For some reason I was digging through my folder of unfinished novels, and I ran across this fragment. In the end, I lost faith in this project. It seemed fake to me, a book that a Chinese person should be writing. I'm not sure if that's valid but I can say I have not read any such books, except for Sid Smith's Something Like a House, which I reviewed for FEER (and saved for posterity here).
Anyway, a few more chapters survive. The book was to be a picaresque comedy about the Beijing Posts and Telecommunications Boxing Team, based on the experience of a couple friends I knew when I lived in Beijing. Somehow it was going to end with the Tiananmen Square incident. There was really a guy named "Patriot Zhang," though he was not a boxer.
Here goes:
Anyway, a few more chapters survive. The book was to be a picaresque comedy about the Beijing Posts and Telecommunications Boxing Team, based on the experience of a couple friends I knew when I lived in Beijing. Somehow it was going to end with the Tiananmen Square incident. There was really a guy named "Patriot Zhang," though he was not a boxer.
Here goes:
VI. Train
The constant travel – “This moving train car
of a prison” the team called it – was the worst part of being a
Post. Zhang hated the anise-flavored watermelon seeds everyone ate
and spat on the floor. He hated the smell of instant noodles, or, to
be precise, the smell of the plastic sachets of congealed fat
impregnated with flavoring that came with instant noodles. He
disliked chatting. He loathed playing cards. He despised track-side
scenery, all foundries and fallow fields with plastic bags hanging in
the weeds. Worst of all, he could never sleep. The 18 hour return
trip to Beijing from Shenyang—to which they had flown from Seoul on
a rattling China Northern Airlines plane—promised to be terrible,
as usual. Coach Wu was in a bad humor because he felt Gao and Fat
Liu had humiliated the nation, and there was no sign the idiotic
penis remarks were going to cease. Even Chen had joined in.
Long-distance
trains offered three kinds of berths, which for political reasons
were not named first, second and third class but soft sleeper, hard
sleeper and hard seat. Only cadres and foreigners booked the 4-berth
soft sleeper compartments, which were as expensive as flying.
Businessmen, schoolteachers, state factory workers, soldiers,
criminals, and what Zhang took for wretched unwashed Russians but in
fact were European adventurers all took hard sleeper, where each had
a cramped bunk to himself and shared a small table, a small thermos
of hot water and a small window with five other passengers. Hard
seat was reserved for peasants and professional athletes.
At the
station in Shenyang, peasants outfoxed athletes horde: 0, leaving Fat
Liu crammed next to the toilet, which had a broken door that wouldn’t
close, and the rest of them to carve out territory from the aisle
amid the farmers’ tremendous carryalls. Never mind the seat
assignments: the attendants were good for nothing but collecting
tickets and fining those who overslept their intended destinations,
and even if the staff had been more competent, when it came to
territory nobody could prevent a farmer from winning a war of gradual
attrition. They consumed prodigious amounts of peanuts, watermelon
seeds and diesel-scented liquor, the internal combustion of which
resulted in poisonous farts. They opened their mouths fist-wide to
pry out uneaten and unsavory scraps of pork, even teeth of the
deepest black, and carelessly wiped it (the pork) on the seatbacks or
flicked them (teeth) across the compartment with a forefinger. They
blew their noses on the window curtains or, if those were too crisp,
in their hands. And if you still didn’t yield, a farmer would fall
into a deep, snoring, drunken sleep, a silk thread of drool spooling
endlessly from his cavernous maw onto you, his mattress.
As soon as
the attendant checked Zhang’s ticket, exchanging it for a metal
chit with his seat number, Zhang retreated to the dining car, where
he planned to bribe the supervisor with his 25 yuan bonus to let him
stay the night through. In the dining car the first and second class
passengers were thrown together at mealtimes (the third class brought
its own food), but it was now empty except for two or three smokers
in sharp, foreign-made suits. The kitchen staff busily set to work
preparing box lunches for the trolleys, and the supervisor, a man
with a mole on his cheek, counted the change in the cash box.
