Rebellion

by Molly Patterson

  Juanlan rides for an hour or more, stops to buy a bottle of green tea at a baihuodian, and then turns back. As she’s coming onto the outskirts of town again, she spots an Internet bar and decides to stop in. It’s been a month, at least, since she checked her e-mail.

  Inside, she takes a seat among the boys playing video games with the volume turned high in their headphones. Internet bars are still a new enough thing for Juanlan to feel surprised by the legions of young men who seem to spend all their waking hours in dark, smoky rooms, staring at screens. Her usual visits last no more than a half hour. Only a few of her friends from university are on e-mail.

  When she opens her in-box, however, she finds a letter from Rob. Immediately her heart begins to pound as she remembers the fake write-up that she gave Director Wei. Surely this e-mail holds news of the real thing: perhaps Rob would like to send her a copy of the travel guide and is writing for her address. Despite herself, she is excited to see it. She’s eager to see what he made of Heng’an, how he will represent the place, what made it into his description and what did not. And though she was never the main champion of the idea, if he’s named their hotel in the pages of the guide, then they won’t have a choice but to welcome the flood of tourists that will come. The future will force itself over their doorstep, after all.

  But when she opens the e-mail, there are only a few lines to tell her that he’s sorry, but the Three Springs Hotel won’t be mentioned in the guidebook. In fact, Heng’an itself won’t be included. “My editors,” he says, “wanted more space for Yunnan. Tiger Leaping Gorge is just too exciting.”

  He goes on to talk of other matters. Things are strange here, he writes. Has she heard about the shooting at an American high school? Of course Juanlan remembers seeing this on the news a month ago or more, not long after Director Wei broke up with her. She recalls seeing the story and not caring much about it. It was too far away. And suddenly she’s angry that he has used this event to turn her attention from the real purpose of the e-mail. The real purpose was to say, You are forgotten. I don’t owe you anything, after all.

  Riding back into town, she has the sensation of being propelled. Her feet are light turning the pedals, her hands steady on the handlebars. She knows where she is going, though she couldn’t say why. But she steers in and out of traffic without noticing how close she comes to swiping this truck or that pedicab, and it is not because her mind is on other things but rather because she can’t seem to focus on anything at all. Her head is filled with a light staccato, like the low sound of gunfire in the Internet bar, as the boys in their headphones shot down enemies onscreen.

  By the time she gets to the noodle shop, her face is damp with humidity and sweat. She locks her bike on a pole and goes inside. Several people are gathered at the tables, watching the television, many more than are usually there, and they are all transfixed. Qiang Ba is watching along with his customers. He stands with his arms folded over his chest, and when Juanlan greets him, he seems unsurprised to see her again but beckons her over with a shake of the head. “What’s going on?” she asks.

  He gestures to the television, where a CCTV newsman is speaking into the camera. “See for yourself.” The sound is low, but the captions scrolling over the bottom of the screen read: “. . . in the early hours of the morning, leaving nothing but rubble and the blood of innocents on the ground. The criminal attack by American-led NATO forces is a direct assault on Chinese sovereignty . . .”

  She is aware of the morning being erased from her mind: Rob’s e-mail, the birdcage swinging from her father’s wrist.

  A man seated at a nearby table says angrily, “They bombed us, the pigs.”

  The story comes out in bits and pieces. The Chinese embassy in Belgrade has been destroyed, perhaps as many as a dozen are dead, some of them journalists, many more injured, the building is devastated. There is footage of smoke and rubble, then a map of Belgrade with a red star on one side showing where the embassy stood. It was an American plane, several bombs were dropped, and there are no explanations except the obvious one: the United States has made an attack on China.

  As the footage loops and the newsman repeats the same information, the people in the noodle shop begin to speculate. The Americans and NATO are claiming it was an accident, but this is not to be believed. A woman seated with her son in her lap says loudly, “Everyone knows the American military is top-notch. They couldn’t have bombed our embassy by accident. It’s an insult to say so.”

  “Of course it’s not an accident!”

  “That fucking Clinton—”

  “—just because China is coming up in the world.”

  Qiang Ba shakes his head and goes over to his post behind the vat of boiling water. “Who wants to order?” he asks, and the others in the shop begin calling out their requests in the midst of conversations with one another. Someone turns up the volume on the television, and the voices all grow louder in response. Juanlan seats herself shakily on a free stool and lays her hands flat on the little table. A feeling is rising inside her, a sensation of restlessness that settles in her fingers and the backs of her thighs. It might be shock’s reverberations pulsing through her bones, but it’s amplified by knowing that she feels exactly what everyone around her is feeling. Anger, pure and simple, as it hardens to rage. Do something. She almost says it aloud. A woman her mother’s age, seated at a nearby table, is crying over the images on the television: an arm half buried under concrete, a young woman stumbling past the camera with a cloth pressed to her bleeding head. The newscasters are naming the dead. Among them is a married couple who were living in the embassy. “Oh, it’s too terrible!” the crying woman says through her tears. “They were living a happy life. What did they do to deserve this?”

  Juanlan’s fingers grasp the edge of the table. She catches Qiang Ba looking at her. “You need to eat,” he says, but she just shakes her head.

