by Vivian Yang
“Oh … um, someone gave me a few, just a sample,” he said, his eyes shifting. “You’d be gone for weeks without seeing me … and you’d be so immersed in all these foreign names and artsy things to care for candy … and candies melt, you know ...”
I glared at him and said, “Right, they can melt and so can a relationship with too artsy a Kemaneiqi who’s been kicked out of the film studio. Are you happy now?”
To my surprise, he disregarded my sarcasm and replied instead, “Reorganization is taking place everywhere these days including our sports field, so try not to feel too bad. You’re so young but already so far ahead of me …” He stopped short as though his chain of thought had been chopped off. He grinned at me, his gleaming white teeth showing. “Let’s not say hurtful things to each other, my beautiful girl”, he said. “Everything will be all right for you in the future, Little Kemaneiqi. Trust me!” he coaxed, putting his firm hands on my shoulders before making their way down to the rest of me.
While back at school but without swim training, seeing Coach Long became logistically difficult. The next time I had planned to visit him was three weeks later, on a weekday my former team wouldn’t be there. Coach Long was not at work. A female coach pointed her finger at me and shouted, “Training is in session. Don’t stand around here!”
I went into the female changing room where the cleaning auntie greeted me enthusiastically, “Ah, Coach Long’s former trainee girl’s here for his Xi Tang! Come over to my supplies locker. I still have a few packets to give out on his behalf.”
Xi Tang, or Happiness Sweets, were customarily handed out by newly-weds to friends and colleagues to celebrate their union.
My heart stopped. “Coach Long got married?” I asked in disbelief.
“You didn’t know? He sure has met his match. He showed me her photo before going to join her in Beijing. Took the train to the capital last week. Said to give these joyous candies out for old acquaintances who may stop by here. His former teammate just retired from the National Team and got her coaching position. Here, have a packet he left with me.”
I felt a weakness in the knees as I took the packet. Throat tightening, I turned without thanking her and dashed out, tears rolling down my cheeks. It all made sense now: the Wrigley’s chewing gum from abroad, the detailed account of the National Team’s sashimi feast in Japan, the Comaneci clipping from Montreal!
“Trust me, Little Kemaneiqi!” -- Coach Long’s last words to me resounded in my ears. My tongue had suddenly gone dry. A piece of Wrigley’s chewing gum would have helped to alleviate the drought, but ...
As though my hands were no longer a part of my body, I tore open the red packet embossed with the golden Double Happiness character Xi. Eight pieces of fruit drops in clear cellophane wrappers scattered, the same type he had used to protect the newspaper clipping! There was no note, no contact information, nothing else.
One by one, I kicked the candies into the opening of a street gutter, aiming at the middle as if shooting a soccer goal, imaging the grates to be the gate leading to the realm of Yin – hell -- to hell with that so-called hero who had professed to love me the great beauty with brains!
Then, I simply stood and stared, transfixed.
Moments later I could hear myself sob, right there on the sidewalk in open view of passers-by. I was gripped by the fear that I could become a teenage mother myself just like my mother and her mother before her. The dreadful family history could repeat itself. I sniffed uncontrollably until my tears were drained and eyes swollen.
On the public bus ride back, an intellectual-looking man with a fountain pen weighing down on his chest pocket said, “Pretty girl, you need eye drops to prevent infection. Some swimmers urinate in that big pool, you know.”
I nodded in appreciation: Yes, I know. I also knew that one swimmer had pissed from a once gum-wrapped dick into the core of my heart. Then came the magical moment of sudden ecstasy: I felt a warm gush between my legs. The time of the month was here.
During the rest of the ride, I bit my lip to collect myself, thinking that I would buy some onions at the market to bring home. I could start chopping them as soon as Mother returned so she wouldn’t suspect that I had been crying. I certainly didn’t want her to know about me and Coach Long, especially now, after I was dumped. When I caught sight of the cucumbers in the next stall, a deliciously vengeful idea came to me. Along with two onions I bought one cucumber with the prickliest pimples and the most protruding veins.
