FRAGMENT 35
A Bamboo Grove Full of Blades
Fragment: A Muddy Tide Churning Inside the Chest | Love Song 1990 | Roughness with a Hint of Cracked Dryness
Time & Location: Spring 1990 · China Youth Daily | "Bamboo Garden," Old Drum Tower Street, Beijing
New Year's Eve.
The fifteenth day after my release.
The third day after Father's death.
Secretary Wang called me into her office.
That oversized face looked unusually pale.
A thin sheen of sweat covered her forehead.
The heating inside Beijing buildings could be excessive in early spring.
Still, I was thirty years younger than she was.
I felt perfectly fine.
She smiled.
A practiced smile.
Steady.
As if controlled by a switch.
Yet inside her flattened chest, I could hear a muddy tide rolling back and forth.
As one of Father's former subordinates, she would never have risen so high without loyalty.
"Comrade Bai Ying."
The opening phrase established her position immediately.
Official business.
Nothing personal.
After all, my father would never hear any of this.
She spoke only three sentences.
"The Party Committee has decided that you cannot remain at the newspaper."
"I understand."
Although Father had brought me out of detention, nothing unfavorable had been removed from my file.
No one dared alter the political conclusion attached to that event.
"We'll give you three months."
"Then you must leave."
"I'll leave immediately."
The answer surprised even her.
"There will be no subsidy."
"No transfer to another government position."
In other words:
Find your own way.
"Fine."
I stood.
Took one final look at that enormous face.
It was so large it resembled a doll's mask attached to a neck.
That evening I walked through the city with my hands tucked into my sleeves.
Groups of armed soldiers patrolled the streets.
Ghostlike.
Expressionless.
The thick rubber soles of their boots struck the pavement with deliberate force.
An announcement of violence.
Young men standing in doorways hummed Luo Dayou's Love Song 1990.
Rubbing their hands together.
Stamping their feet against the bitter cold.
A friend guaranteed a loan for me.
One hundred thousand yuan.
Low interest.
I decided to start a business.
For weeks I studied the regulations governing private companies.
Every restriction.
Every prohibition.
Eventually I reached a simple conclusion.
The only thing I could legally sell was my brain.
I chose a name:
Superpower Consulting Company.
Even registering the company became a lesson in obedience.
A designated legal representative.
A bank account.
A fixed number of employees.
Most importantly:
A lease agreement proving the existence of an office.
At a corner along Old Drum Tower Street, I found a place called Bamboo Garden.
The former residence of Kang Sheng.
The bamboo inside the courtyard was gray-green.
Its leaves tipped with dry yellow edges.
Under the northern wind they produced a brittle rustling.
Sha—
Sha—
The place felt sinister.
The architecture distorted the natural movement of air.
The wind twisted through the bamboo grove.
Thousands of invisible blades seemed to be slicing against one another.
Two side rooms in the front courtyard became my office.
Ran Jun arrived for her first day of work.
Walking with a bouncing step.
The moment she spoke, I froze.
Her voice carried undisguised wildness.
Rough.
Dry at the edges.
Dangerously attractive.
The sound struck me head-on.
Her eyes resembled those of a large cat.
Patient.
Evaluating.
They moved slowly over me.
"What are you looking at?"
I carefully controlled my own voice.
Trying to conceal the desire that was quietly approaching.
"President Bai..."
She stretched out the last syllable.
Twisted her hips.
Sat down directly across from me.
"Being able to work for such a handsome boss makes me very happy."
She paused.
"Oh."
"Wrong word."
"It's an honor."
I knew she had worked in both state-owned and private enterprises.
At that time, experience like hers was valuable.
I was right.
The initial registration.
The paperwork.
The business structure.
The corporate image.
Ran Jun handled almost everything.
Then she arranged something else.
A courtyard residence outside Xizhimen.
Her own home.
A bed neatly made.
Almost obsessively neat.
Beside the pillow sat dolls.
Small trinkets.
Cosmetics.
The possessions of a teenage girl.
Arranged around the sleeping place of a grown woman.
FRAGMENT 36
A Conduction Medium
Fragment: The Restart of Long-Distance Hearing | A Breathing Pattern Both Aged and Authoritative
Time & Location: Summer 1990 · Bamboo Garden, Beijing
I removed my dark glasses.
A haze drifted before my eyes.
For a moment, it seemed as though Grandma Yang were lying upon it.
It was Ran Jun holding me.
Holding me tighter and tighter.
Until we fell together onto the bed.
The bedsheet was whiter than a woman's skin.
Almost luminous.
Waiting for Ran Jun's uninhibited cries.
The courtyard compound was extraordinarily quiet.
Dozens of ears had quietly perked up.
The White Crow, dormant for far too long, began to stir.
Breathing heavily, I lay on top of her.
