I Am China (23 page)

12
LONDON, JUNE 2013

When Iona arrives at the Hayward Gallery, she checks her watch and realises she is twenty minutes late. She spies Jonathan leaving a queue with what look like tickets in his hand. He smiles when he spots her.

“Sorry, the bus took forever; I should have taken the Tube,” Iona apologises.

“No worries. I had to queue for the tickets anyway. I didn’t expect there to be so many people wanting to see an exhibition on the Cultural Revolution!” Jonathan kisses her on the cheek.

“Maybe they’re here for my professor.” Iona looks around, hoping to see Charles in the crowd. “He really is one of the most important historians on China, you know. I’m not exaggerating.”

On the poster in front of the gallery a big banner reads, “The legacy of the Cultural Revolution—exhibition talk by Professor Charles Handfield, SOAS, University of London.”

“I believe you, Iona! But I must confess I am more interested in the exhibition. Let’s go in, shall we?”

They walk slowly round the exhibition together after Charles’s talk, occasionally pointing out pictures, mentioning something that seems to trigger a memory from Jian’s and Mu’s texts. Jonathan is deeply impressed by the wall of photographs from Chinese archives. Frenetic images of Red Guards marching through Beijing’s streets; Mao greeting adoring young supporters; intellectuals being punished on a stage. Iona learned about the Cultural Revolution when she was at university, but still, some of these photos shock her into silence. Her professor’s lecture perfectly complements the images in the exhibition, and Iona is struck
by a wave of nostalgia for university. Perhaps she should have stayed longer and absorbed more from Charles’s encyclopedic mind.

When the lecture ends, Charles is instantly surrounded by his audience. Iona waves at him from a distance, but he’s hidden by a growing crowd. She follows Jonathan out of the gallery and along the South Bank.

She slows down. “Time for a drink? What about here?”

“Yes, OK, a quick one.” He nods as he speaks.

“By the way, did you manage to contact Mu? I wonder if she is still in China, or in the States, perhaps.”

“No information whatsoever, I’m afraid. Her telephone number doesn’t seem to work. I’ve tried it many times.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be contacted—some political reason we don’t know about perhaps,” Iona speculates.

“I hadn’t considered that … it’s an interesting thought.”

They head towards a nearby bar. Before they’ve even made it through the door Iona hears his phone ring. He turns away from her as he answers it, his voice taking on a terse and clipped manner, piercing the noise of the crowd. He hangs up and turns to Iona apologising.

“I am so sorry, Iona, it’s my wife …” He looks uneasy. “I’m afraid I don’t even have time for a quick drink. I’m going to have to head off right now.”

She looks at him, slightly surprised.

“I don’t want to be rude. It’s just … family issues. I need to get back home immediately.”

You’re not explaining anything, Iona thinks, but she says, “Don’t worry. I hope it’s nothing serious. We can call or email tomorrow about plans for the translation. Thanks for coming along anyway.”

As she wonders about what his wife might have said to him on the phone that was quite so urgent, he is already kissing her goodbye and striding quickly away.

Alone, Iona walks along the South Bank, buffeted by the night wind. A certain desolation wraps itself around her. She feels very cold, a chill
climbing up her spine and tickling the back of her head. Looking down at her shadow under the lamps on the pavement, at her hands and the slim shape of her arms, she feels dazed. She walks up to the railing along the river walkway and gazes down at the dark Thames. Below the concrete bank, driftwood is washed onto the narrow mudflats and she makes out a pink plastic shoe among the rubbish. A tourist barge passes, illuminated by the strings of fairy lights. The passengers leaning out wave at the people on the bank and on the bridges, as characters do in films—big smiles and nostalgic sentiments. Iona watches them with indifference and walks away.

She turns and walks up onto the Millennium Bridge, heading in the direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral where she can catch her bus home. Halfway across, she finds herself pausing and leaning over the rail to watch the scene below. The water is dark under the pale moon, the tide subsiding now. She contemplates the waves, thinking how fast the tide runs out. Then, from nowhere, she hears a voice beside her speaking.

