City Gate, Open Up

by Bei Dao

  In the tumultuous torrent, who could clearly see whom anyway? Everyone was duped by revolutionary passion. From what I gathered, during her army days, Qian Ayi danced the dance of loyalty and participated in the neighborhood committee struggle sessions. She had trouble reciting quotations — not just because of her illiteracy but because of her tongue-twisting Yangzhou dialect. As we stumbled about in a half-crazed state, too, sidewise watching a half-crazed Qian Ayi seemed quite normal to us.

  It wasn’t long before Qian Ayi’s brave surge declined; she dug out her little Ming blue padded ao jacket and, like a molting bird replacing its plumage, prepared for the winter. What hidden difficulties could she not share with us? No one knew, and yet one could presume: When a little nobody charges headlong into the immensity of an age, how many harmful ambushes await her on all sides.

  Father’s work unit pasted up some big-character posters that listed names and claimed that employing a baomu perpetuated a bourgeoisie lifestyle. My parents panicked; the same night they had an urgent talk with Qian Ayi, asking if she could please leave, just temporarily, making promises that they would still take care of her in her old age.

  Qian Ayi acted as if nothing had happened; the next morning she brushed her hair as usual with her double-edge fine-toothed comb and coiled it into a bun. A few days later, she made us a nice lunch, then, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle, she left. For a while, she still dropped by regularly to see us, but as more time passed, she slowly faded from our horizon. Then suddenly the news arrived that she had married a pedicab driver; in those times when it seemed impossible to be shocked, she succeeded in shocking me totally.

  One Sunday morning I rode my bike south on Xisi Bei (“West Four North”) Avenue, trying to track down an address. When I found it, I stood before a very large, multifamily courtyard compound, noisy and crowded. A child showed me the way to a door curtain, and when it lifted open, Qian Ayi’s head poked out. She brought me into a small room, barely four or five square meters, the kang bed taking up more than half the space, the drop ceiling and window paper newly restored. Qian Ayi insisted that I sit on the lone chair while she perched at the edge of the kang. I felt a bit flustered, stumbled over a few words, then asked her about married life.

  “The old man’s at work,” she replied. Her facial expression remained as stiff as wood.

  An awkward silence followed. Qian Ayi poured hot water over the tea leaves, then asserted that she would make me something to eat. I pleaded that I had things to do, hurriedly said my good-byes, then turned and disappeared into the streaming crowds. A few days later, news came of her divorce, though nothing about any upheaval at home, no swelling wave that finally crashed down upon them. We heard that the reason for her divorce was actually very simple: Qian Ayi couldn’t stand messy people.

  3

  Around the beginning of 1969, Qian Ayi moved back in again, mainly to look after the apartment. Everyone had left, the place was empty: Mother had gone to the May Seventh Cadre School in Xinyan prefecture, Henan Province; my little brother had gone to the construction corps on the border of Mongolia; I had gone to a construction site in Yu County, Hebei Province; not long after that my little sister had joined my mother at the Cadre School; and for the finale, Father had gone to the May Seventh Cadre School in Shayang County, Hubei Province.

  The day my brother left for the construction corps, Father saw him off at the departure point on Denei Avenue and returned home. At the entrance to our building, he bumped into Qian Ayi, who in a flustered frenzy sputtered, “Suppose Bao Bao” (my brother’s childhood nickname) “finds a Mongolian wife before coming back home, that would be a disaster! This matter can’t be ignored, did you talk to him about it?” “No, I didn’t talk to him about it,” my father replied, “and no use chasing after him, he’s already far away now.” Qian Ayi raised her face with a long sigh: “O my Old Heavenly Grandfather!”

  Summer of 1970: Our construction site moved from Yu County to the outskirts of Beijing; every other Saturday, around midday, a transport bus would take us into the city for our weekend off, and early Monday morning bring us back. When I arrived home, Qian Ayi would circle me round and round, asking if I felt hot or cold and if I was taking care of my health; she’d first cook me a big bowl of soup noodles, making the base out of soy sauce, vinegar, and chopped scallions, then added a spoonful of lard and two fried eggs on top. She watched my ravenous wolf devouring tiger table manners with a look of ease and contentment.

