would only be studying about in the States and—”
“How about law school?”
“Mom!”
> “Anyway, do you remember your elephant foot plant?” she asked.
“Of course I do.” I had picked out the elephant foot plant almost twenty years before, when both it and I were only as high as my mom’s knee. I had always wanted a little sister, or a pet, to lavish attention on, order around, and mold in my image. I had to settle for the plant. For years I had watered and cared for it and watched as it grew from a giant, squat bulb into a tall cascade of strappy, flowing leaves.
“It died.”
“What do you mean it died?”
“The leaves turned brown. I tried to repot it but it didn’t like the new soil.”
“Were you watering it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Twenty years is a long time for a plant to live, Val.”
“Oh, I can’t believe it’s gone. I loved that plant.”
“You were too far away from home for too long.”
“Are you sure you watered it? Plants don’t just die, Mom.”
“Okay, okay,” said my dad. “We have to go.”
“Well, bye then.”
“Bye, love you.”
“Love you too.”
After we hung up, I sat thinking about my elephant foot plant, which had always seemed to have such a strong personality. It was a hardy, unruly plant whose narrow, sharp-edged leaves would cut you if you handled them wrong. But those same leaves tapered down to wisps at the end, making the whole plant look like a head of long green hair. I imagined my mom slowly depriving it of water and watching as the leaves turned brown and shriveled. But I didn’t think she was capable of that. She was right. Twenty years was a long time for a plant to live, and everything has its time to go. I too had been repotted, and only time would tell if I would fare better than my plant.
I lay in bed staring out the window. My bedroom was a makeshift brick hovel with a tin roof, which was freezing in the winter and would be boiling hot in the summer, like a Parisian garret. My landlords had built it on the roof. The walls of the room were blotched with water stains, black and degenerate. Two huge windows formed one corner of the room and out of them I could see the cylindrical brown top of the Hotel Kunlun where Zhang Yuan and I had had brunch.
Any time I felt fear or despair over the life I was living, I just looked out the window at the hotel and the word harbinger popped into my mind—of good, of hope, of the future. Like a daffodil after a long winter. I will make my own documentary, I thought. I will. I will work hard, save money for a camera, do what it takes. The unspoken end of the thought went, And then my parents will finally be proud of me. I would never have spelled this out, nor would I have dared consider the consequences of not succeeding.
Chapter Seven
Harbinger, Harbinger, Harbinger
Mysterious sounds echoed into my apartment from the stairwell outside: a long metallic screech ended by an abrupt clang, low hissing, dull menacing thumps, a sound like a strand of beads breaking and spilling all over the floor. I sat alone in my apartment one Saturday night, the High Holy Day of Partying stretching out bleakly in front of me. And now a horde of angry ghosts was trying to break into my apartment. I tried to identify the sounds: security doors slamming shut, trash falling down the chute and hitting bottom, feet shuffling upstairs, giving a hard stomp on the landings, but the beads breaking—that one I couldn’t figure out.
I heard someone climbing upstairs, stomping three or four times to activate the stubborn light sensor on the fourth floor. (The sensor on my landing was the exact opposite, set off by no more than a stealthy footfall.) I could picture the stairwell out there—dark and grim and full of things most sane people would have thrown out: birdcages with broken bars, toilet bowls blackened by dust, half-rusted bicycles. Then came loud voices on the landing, so I went to the peephole. It was like watching a tiny movie: I saw my neighbors—husband, wife, and teenage daughter—going into their apartment and shutting the door. Suddenly the light in the scene was snuffed out, my peephole plugged by the wide thumb of someone who was clearly a maniac. His hands would be around my throat next. I yelped and the sound activated the light again, making me realize I had been terrified by nothing more than the light timing itself out.
I called Zhang Yuan, but he didn’t pick up. From the window onto the air shaft came a man’s voice soaring in off-key karaoke grandeur into the final aria of the Titanic theme song.
In between the frightful and ridiculous sounds, there was something even worse: a silence more silent than anything I’d heard in my entire life. At home, I’d found the voices of my parents deafening. You can be anything you want to be in life. We saved money since the day you were born to send you to college. You’re spoiled. You’ve never eaten bitterness in your whole life. Do you know what we got for our birthdays growing up? One bowl of noodles. Life is suffering. You had a happy childhood, didn’t you? Work harder! The contradictory voices of my friends only confused me more. Val, you work too hard. Just do what you want. What would happen if you just took their car and went out for a drive? Why do you keep your true self so hidden from the world?
