by Xiaolu Guo
The red swimsuit next to her was just as loud. 'My bastard doesn't trust me. He follows me everywhere. I was in Gap trying on clothes and suddenly he was there. I went to a sushi bar to have miso soup and he sat right behind me. So I came here, to the pool, to this changing room. He can't follow me here. If he does, the pervert, I'll scream.
But it was the black bikini-top with a towel around her middle who beat them all. 'If I'm sad and feel like crying, I come to the swimming pool because if I cried at home, I'd cry and cry and be depressed for three days and three nights and then I couldn't stand it and I'd swallow a load of sleeping pills. Or drive east to the sea and just keep going straight into the water. Or walk off the edge of a cliff. So, I come here instead where there's so much water already I can weep in peace...'
These emotional buckets emptied themselves on to the changing-room floor. Heartaches ran down into the mouldy drains. I changed into my apple-green swimsuit and walked towards the pool area. I could hear the water lapping at the tiled edge.
The pool was packed. I sat on the side and dangled my feet into the water, staring into the shapeless blue liquid. Voices echoed around me, people talking loudly to hear themselves over the children splashing. The water was warm. I started to feel soothed, almost content. This always happened to me when I came to the pool. I felt close to the strangers around me. I liked to think they were here for the same reasons as me. That they were escaping their suffocating apartments, fleeing domestic arguments and newly made enemies, running from rejection and unrequited love. The water was a caress, a comfort. People felt blessed by it. I would watch the swimmers carefully, convinced they were being calmed by the shifting and chasing of the water around them. The only downside? I still couldn't swim.
I looked at the men. Tubby middle-aged men who had started to let themselves go; young men who couldn't wait to grow up; little boys who were just starting to notice women's breasts bobbing in the water around them. The big blue pond at my feet reminded me of a womb – warm, tranquil, safe. Never betraying its inhabitants.
A man with the body of a Greek statue drew himself out of the water and sat on the edge near me. Beads of water dotted his smooth chest, his rippling thighs. His face was sharp and beautiful. At first he stared out at the water, and then he turned his gaze on me. Our eyes met. My hair was dry, my skin dry, my apple-green swimsuit bone-dry. I must have looked weird to him. Quickly we both turned back to look at the water.
Kafka said, anyone who can't come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to wave away his despair and the other to note down what he sees among the ruins. I thought about the diary I used to keep. I wished I still had it. By now I would have had a whole library of my thoughts to look back on. But I stopped writing it when I was with Xiaolin. He treated it as his evening newspaper. He would leaf through its pages when he was bored, looking for stories. So instead, I kept my true thoughts, desires and dreams hidden deep within. I became a person who was very good at hiding her emotions. Maybe that was why people thought I was heartless. Apparently my face often had a blank expression. Huizi, my most intellectual friend, would say, 'Fenfang, yours is the face of a post-modern woman.'
EARLY EVENING. 7.10. The sun had just sunk below a heavy concrete tower. I switched off my laptop and started circling my carpet. Stay in and sleep?Venture out? Eat something? I looked at the phone. It stayed silent, like all my best roles. I found myself standing in the kitchen. There was the remains of a bottle of Great Wall Red Wine in the fridge. I poured the wine into a glass but there wasn't enough to fill it. I suddenly wanted more, much more. On the kitchen table were two more bottles: Thousand Happiness Dry Red and Dragon White. There was hardly any wine in them either. I poured what was left into a glass, mixing them up like a vegetable soup. I took a sip. And another. It tasted terrible, like out-of-date apple juice.
Huizi once told me that, when a young person started drinking, it was a sign they were getting old. It suddenly felt very true.
As I was thinking about how intelligent Huizi was, the phone rang. I picked it up. No shit, it was Huizi.
'Fenfang, hey, where've you been? You've been missed.'
'Have I?'
'Of course. What are you doing now?'
'Me? Nothing, I'm not doing anything. But I've just started drinking wine. Maybe it'll help me sleep. You know I haven't been able to sleep for days. I only manage to drop off when everyone else goes to work in the morning. I wish I had an internal clock like other people...'