Zhang took
a place in the far back, behind a table of idle waitresses, where he
hoped the supervisor would ignore him. No one seemed to pay any
attention until a businessman of middle age entered, glanced around
the car and made straight for him. Zhang decided that the man must
also have wanted to avoid the supervisor, because his eyes widened
with surprise and then narrowed in annoyance when he found Zhang
camped in the bribe-avoidance booth. Judging from the quality of his
shoes and glasses, the man was Overseas Chinese. He nodded and sat
down at the table next to Zhang, where he would be judged and
sentenced by the supervisor in an instant.
Sure
enough, the supervisor sent a waitress on recognizance. Zhang had
hoped to secure a half-finished plate to pick at and thereby hold his
money until nightfall, when the dining car closed and it would be
necessary to bribe the supervisor to stay on. Now he would be forced
to order something or go back to the hell of the hard seat carriage.
Zhang was busy contemplating the cheapest item on the menu when the
businessman demanded the woman’s attention: “Miss, I want to
order food.”
“Wait
your turn,” said the waitress. “This sportsman was here first.”
Zhang
made a self-deprecating gesture.
“I
am inviting him to join me,” the man said in what Zhang decided was
a Taiwanese accent. He moved over next to Zhang and proceeded to
order sliced pork and scallions, fish-flavored eggplant, stir-fried
spinach with garlic – here he paused to ask Zhang whether he liked
century eggs and found he did – and a plate of century eggs, very
black and very bitter. “And bring us two bowls of rice,” he
said. “You eat rice?”
Zhang, who
did not have to make weight for several weeks, nodded. When the
waitress had gone, he thanked the man and introduced himself.
“Mao
Chen,” the Overseas Chinese said, proffering his business card.
“But you can call me M.C.
You speak English, right? Good. English is the global language.”
He spoke in Chinese, except for those aggravating initials. “I
live in France, so I speak English with a French-Chinese accent and
French with a Chinese accent. Have you changed your ticket? Yes?
Do you think they’ll check tickets in here? I haven’t changed
mine and I’ve left my passport with my luggage.”
Zhang
was even more convinced that M.C.
was Taiwanese by the way he aped foreign manners and bossed people
around.
“They
have to come back through here when they finish with third class,”
Zhang said. “But I doubt they’ll check our tickets. They’re
assigned by carriage.” After each stop, the conductors collected
passengers’ tickets, checked their passports and gave them a metal
chit with their seat assignment on it. They kept the tickets from
each carriage in a wallet, so they knew where everyone aboard was
meant to get off, and before each stop, they came around and took the
chits back and returned the tickets. One had to produce a ticket at
the station to be allowed off the platform. The system had
practically eliminated fare dodgers, except for during Spring
Festival, when the crowd simply mobbed the attendants and scrambled
over the turnstyles.
M.C. asked
to see Zhang’s chit, and when he had inspected it put it down on
his side of the table, next to his chopsticks, rather than handing it
back. Zhang meant to ask him for it right away, but M.C. began to
tell him a story about the first time he had seen the Eiffel Tower
and it seemed impolite and paranoid to interrupt. Then the dishes
began to arrive, century eggs first, and M.C. ordered them each a
bottle of beer. Zhang decided all he need do was be sure to remember
the chit when they finished and M.C. headed back to his berth.
They were
snacking on the final dish when the door leading to the hard seat
carriages opened and the attendants passed through to return to their
between-car posts. M.C. began to move the metal chit back and forth
like an indecisive chess player and finally left it uncovered on the
edge of the table next to him just as the attendants passed. So,
that was what M.C. had been after, Zhang concluded, but then
reflected that M.C. had gone to an awful lot of trouble to avoid
spending a thirty-yuan on a third-class ticket, and bought a
sixty-yuan meal in the process. And, even if he had managed to get
aboard without a ticket in Shenyang and somehow was able to avoid the
conductors for the rest of the trip, he would have to produce a
ticket in Beijing to get out of the station. Maybe M.C. did have a
ticket, but had forgotten his passport at his berth and was too lazy
to go back for it, Zhang decided. In any case, he didn’t like to
be used, especially by a Taiwanese know-it-all.
