by Xinran
He went home to talk things through with his wife, who worked in a printing factory. At first Wang Tong was reluctant. All her life she had loved books and she wasn’t sure she wanted to join the uncultured ranks of small traders. Nor could she see herself as the boss-lady of a restaurant, all slavish smiles and servility to those above her, all frowns and severity to those below. However, when Guan Buyan explained the gravity of the situation, she reconsidered. They had only been married two years and had no child, why not try to turn their fortunes around by starting a business? After all, how could a man who couldn’t keep himself become a father in the future?
Guan Buyan’s plan was to open a fast-food restaurant on a very small scale, since a small boat is easier to steer. This meant that he would not need many staff or a fancy shopfront and, if he chose a good location, close to a commercial or tourist centre, he might just be able to survive, or even expand. As the saying goes: the belly can do without clothing but not without food.
The name came to him before anything else. His father had always told him that his dead mother had been determinedly cheerful, even when faced with the worst. ‘Don’t be sad,’ she would say, ‘if there’s nothing to be cheerful about, look for happiness, for only those who fool themselves can be truly happy.’ He decided that he would call his restaurant ‘The Happy Fool’ after the mother he had known only from a photograph copied from her work-unit card. All the other photographs of her had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution because of their connotations with the ‘past’. There was no wedding photograph because the embroidered wedding gown had been considered ‘feudalist’, no graduation picture because the clothes she had been wearing were ‘capitalist’, and the group photograph that had been taken when some Soviet experts visited her workplace was said to be ‘revisionist’ now that China had fallen out with the USSR.
By a great stroke of luck, a family friend knew of a small shop to rent on Red Guard Lane, near to the Confucius Temple. It was an area where the streets were always full of shoppers and tourists, so Guan Buyan took the place immediately, even though it meant being neighbours with Kentucky Fried Chicken. It wasn’t his intention to become a ‘people’s hero’ among fast-food restaurateurs, but he had been reared on the slogans of Mao Zedong and so it was natural that he should create a slogan for his shop. On its first day of business the Happy Fool was emblazoned with the words, ‘Don’t Let McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken Destroy Our Chinese Taste for Freshness.’
Few people know the history of Red Guard Lane, or the fact that, before the Communist Party came to power in 1949, it had a very different name. Then it was known as Face Powder Lane, after the pink rouge that its many courtesans applied to their cheeks, and it was famous throughout the Yangzi delta for its large number of sophisticated brothels inhabited by artistic women who could sing and dance. Clients would be welcomed into the courtyards with lines of verse recited by the strapping fellows on the gates, and when choosing a young lady, would be required to guess her name from a fragment of Tang or Song dynasty poetry. In this way, rough working men who had never touched a calligraphy brush or read the classics would be prevented from entering its perfumed rooms.
In the early 1950s, Face Powder Lane became Red Guard Lane, and the reformed prostitutes earned their living by writing lucky couplets for doorways, or copying correspondence for the illiterate. Then came the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, and the few remaining women were forced to undergo Political Criticisms and physical punishment. By the end of the seventies, the street had become ‘one hundred per cent Red’ and all the houses had been taken over by worker and peasant functionaries. These people converted the slabs of famous Anhui ink (which the prostitutes had hidden under the floorboards) into props for the legs of wonky beds, and turned the wolf-hair calligraphy brushes that had been treasured for generations into bottle washers. High-quality rice paper that had once borne beautiful poetry was used ‘to resolve the outgoing problems of the masses’ – that is, as toilet paper – while the silk on which the courtesans would paint their delicate pictures was stuffed into the split-crotch trousers of babies and toddlers to serve as makeshift nappies. Incense burners from the Ming dynasty became crocks for storing rice and beans; writing tables with secret, mirror-lined drawers were transformed into hencoops or shelving. As for the rest of the furniture, it served – along with the manuals on the art of love, the erotic drawings and the diagrams showing how men could conserve their sexual energy – as firewood; it was said that one long opium couch could last for fourteen meals. In short, anything the worker and peasant functionaries had not seen before was labelled ‘feudalist, capitalist and revisionist’, and destroyed. The Red Guards had no idea that the beautifully decorated, tiny porcelain shoes (which they imagined to be a form of punishment for the prostitutes, who would be forced to have their feet jammed inside them) were in fact the famous ‘golden-lily drinking cups’ that were used to serve spirits and wine to the clients at the brothels. The only things they left untouched were the alcove beds, carved with dragons and phoenixes, on which countless prostitutes and their clients had slept. After a comfortable night in one of these, workers and peasants, who had previously slept on wooden planks or on the floor, could be heard to exclaim angrily, ‘No wonder those vile women weakened the wills of their clients. Just sleeping on those beds turns your bones to jelly.’ But, even so, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to chop these ‘beds of sin’ into firewood. Instead they reformed them by stuffing pictures of Chairman Mao into the frames at the bedhead that had once contained erotic art.
