The Wounded Muse

by Robert F Delaney

  He’s a good forty-five minutes away from his apartment on foot but the mild air of spring feels refreshing even if the halos of haze and construction dust around the streetlights reveal the pollutants he’ll inhale on the way. No matter. He’s been breathing this concoction for years and is convinced his body has reached a physiological accommodation, much the way skin thickens in the cold.

  Jake heads south towards Jianguo Avenue through the narrow hutongs lined with low-rise housing blocks that were built sometime in the 80s. Clad in white tile now weathered to the colour of slate but not yet ripe for demolition, their overall uniformity is broken up by ground-level tuck shops selling beer, snacks and packets of shampoo hanging down like streamers. These shops stay open late but not so much for the revenue since there’s less business to be had since more supermarkets are opening throughout the city. These shops are Beijing’s public sphere. The owners sit on small stools with their friends, discussing whatever they’ve most recently learned about the world, perhaps from a relative with a daughter or nephew studying in Boston or Melbourne or Manchester.

  Jake understands only some of their chatter because of the local accent that makes them sound as though their tongues are swollen. But their certitude is clear to Jake. With no illusions about their own government or anyone else’s, they speak with authority, spitting truth like bullets between drags on their cigarettes as they rock back and forth on their stools, relaxed, legs crossed and not caring who might disagree. Their loud banter, punctuated with the occasional hacking up of mucous, is the life blood of a city whose main features are either unremarkably drab and utilitarian or grand and imposing.

  The residential hutongs lead to Jianguo Avenue’s diplomatic compound just outside the Second Ring. A cross between Miami Art Deco and communist block utility, this compound surrounded by high walls and guarded gates had served for decades as the only place foreigners could live. As China opened up, the half-dozen or so buildings making up the compound became required quarters for only diplomats and journalists. After the turn of the millennium, when the authorities had the technical wherewithal to spy on anyone, anywhere in Beijing, the compound was no longer assigned housing and became an option for those looking for high ceilings and an intriguing backstory. The government gave the exterior a brighter finish and installed modern window casings to bring them up to the standards of the many new developments throughout the city. Inside, they removed bugs from behind the wallpaper and cornice mouldings.

  Heading east, Jake follows the broad sidewalk past other uninviting structures from an earlier era now festooned with Olympic Games motifs and slogans about national unity. Traffic crawls so slowly that Jake makes better time than any taxi he might have jumped into. Very few others bother walking down the avenue, especially at this time of night. Everything is spaced too far apart, separated by large manicured knolls filled with thousands of potted plants arranged into swirls and other geometric patterns that look more impressive from many floors up, like from the China World Centre just ahead. The latest China World Tower now dominates the northwest corner of the intersection of Jianguo and the Third Ring. The Yintai Centre, a skyscraper topped with modernized imperial motifs glowing red from the inside has just opened on the southwest corner, setting the area a world apart from the modest tuck shops and lively conversations they attract just a few hundred metres off the city’s main axis.

  The vast range of life he’s just walked through and the rate of its change reminds Jake of why Qiang’s work is so important. He’s now as sure that the documentary will be a success as he is that Jianguo Avenue is becoming a new centre of global power. A sense of confidence swells within Jake, one that offsets any disappointment that he happens to be sober and alone on a Saturday night.

  SUNDAY, March 24, 2007

  10:23 p.m.

  Qiang’s one-bedroom flat in Progress Park faces east, allowing him to capture the changes taking place across the street and the entire surrounding neighbourhood. A camera fixed to his window with tape snaps a photo every day at noon. The time-lapse sequences shot here and in other locations throughout the city will capture the simultaneous demolition and reconstruction. Qiang will insert these sequences throughout his film, a technique that he hopes will keep his audience’s attention when he’s narrating some of the details.

  The vast new property across the street is coalescing into grade-A office towers and a Four Seasons hotel. It’s all built on what will be a shopping mall formed from beams radiating outward from the ground as if the fortress of grey metal was planted by extraterrestrials as a monstrous seed and sprang from the earth to commandeer the city. Growing outward and upward, the structure will soon deprive Progress Park’s east-facing residents from a key selling point, the morning sunlight.