Then suddenly realized something.
My long-distance hearing was returning.
And a woman's body could serve as a conduction medium.
Far away, I heard a familiar sound.
A cold little laugh.
"Heh-heh."
The man Father had mentioned shortly before his death.
I had heard that Gao Yong had already risen to bureau-level rank.
A political star among the Classes of '77 and '78 at Renmin University.
More details arrived.
His voice alternated with another.
An old voice.
Ancient.
Fragile.
The sounds were so faint that I had to press my ear firmly against Ran Jun's collarbone to hear them.
The softness of her body.
The intensity of my concentration.
Together they confirmed something.
The source was inside Bamboo Garden.
The inner compound.
Ran Jun's legs shifted beneath me.
I immediately sat upright.
Pulled on my clothes in a hurry.
"Darling."
She frowned.
The corners of her mouth drooped.
Like a displeased government cadre.
"That's not very gentlemanly."
"Where I come from, we'd call that heartless."
"Get up."
I grabbed my coat.
"We're going back to Bamboo Garden."
The inner compound had always fascinated me.
A sign hung at the entrance:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
An armed guard in a military overcoat flipped through a registration ledger.
His fingertips produced a strangely cold friction against the paper.
I pulled Ran Jun along.
Into the narrow brick pathway between the bamboo groves.
The buildings were old.
Filled with the smell of decaying wood.
After only a few steps, a breathing pattern emerged from behind a row of carved wooden windows.
Extremely old.
Yet somehow still authoritative.
Gao Yong's father.
The old man who, according to rumor, had already survived two emergency resuscitations.
Recently relocated from Compound No. 7.
Beneath the veranda of the main hall, I gently placed my hand against a massive red-lacquered pillar.
Medium coupling.
Boom—
The pain arrived instantly.
Without warning.
My eyes erupted in agony.
The world filled with afterimages of bamboo leaves.
And floating red stains.
Inside the main hall, Gao Yong was speaking in a lowered voice.
Between tiny swallowing sounds, he was persuading his father.
"Dad."
"If this steel allocation gets approved, we can revive the project in Haikou."
"Then it won't just be about money."
"It'll become the foundation of everything our family does for decades."
A voice answered.
Like a broken bellows.
"Son..."
"Cough... cough..."
"Remember this."
"The roots of these bamboo plants are connected."
"Cough..."
"I've already made arrangements."
Gao Yong's fingernail tapped lightly against a rosewood tabletop.
A crisp echo.
It passed through the silent bamboo grove.
Carrying hidden currents of money.
The bamboo suddenly erupted into violent friction.
As if ten thousand green snakes were crawling through the darkness.
Something vast.
Sticky.
Cold.
Belonging to another era.
It traveled through the red-lacquered pillar.
Into my fingertips.
Straight into my spine.
I jerked my hand away.
Gasping for air.
A warm liquid rushed from my nose.
Heavy with the taste of iron.
"President Bai?"
Ran Jun grabbed my arm.
"What's wrong?"
I quickly put my dark glasses back on.
Hiding eyes that had begun to bleed.
Then forced out a dull, accommodating smile.
"Nothing."
"I've never seen so much bamboo."
"It stunned me."
I grabbed her warm, soft hand.
Covered my nose with the other.
And lowered my head as we left the inner compound.
Returning to the office.
Behind us, the bamboo grove remained.
Yellow-green.
Cold.
Sinister.
Still whispering:
Sha—
Sha—
What an eerie place.
FRAGMENT 37
Help
Fragment: Happiness Swallowed Through the Throat | Leather Shoes Striking a Perfectly Measured Rhythm
Time & Location: Spring 1992 · Bamboo Garden | KFC, Tongzhou District, Beijing
I spent most of my time trying to avoid Gao Yong.
After a year of exhausting effort, Ran Jun and I had not secured a single contract.
One afternoon, I secretly opened the accounting ledger.
Just over one hundred yuan remained.
Next month's salary could not be paid.
Not even Ran Jun's.
I felt guilty.
"Someone's here to see you."
Ran Jun's low voice drifted in with the warm air from the courtyard.
I had been expecting him.
Years earlier, Yuan Qing had been studying at a junior college in Tongzhou.
A young man from Wenzhou.
After a failed romance, he had decided to end his life.
Then, by chance, he read one of my articles.
Immediately afterward, he wrote me a letter.
The title was simple:
My Last Letter.
There was no anger toward the woman.
No accusation.
Only disgust with life itself.
The letter barely contained a single coherent argument.
What happened next was strange.
Within a single day, the letter passed through the postal system, the newspaper's mailroom, the reader correspondence department, and the department director's desk.
Then it arrived in my hands.
I happened to be free that afternoon.
I opened it.
Read several paragraphs.
Then immediately grabbed the telephone.
