Empire of Glass

by Kaitlin Solimine

  35. Halfway through the journey isn’t the place to turn back. You either set out or you don’t. Cold Mountain didn’t pause on his departure, turn to his wife and say, “Goodbye, my beloved.” Once he took the first step he kept walking, up that mountain path and to that hidden, wind-sheltered cave. That is, if the story we’ve come to believe, rewritten numerous times by numerous men, is true. But I wasn’t Cold Mountain. I wasn’t Li-Ming. I was a 16-year-old who’d never traveled outside the U.S. but believed I was old enough to smoke cigarettes, sleep with my physics teacher, and step off the edge of my mother’s roof, only to shatter a collarbone and tibia. Everyone thought China would straighten me, not bend me further. Tiananmen, my nesting ground—where I’d go when the light was shifting and the world felt too cluttered and broken—was full of life that year. The only place in the city where you could sense the enormity of a northern, desert sky. One day, this square was so silent only a gun’s soft-pitched rap-tap-tap broke night’s rapture. “Okay,” I said, and Baba loosened his grip around my wrist. The rock music dulled to a soft coo and the night turned to something resembling day. The unraveling began then; we clung to one another for fear in its loosening, we’d both fall apart.

  Letters #5, 6, 7

  Letters addressed in your name:

  An unknown location in the western hills,

  piled under my bed like hungry children.

  Nibble the pages, a new nutrition.

  My mother’s peony stamps: they’d never reach you.

  Ghost girl, sitting beside Houhai, opera-faced Mandarin ducks bobbing like puppets.

  City walls are falling down now.

  The only reply:

  Are you sitting still?

  That’s all.

  Greedy as a pigeon below Tiananmen’s Revolutionary statues

  peck peck peck at the stony feet of heroes

  How many years?

  Didn’t you see? Of course I was sitting still.

  But then: dinners to cook and husbands to placate and children to birth and work units to report to.

  Lifting box after box, dank rooms filled with stacks of letters in wooden boxes awaiting delivery.

  Eagerly awaiting:

  an ear, a touch, an audience.

  Baba

  How many hours did Wang Guanmiao sit on that metal stool alone in the center of cavernous Factory Hall Number Five beneath the pitched, bat-laden rafters? Six? Ten? Fifteen?

  He measured the passing of days at the start of the Great Unraveling36 by observing the shifting light, the golden beam beginning as a sliver in the corner of those factory floors and sliding, searching for something lost, across the cement beneath his feet.

  Then the lights would flicker on, the only song he heard during those unending, slow-minded factory days. Music: electricity jumping circuit-to-circuit above their heads. Electrons. The spinning of grinding machines, sparked glass to metal. Music was something they invented to pass the time.

  One night, when Wang sat on his stool counting the hours since lunch, after his co-workers retired from their grinders and walked home, he decided it was time to find Li-Ming’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. It had been months since he’d received a reply from her; he worried she might be losing interest in their correspondence, especially as he hadn’t made it to her Shangri-la—or had he? Wang flicked off his station’s switch, the well-worn belt sighing as the spinning slowed. He was always the last one on the factory floors at night, his comrades home in their crowded apartments on the leafy factory campus. He’d see their smiling faces through the dusty windows on his midnight walks to the apartment he shared with the only other single men in his danwei: Pockmarked Zhang, the dormitory’s most flatulent sleeper; and Wu Wei, a smooth-skinned, perfectly-built Beijing native (the girls remarked he was even better looking than the exemplary Comrade Lei Feng). But on his walks alone under an oblivious moon, in the apartment blocks beside him, families readied for bed, reading from the Little Red Book before the children dozed off and parents listened for the latest propaganda announcement on China National Radio.

  Wang knew that Huang Daozhen, Li-Ming’s father, regularly returned to his office at night to smoke a pack of cigarettes and play mahjong with the other factory bosses (although the game was outlawed by the Party, danwei leadership played after hours in the privacy of their offices). Click-tap. Tiles smacked against one another, slid across the table. At Huang Daozhen’s office, Wang waited for a lack of sound—signifying a lull in the action—then rapped his knuckle on the slightly-ajar door. The wood reverberated, sending an unexpected chill up his spine, then the door opened wider, exposing his entire frame to the room.

  “Shei-a?” It was Huang Daozhen’s recognizable gruff and unforgiving baritone wanting to know who knocked. Huang was known around the factory as the ‘Singer Boss’ because of his gravely voice, a voice that betrayed the fact there was something unexpectedly soft in him, as if his years in Moscow studying Leninism taught him more than his comrades would ever know.