“Old Thames, such an ancient bitch river, pouring herself into the old muddy Channel.”

She turns her head, sees a figure, standing quite close to her, breathing roughly, leaning over and watching the same scene. It’s an old man, rough coat on to protect him from the keen chill in the air and the wind that spins up from the surface of the river; unshaven face with a multitude of protuberances and folds. When the man catches her eye, he continues.

“I know you,” he says in a rusty, rasping voice projected from oily lungs.

“Sorry? Sorry?” She’s a little startled.

“You heard. I know you! Seen you here before. Seen you look into the river. You ain’t gonna jump, are you?” He gives a kind of laughing grunt.

All Iona can do is stare, and retreat, stammering, “I’m sorry. No. I’m sorry.”

“Nuffing to be sorry about, love. You ain’t gonna jump. Ain’t nuffing down there, my girl. Nuffing at all. Just shitty cold, it is. And worse, too. I got my eye on ya, you know!”

The old man seems like an apparition from another world. Her throat dry, unable to speak clearly, all she can do is mumble, “Sorry, I have to go. Bye.”

She hears the old man start humming to himself as she hurries over the bridge. Then suddenly she remembers the old Englishman in Milwaukee from Mu’s diary. Now his voice descends from the sky above the water:
“If you ever visit England, then send my regards to that old hag of a town, London, though I’m sure she’s tarted up well enough now.”

13
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, MAY 2012

The show is over. It’s the day after the last performance and the band are having their longest lie-in of the entire trip—apart from Bruce, who is up early and on the phone, making calls and negotiating contracts with other musicians in God knows which country.

At noon, Dongdong wakes up. After drinking a mouthful of chilled water from the fridge, he discovers that Lutao is not in his bed. At first he thinks the singer might be in the bathroom, a long morning discharge after that spicy Mexican food and all those beers last night; but fifteen minutes pass and no one comes out. He checks the bathroom, but there is nothing—no vomiting, no blood, no dead body. Then Dongdong realises something is missing from their room—the blue suitcase covered with star stickers which belonged to Lutao. Gone with his clothes and his newly bought leather shoes and Elvis Presley T-shirts!

Dongdong knocks on Bruce’s door and their manager’s face drains of colour when he hears the news.

“I should have taken everyone’s passports,” he says regretfully. And now it’s too late.

After lunch, they hang about watching the comings and goings on the street outside in silence. Mu is still wearing her pyjamas, sitting on Lutao’s empty bed eating an apple, as if what has happened means very little to her. It is Monday, cars are flooding onto freeways, pedestrians are milling in the streets. Even in a city like Memphis, the Monday traffic is not light. The boys stare at the people passing by, vaguely hoping they might catch sight of a Chinese man with a blue suitcase crossing the street. But there are no Chinese men, no Japanese men, no Korean men in sight.

“Well, good luck to him.” Bruce curses bitterly.

*   *   *

During the band’s remaining days, Bruce wants to show his hospitality, and invites everyone to stay for a few days at his family home near Boston. “Now it’s holiday relaxation time, you guys must come and have some chill out time with my parents. Free food! No more tipping and hotel service charges!”

There are cheers, from all except Mu.

Bruce shows them a photo of his family home. A roomy three-storey house with a garden.

“A great house, and good feng shui too,” Liuwei praises with a twinge of envy. He is the other member of the band who would have loved to disappear and remain in America.

“That’s why the American president has the loudest voice! They are paid better and live better than the president of any other continent!” cries Dongdong.

Bruce shrugs. “Well, if you grew up here you wouldn’t find it so interesting. That’s why I went to China.” He turns to Mu. “Listen, Sister, I can try to organise a reading for you at a Harvard student club. I think those young intellectuals will like your style.”

“Fine. Whatever,” Mu responds tersely. She’s stopped speaking in full sentences to Bruce now.

14
LONDON, JULY 2013

Iona is googling “Harvard University + Sabotage Sister” and it takes her instantly to a blog on the student forum of the Harvard website. The blog is a report about a performance Mu did at Harvard in May 2012, just over a year ago.

