City Gate, Open Up

by Bei Dao

  One night, in the early days of the so-called cultural revolution, a classmate and I cycled by Ping’anli (“Peaceful Safety”) Lane. Night deepened into stillness, and as if out of nowhere, ten or more donkeys suddenly appeared with a peasant in the lead, herding them westward. My friend told me that a drove of donkeys passed along here every day, entering the city in the middle of the night, through the red gate in the east, and on to their destination, the zoo. I froze, then asked him what exactly for. He laughed and said that they were being sent to the slaughter, the next day’s fodder for the tigers, leopards, wolves. A long time after this incident, I tossed and turned late into the night, listening for the disordered clip-clop-clip-clop of those donkey hooves on the pavement. They must have sensed their coming doom, just like that drummer boy, falling into step, embracing the will to die.

  * * *

  *From Fabre’s Book of Insects, retold from Alexander Texeira de Mattos’ translation of Fabre’s “Souvenirs Entomologiques” by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998).—Tr.

  Toys and Games

  Those toys, so time-worn and faded in memory’s ravines that they seem to have preceded my birth, lurked in ambush on the path of my adolescence.

  The first toy to appear, a tin motorboat — lighting a little oil lamp inside its cabin converted heat energy into a propulsive force and tu tu tu the tin boat puffed around the curve of the tub. It was also equipped with a miniature dynamo; one crank of the wheel and a small light lit up, flickering on and off. In truth, it really became my father’s toy, fulfilling his own, long-unfulfilled childhood wish.

  After the dynamo motorboat, a glass car coruscates in the light, waiting in the line to my adolescence. It actually was a glass jar blown into the shape of a car that originally held a bounty of colorful jelly beans, dappled and bright; on the back of the vehicle a spare tire functioned as a cap. That car represents the tangible thirst left over from a sweetness long dissolved, glass being so easily broken after all.

  I see a son’s love for weapons as my own, male karma passed down from generation to generation. In Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, the word “arms” takes on a double meaning: weapons as well as a woman’s embrace, referring to the male protagonist’s struggle, namely, parting from weapons of war as well as parting from maternal love — his loss involves the relation between the maternal bond and masculine approbation.

  The first weapon that was passed to me: a Soviet-style rotary submachine gun — wind its handle and it rattled away ga la ga la ga la. In an old photograph, I’m holding the submachine gun strapped across my shoulder, head raised, chest out, glaring straight ahead. At some point my uncle Biao Jiu (maternal cousin’s father), a sailor in the navy, gave me a precious gift: a revolver. Made out of cast iron, the gun felt the perfect weight; leather holster slung across my body, the gunslinger looked like a round commissar. My self-centeredness knew no bounds back then. Even more miraculous, pulling the trigger of the gun advanced a roll of paper caps that ignited under each snap of the hammer, striking fear and terror into hearts and minds. These military gifts have a kind of ceremonial significance, backing up a cycle of violence through the ages, to the moment an accident happens.

  That day, on an outing to Beihai Park with my family, we stopped for tea at a restaurant near the Five Dragon Pavilions. While the grown-ups chatted, I strapped on my revolver and embarked on a reconnaissance mission, leading the charge, seeking a place to bivouac. Coming into a small grove of trees, I brushed past another little boy. He eyed the gun strapped to me and spit out a profanity; hatred like a magnet pulled us close together. Before I could draw out my weapon, a dagger appeared in the form of a screwdriver aimed at my chest. He didn’t care if he was younger and smaller than me. From his ragged clothes, scabby face, blackened neck, I could see he dwelled on the lowest rung of society.

  The standoff lasted a minute or two at most, yet it seemed to last forever, time progressing at the pace of a heartbeat. Being so close together I could see the murderous intent in his eyes, my chest pounding like a hammer. Finally, I retreated a step, turned, and walked away, behind me the wild hee hee hee impish laughter of the victor. Leaving the grove of trees and returning to the happy family chatter, I felt an incomparable sense of injustice and choked back tears. I knew that in order to be a real man, I, alone, needed to swallow the bitter-tasting pill of defeat. And so the round commissar shed his shell and returned to the plowed fields, the revolver tossed aside, forgotten.

