Scene 7
Hao An's Chi is badly depleted, his confidence knocked. But, as I said, Hao An is the kind of man who keeps himself busy. His fifth job gives him a brush with the fashion world. He orders a batch of handmade tie-dyed shirts from Guizhou province and takes them to a graduate student at the Central Authority Fine Arts School to find out what to charge. The graduate student swings his long hair back and forth and tells Hao An these shirts are not authentic enough, not tribal enough. No way are young Beijingers going to be interested in them: there's no art, no attitude. 'What should I do now then?' asks Hao An. The graduate student tells him to head to the bars in Sanlitun and sell them to drunken foreigners and pretentious businessmen with art collections.
Scene 8
The boozy streets of Sanlitun. The people around here are unlike anything Hao An has seen. White boys and white girls, black boys and black girls sit together in front of coffee shops looking bored. Westerners seem to have no purpose in their lives. But Hao An minds his own business. The customer is God. He peddles his clothes enthusiastically to the foreigners. One of them even gives him a green American bill – 50 dollars. His day has come.
At some point during this successful shirt-selling exercise, Hao An meets a man interested in buying porn VCDs. The man looks trustworthy. Hao An thinks for a moment, then tells him to come back tomorrow.
Scene 9
Hao An waits for the trustworthy man, five VCDs in his bag, including the strange French film. He waits for so long in the burning sun that he feels he might pass out, so he walks into a dim bar. He's momentarily blinded by the darkness. As his sight returns, he can make out a heavily made-up woman in the corner. She is drinking something strange. It's the colour of blood, with a limp stalk of celery poking out of it. The wilted leaves of the celery droop down the side of the glass.
Hao An asks the woman if she is interested in tie-dyed shirts from Guizhou. He opens his holdall in front of her. As he does so, he notices that her lips are the same colour as her drink.
Scene 10
Fifteen minutes later. Li Li has chosen a shirt but, not having enough money to pay for it, has offered Hao An a drink instead. It's been a long time since a woman has talked to him, let alone offered him a drink. Hao An accepts with gratitude. Now he sits with a can of 'tonic water' in front of him. Although he doesn't like the taste, he's content.
Li Li doesn't say anything, just stirs her drink with the celery stick, and then stirs again. She looks like someone tired of speaking.
Suddenly she says, 'Sounds good.' Hao An is confused. What sounds good? Li Li points to the speakers on a nearby shelf. Hao An nods. The music, of course. Sandy Lam is singing *I Love Someone Who Isn't Coming Home'. Li Li listens with her head tilted to one side. Her eyes sparkle. Eventually
Sandy Lam's voice fades out and Li Li's eyes grow dim once more. Hao An studies his can of tonic water and can't think of anything to say.
Silence… then two policemen come into the bar. They're walking towards Hao An. He panics and tries to hide the VCDs under his chair. But the policemen aren't interested in him, it's Li Li they want.
Scene II
Hao An looks around. The bar is empty. He turns to the window and sees there's no one sitting at the tables outside either. The clothes – sellers who have flocked to Beijing from Zhejiang province sit in the shade, listless and hot. Hao An looks at the strange drink on the table in front of him and thinks of the woman he's just met. There's a red mark on the rim of the glass, but he can't tell if it's from her lipstick or from the sticky blood-red stuff she was drinking.
Scene 12
Beijing Friendship Hotel. Here is Hao An in a smart red uniform, holding open the door to one of Beijing 's finest five-star establishments. A Doorman. Or rather, his official title: Attendant to the Grand Lobby. His sixth job, found in the Classifieds section of a newspaper. Hao An's expression is still inscrutable, but occasionally his facial muscles tighten slightly. Not exactly a smile, but that must surely be what he's aiming at.
Today, Hao An opens the door to an elegant man with fine, chiselled features. The man is courteous to Hao An and gives him a generous tip.
Scene 13
Ten o'clock in the evening, the same gentleman comes back to the hotel carrying a bag full of fruit – kiwis, tangerines, pears, mangoes. This surprises Hao An, since fruit is not the kind of thing meat-loving Chinese men usually buy. As Hao An holds the door open for him, the man stops and says in a low voice, 'Come to my room tonight after you finish your shift. Room 502.' Hao An is taken aback. Guests rarely even talk to him. 'Of course,' he murmurs politely, 'of course, of course.' The man smiles and strolls across the Grand Lobby to the lift, clutching his bag of fruit.
Scene 14
At midnight, Hao An, no longer in his uniform, stands outside Room 502. The elegant man opens the door in a silk robe. He is holding a bottle of Great Wall wine in one hand, a corkscrew in the other. 'Wonderful,' he says. 'You came. I wondered whether you would.'
The man pours Hao An a glass of wine and invites him to sit down. Hao An perches on the edge of the plush sofa. He feels awkward. This luxury room costs 1,000 yuan a night. He doesn't belong there, and he finds the wine sour. He much prefers drinking Er Guo Tou, the cheap Beijing favourite.
'Friend, I like you,' says the man. Hao An listens and nods. Why would the man have invited him to his room if he didn't like him?
Later, Hao An lies contentedly under the covers of a comfortable single bed, with the man in the bed next to him. They are watching TV. Hao An has never seen so many channels: Phoenix satellite, pay-per-view movies, MTV, ESPN, CNN. And they all speak foreign languages. Suddenly the man comes over to Hao An's little bed. He lies down next to him and reaches for Hao An's hand. