Hour of the Rat (8 page)

I get out my battered laptop. Power it up. Connect to the VPN.

It takes me a few times to get a connection. The government’s really ramped up the Great Firewall since all this Jasmine shit started.

Finally I’m in. Over the Wall.

I log on to the Great Community.

It’s the same welcome screen as always: the beach, the ocean, rendered in a texture that looks like brush strokes. A three-legged dog splashing in the surf. A giant Mao statue, bleached and faded, half buried in the sand like some sort of Sphinx, seagulls nesting in his outstretched hand. Farther up the beach, the Twin Towers, leaning against each other for support.

He started it as an art project, he told me. And a safe place, for him to work, for me to visit. Like we used to have for real.

It’s changed a lot since the first time I saw it. There are others here now, other avatars. Maybe a hundred people. Artists, mostly. Writers. Musicians. Where before there was only a dumpling restaurant and a house, now there is a little village, with a nightclub, a gallery, more houses, crazy constructions that don’t fit neatly into any kind of category: windmills cobbled to nuclear plants, castles that morph into trees and mushrooms, crazy-ass shit that doesn’t make any sense to me. But then a lot of the art stuff never did.

Some of the avatars I recognize. I’ve seen them before. I think they might be people I know in real life, but I’m not sure. I don’t ask.

They make their art projects, throw parties, have concerts, lectures. Some of it’s in Chinese. Some in English. They talk about democracy, and socialism, and deep ecology. Feminism and patriarchy. Sexuality. Death. You can talk about anything you want. Go into private chat rooms and act out whatever you feel like. It’s a safe space here.

I don’t know who hosts it. No way the servers are in China. It’s gone far beyond what Lao Zhang started; there has to be some money involved to support the whole thing. Harrison, I think, is a likely patron. But if he’s involved, he won’t admit it to me. Just like I won’t admit that I know about it.

I wave to an avatar I know, Sea Horse. She’s working on
a sculpture in the middle of the town square. By “working” I mean her avatar stands there, sentinel-like, as objects appear—a fat, rosy-cheeked baby and giant ears of corn at the moment—manipulated by the invisible hand pulling her strings.

I think I might know who Sea Horse really is, someone I used to know in the real world, or what passes for it. But I don’t ask. No one does here. This is a place where it’s safe not just to be who you are but also to be who you want to be.

A lot of the avatars are pretty elaborate. Sea Horse has a mermaid’s tail, a glittering silver helmet. Another avatar has angel’s wings, his hair wreathed in fire. I haven’t bothered with any of that. I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, like always.

It’s too hard to pretend to be somebody else.

I make my way to my house.

I
T
’
S A STONE HOUSE
, surrounded by a wooden deck, against a backdrop of pines. As I approach it, a big three-legged dog lopes toward me, barks, then halts and wags its tail. An orange cat sleeps on the stoop. I cross the threshold, and it starts to purr.

Home.

I go inside, and the place lights up. I sit on the couch, across from the huge picture window that looks out onto the beach, watch the animated waves swell and crash and send up spouts of foam. Occasionally huge goldfish surface, puffing their cheeks, mouths pursed in perfect O’s. Dolphins surf in the waves.

If Lao Zhang is online, he’ll know that I’m here.

I wait. Order another cup of coffee—I mean, a real cup. The coffee place is decorated like it’s French or English or something—uneven wooden tables, puffy chintz cushions, old coffee grinders, prints of gardens and flowers on the walls. The coffee’s good, too. They do designs in the foam of their
cappuccinos. The other customers, some hip young Chinese, maybe from Hong Kong or Shanghai, a family from France, sit and drink their coffees and chat and laugh, leaning back in their chairs, enjoying themselves. A couple of the kids play a board game, Pictionary, I think. On vacation. Like I should be.

Outside, the fog has thickened into drizzle. I can see the drops suspended in the halo of light from the streetlamps.

Halfway through my second cup of coffee, Lao Zhang knocks on the door.

Monastery Pig, I guess I should say. That’s the name he goes by here.

I used to be Little Mountain Tiger, but I changed it. That was a different game, one I want to leave behind.

Now I’m Alley Rat. I was born in the Year of the Rat, and rats are a good sign in China, they tell me: clever and quick and good at surviving. Rats and cockroaches, right?

Lao Zhang’s gone for simple in his avatar, too. He’s wearing a beanie, a black T-shirt, and cargo shorts. All his work goes into the pieces he creates for this place. Like my house.

A text box appears over his head.
YILI
,
NI HAO
.

NI HAO
, I type.

My house is a private chat room. I still don’t know what the fuck to say after
HI
,
HOW
’
S IT GOING
?

Lao Zhang sits next to me on the couch.
SOME GOOD MUSIC LATER TONIGHT
, he says.
IN THE WAREHOUSE
.

COOL
, I type, distracted.

HAVE TO USE PASSWORD
,
BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOME LIVE STREAM
.
MAYBE VIDEO
.
ISN
’
T THAT RISKY
?

MAYBE A LITTLE
.
BUT I WANT MORE PEOPLE TO COME HERE
.
TO SHARE THINGS
.
THAT
’
S WHY I BUILD IT
.

Time was we had a real place to be. An actual village. With
houses made of brick. People made of flesh. We could sit down and eat real dumplings together and drink beer.

But that place got
chai’d
. Bulldozed under. Now there’s a cluster of high-rises called Harmony Village Gardens, where nobody lives. The units bought up by speculators or not bought at all. Subsidized by the government, maybe, by bad loans at state-owned banks. A ghost village.

WE HAVE A PROBLEM
, I type.

TELL ME
.

I keep it short. About me drinking tea with the DSD. About Harrison’s fear that they’ll charge us on economic crimes.