  My fifth uncle’s family on my mother’s side had four beloved daughters, each one as beautiful as the next; but as they had no sons I was looked upon as a treasure, and, given this lack of male progeny, my parents proposed an exchange with the daughters that involved them borrowing me on a regular basis. So during winter and summer breaks I would go to Fifth Uncle’s for a short stay. Living among girls, I felt different from them — no wonder Jia Baoyu of the Red Chamber turned out the way he did. When you enter a village follow its customs, and so I participated in all the girls’ games and activities: weaving purses, jumping elastic rope, playing hopscotch and throw the bag, while the local boys jeered and wisecracked. Then, as we started to play house, make-believe transformed into reality as I gradually fell secretly in love with my older cousin Mei.

  My uncle’s family lived in the Hepingli district, in the residential housing for the National Measurements Officewalk — in those days, you stepped out and into open fields. In the summer, my sister-cousins would take me to pick fingernail flowers (scientific name Balsaminaceae); we’d mash the peach-colored petals into juice and paint our nails, layer upon layer deepening the shade. It felt quite stimulating at first, and I even showed off my nails to other people.

  We often played “snatch the bones,” a variation of the Mongolian game shagai. Take the anklebones of a sheep’s hind legs, dye each of the four sides a different color, and divide them into four to eight bones per group. As you toss up a small cloth beanbag or a Ping-Pong ball, with the same hand flip over the sheep bones and arrange them in a certain combination before catching the bag or ball, not letting it fall. “Snatch” here is a very imagistic verb, evoking the nimble use of the five fingers to seize and arrange each sheep bone into its proper position. I, however, lacking agility and coordination, caused my cousins to roll back and forth with laughter.

  After vacation, I returned to the world of boys. I never mentioned playing girls’ games to my buddies. I lived in these two separate worlds until I experienced a sudden sexual awakening early one spring morning. In the throes of my secret love for cousin Mei awoke an awareness of incestuous relations, the chasm between the two worlds impossible to leap across.

  We lived near Huguo Temple. A temple fair took place on the grounds every ten days, twice a month, food stalls, zoetropes, street operas, folktale tellers, martial arts performers, anything one could ever want could be found there — for kids, the place to be after school. The back gate of Huguo Temple faced a small street called Hundred Flowers Abyss where the cricket sellers gathered. Most of the crickets were kept in woven bamboo thermos holders, with gauze used as the bottom of each cage. Those contained the inferior crickets, two or three fen for one, while the royalty lived alone in separate quarters, in a clay or porcelain jar, their loud chirping muffled but still heard. The fiercest and most robust species of cricket, commonly known as the Coffin, had a triangular head and usually sold for around 120 RMB: for us, naturally, an astronomical amount.

  Beside the cricket market a number of old men sat along a wall, first fighting among themselves before letting loose two crickets to fight, whereupon we’d circle around to watch. The two heroes engaged in combat, teeth bared bodies entwined, never dividing never parting, until the defeated fell and fled, the victor’s wings vibrating ming ming ming. The trainer used his “probe” to draw the defeated out, and after three consecutive losses, would retire him.

  Yifan and I fabricated an ir
on-wire trap, dumped out a salt container from my place, and, though it was said the probe was made from the whiskers of yellow weasels, we turned to our native habitat and found a kind of Humulus japonicus wild grass, split it in half, inverted it and pulled it apart, exposing its fine, slender villi for our probe. Preparations in order, we sent out some feelers that caused us to break out in a cold sweat: Apparently, of all the realms under heaven, our brave heroes liked to hide outside the city walls in the desolate wilderness of the cemeteries. As if warriors going to battle, we walked for many li, ears raised, through brush and bramble thickets, flipping over old bricks and debris. Then at last we heard the chirping of crickets. After exhaling with relief, we discovered the hopelessness of trying to pinpoint the exact location of the source; it was as if the chirping came from all around us, the qu qu qu of the open wilderness; we were trapped by the crickets’ encircling siege, the songs of Chu coming toward us from the four directions. We returned home empty-handed, muscles aching, energy depleted, qu qu qu echoing in our dreams.