  “Ah,” Wang said, his tongue suffocating itself. How could he not remember his own name? He cleared his throat, reminded himself why he was here: Huang Li-Ming. Getting her would mean the end of a story, mean he could finally rest, would reach a certain pinnacle in his life, a cliff from which he could view the rest of the world. What he didn’t know was none of this was true. The surety of ambition: one day he’d look back, rub his balding head, and muse at the stupidity of middle age.

  “It’s me, uh, your comrade Wang Guanmiao of Glass Grinding Station Number Five, Factory Five.”

  “Of course, Wang Guanmiao. Our most diligent worker. What are you doing here so late? And why stand in the doorway like a deeply rooted tree? Are you a mahjong fan?”

  Wang didn’t know which question to answer first. He chose the last.

  “Mahjong is not my specialty, but I do enjoy our nation’s special game.” He couldn’t believe how rehearsed this sounded. When had he become like his dull comrade Xiaodong? Why couldn’t Huang Daozhen have been here alone? His plan was not built for success. Maybe he should try another night.

  Too late: “Come in,” Huang waved Wang to the table, to a mahjong game in progress, all four men, Huang included, hunched over their tiles. “Sit.” He pointed to a stool nearby.

  The other men didn’t look up but Wang recognized them as his factory’s leadership: Comrade Zhang with the scoliosis spine, Comrade Gao with the kite-shaped birthmark on his scalp, and Comrade Ting who always shook his head ‘no’ when he was actually saying ‘yes.’ These men were not truly Wang’s comrades—they served in the Party prior to Liberation, some of them even participating in the Long March. They were on a first-name basis with the Chairman himself, studied Marxism in Moscow, and regularly met with the Party politburo at the CCP headquarters in Zhongnanhai. To them, Wang was just a country boy. He didn’t deserve to sit at their table, so close to their hunched, important bodies.

  “You know Confucius himself wrote the rules of this famous Chinese game, don’t you, son?” Huang Daozhen was especially loquacious tonight, which made Wang even more uncomfortable. Zhang shifted in his seat, rubbed his back. Ting tapped his cigarette into a stuffed ashtray. Gao combed the hair above that birthmark with a sun-spotted, quivering hand. Above the table, a fan spun lazily. Blade shadows flickered like old film across the hands of the mahjong-playing party leaders, the white and black tiles, the brown table. White on brown. Wang’s mind spun like that fan. His fingers tapped the rhythm on his thighs. Could he leave? From deep within his abdomen rose the unmistakable feeling of swimming, of trying to get to the other shore—the far shore where muddy reeds enclosed ankles, water traded for air. But Wang didn’t know how to swim. His mouth tried to sputter a response to Boss Huang’s question about mahjong, but his words were underwater: no one could hear him.

  “Speaking of sons,” Comrade Ting cut in, drawing a cigarette to his mouth and saving Wang from drowning. “When’s that lovely Li-Ming of yours ret
urning to Beijing to marry and give you your first son?”

  Huang Daozhen leaned back, placed his hands sage-like on his lap. Lips placid, neither smiling nor frowning, his face never conveyed emotion, as if the best way to live was to remain detached, unaffected.

  “My Huang Li-Ming is a funny child. She’s not like her comrades in Weifang.” He seemed to be searching for the right words to describe her and Wang grew elated that Huang Daozhen felt the way Wang did about his daughter, believed in the absolute uniqueness of her.

  “Actually, Honorable Sir,” Wang said, turning to Huang Daozhen. The stool beneath Wang wavered.

  “No feudal titles needed, Comrade,” Huang said, sounding more like the man Wang knew on the factory floors: distant, but kind—like the father figure portrayed in Party films, a father for the nation: he expected the most of you, if only because he knew you were capable of greatness, so much to make the Party proud.

  “Yes, Comrade Huang,” Wang corrected. The fan clicked. “Li-Ming.” He said the name he’d repeated so many times, only this time the tones fell flat. Wang straightened his seat and the stool beneath him came to rest. “I came here to ask you a question about her.”