'All right, Fenfang, stop drinking,' said Huizi. 'Listen, I've just finished the first draft of a TV script – twenty episodes. I've been told I can recommend some female leads to the Director. So I thought of you. I'm with the Director right now, having dinner. Get in a taxi and come here immediately. We're at Sun Yue Dumplings on Hospital Street in Haidan. Hurry! I'll pay the fare.'
I hung up with a hundred thanks. Now I was moving quickly. I changed into something decent and sharp. A Korean TB2 skirt. A tight-fitting Double Love T-shirt. A pair of high heels I never managed to walk in for more than 10 minutes. And I pulled my hair into a ponytail. I looked like a new-generation woman. This TV Director would believe at once I was the actress he needed. Minutes later I was in a taxi on the way to Sun Yue Dumplings. Using the rear-view mirror I brushed powder on to my cheeks, added colour to my lips and darkened my eyebrows. I looked like a juicy peach ready for picking.
When the taxi stopped at the dumpling restaurant, Huizi was sitting alone. Four huge plates of steaming dumplings filled the table in front of him. He was staring at the food like an idiot.
'Where's the Director? Didn't you say he wanted to choose actors with you?'
Huizi looked at me. 'He just left, literally a minute ago. I'm so sorry. He didn't even give me the payment he owed me for the script.'
What?' I couldn't believe my luck. I slumped into the empty seat across from Huizi. It was still warm.
'It's a complicated story,' said Huizi. We just ordered all these dumplings ten minutes ago. Then the Director's phone rang and it was his Producer. The Producer told him that their investor, some rich stock-market dude, got killed last night. Policemen said it was a murder. What happened was, the Producer went to collect the first instalment of money from this guy and found him dead on the floor. Blood everywhere. So now the Director has to go to the police station for questioning.'
Huizi lowered his head. 'It's probably a good thing. Now you won't waste your time with lousy people.'
I didn't know what to say. I leant over, picked up the clean chopsticks in front of me and reached out for a fennel dumpling. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, there was a bottle of Eight Dragons Soy Sauce on the table. I couldn't believe my eyes. What sort of Director had been sitting here? Deep down, I'd always suspected there was a link between the high salt content in Eight Dragons Soy Sauce and Xiaolin's temper. Anyway, what the hell. I poured some of the damn soy sauce on to my plate, dipped the dumpling in it and swallowed without chewing. I was starving, and apparently I'd just lost my one opportunity to play a leading role. At least I could eat, eat as much as I could, eat until the world didn't owe me one penny.
After about 10 dumplings, I stopped feeling low. At least Huizi and I had each other to share this bizarre moment. At least I wasn't alone. I was thankful for that, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky.
Huizi sat back, watching me eat. I finished the whole plate of fennel dumplings, and started on the pork and chive ones.
'Fenfang, maybe this is a sign,' he said. 'Maybe you need to try something other than acting. You like reading. You know about films. Why don't you try to write a script? Seriously, if you could just finish a first draft, I'm sure I could help you to show it to people.'
'A first draft?' I looked at him, my mouth full of dumplings.
'Yes. Have you ever heard this: "Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan – till the first draft is finished"?'
'Who said that?'
'Tennessee Williams.'
The du
mpling stuck in my throat. 'Tennessee Williams? Who's that?'
'He's this American playwright who came from Mississippi, where there are loads of tornadoes during the summer. You know tornadoes?' Huizi asked. 'They're like typhoons, lots of crazy wind and wild rain. Anyway, he wrote a famous play called A Streetcar Named Desire.'
Desire? That was a weird name for a car. I imagined that Tennessee Williams was from some shiny world swept by dramatic winds.
Tornadoes, desire... these words excited me. Even though I'd never heard of Tennessee Williams, I clung to everything Huizi told me. I polished off the pork and chive dumplings, and felt encouraged.
'Huizi,' I said, 'you've got to be my best friend in the whole world. If everyone else on the planet died, I wouldn't give a shit. Even my mother. But if you died, I'd howl.'
EVERYTHING AROUND ME WAS CHANGING SO fast – my apartment block, the local shops, the alleys, the roads, the subway lines. Beijing was moving forwards like an express train, but my life was going nowhere. Okay, so I was getting lots of work, but it was all the same. Woman Waiting on the Platform, Lady in Waiting, Bored Waitress. I was only in my twenties, but I felt 70. I had to do something, ask my brain to start working, so I could match this fast-moving city.