Nanjingers said that Red Guard Lane was the most revolutionary street in the whole city, and it is perhaps because it was so thoroughly reformed that its history was completely forgotten until recently. It was only at the end of the 1990s, by which time almost all the streets and alleys with some claim to past fame had been rediscovered and registered by the city officials as historic Chinese sites, that people began to recall old Face Powder Lane, which had flourished over a hundred generations and several dynasties. Or perhaps it wasn’t a lack of historical knowledge, but a fear of its bad reputation. Whatever the reason, when the American giant Kentucky Fried Chicken decided it wanted to open a branch on this street, the city officials were surprised. If the Yanks are so clever, they muttered behind closed doors, why didn’t they want the prime territory on Sun Yatsen Avenue?
Who knows. Perhaps the Americans had got wind of the colourful history of Red Guard Lane and gave it a greater value than the locals.
The Happy Fool restaurant stood right next to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and was dwarfed by its American neighbour’s huge sign. The shopfront was fewer than five paces wide and its sole adornment was a tray hanging in the middle of the window with a display of the food on offer. Nevertheless, passersby always stopped to look in the window, and very often what they saw made them pop in to have something to eat.
This food display had been dreamt up by Guan Buyan when he saw how Three was able to turn a basketful of vegetables into a work of art. Early every morning his wife, Wang Tong, would go to the nearby farmers’ market and choose the freshest vegetables, and every day Three would create a new arrangement for the tray hanging in the window. It wasn’t a fancy tray, but it had a rosewood border, and was suspended from two brocade ties with elaborate Chinese knots which hung down on either side. Below it, written in neat green letters was Guan Buyan’s slogan: ‘Don’t Let McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken Destroy Our Chinese Taste for Freshness.’
Nanjingers are known across China for their love of fresh fruit and vegetables, but even in this city it was rare to find a grand hotel that used such fresh produce, let alone a fast-food restaurant. Soon people who lived close to the Happy Fool began to visit it, not to eat, but to see what vegetables they should be buying for their own tables. One woman from northern China, who rented lodgings in Red Guard Lane, used to come and look in the window every single day before she went to the market.
Three’s talents were also employed inside. Instead of the glitzy photos of mountains and rivers that decorated the walls of other restaurants, the Happy Fool had rows of paper plates hanging from plastic hooks, to which Three attached single leaves or vegetable hearts. She also filled glasses with sliced-open fruit. Quite often, a number of the brightly coloured plastic tables would be occupied by parents using Three’s displays to teach their children about the natural world. The children’s naive questions would have everyone sitting nearby in fits of laughter. And so it was that the Happy Fool became a place that truly made ordinary people happy.
In the early days of running the restaurant, Wang Tong had been daunted by the task that lay before her. There is a saying in Chinese that ‘a horse can run itself to death before it reaches the mountain it has been running to’, and Wang Tong was forced to recognise that, if she was going to survive, she would have to be realistic about her aspirations. However, she had good instincts. She knew immediately that, with a mixed clientele, a kitchen only two metres wide and very little storage space, the restaurant should serve only dishes that could be cooked fast and where the ingredients could easily be replenished by a quick twenty-minute trip to the local market. The delicately flavoured stir-fries traditional to Nanjing were perfect for this, unlike slow-cooked northern food, which wasted time and heat, and leached colour and freshness from the vegetables. She also had the idea of introducing cold dishes that were not native to the area because they were easy to make and store, and suited Nanjing’s hot southern climate.
