I'D BEEN TRYING TO WRITE SINCE 10 A.M., and now it was half-past two.
'You only need to finish the first draft.' Huizi's words had been echoing in my ears. I wanted to create something exciting, but I felt whatever I wrote was lousy and trivial. Somehow it all referred back to roles I'd played in various pathetic films: Executioner's Assistant, House Cleaner, Steamed-Bun Seller, Woman on Bridge Pushing a Bicycle. I wanted to write a female character who could be everything: wife and mistress, servant and warrior, all at once. But I realised I had no idea how to do this. I didn't understand women. In all my time in Beijing, I'd never managed to have a female friend. It seemed every woman in this city was either busy with her kids or with her mortgage. Money was the only friend she needed. And I wasn't my own friend either. So I gave up on women and started writing about something else.
Very quickly I wrote a two-page outline for a film called The Internet Artist, copying the style from The Matrix. It was about a computer geek obsessed with controlling the internet. This geek created a particularly vicious internet virus and then got himself a job as a virus-hacker. And suddenly this guy had the world at his mercy. He could do anything with the internet he wanted. He had absolute power, he was so powerful that he began to feel disillusioned and couldn't deal with what he'd done. So he tried many different ways of committing suicide. Eventually he succeeded and disappeared for ever. The world sank into chaos and horror, their master was gone…
I finished the story and called Huizi.
The story sounds all right, Huizi said. I've heard about this Producer who's got loads of cash and is desperate for scripts. I've already sent him one of mine. If I give him a call, we might be able to meet him today.
I couldn't believe my luck.
I hung up the phone and decided to make myself a hot cup of coffee. Hot coffee is like a 37.2°C man. They both give you the courage to face a new day.
An hour later Huizi and I arrived at the Producer's office. It was on the 21st floor of the Jian Wai SOHO building, where all the foreign businesses have their offices. Looking for the lift, we got lost in the massive Starbucks on the ground floor. When I saw the Producer, my heart sank with disappointment, and when I saw what was written on the business card he handed me, it sank even lower.
Jin Gui Quan, Manager of the Anti-Piracy Group.
His surname – 'Jin' – literally meant gold. Let's just refer to him as Comrade Loaded-With-Gold.
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold was a man who had worked in the fields for 30 years before suddenly making it rich. He looked like a long sweet potato, his face swollen from a lifetime of struggle, his teeth sticking out from eating endless watermelon. His skin was greasy and his forehead was heavy over his eyes. He looked newly rich and greedy. Comrade Loaded-With-Gold had a thick north-eastern accent, and never once looked straight at me, probably because I wasn't a man.
He sat back in his chair and flipped through my script. He seemed to be thinking. Suddenly he picked up his mobile phone and madly pressed some buttons. At once he started shouting into the phone about stocks and shares, about what was up and what was down. Then he hung up as swiftly as he had started, tossed his phone on top of my script and sat back in his chair. He looked in my general direction and started to speak.
'So, you're a woman writer. I, eh, I've never read anything by a… you know… woman before. And eh, don't be angry, but let me tell you women can't write. You tell me which great writer in China was a woman? There just aren't any. QiongYao, that writer from Taiwan, maybe she counts, if you say that Taiwan belongs to us. That story she wrote, about a little princess or a little swallow or something, that was just about okay… What I love to read are the tabloids. That's where you find some real stories, true stories. True stories are what make great writing. My favourite newspaper is The Police Review. And I just threw some money into making a TV series called I Kidnapped a Woman. Your story about the internet, why not make it from the point of view of the policeman looking for this hacker instead?'
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold took a breather, slurped some of his tea. I looked over at Huizi, but he was staring out of the window.
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold spat a couple of tea leaves back into his cup. He leant back into his chair, getting himself comfortable.
'Huiziiiiiiii, Fenfanghhhhh,' he drawled, 'let me tell you, life is really interesting. I've had so much to, eh… chew over in my lifetime. You know what? Only yesterday, I advertised for new staff and eight girls showed up – all of them over one metre sixty, all wearing the same suit, same make-up. I lined them up to have a good look at them. It was like choosing myself a concubine, heh-heh! I quizzed each one a bit, but aiya! To tell you the truth there just wasn't one that was right. What a shame! So I got rid of them all, and went out to buy a half-kilo of steamed buns instead, and aiya, wouldn't you know, as I'm standing there buying my buns, here comes this sweet young little thing and stands next to me. Aiya, this girl, I tell you, she was something! I started chatting to her.
