Chenxi and the Foreigner

by Sally Rippin

  ‘I know it might all seem very confusing for you at the moment, darling, that’s why you should take my advice. The trouble with your generation is they don’t know where they are going. Kids your age are lost. They have too many choices. When I left school, there were only two options. You went to university or you got a job...’

  Anna’s mind began to wander. She had heard this lecture before. She thought about beautiful Chenxi and his magnificent painting. How was it that two people who grew up on opposite ends of the earth could have exactly the same vision? After what she had seen this afternoon it was impossible that they could not be together. She was sure he was the reason she came to China: everything happened for a reason.

  Their waiter approached and Mr White ordered quickly so he could continue, but Anna interrupted him before he could go on. ‘What do you think of Chenxi?’ she dared.

  Mr White frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know. The Chinese guy from my college.’

  ‘Have you been listening to me, Anna?’ He stopped and eyed his daughter. ‘You don’t have a crush on him, do you?’

  ‘Maybe...’ She twiddled her fork.

  ‘Oh, darling. You’ve only been here three days. You haven’t been here long enough to understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘Look, love.’ His voice softened. ‘Chenksy seems like a very nice boy and I can certainly see how you’re attracted to him, but just be careful.’

  ‘Dad!’ Anna spluttered. ‘You’re so patronising! I know all about contraception and stuff like that, if that’s what you mean? I’m not a virgin.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Just be careful about what you get into. I know it sounds harsh, love, but a Chinese boy would do anything to go out with an Australian girl. You’re probably lonely, but when I take you on Friday night to drinks at the consulate you’ll meet some people you like. There are usually a few foreign students from the university just up the road from your art college. I’ve met a nice French boy who comes regularly. He’s here studying Mandarin.’

  Anna stared at him. It struck her then that, despite living in China for three years, her father had no Chinese friends. He employed plenty of them: maids, drivers, even fellow engineers, but he didn’t mix with them outside of work. Were all expatriates like that? She decided that in future she would keep her thoughts on Chenxi to herself.

  In silence, Anna and her father ate their imported Italian meal and drank their imported red wine, the street sounds of Shanghai muffled by the altitude and the double-glazing of the top floor restaurant.

  Far below, along Zhong Shan Lu and past the street market, was the Shanghai College of Fine Arts. And, if you paused to look through the high iron gates, you might see a single bulb burning in the classroom on the second floor, where, having cooked for his mother, and after tucking the exhausted woman into bed, Chenxi sat meditating on his painting. A new painting he had just begun that evening. A painting of a girl.

  On the other side of Shanghai, the subject of Chenxi’s new painting sat on her bed in the air-conditioned apartment that overlooked Fuxing Park. She took out her journal to gather her thoughts.

  9

  Next morning Anna arrived late at college, hot and flustered, but proud she had negotiated her new pink bike in the traffic.

  The students were already at work, copying onto silk, and all of them looked up as she walked in, except Chenxi. Teacher Dai nodded and patted Anna’s desk. Had he thought she wouldn’t come back? The moon-faced boy beamed and slipped a note into Anna’s hand as she walked past. She shoved it in her pocket.

  Teacher Dai prodded Chenxi, who got up, making a performance of rinsing his brush and twisting the bristles into a fine point before ambling over to translate for Anna. She grinned at him and he returned a token smile.

  ‘Teacher Dai say you can begin try bamboo today.’

  ‘Bamboo?’ said Anna.

  ‘Bamboo.’

  Anna stared at the newspaper laid out on her desk. Was she not considered good enough to begin on rice paper?

  Teacher Dai was looking back and forth between them, as if following a tennis match. When he saw Chenxi had finished translating, he nodded and smiled and took one of Anna’s sheep-hair brushes from the bundle. He dipped it into a cup of warm water to soak out the protective glue and set about making ink for Anna.

  Anna watched, fascinated, and Chenxi stood behind, translating whenever needed. Dai Laoshi rubbed the ink stick around and around the flat stone in a little water. Ink gradually formed from the powder dissolving into the liquid. He rubbed the stick almost meditatively, in rhythmic circles, then let Anna try.