  All three factory bosses released their tiles to the table. Four pairs of eyes turned to Wang, so many eyes he didn’t know where to direct his gaze so he dropped it to his hands, to the flickering gray shadows playing lazily over his calloused skin. Light and shadow. Everything he knew about the world could be reflected atop his hands: light, shadow, men coughing in corners, tiles sliding across tables, machines clicking on, clicking off, bicycles rumbling down frost heaven alleyways, smoke catching in his nostrils. Everything he knew yet never really understood: Now. Steady. Breathe.

  “I want to ask you for Li-Ming’s hand in marriage.” Wang raised his eyes to meet Huang’s.

  Zhang shifted in his seat and slapped unkindly at his lower back. Gao’s eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead and crumpling his birthmark. Ting choked back a cough (or was it a laugh?), ashing his cigarette in the communal silver tray. But Boss Huang didn’t move. He didn’t so much as lean forward. Nor blink. He was a man of patient action.

  “I’m sorry, Comrade. Her marriage is already arranged,” he said, unflinchingly. “Didn’t your roommate tell you?”

  Pockmarked Zhang, Wang thought, his stomach tightening. Everything was suddenly clear: Pockmarked Zhang with the scarred purple cheeks, the gaseous ass that shook the bunks at night. Pockmarked Zhang escorting Li-Ming down Xinjiekou, beneath draping willows. Pockmarked Zhang straddling Li-Ming’s hips in a cold, stark dormitory bunk, his white backside flashing with moonlight as he thrust himself upon her, teeth flashing a smile as he witnessed Wang in the doorway. The children Pockmarked Zhang and Li-Ming would make: squatter versions of Zhang, with her soft cheeks and his wide, dense forehead. How could Pockmarked Zhang have won Li-Ming?

  “That Wu Wei is quite the catch,” Comrade Ting said with the exhale of a large plume of smoke that hovered above the table, the tiles, the steady bars of—

  shadow-light

  shadow-light

  shadow-light

  —Wu Wei. The cloud dissipated, leaving behind a viscous web. Sweat pooled beneath Wang’s palms. Wu Wei. Of course it would be Wu Wei who’d win Li-Ming’s heart. He’d won the city’s Athlete of the Year award five years earlier for running the fastest 100 meter sprint, swimming the fastest 100 meters, and jumping the farthest (almost six and a half meters). He’d won a spot on the coveted glass grinder near the doorway, closest to the fresh, chilled breeze, won the top bunk in their dorm room and the most desirable cleaning duties—sweeping the hallways, not scrubbing the squat toilet stalls as Wang was assigned. Wu Wei’s wide smile allowed doors to open magically, as if the wind itself believed in his powers, his moral and physical strength. Wu Wei. Wu Wei and Li-Ming. An odd pair, surely, but the more Wang thought about it, the more likely the betrothal seemed inevitable, practically heaven-ordained.

  Wang stood, his thin shadow barely masking the table.

  “And so the charmed suitor departs,” Comrade Zhang said, laughing softly beneath his mustache.

  “Gone so soon, Comrade Wang?” Huang Daozhen’s words trailed Wang outside, past the slapping of the heavy metal doors, the bare aspens scratching each other, swollen moonlight suffocating the city’s alleyways.

  Gone so soon, said the wind.

  Gone so soon, said the pigeons with whistles tacked to their wings.

  Gone so soon, said the emptiness of bicycle-less streets closing in around him.

  A hand gripped his shoulder. “Where are you going?” Wang turned to see Huang Daozhen’s unsmiling face, somehow patient, somehow paternal, under the omniscient moonlight. He breathed heavily—he’d jogged to catch Wang, was fast enough to catch him.

  “I’m going home,” Wang said. At least this didn’t feel like a lie.

  “Can I walk with you?” Huang asked.

  “I think it’s too late.”

  “Well,” Huang said, ignoring the protest. “I just wanted you to know Wu Wei and Li-Ming were a match since primary school. They were top athletes in their classes, companions on school trips to the countryside. I’m sure you’ll understand.” His hand was still on Wang’s shoulder, but now they faced one another. Huang’s face: crests of wrinkles lining his forehead, frowning eyes pulled downward by gravity, a squat Southerner’s nose, a nearly invisible neck. All the marks of age, of time, in his face alone. What did he see in Wang? What did Wang expose in the double-folded expressivity of his eyelids, his tall nose, his frowning, wide mouth? No matter how hard he tried, Wang couldn’t fake the confidence of a man like Wu Wei.

  “Li-Ming’s no prize,” Wang said before he could prevent the words from spilling off his lips.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Huang Daozhen said, surprisingly. “But she’s my daughter… and I can only do what The Party thinks is right for her.”

