The Drink and Dream Teahouse

by Justin Hill

  ‘I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while,’ Autumn Cloud shrugged. ‘It felt right.’

  ‘But you look terrible.’

  ‘I got a cold head last night,’ Autumn Cloud admitted, and then let out a long sigh. ‘I get so lonely sometimes,’ she said. ‘My children are so far away. My husband is dead. It’s not right,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion, ‘everything he did for the country. Everything he did for this factory. All the work he put in. Everything he did for these people‌–‌and what do they care? They’re building a swimming pool!’

  Old Zhu’s wife remembered what she had had to suffer in the Labour Camps: the hunger, the shame, the indignation. The night they came to take Old Zhu, and when they came to take her. Admit your sins! they demanded, but she had no sins that would satisfy them. The cold fear at night when the Red Guards would come to struggle against her. The terror when she heard that one of the male prisoners had hanged himself in his cell, and she’d been convinced it was her husband. The hours she had worried about her child: and what would happen to him without his mother and father. Whether they would punish him too. She thought about the years of his life she’d missed. Her own years wasted, the years she and Old Zhu could have spent together. The other children they might have had.

  Old Zhu’s wife wiped her eyes, the anger inside her was so strong she was afraid to let it out. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down. At least she’d come out of it with her mind intact, she told herself, which was more than could be said for Autumn Cloud. Autumn Cloud’s mind wasn’t strong enough. She’d lost her mind. They’d sent her for electric shock therapy. She’d never been the same after that.

  Old Zhu’s wife stroked Autumn Cloud’s bristly scalp. At least Old Zhu and she were still here, she told herself, it was a victory of sorts. And Da Shan was here with them as well. She ought to be grateful. She looked down at Autumn Cloud and her shaven head. It reminded Old Zhu’s wife of a rice field full of stubble. Poor Autumn Cloud. Life had broken her and then she’d been stuck back together and forced to carry on.

  Party Secretary Li had never forgiven the country for what had happened to his wife in the labour camps. He’d always tried to understand how it had happened, but there was no understanding. The past just was: like the cold or the mountains, like the fact Autumn Cloud had shaved her head, like the fact Party Secretary Li had hanged himself.

  Old Zhu came back for lunch and found his wife furiously mincing a piece of pork with her cleaver. She glared up at him. ‘Where have you been all morning?’

  ‘I was gardening.’

  ‘I looked there!’

  ‘Oh, I went down to the river,’ Old Zhu said, as if it had slipped his memory.

  ‘Well, I went to see Autumn Cloud this morning!’ Old Zhu’s wife announced. ‘And guess what!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s become a nun!’

  Old Zhu looked up.

  ‘She’s shaved her head.’

  Old Zhu shook his head. ‘Impossible!’

  ‘It’s true, the man who sells beansprouts told me,’ Old Zhu’s wife continued. ‘I didn’t believe it until I went to see her.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘How should I know why?’ she spat. ‘What do you think?’

  Old Zhu looked out of the kitchen window. Green leaves were rippling in the sunshine, and his mind was caught in their gentle dance.

  ‘Are you taking any notice of what I’ve said?!’

  ‘Hmm? Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You ought to do something.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You can do something,’ she said.

  Old Zhu spent the afternoon behind Number 7 Block of Flats looking at the weeds and smoking. It was too hot to do anything. He wiped the sweat from his head and sat for a while in the shade of a tree, looking around at the factory buildings and chimneys, thinking of Autumn Cloud and her shaven head. Just like the women they had cared for all those years ago when he and Party Secretary Li were assigned as leaders of the Number Two Re-education Centre for Shaoyang Prostitutes.