That same day, I traveled to his school.
Invited him to lunch.
He was exactly twenty years old.
It was his first time inside a KFC.
The restaurant was bright.
Clean.
Almost foreign.
I ordered:
Ten pieces of Original Recipe chicken.
Two servings of French fries.
Two mashed potatoes.
Two Coca-Colas.
The bill came to eighty yuan.
Listening to the happiness he swallowed through his throat, I became certain of one thing.
That meal had saved a life.
Now he had come to repay the favor.
During our conversation, Yuan Qing quickly discovered the state of my company.
Within minutes, he picked up the phone.
Called an old classmate.
The classmate had recently become head of finance at a major state-owned enterprise.
Together they devised a solution.
A two-million-yuan advertising budget.
The money had originally been assigned to a state advertising agency.
Now they intended to redirect it to my company.
The arrangement was nearly perfect.
The contract was ready.
The funds were ready.
Only one day remained before signing.
Then Ran Jun told Gao Yong.
A mistake.
Or perhaps not.
Either way, the news reached him.
Tap.
Tap.
A pair of brand-new leather shoes approached my office.
The footsteps were balanced.
Measured.
Confident.
Then they stopped outside the door.
"President Bai."
"It's Gao Yong."
"Heh-heh."
I deliberately remained silent.
Only for a few seconds.
Just enough time to calculate the value of the opportunity suddenly standing outside my door.
"Oh?"
"Director Gao."
"What an honor."
"Please come in."
I knew I was smiling.
The smile probably looked natural.
After all, Gao Yong was an ordinary man.
No ordinary man could hear the deeply buried contempt hidden inside my voice.
By then he had already left the Central Propaganda Department.
Transferred to the Central Organization Department.
A bureau responsible for overseeing major state-owned enterprises.
FRAGMENT 38
The Spectrum of Extortion
Fragment: A Frequency Struggling to Resist | Low Frequencies Generated by the Flow of Money
Time & Location: Spring 1992 · Bamboo Garden, Beijing
He sat down methodically.
His head resembled a millstone.
Turning slowly.
His narrowed eyes swept across the room.
Then stopped behind me.
"Ah."
"Very scholarly."
A bookshelf stood there.
More than a hundred books piled without order.
"Got a cigarette?”
"I thought you didn't smoke."
"Old friends reunited."
"My emotions are difficult to control."
"Heh-heh."
I almost laughed.
His performance of political composure had become fairly convincing.
Five or six parts out of ten.
Yet the nervousness remained impossible to conceal.
A frequency of resistance kept appearing.
In his fingertips.
In his throat.
In the friction of his knee joints.
"I hear you've landed a big contract."
After considerable effort, he finally exhaled a smoke ring.
The second one collapsed.
The third scattered even faster.
The conversation lasted half an hour.
A perfectly arranged chain of logic.
One airtight argument after another.
His narrow face gradually turned red.
A fleck of white foam gathered at the corner of his mouth.
Finally he stood.
Patted my shoulder.
His expression became solemn.
"Brother."
"We grew up together."
"Let's settle it this way."
He took his share.
Fifty percent.
Half of everything I would earn.
A harvest obtained through the leverage of power.
Oddly enough, I did not feel defeated.
Mathematical formulas flashed through my head.
One after another.
Remove emotion.
Remove expectation.
Remove the highest risk.
Remove the lowest return.
The answer seemed obvious.
What I lost today would inevitably become greater gains tomorrow.
I opened the door.
Stepped aside.
Extended my hand.
Escorting him out.
Then—
The turntable jammed.
A brief smacking of lips.
One click of dissatisfaction.
I heard it perfectly.
The two-million-yuan check lay on my desk.
I pressed a finger against the paper.
Moved it gently across the surface.
The friction generated waves of low-frequency vibration.
The sound was deeply comforting.
Ever since falling into the ocean of money, my eyesight seemed to have improved.
Without my glasses, I could read more and more words.
Especially numbers.
Especially numbers connected to money.
Without my dark glasses, the world no longer dissolved into white light at dusk.
The White Crow was sleeping peacefully.
Not pretending.
Not hiding.
Not playing dead.
Simply unnecessary.
I dismissed Ran Jun.
My explanation was direct.
"I was betrayed."
"The losses were substantial."
She cried.
Screamed.
Made a scene in the office.
At her place, I could never stay.
At mine, I could never bring her.
From the very beginning, I had never intended to tell her my deepest secret.
Father's lesson—
Keep yourself secret.
I used it on her.
Gao Yong happened to be traveling out of town.
No one remained to protect her.
I placed twenty thousand yuan into an envelope.
More than a year's salary.
Then I walked toward her.
Attempting to help her up.
Whoosh.
She snatched the envelope from my hand.
Rose to her feet.
Turned around.
And slammed through the door.
