Under Red Skies

by Karoline Kan

  “You should set a good example for others and show the right political attitude. I trust you will stand with the government and not make a mistake,” Guan Xin said.

  I looked down and held my tongue.

  He said there was a rumor that some students were planning to wear white T-shirts as a silent rebellion, and he didn’t want to see any white clothes that day on campus. “Lastly, do not accept interviews from the awful foreign journalists.”

  We dutifully wrote everything he said in our notebooks.

  On June 4, I switched on my VPN and sat in front of my laptop reading coverage of the anniversary on foreign newspapers and websites.

  On campus, everything was quiet. We had classes as usual, and no teachers mentioned the special meaning of the date. At lunch, in the canteen, people watched News 30 Minutes, which covered everything from China’s GDP growth to updates on the space program, but not a single word was mentioned about June Fourth. All seemed ordinary. In fact, it was all too ordinary. I wanted my friends and classmates to care about the anniversary as much as I did. I had sat in silence during Guan Xin’s talk, and wrestled with myself all day. I should have spoken up. I should have asked questions, I thought. Instead, I had done exactly as I had been taught; I sat silently.

  That evening, in my dormitory, I said to my roommates, “Don’t you care that it’s June Fourth? We should do something!”

  “Why? What’s the point?” Yun asked.

  “All of us say we want democracy and freedom of speech.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to put myself at risk for a cause that most likely won’t come true,” Yun said in her elegant way.

  “I don’t like that you put yourself on the moral high ground,” Mei said to me, “and assume that we don’t care about it.”

  Yun and Mei were both from central Beijing. On the night of June Fourth, a bullet shattered the window of Mei’s grandparents’ house in the hutongs south of Chang’an Boulevard, near Tiananmen Square. Her grandmother, who had earlier sent food to both the students and the young PLA, was terrified. “She didn’t even dare whisper,” Mei said. “The soldiers and the students were the same age. Some students were killed, and so were the soldiers.” Yun told me that her father had been an idealistic young man who listened to rock music and grew his hair long. In 1989, he was working in a state-owned soda factory but also protested against things that mattered to him. “He changed his tune after the government cracked down on the movement. The gunshots still haunt him,” Yun said. “He warned me before coming here to never get involved in any political movements. He told me that nobody could help me if I got in trouble, not even him.”

  I had met her father on the first day of school. He ran his own advertising company now, but I could see something heavy in his eyes, which looked tired and worn. Yun told me he drank a lot, to forget. His only goal now was to make money and send his daughter abroad and out of China.

  “Protests will only bring more instability to your life,” Yun said. “Leave the problems alone, Chaoqun. They’ll solve themselves as China develops.”

  “I don’t want to be in trouble for crimes against the government,” Mei added. “That would be terrible for my family.”

  When the electricity in the dorm was cut off as usual at 11 p.m. it ended our discussion, for the most part. And though I was disappointed with my friends and other students for their passivity, I also hadn’t done anything. It was painful for me to admit, but I guessed it did not make sense for me to risk my future either. We were taught to play the game and abide by the rules even when we didn’t like them. From our first day in primary school, Chinese children are taught to be opportunists. If I were kicked out of the university for organizing a protest, my future would be ruined. We were not foreigners with endless opportunities. I only had one and needed to make the most of it. Before I closed my eyes to sleep, I climbed down from my top bunk, walked to the window, and lifted a corner of the curtain. A half-moon hung over the treetops. I imagined for a second what it might have been like on this night twenty years ago. When I crawled back into bed and lay down in peace, I was glad no one had protested and there wouldn’t be any trouble.

  * * *

  “Do you want to settle down in Beijing in the future?” I asked Sun Bin while we were on the train traveling to our internships. I was going to the finance department of an international agricultural company; Sun Bin to an auditing firm.

  “Everybody wants to,” he said. “But it’s difficult.”

  It was rush hour on a Monday morning. It was so crowded we had to stand and squeeze ourselves against the door.

  “I know I won’t go back to my hometown,” he added confidently. “If not Beijing, then maybe Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Shenzhen. My goal is to be one of the city elites who can travel abroad a few times a year, afford a good education for my children, and never be afraid of becoming ill because I’ll have health insurance. I’ll have a big apartment.”

  I looked around at the other passengers. Many of them were male white-collar workers wearing plain black suits. They would commute for one or two hours to the city from their homes in the suburbs. Some might spend as many as six hours a day commuting round trip. And no matter how hard they worked, or how long their hours, many of them still wouldn’t have the life Sun Bin described.

  When we arrived at the next station, passengers waiting on the platform rushed to the door before it opened, pushing their way in. I was hardwired to the door. The subway staff in their blue uniforms yelled at the crowd to stand in line, but people struggled to get in and out anyway. A woman kept screaming into my ears, “Not out yet!” and held her purse tightly while squeezing out.

  The announcements were in English and Chinese: “Welcome to subway line one.” A little boy sitting on his mother’s lap made me chuckle as he repeated the English words. Sun Bin moved his foot aside slightly as a man stamped on it when he turned around to get more space. The man didn’t apologize. A fat woman was fighting loudly on her phone with someone. This was the morning hustle in Beijing.