  Anna lost herself in the rhythm of the rubbing: what a calm beginning to a day’s painting.

  Once the ink was made and the brush soaked, Dai Laoshi dipped the tip of the bristles into the ink, instructing Anna not to have too much or too little. Then, with his arm curved loosely in front of him, the brush vertical, he let the tip down onto the newspaper, pushing the brush out in front of him.

  ‘It important you paint with all your chi…your energy…’ Chenxi translated, ‘not just you arm. Chi come from you stomach, run through you arm, through point of you brush. If you paint with chi you have good strong brush stoke.’

  Dai Laoshi lifted his brush, then pressed it down to form another stroke above the fi rst. He looked at Anna to check that she was watching. Then he continued painting the same strokes until he reached the top of the newspaper.

  ‘The stalk of bamboo,’ Chenxi announced.

  With deft strokes, Dai Laoshi then painted the branches and the leaves of the bamboo, fanning out in orderly bunches of fi ve. It looked easy. Deceptively so, as Anna discovered with her wobbly fi rst attempt.

  Chenxi and Dai Laoshi chuckled at the foreigner’s bumbled effort, and Chenxi translated to Anna that she was to practise painting bamboos on newspaper at least until the end of the week.

  ‘To the end of the week?’ Anna frowned. She would rather be working on silk like the others.

  Chenxi looked stern. ‘At least until end of week!’

  Anna turned and began to paint another stalk of bamboo.

  After her second hour of painting bamboos, with little improvement, she grew restless and gazed out the window. From where she sat she could see over to the bike shed where her bike shone out of the rusty tangle like an unwrapped lolly. On the other side of the bike shed was another dull cement college building as formidable as a prison block, where row upon row of black heads were bent studiously over their work. She stretched and turned back to her class.

  The moon-faced boy was looking at her and Anna remembered the note he had thrust in her hand. She took it out of her pocket and unfolded it. On the paper was a cartoon drawing of two lovebirds, and underneath he had written: Hello! My name is Disco. Will you be my girlfriend?

  Anna giggled at the crazy name Moon-Face had chosen for himself. When she looked up he was grinning at her, his yellow teeth gleaming. She smiled and shook her head and Disco pulled an exaggerated grimace. Anna settled down to bamboo painting again, but felt her admirer watching.

  At eleven twenty-five, the students had already packed up and at eleven-thirty most of them were out the door, caught up in the lunchtime mania. Disco straggled behind, lighting a cigarette and talking to Chenxi. Chenxi strolled over to Anna, with Lao Li and Disco close behind, giggling and nudging each other like ten-year-olds.

  Anna stood with her hands on her hips, watching their silliness to stop like a long-suffering primary school teacher. Chenxi cocked his head, trying to suppress a smirk. ‘Ding Yue want to know why you not want to be his girlfriend?'

  Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Ask Ding Yue why he calls himself Disco.’

  Chenxi translated Ding Yue’s earnest response, his lips twisting in mirth. ‘He say he love disco and karaoke, and if you his girlfriend he take you to disco and karaoke bar his uncle own.’

  Lao Li shrieked with laughter.

 
‘Well tell Disco Ding Yue,’ said Anna, ‘that’s it’s fortunate I already have a boyfriend, because I hate disco and karaoke!’

  Chenxi translated once again. Lao Li was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. Ding Yue clutched at his heart, pretending to be wounded, and dragged himself out of the classroom, howling all the way.

  Anna turned to wash out her brushes, but Chenxi said, ‘Why you not want be girlfriend with Ding Yue, eh? His family own lot of factories. He make very good husband. Is because he Chinese?’

  He watched for Anna’s reaction.

  Anna looked away and finished washing. ‘Of course not! I told you already! It’s because I already love someone, OK? Are you coming for lunch, or what?’

  She swung her bag over her shoulder and headed out of the room. Chenxi and Lao Li followed, Lao Li still hooting like a crazy animal.