  The new homeowners moved in a year earlier, assuming the low-slung brick housing blocks across the street would remain for a while. The old neighbourhood of squat worker housing blocks had been a town unto itself with ground-floor shops selling shampoo, cheap mobile phones and steamed buns. Behind the old buildings, a wet market strewn with plastic bags and Styrofoam had teemed with farmers selling produce from the backs of grimy pickups and butchers dangling scales from their fingers to weigh bloody hunks of pork while they haggled with customers.

  That’s all gone now. Demolition will start in a matter of weeks. The harbinger of abrupt change appeared on the old brick walls shortly after Progress Park’s elevators started ferrying new sofas and bedroom sets skyward. A red character 拆, demolish, had been painted on the buildings sometime in the dead of night about a year earlier, just before the wrecking balls and earthmovers mobilized to pulverize the neighbourhood and make way for luxury. Grimy interior walls decorated with red Lunar New Year wishes and calendar pages were torn open to face the sunlight like freshly shucked oysters.

  Qiang’s phone rings, showing Kendra as the caller.

  “Hey.”

  “Qiang, what’s the deal with this number?”

  Qiang emailed Kendra the number using an address he’d generated on a VPN that put his location outside of China.

  “It’s safe. It’s a pre-paid account, the last one I picked up before they started requiring ID.”

  He hears Kendra sigh.

  “Qiang, I just saw the footage you uploaded. Holy shit.”

  “So you didn’t know that was coming?” Qiang asks.

  “No. What I thought was coming was, I don’t know, I figured he was going to denounce the hardliners. No surprises. It was going to help back up the theme, not… um… I didn’t expect something that completely re-frames this project, Qiang.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I wonder if Zhao’s not just completely delusional. All of the documentary evidence suggests the opposite, that Hu refused medical care because he didn’t want to be a bother. He had ideological enemies, but I don’t think the leadership would have let him die.”

  “So maybe he’s delusional, or maybe he just wants to settle scores before he’s gone.”

  “Whatever the case, I’m going to need more time to figure out what’s what. No matter, though. I’ll figure out how to do that. I’m just glad we have this.”

  “You have this, Kendra, not me. It’s intriguing stuff but, you know, it’s not my project.”

  “Right, but I just want you to know I’m very grateful.”

  “It’s the least I can do for your help with mine. It’s just best we keep me as far away as possible from yours.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. I just want so much to give you credit for a very risky move. This is the kind of thing that wins awards.”

  “Well…,” Qiang says before Kendra cuts him off.

  “I know, I know what you’re going to say. It’s not about the awards,” she says. “So tell me, you think you pulled it off without the PSB noticing? Not even any black sedans outside when you left?”

  Qiang looks at the time display on his monitor. It’s late and he wants to focus on preparations for
tomorrow’s interview, his last one. He’ll be stuck on the phone for another twenty minutes if he brings up the events of the past for forty-eight hours. Kendra will want a detailed account of the PSB’s intervention.

  “Yeah, no issues,” he says. “I wrapped things up quickly and got out.”

  Qiang knows what Kendra will say if he tells her about the warning. He’s come too far to give up on the interview with his key subject. A community organizer, also an entrepreneur. A strange combination, which attracted Qiang’s attention. The man founded a glass distribution company that transformed into a solar panel producer, one that exports millions of dollars worth of the products to Europe. Some of the organizer’s investors hold senior positions in the municipal government. The money that comes in probably enriches enough people to have kept the entrepreneur safe. He started petitioning the Beijing Municipal Committee to consider a proposal that would keep communities intact. Especially the community he was focusing on, Jianguo Avenue just outside of the Third Ring, an area many thousands of people will see when the fireworks open the 2008 Olympics. Not an inch of this strip escapes the attention of the city’s planners. Every other neigbourhood along Jianguo has either been renovated or replaced with new gleaming structures that would stand just as proudly in central Tokyo, Dubai or Paris.

