City Gate, Open Up

by Bei Dao

  The closest swimming pool to my home was located in the Shichahai district. I’d set off on foot with my pals from next door, walk the half-hour distance with the sun beating down on our heads, withering us into listlessness. But then, from half a mile away — salvos of boisterous clamor followed by a head-on olfactory attack of urine, bleach, and Lysol mixed together made our blood surge and boil. In stark contrast, when we staggered back home, wet swim trunks on our head, our shadows seemed to swim on the ground alongside us. We’d stop at the tomato stand, five fen for half a basket — the red mushy mess covering our faces and bodies rinsed away under a roadside faucet, where we filled ourselves with a bellyful of cool water.

  I first imitated the freestyle stroke in the mushroom kiddie pool, two hands alternately paddling the water, and both feet splashing furiously, yet I remained in the same place. From the mushroom pool I surveyed the deep waters and burning fires of the grown-up world: dangerous movements and extreme cacophony clashed with frenzied competitive play, as if on a field of battle.

  At home I used a washbasin to practice holding my breath. A quick glance at the alarm clock, suck in a deep deep breath, dunk the head into the water, air bubbles emerging gu gu gu, until the agonizing last moment of no breath causes the neck to snap violently back. Competing against my buddies I could hold my breath longer and longer, but with a heave a gasp a pant, my face looked ferocious, as purple as an eggplant. Along with breath-holding, I also practiced keeping my eyes open underwater, to the point where it looked like I suffered from pinkeye. To master the skills of a fish, Homo sapiens must reverse millions of years of evolutionary progress.

  Moving from the washbasin to the swimming pool, the world expanded with the level of difficulty. One slip of a held breath and, gu-dong, a mouthful of water went down, leaving behind an acrid taste — piss in the pool. And yet, for those reluctant to swallow the water, how could they ever learn the skills of a fish? The mushroom kiddie pool became my drill pool. Both hands barbed to the gutter grate, I’d take a few breaths, hold it, cat-bend into the water, push off hard from the wall, and bob ’n’ flop for seven or eight meters in one breath.

  Having drunk large quantities of the undrinkable water, my technique eventually did improve: Unable to breathe while freestyling, I popped my head above the water surface while frantically working my arms and feet, and managed to swim twenty to thirty meters. The adept are bold, as the saying goes, and so I ventured with my friends to the “swimming wilds” of Houhai. So-called swimming wilds denote the rivers streams lakes seas vast heaven and earth, which, for one, are free, and secondly mean no one present appointed to save you and so, if need be, you better save yourself. Houhai was a swimming wilds paradise for poor children, no lifeguard naturally, plus you could fish, catch shrimp, and even clam. And kids there didn’t just thrash and splash in the water to keep from drowning; they swam like a fish to water, and looked like a little black brood so darkened from the sun that their teeth and eyes gleamed white. Although we couldn’t keep up with their ranks, we could drift across the light waves of the lake, to our heart’s ease and delight.

  The Beijing Evening News often ran stories of people drowning, which didn’t deter me, a water demon, in the least. Houhai waters weren’t deep; even if there was the threat of full submersion, you had nothing to fear if you could tread water. Clamming proved the most difficult skill to learn. I watched others dive into the water, forked feet pedaling twice in the air then vanish, only a thin trail of bubbles floating to the surface showing the diver’s whereabouts, and the next instant, the diver rocketing into the air, hand clasped around a big clam. I tried many times, each attempt ending in defeat: one hand pinched my nose, back arched, butt sticking out, legs fanning convulsively with spasmodic kicks, my body like a crossbeam spinning in the same spot. My open eyes were blind, only the bubbles gurgling from my mouth visible — not even close to clamming when I couldn’t even reach the sludgy bottom.

  2

  I marched farther on toward wider watery realms.

  Summer break, age ten — my classmates and I visited the Gardens of Nurtured Harmony at the Summer Palace. It was a tranquil day, gentle breeze, calm waters. We rented two boats and chased each other around the lake, our bodies soon drenched with sweat. We docked at the Pavilion of Literary Prosperity, climbed ashore, and headed straight for the waters nearby. The seasonal swimming area had some simple changing rooms and wooden signs that marked the water levels and safety zone.