With
a beery, self-satisfied look, M.C. began to expound the benefits of
living abroad. The overseas Chinese, who were all trying to be
Americans from tiny satellite dictatorships, were worse about this
than ordinary foreigners, who all had delusional fantasies about
submissive women, kung fu and traditional medicine.
“You
might not live any better, measured by material standards, but you
have a feeling of freedom, that you can do whatever you want and
nobody will pay attention,” M.C. said. “You don’t have bribe
your boss or treat him to dinner to get cleared to change jobs.
Nobody but criminals has a personal file. The police pay no
attention to the old ladies of the neighborhood watch.”
Zhang,
who had heard that feeling of freedom nonsense before, poured the
last of his beer into the glass and waved at the waitress to bring
another one. He gave a noncommittal grunt.
M.C.
changed tact. “Patriot,” he said. “An interesting name.”
“I
was born in ’70,” Zhang said. “Ten years earlier and I’d
have been ‘Steel.’” Just about every man born during the
infamous backyard furnace effort to support the Great Leap Forward
was named Steel, Iron or Metal, just as those who, like Zhang, were
born during the Cultural Revolution, were called Patriot, Hero, Lei
Feng, Rocket and Space Conqueror.
“But
you do love the motherland, don’t you?” M.C. said slyly. “As
an athletic hero of the state and so on?”
“We
must help the country to stride forward boldly into modernization,”
Zhang said, mustering up a winning grin. “It’s our job to
promote international friendship and cultural exchange and to provide
an example for the world of China’s development.”
M.C.
looked at him closely, but apparently could make nothing of his
expression, for he didn’t pursue that line of questioning any
longer. Instead, he rambled for a bit about the boundless varieties
of pornography available in Western countries. When he finally rose
to leave, he tried to take the metal chit with him, pretending to
scoop it up without thinking.
Zhang
grabbed his wrist. “That’s mine,” he said. “I need it to
show the attendant and get back my ticket when we arrive in Beijing.
You’ll have to change your ticket with the person in charge of your
compartment.”
As
M.C. apologized, Zhang again wondered what he was up to. Maybe he
didn’t
have a ticket, and hoped to exchange the chit for Zhang’s before
they got to Beijing. His suit would certainly stand out in hard
seat. Every farmer in the car would notice.
“I’m
terribly sorry,” M.C. replied. He lay the chit on the table, and
Zhang released his wrist. “They might have thrown you off the
train! Please, why don’t you take my ticket, and I’ll take your
place.” M.C. produced a soft sleeper ticket and held it out. His
face was red from the beer. He mopped his forehead with a crumpled
napkin. “Please,” he said.
“Done,”
said Zhang, capitalizing on the idiot’s embarrassment without
hesitation.
“It’s
a lower berth. Cantonese newlyweds above, whispering and giggling.
I consider myself lucky.”
“Have
you seen the hard seat carriage?” asked Zhang, rising from the
table. “I recommend you stay right here.”
He
went directly to M.C.’s soft-sleeper compartment, where he was
pleased to note another example of the man’s stupidity. The couple
who shared the chamber were not newlyweds at all. One was a Hong
Kong businessman and the other his mainland mistress. They were both
crammed into the same overheard berth with the blanket tucked up
their chins so all Zhang could see of them was their faces. The
businessman blinked at Zhang with the confused eyes of someone who
has just taken off his glasses. The girl giggled.
