Forbidden City

by William Bell

  Xin-hua steered the che off the pavement.

  “I have an idea, Xin-hua. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Why don’t we go into the Friendship Hotel! I could use the phone to call the embassy.” It all seemed so easy, I felt like a fool for not thinking of it long before.

  Xin-hua shook her head. “Shan Da, I can’t go in there. Chinese not allowed in the hotel without special permission.”

  I had forgotten about that. Chinese couldn’t get into a hotel where foreigners stayed unless they had business there and the papers to prove it. They couldn’t get into the Friendship Store either, unless they had connections.

  “Okay, you’re right. But how about if you wait outside and I go in?”

  She shook her head again. “Shan Da, you look Chinese now, remember?”

  I put my hand up to my hair, still stiff with black polish, and a little dirty from lying on the floor of the hut. “But I can still speak English to the guard. He’ll believe me, don’t you think?”

  Again the irritating head shake. “No passport, Shan Da. No ID. You could be anybody. PLA are looking for students who are running away.”

  She started to pedal again, sure that my idea was dumb. Which it was, I realized now. Until I got to the embassy, I was nobody. I was a worker delivering a washing machine, whether I liked it or not.

  We turned onto the Third Ring Road, a wide avenue that headed east past high rises and stores and lots of construction sites. The crane towers rose silent and unmoving into the dull sky like bits of giant building sets left unfinished by a child.

  I was just saying to Xin-hua that on this road at least the pavement was fairly smooth when we spotted them in the distance. A convoy of trucks, packed full with troops, bristling with rifles held upright by the soldiers. Heading towards us. As the convoy advanced the people on the sidewalks scattered, disappearing down side streets and into stores. Cyclists pressed on, looking down at the road as they pumped, or found reasons to swing onto side streets.

  Which is exactly what Xin-hua did. She hunched her shoulders, as if remembering the shots that flew over her head yesterday, and made a sharp turn to the right onto a tree-lined street, and increasing her speed.

  So we headed back south, the direction from which we had come that morning.

  Eventually we turned east, then north, I think, then we zigged and zagged along a narrow alley through a quiet neighbourhood and came out near the Huang Si, the Yellow Temple. My leg had started to stiffen up again, and I kept shifting my weight and changing my position.

  Suddenly Xin-hua braked to a stop. She climbed onto the platform with me.

  “Shan Da, do you have map? Want to show you something.”

  I got out my map and we opened it carefully, looking around, and spread it on the bed of the che, hiding it with out bags and legs. We didn’t want some Public Security Bureau type or PLA guy to see us poring over a map that was only sold in tourist hotels.

  Pointing out various streets as she talked, Xin-hua explained the problem. To get to the San Li Tun embassy compound, which is where the Canadian Embassy was located, we had to either take the Second Ring Road — the road the PLA was defending so aggressively with all the tanks and troops — for a kilometre or two, or we could cross it by going south on He Ping Li Street, turn east on Dong Zhi Men Street, and cross it again. The reason was that outside the Second Ring Road, where we were then, there were no streets through a big area called Zuo Jia Zhuang.

  Either route was risky. The Second Ring Road was PLA territory. That’s where we had run up against the roadblock yesterday. Inside the Second Ring Road there were PLA all over the place, at all the big intersections. And that’s where the plain clothes PLA were operating, not to mention the bands of club-wielding Public Security cops.

  I opted for crossing the Ring Road. “We can blend in better on the side streets,” I said, “even if there are more PLA around. On the Ring Road we’ll be too easy to notice.”

  “Yes, I agree.”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I said, trying to sound confident. “And let’s turn on the camcorder now.”

  Xin-hua swallowed hard and nodded. She remounted and started pedalling. It was 12:15 P.M.

  We went south and got across the Ring Road okay. It was a little tense, but the troops at the roadblock, as near as I could tell as I lay there pretending to be asleep, seemed bored by the whole thing. Xinhua talked to them for only a moment or two and we were on our way again.

