Chenxi and the Foreigner

by Sally Rippin

‘My uncle is dead.’

  ‘No. My uncle is killed. In Cultural Revolution.’

  Anna stared at him and felt her blood run cold.

  Zhou Lai looked at the door. He shook his head and lowered his voice. He drew in closer to Anna. ‘You know this outside China? In your country? You know this Cultural Revolution?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘It very no good…’

  Anna didn’t interrupt.

  ‘He is killed in Cultural Revolution for love. He is marry to Chenxi mother but he love foreign woman. Older woman. His family say he very bad. They say he love foreign woman, he no love China. Chenxi only baby. Chenxi now very do not like his father. He very angry for his father love foreign woman. He no like foreigners, Chenxi. He say they trouble. That why Chenxi not polite with you…’

  Anna heard the door behind her open, and Zhou Lai’s eyes widened in fright. Anna’s heart thudded in her chest. Without turning, she continued to read from the textbook, ‘What does your brother do?’

  ‘My brother is studying at school…’

  15

  Mr White stirred the sauce. On his brow pearls of sweat formed. One shook loose and rolled down through his thick grey eyebrows, along the bridge of his nose to the tip where it quivered and plopped into the red bubbles. He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. Anna leaned against the kitchen doorway in a bathrobe and head towel, watching his efforts. Mr White was making his special spaghetti sauce as a celebration for his daughter’s safe arrival home, suffering no more than a slight cold. Anna picked at her nails.

  ‘Even with the air-conditioning it gets so hot in here!’ Mr White complained.

  ‘Dad? What was the Cultural Revolution all about?’

  Mr White lifted the wooden spoon and gingerly licked the end. Frowning, he reached for the salt and sprinkled into the sauce. ‘The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s last attempt to hold on to power. The Communist Party had ruled since 1949 but he’d made such a mess during The Great Leap Forward that people were beginning to doubt his capabilities. So he had to come up with something to make them believe in him again. In 1966 he cleverly manipulated the people into believing that there was a threat to the Communist revolution that could only be stopped by supporting him.’ Mr White paused to pick up the spoon and taste the sauce again. ‘Mmm…that’s better. Have you heard of the Red Guards?’

  ‘We had a lesson on it at school, but I don’t remember much. Weren’t they students working for Mao? But they ended up getting out of control? Our teacher compared them a bit to the Nazi Youth.’

  ‘The Red Guards were young naïve students, your age and younger, who Mao rallied into supporting him. The education system in China has always been strict, so you can imagine, when Mao told the students that they could denounce their own teachers as enemies of the revolution, they went wild! For the students it was pure anarchy! Suddenly they had the amazing power to dress their teachers in dunce hats and parade them through the streets, the power to imprison them and beat them, and all with the support of the government!’

  ‘Wow! What were people attacked for?’

  ‘Anything! Anything that could be twisted around into being against Mao and the Communist ideals.’

  ‘For being involved with a foreigner?’

  ‘Especially for being involved with foreigners. Foreign companies were ransacked and looted. As were galleries and temples. Anything that was considered bourgeois and elitist and anti-Communist. Thousands of innocent people were tortured and imprisoned, killed, or driven to suicide. Families were torn apart. Students were sent to labour in the countryside and all the schools and universities were closed down. The country completely ceased to function. By the 1970s China’s economy and social order were in ruins. But Mao was such a powerful person that it wasn’t until he died in 1976 that the people could gain control again. When he died, the Gang of Four—did you learn about them?’

  ‘I can’t remember who they were…’

  ‘What do you learn in schools these days? They were the leaders of the Cultural Revolution and included Mao’s wife. They were arrested after Mao died and the country began to return to normal. But enormous damage had been done. Can you imagine? People were left emotionally scarred. Chinese people look on that period as being the worst in recent history.’

  ‘I can understand,’ Anna sighed. ‘Imagine being denounced by your own students!’

  ‘It wasn’t only that! Everyone got into it! People were denouncing and criticising all over the place! Even in their own families!’