Inspired by Huizi, I started to watch nameless men and women in the street. We were alike: none of us heroes, just ordinary people – extras – drifting through messy streets in a vast, messy Beijing. One morning, I went for a walk along the rubble-filled roads near my building. The area was being completely reconstructed. Three or four giant trucks had just arrived to start their demolition. Old buildings were going. Entire streets were going. In just one night all the food stalls had disappeared, along with the men from the countryside who used to run them.
A man came to my mind. An ordinary man who had once moved through these empty streets. He could have had any name. I decided that he was called Hao An.
Hao An was nothing special to look at. Just an average nobody, unmemorable. The moment I thought of him, I felt like I'd heard about him before. I was sure he'd been mentioned in the scraps of gossip I picked up as I wandered around the neighbourhood. I started to write.
When I finally finished the story, I was nervous of showing it to Huizi. What if he thought it was a piece of shit? What if the producers he knew thought he was insane for trying to help such a fucking awful writer? Then I remembered the Assistant Director – the man with the pathetic yellow umbrella and the bible of useful names. He'd worked his way up through the ranks to become a prominent Second-Rate Director. Perhaps he would read my script. I gave him a call.
We met in Serve the People, the one on Electronics Street, because the Second-Rate Director wanted to eat Thai food. He looked different: fatter, with a ponytail and meticulously trimmed beard. Despite this, the pitiful red V-neck peasant sweater still peeped out from inside his jacket. Over pork and rice, I tried hard to sell the story of Hao An to the Second-Rate Director, but he didn't even let me finish. He shook his head and said this wasn't the kind of film people wanted to see. There was no moral, no uplifting message. Couldn't there be a mention of Red Army Day? Or National Tree Planting Day? Or China Aids Day? No? And what was he called – Hao An? Why such a boring name? Far too humble and unfashionable-sounding. My hero did absolutely nothing of value in the course of the story. He didn't represent the 21st-century Chinese. How could he, a Second-Rate Director, cast such a film? There was no way stars like Little Swallow, Su Youpeng or Xu Jinglei would be in something like this. It just wasn't modern enough. The Second-Rate Director repeated the word 'modern' in English, just to make his point.
I went back to my flat and lay down on my bed with all my clothes on. For two hours I didn't move. What had Huizi been thinking? There was no way I could write a script if I had no idea what would pull in an audience. From the way the Second-Rate Director had talked, it seemed like I would be better off studying for an MBA before I wrote a word. Clearly I was no Bo Le, the legendary horseman with an instinctive knowledge of horses. Bo Le always chose the right horses to win battles, but Hao An's story was a donkey. I wasn't even fit to be Bo Le's assistant.
Still, I couldn't stop thinking about Hao An and his trivial life.
THE SEVEN REINCARNATIONS OF HAO AN
SETTING
Beijing. 1999–2000. The last couple of months before the millennium.
DESCRIPTION OF MAIN CHARACTER
It's difficult to tell you what Hao An looks like. He's so ordinary, he's like a grain of sand in the gutter of a road in a big city. Let's just say he looks like any man who has grown up in a small, rural village in China and then moved to the city. He has no skills and no clue. His age? Hard to tell. He could be 30, he could be over 40. His body-language is self-effacing; his past is vague.
The first job Hao An got when he arrived in the city was as a driving instructor – making use of his 10 years' experience driving a tractor through sugar-cane fields. He wore a standard-issue blue uniform and sat behind the wheel of a Liberation 1041 truck. He blended right in. Next he worked in a factory moulding metal screws. He was a model worker and could mould twice as many screws as any other worker. But when the warehouse became overstocked with metal screws and the state was unable to sell them, Hao An wasn't seen as such a model worker after all.
But that is irrelevant to this story, which begins as the new millennium is tapping Hao An on the shoulder. He is unemployed. He has a place to stay, but not really a home. He doesn't smile. The filth and dust of hard living have become ingrained in the lines of his face. He doesn't have any friends, but he isn't lonely. The day-to-day grind of earning enough to eat keeps him too busy for that.
The film starts like this.