  There were soldiers at every intersection now. They seemed to be stopping citizens at random, especially ones in their late teens and early twenties, and checking their ID. When we turned east onto Dong Zhi Men, two troops held a young woman at gunpoint, kneeling in the gutter. Her wailing cut the air as the gun barrels jabbed into her back.

  When we approached the Ring Road again my heart was pounding. I was sure it could be heard by the PLA at the roadblock, resonating against the boards of the che. I counted four voices this time, in addition to Xin-hua’s. She was trying to sound friendly, chattering away to them, but her voice was forced.

  I was curled up into a ball, pretending to sleep, my canvas bag with the battery packs in it tucked out of sight against my chest. I heard a voice right next to my head. A rough bossy voice. Xin-hua answered. Then something round and hard prodded my back. A machine-gun barrel.

  I pretended to wake up, with a wide phony yawn. My pulse banged at my temples. A soldier with a broad flat nose and a thin moustache prodded me again, rattling away in Chinese. I forced a smile and nodded. Then I pointed to my ears and mouth and shook my head.

  The soldier motioned with his gun barrel for me to hand over the two canvas bags. I gave him Xinhua’s. He opened it, looked inside, and tossed it back to me, then motioned again. Trembling, I handed him mine.

  That morning I had put my battery packs and video cassettes into the lunch tins. The soldier dumped the tins out. They clattered onto the bed of the che, but luckily the lids didn’t pop open.

  “Chi wan le ma?” he said, laughing. Have you eaten yet?

  “Chi wan le.” Xin-hua answered.

  The soldier said something else to Xin-hua and she reached into her jacket pocket and handed over her green hu kou card She hadn’t brought her university ID because the PLA were arresting students right and left.

  The soldier tossed it back at her. It hit her in the chest and then fell to the pavement. She dismounted and picked it up, put it away, and stood there.

  The soldier growled something to me.

  “Ta mei you.” Xin-hua said nervously. He doesn’t have it. Then she talked some more. I guessed she was giving him some phony story to explain why I didn’t have my ID. She reached into her pants pocket and drew out some crumpled bills and as she talked she moved her hands around so that the money was visible. I got the idea and pulled out the wad of one and two yuan notes that Nai-nai had given me. The soldier accepted both gifts. He seemed satisfied. While he and Xin-hua talked, another soldier, a squat, thick-set character who obviously enjoyed carrying an AK 47 around, pointed to the washing machine box.

  My heart hammered at my ribs. I swallowed with a dry throat.

  Xin-hua started chattering away like crazy. I could already picture us kneeling in the street with the AK 47s jabbing the backs of our necks.

  The heavy-set guy barked an order. Xin-hua argued. He shouted at her. She climbed up on the che and stood beside the box.

  As she bent to grasp the lid she whispered, “When I shout, run Shan Da!”

  I was paralyzed. My limbs shook. Run? How far would I get? She was the one who should run, but how could I argue with her in English?

  She paused, looked at both soldiers, and forced a laugh that didn’t convince anybody. Then she grasped the lid firmly.

  Crack-crack-crack!

  I swear her mouth was opening to shout whatever it was that she thought would divert the soldiers’ attention when gunfire blasted behind us, out on the Ring Road. The soldiers turned towar
ds the gunfire. Xin-hua looked at me, her eyes wide with terror. Then the soldiers took off, running towards the tanks that lined the road.

  In a split second Xin-hua was back on the seat, pedalling like mad. We kept our heads down as we crossed the Ring Road. Off to our left in the distance, two men were running along the road. Gunfire sounded again and one of them collapsed to the ground. The second figure stopped dead in his tracks and raised his hands. Just as we crossed the roadway they shot him where he stood.

  I covered my eyes with my trembling hands, screaming inside my skull.

  Soon we reached a really busy area and realized we were in big trouble. The whole place was thick with green uniforms. The quiet, tree-lined streets leading off Dong Zhi Men to our right led into the San Li Tun embassy area, and every street was guarded by a contingent of PLA who were stopping vehicles and pedestrians who tried to get in. Xin-hua kept right on going past San Li Tun, the street we wanted. We came to an intersection at a wide avenue and I realized we had reached the Third Ring Road. She pulled to the curb and stopped.

