The People’s Republic of Desire

by Annie Wang

  In 1989, when I was eleven years old, my parents suddenly divorced. To this day, the reason why they divorced remains a mystery. They have kept it secret. Friends who know them well guess that they separated because of political differences during 1989. This was the year that many Chinese students protested the government's actions in Beijing. You may remember the famous picture of the solitary student with a grocery bag in his hand, holding back the line of tanks by refusing to move out of their way. Even an event as volatile as the Tiananmen Square protest shouldn't have been able to tear apart two people who love each other, should it? But how can they allow politics to intrude on their personal life? It's stupid. My parents never quarreled when they were together. They separated peacefully. Neither of them has given me a satisfying explanation. They just said that they wanted different things in life. Mother looked after me alone, but there were admirers who pursued her. They bought me candies or chocolate to win me over. I used to be annoyed by so many visitors at home. I enjoyed spending private time with my father. He liked to take me outdoors, hiking in the mountains, camping in the woods.

  Mother later married a white-haired American, who is the general manager of a Texas oil company in China. The old man is tall and thin, refined, and fifteen years older than Mother. I call him Big John. When Mother was forty, she gave me twin Eurasian little sisters. They study at the Beijing International School next to the Holiday Inn Lido. Mother and my stepfather, Big John, live at Riviera Villa near the airport, with celebrities and multinational company bosses as their neighbors.

  Even though we are mother and daughter, we are as different as night and day. Mei is very practical. She loves a man's power and status more than the actual man. I am the opposite. I'm much more romantic and sentimental. I want to love someone for who he is. But I can't deny that Mother is more successful in dealing with men.

  My father remained single for over ten years. I always feel that he loved Mother more than Mother loved him. I used to say this to him, and he said I was being unfair to my mother. Father put his heart entirely into his work after the divorce. In 1992, he left HP. With a group of colleagues, he set up the Chen Computer Company, manufacturing computer components for the United States and Taiwan.

  Now he has several factories across China. Two years ago, Father married his former secretary, Jean Fang.

  27 The New Leftist

  I have a male admirer in Beijing: Professor Yuan. He is the Chicago-educated hunk who is considered a flag in the camp of the new leftists.

  We met at a reading at the New China Bookstore. He moved very fast – he sent me a letter the day after we met. "Good upbringing, good education, good-looking, smart and intriguing: I met my Venus today. I felt like Goethe's young Werther. My sorrow came after she disappeared."

  For the next two weeks, he faxed me love letters every day, citing Plato, Hegel, and Shakespeare. I think it is nerdy, but cute. My mother Mei encourages me to see him, "People say that Yuan is a political star. Who knows? He might become China 's president someday."

  I agree to have dinner with him. It's not because I am interested in being China 's First Lady. I just want to move on from my past with Len. It's been a year since I came back to China. Sometimes, I feel lonely when I see boys and girls walking in pairs in the streets. It's time to have a date now.

  Neither Professor Yuan nor I expected that our date would turn into a heated debate between a liberal and a new leftist.

  In the Chinese ideological world at the moment, the liberals and the new leftists are engaged in a vigorous battle of name-calling. Basically, the liberals are pro-U.S. and the new leftists are anti-U.S. The new leftists call the liberals "imperialist lackeys" and hanjian, or Chinese traitors, while the liberals denounce the new leftists as a bunch of xenophobic nuts and opportunists.

  As Professor Yuan and I drink dragon-well tea at Kongyiji, a restaurant named after a character in a story by one of China's best-known authors, Lu Xun, Professor Yuan asks me, "Are you interested in politics?"

  "Yes." I smile.

  "Great. I love girls who are into politics and soccer!" Professor Yuan's eyes glitter with passion. In the next hour, he indulges in jargon, dropping words and phrases like new orientalism, multipolarity, postcolonialism, globalization, and the clash of civilizations.

  I keep nodding, thinking, he's hot-looking. I'll go along with this political stuff for a while, then try to change the subject with a more romantic gambit.

