FRAGMENT 23
The Sound of a Pen Scratching Paper
Fragment: The Tiny Breath of a Pen Crossing Paper | Flatulence During the Qigong Craze
Time & Location: Autumn 1982 · China Youth Daily, Beijing
I reported for duty at China Youth Daily.
The compound looked like a miniature government ministry.
Three-story red-brick buildings stood on the left.
An eight-story concrete headquarters faced the entrance.
The courtyard was bare.
Grains of sand rolled across the cement.
Inside every office came the faint breathing sound of pen tips moving across paper.
Telephones never stopped.
Click.
Whirr.
Clatter.
Click.
Whirr.
Clatter.
The rotary dials spun endlessly.
The noise tightened every muscle in my body.
Made my head ache.
Made my vision blur.
Some people even flicked the dial with pencils.
The graphite scraped against plastic.
The sound was pure evil.
A pair of fleshy hands reached toward me.
Warmth performed for effect.
I stood.
The man was three inches shorter than I was.
Chen Dashan.
Thirty years old.
Transferred to the newspaper four years earlier.
A veteran by newsroom standards.
I had heard he had never attended university.
Before joining the paper, he had worked as a forge operator in the Tangshan Iron Works.
I was the top humanities student in Beijing.
A graduate of Renmin University's journalism department.
He worked hard to project humility and goodwill.
I worked hard not to listen to the broken fragments of envy being swallowed deep inside his throat.
After lunch I fell asleep at my desk.
He woke me.
A mountain of wrinkled papers and envelopes landed before me.
Hundreds of readers' letters.
Dozens of articles submitted by local reporters.
All related to the Qigong craze.
The senior editor spoke with solemn authority.
"Bai Ying."
"Read every one of them."
"Carefully."
"Very carefully."
His stomach strained against his shirt.
I could not help laughing.
Beneath that fabric, biochemical warfare was already underway.
The rumbling grew louder by the second.
"Editor Chen."
"You had a good lunch, didn't you?"
"You little bastard. Get to work."
"University graduates love showing off."
"Uh..."
"Uh..."
Pff.
Pff.
A foul smell erupted.
I grabbed the papers and fled.
Back then, reporters and editors often joked about the nationwide Qigong fever.
The most memorable line was this:
"Hundreds of people gathered together."
"Either they're inhaling in unison..."
"Or secretly farting."
It took me forever to finish reading the material.
When I returned it to Chen Dashan, he pulled me along to meet a woman in her thirties.
Not tall.
Large eyes.
Large breasts.
A Zhongshan suit tailored with unusual care.
Perfect Mandarin.
"This is Sister Rong."
"Our department director."
Sister Rong was efficient.
Within minutes she had explained everything.
I immediately understood what my job would be.
"Bai Ying..."
"You have a good voice."
She smiled and walked us to the door.
Standing in the corridor, I replayed her final sentence.
There was something smooth about it.
Something slightly sticky.
Yet I could not quite hear the meaning beneath it.
Over the following weeks I rode my bicycle through every corner of Beijing.
The editorial department supplied clues.
I followed them.
At each location I stayed only a few minutes.
I showed my press card.
Stood quietly.
Listened.
I rarely even opened my eyes.
Then I left.
Every qigong master sounded different.
Every organizer used different words.
Every gathering had its own rhythm.
Yet I was certain of one thing.
Not a single sentence was true.
I could not hear that smooth, stable frequency which accompanies truth.
Not once.
Perhaps lives sustained by so-called ideals and beliefs always sounded false to me.
Most people were terrible performers anyway.
Their singing never stayed in tune.
I wandered through the primitive fields of energy shared by birds and humans.
Sound fields.
Magnetic fields.
Invisible currents.
The background noise of humanity could be muted whenever I wished.
Why waste too much attention on charlatans and their followers?
My mind drifted.
The bicycle slammed into a willow tree.
I flew over the handlebars.
Landed hard.
And burst out laughing.
The final stop was Guozijian Street near Yonghe Temple.
Before I even entered the courtyard, Gao Yong was already bubbling inside.
His passionate voice overflowing the walls.