  ‘Would it be possible for a wife to denounce her own husband if she suspected him of being involved with a foreigner?’

  ‘Of course. In fact it would be very likely. People used the excuse even to settle their own personal disputes! Husbands, wives, children, parents. It was out of control. Anyway, it’s good to see you’re catching up on your Chinese history, dear…would you smell this sauce, doesn’t it smell fantastic? Shall I open a bottle of wine?’

  ‘If you like, Dad,’ Anna said, sitting at the table. Thoughts of Chenxi and his family whirred through her head.

  Mr White chose a bottle from the cabinet. An Australian red. As the wine glugged into her glass, Anna smelt the Australian bush.

  April 23rd, 1989

  Day by day I am piecing together information about Chenxi that helps me understand him. If I can learn about his family and his past there is a chance we could have a future. Now that I know what happened to his father I understand what he must feel about foreigners. But I’m not just a foreigner! I can be more to him than that. I want to know everything about him and he will see there is no need to be afraid…If only I could make him understand that we are meant to be together.

  ‘Please,’ said Anna. ‘Not another week of bamboos!’

  Monday morning and Anna felt excited at being in class again. Even though Chenxi hadn’t turned up yet, the other students were happy to see her. Lao Li hovered protectively and Disco Ding Yue gave her furtive glances and childish grins. Anna was amazed at how quickly these faces had become familiar. She felt embarrassed that, like so many foreigners, when she’d first arrived in Shanghai, all Chinese had looked the same to her.

  Her delight that she was perhaps truly becoming a member of the class turned to disappointment when Dai Laoshi approached her with another pile of newspapers. She groaned and stuck out her bottom lip like a sulky child. Dai Laoshi raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Can’t I do what they’re doing?’ she whined and pointed to the other students bent over their desks, painting on silk.

  Dai Laoshi shrugged. He looked towards Lao Li who shrugged in turn.

  Anna thumped her chest and pointed to the other students again. She mimicked them, her head down over a piece of invisible silk.

  Disco Ding Yue chortled. Lao Li mumbled to Dai Laoshi who pulled at his chin. He mumbled something back in a nervous voice, and then walked to his satchel and pulled out a stack of pictures. Dai Laoshi flicked through them and brought one to Anna. The class watched in silence.

  Anna looked down at the small print of a fan. Painted on the fan was a winding landscape disappearing into the mist and tiny fishermen casting a net into the rippling water.

  ‘Xie xie! Thank you!’ said Anna triumphantly, pleased that she had been able to make herself understood without the aid of Chenxi. She took out her inkstick and brushes.

  With a little miming and coaching from Dai Laoshi, and helped by her observations of the other students during the first week, Anna deciphered the art of painting on silk. She discovered it was a matter of building up fine layers, one on top of the other, and washing the edges of the brushstrokes to blend out the lines; very different from the bold brushstrokes of Western painting. In areas where a dark colour was needed, she learnt to apply as many as twenty layers. White was always painted on the reverse as it was much more opaque than the black. To keep the feeling of the muted Ching Dynasty colours, Dai Laoshi showed her it was enough to have the white shine t
hrough the tea-coloured silk from the back.

  With Chenxi not there to distract her, and unable to speak enough Chinese to chat to any of the other students, Anna soon lost herself in copying the intricate detail of the tiny mountainous landscape. Lunchtime came and went and she continued painting, engrossed in her work, declining Lao Li’s offer to accompany him to the noodle shop.

  At the end of the afternoon, the painting close to completion, Anna sat up and stretched, suddenly restless. The sun had shifted lower in the sky and all her classmates had long gone home. They had been impressed with her stamina and, as she pushed back from the table and looked critically at her day’s work, she was pleased with what she saw.

  Some of the lines were thick and shaky, but perhaps it stood up well against the replica style of the other students. Anna knew this had irritated her classmates. She didn’t have to understand Chinese to be aware that they talked about her and that it unnerved them to see a foreigner so quickly learn the techniques of Chinese painting. They had all looked amused at the beginning of the day when they watched Anna lay down her first timid strokes, but were quiet when they returned from their lunch break and saw how the work was progressing.