  If the organizer can get an audience with just a few members of the Municipal Committee, he’ll agree to drop a lawsuit he’s filed to stop the relocation of residents.

  Qiang had watched the organizer make the case on YouTube, a presentation that tied together investment, community and solidarity. It concluded with the slogan seen on banners hanging everywhere in the city: “Building a Harmonious Society”. With this, Qiang heard a political pitch that offered a plausible solution, not just a slogan, and, in that moment, resolved to make a documentary around this man and his idea.

  Qiang made contact through the organizer’s blog, got his cell phone number and, two weeks earlier, set a date for the interview. When he arrived at the organizer’s home, no one answered. The man’s phone was switched off. Then, his presentation on YouTube was blocked, fueling Qiang’s determination. He found the lawyer preparing the suit against the municipality but his phone also went dead. Then two other sources went silent. The organizer resurfaced yesterday by sending a text, apologizing for the silence and suggesting 11:00 a.m. the next day for the interview.

  It’s almost 3:00 a.m. and Qiang has been editing footage since sundown. He gathers the final handful of raisins meant to tie him over until a dinner break he never bothered to take. A heavy rainstorm is starting to taper off. It passed through in waves, building to a crescendo powerful enough to push the last of winter from the air and usher in spring. The raging weather hadn’t stopped the construction work across the street, though, as the pounding of steel prevailing over diminishing booms of thunder.

  Billie Holiday has been singing through Qiang’s tinny computer speakers to keep him company. Playful and then forlorn, her voice softens the rage of thunder above and the pounding of steel across the street. And then Nina Simone. These and other jazz legends accompany Qiang often as he edits through the night, the squelched trumpets and cascading piano chords creating counterpoints to the rampaging newness of China, he says.

  “You might like the music,” Jake once said to Qiang. “But I don’t think you’d like the music as much without the artists’ back stories. They’re victims, just like the residents you’re championing in your documentary.”

  “Wrong,” Qiang responded. “The voices would be just as compelling for me whether or not I knew about their lives.”

  And with that exchange, over drinks and hours of discussion about the direction China’s taken, Qiang and Jake became friends.

  The thunder is now so distant and delicate, it sounds like a lullaby and Qiang has trouble keeping his eyes open. By the time he saves his work, strips down to his briefs, stuffs a pair of Styrofoam plugs in his ears and settles into bed, the pounding of steel stops. Perhaps a change of shift or a break to recalibrate the machinery.

  He texts Jake.

  last interview, i promise. set for tomorrow at 11:00am >

  !!!! where? I’m going with you. >

  you don’t need to, but if you insist meet me on the northeast corner of Jianguo and Dawang at 10:55. >

  Amid the stillness, two unmarked vans bearing official plates – the letter A followed by only three numbers – pull up in front Qiang’s building, stopping illegally. After a few moments, their engines and lights shut off.

  MONDAY, March 25, 2007

  The buzzing vibration of a text message wakes Qiang. He rubs his eyes, grabs his glasses and reaches for the cell phone on his nightstand. He’s slept through his alarm which sounded an hour earlier. The organizer wants to do the interview at 10:00 a.m instead of 11:00. It’s now 9:10.

  “Shit.”

  Qiang runs through his questions as he showers. He wants them to come out naturally, not from a piece of paper. Nothing should interfere with an open exchange. Only amateurs use written prompts.

  Qiang towels his cropped hair in front of a mirror on the wall, squeezes out a dab of molding paste and works it around the back of his head. He then pulls his hair forward and shapes the front into a bank of spiky tips. He buttons his shirt and pulls on a pair of jeans.

  A reminder from Qiang’s cell phone chirps. He yanks open a desk drawer and routes through a tangle of wires, pulling out a pack of blank mini discs. He grabs one, unwraps it and peels the enclosed sticker from its backing. After affixing the sticker to the disc, he scribbles some characters on it.

  Outside, Qiang slides his backpack full of lenses, batteries and lighting equipment off one shoulder and swings it into a waiting taxi amid a chorus of honks from drivers behind them, commuters diverted into other lanes. He slides into the rear seat and tells the driver to head to the northeast Fourth Ring. As the taxi pulls away, one of the two vans that have been parked illegally since before sunrise pulls out into the traffic, following Qiang’s cab.