One reason I’d traveled so far away was to break out of everyone’s orbit and to be able to say, This is my life, this is my story, my toilet jury-rigged with dental floss by me. I had no idea how vast and empty the world would seem. I sent my mind out as far as I could—into the dark city and the dark countryside rippling out to mind’s end beyond that. It didn’t touch anything familiar or comforting, just silence, fear, loneliness, as if all the love had been sucked out of the world. Sitting there felt hollowing and painful and mysterious—like some kind of meditation or fasting. Either I’d get stronger or just go crazy.
What did having a nervous breakdown even look like? From the name, I assumed it involved falling down on the floor and twitching like a bunny’s whiskers until someone noticed and put you in a quiet rest home for weary women in the countryside, with beautiful manicured lawns and bars on the windows. But somehow I began to suspect that it might be something subtler, like your insides slowly melting into undifferentiated glop, the conversations you had with yourself becoming increasingly animated, and the food in the refrigerator rotting, as the world around you ticked obliviously along.
If I could have cried, I would have, but I never cried in China. Instead, I took a piece of white cardboard and began writing VALERIE all over it, again and again, each letter a shape with no meaning.
• • •
The next Saturday night, the phone rang.
“Hello? Wei?”
“Val! What are you doing right now?” asked Jade.
“Nothing.”
“We’re going out to the Den. Tonight is Eighties Nite. I cannot wait. Do you want to come?”
“I don’t know. Eighties Nite?” It didn’t make sense to me to come all the way to China to listen to ’80s music from America. Plus, the darkness outside seemed so forbidding, as if the world simply dropped off beyond the walls of my apartment.
“You can’t just stay home.”
“I can’t be bothered to get dressed and get myself into a cab.”
“I’m in Steve’s car. We’ll come to pick you up.”
“Well . . .”
“They’ll buy us drinks.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Max is with us too.”
“Okay.” No was my normal social instinct—I am my father’s daughter, after all—but new in town, it was time to say yes to everything. Jade was an excellent role model. Though raised by Chinese immigrant parents, she had not a shred of my self-abnegation.
“We’ll be at your door in twenty minutes. Be ready.”
The Den was dark, crowded, and smoky. Upstairs a DJ was spinning hits from the ’80s. “My Sharona.” “Take on Me.” “Material Girl.” Young Westerners danced in sweaty clusters. Now it was only the ’90s—much too early to
be nostalgic for that era. Standing awkwardly at the edge of the bar, my life didn’t seem so different yet.
“What do you want to drink?” yelled Steve over the music. At least there was booze now.
“Long Island Iced Tea,” Jade instantly said.
I waffled and Max cut in. “B-52s for both of us.”
After Steve went to the bar, Max turned to Jade and said, “When I got you the internship with him, I didn’t think you’d jump into bed with him!” His angry tone of voice was belied by a big grin.
Jade rolled her eyes. Steve was a ruggedly handsome New Zealander who had been working as a photographer in Beijing for almost ten years. After a few days of riding around in his jeep with him as he took pictures, what she wanted most was to hang out in his apartment in the diplomatic compound and watch cable TV.
“I just cannot be a photographer in this city without a car,” she said. “Do you expect me to ride the bus everywhere?”
Steve came back with the drinks. He handed Jade hers and then gave Max and me shot glasses with blue flames shimmying above dark molten liquid. How did this work? Steve came back with a beer for himself and two tiny straws for us.
“Quickly,” said Max. I watched as he slurped his shot down, then I did the same. I expected it to burn and tear on the way down but it was surprisingly sweet, and I could feel my head pop open a crack. I noticed that Max’s pinkies were mere stumps. Jade took one sip of her drink and handed it back.
“Tell them to put some liquor in it.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said Steve.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself,” she said, and made a beeline for the bar.
After a few more drinks, the air began to liquefy and I began to feel a feathery connection to others in the room. In the dim corners of the bar, strangers began groping one another. I danced. The past began to seem further and further away.
On the way home, my cab was stopped around the corner from my apartment by a man in a green army overcoat and red armband. A Chinese-looking woman traveling alone at night in the neighborhood aroused suspicion. I rolled down the window. He ordered me to get out. I refused. I was suspicious of him too. Was he was really a police officer? And would it be better if he were or if he weren’t? Behind him was a raucous crowd of men squatting and smoking and playing cards. He opened the cab door and ordered me to show him my identity card. I refused again, saying I didn’t have one. I wasn’t Chinese.