FRAGMENT 19
The Soundscape of Crossing a Border
Fragment: Barbed Wire Tearing Through Flesh | Leeches Covering My Face and Body
Time & Location: Summer 2022 · Alumni Chat Group | Yunnan Borderlands
After returning from the volleyball court to my apartment in Chegongzhuang, I immediately offered a reward of one thousand U.S. dollars in the alumni group, hoping to find Rowan.
An entire night passed.
All I collected were fragments.
She had lived with a Moroccan man in Paris.
She might own a modeling agency.
She might have converted to Islam.
She returned to China from time to time.
But every trail pointed toward the same fact:
she had never divorced Gao Yong, who was now serving a prison sentence in Qincheng.
No one could produce a recent photograph.
I split the reward into dozens of small red packets and scattered them through the group.
The result was a burst of cheers.
And a flood of jokes accusing me of behaving disgracefully for a man my age.
A few days later, I quietly checked into a small hotel in a border town in Yunnan.
Night had fallen completely.
A motorcycle carried me through the darkness.
Its exhaust sounded like applause from the Statue of Liberty.
We passed checkpoint after checkpoint and eventually arrived beneath a mountain as black as forged iron.
After climbing more than a thousand meters, I collapsed onto the ground.
Ahead of me stretched a barbed-wire fence running along the border.
Insects sang from every direction.
The barbs reflected cold moonlight.
The silence of the human world felt terrifying.
Without warmth.
Without mercy.
I heard the two villagers whispering.
They complained that I was too tall.
Too heavy.
That the smuggler was paying them too little.
I was exhausted.
There was no way back.
I pulled out the last two thousand yuan I carried and handed it to them in the dark.
They lifted me.
Then pushed me through a hole that had already been cut into the fence.
The barbs sliced through the synthetic fabric first.
Rows of fibers snapped apart.
Sharp.
High-pitched.
Then came my thigh.
The flesh split open.
Rrrrip.
Rrrrip.
The sound was so horrifying that I lost all control of my body.
Thud.
My shoulder struck foreign soil before the rest of me.
I clenched my teeth.
Controlled my breathing.
The same way I had done years earlier inside a prison cell reserved for violent criminals.
"Move."
One of the villagers growled.
The frequency was so low it seemed to rise from hell itself.
They lifted me again.
Like a log.
Step by step, they carried me downhill.
My feet slipped constantly.
Several times I nearly disappeared into the silent abyss beside the trail.
My ears filled with sounds.
Insects crawling.
Insects flying.
Drops of water rolling along leaves.
Bones and organs struggling against one another inside the villagers' bodies.
When we finally reached safety, I collapsed onto a rock and lost consciousness.
A shaft of morning sunlight woke me.
My face was covered with leeches.
My body was covered with leeches.
They had buried themselves into my flesh and were drinking my blood.
As I peeled them away one by one, I felt something strange.
The devil was not the leeches.
The devil was my will.
Or at least, whatever drove me forward was no longer entirely human.
After removing them all, pain flooded back into my leg.
My hand came away black-red with blood.
The bone was intact.
Only flesh had been torn.
Yet I still could not stand.
My throat was so dry I could not speak.
I reached toward the grass and wiped dew onto my lips.
One of the villagers handed me a dry branch.
I froze.
Its shape resembled a wooden toothbrush.
Without thinking, I recoiled.
FRAGMENT 20
A Toothbrush
Fragment: Bone and Plastic Were Trying to Destroy Each Other
Time & Location: Winter 1989 · Fourth Ring Road Detention Center, Beijing
Heh-heh. Tough journalist, aren't you?
The cell boss shook his small head and glanced behind me.
Before I was thrown into that cell of barely a dozen square meters, I had already lost my hearing.
I had also lost my hearing aid.
Several large men rushed forward and pinned down my legs and right arm.
Someone grabbed my left hand and forced apart my middle and ring fingers.
A toothbrush was shoved into the gap.
Twisting.
Then accelerating violently.
The toothbrush jammed deep between the fingers.
The joints emitted a series of creaks, like a rusted hinge being forced open.
Bone and plastic were trying to destroy each other.
I stared at the mold stains on the ceiling.
I nearly bit through my back teeth.
My entire body trembled.
In my ears remained only that raw grinding sound produced by extreme pressure.
Again.
And again.