  Then suddenly Qian Ayi got old, wrinkles furrowing across her cheeks and forehead. A photograph of her at the time still exists as proof, a portrait I had taken for her residential registration. Here it should be said that though I considered myself a seasoned photographer, having assiduously plied my trade for several years, most of my subjects until then were pretty girls. First, I’d hang a white bedsheet across an iron wire as a backdrop, then adjust three high-wattage lamps for lighting, mount my Czech “hobbyist” 120 twin-lens reflex camera onto a tripod, and pressing my shutter release cable kacha kacha kacha. . . .

  I admit my portrait of Qian Ayi failed dreadfully, just as she herself assessed: “Looks like a ghost.” As for the reasons: 1) overexposure, 2) out of focus, 3) didn’t find the best angle to shoot from. No doubt there were also other processing problems later. Before I returned to my construction duties, I passed the negatives to Yifan downstairs to make the prints; the two of us shared one photo enlarger he kept at his place.

  Later, Yifan grumbled to me that it was hopeless, the negatives overexposed, even using grade-four photo paper didn’t work, the prints came out too dark with zero contrast. But after my errors, he made a more serious one by casually tossing the dozen or so shoddy photographs into the garbage bin. Who knows the rotten kid who dug them out of the trash and pasted each one up along the corridor windows at the entrance to our building. Qian Ayi looked like a wanted fugitive. She flipped out, embarked on a fanatical investigation, until she determined that the chief culprit was none other than me.

  Qian Ayi idled around the house doing nothing, her heart troubled; she spent 120 yuan to buy me a Dong Feng wristwatch. Soon after that I received a letter from my father. Apparently more gossip had spread to the Cadre School — as the presence of a baomu was considered clear proof of a capitalist lifestyle, Father was being subjected to the usual array of severe pressures: isolation and interrogation, tight supervision during his manual labors, and so on. Despite my father’s tactful wording, Qian Ayi listened to the letter and immediately understood; she left immediately for her hometown.

  In the end, we never fulfilled our promises to take care of Qian Ayi in her old age.

  4

  Spring of 1982 — as a journalist for the Esperanto magazine China Report, I decided to write a piece about the Grand Canal, to set out from Beijing and trace the canal south, where I’d eventually pass through Yangzhou. I wrote a letter to Qian Ayi’s sister before I left, telling her about my trip. The day I arrived in Yangzhou, after gathering some information at the city government offices, I visited her sister’s home in the afternoon. Qian Ayi looked restless and tense; upon seeing me, her little eyes blinked and blinked, without tears. From her younger sister’s tone of voice, I could sense that Qian Ayi had no status in the family and counted for nothing. I suggested that we go inside her room and sit for a bit.

  Along the green dampness of a stone path we walked shoulder to shoulder. Qian Ayi had grown so thin and small, her shadow even smaller, as if she could vanish into the earth at any moment. Her so-called home was merely a small, wooden room; besides the bamboo bed there was hardly anything else in it. I had bought a tin of cookies at a shop nearby, and gave this to her, along with a transistor radio; the gifts seemed totally out of place.

  In her clouded eyes I could see a flicker of fear — fear of old age, of hunger, of death. She faltered, mumbled, then halted again, until it was time for me to go, at which point she blurted out: “W
hat I really need is money!” I felt like a fool, stunned by the red-bared truth of her poverty. I told her to please set her mind at ease, and promised to send her some money when I returned home (my mother later sent her seventy yuan). At the main gate, the setting sun behind her plated her in golden light. Her mouth twisted; she wanted to smile but no smile broke out.

  Through the wide streets and narrow alleys those Yangzhou-flavored words Qian Ayi spoke float on and on. Here, it turned out, would be her real native home.