  I had never been passionate about my major, and any hope that I might like to work in finance was killed in that six-month internship.

  Everything about the company looked professional and would have been nice for someone else, but not for me. The skyscraper was modern, and two very pretty, smiling receptionists welcomed guests and staff. Sunlight flooded into the tidy, clean offices. Chinese employees wrote and spoke to each other in English, though I didn’t understand why at first. I sat in a room shared with junior employees. At lunchtime, the employees in their white shirts and tailored skirts chatted about their recent travels or the newest Louis Vuitton handbags. I wanted to join them but had nothing to contribute. I knew they were not interested in hearing my opinions on healthcare reform or equal rights for women. I could only imagine how they would look at me if I brought up such issues.

  So I spent most of my time alone at my desk inputting data. As I punched in numbers, I realized I had to make a change. This kind of job might bring me money, but I wouldn’t get any sense of fulfillment, which to me was water to a fish. I finished the internship, knowing I would never again work for a finance company. I would do what my heart most desired; I would be a writer, a journalist.

  * * *

  I was down. I would soon realize that my choices would affect me in ways I hadn’t foreseen. I still didn’t know what to call my relationship with Wei…that is, until he told me he had a girlfriend.

  I never asked him why we had never properly dated, but I guessed one reason was that his parents didn’t approve of me. In Lutai, everyone knows everyone else. My parents liked Wei, and they were even more eager than I was to see us together, but Wei’s mother had openly said things against me, one of them being that I was too opinionated to be a good daughter-in-law. My family said I should not take her comments too seriously but I did, very seriously. Her words hurt me. I liked having opinions and I liked Wei. I hated that she wanted me to pick between
him and being myself. I was not a bad person, and I had no idea why she disapproved of me so much. I had barely ever spoken to her.

  One day Wei sent me a message on QQ:

  Are you there? I have something important to tell you.

  My heart started beating faster. I wondered if this was finally the moment he would ask me to be his girlfriend.

  Listen, I have a girlfriend now.

  You’re my best friend, so you are the first one I wanted to share this with.

  A smiley face followed.

  I felt a stabbing feeling in my heart, so much so that I was certain that it was bleeding. I didn’t answer him for a few minutes, and then I lost control of myself and started pouring out everything I had felt for him in the years we’d been seeing each other. Tears dropped on my keyboard with every word I wrote. And then I felt so angry with him, his mother, and whoever this new girlfriend was.

  He sent me a lot of messages back, but I didn’t read any of them.

  My body ached, reflecting the ache in my heart, and I was tired. I tried to close my eyes to sleep, but I couldn’t. After a few hours’ tossing and turning, I saw my phone light up with a message from Wei.

  Sorry if I hurt and misled you. I think we are very similar, and a couple should be different to make up for each other’s shortcomings.

  What was that supposed to mean? I wanted to scream at him. This was the reason? Had I shared too much with him? Had too many opinions like him? Was I not meek enough like his new girlfriend must be? Of course we were alike; that’s why I liked him! Couples were supposed to have things in common. I tossed all night, recounting and regretting everything I could possibly have done to make him think that way.

  When I opened my curtain the next morning, the sky was covered in a blanket of thick gray smog. It had snowed two days ago, briefly clearing the air of pollution. Beijing’s air pollution had grown worse over the years and now, after the snow, the toxic smog returned, burning my eyes and nose. My roommates complained, but today the smog was the perfect backdrop for my mood.

  Tian stretched a pink paper mask over her mouth and nose before heading out to class. I had been suffering from allergies since I moved to Beijing. The coal-burning factories, a surge in the number of vehicles, and Beijing’s topography exacerbated the situation. Surrounded by mountains, the city traps pollution. Smog is now related to nearly one-third of deaths in China, and reduces the life expectancy in northern China by three years. In the south, the air is much better.

  We kept the windows closed and I planned to stay inside all day and think about what had happened, but Yun and Mei said it wouldn’t do me any good to think about him a second longer. Christmas was approaching and they wanted to walk around the city. Although Christmas was not an official holiday, young people celebrated it. The funny thing is, we did not know or care about its origin. In China it had become an excuse to go shopping, and many malls and department stores were decorated for the Western festival.

  There was a huge, waving blow-up Santa placed at the front of the shopping mall, Joy City. Children wore reindeer ears, and couples took photos by Christmas trees decorated with tinsel. I wondered if Wei and his mysterious new girlfriend were doing the same. Strings of bulbs were twined on the trees, and an ad with a smiling Chinese housewife in a Christmas sweater was flashing on an electronic sign. I usually loved this time of year, but thoughts of Wei and his girlfriend made me so depressed, more and more alone, and like I would never fit in anywhere.

  Christmas in China also had nothing to do with family, unlike in the US. It was a day for young people—friends and lovers. When I was in middle school, on Christmas Eve we’d collect twenty-four coins from our friends and buy a special apple wrapped in glittery paper and tied with a lace bow. The apple was bigger and redder than other apples we ate on regular days, and ten times more expensive. We’d give them to a boy or girl we liked or to a good friend.