  “Clinton should be tried for war crimes,” a man seated near her declares. He taps the table; he is speaking to her.

  “It was a barbarous act,” she agrees, “a criminal act . . .” They are the same words the newsman was using a moment before, but they don’t feel any less true because of it.

  Someone has switched the television to another channel. The news is the same, but this is the provincial station, based in Chengdu, and the newscasters are talking about protests. Demonstrators are already gathering outside the US consulate, they inform the audience, and more are expected to show up throughout the afternoon. Juanlan thinks of the lectures she attended there as a student, of the expat who’d spoken about American missionaries. She thinks of the lecture room with its sound-absorbing panels, of the high walls surrounding the compound, of the guards at the gates, and she is suddenly angry with herself for having gone to listen to these talks. The people who gave them were not experts, and they were not wise. Often they looked impatient at the questions the audience asked. They were, Juanlan thinks, the same as Rob: feeling themselves beholden to nothing and no one, just messing around.

  “If I were in Chengdu,” the man seated near her says, “I would be down there right now. And I wouldn’t just be chanting slogans, either.”

  “Why don’t you go?” she asks. “The bus station is just around the corner.”

  He nods as if he might be considering it. Then he turns back to the television and mutters, “The imperialist pigs!”

  Do something. Juanlan is sick of watching the news. She stands abruptly, tipping her stool onto its side, and she doesn’t bother to right it before making her way to the door. “Where are you going?” Qiang Ba asks. She doesn’t stop to answer him.

  The man behind the ticket window shows no sign of having heard the news. “Do you know about the bombing?” Juanlan asks, and he shrugs. Then he points through the door into the waiting room and says, “You’ve got less than ten minutes.”

  It’s not until the bus is pulling out of the station that she remembers her bike, parked next to Qiang Ba’s shop. Immedia
tely after, she thinks of her parents. In a few hours, they will start to wonder where she is, and she won’t have a chance to call them until she gets to the city. She pictures her mother pacing angrily over the hotel lobby floor, her father standing at the door, peering up and down the street. They’ll worry, but it’s better that she didn’t call before. What she’s doing is crazy; they would have tried to talk her out of it. And she doesn’t feel like being talked out of anything.

  It is a small bus, and the other passengers are all abuzz with the news. They spend the next hour speaking of nothing else. Even the ticket taker and the driver join in. When at last the driver turns on some music, the conversation dies down and Juanlan turns to the window, glad to be alone with her thoughts. What she is feeling is too difficult to name. It is the feeling of a dream before you have it.

  Months ago, before the baby came, Lulu mentioned that she was having vivid dreams. Falling asleep was like opening a door, and once she had gone through it she was in that place forever. In one such dream, she was crossing a wide brown river with a hippopotamus beside her. Her arms were tired from swimming, and she felt a deep sense of dread. Still, she swam and the hippopotamus stayed beside her. Juanlan asked what she thought the dream meant. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Lulu replied. “It’s some other life I’m living.” But Juanlan tried to trace its meaning, to discover the emotion that explained the action. The hippopotamus was the baby, she said. “Let’s hope not,” Lulu said with a sharp laugh.

  The next few hours pass as if in that kind of dream. Another life. Juanlan isn’t sure whether she has slept or not. Their bus bumps slowly along the road, and when the expressway comes into view, she sees that it is nearing completion. The asphalt is laid, and without the lines drawn on, it looks like a river, black and flowing. And she is in a boat sailing straight down the middle.

  Then they are edging slowly through the Chengdu traffic. They move in fits and starts; the southern portions of the first and second ring roads are closed, and so they are detoured north of downtown. To the south, the giant statue of Chairman Mao towers over Tianfu Square. Squinting, Juanlan imagines she can see it between the buildings, but of course this is only her imagination. She wants to open the windows and breathe in the air of Chengdu: smog and exhaust and the dust from construction.

  Her resolve has been tempered over the past several hours, in the time when she was half awake, half dreaming, and when she finally steps off the bus at Xinnanmen Station, her only thought is how to get to the consulate. She asks a policeman standing outside the station, who doesn’t blink as he gives her directions: a straight shot south and then left on Jinxiu Lu. “Are you joining the protests?” he asks as she starts to turn away.

  She considers lying, unsure whether they are fully authorized. But the tone of the news report suggested government sanction, and so she tells him yes, she’s headed there now.

  “That’s good,” he says. “The universities are busing students over there. Join up with them and you should stay safe.”

  She walks two or three kilometers before reaching Jinxiu Lu, but long before that point, she passes through the membrane of a crowd and becomes part of it. Who knows how many people are marching? She sees a little boy sitting on his father’s shoulders, waving the national flag and yelling, “China, fight back!” Not far away are three women her mother’s age who, on a normal night, would probably be in the nearest park doing their evening dance exercises, but are now shouting along with the rest: “Blood for blood! Blood for blood!” The chant carries on for several minutes before ebbing a little, but then another is taken up in its place: “Bomb the White House!” Some people are carrying signs with the same slogans and others, slogans mentioning Clinton and Albright, how they should be killed or fucked.

