FRAGMENT 39
Going in Circles
Fragment: The Wind Rustling Like Banknotes | Tears Striking the Tombstone Base
Time & Location: Autumn 1992 · Beijing | Spring 1999 · Western Hills Cemetery, Beijing
I bought a metallic-painted Santana.
Loaded my wife and daughter into it.
Then drove around the city.
Around and around.
Until I arrived at that peculiar spring.
In more than thirty years of life, I had never seen spring drape itself in politics.
Newspapers and radio broadcasts praised it every day.
Described its beauty.
Celebrated its charm.
Some articles became so excessive that they transformed spring itself into a woman intoxicated by aphrodisiacs.
The scent was everywhere.
"Spiritual pollution."
"Rectification."
"Readjustment."
All the grand slogans.
All the orderly arrangements.
One by one, they were overwhelmed by the smell of instinct awakening.
Then replaced by it.
Being a businessman allowed me to see another world.
Elegant restaurants.
Luxury hotels.
Mansions hidden behind high walls.
Household goods I had never imagined existed.
The wind in Beijing sounded like banknotes rustling.
Some people found it comforting.
Others found it disgusting.
I liked it.
With Gao Yong's fifty-percent partnership model acting as an aphrodisiac, his influence allowed me to secure small contracts from various state-owned enterprises.
Nothing spectacular.
Just enough to keep the company alive.
Enough that my wife no longer depended upon her beauty to earn admiration—or jealousy—from colleagues.
The title of *Boss's Wife* settled neatly upon her dignified face.
The metallic-painted Santana allowed her to step gracefully inside while hundreds of coworkers watched.
Even though our marriage remained sexless.
Around and around.
Black cat.
White cat.
We watched a great man depart.
Hong Kong returned.
Soon Macau would return as well.
Gao Yong invited me to dinner.
I felt uneasy.
That morning, I had just visited Father's grave.
The wind sweeping across the hillside was harsh.
A headache throbbed behind my eyes. I could barely keep my balance.
I took a few unsteady steps and moved behind the headstone.
There, carved in bright red characters, four words seemed to whisper from the stone:
Loyal Guardian of the State.
“Dad.”
I said it softly.
I did not regret arguing with his political views.
I did not regret visiting him too rarely during his final illness.
I did not even regret that I had never cooked a single meal for him.
But I regretted something else.
I regretted that I had always talked back.
Always challenged him.
Always pushed against him.
If only once—just once—I had held my tongue.
The tears would not stop.
They fell one after another, striking the marble base of the monument with soft, helpless taps.
FRAGMENT 40
The Secret Rhythm in the Ends of Her Hair
Fragment: A Two-Hundred-Millisecond Burst of Laughter | My Ears Begin to Ring
Time & Location: Spring 1999 · China World Hotel, Beijing
I parked my Nissan Cefiro near the restaurant.
After walking barely twenty steps, I saw that I had guessed correctly.
The parking lot was packed with luxury cars.
Carefully, I pushed open the gilded door.
"Welcome, welcome."
"Everyone, this is my childhood friend."
"The great talent, Bai Ying."
Gao Yong touched his face.
A fingertip brushed away a tiny flake of skin.
It disappeared into a smile so carefully assembled that even I felt embarrassed by its sincerity.
I sat beside him.
Immediately, I caught a faint fragrance.
Turning my head, I saw a woman in military uniform smiling at me.
No cap.
Short hair.
Sharp.
Confident.
The secret rhythm moving through the ends of her hair flowed directly into my bloodstream.
"This beautiful lady is Xu Yanan."
Gao Yong pushed a can of Coca-Cola toward me.
Pop.
I opened it.
Pretended to study the can.
Occasionally allowing my peripheral vision to drift toward the chest beneath the tightly fitted uniform.
The lieutenant colonel's uniform had been pressed to perfection.
Not a single wrinkle.
Yet no amount of military discipline could conceal the body's quiet signals from my ears.
She had dressed herself like a lady from a Tang Dynasty painting.
But deep inside her body, subtle rhythms of choice, curiosity, and approach still moved beneath the surface.
Those sounds could not escape me.
I had not touched a drop of alcohol.
Yet she already filled the entire room.
