Beautiful Country

by J. R. Thornton

  We arrived in Tianjin at precisely 12:25 p.m. As in Beijing, the old train station had been demolished and a much larger one built. I walked out into the sunlight to a vast concrete plaza the size of four football fields. In the middle stood a tall clock tower with all of the mechanics exposed. Around its base, travelers wearing backpacks sat with a sense of permanence, as if they had no plans to move. The sun shone brighter than in Beijing. I hadn’t seen any other Westerners on the train, nor did I see any around the plaza. I bought a map at a kiosk and opened it up to get my bearings. The tennis complex was not far from the train station so I decided to walk.

  I reached the tennis complex after about half an hour. It was just as I had remembered it. A group of young boys and girls were practicing. I waited for the coach to notice me. He walked over and asked me what I wanted. I told him I had played in Beijing with the boys’ team four years before. I was trying to find one of the players who was from Tianjin. “Do you know Bowen?” He shook his head and pointed to the office. “You can ask in there,” he said.

  I found a woman at a desk in a small office. I explained why I had come.

  She shook her head. I asked again. She said, “Wait a minute,” and brought in one of the other coaches. He nodded his head. “Bowen. No play,” he said. “Working.”

  “Ta zai nar (Where is he)?” I asked.

  “Bu zhidao (I don’t know).” He looked away when he answered and I could tell that he was lying. I switched to English.

  “I’m an old friend of Bowen’s. I came all the way from Beijing to see him.”

  “Bowen no here. I don’t know,” the coach repeated.

  “Is he with his family? His father?”

  Maybe because he wanted to get rid of me, or maybe because I had proved by my knowledge that I was a friend of Bowen’s, he decided to help me. He nodded and pointed north. “He works over there, I think. New buildings. Very big.”

  “How far?”

  “Hen jin (Very close), ten minutes?”

  I left and headed in the direction that he had pointed. I couldn’t imagine Bowen being so close to the tennis courts and not playing.

  After a few blocks I saw the tall high-rises. I counted twenty-eight buildings. About half were finished, the others were under construction. The buildings were grouped in clusters of four with shared courtyards. I saw a group of men building a wall at the far side. I walked slowly and then stopped and watched.

  There was Bowen, sitting down on a half-built wall with the other workers smoking a cigarette. I watched him throw his cigarette butt down and stand up to return to work. His hair was shaved close. He wore dusty cargo pants and a once-white tank top. His skin was tanned and his thin shoulders and arms were sinewy with muscle. He worked while the other men rested.

  The sun was high, and the August air was hot and thick. I looked around for a spot in the shade, but there was none. The building next to where Bowen was working had a fenced-off playground that was part of a primary school housed on the ground floor. I found a bench on the other side of the playground and sat down. The tangle of so many children on swing sets and jungle gyms screened me. I listened for a moment. A high-pitched laugh or shout would peak above the gentle static of the children’s voices as they tried their skill at the monkey bars, or pushed each other on swings, or played king of the mountain on the sliding board.

  I don’t know what I had hoped to find, but I didn’t expect to find Bowen like this. I leaned over and held my head between my knees to find a way to breathe. I closed my eyes and heard the joy in Bowen’s voice when he gave me my Chinese name—Yu—and when he first told me the Chinese name for America—Mei Guo—the beautiful country—Mei Guo—he had repeated it several times. I sat back up and watched Bowen as he bent down and picked up one heavy concrete block and laid it across a joint. He adjusted it slightly and then began to smooth a thin layer of cement across the top and side. He turned to pick up another concrete block. He kept his back flat as he bent down. He straightened his body and set the concrete block in its place on the wall. He gently pushed and pulled each side until it was lined up just right. He took a step back to examine it. Unsatisfied, he made one more tiny adjustment and then smoothed a thin layer of cement across the top of the next block. He turned to retrieve another concrete block.

  He didn’t work with gloves. His fingers and palms would now be so callused that he would not be able to hold a racket the way he used to, when the racket was an extension of his arm. He would no longer be able to feel the speed and weight of a tennis ball. He would no longer be able to play the game the way that he had, the way that so many people dreamed of playing, but so few ever could.

  For three hours I watched Bowen single-handedly complete one side of the wall, concrete block after concrete block. Bowen worked with the steadiness and precision of a machine. When he had completed his side of the wall, he turned to help another worker, an elderly man who was thin and stooped.

  A teacher emerged from the primary school, leading a troupe of children single file. She clapped her hands and shouted to the children and they broke ranks and scattered, running and laughing, across the playground. The playground was now almost completely darkened by the shadow of an adjacent building. The children ran in circles around her until she called out again. They dropped into a loose arc around her. She led them in songs and clapping games. Some of the children stood up and jumped around and waved their arms as they sang. With each successive song the teacher slowed the tempo, and the children were calmed as if a light had been dimmed.

  Why had I come?

  I checked my watch, it was almost five. I looked back at the construction site and saw that the other workers—all, that is, except Bowen—had begun to pack up their belongings. The sun was making its slow descent, but Bowen remained. He worked alone now, building the wall, brick by brick. There was no joy in the way he worked as there had been in the way he had played tennis. But he worked in a way that was different from the other men who had slapped cement on the bricks without care and never checked to see if they placed them on the wall crooked or straight. I remember the pride he had shown when he had spoken about his father as a master craftsman. I remembered the story he told me about his beginnings in tennis—about how he practiced every day by himself, hitting a ball against a wall, here in Tianjin. I wondered if the wall he was building would ever serve the same purpose for another young player.

