Da Xian has been with us for a week. I invited him down from Beijing to paint our ornamental gateposts. His girlfriend Chun Mei studies English three hours away at Shenzhen University, so they see quite a lot of each other.
Li Tao’s letter is a week old.
I know just how you felt when you found out about Xi Ping. I popped round to Da Xian’s house yesterday and saw Mimi’s bike outside his door. I had no idea she was in Beijing. I knocked but no one answered. Then I smashed the window and Mimi came running out. . This is too much. I can’t take it. I knew Mimi was unhappy, but I would never have guessed she could betray me like this. I want to kill someone. Make sure Da Xian has left Guangzhou by the time I arrive. You better tell Chun Mei about this too, she has a right to know. Fan Cheng says we have opened our door too widely, and should rid our gang of scum like him. Mimi weeps outside my door every day, begging me to take her back. She looks like a drowning woman grabbing for branches. But my heart is numb. . I will arrive in Guangzhou next week. Shenzhen University has offered me a teaching post in the economics department.
Da Xian is coiling a piece of wire in the sun. I remember Qiuzi and Xi Ping and I want to strangle him. He turns round, sees my face and realises his secret is out.
‘And what’s it to you, then?’ he snorts. His nose is always blocked.
‘When Chun Mei comes tonight I will tell her the truth and she can make up her own mind. It was Li Tao who suggested I invite you here, and all the while you were sleeping with his girlfriend. You dog.’
‘It’s not as simple as that, Ma Jian.’
‘I don’t want any explanations. You must leave in three days. If your work isn’t finished by then, you won’t get paid.’
Chun Mei arrives at dusk. She always smiles before she speaks. Her red lips and white teeth show she is in the prime of youth. She hands me a cassette and says, ‘I recorded this for you, Ma Jian. I hope you like it.’ She gives Da Xian an affectionate smile. I remember her lying in his arms last week. She was wearing white shorts. Her curved knees reminded me of Xi Ping’s.
‘Sit down, Chun Mei.’ I glance at her bare legs. She sits on the camp bed and strokes Da Xian’s hand. ‘I have something to tell you. Da Xian has been sleeping with Mimi in Beijing. I got a letter from Li Tao today. He wanted you to know. Well, I’ve told you now. I’ll let you sort out the rest yourselves.’ As I walk to the door I see a tear drop from Chun Mei’s smiling eyes.
Outside the park gates, I turn right and head for the banks of the Pearl River. Both ends of the distant Huaizhu Bridge sparkle with lights. Small ferry boats chug back and forth. Lingling’s husband Wang Shu said that visitors from the north always assume the opposite bank is Hong Kong. At the dead of night they swim to the other side, crawl up the beach, and have just enough time to shout ‘I’m free at last!’ before the police pounce and put them in handcuffs.
At this time of night the lights in Beijing have already sunk behind the courtyard walls, and anyone walking the streets is liable to be arrested. In the north, even the air is hard. But in the south people live in the open and the air is soft and warm. No wonder everyone wants to live here.
A banner across the road on the left reads A SON WHO JOINS THE ARMY BRINGS PRIDE TO THE FAMILY. A SON WHO ESCAPES TO HONG KONG BRINGS SHAME TO EVERYONE.
When a son joins the army in the north, it is an occasion for celebration, but no one wants their son to be a soldier here. In the south, if a young man has not escaped to Hong Kong and made his fortune, his mother will curse the day he was born.
The entrance to the restaurant is lined with cages of snakes, cats and tortoises. A man takes a skinned dog off his bicycle rack and delivers it to the kitchen. The fish and prawns jumping in enamel basins splash water onto the stone floor and remind one the sea is not far away.
There really is nothing Guangzhou people do not eat. Tonight I have tasted snake, cat, turtle and raw fish. Lingling has invited the manager of a printing factory and a photographer from Guangzhou Press who owns a Hasselblad. They have agreed to take our publicity photographs and print our posters and tickets for free because they are friends of Wang Shu. Lingling promises to pay them when the exhibition starts making money. As they chat away in Cantonese, I sample the dog dumplings and deep fried dove. Lingling asks if I have decided on a model yet, and suddenly I wonder what to do if Chun Mei decides to back out. I had planned to dress her up as a Yunnanese girl and plaster her photograph across the city.
Day and Night
The next morning, Da Xian, Chun Mei and I scour the shops along Zhongshan Road for film, candles, coloured paper, paints and pens. Chun Mei’s unsmiling mouth looks like a man’s.
Cantonese pop booms from every radio, and each television is tuned to the same Hong Kong soap opera. The noise on the street is so loud we have to retreat into shops before we can hear ourselves talk. The portable electric fans that stand on the counters churn smells of roast duck through the air. The advertising hoardings on the streets and the blonde mannequins in the shop windows give the city an air of opulence and sophistication that is worlds away from the north. Streaming past me are businessmen with leather briefcases and baggy trousers, women with dainty handbags and heavy make-up, and workers in vests and shorts. Housewives carrying plastic bags weave through the bicycles and motorbikes. Southerners move with fluid steps, their bodies are light and supple. Posters of Hong Kong pop stars cover the walls of every grocery store, and make the Marx, Lenin and Mao posters in the Xinhua Bookshop look like museum pieces in comparison. I browse through the magazine section, then buy some pens and paper, as well as Updike’s Rabbit, Run and Joyce’s Dubliners which I will read and then send to Wang Ping.
We turn into a narrow lane of small brick houses. Smells of fish and incense pour from open windows, the rooms inside are black. Pink and yellow underwear hang from bamboo poles above. I go to a public phone, give Lingling a call then wait for her to call me back. The heat is unbearable. A table on the pavement is set with cups of tea. We each buy one, but Da Xian and I have to spit ours out. Chun Mei tells us this is called ‘bitter tea’. Two old men on plastic stools stare at us then gaze at the line of shops behind. A furniture store sells goldfish in its doorway. A man who cuts keys, prints name cards and mends watches has set up business in the entrance of a shop that sells hats, cosmetics and Hong Kong cigarette lighters. Outside the radio repair shop, a tethered cat claws at a plastic bag as it tries to break free.
Life is easy here. Women stroll to the public toilets in their nighties and stop to buy rice on their way back. Children wash their feet and sandals while they clean vegetables under the street tap. A man on a motorbike pulls up beside a fruit stall and leans over to select his tangerines.
In the afternoon, Chun Mei appears to take a turn for the worse. She is wearing brown make-up and a grass skirt for the photo shoot. When I look at her through the lens, her ears seem very white. The photographer forbids me to touch his Hasselblad, so when I need to take a picture, I tap his hand and he presses the button for me.
Having seen Chun Mei on to the train back to Shenzhen, Lingling and I return to the exhibition ground. I lie down on my camp bed and tell her how much I appreciate her finding this job for me.
When the gates close for the night we have the whole park to ourselves. We take a boat out and row into the middle of the lake. The water smells of jasmine. She tells me she likes me.