  Boys’ games often involve an element of gambling, as with “fan the triangle.” Pile up empty cigarette packs into a triangle and compete by trying to fan your own triangle to knock down your opponent’s, so your triangle not only must fall accurately but must also carry sufficient force. Typically, given my poor coordination skills, an opponent toppled my triangle. Before the game could start, though, positive identification needed to be checked, for only worthy cigarette brands qualified for competition. During the Difficult Three Year Period of the Great Famine, my uncle Da Gufu, the husband of my father’s elder sister who was a senior engineer and enjoyed special remunerations, gave my father his monthly allotment of two complementary boxes of premium Chunghwa and Peony cigarettes, as he didn’t smoke. With eyes full of angst, I paced behind my father as he billowed out mist and clouds of smoke, dying for him to finish puffing his two boxes. I became a direct beneficiary of his privilege. Despite my dire technique, a brand-name triangle in hand felt just like holding a winning hand, drawing the bow without releasing it; fortunately, there weren’t many such brands that could qualify for competition — no battle, no victory, no loss.

  Whenever I pass a golf course I’m reminded of playing marbles, these two sports sharing not a few things in common, and yet if you care to peer more closely at the differences, marbles is by far the superior game. First, marbles adapts to local conditions — just dig five little holes and preserve energy as well as the environment, while golf simply increases the number of holes across a greater expanse, forcing one to let loose the mounts to raid the land, and construct sand traps, plant trees, meticulously tend and protect the poisoned grass where no sheep can graze and no dog can urinate. Second, marbles is economical — a handful of little glass spheres and nothing sets the heart racing more, while golf expenditures require drivers, woods, irons, putters plus a club membership fee, as well as hiring someone else to carry your clubs — all of it adding up to pure money-spending anguish. Third, playing marbles is carefree and easy — just lower your head, stick out your butt, circle about five small holes wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, or even go shirtless, unfettered and unhindered; but playing golf is mostly about sticking out your chest, sucking in your gut, kitty stepping or duck waddling, and pretending to be relaxed — take a deep breath, then another even deeper breath, and through enormous exertions emerge from this ocean of a contest for another breath.

  Considering competitive games in general, marbles is particularly complex and unpredictable as you not only must shoot your own ball into each of the five holes in turn but also need to attack and defend the path forward. Perhaps the most important tactic in the game is winning your opponent’s marble. Like winning a lover’s heart, it is the most soul-stirring moment. Because of an unresolved impediment of dexterity, I rarely experienced this soul-stirring moment myself. My style of playing marbles could be called “zit squeezing” — weak pinch with zero accuracy. One need only observe a master smash a marble with a flick of forefinger or thumb, one-eyed aim straight as a plumb line, precise, unyielding, consistent, ding dong! clack-clack, five to four, and so on, sweeping across the land.

  I’ve found boys in particular go bananas for toys that spin, like the “whipping top, ” also known as a “whipping traitor,” a name that arose, it seems, during the war with Japan. Tops were a typical DIY craft: take a shovel and saw off part of its handle, then use a knife to whittle it into a conical shape; set a ball bearing from a bicycle hub into the bottom point and circle the top’s surface with a rainbow of colors; finally, take a piece of bamboo and tie a clothesline around it — this is the whip. The top looked like the spitting image of a traitor being whipped by a vile rogue, the more ruthless the whipping the more it could be tamed into submission; if the whipping halted, it wobbled east and bobbled west in dizzy transport and delight. Or a Beijing boy would yell out: “Hey, ya! You looking for a whipping?” This must have been how the game started.

  Hoop rolling. Fasten the hook to the big iron hoop, then balance and guide it while pushing it in any direction. I wrote an early poem called “Blue Hoop” that clearly came directly out of my childhood experiences. The hoop must have been the first circular form to emerge from humanity’s dreams: add another circle to make a bicycle; add two more circles to make a tricycle; add three more circles to make a car; add several more circles to make a train.