  Wading away from the stone levee, I tested the depths on tiptoe, the lake bottom mucky mud interspersed with sharp stones. Sludge oozed soft between my toes and sucked the soles of my feet; the undercurrent surged, mud loaches threaded in and out right under my crotch. The water rose up to my chest; I began to swim forward, reached the wooden sign that warned of the depths and turned around. Back on shore I caught my breath and rejoined my friends. Hungry, I bought some provisions at a food stall, ate and drank with relish, and returned to the water.

  The more I swam the braver I grew and soon I left the safety zone behind. The people on shore looked smaller and smaller, the world silent save for the sound of the wind, the water, my breath. Shimmering sunlight, scrolling clouds. That sudden feeling of loneliness so entrancing as anxiety elevates.

  A ferryboat sped by, triggering a series of big waves to roll toward me, blocking the sky sweeping the earth; I went under fast, swallowed gulp after gulp of water in quick succession. I got caught in the middle depths — unable to reach the lake bottom in order to push off to the water surface above. Darkening sky, sun a turbid blur at the center of the vortex. Choking, my whole body went limp, my head cleared to lucidity, and in a split second dinner, schoolbag, parents, pet rabbits . . . coalesced and scattered, like the brilliance of fireworks bursting, as I bid farewell to everything, each and everyone, before my awareness of death gave me a jolt — in a flash transforming into a powerful will to survive. I flailed with all my might until, at last, I made it to the surface; with my equilibrium totally ruined from choking so much, I bobbed up and down in the water, sinking and rising while swallowing several more mouthfuls of lake.

  But once again I floated on the surface, then flung out my arms and floundered toward shore. Reflecting further on my swimming technique, just think of a child’s “tortoise-fist style” of fighting. Finally, my toes could reach the lake bottom; I exerted the rest of my strength in finding my footing while hacking out the water that had collected in my lungs. At last, climbing onto shore, my whole body weak and limp, I found a rock to sit on. Surveying the scene, I saw my friends frolicking and chasing each other in the water — not one of them had noticed my plight. Life moves on. The sun dipped in the west and would soon fall behind the hills, this sun, the same sun I had glimpsed underwater.

  I didn’t tell my friends anything, and of course didn’t tell my family. This was my first near-death experience, which I could share with no other.

  3

  The first time I met my older cousin Kai Fei it must have been a Sunday as that was the only day he could ask for leave. I was about thirteen. We ate lunch at the home of his maternal uncle (who was also my father’s elder brother), and afterward went to the swimming pool at Taoranting Park together. The Taoran Pavilion was built in the Qing dynasty and got its name from a couplet by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi about yellowing chrysanthemums and drinking, “happy and carefree.” My cousin met me with his head hung down, as silent as an oyster. This never changed.

  Cousin Kai Fei was a student at a Red Flag School. “Famous schools with reeducation through labor characteristics,” is how teachers and parents put it to threaten children. Anyhow, my father encouraged us to get together as, after all, we were cousins. Whatever my cousin had done was guarded by the whole family as a dark secret. Though children may not really grasp the moral universe of adults, whatever is treated as taboo, illegal, heretical only piques their curiosity, to the point of fostering a natural re
verence.

  From Legation Street we rode the No. 6 streetcar to the Taoran Pavilion Swimming Pool, hardly exchanging a word the whole way. My cousin was three years older than me, short and stocky, dark-skinned, with a laryngeal lump rolling up and down — that mark of adult maturation. I hadn’t reached this advanced developmental stage yet and, compared to him, looked like your everyday thin-boned, helpless, firewood chicken.

  While inching along the metal railing of the ticket line, we each wished to speak, then stopped, glanced at each other, chuckled, and when it came to be our turn, fumbled in our pockets for change and each paid his own way. At the entrance he bought two popsicles and handed me one, waving me off when I tried to thank him. On the way from the changing rooms to the pool, sunlight blinding, chaotic hubbub of the crowds, the sky swayed for a moment — I slipped on the wet ground and nearly crashed onto my back. But before disaster could strike, my cousin grabbed me with his hands, held me steady, his arms strong and powerful.

