by Fan Wu
“It’s not a good magazine.”
“What do you mean by ‘good’? Even Reader uses pretty girls on its cover.”
“But you wore so little—”
“At least it’s not see-through.”
“I don’t like your makeup. It ’s so heavy. You look like an old woman.”
“Don’t call me an old woman!”
“A bad girl then.”
“What’s wrong with being a bad girl? How can you tell a good girl from a bad girl just from a picture? Just because you’re covered up in ugly clothes, does that mean you’re a better girl than I am?”
“I don’t want to argue with you. Your parents sent you here to get the best education. There are so many decent jobs in the world for a person like you with college education. Why do you want to become a model?”
“First of all, they didn’t send me here, I did it on my own. Secondly, I am who I am and I do what I want to do.”
“Like wearing a bikini?”
“I thought you were open-minded.”
“I am. But—”
“I’m telling you that I’ll become a model.”
“Only uneducated shallow girls want to become models.”
“Too bad. You ’d better accept the fact that your best friend is an uneducated shallow girl who wants to become a model!” She stormed out of my room, waving the magazine.
I suspected that she took private lessons to learn how to become a model. Once I saw a model-training studio business card on her desk.
This was our first real fight. I quickly learned to ignore her dream of becoming a model, just as she ignored my opinion of it.
One Sunday morning I was awakened by the radio—Pingping was mimicking the speakers on a Cantonese program. She was quite diligent in learning Cantonese, which she had laughed at as “a language for birds” when she first arrived at university. She complained that it was more difficult to learn Cantonese than to learn English. “It has nine tones. That drives me nuts! Five tones more than Mandarin! My tongue and teeth keep fighting each other. I heard that Cantonese ancestors are snake-eating barbarian natives. How could such a backward place have developed such a complicated dialect?” When she was in a good mood she would sing a popular Cantonese song from a recent Hong Kong movie. Her Cantonese was so terrible that the Cantonese girls in the dorm would cover their ears and beg her to stop.
“If you want to find a job here, you’d better learn Cantonese,” I had heard her lecture Donghua the other day.
Miao Yan had said the same thing to me more than once but I never took her seriously—if I had time, I ’d rather read a book. Of course, I could see why knowing how to speak Cantonese was important. For many non–Cantonese students, the ultimate goal after graduation was to obtain permanent residence in Guangdong, especially in Guangzhou, its capital. The most ambitious students would want to work in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, where salaries were the highest in China.
“Ming, get up! Time for the election.” Pingping’s high-pitched voice penetrated the room.
I opened my eyes and saw her standing next to her bed, wearing a tight red T-shirt and holding a duster, her bony legs spread apart.
“Which election?”
“Class leaders. Don’t you remember? Counselor Wang asked us to pick candidates two weeks ago.”
“Oh, I was reading a novel.” I smacked my forehead with my palm, remembering that meeting. “I guess I forgot to turn in my list.”
Counselor Wang had recently been assigned to my class to take charge of students’ ideological education. Every other week he would call for a meeting to discuss the latest Party documents or things related to ideology. If he ran out of things to say he would ask us to read aloud the handouts, one paragraph per person. Since his meetings were mandatory I had to attend them, but I always sat in the back row, reading my own books. For the last meeting, he asked us to suggest a student leader in each field—general studies, arts and entertainment, sports, and political studies.
“Didn’t you see the result? Both you and Pingping were nominated, Pingping for the leader of general studies, you for head of political studies,” Donghua chimed in, a half-knitted black scarf in her hands.
“Political studies?” I almost jumped up from my bed. “I never like reading Party documents.”
“It’s a good position. You’ll have a chance to talk with Counselor Wang every week. You only need to write a report once a month.” Pingping threw the duster behind the door and grabbed her bag. “Donghua, we need to go now.”
“It’s perfect for you. You spend more of your time reading and writing than anyone else in the class.” Donghua winked at me before she left.
A little while later, I got on my green bike, which I had bought for fifty yuan from a final-year student when I first arrived, and headed to the department. Though I would rather have sat in the library reading, cycling on such a sunny spring day was enjoyable. Moreover, I had something to look forward to—Miao Yan and I planned to eat dim sum for lunch at a newly opened restaurant. She knew I loved dim sum and could never get enough of it.
Once away from the dormitory complex for undergraduates, past the History Department, the unpaved area where seven or eight people were playing soccer, and a high-rise building for male graduate students, I hit a wide, straight road. A short distance ahead, next to the Violin Lake, stood the three-story building for female graduate students; its glazed tile roof and green-painted poles never failed to remind me of the university’s long history. This building was nicknamed the “Moon Palace,” which conjured up the female graduate students’ arrogance and lack of understanding of the real world.
I took a short detour onto a less traveled road lined with silk cotton trees and eucalyptus. The moment I reached the shade, a soothing breeze embraced me. I felt I was flying. I looked up at the sky between the branches and the leaves—it was serene, clear, and appeared closer than ever before. I let go of the handlebars and raised my hands, imagining how it would feel to hold it, to possess the sky.
