health and eating more vegetables. I wanted to live in a house facing the ocean and feel the warmth of spring blossom around me. Not that I'd made much effort to achieve this. In fact, I'd done very little, since arriving in Beijing, to make my life more comfortable. I'd just drifted through this painfully crowded city, without finding a place to settle. Maybe I would never get to stand and face the ocean as the warmth of spring blossomed around me. Maybe I should tie myself to a train track on a mountain pass too. Fuck it.
I lay in bed listening to the phone, the tragic story of the poet spinning round my head. Cha-Haisheng was very young when he died – only 25 years old. It was spring, just before the Tiananmen Square demonstration. Perhaps if he hadn't committed suicide, he'd have become a student leader and defied the armed soldiers. Then he'd have died like a true hero.
Anyway, Huizi told me the doctor doing the postmortem found only half an orange in the poet's stomach. Half an orange, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky! That's the only thing the poet ate on the day of his death. Suddenly I felt guilty. I felt my life was like a worm's. No soul. I was a useless person compared with this poet. Useless like all the other useless people in Ginger Hill Village. Lost in my thoughts, I decided I would answer the phone if it rang for another minute. It might be Huizi. But then it occurred to me – Huizi barely called anyone. He didn't get too involved with the details of his friends' lives. He was private, shut tight like a fortress. His short crew-cut and refined manners gave him the air of a Buddhist monk. Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.
I hung on to those words. I depended on them.
I buried myself even further under the covers and could have stayed there another four hours just dreaming and listening to the damn telephone ring, but I forced myself to think logically. Who could it be? 1) Definitely not Huizi. He wasn't a morning person. He didn't believe in doing much before the double-digit hours, and, anyway, I couldn't imagine that, when he did get up, he'd immediately reach for the telephone to have a chat. No, he would sit quietly and slowly savour his first cigarette of the day. 2) Patton? He was out of town. 3) A wrong number? 4) The landlady asking about her rent? 5) The utilities people collecting money for gas or water or electricity or the TV licence? Fuck, the goddamn phone just kept ringing. I threw back the covers, padded naked over to the phone, sat down on the floor and finally answered it.
'Hello? Hello?'
It wasn't my beloved Ben, or volatile Xiaolin, or even Huizi with his thought-provoking philosophies. It was some unknown Third-Rate Director.
'Fenfang, how are you? This is Old Third-Rate Director, but you can just call me Old Third.'
'Ah, hello, Old Third.'
The Chinese Film and Television Bureau has a rigid four-tier classification system for Directors: first-rate, second-rate, third-rate and fourth-rate. But the loss of face that would have to be endured by someone with Fourth-Rate Director printed on their business card meant that I had yet to meet one.
'I've seen your details in the Beijing Film Studio archives, eh, and think you're perfect for my film. Can you come and join us tomorrow, eh? All you have to do is go to the main gate of the Film Studios, eh, and wait with the other extras for a bus...'
Hang on hang on hang on. I dragged the phone closer towards me.
'What do you mean exactly? What role is this, a leading role? Or a number two, or what?'
Old Third said I could decide which of the many female roles I wanted. His film was based on the collective wedding ceremony that had been held in Beijing's Forbidden City in the year 2000; 2,000 couples took part. The film would tell the story of one of these 2,000 couples as they walked up the red carpet together to welcome the dawn of a new era, a new century.
I lay in bed listening to the phone, the tragic story of the poet spinning round my head. Cha-Haisheng was very young when he died – only 25 years old. It was spring, just before the Tiananmen Square demonstration. Perhaps if he hadn't committed suicide, he'd have become a student leader and defied the armed soldiers. Then he'd have died like a true hero.
Anyway, Huizi told me the doctor doing the postmortem found only half an orange in the poet's stomach. Half an orange, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky! That's the only thing the poet ate on the day of his death. Suddenly I felt guilty. I felt my life was like a worm's. No soul. I was a useless person compared with this poet. Useless like all the other useless people in Ginger Hill Village. Lost in my thoughts, I decided I would answer the phone if it rang for another minute. It might be Huizi. But then it occurred to me – Huizi barely called anyone. He didn't get too involved with the details of his friends' lives. He was private, shut tight like a fortress. His short crew-cut and refined manners gave him the air of a Buddhist monk. Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.
I hung on to those words. I depended on them.
I buried myself even further under the covers and could have stayed there another four hours just dreaming and listening to the damn telephone ring, but I forced myself to think logically. Who could it be? 1) Definitely not Huizi. He wasn't a morning person. He didn't believe in doing much before the double-digit hours, and, anyway, I couldn't imagine that, when he did get up, he'd immediately reach for the telephone to have a chat. No, he would sit quietly and slowly savour his first cigarette of the day. 2) Patton? He was out of town. 3) A wrong number? 4) The landlady asking about her rent? 5) The utilities people collecting money for gas or water or electricity or the TV licence? Fuck, the goddamn phone just kept ringing. I threw back the covers, padded naked over to the phone, sat down on the floor and finally answered it.
'Hello? Hello?'
It wasn't my beloved Ben, or volatile Xiaolin, or even Huizi with his thought-provoking philosophies. It was some unknown Third-Rate Director.
'Fenfang, how are you? This is Old Third-Rate Director, but you can just call me Old Third.'
'Ah, hello, Old Third.'
The Chinese Film and Television Bureau has a rigid four-tier classification system for Directors: first-rate, second-rate, third-rate and fourth-rate. But the loss of face that would have to be endured by someone with Fourth-Rate Director printed on their business card meant that I had yet to meet one.
'I've seen your details in the Beijing Film Studio archives, eh, and think you're perfect for my film. Can you come and join us tomorrow, eh? All you have to do is go to the main gate of the Film Studios, eh, and wait with the other extras for a bus...'
Hang on hang on hang on. I dragged the phone closer towards me.
'What do you mean exactly? What role is this, a leading role? Or a number two, or what?'
Old Third said I could decide which of the many female roles I wanted. His film was based on the collective wedding ceremony that had been held in Beijing's Forbidden City in the year 2000; 2,000 couples took part. The film would tell the story of one of these 2,000 couples as they walked up the red carpet together to welcome the dawn of a new era, a new century.
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