by Ha Jin
Our American host informed us that there would be a writers’ conference at the university on Saturday. The organizers would love to arrange a special panel for the Chinese writers, meaning those in our delegation. We agreed to participate, quite moved by such a friendly invitation. I was asked to talk about American literature in contemporary China, while the six writers wouldn’t have to speak, just be prepared to answer questions about their writings and experiences. We were all excited and put on our best suits or dresses for the occasion. To fortify my spoken English, I read out articles in The New York Review of Books for a solid hour before we set off.
The university was in a small town, which lay in a wooded valley. It was clean and eerily quiet, perhaps on account of the summer break. The roads on the campus were lined with enormous tamaracks and maples. A cream-colored minivan dropped us before a low brick building, wherein several talks were to take place at the same time. Because our panel had not been advertised like the others, most of the conference participants didn’t know about it and were heading toward the other rooms. I was nervous, whispering to my comrades, “If we just have a dozen people, that will be good enough.”
How we were worried! Ganlan, the woman playwright, kept wringing her fingers and said we should not have agreed to take part in such an ad hoc thing.
Suddenly Mr. Fang shouted in his broken English to the people in the lobby, “Attention, please, ladies and gentlemen, I am Professor Fang Baichen, a great contemporary Chinese fiction writer. Please come to my lecture!” He pointed his index finger at the entrance to our room while his other hand was beckoning every American around us.
People looked puzzled, then some started chortling. We were astounded and had no idea what he was up to. I thought perhaps this was just a last-ditch attempt to fetch an audience. Mr. Fang went on shouting, “Room Elefen. Please. A great writer is going to speak.”
If possible, I would have fled through the roof. We stepped aside to make ourselves less conspicuous. But Mr. Fang’s performance did attract a sizable audience—about thirty people came to our panel. I made an effort to keep calm so as to talk.
To our astonishment, after the woman moderator introduced us, Mr. Fang grabbed the microphone from me and began delivering a lecture. He was reading loudly from a paper he had written in advance. His voice sounded as domineering as if he were a government official delivering an admonitory speech. My head was tingling and my mouth went numb.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Ganlan.
Another writer said, “This is a blitzkrieg.”
“Academic hysteria,” I added.
Why didn’t the moderator stop him? I wondered. Then I saw the woman’s oval brown face smiling at me understandingly; she must have assumed he and I had agreed to switch positions.
Mr. Fang was speaking about how he had successfully experimented with the most recent fiction techniques (which were, in fact, all outdated in the West) and how he had inspired the younger generation of Chinese writers to master the technique of stream of consciousness. At first, the audience seemed shocked by the immense volume of his booming voice. Then some of them began chuckling and snickering; many looked amused, as if they were watching a comedian performing a skit. How ashamed we were! He made a fool of all the Chinese in the room! We couldn’t help cursing him under our breath.
It took him more than half an hour to finish his lecture. The audience laughed and smirked when he finally stopped. A few young men, who must be students, whistled as Mr. Fang stood up to acknowledge the pitter-patter of applause, which was obviously meant to mock him.
I did not give the talk I had prepared. Completely flustered, I simply couldn’t do it. But meanwhile, Mr. Fang kept smiling at us, his compatriots sitting along two folding tables. His broad face was glazed with perspiration, and his eyes glowed complacently. He was engulfed in a rectangle of sunlight falling in through a high window. Again and again he looked at us with a sort of disdain on his face, as if challenging us, “Who among you could deliver a lecture like that in English?” Were I able to reach him, I would have pinched his thigh to restore his senses.
The audience asked us some dull questions. We managed to answer them perfunctorily. Every one of us was somewhat shaken. My English became incoherent, marred by grammatical mistakes, as I struggled to interpret the questions and answers. In fact, I couldn’t help stuttering, half throttled by scalding rage. My pulse went at 120 a minute at least.
Finally the whole thing was over, and every one of us felt relieved. Thank heaven, we survived it!
You can imagine how disgusted we were with Mr. Fang after that episode. Nobody would have anything to do with him. We wanted to let him wear the halo of “the great writer” alone. Ganlan even suggested we depart for San Francisco in secret, leaving him behind so that he would have trouble finding money for the return airfare. Of course we could not do that. Even if he had died, we would have had to bring his ashes back; because if he had remained in America, the authorities would have assumed he had defected, and would have criticized us for neglecting to anticipate his motives and, ergo, being the occasion of such an opportunity for him.
When we had returned to China, he was reprimanded by our college’s Party Committee, which ordered him to turn in a thorough self-criticism. He did that. Then the Provincial Writers’ Association revoked his membership. He became persona non grata again. Narrative Techniques was taken out of his hands, this time for good. He was returned to teaching as a regular faculty member and has been barred from attending conferences and giving talks.
