by Qiu Miaojin
2
From that point on, life became much simpler. I lived at a relative’s on Heping East Road with two cousins, both boys who were around my age. The three of us were locked in a competition to see who could stay out the latest and get up the latest, leaving no time for small talk. One evening in early July 1988—the summer after my freshman year—I was brought to a bustling teahouse by a senior member of the Debate Society to attend a planning meeting for a new student organization. The club charter they’d drafted contained thirty signatures, but after waiting almost two hours, only three people had shown up, with me, an observer, being the fourth. In the end, maybe because the charter was pitiful, or maybe because I was a willing victim, the observer suddenly found herself nodding, agreeing to serve as club president.
During the day, I’d run around attending to organizational duties. At night, I’d go to McDonald’s, where I’d buy a small soda and sit and read until closing time at eleven. Rode my bike home. Made about a dozen phone calls to people on the club’s contact list. I avoided going home for fear of vaporizing in isolation. During my stint on Heping East Road, I felt like a drop of water in the desert whenever I was alone in my room for long periods of time. I toiled away writing in my journal and breathing, if not much else. The rest of the time, I sought comfort in sleep. My indulgence in sleep was like filling an empty cup until it overflowed. The cup was then exchanged for a glass, which I filled with alcohol. I needed the sleep psychologically, not physically, so I drank beer to force myself back into a broken slumber.
I have vivid memories of reading Pär Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf, Ma Sen’s Life Inside a Jar, books like that. I also recall reading “Toward a Solitary Fate,” a story by a young Mu Shou San published in a magazine, and then thinking about those three works together. I was living then in a sumptuous double room in a twelve-story luxury high-rise. The room had enormous gold-framed windows, cream-colored curtains, and an executive desk with a dark wood finish. My daily necessities were laid out before me like cast bronzes. Here I was, an impoverished student living in an upscale apartment complex in Taipei and feeling like something straight out of Lagerkvist: a hideously deformed dwarf stuffed into a jar, pressed up against the layer of glass cutting off my senses, blinking (to borrow again from Mu Shou San’s imagination) as I clutched my copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude in one hand and Lust for Life in the other. When a fire is lit beneath the jar, the dwarf’s body contorts violently as the flames heat the glass. . . .
That’s how I ended up throwing myself into extracurricular activities. Besides, the club kept things colorful in the backdrop. As van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters illustrates so well, it’s all about having your fill and then some, feasting until the last drumstick has been devoured, then wiping the grease off your lips.
3
“Can you tell me when your new inductions are?” That was Zhi Rou’s voice.
“Yeah. The moment I saw you, I couldn’t wait to join this club.” That was the instant Tun Tun walked into my life. Tun Tun and Zhi Rou looked lovely in their matching skirts, like sisters.
“Have you seen our flyer?” Soliciting like a street peddler, I sat on top of a long table with the club’s name taped to it, facing the athletic fields. Tables encircled the entire plaza. It was orientation time, and every club was vying for new members, capitalizing on their veterans’ talent for presenting a semblance of respectability to hoodwink incoming students into joining, and ideally, forking over the membership fees.
“Oh, I read it just now, when I was standing over there.” There was a hypnotic cadence to Zhi Rou’s voice.
“Great. Then let me tell you a little about our organization and its activities. We—”
“We already heard it. We were standing next to you, listening to the conversation you just had with that last person. You’re not going to go through the same exact spiel all over again, are you?” Tun Tun smiled cheerfully.
“Huh? How do you know I’d say the same thing again?” I refused to back down.
“Fine, go ahead. Let’s see if it’s the same thing.” Tun Tun smiled even more brightly, as if to disagree.
“How’s this? We’re an empty shell of an organization. Our club president doesn’t actually liaise with more than six people. Whatever you do, don’t join! The club president hasn’t even paid the membership dues. It’s been a semester since we officially founded the club, but in actual practice, we haven’t even been in operation a month. The club president is super ugly. And moody and strange, too. I’ve known her a long time, and I think she’s some kind of freak,” I said. “Have you heard this already?”
“You’re bad-mouthing your own organization,” Tun Tun replied, holding back a smirk. “Don’t you care if the club president finds out?”
“I am the club president.” I kept a straight face.
“Oh my god!” Tun Tun and Zhi Rou cried out in unison.
Zhi Rou smiled shyly, as if this exchange between me and Tun Tun had left her speechless. “Are you some kind of freak?” she finally ventured to ask.
“Yeah, that seems about right, but what kind exactly?” Tun Tun said.
“That’s, of course, something you’ll find out soon enough after you become a member. As you can see, at my best I’m a freak with wit and substance,” I boasted.
“Right, the verbal talent of a smart-ass and the charm of a brown-noser, along with a severe case of nearsightedness!” Zhi Rou broke out of her shyness and joined the repartee.
“Well then, let’s get down to business. Have you two ever considered joining a cultural organization with someone like me as the president?” I was beginning to like these two freshmen.