  The first women arrived when the place was still half built. There was such a demand. Those women had had to help build the place during the day and taken part in sessions that taught them how the Old Society had abused them. That wasn’t so hard: there weren’t many high-class prostitutes in a place like Shaoyang. The first girls were cheap fucks: riddled with syphilis and addicted to heroin. Their clothes were burnt and their heads were shaven. This was the hardest thing: they’d spat and bitten like cornered dogs. Old Zhu chuckled to himself‌–‌he’d been bitten at least three times. Liu Bei’s mother had been one of them. Old Zhu remembered Liu Bei when she’d been a little girl: red ribbons in her black hair and a shy smirk. He’d been fond of her, and quite pleased that Da Shan had got together with her, but Old Zhu’s wife had been furious. She didn’t care about New China any more. New China had sent her to a labour camp for six years. What mattered to Old Zhu’s wife was that Liu Bei was a whore’s daughter: and once a whore always a whore.

  Old Zhu snuggled back into the tree trunk, and the niche of memories. There was the night in 1950 when a gang of young thugs surrounded the prostitute re-education camp and demanded their favourite girls be set free. Most of the girls had tried to get out and join them. He smirked at the memory but he’d been furious at the time. He’d had to bar the door with his body as they clawed at his face and screamed for help. Old Zhu smiled. He’d been bitten then as well.

  Old Zhu stretched his legs. One by one they cured the girls physically and mentally. They educated the illiterate ones, taught skills to the others and one by one the girls were found jobs and husbands and let back into the community. They were washed clean of all the filth of Old China and given a second chance. Some stayed on at the centre, and then they’d started the factory. It was a good feeling‌–‌to have worked so hard helping to change lives. It made up for everything else that had come after.

  Old Zhu was enjoying the solitude of memory when he saw Mrs Cao walk past. She looked over and saw him and started to tiptoe across his allotment.

  ‘Whoa!’ she called out as if he was stupid, ‘President Zhu!’

  It was a long time since anyone had called him that. He’d been the factory president for years but now the name had a strange sound to it. It no longer fit.

  ‘President Zhu!’ Mrs Cao smiled, sugary sweet.

  ‘Careful,’ he said as she stepped on a melon tendril and crushed it beneath her shoe.

  ‘Oops!’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Mrs Cao collected herself, cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘as you mention it, there is something.’ Mrs Cao cleared her throat again, let a smile rise up to the surface and break like a bubble across her face before settling in her pale brown eyes. ‘It’s about the factory. Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Mrs Cao said.

  Old Zhu looked at her feet, which were straying too close to his melons. Mrs Cao shifted her feet. ‘They’re going to start charging everyone under fifty rent. Either that or we have to buy our flats off them. For 80,000 yuan. How can we afford that?’

  Old Zhu tutted and shook his head. The factory always looked after its own. It gave people housing, schools, clinics, jobs, even an old people’s club. It was a basic part of a Communist country. ‘Yes!’ Mrs Cao continued. ‘The shame of it! After all our contributions to the Motherland. Treating us like strangers in our own homes. It wouldn’t have happened in your day.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Old Zhu agreed. ‘But then lots of other things wouldn’t have happened either.’

  This seemed to be going down the wrong track, so Mrs Cao tried to steer the conversation her way again. ‘We went to talk to them.’

  Old Zhu gave a dry chuckle. ‘And?’

  ‘They wouldn’t listen. I thought they might listen to you.’

  Old Zhu nodded, no
expression on his face. He sat quietly for a long while, looking at his allotment. ‘Do you know the poems of Ruan Ji?’ he asked.

  ‘Ming Dynasty?’ she said, uncertain.

  ‘End of the Han Dynasty,’ he told her quietly. ‘Third century.’

  ‘I’m too foolish,’ Mrs Cao said half embarrassed and half proud of the fact she didn’t know. ‘You know my generation never got an education,’ she said, straightening up. ‘The Cultural Revolution got in the way. We were educated in the fields, with the peasants.’

  Old Zhu nodded. He knew all about that.

  ‘Ruan Ji was forced to choose between two factions at court; so he chose neither and became one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.’

  Mrs Cao fidgeted. ‘I have no idea what you’re saying.’

  Old Zhu carried on, talking patiently. ‘Well, have you heard of Wang Wei?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Cao said, getting irritated with this foolish old man.

  ‘And how he retired from office.’