Professor Pan, do not assume that this is his end. No, he is very much alive. There is one most remarkable quality in this man, namely that he is simply insuppressible, full of energy and resilience. Recently he has finished translating into English the autobiography of the late Marshal Fu; the book will be published by the International Friendship Press. He has made a tidy sum of money from the work. Rumor has it that he claims he is the best translator of Chinese into English in our country. Maybe that is true, especially after those master translators in Beijing and Shanghai either have passed away or are too old to embark on a large project. It seems Mr. Fang is rising again and will soon tip over. These days he brags that he has numerous connections in the capital, that he is going to teach translation and modern British fiction in your department next year, and that he will edit an English journal for your university.
Professor Pan, please forgive me for this long-winded reply. To be honest, I did not expect to write with such abandon. Actually this is the first time I am composing on a computer. It’s quite an experience. The machine has undoubtedly enhanced my eloquence, and perhaps some grandiloquence; I feel as if it could form sentences by itself. Now, I must not digress anymore. Let me conclude by summarizing my opinion of Mr. Fang, though I will withhold my moral judgment: he is a man of vitality, learning, and stratagems; although already in his late fifties, he is still vigorous and may have many years left; as long as you have a way to contain him, he can be very useful and may contribute a great deal to your department. In other words, he can be used but should never be trusted, not unlike the majority of intellectuals, who are no more than petty scoundrels.
My respectful salute!
Zhao Ningshen, Chairman
Department of Foreign Languages
Muji Teachers College
March 29
The Woman from New York
Nobody in our neighborhood expected Chen Jinli would come back. When she was planning to go to America four years ago, many people had tried to dissuade her. What else did she want? She taught math at our city’s Teachers College; she had a considerate husband and a lovely daughter, who was about to attend kindergarten; her family had just been allotted a three-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a new building. We couldn’t understand why she was so determined to go abroad. A few people said she wanted to make money. Most of us didn’t think so. Although it was rumored that in America banknotes were as abundant as tre
e leaves, who would believe that? If she were a young girl, we could have guessed her motive, either entering college there or marrying a foreigner—an overseas Chinese or a white man. But she was already in her early thirties and had her family here. In spite of others’ admonition, she left early that summer. Soon afterwards, her parents-in-law, both being high-ranking officials in Muji City Administration, told their colleagues and friends that Jinli wouldn’t come back anymore. Old people would say, “What a heartless woman. How could she abandon her family like that? What’s so good in America?”
Now she was back. She looked like a different woman, wearing a gold necklace, her lips rouged, her eyelashes blackened with ink, and even her toenails dyed red. We wondered why her shoes’ heels needed to be four inches high. She could hardly walk on those stilts and often held out her hand for support when walking with others. In a way, her makeup and manners verified the hearsay that she had become the fifteenth concubine of a wealthy Chinese man in New York City.
During the first few months after she left, her husband, Chigan, had told us that she was studying English at a language school there, to get herself ready for a graduate program in math. Then we heard she was ill, unable to move about. A year later, word came that she was running a jewelry store in New York’s Chinatown. Some people believed her business must be a gift from the rich old man.
Her last letter to Chigan said she decided to come back and stay with him and their child forever. By her appearance, we doubted that. Yet whenever asked whether she was going back to New York, she’d say, “No, I’ve lost my job there. The jewelry store was closed.” A few relatives of hers were curious about how much money she had made, but she always told them, “I’ve no money. How could you make lots of money by waiting tables? In America half your income goes to taxes. You earn more, but you spend more, too.”
Young people, eager to know of “the Beautiful Land,” wanted her to talk about New York, but she would shake her head and say, “It’s a nice place for rich people.”
“Come on, Jinli, aren’t most New Yorkers millionaires?”
“No. There’re a few millionaires, but most people work harder than us. Some are homeless, sleeping on the streets.”
What disappointment her words gave those credulous young ones, who believed Wall Street was paved with gold bricks.
She came back at a bad time. It was midsummer, the best season in the Northeast when the weather is congenial and fresh vegetables and fruits appear on the market, but her daughter, Dandan, had no school and could stay with Chigan’s parents day and night. A week before Jinli’s return, Dandan had been moved out so as to avoid her. In fact, the child had almost forgotten her mother. Whenever we asked her if she missed her, she would say, “No.”
Jinli was disappointed not to see her daughter and got mad at Chigan. He tried to calm her by assuring her that Dandan would be back in a few days.
For a week Jinli was busy cleaning their home, which had been littered by Chigan. He was a clumsy man, though in his work he maintained machines at the Boat Designing Institute. Spoiled in his childhood, he didn’t know how to keep things tidy and clean. Jinli found eggshells under the beds and dust cloaking the organ, the chests, and the wardrobe. Cobwebs hung in every corner of the ceilings; the rooms smelled musty, and she had to keep the windows open for days. All the quilts were shiny with grease, and a few had holes in them, burned by cigarettes. She was told that the washer she had sent home from America two years ago was kept at her parents-in-law’s. Worst of all, her jasmines and peonies were all dead, standing like skeletons in the flowerpots, and the soil beneath them was covered with cigarette butts and half-burned matches. Within three days, the once-familiar door-slamming and clatter of dishes and pans resounded through the apartment once more—the couple began quarreling again.