  I had no plans or interest in celebrating Christmas this year. Besides the falling-out with Wei, I had other things that bothered me. I found myself constantly stressed about having to make decisions. I was no longer a baby bird in the nest. Growing up in a traditional Chinese home, I was only taught how to study and behave. Those two principles took me only so far. Now, all the problems and pressures of real life, things I should have learned to handle by now, felt like an explosion. Suddenly my family wanted me to have a boyfriend, but I didn’t know how to have a relationship—I had no experience. I had messed up with Wei and talked too much. I had made a foolish decision about my career plans. Journalism sounded exciting, but could I make enough money to feed myself? How could I train? And suppose I wanted children and a family? How attractive would I be if I were broke? I was at a crossroads.

  I was due to be one of 6.8 million graduates, a new record. Few others would want to leave the city. Many, like me, had achieved a dream for their families by being here. To compete, I could try for master’s programs, but I would have to pass another exam to apply, and it would take six months and more money to prepare. I could go abroad, but my parents couldn’t afford to help me do that. There was a lot of competition for civil service jobs, such as in post offices, customs, tax bureaus, and courts, jobs with benefits, the possibility of promotion, and power. Civil servants could become government officials of cities and provinces. Sometimes, thousands of people would compete for one position. There was a civil service examination, but it was tough and didn’t guarantee job placement. And besides, all I wanted to do was write.

  When I finally mustered the courage to call my parents and tell them I had decided to try for a master’s in journalism at Tsinghua University, they went from calm to explosive in a matter of seconds. “Why would you do such a ridiculous thing? After all this studying you’ve done? Stick with finance. If you’re a government accountant, everybody will want to be like you.”

  “Not everybody, not me! It’s boring, and I don’t want my life to be like dull, stagnant water.” I was a bit erratic and emotional, but wanted their approval.

  “What’s wrong with stability?” my mom asked. “Your father and I would be so happy to have stable jobs. Is a scattered life what you want? Then what’s the university degree for?”

  They didn’t want me to have the same pressures they had.

  They wanted me to find a job that could provide me with a Beijing hukou. I’d be able to buy a house and a car and have decent medical care, and my children could attend good schools in the city. I knew a girl who had turned down a well-paid job at a multinational corporation for a less glamorous job in Beijing, only because the latter promised a hukou.

  I told them I would never sacrifice my happiness for a hukou. I wanted to live in Beijing but only if I could do a job I loved. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get married and have children. “Why should I worry about children who don’t exist?”

  “You’re selfish,” my mom said, about to hang up the phone. She had had enough.

  Before she could hang up, I asked, “Would you be happy if Laolao had stopped you from leaving Caiyuan? Our situations might be different on the surface, but the issues are the same. I want to have a life that I believe is right and worth chasing.”

  She didn’t respond. I knew we would both have a sleepless night after this—we rarely argued—and I felt more than ever that I was doing the right thing.

  * * *

  Our argument lasted for days. My parents made me promise to work in a state-operated news organization like People’s Daily, a paper I criticized as the party’s mouthpiece, but which to my parents and their friends was the best newspaper in China. This temporarily stopped the quarreling. However, six months of study later, I failed the exam to get into the journalism school.

  I couldn’t stand it. My parents’ eyes were ready to pop when I went home and announced that I had no job or school or boyfriend. I could only imagine what they were thinking.

  Maybe I should face the truth that I’m not a good writer, I thought.
/>
  The first six months of the final year in university are the best time to find a stable job. I had missed that opportunity, and was totally depressed about the mess I was in. I did not know what I had gained from being in Beijing. A good job would have been my one and only ticket to belonging there, but I had screwed it up. I had once thought that by working hard, everything would come to me. I was wrong. And now I was miserable, with no future plans—probably the worst thing ever for a Chinese woman my age. My mom had worked so hard for me, and I did not want to disappoint her. I thought about Laolao, who had never had opportunities to make any decisions about her own life. And look what I had done. I’d failed her, and my mom.

  After everything I had done—working overtime in the library, skipping movies to study—I still wasn’t good enough. Part of me felt as if I was still just a village girl and that Beijing and I were not compatible. My roommates seemed to have their lives sorted: Yun planned to go abroad. Tian, who had also failed a master’s examination, would live at home and retake it next year. Na would marry her high school sweetheart and work at a local accounting firm. Mei got an offer from one of China’s biggest banks, where her grandfather had once been director.

  I started looking for a job in the last four months before graduation, like a madwoman scrolling through every recruiting website several times a day in a frantic search for an inkling of hope. Most big media firms had already finished the recruiting process. Looking at my résumé, I knew I was at a disadvantage: female, no Beijing hukou, and no journalism experience or degree. Most of the companies asked applicants to attach their photos on the forms. I guessed mine didn’t help. Employers filtered their CVs: male, check; Beijing hukou, check; good-looking, check; rich parents, even better. I had none of those assets.