  Reading Books

  1

  Reading books has nothing to do with going to school, the two totally separate activities — reading, as being outside the classroom, and books, as being outside textbooks — so that what happens when reading books arises out of a kind of mysterious life power, which has nothing to do with any profit or gain. The experience of reading is like a well-lit road, illuminating the darkness during our brief existence, and at the end of the darkness burns a candle flame that can be called the zero point of reading.

  Open up a map of Beijing from the early 1960s, and at the northwest corner of Mianhua (“Cotton Blossom”) Hutong and Huguosi (“Protect the Country Temple”) Street you will find a xiaorenshu (“little picture books”) shop. From the little picture bookshop, head west, past the flower sellers, and arrive at the famous Huguo Temple “Little-Eats” Snack Shop, a variety of mouthwatering dainties: sweet ears, rolling donkeys cakes, aiwowo sticky-rice cones, fried sesame balls, miancha millet mush, jelly bean-curd brain. The bottom half of the little-eats shop’s front window will be frosted, the top half fogged over, a blur of shadowy figures, oil crackling in pans zi zi zi, the most exquisite aromas permeating the air. With the meager change in my pocket, I’d often linger back and forth between the little picture bookshop and the little-eats shop: stomach rumbling like a motor, mind as blank as an empty pot. If I could’ve suffered only one of the two, I naturally would’ve chosen the latter.

  Xiaorenshu bookshops weren’t big, their primary customers children, their function somewhat analogous to the Internet cafés of today. Upon entering the shop on Huguosi Street, your eyes brimmed over with the serialized covers hanging from the walls, glittering like jade pendants and carnelian gems, your heart fluttering with ardor. Each one of these “bare books” were wrapped with a second kraft-paper dust jacket that displayed the title and series number written out by hand. The transaction took place over the counter: borrow any title for two fen a day plus a deposit; read it in the shop for one fen, no deposit required.

  During those difficult years, elementary schools only ran on a half-day schedule. In the afternoon, after finishing our homework, like lambs set free the gang would scatter east and west and the little picture bookshop would be our primary meeting-place. Three to five pals would always show up, each one borrowing several titles, this natural resource pooled and shared among us. Though the shop supposedly had a clear no-swapping policy, the boss turned a blind eye.

  Double-tiered benches of different sizes were haphazardly tossed against the walls, their dark brown paint worn away, wood grain faintly exposed. A cluster of stools cluttered the middle of the shop. Shua shua the pages flipped in our hands, punctuated by the occasional gasp of wonder or hushed discussion about what we had just absorbed. An old-fashioned wall clock di da di da ticked away, chiming on the hour, calling attention to the passing of time. Day darkened to closing time; urged on by the boss, we made a dash for the ending, failing to grasp the final seed of the plot. Leaving the bookshop, it felt like we had emerged from another world back to the land of the human race, unsure of which world was the real one. Rooting around in my pockets, I still had five fen left! I rushed into the little-eats shop and treated myself to a sweet ear.

  I enjoyed the perennially popular Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Generals of the Yang Family, and other such graphic-novel versions of the classics, but I was even more wild about underground resistance or counterespionage stories, like Wildfires and Spring Winds, or Fighting in the Heart of the Enemy, or Military Depot No. 51, many of these based on movies. The little picture books compensated for not being able to read the original texts due to dyslexia, besides the fact that they were more entertaining. What entertaining means here is simply satisfying the expectations of readers of below-average intelligence, like our gang of boys. The right and wrong of a black-and-white cause obvious at a glance: the hero dies as a righteous martyr, surrounded by green pines; the villain always in the shadows; the traitor remained flawed from the start and would naturally, in the final moment, come to a bad end.

  Reading next door to the little-eats shop undoubtedly demanded a measure of heroism equal to the task of resisting the temptations of the diverse dainties and not becoming a defector.

  2

  To move on from little picture books to real books took a huge transformation in one’s life, as momentous as evolving from an ape to a human.