  Swirling her brushes around in the inky water, Anna contemplated how to fill the rest of the afternoon without Chenxi. She didn’t want to go home to the vacant apartment, but wandering around Shanghai in the hot crowds appealed even less.

  Who else did she know in Shanghai? The French student she had smoked a joint with outside the consulate was the only person she could think of. His university was just across the river, and he had invited her. She didn’t know his last name but she was sure there wouldn’t be too many Laurents studying there. Feeling adventurous, she decided to pay him a visit. Even though she didn’t particularly like him, he might have some decent friends. It would be good to mix with some other foreign students so that she didn’t have to be so dependent on Chenxi all the time.

  She took a last look at the fishermen’s net shining in the foreground of her mountain landscape, then left the silk painting on her desk to dry and went in search of Laurent.

  16

  ‘Eh?’ The bespectacled old man was scrunching his face behind a newspaper he hadn’t taken his eyes off since Anna had approached the front desk.

  ‘Law-ron!’ Anna tried again, and then in faltering Chinese, ‘Faguo xuesheng. French student.’

  The man shook his head, his mouth turned down, and flicked over the page of his newspaper. Anna sighed.

  ‘I know Laurent!’ came a gentle voice from behind her. She turned around to see a young African man smiling at her. ‘He’s on the third floor. I’ll take you there, if you like?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, following him upstairs.

  The sullen old man at reception watched over the top of his paper as the two foreigners ascended the stairs. Then he pulled out an exercise book and jotted something down.

  At the first floor, the young man introduced himself as Youssou and said he was from Gabon. By the second floor Anna knew what he was studying, how many brothers and sisters he had, and his plans for the future. At Laurent’s door, Youssou asked, ‘Is Laurent your boyfriend?’

  ‘No, my boyfriend doesn’t live on campus.’ She was not entirely lying, but she didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.

  Youssou didn’t try to hide his disappointment and sighed. ‘Well, goodbye then?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose.’ She watched Youssou walk away then knocked on the door.

  Over the faint sound of jazz music came Laurent’s voice, ‘Shi shei?’ and when Anna didn’t answer, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Er...it’s Anna White...we met at the consulate...’

  The door opened and the smell of incense drifted out. It took Anna a minute to recognise Laurent. He had shaved his head and was thinner than she had remembered, with dark rings around his eyes. He grinned at her.

  ‘Hey! Come in! Come in!’ he said, bowing low.

  There were a couple of girls lounging in the corner on a mattress. Anna hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Come on!’ Laurent said and tugged at her arm.

  In the dim light Anna recognised one of the students who had come with Laurent to the consulate party. He was sitting at a desk rolling a joint. On an ashtray beside him balanced the stub of another joint, still smoking.

  ‘You’ve come just in time,’ Laurent said.

  Anna shook her head. ‘No way! That last time made me really sick!’

  ‘I know!’ Laurent groaned. ‘I was the one to take you home. Hey, come to think of it, you never thanked me for that!’ He smirked and sidled up to Anna, pulling her down to sit on the mattress beside him.

  ‘Actually Chenxi was supposed to take me home,’ Anna lied. ‘I don’t know why he left so early.’

  ‘He told me he has a curfew,’ Laurent explained.

  ‘A curfew?’

  ‘Where he lives. They close the gates at a certain time of night. Like they do for us here at the university. Except here, if we have to wake up the caretakers, we get away with it because we’re foreigners,’ he said, winking. ‘For the Chinese it’s trouble.’

  Anna turned this information over in her mind. Even though it sounded unjust, she felt better knowing the reason for Chenxi’s strange disappearance that night. Along with the information she had gathered from her father and Zhou Lai, pieces of the Chenxi puzzle were fitting together. But she was still missing the most important piece: what did he think of her?