  By the time they reach Jinxiu Lu, the street is too crowded to get close. The consulate is a few blocks down, and word goes out that several people have started scaling the walls around the compound, that bottles and bricks are being tossed over the perimeter and onto the grounds. There are police nearby, but none are moving in the direction of the consulate, which means that this, too, will be allowed.

  Juanlan stops to look at the anonymous buildings rising overhead and at the first-floor shops, all of which have their metal doors drawn. It is a strange part of the city—a place where it seems too few people live or work, where the buildings turn in on themselves and keep their secrets. And yet it is full of people now, full of heat, full of shiny faces screaming their frustrations into the falling dusk. It is only here that she can feel a part of it all. The anger in her chest is bruising her bones to get out.

  She takes the policeman’s advice and joins up with a group of university students. It’s easy enough; no one asks who she is, and there’s no need to talk because they are all shouting slogans. At first she thinks that they’re from the technology institute, but then decides that they’re students from Sichuan University. And they’ve come prepared—not only with signs but with long banners and laundry tubs that they bang like drums. The throb finds its way inside her rib cage, fury made physical. The day Director Wei broke up with her, she sat on the edge of the bed, unable to say or ask anything but why. Now she pictures his startled face blinking at a door that she’s slammed in it. The thud of the drum is that door, slamming again and again.

  For an hour or longer she stands with the students, holding up one side of a banner made from a very long piece of cloth. Directly above her are the words “Down with the imperial . . .,” and though she can’t read the rest, it doesn’t matter. She can guess the message, and anyway, they are shouting with all the force of their united anger.

  Some time later—it could be nine or ten or eleven o’clock—she sees, standing beneath the awning of a music shop, an old white man bending forward like a waterbird from his perch on a step. His features are nothing like Rob’s, but the similarity isn’t in his looks: it is simply that he stands out, that he doesn’t belong. The man is shaking his head and arguing with a group of young men and women who have gathered around him: high school students, all dressed in T-shirts and matching track pants that must be their school’s. One of them, a pale fat girl with glasses, has her fists balled in rage. Another is pointing angrily at the foreigner, his finger almost meeting the older man’s chest. Juanlan makes her way toward them, twisting and pressing herself flat between the bodies, a sensation like nausea rising in her throat. But she is not sickened; it is excitement that makes her spine tingle and her heart beat fast. All around her are the shouts and chants of the crowd, and she has the sensation of being positioned exactly on the line between safety and violence, between order and chaos. It could go either way, and she doesn’t know which one she wants. She makes her way toward the foreigner and feels the throng of other bodies moving the same way, with the same intention. The already familiar slogan “Blood for blood!” is shouted at a distance, and a few people closer by take up the chant again.

  Juanlan pushes against two men who are blocking her way, and miraculously, they move apart. The foreigner’s back is to her now, but she has a good look at the girl with the balled fists and sees that her eyes, behind the glint of her glasses, are sharp as knives. The girl moves a few centimeters to the left, and in that moment, a familiar face appears behind her. The shock of recognition precedes understanding: he is taller than he was the last time she saw him, his shoulders broader, but there is no doubt that the boy Juanlan sees is Wei Ke.

  There is a shove, from somewhere. The foreigner stumbles. When he straightens up again, he has a look of confusion on his face that is almost a smile. He shakes his head and says something she can’t hear. It might be in Chinese or it might be in English. He could be speaking some other language altogether, but it doesn’t matter because she isn’t listening. The girl with the glasses has moved again, and Juanlan loses sight of Wei Ke. She tries to move to one side, but the crowd has grown and she is wedged in between a woman cradling a bunch of bananas against her chest and some univers
ity students trying to unfurl another painted banner. The students are screaming about the Chinese martyrs and the American imperialists. Some of them have tears streaming down their cheeks. And the foreigner just keeps shaking his head, repeating the same refrain again and again.

  The girl with the glasses reaches out and hits him on the front of his shoulder. It isn’t a hard blow—her fingers release from a fist even as she’s hitting him—but it is the next step in whatever is happening now, and Juanlan knows there will be a next step, and then a next one after that. She is watching it, rapt, her hands clasped to her chest.

  They are two blocks from the consulate, and a swelling of noise suddenly rises from that direction, a cheer covering over the chanting of slogans. She peers over her shoulder to discover the source of the noise, but nothing is visible through the crowds, the hundreds or even thousands of people cramming the street. She stands on her toes, swivels her neck. Others are looking, too. “They’re breaking in!” someone says excitedly, and others start repeating the news. For a moment, the attention drops away from the foreigner.

  It is enough. When Juanlan turns back, she sees his bowed shape ducking under the edge of the awning, slipping behind a stack of boxes into an alley. He will get away, and it is with the help of the boy who is even now blocking the way, telling the crowd to stand back, to just leave him be. Wei Ke raises his arms, rigid and forceful, and though the crowd could turn on him, instead it turns away. He is safe. He has made sure that the foreigner is safe, too. And when he meets her eye, Juanlan knows that he saw her there a moment before, that he saw her watching the girl who flung out her fist and knew that she wasn’t going to do a thing to stop it.