  Even though he was alone, I could not find it within myself to go over and speak to him. Three times I almost got myself to go over and talk to him, but each time I found some reason to turn back. I told myself that Bowen would not want me to see him laying bricks, that it would hurt his fierce pride. I told myself that even if I went over and spoke to him, that I could make no difference in his life—Bowen who had so desperately wanted to be a world-class tennis player. He and I both knew he could have been one of the best of our generation. I gave myself a thousand reasons not to go over and speak to him, but in the end it didn’t matter. They were probably all wrong.

  I knew that in many ways I was responsible for Bowen’s fate. I was scared, I supposed. Scared of what he might say to me. Scared that he might not say anything at all. I thought about the letter my father had given me before I left for Beijing almost five years ago. “Courage is about always doing the right thing.” The definition was simple and clear—four words—do the right thing—but the difficulty was in the identification of what was right and what was wrong. By the simple definition I had done the right thing. I tried to help a friend who had lied to me, and I had refused a friend when he asked me to lie for him. I couldn’t be faulted, but deep in my heart I knew what Tom would have done, and I knew in the same way that I had failed to venture forth—I had failed to find the courage to take a risk, to act when only one part of me was certain what was right and what was wrong. I’ve come to understand that each person has to work out their own personal algorithm of courage. No two are the same, and it’s no use trying to borrow
or copy anyone else’s. Guided by his own algorithms of courage and determination, Bowen had made it as far as he was capable of on his own—and then he had turned to me for help, and I had failed him.

  The children were now singing a slow, gentle song that had the rhythmic simplicity of a lullaby. After each verse, they repeated the refrain “yue er ming, feng er jing (the moon is bright, the wind is calm).” When they were finished, the teacher asked them to stand up and form a line. She led them—quiet and subdued—inside.

  I took the 6:15 back to Beijing. I watched the countryside shudder past—flat, dry fields and small blockhouses scattered here and there, orange under the final light of the dying sun. Next to me a small child slept in her mother’s lap while her mother sang to her. I recognized her song as one of those the children at the school had sung in the playground that afternoon.

  As we pulled into the Beijing station I noticed that someone had scrawled graffiti across a door in the station wall. I looked at it more closely and recognized one of the quotations that Victoria’s husband Z had on the ceiling of his restaurant.

  我们将治愈我们的创伤，我们将继续战斗直到结束。

  We will heal our wounds, and we will fight until we come to the end.

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a debt of gratitude to all the people who helped me along the way.

  To the boys in Beijing who welcomed me as their teammate and whose work ethic and discipline have always inspired me to work harder.

  To the family I lived with in Beijing, who gave me a home on the other side of the world.

  To Karel Fromel, who taught me the meaning of hard work.

  To Fritz Mark, Jean Yu, Manjula, and Stuart Solomon for the advice and support they gave from the very beginning.

  To Ron Carlson, who read the earliest draft of this novel and told me to stick with it.

  To my wonderful teachers Bret Anthony Johnston, Amy Hempel, and Mark Poirier, from whom I learned so much.

  To the Office for the Arts at Harvard for supporting me.

  To Andrew Wylie for believing in me.

  To Jeff Alexander and Ann Patty for all their help and advice, without which I would not have made it to this point.

  To my editor Maya Ziv for all her hard work and for taking a chance on me.

  And to my mother and father for instilling in me a love of literature and for always encouraging me to pursue this path.

  About the Author

  J. R. THORNTON studied history, English, and Chinese at Harvard College, graduating in 2014. He lived in Beijing as a teenager and returned to undertake a fellowship as a writer-in-residence at the International Writer’s Center at Beijing Normal University. He was an internationally ranked junior tennis player and a member of the 2012 Ivy League–winning Harvard men’s tennis team. He has been the recipient of the LeBaron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize and Harvard’s Artist Development Fellowship. He will return to China in the fall of 2016 as a member of the inaugural class of Schwarzman Scholars. Beautiful Country is his debut novel.

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  Additional Praise for Beautiful Country

  “This unsettling book about the moral encounter between America and China is a study of privilege, innocence, and risk. It is a tragedy of manners and a portrait of Beijing—amplified and torqued and unmistakable.”

  —Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award

  “A coming-of-age story that vividly encapsulates the complexities of the modern encounter between China and America. Indeed, this is in many ways the quintessential ‘Chimerican’ novel for the millennial generation. Disarming in its candor, addictively readable.”

  —Niall Ferguson, author of Kissinger: 1923–1968: The Idealist and Civilization

  “Compelling and authentic . . . a story of China as told by an outsider. Through the perspective of a young American, we can see a different side to our country and ourselves—one that is unfamiliar, but real.”

  —Yu Hua, winner of the James Joyce Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize

  Copyright

  BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY. Copyright © 2016 by J. R. Thornton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-241191-4 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition April 2016 ISBN 9780062411921

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