  After swirling his hips around and stretching his legs, Kai Fei prepared for entry, then dove into the pool. His freestyle stroke was efficient and fluid, flutter kick barely splashed, as if he were a professional swimmer. I was floored — my eyes wide, jaw slack. Entranced, I stared with admiration.

  When we climbed out for a break and stretched onto our stomachs on the boiling cement, black droplets fell from his arms, drop after drop soaking into the rough ground, water stains fanning out. I voiced some words of praise, which were drowned out by the ambient noise; I wanted to repeat them but he seemed lost in thought and I quickly clammed up. My cousin lived in his own closed-off world, unwilling to let anyone inside.

  The sunlight shifted ever so slightly, waves glistened in the light, dancing papercut-figure shadows. My cousin stood up, headed for the depths of the lap-and-diving pool, guarded by a metal railing around its perimeter, the deep waters a clear cerulean blue, a near emptiness, while high above sat a lifeguard with sunglasses on. My cousin first climbed the three-meter-high diving board, jumped twice on its end and soared up, spreading both arms wide before bringing them together, outstretched above his head, and then plunged straight into the water. Emerging from the blue bubbles, he ascended the poolside ladder and climbed again, up and up to the ten-meter-high diving board. He didn’t hurry, but stared out into the distance from his lofty perch.

  When he came back over he smiled as before but his mind wandered elsewhere, his gaze like a blind man’s. Try as I might, I couldn’t make him see me at all, which caused a profound sadness within me. That day we didn’t exchange more than ten sentences, and upon parting, didn’t even say good-bye. It would be the first and last time we’d ever see each other.

  4

  I started to take notice of the fairer sex, especially young girls my age, in the thick of puberty. During a time of suppressed desires, the swimming pool became the public space where the human body bared itself the most gratuitously. I would often lay on the cement with my head resting on my folded arms, feigning sleep while peeping at those graceful, mysterious curves. I secretly sighed to myself, Such beings exist in this world — how could I have looked without seeing before?

  As the pool was small and people numerous, one often bumped into female strangers, accidentally brushing a breast, or thigh, and triggering a sudden surge of electricity. For the most part this moment ended in mutual peace and harmony, but every so often one was confronted with a tricky situation of hurled abuse: “How gross, you disgusting pervert!” During these troubling encounters, there was no recourse but to pretend nothing happened and trade barbs in order to prove one’s respectability. Actual indecent behavior, however, did occur at the swimming pool. What would begin as a small disturbance would quickly attract a gathering, watertight layers, a jam-packed crowd with not a few depraved, jeering hecklers, and end with the offender being wrenched away to the local police station — presumably a case of a real pervert being caught red-handed.

  In all male sports a libidinal factor plays an inherent role. As I attentively observed my cousin Mei with whom I was secretly in love, along with those dulcet strangers at the pool, my swimming skills soared to bold heights. And yet my ultimate dream was to be like Cousin Kai Fei — sashay and sway over to the deep end, scale up to the heights of the high-dive, and casually stare out into the distance.

  The lap-and-diving pool represented the supreme privilege of the whole swimming complex — experience the pure blue cool chill of an Arctic iceberg. At the entrance, a sign noted this pool’s water temperature: eleven degrees today, reminding me of that quality product, the Arctic Pop. And yet us commoners waded through murky waters of a hue difficult to describe, its temperature unmentioned. Because so many people populated the shallow pool, and its water was never changed, the temperature always felt warmer than body temperature, making it feel like you were soaking in a public bath.

  However, to enjoy the privilege of the pure blue cool chill, one needed to pass a two-hundred-meter swimming test. I increased the intensity and hours of my training, including a night session. The key to breaking through to the two-hundred-meter mark was figuring out how to overcome the “false fatigue state” that hits you within the first fifty meters. The night session proved beneficial; fewer people meant less disrupted swimming which in turn focused physical and mental energy. Each time your head lifted for a breath, you could see a row of lights, hovering like a strand of pearls that belonged to the person you loved, or will soon love.