  “I go back, see what’s going on,” she said.

  “Okay.” I hardly noticed her words. I was still trying to control my nerves after the adrenaline rush caused by our narrow escape. And by the sight of the man with his hands up getting shot in the back.

  I looked around. The street wasn’t very busy. The odd bus went by. There was a big park-like place across the Ring road from me and beyond the wide iron fence I saw the outlines of tents pitched on the grounds. The friendly PLA, I thought, doing a boy scout operation on the grounds of the Beijing Agricultural Exhibition Centre. Up the road to the north a tall silver-gray monstrosity rose above the trees into the grey sky — the Great Wall Hotel. Below, a solitary taxi crawled out onto the road and came towards me.

  As it passed, I got an idea. Why not just hail a taxi?

  But I guess the adrenaline rush had affected my brain. I forgot, as I had outside the Friendship Guest House, that I was in disguise. And suddenly it hit me with the force of a train at high speed that the disguise was now a trap. I was imprisoned by it, stuck.

  There I was, between an embassy I couldn’t even get to because I looked Chinese and a hotel I couldn’t enter for the same reason.

  I looked up and saw Xin-hua coming towards me, walking quickly.

  “I waited across street from a roadblock until I saw a woman PLA turned away,” she panted. “Then I follow her and ask to talk this thing with her. She said PLA are stopping everyone who tries get into the area because too many Chinese trying to get out of China. They are apply for visa. Biggest tries are Canada and US. Even if you have Chinese passport, PLA make you reapply now for another one. That takes weeks.”

  I knew that in China the average citizen couldn’t get a passport. They had to have permission from the state and from their work unit. People who got them were lucky — usually students going abroad or people on business, or if they had relatives abroad.

  “Government is very angry,” Xin-hua went on. “A famous Chinese scientist, Fang Li-zhi, and his wife are hiding in American Embassy. So that’s why so many PLA here.”

  Xin-hua looked pretty dejected. “I’ll take us around back, Shan Da, but I don’t think we can get to your embassy. I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”

  She wasn’t half as sorry as I was. Now what? I thought. But I didn’t say that to her.

  “Come on, Xin-hua, it’s not your fault. How could you know this would happen?”

  Xin-hua slapped the curb angrily as she spoke. “But now what to do? My friends and I didn’t think this enough. Now you look too Chinese. If not, you could walk past those PLA and be safe.” She slapped the curb again, so hard it must have hurt her. “We should have brought your clothes. And soap to clean your hair.”

  We sat there, silent, for a while. I got up and took the box top off. I shut off the camera, removed the cassette and battery pack and exchanged them for new ones, and put the exposed cassette into one of the food tins. I tossed the battery into the gutter. I fixed the top back onto the box.

  I sat down again, closer to Xin-hua. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. We’re right close to the road to the airport, right? I think I might as well go there. The foreigners all have to go to the airport to get out anyway. Maybe Dad is already there. And look, Xin-hua, we got everything on video. Those jerks at the roadblock, the microphone will have picked them up. And the PLA blocking the embassy area. We got that, too. Everything we’ve seen, all that horrible stuff, is going to make it to the outside. The government won’t be able to say it didn’t happen. We’ve got the proof. And that’s what we — you and your friends and I — what we wanted.”

  Xin-hua wiped the water from her eyes. “Yes,” she said. The determination was back in those dark eyes of hers. “I go back to store over there and buy something to drink.”

  “But we gave all our money to that soldier at the roadblock.”

  She smiled. “I kept one yuan back. I knew we would be thirst soon.”

  By mid-afternoon the cloud cover was breaking up and the sun was trying to push through but not quite making it. We trundled north on the Third Ring Road to where it intersected with the airport road and then turned right onto the airport road. The two-lane, tree-lined road stretched straight as an arrow into the distance. I remembered coming the opposite way, what seemed so long ago, at night, full of anticipation and a great sense of adventure. Well, no way could I say I hadn’t had adventure.