  This time at the noodle shop Anna was so hungry she decided to take the risk. She couldn’t go to the Hilton for a hamburger every time she needed something to eat, and she felt like disobeying her father.

  The three of them sat at a grimy table and the owner brought three bowls of soup noodles. Anna wiped her pair of chopsticks under the table on a clean tissue and, when nobody was looking, picked off the dried meat and flicked it to the floor, where it curled up into the dust. All that was left was a sprig of coriander, the noodles and the soup. She hesitated for a minute, remembering her father’s warning, but then told herself that she would rather be sick from tasting local food than return home healthy after only eating imported hamburgers.

  The noodles were delicious. In fact they were so good that when Chenxi ordered a second bowl Anna did the same. This time she ate the whole lot including the tasty dried meat, and when she sat back from the table, over-full and sweaty, she saw that Chenxi and Lao Li had been watching, impressed.

  ‘What?’ Anna snapped. ‘You think just because I’m a girl I can’t eat as much as you?’

  Chenxi chuckled and translated for Lao Li. Then he turned back to Anna and said, ‘That why Lao Li call you Xiao Pang Pang.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Anna said, pleased that she had already picked up a term of endearment for herself.

  ‘It mean “Small Fat Fat”,’ Chenxi said, laughing.

  Anna was mortified. ‘What?’ she spluttered. ‘I’m not fat!’

  ‘Yes you are!’ said Chenxi. ‘In China to be fat is lucky. Lao Li think fat is beautiful.’

  Despite her liberal upbringing, Anna found it hard to take fat as a compliment! How different from her own culture’s definition of beauty. Even she, of average proporions, had in her early teenage years succumbed to fetishes of dieting and starvation like most of her friends at school.

  She glanced at Chenxi slyly. ‘What about you? Do you like “fat” girls?’

  ‘I like all girls,’ he boasted, and Anna felt a tiny thread tighten inside her.

  That afternoon, the young model came to class again and smiled when she saw Anna. This time she undid her gown to the waist and sat stiffly, staring ahead of her as the class drew.

  Anna took in her skeletal frame, small and neat like a child’s. Her own body felt big and clumsy and the two bowls of noodles sat heavily in her stomach. But only that day, Anna reminded herself, she had been admired by two men, even if neither of them was Chenxi. Nevertheless, she was glad she was no longer a self-conscious schoolgirl who would have taken weeks to get over a remark like Chenxi’s at lunchtime. It was like shaking off a cumbersome chrysalis to appreciate your body as it was. Anna smiled to herself as she drew.

  Soon she felt Chenxi hovering behind her. Even though he did not make a sound, she sensed an aura that sent her drawing arm to jelly. She put down her charcoal. The only way she could draw with him in the same room was to block him out of her mind. Even that was no mean feat.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, turning to face him.

  He smiled, stepping back.

  Anna tried to think of something to keep his attention. ‘Chenxi,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You want to go for a swim this afternoon? In the consulate pool?’ She hadn’t even seen the pool, but she was sure it would entice him. ‘It’s beautiful. And cool. And quiet. You know—tranquil?’

  ‘Tranquil.’

  ‘Yes, tranquil. I taught you that word yesterday. Remember?’ ‘Tranquil. Calm. Yin and yang,’ Chenxi teased.

  Anna reddened. ‘So. You want to come?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Chenxi flicked through the small worn dictionary he carried in his pocket. ‘Maybe: perhaps, possibly…’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Anna said and went back to her drawing. ‘Come if you want. I don’t care. I’m going anyway. It’s too hot. I’ll meet you at the Australian consulate at four.’

  Four o’clock came and went. Anna waited until ten past before diving into the pool. If he comes, he comes, she thought. I’m not going to hang around all day waiting for him again!

  The cool, rippled turquoise closed over her. Underwater she could have been anywhere. But, when she rolled onto her back and looked up at the grey polluted sky, she was unmistakably in Shanghai. Anna swam and dived and twisted through the water. Her pores were cleansed of the soot and silt but she could not rid her mind of Chenxi. Occasionally she felt sure of his presence and would flip over, certain he would be at the side of the pool, watching. But only the lush consulate palms waved back at her and Anna tried to ignore her own disappointment.