  Interviewee needs to move it up to 10:00. I need to head over there now. Don’t worry.>

  The message had come through a half hour earlier, when Jake was covering a press conference. He sees the message at 9:45 a.m., just as he enters the subway at Wangfujing.

  !!! Exact address?>

  The doors shut as he hits send and the signal drops from one bar to none. Jake hits send three more times as the subway car starts moving east. He clenches his teeth, hoping the strength of his concentration will somehow blow a channel through the twenty metres of earth and concrete above him and bring one of the signal bars back. He’s seen his signal flicker in and out on the subway, never long enough to make a call, but sometimes he’s able to squeeze off a text message. But, of course, this doesn’t happen now.

  Jake can only stew as the subway car trundles beneath the city. He volunteered to proof the subtitles for Qiang, partly because he also wants to wrench himself out of a career that has become more corporate than planned. Qiang’s documentary is the kind of project Jake expected to tackle himself when he arrived in China years earlier but, instead, he covers CEOs and Central Bank officials and Finance Ministry directors in Beijing. And no amount of coverage is ever near enough.

  The size of China’s economy has just surpassed Germany’s and is now set to overtake Japan’s. The pressure to whip out business stories, to stay on top of the great economic disruption, makes it impossible to focus on anything that would let Jake switch to a more meaningful track. At least that’s what he tells Qiang, and himself.

  Qiang’s project didn’t seem provocative at first. On-the-ground reflections of the physical transformation of Beijing. Spontaneous interviews on what the changes mean to the man on the street. If anything, the approach was pro-China. Show the naysayers that people in Beijing want reliable hot water, elevators and Wi-Fi. There will be disruptions. The people most affected will speak and the audience can make up its mind.

  In the f
irst interviews, Qiang got equal parts support and indifference, with many subjects wondering why someone would spend time examining the obvious. Then, chat by chat, as he focused the questions more on dislocations, he learned that some residents were trying to formalize a proposal that would allow them to stay in the area.

  “We want a modern neighbourhood, of course,” said an older woman who reminded Qiang of his mother. “But we want it for us ordinary Chinese folk, not for people coming to Beijing, spending 5,000 kuai a night on a luxury hotel room and then leaving,”

  And then the direction of his project began to change.

  Jake comes up from the Andingmen subway station and calls Qiang. The phone rings but Qiang doesn’t answer. Why? Why can’t he just pick up? Jake’s respect for Qiang’s tenacity turns to fury. Why didn’t he send the exact address? He could have sent the exact address in a text.

  10:57 a.m.

  Standing in front of a bank of housing blocks somewhere in the vicinity of Qiang’s interview, Jake has lost track of the number of times he’s called his mobile. Each time, the line rings through to the message. That damn message.

  “The phone you are calling has been switched off. Please try again later.”

  He’s heard it hundreds of times, a message he knows is coming even before the voice starts because of a distinctive, split-second click followed by an electronic chirp. Frustrating enough to hear under normal circumstances like when a source gets tired of Jake’s attempts to confirm something for a story.

  Later isn’t an option. He’d take a thousand click-chirps later, when trying to report a story, in exchange for a direct connection to Qiang’s voice right now. He wants to plead with every person passing by. Have they seen a thirty-something Chinese guy with a camera? He wants to stop the traffic and look in every vehicle. Each one that passes carries away a shred of hope.

  Jake needs to stop this torture so he focuses on the buildings in front of him to anchor his thoughts. They’re mostly empty and condemned, like the ones he helped Qiang film many months ago. All of them made uglier by their haphazard inconsistencies: window renovations done at different periods, some with aluminum frames, some in white vinyl, others with original iron casings bleeding rust tracks down the brick walls. Scores of power cables, now cut from the grid, wrapped around rusted metal brackets. The lack of life in these buildings is as present as the buzzing in one’s ears in the dead of night and their silence feels like a distress signal.