  I was pretty jumpy. Xin-hua and I talked as she puffed along, her body swaying from left to right as she pedalled. We were pretty sure there’d be more roadblocks along here somewhere. Xin-hua figured there’d be one between the big foreign hotel compound and the airport. I wanted to get off the che and walk the rest of the way once we saw the first roadblock, but so far she hadn’t agreed. I argued with her. At least I had a chance to get through. I could convince them I was Canadian, take off my coat and shirt if I had to and show them my fish-belly white skin and my baby blues. But she had no alibi. The washing machine gambit got less credible the closer we got to the airport. She said she could say she lived on one of the farms nearby. The land around us was all under cultivation and we could see buildings in the distance through the trees. I didn’t buy that. She didn’t look like a brigade member, not with her light skin and soft student’s hands.

  As we talked and argued and planned, taxis sped past us, full of worried-looking foreigners. The occasional tour bus full of disappointed tourists rumbled by us, too. Wonder what you said on your postcards home, I thought. Dear Fred, glad you’re not here. Be home earlier than expected, if I don’t get killed. Love, Ethel.

  Every once in a while a troop truck roared by. They went in both directions. Which didn’t seem too efficient to me. Every time a truck full of green uniformed men appeared Xin-hua’s shoulders would tense up and she’d pedal harder and I’d feel my nerve ends screaming at me.

  We crossed a bridge over a wide river and just after we crossed over, Xin-hua turned the che off the road and we bumped along a dirt track. In a moment we were out of sight behind the trees.

  She got down and said, “Let’s take a short rest, Shan Da.”

  It was pretty warm by then in spite of the steady breeze. The sun was gradually burning off the rest of the clouds. We took off our jackets and caps and followed a path through the trees down to the river. I had to step carefully to get down the steep path. Along the edge of the wide, slow-moving brown water the long grass, tops bent by the breeze, hid us from view.

  Xin-hua sat down on the bank and rolled up her pant legs to the knees, then the sleeves of her shirt. She waded into the water, splashing it onto her face and arms. I wished I could do the same. After all, I hadn’t washed in two days. But the water wasn’t exactly sparkling clear, and I was afraid of infection.

  But I did take off my shoes and socks and stand in the warm water up to my ankles. The dark mud squirmed between my toes as I splashed
water on my face and arms Then I had an idea. I ran my wet hands through my hair and looked at them. Very little of the shoe polish came off on my hands. So much for that idea.

  We sat down on the bank, each of us propped against a poplar so that we faced each other, our outstretched legs almost touching. Xin-hua leaned her head back against the smooth bark and closed her eyes.

  You’d never have known that we were on the edge of a city of almost eight million people. Sunlight flooded from behind a cloud onto the river. The water murmured through the tall reeds, and in the trees birds sang to one another. I closed my eyes.

  It would have been a nice peaceful rest, but my mind was buzzing like a transformer on overtime. Would I get to the airport? Would Dad be there? What would happen to Xin-hua then?

  The distant rumble of a jet taking off startled me. A troop truck roared across the bridge.

  What should I do? I opened my eyes and looked at Xin-hua. I knew that if I asked her, she would take me all the way to the airport — if we could get past the PLA, which we couldn’t. The lower the danger level for me, the higher for her. She had been responsible for me since Tian An Men Square. At least, I knew that she felt responsible. Now I felt responsible for her.

  What I wanted to do was separate from her right there. She had come far enough. I could take my camcorder and the unused batteries and throw them into the river, dump the box, and send her back home on the che. She’d be safe on her own as long as she was careful.

  I got up quietly and limped up to the che. I took the last two bottles of green pop down to the riverbank and laid one in Xin-hua’s lap. Her eyes opened.

  “Thank you, Shan Da.”

  She closed her eyes again. I chewed my pop open and sucked the sticky sweet stuff out of the container. It didn’t quench my thirst at all.

  Xin-hua sat up and rubbed her eyes. She bit a hole into the top of her pop and started to drink it.

  “You must be tired,” I said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  “We should go,” she said, tossing the plastic container into the river.