  My father was a literature enthusiast in his spare time. Such hobbies can become the epitome of miscellany — seize whatever you can buy, no picking and choosing. The russet-colored bookshelf in our home, neither too big nor too small, held around three hundred titles; it stood centered against the north wall in the outer room (where Mao Zedong’s portrait hung during the Cultural Revolution, and before that, where we displayed the ancestral tablets for offerings), and still exists to this day; just from looking at this bookshelf one could see the importance of culture in our family life.

  We categorized our books according to a strict hierarchy: the works of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin-Mao, along with the collected works of Lu Xun, dwelled in the heights looking down, and represented the established canon; the second tier, representing tradition, included classical texts plus modern dictionaries, such as Three Hundred Tang Poems, Ci Poems of the Song Dynasty, Perfected Admiration of Ancient Prose, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as the first major dictionary of the twentieth century, Ciyuan: Source of Words, and the Dictionary of Modern Chinese and the Great Russian-Chinese Dictionary; farther down, contemporary revolutionary fiction represented a moral, Confucian orthodoxy, like Steel Meets Fire, Red Cliff, Builders of a New Life, Wildfires and Spring Winds Raging in the Ancient City, Bitter Cauliflower, among other titles, as well as collections of essays, such as Wei Wei’s encomium to soldiers Who Are the Most Beloved People? and Liu Baiyu’s Red Agate. The latter category served as the prime target of my excerpting prowess — those flowery, rhetorical passages embedded into my error-laden compositions littered with wrongly written characters shined with an excessive glare. The lowest rung belonged to the hodgepodge of magazines that represented current cultural tastes, among them Harvest, Shanghai Literature, Study Russian, although the bulk of them focused on the movies, so in addition to Popular Cinema, Shanghai Film Pictorial, and other more popular ones, we subscribed to a pile of specialty periodicals, like Chinese Cinema, Film Literature, Cinematic Arts, Screenplay Magazine, and so on. I’ve often wondered if, all along, my father harbored a secret desire to write a screenplay.

  My reading interests turned the hierarchy on its head, inverting the bottom and top. I started with film magazines, particularly the ones on screenplays (which included the working scripts directors used), probably because the writing was easy to understand, relying mainly on dialogue, tight plots, strong and vivid images — a transitional stage between the little picture books and real books. Although such readings did come with a load of specialized terminology: stop-motion, flashback, fadeout, long take, voice-over, push pull rotate pan, etcetera; and yet, this issue proved to be no hindrance, like being able to sing without knowing anything about the musical staff. For me, reading a screenplay was more or less equal to watching a movie for free, and in fact, felt even more gripping — words created visual scenes with a much wider space for the imagination to roam. The relevance of this became wholly apparent when I started to write poems. I considered Eisenstein’s use
of montage and, rather than expounding on it as a theory of film, adopted it as a theory of poetry.

  Rising up a level, I gradually became obsessed with revolutionary fiction. What aroused my heart most about these books were the descriptions of sex. And admittedly, Feng Deying became my foremost instructor on sexual enlightenment, his long novels Bitter Cauliflower and Winter Jasmine among the earliest sexually explicit reading material available; they involved brutal violence as well as perversions of the pornographic incestuous variety. Coming upon these passages, my heart leaped and flesh trembled with fear; I wanted to stop but couldn’t bring myself to, and due to my issues with my own class status, intense feelings of guilt followed. I’m convinced that these books had an enormous influence on the sexual awakening of our generation: suppressed sexual violence in the name of revolution lay in the abyss of our consciousness.

  Reading books brought much praise from adults. At a tender young age, where could one go to gain such approval? I recall I was in third or fourth grade when my mother brought me to the Library of the People’s Bank of China; from a shelf, I chose a thick Soviet novel, more than seven hundred pages long, and sat down in the reading room, pretending to read with great pride. A librarian made a loud fuss over nothing, attracting other patrons who circled around and stared at me, as if I were a space alien. And indeed I felt like a space alien, reading a celestial script, bracing myself in the presence of so many new words, leaping forward and backward, unable to string together any hint of a plot.