Nanjing women love eating and shopping for food just as much as they like buying clothes and jewellery, and Wang Tong was typical in this respect. She understood all the nuances of the local cooking. For example, when people from outside Nanjing eat salt-water duck, what they are interested in is the fact that it is a Nanjing speciality. Nanjingers, on the other hand, are most particular about how the brine is made and the breed of duck. There is a Nanjing saying that ‘every part of a duck or goose is a treasure’. From the down in quilts and jackets to the blood and intestines used in the delicious ‘Duck Blood Soup’, every scrap of the bird is put to good use. The stock is even used to fill the delicious steamed ‘soup’ dumplings which Nanjingers love to eat for either breakfast or lunch.
Nanjingers also like edible wild plants, and they are very proud of their ‘Eight Dry Fresh Things’ and ‘Eight Watery Fresh Things’. The Dry Eight consist of purslane, Hen’s Head, malantou, wild celery, rocambole, Chinese wolf-berry greens, shepherd’s purse and reeds. The Watery Eight include shrimps, snails, lotus root, fish, water caltrop and wild rice stems. When food-lovers go to any Nanjing restaurant, no meal is complete without a dish of fresh reeds, gathered from the banks of the river and fried with dried stinky tofu. Another favourite are the fresh buds of the Chinese toon tree, plucked before the Festival of Pure Brightness, which can be fried with egg, eaten cold with tofu, or made into soup with chysanthemum flowers and toon-tree leaves. Nanjingers adore these little dishes of wild food which give them a taste of nature and help them to feel in tune with the seasons.
Wang Tong was courageous in her choices at the market. She didn’t only buy local produce, but piled her basket with ‘imported’ vegetables that came either from abroad or from different parts of China. Often the market-stall holder had no idea what to call these vegetables and adopted the name their peasant-growers had given them. So it was that Wang Tong came back with things called ‘Yankee Smiles’ (pale green cucumbers) or ‘George Bush’s Nose’ (a kind of melon or courgette, pointed at the base and going out to a bell at the top). Clients at the restaurant loved discussing what these vegetables should really be called and even Old Guan, Guan Buyan’s father, couldn’t resist bringing out his botanical dictionaries. Sometimes, Wang Tong put up a ‘Wanted’ poster, calling on scholars and experts for the name of a plant. She made a number of interesting new acquaintances in this way and joked to Three that, with her help, she hoped to turn the Happy Fool into the first Chinese museum of vegetables.
Wang Tong’s other good idea was to charge just a little bit more for the dishes they served.
‘We won’t get customers by undercutting prices,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to have some markup for “freshness”, but we can’t rob them blind either. We’ll add just five fen to our prices. It’s only a sixth of the price of a box of matches and people who want to eat at our restaurant won’t make a fuss. Those who don’t want to eat with us would complain about our prices even if we only charged half a yuan a dish.’
Some of her friends worried that it would be difficult for customers to find this kind of small change. As the cost of living increased in the late nineties, the value of the fen had become so small that it had practically disappeared. With the new millennium, some people were starting to treat five-fen coins as collectable items. But Wang Tong wasn’t too concerned. She said that she would simply make sure she got in a good stock of five-fen coins from the bank each week to give as change. And since the extra five fen added to the price of each dish was hardly going to make them a huge profit, she would donate it to children in the countryside. After all, a city person would hardly bother to pick up a five-fen coin if they saw it in the street, but it could make a huge difference to a peasant child. Guan Buyan thought that this was a good idea, so he begged an old-fashioned metal biscuit tin from his father, and stuck a slip of paper to it which read: ‘We respectfully ask you to contribute your five-fen change to help poor children who have not been to school. We will report back to you on their progress. Thank you.’