  Yuan babbles on eagerly. "Some people call me a new leftist. I don't like it, because Chinese new leftists are all following behind the asses of some loser Western leftist intellectuals. The so-called left and right are also Western concepts. If people have to define me, they should call me a member of the Middle Kingdom school." Professor Yuan likes to talk about himself.

  "Oh, yeah?" Perhaps I'm outdated. Maybe in Beijing, talking about politics is nowadays more sexy than talking about anything else. After all, politics means power, the ultimate aphrodisiac.

  Professor Yuan continues as if he was preaching to his students, "Western culture is aggressive, always searching to expand. The problem with Christianity is that they think their god is the only god. Colonial expansion was undertaken in the name of getting others to discard their own faith and follow the Christian faith and system."

  "What about Christianity's respect for human rights, individualism, and liberty?" I ask, thinking to myself, well, although he sounds a bit ridiculous, like the Gang of Four, at least the Versace suit he wears is cool.

  "Christianity has the respect you talk about for people who act in accordance with their will. But for outsiders, it doesn't. Think about how these Christians treated the American Indians, African slaves, and the indigenous people in their colonies!"

  I think, Nowadays, the legendary revolutionary Che Guevara is well liked in China. Is Professor Yuan trying to tell me that he is a reincarnation of Che who also cares for the oppressed? Otherwise, why does he indulge in political cliches?

  "Are other cultures perfect? Chinese or Islamic cultures are not always humanist!" I respond.

  "Islam is too complicated – I'm not an expert on that. China 's uncontrolled pursuit of money today is all the result of our blind worship of the West," says Professor Yuan. Apparently China is not responsible for any of its own problems, at least not in the professor's eyes.

  "What about the Cultural Revolution?" I didn't expect the Versace-clad professor to be so radical. I decide not to run my toe up his leg.

  Professor Yuan replies with his long-prepared answer. "It was the result of pursuing Western Marxism and Stalinism. If China followed its own path of Confucianism and Taoism, the Chinese would never have needed to go through so much pain."

  "Do you think China was peaceful in ancient times? Weren't most emperors cruel and tyrannical? The legalists, over two thousand years ago, were already totalitarians!" I also want to mention foot binding, eunuchs, emie jiuzu – extermination of an entire family, shougua – the practice of forcing women to remain unmarried after their husband's death, wenzi yu – execution of dissident authors, but I think better of it. No sadomasochism before dinner.

  "I don't deny there is cruelty in Chinese history, but which country's history is free of blemish? Look at the United States, which flaunts itself as being the world's most civilized and most humanitarian nation, yet in the 1950s racial segregation was still legal. What I'm talking about is China 's collective culture, not the culture of its rulers. The Chinese mass culture is tolerant and peaceful."

  "But the pitched battles fought by Chinese peasants and clashes between local clans weren't peaceful!" I wonder if Professor Yuan would get off his soapbox and begin to think about a clash between the sheets. Can a lover of the West and a hater of the West be passionate together in one bed?

  Professor Yuan disagrees. " Europe had bloody fights too. Looking only at China 's dark side is the liberal point of view. Liberals think that the moon is bigger in the West than in the East. When you t
hink of ancient China, the grand Qin and Han dynasties, the golden age of the Tang and Song dynas-ties – the Chinese had dignity and pride! But now we're chasing after everybody else. Before, it was Big Brother the Soviet Union. Now it's the United States. China is always following everybody else's ass."

  "If you dislike the West so much, why did you stay in the States for eight years? Why didn't you leave and come home earlier?" I don't finish the rest of it: Why are you wearing a Versace suit, Ecco shoes, a Cartier watch, and driving a Volvo? I don't want Professor Yuan to lose face, even if he does have ass on his mind.

  "It was all to complete my Ph.D. and get my green card. Don't the Chinese place great importance on returning home in glory? If I didn't go to Silicon Valley and come home a dot-com millionaire, at least I could return home wearing my doctorate cap."

  I can't stand Professor Yuan's hypocrisy any longer and snap back at him, "You take advantage of the West by taking their scholarship and their green card, but on the other hand, you curse the West as colonialist and imperialist. You're pathetic."

