Iron and Silk (18 page)

I
t had been one thing after another the day I stabbed myself with the sword. Several of my students had been completely unprepared for class, I had ridden across the river for a wushu lesson but Teacher Hei was not at home, and when I got back and started practicing I strained a hamstring within half an hour. I limped through most of my routines, saving the one I was studying at the time, the Drunken Sword, for last. This technique was created some time ago by the student of a famous swordsman, who one day gave up in despair, thinking he could never progress beyond the stage he had reached. He left his master’s house, supposedly for good, and went directly to a wineshop in the nearby village. There he got drunk. As he staggered out he was confronted by his teacher, who threw a wooden sword at him in disgust and told him to prepare for a good beating. The student, relaxed and made bold by the wine, gave the master a good beating instead—in front of all the other students, no less. The next day apologies were made and all was forgiven, but all was not forgotten; the students who witnessed the fight went away to the wineshop and began their study of this new method.

My routine called for me to leap, spin in the air and land in a twisted posture. I remember thinking in mid-air that I had not jumped high enough to land properly. When I hit the ground I felt a blinding pain and looked down to see that I had sent the tip of the thirty-six inch blade into my thigh. Thankful that my aim had not been worse, I pulled it out,
dressed the wound and decided to go shopping to cheer myself up.

In all my time in China I had never treated myself to anything but sweatsuits and wushu equipment, so that day I decided to buy a painting. I went to a painting and calligraphy gallery that Hai Bin had recommended, a huge room on the second floor of the Hunan Museum annex, and started to browse. There were only two other people in the room, a sales clerk and an older Chinese man who appeared to be dozing in a large padded chair. The sales clerk walked over, took my arm and led me away from the “boring” monochrome paintings I was looking at, to a section of the room that had a sign, “Welcome Foreign Friends,” taped on one wall. There hung several dozen colorful portraits of Chinese minority women with tiny waists and enormous breasts, dressed in alluring “native costumes,” gathering berries or drawing water from rustic wells. Even if I had wanted one of these monstrosities I could not have afforded it, so I told the clerk I preferred the “boring” monochromes and returned to that part of the gallery. The old man in the chair had apparently listened to our conversation, for he got up, walked over to a few feet from where I stood and silently watched me as I looked at the paintings. “You speak Chinese,” he said at last. “Yes, a little bit.” He lit a cigarette, leaned his head to one side and squinted. “That’s incredible.” “Not really,” I replied. “I live here, I have to speak Chinese.” “You live here?” he asked, his eyes opening up. “Yes—I teach at the medical college.” He flicked the ashes of his cigarette, shaking his head. “That’s incredible.”

He was quiet for a few minutes, then asked, “So you don’t like the girlie paintings, huh?” “No, do you?” He broke into a smile. “I’m Chinese! How can I like that kind of thing?
That’s for foreigners. But you’re a foreigner and you don’t like them. What do you like?” I pointed to my favorite piece, a small ink painting of three shrimp. “And why do you like it?” he asked. “Because it’s simple,” I answered. We compared a few paintings and a few pieces of calligraphy, then he asked me to follow him downstairs for a moment. At the bottom of the stairs he pointed to a large mural depicting a mist-shrouded valley filled with soldiers, jeeps, trucks, smokestacks, utility poles and television antennas. “What do you think?” I told him I didn’t like it. “Why not?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Too many jeeps,” I answered, and he laughed, grasped my hand and shook it for some time. “I’ll have you know I painted that mural,” he said, “and you’re exactly right! There are too many jeeps in it! You don’t know how wonderful it is to hear someone say that! Just for saying that, I’m going to paint you a landscape, I promise you!” He wrote down his address and told me to visit him a week later, after xiuxi.

When I got there, his whole family greeted me and fed me all sorts of nuts, sunflower seeds, dried beans and tea. The artist, Master Lu, took out a photo album showing pictures of favorite works he had sold. He turned out to be one of the best-known painters in Hunan, who was frequently commissioned by the State to paint murals for important halls and smaller paintings for visiting dignitaries. Finally, after clearing a space on the wall, he took a freshly mounted scroll from his desk. He carefully unrolled it, hung it from a nail high up on the wall, then stood back to let me see it. It was an imaginary scene in the mountains with no sign of industrialization in sight, inscribed with a poem in a style of calligraphy he had seen me admiring in the art gallery. Master Lu sat back in his chair, drew on his cigarette and squinted at the painting. “No jeeps. Just mountains.”