“Gather your dirty socks and underwear. Go to your parents’ house to wash them,” she ordered him.
Without a word he was putting them into a cardboard case. She went on complaining about the cigarette ash in the kitchen and the bathroom. “This is like inside a crematorium,” she kept saying.
He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses with his fingertips and said finally, “If you don’t like this home, why did you bother to come back?”
“You think I came back for you?” She bit her lower lip, her teeth showing neat and white. That was another miracle about her: before going to America she’d had compressed teeth, but now they were all regular and pearly, and her upper lip looked normal, no longer protruding. For sure, American dentists know how to straighten out teeth.
Indeed, she didn’t return for Chigan. She missed their daughter. That was why Chigan’s parents had prevented Dandan from meeting her. They despised Jinli, declaring they had no such daughter-in-law, even calling her “hussy” in the presence of others. Naturally, when Jinli stood at their doorstep one evening and begged them to allow her to say a word to Dandan, her mother-in-law refused to let her in, saying, “She doesn’t want to see you. She has no such mother as you. Get away with your penciled eyes.”
Chigan’s father was standing in the living room, holding a flyswatter and shaking his gray head. His back toward the door, he pretended he hadn’t seen his daughter-in-law.
“When—when will she come home?” Jinli asked.
“This is her home,” said Chigan’s mother.
“Please, let me have a look at her.” Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she tried suppressing them.
“No. She doesn’t want to be disturbed by you.”
“Mother, forgive me just this once, please!”
“Don’t call me that. You’re not my daughter-in-law anymore.”
The door was shut. Jinli realized they’d never allow her to see her child. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t get in touch with Dandan, who was kept from coming out of that brick house, a Russian bungalow. She didn’t beg Chigan, knowing he dared not oppose his parents’ will, and he might prefer such an arrangement as well.
When we heard she couldn’t see her daughter, some of us thought it served her right, because hadn’t she abandoned the child in the first place? But a few felt for her and said that since she couldn’t see her daughter, she shouldn’t stay for Chigan, who didn’t deserve that kind of devotion. We were all eager to see what she would do next.
Two years after she left for America, her name had been removed from the payroll of the Teachers College, so now she no longer had a work unit and belonged to the army of the unemployed. How can she live without a job? we wondered. This is China, a socialist country, not like in New York where she could get along just by pleasing an old man. She didn’t know she had lost her teaching position for good, assuming the removal of her name was temporary. She was shocked when they told her that because of her lifestyle in America, she was no longer suitable for teaching.
Somehow she found out that it was Professor Fan Ling who had spread the concubinary story. A few people urged her to go slap Fan Ling. Nobody liked Professor Fan, who was a smart tigress and had earned a master’s degree in education from Moscow University in the early 1950s. According to Jinli, Fan Ling had slandered her because she wouldn’t agree to be the sponsor of Professor Fan’s nephew, who wanted to go to college in the U.S. “You see,” Jinli told others, spreading her slim hands, revealing a chased gold ring on her third finger, “I’m not an American citizen and it’s illegal for me to do that.” Her words might be true, but we were not fully convinced.
She was informed that Fan Ling was going to attend the faculty and staff meeting on Tuesday afternoon. This would be a good opportunity for her to catch the professor and disgrace her publicly. We were eager to witness the scene, though also ready to intervene in time so that she wouldn’t rough her up too much. Fan Ling was old, suffering from high blood pressure and kidney disease.
To our dismay, Jinli didn’t show up in the auditorium on Tuesday afternoon. Professor Fan sat there in the back, dozing away peacefully, while the principal spoke about how we sh
ould welcome a group of heroes coming from the Chinese-Vietnamese border to give speeches on campus.
Later Jinli declared she would “sue” Fan Ling for calumny and make her “pay.” That was an odd thing for her to say. Who had ever heard of a court that would handle such a trifle? Besides, there was no lawyer available for a personal case like this, which should be resolved either through the help of the school leaders or by the victim herself. Some people thought Jinli must have lost her nerve; this might prove that she had indeed led a promiscuous life abroad. Also, why on earth would she think of “pay” as a solution? This was a matter of name and honor, which no money could buy. She ought to have fought for herself, that is, to combat poison with poison.
One morning she went to the city’s Bureau of Foreign Affairs to look for a job. She had heard there was a need for English interpreters. Our city was just opening to foreigners. To attract tourists, an amusement park was being constructed on one of those islands in the middle of the Songhua River. Jinli filled out six forms, but no official in charge of personnel received her. A young woman, a secretary, told her to come back next Thursday; in the meantime, the bureau would look into her file. Jinli pinned to the forms a copy of the certificate that confirmed she had studied English at an American language school and passed the standard exams, her spoken English rated “Excellent.” She told the secretary that ideally she’d like to be a tourist guide.