  Mrs Cao sighed loudly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘To live the simple life, in a thatched hut. And when men came to ask him to return to court he refused.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well,’ Old Zhu stated, ‘I have retired from office. And here is my thatched hut.’

  Mrs Cao stood for a moment and regarded Old Zhu standing in front of her. ‘That’s a fine way to be,’ she sneered. ‘Just because this doesn’t affect you. Just because you have a son to act as your retirement policy.’ She struggled for another barb, then she shook her fist and spat, ‘Has your son’s money corrupted you as well?’

  Old Zhu quoted Zhuang Zi: ‘How can you discuss the size of the ocean with a frog who lives in a well?’

  ‘How you ever came to be leader of this factory‌–‌I’ll never know. You’re nothing but a running dog of the capitalists!’

  Old Zhu’s gap-tooth smile opened wide into a loud laugh. ‘I think you said that to me in 1967,’ he said.

  Mrs Cao snarled, ‘And it was true! We should have left you in your cow shed!’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Old Zhu said, smiling at Mrs Cao, ‘and maybe not. Either way‌–‌why don’t you go and read some Ruan Ji? A very fine poet.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Mrs Cao said as she turned and walked back to the path, crushing melon tendrils as she went. Old Zhu sat down and pulled out a cigarette, lit it and watched and waited, puffing out little clouds of cigarette smoke. He watched as one by one, and very slowly, the leaves she had trampled began to straighten themselves out.

  It was two weeks since the night at the Hot Pot City, but still Peach was too nervous to go outside the factory compound. Her mother had suggested they go shopping together, but each time Peach had made up some kind of excuse: the sun was too hot; it was too dusty; there were too many people in town; she had all the clothes she needed. Madam Fan thought her daughter’s change a little strange at first, but as the days went on she got used to it: took it as normal. If Peach had gone out into town without her then she would have cried all over again.

  One reason for Madam Fan’s attitude was that the more time Peach spent in the Space Rocket Factory Compound the more chance she had to see Da Shan; or more importantly, be seen by Da Shan. Things had fallen into place quite nicely, Madam Fan thought, despite her husband’s lies and behaviour. She was sure that Peach was the prettiest and kindest girl in the whole of Shaoyang Prefecture; and she had a high opinion of Da Shan too. He was rich and intelligent. He had enough good sense to choose Peach as his wife.

  The sun always rose in the east. Heaven was kind, if only you were patient enough.

  Peach spent the whole week helping her mother: sweeping, washing, dusting, cleaning the toilet‌–‌but at random moments she felt Sun An was in the room watching her, or that stuff was dribbling down her thigh and she needed to cry. Then she gritted her teeth. Clean, clean, clean!

  Madam Fan was surprised by her daughter’s sudden desire to clean the house, but what with all the other changes in her daughter, she told herself that maybe Peach was maturing into a woman. It was natural for a girl to start keeping house: it was a sign she was ready to start one on her own. Peach would make a good wife after all.

  Madam Fan watched her daughter with a swell of pride. If only she could sing opera as well she would be the perfect daughter. She put on a tape of opera greats and hummed to herself as she started knitting a red sweater: Peach would look beautiful in red, she thought to herself, and imagined the wedding day setting the whole factory on fire with gossip and excitement. Peach dressed from head to toe in dark red: her beautiful pale skin and black hair. How pretty she’d look. She would have the wedding Madam Fan never had. There’d be cars and motorbikes, fire-crackers and a video. The Zhus would make sure it was a big occasion: Da Shan was their only son. They’d be looking forward to some grandchildren.

  Madam Fan remembered that Da Shan was divorced and stopped for a moment, before starting her fantasy again. His wife was in Shenzhen‌–‌and that would take a couple of days by train. And anyway he’d had a girl. Who wanted a granddaughter when they could have a grandson? And he’d be her grandson as well.

  Heaven was kind! Madam Fan told herself, despite everything.

  As Madam Fan knitted the day outside got colder and colder. In the evening a mist rose off the river, milky tendrils wriggled up over the piles of rubbish and reed beds, then settled over the streets. Overhead stars began to glitter, and a waning moon lifted itself above the hills and crept nervously into the sky.