It was this tin that had caused a hitch on their opening day. On the advice of his elder brother, Guan Buyan had invited thirty party officials for a meal in the restaurant in order to ensure that they would regard his business venture favourably in future. Since the Happy Fool was so tiny, it was of negligible interest to these officials, most of them simply stayed long enough to say a few polite words and pick up the two bottles of spirits that Guan Buyan was offering as a gift. However, one man from the local administration offices took more of a look round. His eyes immediately fell on the five-fen biscuit tin with its request for contributions.
‘Don’t you know that only registered religious organisations are allowed to make collections for charity,’ he asked sternly.
Wang Tong’s heart flew into her mouth. ‘But hasn’t the government called for citizens to help “eradicate poverty”?’ she asked in a nervous voice, looking over at her husband.
The official wasn’t to be swayed. ‘The Government has asked for contributions of clothing and money for poor people,’ he said even more fiercely, ‘not for you to collect other people’s cash!’
‘This isn’t …’
Guan Buyan restrained his wife. ‘This Leader is right,’ he said. ‘When the business is up and running, we can send money to the countryside ourselves.’
‘Quite correct, you can’t break the law, not even in a good cause,’ said the official, and took an extra bottle of spirits with him when he left.
That was the end of the five-fen collection tin, but Guan Buyan’s wife continued to collect the extra fen each week, and to put them into a special account. She had wanted to find a way to help people in the countryside ever since she had visited the village where her elder sister, Ling, had spent the Cultural Revolution. Because city families had been allowed to keep one of their children with them provided they sent the others to the countryside, Wang Tong had had a very different experience of the Cultural Revolution from her sister. However, she couldn’t forget Ling’s stories of how the inhabitants of Guanyun, a village in the north of Jiangsu Province, was so poor that even a postage stamp was considered a great luxury. Ling had talked of how the local postman had befriended the young city people, who had no way of communicating with their parents except by letter. He showed them how to steam open letters from their parents, place a new one inside, then return the original envelope to the sender, so that they didn’t need to buy the stamps
they couldn’t afford. She spoke of how this man had, in a way, saved the lives of many of them who, without the comfort of communication with the outside world, might have taken their lives.
Wang Tong had found her sister’s accounts of village life, with its starvation diet of sweet potatoes barely credible. After all, she had never read such things in the newspapers. Determined to see the village with her own eyes, she persuaded her sister to return to Guanyun, a few years after the Cultural Revolution had ended, to show her where she had lived. Wang Tong was horrified by what she saw. There was a girl of fifteen with no trousers to wear even though the autumn winds had begun to blow, and children wailing for a small piece of sweet potato. The family they stayed with were in despair over the fact that a ten-yuan note that they had carefully stored in an earthenware crock buried beneath the kitchen stove – their entire savings for the year – had been chewed by rats. Ling spent the evening try to piece together the damaged note by the light of a dim lamp, so that she could take it to a bank in town and change it for one of the new ten-yuan notes before the family lost their savings in a different way when the old notes were phased out. When Ling presented their hosts with a new ten-yuan note, the whole family almost got to their knees in gratitude. Wang Tong wept. She didn’t understand why life was so poor and so hard in a village that was only a short distance north of Nanjing. From then on, she would collect the paper that the printing factory where she worked threw away, and staple it into little booklets which she would send to the family in Guanyun. She hoped that the children, who had no school to go to, could at least use it to draw pictures.
Because Wang Tong understood where Three had come from she was particularly moved to see how this young girl could transform the Happy Fool with the skills she had learned in the countryside. She loved to watch her customers making the circuit of her restaurant discussing the displays, especially the parents and children, and she tried hard to increase her own knowledge about what produce was best in which season. Three’s ambition and skill were an inspiration to her and she no longer felt that it was unworthy to engage in trade, nor that one should simply accept one’s lot in silence. On the contrary, she was filled with such energy that she could feel her slow, measured personality, which had used to make her older sister jump up and down with frustration, becoming more and more outgoing.