Slowly she turned toward Gao Yong.
A faint smile.
She stopped looking at me.
After several rounds of drinking, Gao Yong began to loosen up.
"I invited everyone here because there's an opportunity."
"A rare one."
He glanced at me.
Then turned toward the military officer.
As the conversation unfolded, I gradually pieced it together.
The department where Xu Yanan worked had unusually close ties with the owner of Macau Satellite Television.
The broadcasting licenses were valuable.
Rare.
Yet they remained locked away in safes.
Generating no income.
"My dear sister."
"Help us get one of those channel licenses."
Gao Yong raised his glass.
Drained it in a single swallow.
Thirty-year-old Maotai.
I was surprised.
Gao Yong had spent years in the Central Propaganda Department.
He understood perfectly how media could be used to shape politics.
Yet his ambitions had already expanded beyond politics.
Beyond the mainland.
Toward private media.
Toward money.
I had lived more than forty years.
Never once crossed China's borders.
The outside world still felt like a place called capitalism.
Xu Yanan answered his toast.
She emptied her glass as well.
Then tilted it upside down.
A small smile.
My vision began to blur.
A reddish haze spread across it.
My ears started ringing.
Then—
"Pff."
A brief laugh.
No more than two hundred milliseconds.
It pressed the pause button on my restlessness.
"If Director Gao asks personally,"
"how could I possibly neglect it?"
"I'll check with the ministry first."
She stood.
Perhaps a little over one meter sixty.
Yet seated beside her, I always felt she was much taller.
Graceful as a crane.
She walked over to Gao Yong.
Gave him a light embrace.
Then turned to me.
A handshake.
Brief.
Almost weightless.
And she was gone.
"President Bai is about to become an international media tycoon."
"Hahahaha."
Gao Yong rose again.
And emptied another glass.
FRAGMENT 41
Privacy Before the Pixels
Fragment: The Faint Whine of a Hard Drive | Seductive Bodies Reduced to Pixels, Mechanical and Silent
Time & Location: Spring 1999 · Superpower Consulting Company, Bamboo Garden, Beijing
The moment she left, my senses returned to normal.
What Gao Yong had said reminded me of Phoenix Television, then at the height of its influence.
It reminded me of one of its reporters questioning Zhu Rongji in a Taiwanese accent.
It reminded me of that overweight man who always presented himself to the public like a Buddha, yet had once bowed and scraped before my father while speaking with absolute confidence.
For a while, fantasies flooded my mind.
I would become famous.
A cluster of illuminated pixels in newspapers and on television screens.
Every crisp sound of cellular metabolism inside my body seemed to overwhelm instinct itself.
Everything became applause.
Everything became the sound of money being counted.
Endless.
Back at the Bamboo Garden office, I remained dissatisfied.
I opened my Toshiba laptop.
Connected the modem.
Went online.
A form of investigation at any cost had begun.
The bowl of infected pork from Guizhou.
The ten-cent price.
Those thoughts no longer occupied my mind.
Before the millennium arrived, disposable income in Beijing averaged little more than a thousand U.S. dollars per year.
My Toshiba laptop had cost thirty-five thousand yuan.
The modem alone had cost several thousand.
Monthly internet charges could easily reach several thousand more.
China had already been connected to the global Internet for a decade.
Yet the speed remained slower than a donkey cart.
The costs discouraged almost everyone.
I did not care.
Not about money.
Not about time.
I had patience.
Enough patience to wait for every page to load.
The tapping of keys.
The hissing chatter of the modem.
Inside was a world built from zeros and ones.
Every byte carried temptation.
A temptation neither my gift nor the White Crow could resist.
Perhaps humanity could exist apart from flesh.
Perhaps a human being was not merely a carbon-based machine that produced sound.
The faint whine of the spinning hard drive mixed with my increasingly heavy breathing.
A strange duet.
Impossible to stop.
An erotic gallery from Japan finally began appearing on the screen.
Frame by frame.
Like a real woman slowly removing her clothes.
Countless objects of desire assembled themselves into pixels.
Mechanical.
Silent.
No scent.
No voice.
Yet somehow more captivating than many of the women I had encountered in real life.
I slipped a hand into my trousers.