At home, I took out my notebook, torn off the page with my menstrual records and began breaking the ghastly gourd on it until it became a mash of seedy flesh. Heading to the bathroom with the disintegrated sheet and pulp, I dumped it all in the toilet bowl and proceeded to tend to my business. Feeling cleansed and refreshed with my sanitary band on, I flushed everything down in one cathartic go: “Goodbye and good riddance!”
Returning to the notebook, I wrote:
Dear diary,
This too, like being terminated from the swim team and the Studio, shall pass. His betrayal has shown me that he is not worthy of me. Sour grapes, I realize, as I still care a great deal about him and it’ll take a long time, if ever, for me to get over my first love. But I’ve learned a hard lesson of life and I will move on.
I shall and I must move on!
9 Girls at Play
Entertainment as you Westerners know it was nonexistent in the late 1970’s. Watching and re-watching one of the “Eight Revolutionary Modern Model Plays” personally sanctioned by Madame Mao was the only recreational activity. Such was the environment in which the open stall wet markets – so called because the ground was regularly hosed down -- thrived as the prime locale for socializing. The correlation between xiao caichang (the wet market) and xiao shimin (the petty urbanites) was demonstrated by the modifier xiao, which denoted the same trivial-minded nature of the place’s ambience and the traits of its residents. Here, the Shanghainese swapped gossip, gave unsolicited advice, and rendezvoused.
Three “s”s characterized a typical market: smelly, swarming, and strident. Still we had to visit it daily for want of a refrigerator. The 1930’s Shanghai songstress Zhou Xuan, the “golden throated”, had summed up the way foodstuffs were sold:
Fen che shi wo men de bao xiao ji,
Tian tian zao chen sui zhe ta qi.
Qian men jiao mai cai,
Hou men jiao mai mi …
The carts carrying our night soils are like chickens crowing in the dawn,
We get up daily as we hear them pass.
The sound of hawking vegetables in our front door,
The sound of hawking rice in our back door …
Thankfully, human manure was no longer transported in wheelbarrows although indoor plumbing was still scarce. The end of the decade welcomed a gradual ease of meat and poultry rationing. Chickens, in particular, were becoming more abundant, although our residents’ taste buds were increasingly challenged by farmed rather than free-range birds.
Mother now often returned home late, having already eaten, but she never notified me beforehand so I continued my weekday shopping routine. That afternoon, when I was at a chicken stall, I heard someone humming the Zhou Xuan tune. It was Wang Hong, leaning on a bamboo pole that supported the stall, her eyebrows happily arching at me.
“Oh, hello,” I said, avoiding eye contact. This being our first encounter here since I purchased that symbolic cucumber. I was afraid that she could somehow detect that I was no longer a virgin and newly unceremoniously jilted.
“Hello yourself. Still depressed over having to leave the Studio?”
“Can’t say I’m happy about it but there was nothing I could’ve done differently – I’m … just fine.”
“Glad to hear that,” she said, pushing herself away from the pole in an exaggerated motion. “Let’s go play, then.”
I began walking slowly. She trailed me to a vegetable stall. “What else do you need to buy? Cucumbers? Let me pick these nice fresh ones
for you and help you carry them … home?” She said in a way that was more a plea than a suggestion.
Cucumber -- Coach Long, I thought in succession. Decision on the spot: “You can stop by if you want.”
Eyes in one line from grinning, she exclaimed, “Really? Let’s go!”
“But maybe not for long,” I retracted a bit.
“Of course not, just curious about your place, I’ve only seen the windows from outside the house. You’ve been to our dump so it’s my turn, right?”
I nodded weakly, remembering the predominant piece of furniture in her “dump”, the bed made up of planks mounted on benches. I wonder what Wang Hong would say when she saw my twin bed with a spring mattress, known in pidgin as a ximengss.
