Lingling has started an argument with Hu Sha.
‘In Beijing, people just sit back and complain,’ she says. ‘But in Guangzhou, we get on with the job. Now that the economy is booming, you politicos have become irrelevant.’
‘Bullshit! We need politics more than ever, now. These reforms have given us freedom of thought. You southerners don’t know how to take advantage of that.’
‘It’s not what you think that matters, it’s what you do. The future is forged through action.’
‘All right then. Let’s build that cattle ranch in Hebei. Ma Jian! Show them your photographs!’
‘I left them in Beijing. I can draw a picture though.’
Fan Cheng rises to his feet. ‘Ma Jian and I have been planning this for a year now. Each member invests a thousand yuan. It’s a beautiful spot. We can live surrounded by nature and concentrate on our writing.’
‘I thought you wanted to move to Shenzhen and write stories for the government. You won’t find much nature there.’
‘We could buy some horses and run riding holidays. I could set up a travel agency here.’
‘No. We should turn the place into a country club. We could restrict membership to people in the creative arts.’
I draw a sketch of the site on the wall. ‘There’s a lake on the right and a forest on the left. We can put the ranch in the middle and the house here. It’ll be a wooden house with a large veranda where we can store our gumboots and farming equipment. It will have fourteen single bedrooms and a large sitting room where we can sit around a kerosene heater and talk about art.’
‘Can women join?’
‘Of course. We can’t leave the kitchen empty!’
The Lishu women, Cangcang and Caidan, walk in and ask me to drink from their goblet. We have spoken a lot over the last days. They have told me many interesting folk tales. Caidan complained that Shen Chao never said she would have to perform. She hates wearing her national costume in this heat. Cangcang presses her lips next to mine and we drain the goblet dry. The wine burns down my throat. Shen Chao flushes a deep red and raises his glass. ‘I’m so happy that you are all here today. Any friend of Ma Jian’s is a friend of mine. Stand up, everyone! To your health!’
Before I go to sleep I take a photograph of Chen Hong for her Shenzhen permit. When she removes her sunglasses, I notice her eyes are red with tears.
The Opening Ceremony Becomes the Closing Ceremony
The next day we sell just twenty-seven tickets, and no one stays for the bonfire dance.
The opening ceremony could have doubled as the closing ceremony. We call an emergency meeting and decide to split forces. Lingling goes to stick posters up at the universities. Pan Jie returns to Beijing to pressure the national media to cover the event. Shen Chao talks to Guangdong Television about filming a documentary and I offer to repaint the sponsors’ advertisements that have washed away in the rain.
But our problems begin to multiply. The clay figurines Shen Chao commissioned his friend to produce for our gift shop were so ugly we had to send them back, but now the factory insists we cover their costs. Our guests from Yunnan go shopping and fall prey to southern ruthlessness. Li Xueyong from the Jingpo tribe buys a watch, but when he opens the box he finds a nut and bolt inside. The Wa man comes back with a new cassette player, but when he opens the box he discovers a red brick. Tsering the Tibetan buys a Hong Kong T-shirt, but on his way back to the park the design washes away in the rain and leaves red blotches of ink on his chest. The exhibition room is in chaos. The women are in tears, the men are shouting and cursing. Their families have toiled for years to make the money they have lost in just three days. There will be terrible trouble when they get home. The Beijing cook is complaining about the lack of customers and is threatening to pack up and leave.
While I sit on our gatepost repainting another hoarding, I catch sight of the Great China Hotel across the park, and it occurs to me that if we managed to stick some posters in there we might get some foreigners to come. So I jump down, roll up a couple of posters and go to try my luck. A crowd of northern peasants stands at the hotel gates, staring at the brightly clad foreigners who stream from the minibuses. A doorman in a red uniform and round cap bars my entry and chuckles as I walk away.
Ten minutes later I return in long trousers and leather shoes, and sneak in through the duty-free shop on the right. I have visited the shop twice before to admire a beautiful assistant Li Tao has discovered. She stands behind an array of frighteningly expensive perfume bottles, making it impossible to find an excuse to approach. On both occasions I paid a visit to the gentlemen’s lavatory to steal a roll of toilet paper. It is the most elegant room I have ever seen. It has gold taps, potted plants, air-conditioning, piped music. When I sit on the toilet seat I can almost imagine I have escaped to Hong Kong.
The man at the reception listens to my request and calls the public relations officer. The pleasant Hong Kong woman with gold earrings takes my posters and agrees to visit the exhibition. I rush back to the park and tell Shen Chao to fetch her and give her a guided tour.
A few days later I find my way to Guangxiao Temple, one of the oldest Buddhist sites in Guangzhou. The twin iron pagodas that stand in the courtyard look rough and wild. I step into the Hall of the Sixth Patriarch and see a large brass statue of Huineng, the founder of the southern school of Zen Buddhism. As a young man Huineng travelled north to seek religious teaching. When the Fifth Patriarch balked at taking on a southern disciple, Huineng swayed him by arguing that while men are divided into northerners and southerners there is no division in buddha-nature. Upon his return to Guangzhou, Huineng entered Guangxiao Temple and heard two monks arguing over a banner fluttering in the wind. One monk said it was the banner that was moving, the other said it was the wind. Huineng said, ‘Neither the banner nor the wind moves. It is your mind that moves.’ He understood that man’s greatest enemy is himself. A side-chapel holds the ashes of a thousand dead sages. A black-and-white photograph is pasted to each box. If the sages have managed to transcend the fetters of samsara, why do they feel the need to leave these mementoes behind?
I come out of the temple gate, go to a cake shop and order a glass of papaya juice. A little girl is leaning over a plastic table doing her homework. A sour smell of sweat wafts from the soles of her feet. My daughter’s feet used to smell like that. She could never keep them still. By the time her homework was finished, the floorboards beneath her chair were always hot and shiny.
I ask her how old she is and what she wants to do when she grows up.
She swings her legs about and says she wants to make money.
‘Why do you want to make money?’ She is only seven years old.
‘If you have money, even the devil will scrub your floors,’ she says, paraphrasing an old proverb.
‘Where is your father?’ I ask.
‘Gone to fetch cash.’
I ask her mother what she means. ‘He’s gone to work. In Cantonese fetching cash means going to work.’
I check my watch. The bonfire dance is about to start. Unfortunately, this is a city where no one has time to be a spectator.
On the way back I walk past the Sacred Heart Church. From close up it looks old and dilapidated. It is hemmed in on all sides by tall concrete buildings, its two steeples struggle towards the sky. A hundred years ago French missionaries came here to build a heaven on earth, but now their heaven is suffering the tortures of hell.