  The mist was at its thickest in the old town, down by the river. It was so thick it condensed on the cold glass windowpanes and began to drip. Light from a carved window lit the mist up with a yellow halo, and from the window stared a woman’s face. Liu Bei stared into the whiteness and shuddered. It’d be autumn soon, and autumn was the saddest time of year, when she resented being alone most of all.

  Well, she wouldn’t go through that again. She’d be gone before then.

  Liu Bei shuffled through the forms she had collected this afternoon: they’d taken longer than expected the men said, because of a government crackdown on corruption.

  ‘But they’re always having crackdowns.’

  ‘I know,’ the man responded, ‘it’s good for their business. Means they can charge higher prices for what they should do anyway!’

  At the top of the pile was a letter to say that Liu Bei was unmarried and childless. If she’d been in a work unit then they’d have written it; but she’d been thrown out after 1989. In a place like Shaoyang a person without a work unit was a non-person. If you didn’t belong to a village or a factory or school or hospital then you were on your own. She’d heard it was different in Shanghai: but you never knew.

  At the bottom of the pile was the last form she had bought. A new birth certificate for Little Dragon. Liu Bei sniffed and bit her lip. It was the best thing she could do for him. He was getting older now, he needed a father.

  Little Dragon, the writing read, born: January 9th, 1990. Mother: Liu Bei; Father: Zhu Da Shan.

  She folded the papers up, put them in her pocket and waited. There’d be a couple more customers if this night was like all the others. A few more menand then she’dgoand see Little Dragon at his grandmother’s house. Liu Bei could almost hear her son’s breathing: faint but audible. If only Da Shan had written back. She thought of what might have been, then checked herself. Mistress Zhang was coming up the stairs. Liu Bei wiped her eyes and told herself to stop. A couple more customers and then she could go and forget this place.

  The next morning Liu Bei was up early, before dawn. It was a long way to the train station, she had to walk to the Black Dragon Bridge before getting the number 204 bus. As she walked through the early morning dark, it seemed that Shaoyang had never looked so beautiful: the moonlight cleaned the river to a glimmering silver; through the mist she could hear the hoot of a car horn.

  Liu Bei turned a corner and saw a soya-bean milk seller starti
ng the fire on his mobile restaurant. She hadn’t even left and she was feeling homesick already.

  The mini-bus to the train station cost two yuan. It was full of people with faces still puffy with sleep. No one spoke except the ticket collector who crammed people in two to a seat; called for the people at the back to pay their money.

  Liu Bei nodded off to the rhythm of the potholes, woke again when they pulled up outside the train station. The sky had turned a pale turquoise and the sun had begun to glow. She walked up the street, past all the restaurants that lined the road, and past the men shouting out the prices for a bowl of dumplings or steamed buns. The ticket office didn’t open until 7 a.m., but already there was a crowd of people milling around in confusion, looking for the right counter. Liu Bei looked up at the signs and tried to work out which counter she should queue at. Eastbound trains. Numbers 22–27.

  The longest queues were for tickets south, to Shenzhen and Guangdong‌–‌but there were about a hundred people waiting to go east as well. Most of them were peasants, tanned a deep amber from the weeks of harvest, now going away till the planting season came again. They shuffled sacks at their feet, gathered into uneasy clumps, or just gave up and sat on the floor. There was an old woman with bowed legs who didn’t seem to know whether she was going north, south, east or west. She walked from the hips, swinging around on her bent legs, and kept trying to push to the front of each queue. The peasants let her past, but the city folk shouted and pushed: told her to get to the back and stop causing trouble. Liu Bei joined a queue and waited. At seven o’clock there was a bustle of activity behind the screens and everyone shuffled forward in expectation. Ticket touts started going round offering tickets anywhere for a price.

  ‘Where are you going?’ one girl asked Liu Bei.

  ‘Shanghai.’

  ‘There aren’t any tickets for Shanghai left,’ the girl said.