A few years later, when my English became more proficient, I would develop an appreciation for the brilliant transliteration of the term. Not only was the pronunciation of ximengss close to that of Simmons, the American brand, but also its meaning: xi, a piece of hay-woven mat used for covering the bed; meng, dream sweet dreams; and ss: to think of, to miss someone dear. Ximengss was therefore sensual, romantic, and above all, utilitarian, much like the prosaic Shanghainese ourselves. In this city’s fun-filled heyday of hitting the hay, the Westernized men and women had exposed themselves to the enduring pleasure that Simmons could provide. They had heartily rolled on a ximengss mattress or two.
Wang Hong’s reaction upon entering our flat was expected. “A whole room all to yourself? And your own ximengss bed. How luxurious of you!”
I pointed out that it was my mother who had a room to herself. Yes, that’s her place behind the big black padlock. I slept in the all-purpose room, amidst the turtle’s head cooking range, wash basin and the door-less and tub-less bathroom. “I wouldn’t call this luxurious.”
“But look at this – you’ve got a pillar like they have on the Bund in your room!” Wang Hong dashed towards the fluted column, straightened an arm to hug it and started twirling around in a pole-dancing move.
“Whee—ee--!”
Finally she stopped; hand on forehead perhaps fighting a dizzy spell. Steadying herself, she walked over to bring back a cucumber I had just bought. Moving it up and down the column’s fluted groove she giggled like mad.
“What are you doing? This is silly.”
“Silly silly silly – I’m a silly girl,” she chanted, imitating me as she headed towards my bed. “Can I sit on your fancy ximengss for a minute, puh-leez? I’ve never been on one.”
“Just don’t bounce too hard. My mother will kill me if I break anything. We’re not well off as you think. Besides, ximengss are not sold anymore nowadays and nowhere to get them fixed.”
She sprang up and down on it anyway, blissful. Suddenly she sat up straight and asked solemnly, “Do you believe that one day I’ll have money and I’ll have everything you have?”
“That won’t surprise me. I wish you luck.”
“You’re so sweet, Mo Mo. Come join me. A mattress is supposed to have two people on it.”
Sitting next to her, I thought about Coach Long’s “coffin”.
“Come. Let’s be a pretend couple and enjoy your soft ximengss,” she urged,
Her arm was around my waist, sending a current of tickling excitement. I did not want to tell her what I had already experienced. Quivering, I sensed my cheeks burning to my ears, ashamed at the thought of being with another girl.
Wang Hong drew me to her bosom. Her dexterity amazed me and her caresses fanned my desire. “You’ll make a good lover,” I gasped.
“I know that,” she chirped. “Someone showed me a handwritten passage that described how to do it and I learned everything by heart already. But how do you know?”
I cupped my hand next to her ear. “I did it with someone … only not on a ximengss.”
“You did? With whom?”
I pressed my palm on her mouth and said, “It’s all over now.”
She seized both of my hands and demanded, “Already? So what was it like?”
The floodgate of my long-suppressed emotions was unexpectedly released. I told her my infatuations with the coach and how he simply took off without a word to get married in Beijing. In tears I vowed, “I don’t miss him – I won’t miss him ever again. He is uneducated and unscrupulous. He’s just a wolf in sheep’s skin.”
Uncharacteristically Wang Hong listened without interjection. Then she embraced me and said, “Forget about that sleaze ball, forget about him. You have me. Show me you pretty smile, Mo Mo … that’s right,” she cooed.
I began to giggle. “Stop! I’m ticklish.”
She laughed, grabbing a cucumber and wielding it at me like a sword. I used my pillow as a shield and the cucumber bounced off and fell. Picking it up and tossing it into the air like a juggler, she broke it in half and squeezed, pointing and shooting like neighborhood urchins with water guns.
Girls at play.
Later, as Wang Hong knelt down to clean up the sappy mess, I began to cook. If only we had known then that the succulent trail of fruit acid on the floor could keep our faces tender and skin soft, she and I would have been bathing in a fountain of youth.