Zhang
sat down on the bunk underneath theirs, where at least they wouldn’t
be staring at each other, and took out the tattered China Daily, now
eleven days old, that he was in the process of decoding. He was a
few paragraphs into an article about the propaganda ministry’s
policy on bad news. The girl above him immediately began to whisper.
“You don’t love me…. No, you
don’t. If you loved me you’d want me to be happy….. You’d
want me to have an apartment, like my sister’s boyfriend bought
her.”
Zhang tried to
ignore her wheedling and concentrate on the newspaper article. The
Ministry of Propaganda had announced a call for more bad news.
Apparently they’d determined that all the rosy reports were making
people skeptical. That was certainly true, but Zhang didn’t
understand what effect they imagined for the more bad news
announcement.
“I hate you. You never do
anything for me. You left me sitting in that room all day. Of
course I was talking to the security guard. Nobody else paid any
attention to me. No, he’ll hear us. Stop, I don’t like it that
way” --
The
door opened, startling the lovers. A foot thumped against the
compartment wall. The attendant brought in a fourth passenger. He
looked like a small-time criminal or a plainclothes agent of the
Ministry of State Security. He glanced across at Zhang, sat down on
the opposite bunk, and began watching the newlyweds as though they
were television.
“I
haven’t exchanged my ticket,” Zhang told the attendant. He gave
it to her and showed her his temporary passport and his identity
card.
“Beijing?”
She took a metal chit marked 20B from a leather case and put the
ticket in its place. She gave the chit to Zhang and repeated the
process with the new man. When she’d given him his chit, she
replaced the hot water thermos with a full one from the corridor and
banged out.
The
thug or secret agent now directed his crocodilian assessment at
Zhang, who again tried to focus on his newspaper.
“You
an athlete?” he inevitably asked.
“Right.
I’m a boxer.”
“What
team?”
“Beijing
Posts and Telecommunications.”
“American
boxing?” He emphasized American as though he were accusing Zhang
of treason.
Zhang
folded the paper. “Olympic boxing.”
“Of
course. You mind taking a photo with me? For my kid.” The man
gestured at a cheap instamatic camera.
Zhang
moved over next to the thug, who gave the camera to the businessman’s
mistress. She held it in one hand and kept the covers pulled up to
her chin with the other.
“My
son will love this,” the man explained dully. “Are you famous?”
Zhang
grinned crazily, winked and, secretly hoping it was some unknown
obscenity, gave the thumbs up signal he’d learned from the giant.
The camera flashed.
“No,
I’m just a boxer on a municipal industry team. Nobody’s heard of
me.”
“I
see. Anyway, an athlete has a good life, right? Traveling all over
the country in soft-sleeper berths, chatting up wide-eyed girls and
leaving a trail of broken hearts. Your name in boldface in China
Sport.”
Had
he been sober, Zhang would have agreed or perhaps even more likely,
responded with the ubiquitous national grunt that could mean
everything from “You said it” or “Do go on” to “Not
exactly” or “Stop talking shit.” But he was drunk, so he told
the truth. “Maybe ten years ago it was like that, though I doubt
it. In any case, it’s not at all like that now. In an Olympic year
everybody gets a little bit excited over you, as long as you don’t
explain just how unlikely it is that you’ll make it from the
municipal level up to the national team. You might chat a girl up
through a dormitory window or in a hotel elevator sometime, but there
isn’t much you can do about it, with the coach, political educator,
the informant monitoring your every step. As for traveling all over
the country! Touring the motherland’s third-class hotels and
collapsing gymnasiums, more like. Prisoners of the train. It’s
like…it’s like Spring Festival week every month, crammed in hard
seat. Only no noodles, no beer and no peanuts, with the weigh-in to
look forward to. This was the first time they let us out of the
country”--
He
stopped. He realized that he was leaning forward from the edge of
the bunk, his fists clenched at his sides. He hadn’t exactly
shouted, but he had definitely raised his voice, an observation he
made with some dismay as he watched the man’s sly smile widen with
a slight twitch of his lips.
