The Ghost Shift

Guilin, 1989

Margot grips the armrest tightly as the Southern Airlines flight descends, hardly noticing the green hills and lakes below, the lush countryside so unlike Beijing’s arid heat. She has suffered a terrifying journey in an Antonov turboprop that lumbered into the air in Shenzhen, propellers whining as it bounced westward. Only in the final, floating moments before the wheels bang onto the runway tarmac does she see the beauty of the place.

The airport is lined with fields and as the aging plane shudders toward the low-slung terminal, tooth-shaped limestone hills appear in the window. She pauses on the stairway as the other passengers leave, some staring at her western face, and breathes in the aroma of earth and humidity. This is the China that Margot loves, the one she will soon lose. She hasn’t been outside of Beijing for a long time; it is like stepping into a steam bath that soothes her clenched muscles.

Walking through the terminal, she stiffens again. Two military vehicles are parked by the exit at a bus stop, and a line of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army stands by, rifles held at a diagonal. Their faces are blank under their green peaked caps with the red star encircled in gold braid. Margot avoids their gaze. Those weapons mean death—she had heard muffled sounds of gunshots echoing across Beijing two months earlier, like fireworks in Tiananmen Square. When she ventured out of their compound the next morning, the spring’s excitement had vanished from the faces of passersby. They all kept their heads low, trying to be invisible.

The three-wheeled motorcycle taxi bumps along a potholed highway,
past lines of pencil-trunked trees. As they reach the center of Guilin, bicyclists swarm them. Margot has never felt so lonely, on this journey that may change everything. He hasn’t come, and she doesn’t believe his excuse. It is his way: His was was to fix things and leave the details to others. He requires the freedom to walk away; she has seen him check the exits upon entering an unfamiliar building. Margot forces herself not to mind too much, even to laugh. But now, alone in this city, among three-wheelers piled with people and vegetables and crates of chickens, she feels betrayed.

She catches a glimpse, on one side of a boulevard, of two gilded pagodas in the morning sun, and cranes her neck to look back. The driver doesn’t slow down, speeding past a cluster of bicyclists with a muttered oath of irritation in a dialect she doesn’t understand. They must be close, she thinks, and pulls a clasp mirror from her bag and dusts her cheeks with powder, trying to spruce herself up. In the tiny bobbing circle, her face looks ashen and crumpled, hopeless, and she snaps the mirror shut.

It is farther than she had imagined. They emerge on the other side of the city center and wind through hills before plunging into a district with roads bristling with shacks and workshops. In their ill-lit interiors, stuffed with doors, pipes, and metalwork, men check stacks or haggle over a transaction. Then onward again, past a street market with stallholders squatting in the road and ducks poking their heads through cages to gape at the customers. A school, a playing field, before the houses fall away and they reenter the countryside. The driver swerves up a long dusty track surrounded by watery fields.

“Where are you taking me?” she calls to him in Mandarin. But he does not seem to hear.

Just as she is starting to panic, he turns a final bend, stamps on the brakes, and lights a cigarette. She opens the door and climbs out. They are in the middle of nowhere, the fields stretching to hills and sky on one side—deep, luminous greens and blues, as if she is seeing them through Polaroids. From behind, she hears the high-pitched chatter of children and turns to face a concertina barrier with a sentry hut to one side and a courtyard beyond. Steps lead up to a block-like four-story building—a brutalist place whose builders lacked any
sense of style. Six small children in muddy smocks watch wide-eyed, as if they have never seen anyone like her.

The doors open and a man strides down the stairs, scattering the children with a swat of his hand. He gives them a hard glance and turns to Margot with a broad, fixed smile, acting out a greeting. The expression stays in place as he walks across the yard, a young woman following a pace behind. The man is wearing a Mao tunic, his hair molded on his head as if glued down, making Margot feel even more disheveled. As they reach the barrier, a guard emerges to open it and the man bows to her.