There was no sign that Mother would be back in time for dinner. I asked Wang Hong to stay. This was the first time I made a meal for someone other than Mother and I utterly enjoyed it.
“Your cooking is out of this world, Mo Mo!”
“You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Deng Xiaoping’s reign bought gradual changes to our nation. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, it was called. Mother’s students were beginning to practice authority-approved etudes by Western composers. By the time Wang Hong, Condiments, and I were finishing high school in the early 1980’s, I began to experience a kind of popularity I would have never dreamed of in the decade before. Looking Caucasian was fashionable and my schoolmates openly envied my natural double-fold eyelid. Selected hospitals in Shanghai even began to offer plastic surgeries to create an eyelid crease to form the double eyelid.
“Mo Mo is my best friend,” Wang Hong announced to anyone who would listen. “Always has been and always will.”
She and I walked side by side, holding hands as same-sex friends usually did and humming American folk rock tunes like “Rocky Mountain High”. John Denver had performed the song for Deng Xiaoping during Deng’s U.S. visit and the Conservatory was among the few places in China which had the cassette recording of it. Wang Hong and I learned to sing it. Underground copies of The Carpenters cassette tapes also became highly prized and our favorite song was Karen Carpenter singing “Sealed with a Kiss.”
With Madame Mao now serving a life sentence, her revolutionary plays had ceased to be the exclusive form of entertainment. Still, classic literature published prior to 1966 -- banned, burned, buried in sealed libraries, the glue on their spines being eaten up by rats – had yet to all resurface. The vacuum gave rise to an underground, hand-copied pulp fiction market which was flourishing at a speed like that of bamboo shoots after a spring rain. It was from one of these that Wang Hong read about the description of foreplay, she told me during the dinner I cooked for her.
The Silver-gray Tie and A Lock of Blond Hair were among the most sought after titles. The passion for things Western was evident in such titles featuring non-indigenous Chinese clothes or hair. The heart of a Shanghai maiden like Wang Hong was undoubtedly attracted to men with ties and women who were blonds.
A recent afternoon brought me face to face with a dog-eared copy of A Maiden’s Heart, “the most exciting novella circulating,” according to Wang Hong. For the privilege of reading it later, I had to help her hand-copy it first. “Condiments let me have it for two days only. If we go copying it in your place now and you continue to do it alone whenever you can, we’ll have our own copy to keep.”
“Why don’t we read it first to see if it’s worth copying?”
“You don’t get to read it unless you copy it. Once I have a copy, I can rent it out for money
, so you have to help me, Mo Mo.”
I understood that it was time for me to reciprocate.
Crouching over the small stand next to the turtle’s head, a.k.a. our family “dining table”, Wang Hong and I started copying, stroke by stroke. I suggested that she start from the beginning while I did from about one-third down. I found a bookmark with a red silk string and a Chairman Mao quote “Study well and make progress everyday” on it and put it at the beginning of my section. Wang Hong had to copy word for word as she had not committed to memory the strokes of many Chinese characters. I would read a couple of sentences at once then wrote them down without referring back again, progressing at a much faster pace than her.
After about an hour and a half, we took a break to stretch and yawn. Apprehension hit as I checked the time. “What if my mother comes home for dinner and sees us doing this?”
Wang Hong slouched back and began to twirl the ballpoint pen on her thumb. “Just say I forced you to do it. Since I’m from the leading class, she won’t criticize or tell on us. Who knows? She might be reading one of these herself. Anyway, her students are back to playing romantic pieces written by foreigners so what’s the difference?”
I continued copying the following day after school and finished in time for Wang Hong to pick up in the evening. I leafed through the end product as I massaged the sore writer’s bump on my middle finger, disappointed at its content. My secret diaries recording my thoughts and feelings towards the street sweeper or Coach Long seemed to surpass the depictions of the maiden’s heart.
When Wang Hong came, she snatched the opus from me and waved it joyously. “What time did you finish?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. I copied like crazy and my hand hurts.”