On this trip, I discovered another aspect of Mr. Fang’s character which I had not noticed before, namely parsimony. When we had lunch together, he would, if possible, avoid sharing the cost. Twice I paid for him. Despite having a bedridden wife, he was by no means destitute; his son sent him a handsome sum of money every month. Unlike us, he even had a foreign-currency account at the bank. It was less problematic if he took the gratis treatment for granted only among ourselves, the Chinese. What angered me most was that he played the same trick on some Americans, often waiting for them to pay for his coffee or tea or drink, as though everyone in the world owed him a favor or a debt. I could not understand why he acted like a mendicant. Our country had given each of us twenty-two dollars a day for pocket money, which was indeed not much, but a man ought to have his dignity. I could not imagine how a skinflint like Mr. Fang could be a lady-killer. Once, he even wanted an American woman novelist to pay for a cheese strudel he had ordered; he told her, in all insouciance, “I have no money on me.” The tall redhead wore a sky-blue bolero and a pair of large Ching Dynasty coins as earrings, apparently for meeting with us. She had an irksome habit: after every sentence, she would add, “See my point?” She was so shocked by Mr. Fang’s pointed words that she gave a smile which changed into a sour grimace; then she turned to me, as if questioning me with her green, deep-set eyes to determine whether he was in his right mind. Outraged, I pulled a ten-dollar note out of my pocket and said to him in Chinese, “Take this, but I want my money back tomorrow morning.” That, for once, made him open his wallet.
Probably he acted that way because he had misunderstood the capitalist culture and the so-called American spirit, having confused selfhood with selfishness. A few months before the trip, we had invited an American professor, Alan Redstone, to our college to lecture on Faulkner. That florid-faced man from Kentucky was truly a turkey; he wore a ponytail and a flowered shirt and played the banjo. He said that in America the self was absolutely essential, that one had to make every effort to assert one’s own selfhood, that a large ego was fundamental for any individual success, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of flatus. He even declared that self-interest was the dynamo of American culture and economy, and that if you were an American, the center of your life would have to be yourself. I swear, if he were a Chinese I would have had him hauled out of the lecture hall before he was done. But Mr. Fang told me afterwards that he was deeply impressed by Redstone’s talk, which apparently had set his mind spinning. Now, in Hartford, Mr. Fang asserted himself so aggressively in front of the American woman that he would not mind smirching our country’s face. It was as though he were altogether immune to shame. How could he, a well-learned man, be such a credulous ignoramus? This is still beyond me.
Our American host informed us that there would be a writers’ conference at the university on Saturday. The organizers would love to arrange a special panel for the Chinese writers, meaning those in our delegation. We agreed to participate, quite moved by such a friendly invitation. I was asked to talk about American literature in contemporary China, while the six writers wouldn’t have to speak, just be prepared to answer questions about their writings and experiences. We were all excited and put on our best suits or dresses for the occasion. To fortify my spoken English, I read out articles in The New York Review of Books for a solid hour before we set off.
The university was in a small town, which lay in a wooded valley. It was clean and eerily quiet, perhaps on account of the summer break. The roads on the campus were lined with enormous tamaracks and maples. A cream-colored minivan dropped us before a low brick building, wherein several talks were to take place at the same time. Because our panel had not been advertised like the others, most of the conference participants didn’t know about it and were heading toward the other rooms. I was nervous, whispering to my comrades, “If we just have a dozen people, that will be good enough.”
How we were worried! Ganlan, the woman playwright, kept wringing her fingers and said we should not have agreed to take part in such an ad hoc thing.
Suddenly Mr. Fang shouted in his broken English to the people in the lobby, “Attention, please, ladies and gentlemen, I am Professor Fang Baichen, a great contemporary Chinese fiction writer. Please come to my lecture!” He pointed his index finger at the entrance to our room while his other hand was beckoning every American around us.
People looked puzzled, then some started chortling. We were astounded and had no idea what he was up to. I thought perhaps this was just a last-ditch attempt to fetch an audience. Mr. Fang went on shouting, “Room Elefen. Please. A great writer is going to speak.”
If possible, I would have fled through the roof. We stepped aside to make ourselves less conspicuous. But Mr. Fang’s performance did attract a sizable audience — about thirty people came to our panel. I made an effort to keep calm so as to talk.
To our astonishment, after the woman moderator introduced us, Mr. Fang grabbed the microphone from me and began delivering a lecture. He was reading loudly from a paper he had written in advance. His voice sounded as domineering as if he were a government official delivering an admonitory speech. My head was tingling and my mouth went numb.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Ganlan.
Another writer said, “This is a blitzkrieg.”
“Academic hysteria,” I added.
Why didn’t the moderator stop him? I wondered. Then I saw the woman’s oval brown face smiling at me understandingly; she must have assumed he and I had agreed to switch positions.
Mr. Fang was speaking about how he had successfully experimented with the most recent fiction techniques (which were, in fact, all outdated in the West) and how he had inspired the younger generation of Chinese writers to master the technique of stream of consciousness. At first, the audience seemed shocked by the immense volume of his booming voice. Then some of them began chuckling and snickering; many looked amused, as if they were watching a comedian performing a skit. How ashamed we were! He made a fool of all the Chinese in the room! We couldn’t help cursing him under our breath.
It took him more than half an hour to finish his lecture. The audience laughed and smirked when he finally stopped. A few young men, who must be students, whistled as Mr. Fang stood up to acknowledge the pitter-patter of applause, which was obviously meant to mock him.
I did not give the talk I had prepared. Completely flustered, I simply couldn’t do it. But meanwhile, Mr. Fang kept smiling at us, his compatriots sitting along two folding tables. His broad face was glazed with perspiration, and his eyes glowed complacently. He was engulfed in a rectangle of sunlight falling in through a high window. Again and again he looked at us with a sort of disdain on his face, as if challenging us, “Who among you could deliver a lecture like that in English?” Were I able to reach him, I would have pinched his thigh to restore his senses.
The audience asked us some dull questions. We managed to answer them perfunctorily. Every one of us was somewhat shaken. My English became incoherent, marred by grammatical mistakes, as I struggled to interpret the questions and answers. In fact, I couldn’t help stuttering, half throttled by scalding rage. My pulse went at 120 a minute at least.
Finally the whole thing was over, and every one of us felt relieved. Thank heaven, we survived it!
You can imagine how disgusted we were with Mr. Fang after that episode. Nobody would have anything to do with him. We wanted to let him wear the halo of “the great writer” alone. Ganlan even suggested we depart for San Francisco in secret, leaving him behind so that he would have trouble finding money for the return airfare. Of course we could not do that. Even if he had died, we would have had to bring his ashes back; because if he had remained in America, the authorities would have assumed he had defected, and would have criticized us for neglecting to anticipate his motives and, ergo, being the occasion of such an opportunity for him.