  After an hour, she got out of the pool and dressed, refreshed enough to feel herself again. She walked her bike out the front gate and was just about to mount when she heard Chenxi’s call from behind.

  ‘Chenxi! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I wait for you!’

  ‘But I’ve been here for ages! Why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘You tell me meet you at consulate. I wait here, outside.’

  ‘Oh, Chenxi! I feel terrible! I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘I say only maybe. Maybe no. Maybe yes, too.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Have you been waiting all this time? Come on, let’s go for a swim now. I’ll go in again.’

  ‘I must go help my mother cook dinner. She is home from work very tired.’

  ‘Chenxi, I really feel awful. How can I make up for it?’ Anna searched his face to see if he was annoyed but she couldn’t tell. ‘Look, I know. On Friday night they have drinks here, at the consulate. Would you come? At six?’

  Chenxi stared across the road. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Chenxi! Maybe yes, or maybe no!’

  Chenxi winked. ‘Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly.’

  10

  Lights sparkled and bobbed in the consulate pool. The sounds of forced laughter and the chinking of glasses wafted around the back porch of the old two-storey mansion, along with the musky odour of perfume and sweat. Anna looked for Chenxi in case he had arrived early, but there were no Chinese in sight. The only Asian-looking man had a very strong American accent. Although it was evening and a breeze had lifted, all the foreigners had a sweaty sheen about them, as if they were in a state of constant anxiety. Some of the balding men carried monogrammed handkerchiefs, which they drew out of their top pockets from time to time to dab at their foreheads. Women slapped at mosquitoes around their bare ankles.

  Anna was bored. She shifted from foot to foot half listening to the chatter around her. Why were they all here? What brought them to China? Living as an expatriate must be a bit like movie stardom in Hollywood. It was an unreal existence. Even though she complained about being stared at and touched in the streets, it was like being famous. A constant ego trip. Was that why all these foreigners were here? Were they nobodies in their own countries?

  ‘Well hello!’ A woman in a cocktail dress and glittery nails floated towards her. ‘You must be Anna. Your father told me you were visiting. How are you enjoying it here?’

  Anna didn’t feel in the mood to play the good
daughter. Her father spoke for her anyway, as she had expected he would, explaining that she was in China to ‘broaden her horizons’ and to pick up a bit of Mandarin ‘to help her future career options’. As Anna smiled distractedly, she kept a watch on the front gate. She had told Chenxi in the afternoon that if he was going to maybe come, then maybe he should come in. She couldn’t wait for him all night out the front.

  A group of young people meandered through the gate, foreign students, and Anna’s father nudged her. She looked them over perfunctorily and spied one whom she guessed to be the French student her father was keen on. He had thick, curly brown hair, an attractive face, and was well dressed in cream linen pants and a silk shirt. But any interest she tried to summon up was banished by thoughts of Chenxi.

  Anna excused herself from the conversation and wound her way through the sweaty bodies towards the trestle table set up as a bar. She jabbed a piece of cheese on the end of a toothpick and knew that she had been noticed. She picked up a flute of champagne and felt the French man sidle up behind her. He leaned in front of her to take a glass of beer, bumping her arm.

  ‘Oh, excuse me!’ he said in mock surprise.

  Anna smiled, impressed at his smooth pick-up. He fitted her stereotype of a Frenchman.

  ‘My name is Laurent. Are you a student here?’ he continued without missing a beat.

  ‘Anna. I’m studying Chinese painting at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts.’

  ‘Oh?’ he said, feigning intense fascination. ‘You’re an artiste!’

  ‘I hope to be.’

  ‘I know that college. It’s across the river from where I study at East China Normal University. I study Mandarin. You should come over and see us there one day.’ He gestured to include the other students he had arrived with. ‘We have great parties!’

  ‘I should,’ Anna replied without promise and looked towards the front gate again. Chenxi was either very late or he wasn’t coming.