Although I too feel squashed as I chase through the city streets, I can always sense the sea is just around the corner.
Walking to the End of the World
After the exertions of the exhibition, I take a rest for a while and move in with Li Tao at Shenzhen University. For a month I work on a story, but find the money I earned in Guangzhou and the comfort of being among friends has dulled my creative spirit. I feel the need to start travelling again, and decide to take a boat to Hainan Island, the most southern province of China.
An hour before my boat is due to leave, I make my way to the bus stop. Workmen are hammering cement blocks into the pavement. The newly tarred road in front is covered with sand that has spilled from a nearby building site. Two trucks drive past leaving a cloud of yellow dust, so I retreat into the doorway of a hairdresser’s salon. The girls inside stare at a television screen as they shake their hairdryers about. Suddenly I see Fang Li, the Xian drug addict, walking towards the door. Her dark shiny hair does not match her yellow skin. She smiles and says, ‘Mr Ma, isn’t it?’
‘Fang Li! What are you doing here?’
‘I was discharged from the centre in March and flew straight here. What brings you to Shenzhen?’
‘I’m just off to Haikou. My boat leaves in an hour.’ At last my bus arrives.
‘Let me see you off then.’ Her miniskirt is very tight, so I help her onto the bus. Her arm feels cool and dry. At the traffic lights the conductor sees a policeman and tells the standing passengers to crouch down. When we have crossed the intersection, we stand up again, and she starts telling me about her life.
‘This is the year of the ox. I was born in the year of the monkey. They say monkeys leap over the ox’s back, so it should be a good year for me. I met a guy on the plane here. He fell in love with me at first sight and asked me to move in with him. It was two months before he realised I was using drugs.’
Shenzhen is a vast construction site. There are no corners. Parallel roads lead straight into open fields. People from every province wander the streets in their best clothes, searching for a new life.
‘He is a model worker,’ she continues. ‘If his unit knew about his relationship with me he would get into terrible trouble. I told him I would keep quiet for ten thousand yuan. His wife and daughter are transferring here soon. .’
The air outside the window smells of manure and tilled earth. The high-rises sprouting from the ground make the fields look smaller. Local peasants in new shirts drift aimlessly between the buildings. The young men pouring from the office blocks with polystyrene lunch boxes have light blue shirts and shiny shoes.
When we get off the bus she says, ‘You must write a story about me. I lied when I told you I never sold drugs. I lost ten thousand yuan the last time. I have a girlfriend now, you know. We met at the Palace Ballroom. I fell in love with her when I heard her sing. When my husband gets out of jail next year I will file for divorce. A lesbian? Me? I don’t think so. Go back to Xian? Never. I met a Canadian man last week. He works for a Hong Kong company and sends me flowers every day. I can’t speak English so we have to talk through the dictionary. Love him? I don’t know yet. I’ll wait for him to take me abroad then see how things go. The other guy? He’s terrified to touch me now. I’ll move out as soon as he pays up. .’
I watch her figure disappear into the crowd. She looks like any other pretty girl on the street. You would never guess she has a child in nursery, a husband in prison, a married boyfriend, a girlfriend, a Canadian lover and an opium addiction.
As the boat casts off, I think of Li Tao and Chun Mei. They are in love now. Mimi has agreed to a divorce. Yesterday, Chun Mei came with me to the post office when I sent my letter to Wang Ping. On the way back she stopped and said, ‘Ma Jian, by the time you have finished your travels, Li Tao and I will have an apartment. You must come and stay with us. Shenzhen is a new city, an empty shell. It is waiting for us northerners to come and fill it with our dreams.’
When the Haikou writers’ association see my introduction letter from Guangzhou Press they give me a free room in their guesthouse and pass my story to Horizon magazine. Three days later I follow a line of coconut trees to Wenchang town. Lingling’s cousin Chen Xiong runs a photographer’s studio here. His front window displays a huge photograph of two palm trees bending towards the sea. He tells me he took the picture in Dongjiao, a village twenty kilometres away. It is a photograph that hangs in almost every restaurant in the country. I stay for three days helping him paint a mural of Beijing’s Beihai Park for a portrait background, then take to the road again.
The next day I reach the coconut plantations of Dongjiao. The blue sea and green palms are as close as two lips, separated by a long white beach. Time settles like the flat sand. I sit beneath a tree, inhale the sea breeze and try to let my thoughts grow as large as the ocean. . The letter I received from Ai Xin in Wushan was just seven characters long: ‘I am off to see the ocean.’ I wish that smiling girl was sitting beside me now. Wang Ping said I was rigid and judgemental, and difficult to be with. What is it that draws me to her? On my last night in Shenzhen, Li Tao asked me why I always fall for women called Ping. It is strange. Guoping, Xi Ping, Lu Ping, Wang Ping. . ‘Ping’ means small green leaf that grows on still water, and the women I love are true to their name. They drift through my life like rootless weeds floating across the surface of a pond. Xi Ping taught me never to trust a woman again. Lu Ping’s pirouettes have long since faded from my mind. . Women are like the sea though, they are not just there to be looked at. I throw off my shorts and plunge into the water.
In the evening I come to a village lit by lamps that burn on coconut oil. The fragrant huts stand under dense palm trees. The only break in the canopy is the hole above the village well. A hunched old woman walks home barefoot, beating her way through the leaves. I knock on a door and ask if I can share a bed for the night.
A week later I stop below Five Finger Mountain at a village inhabited by the indigenous Li tribe. Director Huang of the hygiene office puts me up in his house. He advises me not to climb the mountain. ‘There are poachers’ traps everywhere. If you tread on one you will either fall into a ditch or be catapulted into the air. They only check the traps once a week, by which time you will be drinking tea with the immortals.’ I tell him that sounds fine to me.
I set off at dawn and reach the top at noon. A few dead pines rise from the two-thousand-metre summit. The limestone crags have blackened in the wind. My feet start to squelch inside my shoes, and I find it difficult to walk. I sit down, remove my socks and discover about thirty fat leeches stuck to my toes. I beat them with the soles of my shoes then rip them off one by one.
I follow a river to the Li village of Shuiman. There is a folk song that goes ‘Shuiman girls, Shuiman tea. .’ I take out my camera hoping a pretty girl might pass, but it frightens the children so much they run away in tears. Some of the grass huts have side sheds for grown-up daughters. Girls who do not become pregnant bring shame to their families. No Li woman can marry unless she has a bulging stomach. I go to a hut with a smoking chimney and ask for a bowl of tea. The old woman pulls a branch of tea leaves from a cloth bag and drops it into a pan of water. When it comes to the boil she empties the brew into a bowl. The taste is slightly bitter. She says she is seventy years old, and her grandsons are all married. I tell her I organised an exhibition on minority nationalities in Guangzhou, and have come here to photograph the Li. She eyes me coldly. ‘The Han came here when I was a girl and took twenty-four of us to Guangzhou. We were exhibited in iron cages in Yanghan Park for three whole months. They told the visitors the Li are born from monkeys and raised by snakes.’ Her lips quiver with anger. I let the matter drop. Despite our noble motives, the exhibition was a failure, a fantasy within a tropical garden. The old woman’s face is covered with tattoos. I ask to take her photograph but she still doubts my credentials so I show her the red stamp on my introduction letter. The sad lines inked onto her face as a girl have faded over the years. I promise to send her the photograph. She tells me Li girls tattooed their faces to repel the Han invaders.