  “Of course, The Party,” Wang said and wondered if Li-Ming’s father saw the way his eyes rolled slightly, lips quivering, eyebrows pinching. The Party. What had The Party given them? In Andong, The Party made him lose his perfect vision. In Gansu, The Party made him an accomplice to a crime—the killing of a mythical creature—that his ancestors would surely haunt him for. And now in Beijing, The Party took the love of his life from him. The Party wasn’t for the people anymore. It hardly stood for anything but the blank stare Huang Daozhen gave him before he shook his head and continued on his way.

  “Remember what Marx and Chairman Mao say about knowledge!” Huang shouted to Wang’s shadow. “True knowledge begins only with revolutionary practice! Don’t forget that more than mere thought is valued here!”

  Wang didn’t respond. What use was there in attempting civilities with a man who would only be his factory’s leader, nothing more? And he disagreed: true knowledge could never arise from the practices derived from a wrong mindset. If he lived in a world where only the Wu Weis could win, he didn’t want to participate. He’d stop “practicing” all the revolutionary activities, and thus stop creating any of this false “knowledge” to which Huang Daozhen referred.

  “Did you hear me, Comrade?” Huang’s voice cracked.

  Wang didn’t respond but allowed the click-tap of his footsteps to reply. Click-tap around the abandoned factory grounds toward shuttered Rending Lake Park. Click-tap until the sun rose purple-pink in the eastern sky. Click-tap until the window shades in the apartments lifted one by one, each family awakened by the waking of their neighbor. Click-tap until he stood outside the danwei mess hall at breakfast, chopsticks smacking porcelain bowls of congee, a chorus of voices so loud, so intermingled, not a single word or phrase could be extracted from the cacophony. Nothing except…

  “Stop daydreaming, Comrade Wang!” Wu Wei shouted from inside the mess hall. Behind panes of glass brushed yellow by the Gobi’s sands, Wang could see Li-Ming’s future husband—his wide, coffee-colored face, his strong jaw stretching into a proud, straight-t
oothed smile. A victor’s smile. Wang’s comrades lounged in a circle around Wu Wei, laughing for the beautiful man in a rehearsed way. They waved for Wang to join them.

  “Are you coming or what, Wang?” Wu Wei’s tone was unmistakable. His laugh too: pitched and frivolous, a chicken’s cluck. Wu Wei, like his fated wife Li-Ming, was always the center of every crowd while Wang stood on the outside, his lonely shape wavering like the wind now shuffling past the cracked window pane.

  Wang exhaled: his breath fogged the scene. He looked at the sun’s early slant for forgiveness, shoved his hands into his pockets. He wasn’t the strongest man in Beijing. He wasn’t the victor. But at least, he thought, walking into the mess hall to greet his comrades, he knew how to conquer distances with his hands, feet, and eyes. While most of them had yet to leave the bounds of the capital’s ancient city walls, he’d gazed down the tube of a telescope and seen shores so distant, so foreign, they didn’t have names. Only those who’ve traveled such distances can understand the simultaneous grandeur and smallness of this world.

  Wang took his seat at the head of the long, wooden table. Wu Wei straddled the far end, telling a story about the first time he caught a trout in one of the aqueducts surrounding the Forbidden City. His admiring disciples looked on as he wrestled with the imaginary fish bare handed. What stories victors tell themselves, Wang thought, reaching for a bowl of tepid congee. The liquid slid down his throat and landed, lead-like, in his empty belly.

  “Another Tale of Wu Wei!” one of their fresher-faced comrades shouted, a man Wang recognized from the dormitory’s shared latrine whose piss smelled like burnt cinnamon.

  Wu Wei obliged his hungry masses. Wu Wei’s men listened, slack-jawed, the duration of the meal, nodding their heads like dogs to a pork bone. They did not speak, but smiled when directed, clapped their hands when inspired. When breakfast was finished, they followed Wu Wei outside, their shadows hovering darkly at the cafeteria windows, before dissipating into a world unseen. Wang waited at the table until their voices were overcome by the wind, trying to decide what was to be done in a world not his to conquer anymore, in a scene now brushed gray at the edges, the cafeteria’s slouched janitorial aunties clearing bowls from the slop bins, making clucking sounds at the mess the men left behind, tired by the lot life handed them but still going on living this life, arms elbow-deep in vats of discarded congee.