“Never thought about it. . . . Nope. Someone in a leadership role going rogue, kicking their feet up on the table like a boss when they talk to other people, even standing on top of the table, with a set of pipes that can drown out a vegetable hawker?” Zhi Rou said, her own voice growing louder. She took my chin in the palm of her hand. “You’ve got the baby face of someone in junior high. And upon closer inspection you are, uh-huh, incredibly feminine.” Zhi Rou nudged Tun Tun’s elbow teasingly. “Okay, so what were you saying?”
“But think about what this baby face here just said about a college student’s lifestyle, what it means to become educated, etc. Sounds like a senior with a few tricks up her sleeve. Pretty impressive. Not only that, but she can take on the two of us complex characters here single-handedly and still keep the bullshit going. She seems qualified enough to be club president.” The way that Tun Tun followed Zhi Rou suggested that this little routine of theirs was rehearsed. Unless it was actually spontaneous, and the pieces had just fallen perfectly into place.
Completely captivated by these two girls, I put aside any pretense of niceties. There was something about them, a kind of enviable pedigree. It was a quality I knew all too well. During the three years I had spent at what was known as the most prestigious all-girls high school in Taipei, I had learned to recognize traces of a certain kind of breeding, whether on the athletic fields or in the corner of a hallway, traces that I associated with social class.
“I’m a sophomore. Looking at your info, one of you is studying international business and the other zoology, and you both went to the same high school. Are you two best friends? We share an alma mater,” I said warmly.
“Oh! How wonderful. Our big sis-ter.” Tun Tun drew out the last syllable mischievously, as if she were teasing me. If I had said those words myself, it wouldn’t have sounded the same. But the way she gave it an added stress, it was like she was addressing the woman next to me. I realized these two were coaxing me out of my shell. That guardedness was a by-product of my lifelong socialization, of other people labeling me and putting me in a box. Tun Tun revealed that it’d taken them only a glance to figure me out.
“Who’s studying zoology? Maybe you were assigned to the same track I was.”
“Make her guess.” Zhi Rou tugged Tun Tun’s hand, interrupting he
r.
“I think she’s the more outgoing one, so she’s more likely to be studying international business,” I remarked, pointing at Tun Tun.
“Nope. Tun Tun got in through the honors recommendation system. She didn’t feel like taking the entrance exam, so she decided to enroll in Academia Sinica’s gifted program, and from there, she went straight to the Zoology Department,” Zhi Rou explained, pleased that I’d guessed wrong.
“Oh. . . . You weren’t on the Providence or Ascension tracks, were you?” I pointed at Tun Tun again.
“Wait, you were in a gifted program, too?” Tun Tun asked me, astonished.
I nodded my head, embarrassed. It wasn’t the sort of distinction that you wore proudly. More than anything, it was a source of chagrin.
“We’re from Ascension. The gifted group for the sciences is in Ascension,” Zhi Rou said excitedly.
“We? So you tested into international business, but studied humanities?” I pointed at Zhi Rou.
“We’re from the same group, all right. Zhi Rou switched to the humanities in her junior year. Didn’t care what anyone thought. What other people took three years to do, she did in one. Out of the top six examinees in all of Taiwan, she’s the most self-directed one.” Tun Tun jabbed her finger at Zhi Rou’s face, beaming with pride. A faint dimple appeared on Zhi Rou’s face. Her dimpled smile was so endearing that the two of us couldn’t help feeling a little weak in the knees.
“So we were destined to meet. I like you two. Do you want to have lunch together?” I hopped off the table. My butt was sore from sitting. With a jerk of my thumb, I signaled let’s go, and the two of them squealed. Without a word, we leaned forward and exchanged high fives.
The October sun shimmered softly. The candy-striped umbrellas over the tables were starting to slouch, like cadets forced to stand at attention too long. The veteran club members clustered underneath carried on, zealously delivering their hollow speeches. The dispersal of the freshmen, who’d just been let out of a tedious orientation, unleashed waves of identical greetings throughout the plaza. The scene was that of a chemical reaction, like a powdered beverage being added to water: The new students were the powdered clumps floating on top—pure and whole, and on the brink of integration. It was a portrait of youth.
It was almost noon. Despite the scores of new recruits, joining a club meant little until membership dues were paid. Most new members would at best show up at a few events or drop by after class to help out. Handing over the reins, I asked my fellow club member to man our booth. I pulled my bike out from the shade, wheeling it over the brightly colored flyers littering the ground. Meanwhile two little devils were scurrying around me, hissing that I was going to get in trouble, and egging me on all the while.
“How is it that one of you went to all the trouble of switching to the humanities and is still studying international business, while the other is so smart that she can pass every stage of the Academia Sinica admissions process, yet she rushes straight into a lab where she’ll be trapped all day?” From the get-go, I took advantage of my seniority and dispensed with formalities. We went to a Western-style buffet. I chose a window seat so that I could do some people watching, helping myself to a serving of macaroni and cheese. They sat across from me. Tun Tun was having the honey-roasted chicken legs and on Zhi Rou’s huge plate was a small steak.
“It’s not like that. Animals are fun. I love Mother Nature. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to study living things,” said Tun Tun with a drumstick in her mouth.