When I left the woods, a typical campus scene rolled out before me. It was late spring, the best time of the year. Students strolled on the paths with their headphones on. On the stairs to the library, two girls in white blouses were chatting, eating apples, a stack of books at their feet. In front of an ivy-covered brick building, a young woman in a long blue skirt was telling a group of primary school students about its history. The lawn at the center of the campus was thick, green, and perfectly trimmed. Strung between two banyan trees, a white banner with red characters read: “Welcome delegates from universities in Australia and New Zealand.” Several students sat at a stone table playing chess under one of the trees. The sight of the peaceful campus always filled my heart with happiness and pride.
When I parked my bike and stepped onto the squeaky wooden stairs of the Chinese Language and Literature Department building—a building more than one hundred years old—I was sweaty from the ride.
There were about thirty people in the conference room. Counselor Wang stood in front of the podium, his hands behind his back. He was in his early fifties, short, and skinny. While talking, he liked to move his hands abruptly to emphasize his points. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of a sentence and look at us to see if we were listening.
I saw Pingping and Donghua sitting together in the front row. There was an empty seat next to Yishu in the back row. Like me, she wasn’t very sociable. Though we talked little, I felt she was especially friendly to me. Whenever she saw me she would smile. Occasionally, when she was wiping the frame of our bunk beds, she cleaned the upper part for me as well. I would have liked to talk more with her but she spent so little time in the dorm that I seldom saw her other than in class.
“Hey,” I said, and sat down next to her.
She raised her head from the book on her lap and smiled at me. Pingping didn’t like Yishu and insisted that she was so silent because she was pretentious and snobbish. In Pingping’s eyes all Cantonese
were snobbish and they all looked down on northerners.
“You were nominated,” Yishu said.
“I don’t know who nominated me but I hate reading Party documents.”
“I nominated you.” She smiled again. “It might help you in the future. At least that’s what I heard.”
At ten thirty, Counselor Wang announced the election. He passed around a stack of paper with the names of candidates written in black ink. Under the category of “Head of Political Studies” I saw my name and two other names.
After a lot of whispering and suppressed laughter, we turned in our ballots. Then Counselor Wang counted the votes and began to read the results.
To Pingping’s disappointment, she didn’t get the position as head of general studies. When the winner was accepting a round of applause, she didn’t clap.
I was becoming agitated with the slow pace of the meeting. The clock on the wall pointed to ten minutes past twelve. Miao Yan must have been wondering where I was. Perhaps I should pretend to go to the bathroom and slip out?
“The last one, head of political studies,” Counselor Wang finally said. “Zhou Tao, eighteen, Wang Meili, nine votes, Chen Ming, eighteen.” He used his hand to cover his mouth and cleared his throat. “There’s a tie here. Let’s have another vote.”
There was a roar of impatience.
I don’t know what got into me but I stood up. “I think Zhou Tao is more qualified than I am. She reads more Party newspapers and political works.” I glanced at Zhou Tao and saw a big smile spreading across her face.
My suggestion was accepted. As soon as the class was dismissed, I ran outside the building, grabbed my bike, and rode back to West Five.
“What? You gave up the position?” Miao Yan didn’t laugh as I had expected.
“Why not? It’s a silly position. You know me. I never read political stuff.”
“Did you vote for yourself?”
“Of course not. Why would I do that?”
“I’m sure she voted for herself. You ’d have outvoted her if you had voted for yourself as well, and then you’d have the position.”
“But I’d hate it. It’s boring to write reports like that and have to meet the counselor every week.”
“You’re crazy.” She shook her head hard.
“You’d never have taken it if you were me.”
“Oh, yes. I’d have taken it. My problem is that I would never get nominated. Everyone in my class hates me.”
“I thought you didn’t care about titles like these.”
“When will you grow up? You can’t be a kid forever.” She walked to the window, pulled a blouse down from the wire used for hanging wet clothes, and turned to me abruptly. “Students who’ve held those kinds of positions have much better opportunities to stay in the best cities in Guangdong. Don’t you get it? You’re competing with your classmates for a handful of opportunities. You have to go through the university’s job-assignment office to get permanent residence here. Without it, you can’t stay in Guangdong. The government and the big companies simply won’t hire you. Even if you could stay in Guangdong, you want to stay in Guangzhou, Zhuhai, and Shenzhen, not the less developed areas. Listen, the last thing you want to do is return to your poor hometown. You’ll have no future in Jiangxi and people will laugh at you for being a loser. There ’s no way I’m going back. I’m not going back even if my classmates bitch about me every day, even if everybody wants to kick me out of Guangdong.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” I said, taken aback by her sudden outburst. “I thought you got a few interviews in Shenzhen.”
“I’m trying.” Miao Yan suddenly looked exhausted.
We didn’t go to the dim sum restaurant. She was in a grumpy mood and I was angry at her for being tough on me. Though Guangdong was wealthy, I never felt that I had to stay here after graduation. There were so many other places I had yet to explore, like Beijing and Shanghai. Also, some Cantonese seemed too arrogant to me. They either didn’t speak Mandarin, the official language of China, or chose not to. They often looked down on people from the other provinces. Some were openly hostile to outsiders, complaining that they took jobs from the locals and made the traffic horrendous. Almost every day I could hear the Cantonese referring to outsiders as “northern bumpkins”—they thought or liked to think they were all backward country folk with savage ways. It frustrated me to see Miao Yan so determined to stay in a place where outsiders weren’t welcomed.