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O
n October 1, China’s National Day, the Provincial Foreign Affairs Bureau arranged a banquet for all the foreigners living and working in Hunan. Prior to the banquet our host, a high official within the Provincial Government, held a meeting at which he gave us a “brief review of current political, economic and social issues affecting the province.” This brief review, translated a sentence at a time into English, turned out to be a very lengthy recitation of statistics, all showing remarkable growth, interspersed with firm declarations of purpose, goals for the year 2000 and conclusive evidence that these goals would be met. The official sat completely still as he delivered this speech, moving his lips only as much as he had to except at the end of paragraphs, when he pulled them open to smile, shaking his head from side to side so that the smile fell upon all members of the audience equally.

After two hours the translator showed signs of fatigue. Something about striving from victory to victory was translated as “And the broad collective masses, by means of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and under the protection of the new Constitution approved during the Twelfth Party Congress, shall—shall strike from factory to factory in order to realize the goals of the Four Modernizations
by the year 2000.” By the third hour, the poor translator had become delirious, stumbling over nearly every sentence.

No one experienced fatigue more than the audience, however, for of the fifty foreigners there, about ten spoke both English and Chinese, whereas the rest, from Japan and Romania, understood neither English nor Chinese.

In the room sat an almost equal number of Chinese, mostly Foreign Affairs representatives, some local government bureaucrats and translators from the institutions with foreign expert programs. Watching them, I could understand why they do not appreciate the Westerner’s irritation with long, boring meetings. The Chinese have, by necessity, increased their endurance manyfold by making listening optional. During meetings they talk with one another, doze, get up to stretch or walk around, and in general do not pretend to pay attention. This does not seem to offend the speaker, who, in general, does not pretend to be interested in what he or she is saying.

A Chinese man sitting next to me had been dozing quite freely since the first hour of the speech. He opened his eyes during the third hour to reach for his teacup, and noticed me looking at him. He had extremely thick glasses, a bloated face and a few beads of sweat on his forehead that he wiped at with a dirty handkerchief. He stared at me with no expression on his face for a long time, then suddenly asked me what I thought of the meeting. I said I thought it was very boring, too long and repetitious. His face did not change at all and he continued to stare at me. “That is because you are listening,” he said, and went back to sleep.

I happened to see this man again on several occasions, and each time talked with him at greater length. Though extremely shy at first, he eventually loosened up and spoke
freely about his interests and ambitions. In time I found him to be a very warm person, and despite his stiff, expressionless manner, he had a sense of humor as well. No matter how funny something was, however, he always told or heard it with that deadpan face, wiping at his forehead and staring at me from behind his colossal lenses.

Some time later he came to my house to talk about a project that he wanted help with. He translated Western novels into Chinese in his spare time and hoped one day to publish. The problem was that, like most Chinese, he had no access to recent works—meaning nearly everything published since 1930. He wondered if I could lend him some contemporary American novels that might be suitable for translation. I said that he could borrow as many as he liked from my bookcase, and that if he had anything specific in mind, I would try to get it for him. He didn’t seem to have anything specific in mind, so I let him take a few books at random and asked that he return them by the end of the year.

To my surprise he returned a few weeks later, having read all of them. He put them carefully back into the bookcase, exactly where they had been before, and stared at me. “How did you like them?” I asked. Without blinking he replied, “Thank you very much, but I’m afraid these books would be unsuitable for publication in China. They contain scenes and language that would be considered decadent, or even pornographic.” I said that I was sorry to hear that, and tried to think of books I had that might be more suitable. I chose a few short story collections and told him to read through them. “Even though these aren’t novels, they are examples of recent American literature, and since this is a high school English textbook, I doubt they contain much pornography.” He thanked me again and left.

A month or so later he returned, and once again put the
books very carefully back into the bookcase. He wiped his forehead and apologized for keeping the books so long. “I’m afraid that these stories are also unsuitable for publication in China. They have heroes who represent pessimism, alienation and individualism, all of which, as you know, are considered detrimental to the cause of Socialism. Do you have anything else?” I had to admit, with some irritation, that I could think of no books in my possession that would be considered beneficial to the cause of Socialism. “I understand,” he said, and began to leave. Passing by the bookshelf he noticed a large book that had not been there before. It was
The World According to Garp
. He asked what it was about, and I laughed and said he should read it and find out. He took it down, put it in his bag and said he would.