  The diabolo. This toy looks simple but is actually quite profound; like the game of Go, its skill levels can be divided into dan ranks, so upon reaching the ninth dan one must surely be an acrobat. Two sticks one rope between; loop three coils around the diabolo’s neck, then lightly pull one side up, loosening the yo-yo as it begins to spin; as it slightly trembles, gently yank up again with more strength and soon weng weng weng the yo-yo hums, like a gale passing through a bamboo forest. But the real climax comes when, with arms spread, the yo-yo’s flung high up into the open air. Eventually, we weren’t satisfied with just the diabolo and moved on to spinning pot covers, teapot lids. . . .

  Violent tendencies and a spirit of risk are the unwritten rules of boys’ games. In the mid-1960s, the film The Knife Thrower became the flavor of the moment, the flying knife hijacking our imagination. We started by sharpening a few pencils while the parents were out and pockmarking the door into a honeycomb; then switched to a fruit knife, using a chopping board as a target. But these, naturally, weren’t true knife-thrower’s flying knives. For a long spell, Yifan and I went crazy searching for those knives, from the realm of heavenly jade to the Yellow Springs, until at last, in a scrap pile of an iron factory, we “swiped” some heavily rusted knives. First, we furiously honed the knives on the cement sidewalk outside our gate, frightening passersby to respect the ghosts and gods from a distance and detour around us. Then, with increasing savageness, we propped up the wooden lid of the garbage can in the courtyard, and from a distance of roughly twenty meters, let the knives flash and flicker by, dazzling the eyes and cheering the heart. Later, we were told that we had caused a disturbance and both our school and the neighborhood committee joined forces to investigate — which is how our flying knives got confiscated.

  What the populace looks forward to most each year is Spring Festival, the New Year — for boys, being allowed to play with firecrackers is the main allure. No matter a family’s circumstances, each child is always given a little “money to ward off evil spirits,” and most boys use it to buy firecrackers. Firecrackers come in all shapes and sizes, each akin to its military counterpart according to firepower: Little Whip, a bullet; Big Whip, a hand grenade; Fire the Lantern, a flare; Double-Kick Cracker, a mortar; Soaring Rocket, a ground-to-air missile; and as for the Numbing Thunder, its closest equivalent would be a TNW, a small-scale tactical nuclear weapon.

  At age seven, for the first time in my life, I could go outside and light a firecracker by myself, electrifying my soul beyond anything. Before setting out on my mission, I first made some importa
nt preparations. I broke off one firecracker from a bundle and stuffed it into my pocket, then took a small wad of toilet paper and rolled it into a thin joss stick. Such a toilet-paper stick, or wick, when soaked with saltpeter, released a stream of pungent smoke once ignited, giving off a lovely odor, though you needed to blow on the wick evenly to keep it from dying out. As I stepped out into a snowy and icy land, fireworks exploded above me, blooming into twinkling stars that illuminated the dark night. I lit my first rocket; at the end point of a parabolic arc it burst crisp and clear, a lonely echo, like the first gunshot fired in a military attack.

  Courage grows with age, for instance, pinching a Double-Kick Cracker between two fingers while lighting the wick, then dropping it to the ground with a loud pop before it comes to life again, flies into the air, and explodes. Then there’s the Yellow Smoke Cracker, a special kind of weapon analogous to a smoke bomb, or poison gas bomb, and actually released enough yellow smoke to obscure the sun and sky coupled with an intense sulfuric smell that made you cough and wheeze. Yifan and I took a Yellow Cracker and snuck over to apartment 211, the Ma family’s residence, lit the weapon, slipped it under the crack of their door, and scrambled away. Their New Year’s dinner turned to mayhem, and eventually one of the Mas arrived at our door threatening to file a lawsuit. Father and Mother pulled me by the collar back to their place so I could offer a formal apology. Fortunately, in those days, this type of lawsuit didn’t exist in our judicial system. Otherwise, I imagine that would’ve been the downfall of our family — to be sued into ruin by another family.