On the other hand, I felt that her outburst was more than just a reaction to my not taking that position. She seemed to have hidden something about herself from me, something beyond her wanting to stay in Guangdong. Although at the beginning of our friendship I saw her as a happy person, after being with her for a while I had begun to think that was not true.
Next day, when I visited her to make sure she was okay, she looked more alive than ever, as though nothing had happened the day before.
When summer arrived three weeks after the election, everything seemed brighter. In Guangzhou, summer dominates and seems eternal. Even after living here for more than a decade and having seen all the seasons, what I remember most is the blinding summer sunlight and how the sweat pours off my skin.
That summer was especially hot. In the dry, scorching heat the wild grass behind West Five turned yellow in a week. The water levels in the ponds shrank to their lowest, and stainlike moss could be seen on their darkened walls. When the sun was at its zenith, the campus looked empty—everyone was either in her dorm napping or in one of the libraries where the ceiling fans rotated at full speed. Our dorm had no air-conditioning and was like a sauna when the temperature hit a record thirty-eight degrees Celsius for a few consecutive days. Although I had an upper bed and the window was open all night, there was little breeze.
Then there were the mosquitoes to worry about. The ones in Guangzhou were unusually big. Cantonese people said that three mosquitoes could make a meal. Of course they were exaggerating, but I had never seen mosquitoes as big as they were here. Their bodies were gray and their legs extremely thin and long. If I didn’t close my mosquito net tightly, or if I accidentally kicked it open while sleeping, I would be stung all over by the time I awoke; the mosquitoes would be so well fed with my blood that they couldn’t even fly. Once I was stung on both my eyelids and they were swollen for days. I tried all kinds of pesticides and repellents but they didn’t help—these mosquitoes seemed to be immune.
If you ask me what I like least about Guangzhou, I would say it is the summers. But summer was Miao Yan’s season. She loved to wear revealing clothes. Unlike most other girls, who preferred a pale complexion, she was never afraid of getting tanned. Though she was busy looking for a job, every few days she would stop by my room to show me the new outfits she had purchased. One top was transparent except around the chest, and another was strapless, in a slim-fitting, bodice style. Whenever I asked her where she had gotten the money to buy these clothes, she would say, “I have a part-time job.” But she never told me what that job was.
One day at about five in the afternoon, just as I had laid down my schoolbag to go to the canteen to buy dinner, Miao Yan rushed into my room. Without saying a word, she dragged me up the stairs into her room. Panting, she double-locked the door from the inside. As always, none of her roommates was home—somehow, whenever Miao Yan was home during the day, all her roommates would stay away.
She walked to the window, poked her head out, looked both ways, and closed the window, then she took down a big pink shopping bag from her bed and shook out a black dress.
“See what I bought today! Try it on! You must try it on!”
Her eyes were gleaming, her cheeks red with excitement. Holding the dress with both hands, she looked at me with a hopeful and encouraging expression on her face.
Almost before I knew it her fingers were at my waist, un-buckling my belt. I pushed her away and insisted on changing inside her mosquito net. She frowned and looked at me mockingly, but agreed.<
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“Do you have to close the net? I promise I won’t look at you.”
“No way.”
“What’s the big deal? I don’t mind you watching me change clothes.”
“I mind.”
“You incurable country girl!”
“I’m doing you a favor,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t even look at the dress.”
This stopped her. She left me alone and started to pace the room. Then she sat down on a chair, rocking left and right, her gaze focused on the bed. By the time I took off my jeans and T-shirt she had lost patience. “Hurry up!” she cried.
I sat on her bed in my underwear, holding the dress. It took me more than a minute to work out how it was supposed to be worn. As soon as I figured it out I changed my mind.
“Who made this stupid dress with so little material? It’s impossible to wear!” I said.
“Oh, my little sister, you’re going to wear it.” Miao Yan snatched up my jeans by one of the legs that was hanging outside the net and immediately hid them behind her back. “I’ll only return the jeans if you put on the dress,” she said firmly.
I had to put on the dress.
“What are you doing up there? Climb down!” She pulled open the net. “I want to see you in the dress!”
“Give me back my jeans.”
“Climb down first.”
She gripped my hand, her other hand holding a big mirror. There was an uncomfortable silence when I climbed down the ladder. I assumed she must have thought the dress looked really ugly on me. If she hadn’t been gripping my hand I might have gone back up the ladder to put my own clothes on again.
“Now you can look in the mirror,” she said.
I looked at her instead—I had never seen her so serious. Her eyebrows knotted, then spread like the wings of an eagle. “Shoes!” she said.
She leaned the mirror against a wall and got down on her stomach, her cheek almost pressing against the dusty cement floor, scanning underneath all the beds and desks. When she finally found a pair of black leather shoes my size, she used a piece of tissue to wipe them, then ordered me to sit on a chair while she put the shoes on for me. “They’re cheap shoes but they should fit,” she said.