And about John, whom Lao Zhang knew by another name, before. Who I sure hope isn’t here in the Great Community, under a different name entirely.

After I finish, Lao Zhang is silent. Or rather his avatar sits still on the couch, occasionally blinking, which is a default feature for the avatars here.

THANKS FOR TELLING ME
, he finally says.

THE MAIN THING IS
,
IF YOU NEED MONEY
,
WE CAN
’
T SELL YOUR WORK RIGHT NOW
.

I DON
’
T NEED MONEY
.
I AM WORRIED ABOUT YOU
.

I get this nice warm flush. Because, you know, some guy acts like he cares about me.

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
.
I DON
’
T THINK
.

OKAY
. And then silence.

Out in the virtual ocean, Chairman Mao surfs an animated wave, wearing baggy swim trunks patterned with marijuana leaves.

I NEED TO CONSIDER
, Lao Zhang types.

CONSIDER
?
WHAT I SHOULD DO
.

THERE
’
S NOTHING FOR YOU TO DO
, I type.
I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW
,
THAT
’
S ALL
.

YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL
, he types.

No shit.

I
COULD LOG OUT
from my house, but I decide to leave through the town square. The sculpture that Sea Horse was working on has taken shape. The rosy-cheeked baby has gotten bigger, nearly as tall as the giant ears of corn. And there are bees now, huge bees that buzz the stalks and corn silk. The baby holds up a basket filled with husked corn, except some of the kernels are bulbous. Misshapen. A single bee lies belly-up on the pile of corn, its legs twitching. Other dead bees surround the base of the corn statue.

SEA HORSE
,
NI HAO
, I type.
WHAT
’
S WITH THE BEES
?

Sea Horse stands next to the baby, blinking.

YOU
’
LL SEE
, she says.

“A
NDY SAYS THERE
’
S A
great show we can go to tonight.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Andy nods vigorously. “Yes. With lights. And music. On lake.”

“By that fellow, the movie director? The one who did the Olympics ceremony, with all the drummers?”

“Oh, right,” I mutter.

So far today we’ve taken a bus to this ancient village called Xingping, which I have to admit is pretty fucking charming—narrow cobbled streets with colored pennants and lanterns strung across them, chickens wandering around, laundry hanging out on poles. You know, the kind of place that looks like a postcard. Kept that way for tourists, I’m pretty sure. My mom stops and buys a bunch of cloth purses shaped like fish—“Oh, look, how cute! See? There’s a smaller fish inside for change!”—while Andy insists on buying lunch, the local specialty, “beer fish,” and after that we go to a groovy coffeehouse in an ancient building for coffees and dessert.

Now we’re on the river cruise back to Yangshuo, on a flat boat made of white PVC tubes, a canvas canopy supported by a shaky aluminum frame, powered by an outboard motor.

And yeah, it’s gorgeous. I can’t really take it in, it’s so beautiful. All the alien mountains, swaddled in fog. Water buffalo and pebbled beaches. Tropical palms and every manner of green. “Those mountains, you see them?” Andy points. “They are on back of the twenty-yuan bill.”

I look to where he points: a mountain range that looks like someone went nuts with a soft-ice-cream dispenser, depositing row upon row of these crazy shapes, the greens and browns muting into blues and greys as the ranks recede.

“You see?” Andy says. He’s taken a bill out of his wallet. Holds it up in front of my face. “Twenty-yuan bill.”

I think, Get that fucking money out of my face so I can see the actual mountains, Andy, because I can look at a twenty-yuan bill anytime.

“Yeah, I see,” I say, and take a slug of my Liquan beer. Breathe in the river’s mossy scent and tell myself to calm down.

“So what do you think about the show?” my mom asks.

“Why don’t you guys go? I have some work I should do.”

She pouts. “Ellie, I thought this was supposed to be a vacation.”

And I thought the two of us were supposed to go alone
, I want to say. But I don’t. Because it’s not really a vacation for me anyway.

“Stuff happens,” I say with a shrug. “I made a promise to … you know, to do a good job.”

A
FTER
M
OM AND
A
NDY
leave for the light show, I put on my jacket and knit hat, grab my color copy of Jason’s photograph, and set out.

The main tourist drag in Yangshuo is called Xi Jie—West Street. It’s filled with bars and discos and coffee places with names like Minnie Mao’s and the People’s Commune Café, complete with Santa Claus in a PLA uniform. There’s a Venice
Hotel, a Stone Rose Bar. The street is narrow, most of the buildings two or three stories, a lot of traditional architecture, whitewashed, red-stained wood shutters. Uneven granite paving stones. No cars. By now it’s just past 7:00
P
.
M
. The music is already pounding from the discos, the streets thronged with tourists, vendors calling out to “look, come buy!” and holding up their scarves and hats and carved wooden frogs.

The weird thing is, for a street called West Street, there are way more Chinese tourists than Westerners here. Young people, mostly, wearing broad grins. Couples holding hands, cruising the strip. I guess West Street to these kids means it’s something sort of forbidden, a little dangerous.

I hate it already. The crowds, the music, the pulsing strobe lights from the discos, the constant come-ons to buy something or drink something or fuck something.

You made a promise, I tell myself. You have to at least try.

I hesitate, then go into the first coffee place I see, show the girl greeter Jason’s photo. “Sorry to bother you. Have you seen this young man? I’m a friend of his family. They are worried about him.”

The girl, a tiny thing who looks like she’s maybe twelve, wearing a sort of sailor suit with very short shorts over tights, makes a show of studying the photo, scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him. But wait a moment. I can ask my manager.”

She retreats into the coffee house, a wood-lined space that reminds me of the inside of a cigar box.

“No, sorry,” she says when she comes back. “My manager doesn’t recognize him either.”