I could hear the bones reaching their limit.
Like dry branches on the verge of snapping.
The air froze.
Everyone was waiting for the crack.
I refused to make a sound.
My body drew tight like a crazed bow.
"Stop! Stop!"
The cell boss suddenly stood up.
Buzz.
A dull concussion split the sky.
My hearing returned.
"Oh my. The journalist really is tough. Nobody stays quiet when we use this thing."
The cell boss pinched his voice into an ingratiating tone.
He even stroked my bleeding hand.
Then he launched into one of his favorite subjects:
himself.
He had eight murders on his record.
Recently transferred back from Xinjiang.
Soon enough, he would face a firing squad.
That very night, I learned the backgrounds of the other sixteen men in the cell.
The least serious offense belonged to a man who had photographed nude women.
"Hooliganism."
Life imprisonment.
The others were murderers.
Or armed robbers.
Yet these devils showed me an inexplicable friendliness.
Especially when the conversation turned to my defiance of authority.
They never seemed to tire of it.
I had no idea when I would regain my freedom.
So I began learning how to survive among them.
With my hearing fully restored, I played the mystic.
The madman.
The fortune-teller.
Before long, I held the psychological advantage.
The man imprisoned for nude photography seemed unconvinced.
He wandered over.
"The journalist's voice sounds pretty good," he said.
"You sing?"
Before the sentence was finished, the hard leather sole of his three-section dress shoe was already grinding down on my fingers.
Laughter erupted around the cell.
Buzz——
The khoomei rising from inside me suddenly vibrated.
Crash.
Clatter.
Bang.
Objects throughout the room toppled over or fell to the floor.
Everyone fell silent.
Even their breathing became controlled.
FRAGMENT 21
Shockwave
Fragment: Khoomei Vibrations | The Thunder of Every Bump in the Road | March of the Volunteers
Time & Location: Winter 1989 · Fourth Ring Road Detention Center, Beijing | Summer 2022 · Yunnan Borderlands | Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
A few days earlier, on a winter morning in 1989, I had just arrived at the newspaper office when a squad of soldiers dragged me from my desk and delivered me to a detention center for violent offenders near Beijing's Fourth Ring Road.
Several slaps knocked my hearing aid to the floor.
The soldiers left.
A veteran policeman took over.
"What was that noise? Huh?"
The old policeman rushed over.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody looked at me.
His leather shoes trembled constantly against the concrete floor.
It was this same old man who interrogated me on my first day.
Before I could say a word, he picked up a file and began listing my crimes.
"Bai Ying. Male. Thirty years old. Native of Beijing."
"Well? Is that right? Speak, damn it!”
His eyes resembled those of a hanging ghost.
Green light seemed to leak from them.
He continued reading.
I could not hear a thing.
No doubt the usual charges:
organizing illegal demonstrations;
delivering reactionary speeches to martial-law troops;
publishing counterrevolutionary articles in newspapers.
The final accusation was especially bizarre.
Apparently, I was also suspected of drugging and raping a Tibetan female journalist.
After changing into prison clothing and being photographed, I was shoved into a low-ceilinged cell.
Before leaving, the old policeman gave the inmates a look.
They understood immediately.
A gang of criminals rushed forward.
My head was shoved into the toilet.
The blows came down like a collapsing mine shaft.
The day martial law was lifted in Beijing, I heard the old policeman calling my name.
His voice floated through the corridor.
"Bai Ying!"
"Present!"
By then, I had already learned the proper way for prisoners to answer.
"Well, well, Journalist Bai.
Get out here.
Your old chief has come to pick you up.
Pack your things."
Father handed me a pair of dark glasses.
And a hearing aid imported from Japan.
Then he gently patted my back.
"Get in the car."
"We can't afford any more delays.
We have to keep moving."
The villager had already urged me several times.
I picked up the branch, slightly thicker than a toothbrush, and continued downhill.
The mountains of Phongsaly stretched endlessly before me.
Streams cut through the valleys.
Behind me remained traces of blood.
And footprints.
My legs suddenly gave way.
I fell hard.
The sharp edge of a rock drove upward into me.
The pain was unbearable.
I reached back.
My hand came away covered in blood and excrement.
The first stage of the journey ended on the back seat of a Honda motorcycle.
The wound near my anus began to burn with unbearable pain.
The motorcycle bounced along broken mountain roads.