The Friday night poetry reading at the Student Club turned out to be a real disappointment. The advertisement said that the poet—Sabotage Sister, as per her nom de plume—is “A Brand New Voice from the Underground Chinese Poetry Scene.” So we (three Chinese Ph.D.s as well as several M.A. graduates) went along, hoping for a chance to feel a bit nostalgic, a bit patriotic perhaps. But she turned out to be a total cultural prostitute. As soon as she announced she was going to read a Chinese cover version of an Allen Ginsberg poem, “America” it was called, I knew she (and that pretentious band) were Western-ass-kissing people. Let me share with you the beginning of her poem and you can see for yourself:

China when will you be angelic?

When will you take off your clothes?

When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?

China why are your libraries full of tears?

How ridiculous is that? She would be jailed if she said something like that in China. As I said, a serious disappointment at the very least, and a despicable trashing of Chinese heritage and form at the worst. I find the idea of Sabotage Sister calling herself a poet downright insulting.

Posted on May 23, 2012. Read Alison Wang Blog
here
.

How interesting, Iona thinks, what a difficult end to the tour. The Chinese with their hard ideology don’t seem to evolve much even outside of China. It seems they judge each other as harshly whether they’re at home or abroad. She scrolls down and reads the comments section posted under the article.

Roosterinboston:

I don’t agree. She is an honest poet. Just with a pretentious pen name. But she shouldn’t be slapped. That was really rude.

Xiaotian:

She deserved the slapping. The security guards should have used catapults and shot stones at her every time she opened her mouth.

Keeion082:

Stop being so hypocritical, brothers and sisters. To have a few more sabotage sisters might help reduce the West’s prejudice of China.

Qingyuan99:

I am sure that Sabotage Sister is taught and backed up by some Western dude. I bet she still eats rice with chopsticks. But she has forgotten her roots.

Iona then finds two pages from Mu’s diary, dated 23 May 2012:

It was the most terrible experience. I wondered what Jian would do if he had faced such an abusive situation. The audiences at Harvard were mainly Chinese students from prestigious government-family backgrounds. Obviously all very corrupt. They got their rich daddies to pay for them to study overseas. I smelt the distinct whiff of strong nationalism the moment I entered the room. As I went onstage, I took a quick glance at those kids—mostly twenty-somethings, cheeks still plump with baby fat, their ignorant but confident faces shining with huge ambition, their eagerness for power radiating from behind their thick glasses. I didn’t feel good at all in a room full of overfed goldfish
.

As I announced I was going to read an Allen Ginsberg cover version of “America,” their faces fell. I started to read, and from the corner of my eye I could see a few Chinese students beginning to shuffle and talk in their seats. Then the room became uncomfortably quiet. I read another two verses … I knew something terrible was going to happen. I was waiting for a bullet, bang, right in my forehead from somewhere in the corner of the room. Or perhaps they would wait until I had left the Student Club and just as I stepped onto the stairs the sniper would fire. But there was no bullet; instead, two big fat Chinese boys jumped onstage and grabbed me. They grabbed my arms exactly like the Red Guards had done to protesters during the Cultural Revolution. The only difference was that these little Red Guards were educated at Harvard, not in the rice fields of home. One of them was screaming at me and spitting all over my face. “Stop licking Western ass. Who do you think you are? Eh? This is Harvard, not some shitty Chinese restaurant where you can spit whatever you want to spit!” Another one spoke in a Beijing accent. “Don’t you love your country? Eh? What kind of image do you want to show the West, eh? Our five thousand years of dignity have been ruined by you!”

There was a commotion in the hall. As I was being pushed and pulled by these plump bullies, students were gathering their belongings, murmuring in excited whispers to each other and leaving the room. I suddenly didn’t care about the humiliation or the farce of the whole situation: I just wished I could have looked out into that sea of unkind faces and seen the only face I wanted to see. I know he would have smiled up at me, listened intently, listened deeply, applauded loudly
.