FRAGMENT 24
The Sticky Question Mark
Fragment: Slightly Hollow Breathing from the Lungs | A Lion Trapped Inside the Throat
Time & Location: Summer 1983 · Guozijian, Beijing | Beijing–Shanghai Railway
The arrogant frequency that lived deep inside Gao Yong's nervous system still sent a chill through my spine.
“Heh-heh."
After graduation, Gao Yong had been assigned to one of those institutions responsible for regulating thought and language.
Now he stood on a stone staircase as a division chief, accompanying several elderly scientists whose hair had already turned white.
He wore a carefully tailored navy Zhongshan suit.
The collar button was fastened perfectly.
A narrow strip of white shirt showed beneath the jacket.
Behind a row of cypresses stood a wooden sign painted in red characters on a white background:
Institute of Human Science.
From a distance, I heard the slightly hollow breathing in Gao Yong's lungs as he whispered to an old man.
"Professor Qian has already expressed his support."
"This may be the key we've been looking for."
"The key to the future."
The old man leaned away from Gao Yong's breath and nodded.
Heh-heh.
There he was again.
Smiling.
Behind the expression of sincerity hid a physiological pleasure derived from playing with other people's intelligence.
"You're coming to Shanghai with me."
Sister Rong did not sound as though discussion was possible.
We boarded a green train packed with passengers.
She showed her green press credential.
Within minutes she had persuaded the conductor to find us space in a hard-sleeper carriage.
Bodies pressed against bodies.
The sounds of digestion and immunity rose and fell around us.
Very little of the irritability that originated from the reproductive system.
At dusk the train raced south along the Beijing–Shanghai Railway.
Villages.
Wheat fields.
Scattered trees.
All slipped past the window.
I occupied the upper bunk.
Sleepy.
Half dreaming.
Below me, Sister Rong softly hummed Bengawan Solo.
The melody flowed upward.
The voice of a young girl.
The rhythm of a mature woman.
They traveled through my body and gathered in my lower half.
On the journey back to Beijing, we rode the same train.
The same hard-sleeper carriage.
The moment we boarded that morning, before I had even climbed into my bunk, she placed a copy of Three Hundred Foreign Folk Songs on the small folding table by the window.
"Sing a few for me."
Her large eyes blinked.
A sticky question mark.
One button on her blouse had pulled slightly apart.
We sang from the songbook.
One song after another.
Until the lights in the carriage finally went out.
She suddenly wrapped her arms around me.
Her lips brushed my cheek.
Then my mouth.
My breathing stumbled.
So did hers.
Something inside my throat was struggling to break free.
A lion.
Just as it was about to roar, she covered my mouth with her hand.
She held me tighter.
Her breathing lost its rhythm.
The tone in her throat dropped lower.
Her fingertips lingered where they had stopped.
Softly.
Lightly.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
FRAGMENT 25
The Sound of Swallowing
Fragment: Carefully Choreographed Vibrato | Waves of Almost Mournful Peristalsis
Time & Location: Autumn 1984 · China Youth Daily, Beijing | Huaxi Mountains, Guizhou
The office next to mine belonged to the Political News Department.The deputy editor was reporting on the latest developments in official propaganda.
His voice carried an excessively restrained low-frequency resonance.
Every tremor had been carefully arranged.
He wrapped opportunism in the language of brightness and conviction.
Across from him, the editor-in-chief listened with a gentle expression.
A long breath of relief escaped his chest.
Followed by an even faker laugh.
The city was full of lip-syncing and counterfeit smiles.
Even China Youth Daily, still known for daring to tell the truth, had begun manufacturing false news and false commentary.
Every day, we distributed political dopamine.
Sister Rong became determined to turn me into a singer.
She paid out of her own pocket to hire one of the country's finest vocal instructors, who began teaching me how to breathe, place a tone, and project a voice according to the traditions of Western classical singing.
The discipline was undeniably beautiful.
Within a short time, my high notes could travel from the twentieth floor of a building all the way down to the ground below.
Sister Rong would stand there, head tilted upward, eyes shining with tears of joy as she listened.
In her apartment, beside the piano, I stood awkwardly like a wooden post, singing exactly as instructed.