Every impact exploded through my body.
For two hours, each bump was a nightmare.
The second stage placed me in the narrow gap behind the driver of a cargo van.
I waited for hours before I found a chance to clean myself.
The third stage unfolded inside the trunk of a Toyota SUV.
Four hours.
The friction between tires, asphalt, and concrete became a high-frequency vibration that sounded like an execution order.
Checkpoint after checkpoint fell behind us.
Eventually, we reached Luang Prabang.
There I met the brother who had arranged my escape.
I ate eggs fried with chili peppers.
And drank Coca-Cola.
Two weeks later, I checked into Marina Bay Sands.
The room cost more than eight hundred U.S. dollars a night.
I was happy.
I was no longer the doll bullied in a mountain village.
No longer the timid student who had lost his first love.
No longer an ordinary citizen trapped beneath the power of political bosses.
My Citibank account still held plenty of U.S. dollars.
The bed beneath me was larger than the wooden platform where eighteen prisoners once slept together.
I spread my arms.
Spread my legs.
Forming the shape of a Chinese character.
Without realizing it, I began humming:
"Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves..."
Space feels different when it belongs to freedom.
Freedom is never cramped.
FRAGMENT 22
The Female Go Player's Probe
Fragment: Metal Grinding Against Gravel | "Could We Stop Eating Dog Meat?"
Time & Location: Summer 2022 · John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York | Autumn 2006 · North Shore of Houhai, Beijing
As I walked out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, I headed straight toward Prince Ankh.
He stood there like a statue.
His hands gripped my shoulders tightly.
Tears streamed down his face.
His voice struggled to maintain its old heroic strength.
What I heard instead was the noise of decay spreading through a body more than ninety years old.
The sound reminded me of metal being sharpened against gravel.
I had heard the same sound beside my father's bed.
"Hello, Grandpa."
The girl beside me reached out and touched his arm.
"Welcome, National Champion."
The old prince smiled through his tears.
"We meet again.”
The old Mongolian prince smiled through his tears.
"Bai Ying."
A Shanghai accent burst from the telephone.
Bright.
Powerful.
Full of energy.
"General Zhou? You're in Beijing?"
I remembered his voice from the year Macau returned to China.
Back then, he sounded like a battlefield conductor.
Even more commanding than now.
"Haha. Came back to report in person.
Then I'm heading out again.
Too dry over here."
"Do you have time? We should meet."
"Your Go isn't bad, if I remember correctly."
"Only amateur level. Three or four dan at most."
"Good.
I'll introduce you to a real player."
"Wonderful."
"Tomorrow, then."
The national-level player turned out to be a girl.
She had just turned eighteen.
Thirty years younger than I was.
About one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters tall.
A headband exposed her smooth, rounded forehead completely.
Her face was full as a harvest moon.
Willow-leaf eyes.
Willow-leaf eyebrows.
Everything looked painted.
The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, revealing a row of perfectly aligned white teeth.
Her heartbeat was steady.
Strong.
She looked so beautiful that she completely overturned my long-held belief that there were usually more unattractive women than Go stones around a Go board.
General Zhou introduced her.
Yehenara Orchid.
A professional player from the Chinese Go Association.
A distant relative of Empress Dowager Cixi through Mrs. Zhou's family.
Fresh from defeating several of China's strongest players.
"Please, sit down.
Miss... I mean, National Champion.
General Zhou."
I found myself stumbling over words.
"Hello, President Bai."
A trace of Beijing softness lingered in her voice.
No one had called me "President Bai" in a very long time.
Strangely, I felt flattered.
We chatted for a while.
Although she was the same age as my daughter, I never dared treat her like a junior.
When General Zhou mentioned Go, neither of us responded.
We both understood.
The difference in skill was simply too large.
I took them to the north shore of Houhai for dog-meat hotpot.
When we parted, Lan Hui leaned lightly against my shoulder.
Then she spoke in a soft voice.
"President Bai."
"Yes?"
"Could we stop eating dog meat?"
"Okay?"
I froze.
To me, it felt no different from a probing move in a complicated endgame of human nature.
The silhouettes of the General and the young Go player disappeared into the evening.
I crouched beside the railing.
Like I used to as a boy.
I picked up a few flat stones and spun them across the water.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Ring after ring spread across the dark surface of Houhai.