  "Niuniu, I think you've become a Western thinker. Westernization of a Chinese woman often leads to the corruption of the woman. Chinese men still prefer traditional women."

  I light a cigarette of Yuan's, pretending to be a smoker. "I'm already corrupt."

  Professor Yuan tries a new tack: "I don't spend all my time talking about this stuff. I also love soccer. How do you think the World Cup will play out?"

  "I wish my idol Ricky Martin would sing again there someday!" I say.

  "Ricky Martin? A Latino bro? At least not an imperialist!"

  "I wish my hero David Beckham would recover soon," I say.

  "That English devil is my hero, too." Professor Yuan surrenders.

  POPULAR PHRASES

  HANJIAN: Chinese traitors, a historical pejorative term.

  EMIE JIUZU: The ancient practice of exterminating an entire family through the ninth extended relatives as punishment for wrongdoings.

  SHOUGUA: The practice of forcing widows to remain single till death to keep their purity. Obviously this is not a custom that is particurly popular in today's modern China.

  WENZI YU: The execution of dissident authors.

  28 One Dollar

  Sometimes, while driving the roads in big cities such as Shenzhen and Beijing, I see so many luxury cars pass by that I can't help but wonder how wealthy the Chinese have become compared to twenty years ago. Take a friend of mine as an example. She came to Beijing ten years ago for schooling from a town so small and isolated that most of the people living there had never even heard of BMWs, let alone seen one. Nowadays, she works for a Beijing newspaper, drives a European car, and has just bought a condominium costing 800,000 yuan. But according to her college classmates, she is considered "just so-so." As a returnee who lived in the United States for some years, I see that young urban Chinese are finally catching up with the middle-class life of the West. And the effects of this change are both positive and negative.

  Today in China, to get rich is glorious. But does a higher standard of living make people better human beings? Are the rich more generous than the poor? What about the tension between the rich and the poor? Can money buy satisfaction? These are serious questions that I think need to be thought about more by the Chinese people.

  One Saturday night, I was waiting in a line of cars to exit a crowded outdoor public parking lot. There were five cars ahead of me. For ten minutes, the line didn't move. I soon discovered that the owner of a BMW SUV, a man in his thirties, was refusing to pay the one yuan parking fee because he objected to the parking lot attendant knocking on his car in a heavy-handed manner. No damage was done to his car, but the driver remained defiant. The parking lot attendant, wearing cotton-padded clothes and looking to be at least fifty years old, insisted that the driver pay the fee. He stopped the car and gathered four buddies who work in the nearby food stand to block the BMW from exiting the lot. Then, he threatened to beat the driver if he did n't pay.

  I didn't know if I should get out of my car to offer my help or just stay in the car for my own safety in case a fight broke out. At a crucial moment, a man riding a bicycle approached the group on the brink of an altercation. This passerby carried a ragged bag. He pulled out one yuan from his pocket and offered to pay the fee for the driver.

  "It's not about money. I have money!" The BMW driver proudly showed the cyclist a thick stack of one-hundred-dollar bills he carried in his wallet.

  The cyclist waved his hand at the BMW driver and said, "Go on, then. Drive safely."

  I became curious about the cyclist. Four drivers of fancy cars behind the BMW offered no help. A policeman who witnessed the entire incident did nothing. But the poor bicyclist intervened and solved the problem. I followed him until he stopped at the bicycle repair shop next to the parking lot.

  "I need my bike to be aligned and my tire to be fixed," he said to the three men working at the sh op.

  "We all watched you!" said one of the men. "At first, we thought you worked for that guy in the BMW – but now we see that you are not with him. You're by yourself!"

  "Yes," the cyclist nodded nonchalantly.

  "So, you're just a man with a good heart. We can't believe we've met such a good man tonight! We will fix everything on your bike and give you a 60 percent discount. You only need to pay six yuan!" says another shop attendant.

  The bicyclist searched through his wallet, and said, "I'm sorry, I only have three yuan left." I felt moved at the thought of this poor man stepping in to help a rich man in a BMW. How can poor people be so giving? I walked toward them with three one-dollar coins. "Let me pay for him."