She accompanied me with complete concentration, striking the keys with a passion that seemed to consume her.
The loose robe she wore revealed flashes of bare skin as she leaned into the music, oblivious to everything except the melody.
The music itself was intoxicating.
It stirred desire in me.
Yet just as that desire began to awaken, it vanished.
Not because of the atmosphere created by the music.
Not because of the tenderness in her eyes.
Not because of her patience, her warmth, or the intimacy of those evenings.
It was because I could not silence the sounds that ordinary people never heard.
While others lost themselves in melody, I heard blood moving through arteries, distant machinery vibrating through concrete, hidden frequencies buried beneath every note. The world refused to become music. It remained noise.
I could not endure the humiliation.
So I walked away.
Without hesitation, I abandoned what might have become a career on the concert stage.
The vocal instructor considered it a tragedy.
She later told Sister Rong that my voice reminded her of Plácido Domingo, but carried an additional low-frequency resonance unlike anything she had ever encountered.
"If he enters the profession," she said, "he'll be extraordinary.”
Neither of them ever understood.
I hated performing.
Out of pity, Sister Rong sent me away from political whirlpools.
My next assignment took me to distant Guizhou.
To write a story suitable for publication.
A story about farmers.
Three days and three nights by train.
A full day by bus.
Several more kilometers on foot.
Alone, I arrived at an impoverished mountain village in Huaxi.
"Reporter Bai."
I always liked hearing villagers and local officials call me that.
"Could you stay at my house tonight?"
The village Youth League secretary, Xiao Huang, asked timidly.
His voice carried the hollow low pressure of a body deprived of fat.
I could even hear the friction inside his frame.
"Of course."
"Where will I sleep?"
The house had walls.
Barely.
Wind entered from every direction.
It looked like countless homes scattered through the mountains of Guizhou.
A dozen mice conducted guerrilla operations across the room.
Three battered pieces of furniture stood inside.
The bedding piled beside the bed had turned black with age and grease.
Xiao Huang and I talked from morning until dawn.
Twenty-two hours.
Two notebooks filled.
My fingers cramped from writing.
At last I asked what I thought was a vivid question.
"What is the happiest thing young people here experience each month?"
He nudged a mouse with his foot.
Even his yawn seemed exhausted.
"Happiness?"
"Going down the mountain for market day."
"Eating a bowl of bean pork."
My aunt was a professor of parasitology.
She once told me that pork infected with cysticerci was a terrifying poison.
The parasites loved entering the human brain.
They could cause dementia.
Epilepsy.
Even schizophrenia.
Such meat was commonly known as bean pork.
Curious, I asked Xiao Huang to take me there.
A group of young villagers sat before a row of chipped porcelain bowls.
Their eyes never left the food.
Their fingers gripped oily chopsticks.
I listened.
Throats rose and fell rapidly.
Hungrily.
Chunks of parasite-ridden meat disappeared within seconds.
Dragged downward by violent swallowing.
Then came the sounds from below.
Wave after wave of movement.
Almost mournful.
Peristalsis.
The bowls emptied.
The young men wiped their mouths.
Then licked the remaining grease from the backs of their hands.
My legs began to tremble.
Everything I had planned to write about exposing the truth suddenly collapsed.
Into a pile of mouse droppings.
My throat felt full of sand.
"How much does one bowl cost?"
I asked.
"Ten cents."
Xiao Huang's voice was hoarse.
His heartbeat was so steady that it frightened me.
Suddenly everything turned white.
I nearly fell.
FRAGMENT 26
The Equation of Truth
Fragment: Carefully Choreographed Vibrato | Waves of Almost Mournful Peristalsis
Time & Location: Autumn 1984 · China Youth Daily, Beijing | Huaxi Mountains, Guizhou
The office next to mine belonged to the Political News Department.The deputy editor was reporting on the latest developments in official propaganda.
His voice carried an excessively restrained low-frequency resonance.
Every tremor had been carefully arranged.
He wrapped opportunism in the language of brightness and conviction.
Across from him, the editor-in-chief listened with a gentle expression.
A long breath of relief escaped his chest.
Followed by an even faker laugh.
The city was full of lip-syncing and counterfeit smiles.