“Tun Tun made the choice herself. I was forced. The last month before exams, I didn’t go near a book. I ran off on my own to a seaside monastery in Hualien. I didn’t read a single word the entire month. I totally forgot about this whole entrance-exam business. The day before the exam, I was called in to see the head monk. I was told that my mother had come and wanted me to return for the entrance exam. So I did. When I took it, I placed sixth in the nation. I have a knack for guessing to thank for that. I never thought I’d have such luck. But after earning this distinction, I couldn’t bring myself to fill out my application forms. I lay in bed all day until eight, when I’d get up to watch a TV show. Whenever I left my room, my whole family would stare at me dumbly, pleading with and pitying me at the same time. Everyone except my father, who didn’t bat an eye. The night before I submitted my application forms, I played forty songs on the guitar. I also made ten paper cutouts of the word happiness and ten of the word Buddha. Then I put only one school on the application form and submitted it the following day, just like that. No one said a word about me studying international business. In my family, that’d be like singing the national anthem right before a movie. Why would you need to do that? I wasn’t going to make them disappointed in me. There’s no way I could ever live without them.” Though a look of distress passed over Zhi Rou’s face, her eyes contained a fierce, hardened determination, and her winsome smile remained.
Tun Tun eagerly seized on Zhi Rou’s words. “Ah, well said. ‘Like singing the national anthem right before a movie. Why would you need to do that?’ ”
“That isn’t being forced to do something. It’s your own choice not to make other people disappointed in you,” I said.
“So you’re saying that even though I don’t really want to study this subject, it’s still a choice based on my own free will, since my goal is to not disappoint anyone?” Zhi Rou’s reply robbed me of any chance to explain further. Her sharpness bordered on cunning. In fact, it revealed a defensiveness that made me back off a little. Even so, I had to admire her flash of wit.
“What would happen if you did disappoint them?” I asked.
“Good question.” Tun Tun wiped the corners of her mouth, chiming in. I asked if it was important to her, too.
“You’d be able to live with yourself if your family was disappointed in you?” She shot back, skillfully dodging the question.
“Ever since I started to wise up, my family’s been perpetually disappointed in me. Though it hurt them, I shattered their image of me little by little. If I didn’t, I’d have to sacrifice myself in order to maintain a false ideal. I’ve been trying really hard to get over my resentment. It’s caused them no small amount of pain,” I answered honestly.
“So have you completely broken down that ideal?” Zhi Rou asked softly.
“It’s been a challenge. It was hard enough to demolish just one little part. It hurt everyone, including me. To make up for it, I let them form a new image of me. It’s been a constant struggle. I’ll always feel love for them and have basic needs to be met, so it takes courage to draw the line. But if I don’t, my love for them and my needs will become bargaining chips that I have to exchange for my independence. And using those would be like retreating before the battle’s even begun.” I didn’t feel the least bit inhibited telling them about my family. The more I shared, the more open I felt.
“That’s what I’d call going down without a fight.” Zhi Rou let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “It sounds like that mental disorder where you’re afraid that everyone will die if you move even an inch, so then you stay as stationary as possible. It’s basically the same thing, no?” Zhi Rou twisted Tun Tun’s straw in her hands. I sensed a tinge of self-loathing. Her laugh reminded me of a handsome older woman removing her makeup and revealing her wrinkles.
“It’s not as bad as you make it sound,” said Tun Tun, shaking her head. She reclaimed her straw and straightened it out. Replacing it in her iced tea, she tried to take a sip. “What Lazi didn’t say is that it would be hard to live with your family’s disappointment. And we’re not even talking about the whole idea of making your kids study international business in the first place. That’s actually a tougher barrier than in most families!”
Tun Tun raised her head, blinking. Her tone had darkened somewhat from its gleefulness a moment earlier, but it still ended on the same rising pitch, as if she wanted to offer a spirited response to Zhi Rou’s words that sounded somewhere betw
een confident and hopeful. She’d used my words to set up her partner, and when it was her turn to speak, she’d tacked on my name to what she herself wanted to say in an attempt to turn around Zhi Rou’s bad mood. She struck me as wholesome and pure on the outside, and optimistic on the inside, preferring not to give away any signs of her true intelligence. There was a pure gentleness about her, like clear waves washing over white sand.
“Hey, who’s Lazi?” Despite knowing the answer perfectly well, I pretended not to.
“Why, it’s you,” said Tun Tun, looking at me in astonishment, as though it were my fault I didn’t know who Lazi was.
“Why am I being called this horrible name?” Trying not to laugh, I made a disgusted face.
“Huh?” Tun Tun stared at me, wide-eyed. “Well, I think it sounds good,” she said primly, as if the nickname had been a compliment. I was baffled.
“Why not Zhuozi as in table, Yizi as in chair, or Juzi as in saw? Anything sounds better than Lazi,” I said.
“It came to me when you were sitting at the booth earlier today, and I decided your name was La.”
“So why did you add the zi part?” I was genuinely curious how she came up with the idea.
“Huh? La is the verb to pull, so I had to add a suffix to it as a placeholder. I wanted to coin its usage. Other people aren’t allowed to use zi the way your verbal name does. The suffix zi is an attachment, and if you take away the La, it has a million different uses.” Tun Tun was like an entomologist explaining a new insect she’d discovered.