'At first she didn't give a shit, but eh, my thick skin is my best quality, you know? So in the end I managed to persuade her to come to my office and to take the job. And you know, in my life, I've always had luck with tall women. And this girl is one metre seventy. I can't remember her name, but I remember where she's from: Wen Zhou, the smartest town in Zhejiang province.
'Then yesterday night, you know what? I'm at home watching Palace of Desire on TV, and she calls me! She says, "Brother Jin, want to come over to my place?" Aiya, when I heard this, I tell you my blood started getting hot, you know what I mean, Huizi? Because I've struggled, let me tell you, I've had a shit life! But I'm definitely not stupid. I reminded myself to be careful with that kind of woman. Maybe it was a trap, maybe she had a whole bunch of men at her place, waiting to kidnap me and steal my money! So I called a taxi and we drove over to the address she'd given me, and when we got there, I gave my taxi driver an extra 50 yuan and told him to take a look at what was going on upstairs. And he came back and said everything looked pretty normal, and she looked a nice girl. So I go up there myself and, well, we spend the night together. A night of destiny, I tell you! The next morning, I hand the girl 2,000 yuan, and tell her, "Go ahead, treat yourself to some nice clothes, eh?" But this girl surprises me again! You know what she says? She says, "Brother Jin, I don't want your money. Why don't we start a business together instead." Aiya! I hear this and I'm impressed. This girl's got prospects. She doesn't want my 2,000 yuan. She's so smart, she reckons she can make 20,000 yuan instead! I put the money back in my pocket and I stop thinking that she might be a prostitute. What a brain! You know she is from Zhejiang province – that explains everything. People have sharp brains over there, and every cell in their body belongs to a business shark, not like us north-easterners with our slow pig brains… Aiya, what is she called, that girl? Really I can't remember.'
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's mobile beeped again. He put down his teacup and answered. I didn't know which godforsaken corner of the north-east the call came from, but it went on and on and on. The extent of the conversation was Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's attempts to explain to the idiot at the other end how to make long-distance calls, but pay only local rates. I swear he explained it a hundred times, but the moron still couldn't get it.
Through all of this, Huizi and I sat still and bored to death on his sofa. It was like a punishment. I hated sitting and waiting, but I didn't want to walk around, either. The ridiculous office had four red-leather sofas with four plastic bamboo trees standing in each corner. I guessed four must be Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's lucky number.
Outside the window I could see the sky darkening already. A sand storm was coming. The strong smell of leather was making me nauseous. Huizi kept looking back and forth between me and Comrade Loaded-With-Gold. My outline lay neglected on the table.
Finally Comrade Loaded-With-Gold hung up and turned his attention back to the pair of us. Without much of a pause he resumed his life stories.
'You know, life is really something. I've been told that by the time I die, I'll have been in love four times. This girl from Zhejiang province, she must be one of the four. I could give you some ideas for scripts, Fenfang! Let me tell you about my first love. You're not going to forget this, eh. At middle school, I was in love with our class prefect. She was a giant, this girl, so tall! Aiya, it gave me goosebumps just to look at her. When our term finished I wrote her a note saying, "Hey, why don't you sit next to me in the back row next term?" I know I'm short and she was very tall, but I tell you, even then, I knew I had luck with tall girls. We were all out skating on a frozen lake, and I slipped this note into one of her red gloves, which she'd dropped on the ice. And then I stuck around, I didn't want to miss her reaction! And you know what happened next? She was coming back for her glove when she fell, and slammed right into the ice! Oh, I tell you I felt terrible! Finally she pulled herself up and used her red gloves to dust herself off, and there, out from the glove, flew my note! She picked it up and read it. I was watching intently, but no reaction. She just put the note in her pocket. And then you know what she said to me as she walked past? She said, "Gold, you have dirty, dirty thoughts. We're too young to think like that!" This was a harsh criticism, and from my very own adored giant of a class prefect!'
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's mobile beeped loudly once again. He looked at the phone and got suddenly quite agitated.
'Aiya, I think it's that girl from Zhejiang. And I remember her name now too: Zhang something. But let's forget about Little Zhang… Let's talk about us now.'