Even China Youth Daily, still known for daring to tell the truth, had begun manufacturing false news and false commentary.
Every day, we distributed political dopamine.
Sister Rong became determined to turn me into a singer.
She paid out of her own pocket to hire one of the country's finest vocal instructors, who began teaching me how to breathe, place a tone, and project a voice according to the traditions of Western classical singing.
The discipline was undeniably beautiful.
Within a short time, my high notes could travel from the twentieth floor of a building all the way down to the ground below.
Sister Rong would stand there, head tilted upward, eyes shining with tears of joy as she listened.
In her apartment, beside the piano, I stood awkwardly like a wooden post, singing exactly as instructed.
She accompanied me with complete concentration, striking the keys with a passion that seemed to consume her.
The loose robe she wore revealed flashes of bare skin as she leaned into the music, oblivious to everything except the melody.
The music itself was intoxicating.
It stirred desire in me.
Yet just as that desire began to awaken, it vanished.
Not because of the atmosphere created by the music.
Not because of the tenderness in her eyes.
Not because of her patience, her warmth, or the intimacy of those evenings.
It was because I could not silence the sounds that ordinary people never heard.
While others lost themselves in melody, I heard blood moving through arteries, distant machinery vibrating through concrete, hidden frequencies buried beneath every note. The world refused to become music. It remained noise.
I could not endure the humiliation.
So I walked away.
Without hesitation, I abandoned what might have become a career on the concert stage.
The vocal instructor considered it a tragedy.
She later told Sister Rong that my voice reminded her of Plácido Domingo, but carried an additional low-frequency resonance unlike anything she had ever encountered.
"If he enters the profession," she said, "he'll be extraordinary.”
Neither of them ever understood.
I hated performing.
Out of pity, Sister Rong sent me away from political whirlpools.
My next assignment took me to distant Guizhou.
To write a story suitable for publication.
A story about farmers.
Three days and three nights by train.
A full day by bus.
Several more kilometers on foot.
Alone, I arrived at an impoverished mountain village in Huaxi.
"Reporter Bai."
I always liked hearing villagers and local officials call me that.
"Could you stay at my house tonight?"
The village Youth League secretary, Xiao Huang, asked timidly.
His voice carried the hollow low pressure of a body deprived of fat.
I could even hear the friction inside his frame.
"Of course."
"Where will I sleep?"
The house had walls.
Barely.
Wind entered from every direction.
It looked like countless homes scattered through the mountains of Guizhou.
A dozen mice conducted guerrilla operations across the room.
Three battered pieces of furniture stood inside.
The bedding piled beside the bed had turned black with age and grease.
Xiao Huang and I talked from morning until dawn.
Twenty-two hours.
Two notebooks filled.
My fingers cramped from writing.
At last I asked what I thought was a vivid question.
"What is the happiest thing young people here experience each month?"
He nudged a mouse with his foot.
Even his yawn seemed exhausted.
"Happiness?"
"Going down the mountain for market day."
"Eating a bowl of bean pork."
My aunt was a professor of parasitology.
She once told me that pork infected with cysticerci was a terrifying poison.
The parasites loved entering the human brain.
They could cause dementia.
Epilepsy.
Even schizophrenia.
Such meat was commonly known as bean pork.
Curious, I asked Xiao Huang to take me there.
A group of young villagers sat before a row of chipped porcelain bowls.
Their eyes never left the food.
Their fingers gripped oily chopsticks.
I listened.
Throats rose and fell rapidly.
Hungrily.
Chunks of parasite-ridden meat disappeared within seconds.
Dragged downward by violent swallowing.
Then came the sounds from below.
Wave after wave of movement.
Almost mournful.
Peristalsis.
The bowls emptied.
The young men wiped their mouths.
Then licked the remaining grease from the backs of their hands.
My legs began to tremble.
Everything I had planned to write about exposing the truth suddenly collapsed.
Into a pile of mouse droppings.
My throat felt full of sand.
"How much does one bowl cost?"
I asked.
"Ten cents."
Xiao Huang's voice was hoarse.
His heartbeat was so steady that it frightened me.
Suddenly everything turned white.
I nearly fell.