  "Oh, another stranger that turns out to be a good person!" another repairman said with a wide grin.

  I walk back to my car, feeling good about myself.

  "Hey, wait a minute, is that you, Niuniu?" the cyclist called.

  I turned around, again looking at the bicyclist, this time recognizing him as my grandfather. Under the dim lights of the parking lot, I had not been able to see him clearly. I am at once happy to see my grandfather and embarrassed that I didn't do anything to help sooner. What's more unnerving is that my grandfather isn't even close to being poor.

  "I love you, Grandpa!" I give my grandpa a big hug and a kiss, before saying good-bye. As I walked back to my car, another thought crossed my mind. Maybe getting rich is glorious, but the combination of looking poor and offering help is so much more glorious than looking rich and acting petty. The new generation of Chinese might be getting wealthier, but are we getting any wiser? We could all take a few lessons from my grandfather.

  29 Three Types of Men

  On Saturday afternoon, Beibei, Lulu, and I go to play tennis at the Twenty-first Century Hotel. We are missing a fourth player, but it so happens that Beibei has a sore foot, so Lulu and I play singles.

  I have been worried about Lulu's mood since she broke up with Ximu, but in the end Lulu acts like there was nothing wrong. In fact, her conscience is so clear that she is beating me easily, two to nothing.

  It is Beibei who speaks less than usual, as if there was something weighing on her mind. After tennis, the three of us go to Half-Acre Garden on the East Third Ring Road and have a simple meal of Taiwanese snacks. After dinner, we go to T.G.I. Friday's to have a drink. Very few places in China offer free refills of Coke and iced tea. T.G.I. Friday's does.

  With Sade's song "Lover's Rock" in the background, I ask Beibei, "What's up?"

  Beibei rolls her eyes, "Don't get me started. It's been a big mess."

  Lulu quickly fills me in: "One of Beibei's hottest male singers, Little Bench, got himself into trouble. Ten days ago, he had a concert at Beijing Workers' Stadium the first show of his national tour. While his limo was driving along Workers Stadium Road North, many fans were chasing him, so the driver was driving slowly, and Little Bench opened the window to wave at his fans. Just then, a man suddenly threw himself in front of the limo and stopped it. T
hen he poured petrol on himself and shouted to everyone: 'I've loved Little Bench for ten years. Now he's famous, he's a big star, he loves someone else, and doesn't want me anymore. My life doesn't have any meaning. I want to die for him.' No one knew what was going on – then this guy lit a match and set himself on fire. The people around tried to save him and put out the flames. He was badly injured, but luckily he didn't die."

  Beibei sighs again. "As soon as this happened, everybody knew that Little Bench was gay. China is not like England, where they can easily accept openly gay pop stars like George Michael and Elton John. After this happened, our office exploded. The phone didn't stop ringing, journalists were following Little Bench every day. He was in hiding, like a criminal. The most infuriating thing is that my little lover Iron Egg, he's so underhanded. To make some money, he went to the newspapers with some inside information he learned from me. He was ruthless. After this rotten business got out, the other cities all canceled Little Bench's concerts. His CD sales have plummeted. I tried calling Iron Egg, but he's switched off the mobile phone I gave him. That traitor! He betrayed me, then he abandoned me!"

  Lulu joins in, cursing. "In the past, even punks had a little loyalty. Now loyalty is something that belongs in a museum. Modern kids like Iron Egg are too shrewd. They submit to whatever hand feeds them. No sense of Confucian-style loyalty and filial piety whatsoever!"

  "Still, it was my own stupidity." Beibei begins to make a self-criticism. "Actually, I knew exactly what kind of a guy Iron Egg was. But I always thought, we've been to bed together so many times, there must be at least a little emotion. I never thought he would stab me in the back. But that's exactly what he did to me. He's so cruel. Really, to be betrayed by the person who makes love to you, by someone so close to you, is the cruelest thing. And this sort of cruelty falls upon me repeatedly. Why do I have such lousy luck in love?"