It surprised me that he was ignoring the call. 'We should get some food, eh. There's a place downstairs called Friendly North East. They make the best pork intestines, just delicious…
'Yeah, so where was I? Oh, after the class prefect criticised me, we never spoke again. Forty years passed and then one day, I'm on a visit to my old home town, Ha Er Bin. I'm driving my BMW along a street when I spot this stall selling fresh pigs' trotters. "Those will be perfect with a bottle of beer for dinner," I think and, aiya, you'll never guess, even in your next life, who I see behind the stall! My old class prefect! But, I tell you, eh, what an awful sight she was. Fat, like a Buddha! With an annoying little kid beside her chopping pickles. She must have been twice as wide as me! But her name… her name, I remember it now: LiYaqin. LiYaqin grabbed my hands and started fawning all over me. "Aiya, Gold, it's you! How do you come to be here? All these years I've been searching for you! I have had such a difficult life. My father's been working in the mines and I've never had any money. Aiya, I so regret what happened, Gold."
'"What do you regret, LiYaqin, eh?" I asked, and she started to cry, just like that! Clutching at me and telling me that the happiest moment in her life was the day she fell on the ice and read the note I'd written her. "I was so happy!" she said. "And all these years I couldn't find you, but now here you are, with your big car at my food stall! But it's just too late, and my boy he's so big now." At that moment, I looked down at the pigs' trotters and you know what? They looked just like her hands – dark and fat and stained.
'Aiya, life… you know. Life is just like those stewed pigs' trotters. Sometimes you just have to eat what you're given.'
At this point Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's eyes started to mist over. Huizi and I looked at each other, and neither of us knew what to say. My outline was still on the table, completely abandoned by now.
Comrade Loaded-With-Gold suddenly raised his head from his sentimental past and looked at me.
'Fenfang,' he drawled. 'Tell me, do you find a man like me interesting?'
Huizi shot me a look.
'Sure, really interesting.' I cleared my throat. 'Yes, definitely. I find it really easy to relate to you, especially since you're about the same age as my father. It's not that difficult to understand you.'
I could feel Huizi relax.
'Aiya, you meet me for the first time and already you think I'm fascinating, eh. Well, that Wen Zhou girl, aiya, what's her name… you know?'
'Zhang?' I offered.
'Yes, yes, Miss Zhang. Right, well, I can't chat any more, you see, I should go and ring back Little Zhang.'
And with that, Comrade Loaded-With-Gold walked out of the red-leather office to make his call.
Huizi and I both stood up, perfectly synchronised. I picked up my outline from the desk and shoved it into my backpack. I didn't blame Huizi. We walked out of the office.
Another sand storm was starting, the wind flapped at my thin skirt. There was never any gentleness in a Beijing spring. Huizi and I walked and walked. There was silence between us. A woman passed us on her bicycle, she'd wrapped her scarf over her mouth to stop the sand. Men carrying their evening newspapers and briefcases hastily pushed past us. Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's northeastern accent still rang in my ears, as did those words… 'Dirty, dirty thoughts!' Sand whirled up into my eyes and I couldn't stop rubbing them. My head ached.
Huizi could sense I was a bit low.
'Right, Fenfang,' he said, 'I'm taking you to Jade Pond Park to see the cherry blossom.'
I just said, 'Okay.' Nothing more. Then I followed Huizi. I can't explain why, but I felt like I'd aged five years since walking into Comrade Gold's office. I actually felt lots of sympathy for the man. As I'd said to him: I understood him.
Jade Pond Park, with its famous cherry trees, was packed with tourists. You could hardly move. Parents with their children. Young people with their old parents. Visitors, officials, builders, guards. We climbed up a little hill to get a better view. The trees spread below us were like sculptures made of twisted wire, the pink blossoms were swinging in the sand-filled wind. There was hardly any scent.
I thought of Japan and how popular the cherry-blossom season is there. Then I remembered a sad story I read in the newspaper about a young Japanese girl who had committed suicide by jumping into a waterfall. In the note she left, she explained:
I don't want to lose the beauty of my youth. I don't want to see my body ageing. The cherry blossom chooses to die in one night. I want to do the same.
I looked again at the cherry-blossom trees beneath me and saw that the grass was already covered by a layer of fading petals.