Scene I
On a forgotten road in Beijing, a woman with a powdered face and bright-red lips bites into a hot chestnut. Her curly hair is tied back and the fur coat she is wearing is mangled and dusty. She looks like she spent the night somewhere unfamiliar. A place with no combs or mirrors. Simply a venue for a one-night stand.
Her name is Li Li. Or maybe it's Zhen Zhen or Sha Sha or Mei Mei, or any other name known by the Heavenly Bastard in the Sky. It doesn't matter. She finishes off the chestnut and hands a coin to the man at the stall. Then she starts walking. We lose her in the crowd.
Scene 2
The crowd is gathered around two middle-aged men selling stamps. One of the stamp – sellers is Hao An. This is Hao An's third job, but he's not a very good salesman. Turning the pages of his book, he focuses on two rare stamps (the only existing examples in China, of course): an Army stamp that was withdrawn from circulation because it had too many tanks on it, and a stamp from the Cultural Revolution that had to be pulped because it showed Chairman Mao with his big black mole on the wrong side of his face. Hao An's hoping to convince the crowd that each is worth 2,000 yuan, but none of the men standing around Hao An has more than 100 or 200 yuan in the pocket of his cheap western-style trousers. As the surrounding idlers question Hao An, his fellow stamp-seller suddenly yells, 'Police!!' Hao An jams the book of stamps under his arm and rushes off.
Scene 3
His pockets still empty, Hao An wanders down a nameless street, directionless. He has no woman, no plans, no bank deposit book. He notices some ads on a nearby wall, ads for VCD players – soon to be replaced by DVD machines, but currently all the rage in China: Amoi Electrics, Xianke Electronics, Wanlida and Wanyan. The seeds of his fourth job are planted.
Scene 4
Hao An's room, off the first courtyard in Cat's Eye Alley. The four walls are bare. No photos of women or children, no mirrors or combs anywhere. Only three or four 'Model Worker' certificates stuck to the ceiling to stop the rain from coming in.
Hao An has borrowed a VCD player from a neighbour and is going through a collection of pirated disks he has managed to get hold of. He watches each film carefully. He doesn't want to sell porn. Despite not having any friends and knowing that he is not a great man, Hao An has principles. Five of
the films seem dubious. One in particular – a French film in which a scantily clad blonde woman lies on a bed doing nothing for over an hour except smoking, drinking, eating strange foreign food, talking on the phone, then taking off all her clothes and reading out her poetry in the nude. In the end she lies on a red sofa and touches herself, moaning like a baby cow. No one else appears. What the hell kind of film is this? Where's her man? Why's she naked if she's on her own? Will the police think it's porn? Since Hao An isn't sure of the answer, he puts it aside, along with the other four.
Scene 5
Hao An sets himself up near other VCD-hawkers on a street corner in the Haidian district. He uses a different sales tactic to the other men. Instead of taking the customers down a dark alley to show them his collection, he keeps his VCDs on him. Hao An's method is more risky, but more profitable. By late afternoon he has made over 400 yuan. The other VCD-sellers are jealous. On his way home that night Hao An is attacked by a gang of them. They beat him senseless, steal his VCDs and the 400 yuan he earned that day, leave him in an alley. As the sun sets, Hao An rests his bruised body against the wall of a building.
Scene 6
Remember the woman from earlier? The one biting into the hot chestnut? That same night, Li Li stands at a food stall and is approached by a group of men. She sits down with them, shares some fried pig ears and flirts. One of the men gives her 400 yuan and they leave together. The 400 yuan still smell of Hao An.
Scene 7
Hao An's Chi is badly depleted, his confidence knocked. But, as I said, Hao An is the kind of man who keeps himself busy. His fifth job gives him a brush with the fashion world. He orders a batch of handmade tie-dyed shirts from Guizhou province and takes them to a graduate student at the Central Authority Fine Arts School to find out what to charge. The graduate student swings his long hair back and forth and tells Hao An these shirts are not authentic enough, not tribal enough. No way are young Beijingers going to be interested in them: there's no art, no attitude. 'What should I do now then?' asks Hao An. The graduate student tells him to head to the bars in Sanlitun and sell them to drunken foreigners and pretentious businessmen with art collections.