“So
life as one of our nation’s sportsmen doesn’t suit you?”
“No,”
Zhang emended. “It’s not that it doesn’t suit me.
I—er—I—ahem—I’m just a little frustrated with the slow
progress we’re making in our march toward modernization.”
The
man leaned back against the wall of the compartment so that his face
obscured by the shadow of the bunk above him. He faced the window
and looked at Zhang askance. “So your criticisms of the state are
motivated by boisterous nationalism,” he said.
“That’s
probably true,” Zhang stammered. “Only I hadn’t meant to
criticize the state. I was just talking nonsense.” He could feel
sweat trickling down his back between his shoulder blades—that cold
sweat again. He was now certain he was dealing with an agent of the
MSS.
The
secret policeman watched him. In the berth above, the businessman
and his mistress shifted positions restlessly, now and then thumping
the wall with an elbow or heel. They no longer whispered. Zhang
opened his wilted newspaper again and tried to read it, but found
himself instead studying the page, wondering if the agent was still
watching him and fighting the urge to look up and see. He read the
same paragraph over and over again. Readership
is down for many newspapers, including the China Petroleum News, the
Communist Youth Daily, Chemistry with Chinese Characteristics and
others, the Ministry of Propaganda announced today. Only the
People’s Daily remains unaffected, retaining a circulation of 6.3
million dedicated readers.
After
some time, the woman began to whisper again, wheedling about her
sister’s apartment. Southerners are fearless, Zhang thought,
remembering the old saying, “The mountains are high and the emperor
is far away.”
“You
studying English?” the MSS agent said finally. He indicated
Zhang’s China Daily. “Planning to go overseas?”
“For
personal development,” said Zhang.
Again
silence. Then: “What made you decide to take up American boxing?”
“Sorry?”
Zhang said, pretending not to have heard.
“Chinese
kung fu not good enough? So you went in for boxing?”
“It’s
not American boxing. It’s Olympic boxing. Anyway, I didn’t have
much choice in the matter. I was at the Beijing Sports Middle School
to be a hurdler – this was in ’86 – and the coach told me I
wasn’t going to be taken up to the senior league.”
“If
you’re traveling with the team, and the rest of them are in hard
seat, what are you doing in a luxury berth?”
It
occurred to Zhang that the agent was looking for M.C. That would
explain why he had been so anxious to swap his soft-sleeper ticket
for Zhang’s place in hard seat, an act that Zhang had stupidly
dismissed as mad. For an instant, he thought of saying he found the
ticket left behind in the dining car, but then he considered that the
agent’s next step would be to speak to the staff there, who were
certain to remember his idiotic Big Red Machine tracksuit.
“I
swapped seats with a stupid overseas Chinese in the dining car,” he
said. “He was embarrassed that he almost took my seat number by
mistake and wanted to save face, I suppose. I went along. Losing
face is one thing, but the hard seat carriage….” He grimaced.
There was no reason to repeat M.C.’s ramblings about the feeling of
freedom one has living outside China or his leading questions about
his patriotism.
The
agent produced a flimsy badge – not unlike the pathetic tie-pin
Zhang had been given by the American military officer – and
demanded to see his identity card. He noted his name and address.
When he asked the couple in the upper berth for their identification,
the Hong Kong business man had to reach across to the opposite bunk
for his pants, and the blanket fell away to reveal that his mistress
was topless.
The
train was held up at the next station for M.C. to be taken off by the
secret policeman. Zhang watched through the carriage window as he
was led off, his wrists cuffed behind his back, by two ignorant
People’s Liberation Army soldiers. The secret policeman walked
behind and glanced back toward the train every few paces. When he
caught sight of Zhang, he boxed the air for a moment, grinning.
Despite the comfortable berth, Zhang did not sleep more than a
restless hour or two for the rest of the way to Beijing.