  ‘Here,’ said the dark-haired man sitting at the desk. He handed the smoking butt down to Anna. She shook her head. He shrugged and held it out to Laurent.

  ‘Ladies?’ said Laurent, offering the joint to the two girls.

  'Oh no!' they giggled and pulled themselves up, leaning on each other for support. ‘We’re out of here, man. We’re wasted!’

  They stumbled to the door, laughing and swearing in a language Anna couldn’t recognise, before they fell into the brightly lit corridor, slamming the door behind them.

  Laurent winced. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ he said. ‘They only come here for one thing...and it’s not my body!’ He chuckled at his own joke, then finished what was left of the joint before grinding it out on a small plate.

  ‘Je m’en vais aussi,’ said the dark-haired joint roller as he stood up. ‘See you, Hannah?’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ He swept up the last few specks of hashish on the glass top table and pressed them onto his tongue, then closed the door behind him.

  Anna felt uneasy at being alone with Laurent in his lair but, to her relief, he now reverted to the gentlemanly manner he had used when they first met. He offered her tea and unscrewed a golden tin, from which he pinched a few scraggly leaves and dropped them into a ceramic cup with a lid. Then he picked up a large plastic thermos and told Anna he would go to the boiler room for hot water.

  While he was gone, Anna studied his room. It was decorated with exquisite taste and was very different from the other students’ rooms she had peered into on her way upstairs. Lengths of pale green silk patterned with dragons were tacked to the walls alongside the beds, like wallpaper. Half the floor was laid with straw matting. In the other half of the room were two desks and two cane bookshelves overloaded with Chinese books and porcelain teacups. On the floor against the walls were two mattresses made up into beds.

  Laurent returned and answered her unspoken query. ‘My room-mate is never here. He spends all his time trekking through Tibet, so I have the room to myself.’ He filled the two cups with hot water. ‘He was my room-mate last year, too, and I organised to have him again this year.’ He smiled conspiratorially at Anna and she wondered if his room-mate really existed. Laurent seemed very good at arranging things to suit his convenience.

  He handed Anna a cup of tea and sat down beside her. ‘So what have you been doing since I saw you last?’

  ‘I went away with Chenxi for a week. We stayed with his aunt in a tow
n just outside of Xian.’

  ‘Really?’ Laurent said, surprised.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Anna retorted.

  ‘Nothing. I suppose. It’s just that usually Chinese aren’t allowed to have foreigners staying with them.’

  ‘It was organised by the school.’

  ‘I hope so. For Chenxi’s sake.’

  ‘Who could he get into trouble with?’ said Anna, but Laurent wasn’t listening. ‘Laurent?’

  Laurent put his finger to his lips.

  ‘What?’ she whispered, exasperated.

  Laurent pointed to a small loudspeaker over the doorway. It crackled a little. He leaned towards her and whispered close in her ear. ‘The intercom system. It’s for calling us when we get phone calls. But it works both ways!’

  ‘You’re paranoid!’ Anna giggled. ‘You smoke too much dope.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Laurent. ‘But a friend of mine studying in Beijing found a bug in his bedside lamp just last week.’ He leaned closer until his lips brushed Anna’s ear. ‘We’re in China, my dear,’ he said dramatically. ‘Not Australia!’

  Anna inched away and tried to think of a new subject.

  The intercom gave a slight pop. ‘It’s OK,’ Laurent said, his voice returning to normal. ‘They’ve finished listening.’ He sat back on the mattress against the wall. She sipped her tea.

  ‘What do you do at your college?’ Laurent asked amiably.

  He was trying to make conversation to keep her in his room. She wondered why she had come. ‘Painting,’ she replied.

  ‘Thanks. I guessed that,’ Laurent said. ‘But what kind?’

  ‘I almost finished a copy of a Ching Dynasty painting on silk today.’

  ‘Really? What’s it of?’

  Anna was bored. She knew he wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand the technique, and he wouldn’t understand the emotions. She was tired of trying to articulate her passion for art to people who didn’t get it. Chenxi understood. He had the same passion as she did.