  Blue firmament on high, I finally passed the test and earned my lap-and-diving pool certification, sewing the patch onto the most eye-catching place on my swim trunks.

  The very next afternoon, I sashayed and swayed over to the gate of the deep pool. In that moment, I felt the gaze of every girl there as if a spotlight focused on me, its singular intensity. Nonchalantly, I lined up for the ten-meter diving board. Feeling dizzy from the heights, I couldn’t look down let alone gaze out into the distance. I stepped onto the diving board, threads of panic tangling mind and heart, no open path to beat a hasty retreat; I could only pinch my nose and, straight as a brush, bounce into the empty air. With a great PENG! I felt a violent slap as the perfect storm swallowed me with a fearsome wave. The icy waters felt like needles, my scalp a tingling numbness, my whole body stung. I straggled up the ladder and out of the pool, shivering uncontrollably, half of my body red and swollen like a cooked shrimp curled over. At a loss for words, I couldn’t stop shivering. I only prayed that the persistent spotlight pursuing me would immediately switch off.

  Raising Rabbits

  1

  One day, while exiting our building, a peasant with some baskets balanced on a shoulder pole and a tattered straw hat on his head called out his high-to-low hawking cry, luring many children around him to circle in for a peek. I followed my father over and leaned in to take a look; the baskets at each end consisted of multilayered bamboo trays, each tray crowded with newly hatched chicks, golden yellow down feathers so fluffy and light, tickling our hearts. After my badgering, Father went back upstairs to fetch a cardboard box and bought six or seven chicks. At home, he used a pair of scissors to poke some small holes into the top for air and, Bian!, an instant chick nest.

  Their faint murmuring cheeps really turned your innards inside out with worry. After school I rushed home and charged straight for the box, first observing and petting, before cupping each one with both of my hands. The baby chicks used their claws to hook my fingers, each one trembling like a silk string and wailing plaintively on and on. I couldn’t help but feel a thread of ecstatic delight.

  It was the late 1950s and food supplies grew scarcer with each passing day; I could only give my brood minced pieces of white cabbage. Their crops swelled out; soon their feces turned a watery ash-green, attracting countless houseflies. Soon they turned into yesterday’s yellow flowers — heads featherless and bald, bodies covered in filth, claws curled sharp. From the beginning, the adults harbore
d a secret plan for them that they kept from the children: The hens would be used for eggs, the roosters for meat. But that plan was still far from becoming a reality when, one after another, they fell ill and passed away.

  By comparison, raising silkworms was much easier — as long as you didn’t expect to spin and weave, let alone expect the bugs to spit up a single thread of silk. Start-up costs were low, just spread out ample mulberry-leaf bedding onto the bottom of an empty shoe box. The silkworm larvae looked as small as cadelle beetles. Their so-called nibbling away difficult to perceive with the naked eye — tiny black specks of larvae droppings evidence enough. In fact, their appetite and growth rate turned out to be astonishing in proportion to their tiny size. Mulberry leaves soon became hard to find, almost every mulberry tree around the neighborhood totally bare, save for a few lone leaves at the branch tips. I suffered from vertigo. The Tang poet Li Shangyin famously wrote about “spring silkworms spinning silk unto death,” but my silkworms died before the silk-spitting stage — just as well, given my fear of moths; I had nightmares of cocoons breaking open and moths rising out.

  Goldfish were the easiest to raise — they’re equipped to endure hunger for ten days, half a month, no food no problem. Regular water changes the only inconvenience, though even this could be a fun chore: carry the fishbowl to the sink, use a bamboo strainer to scoop the fish into a dish, watch the fish gasp for breath, the innate wickedness of children manifesting itself so naturally. The life of a goldfish is wholly transparent. It made me wonder: Did the goldfish adorn our lives, or did we adorn theirs?

  2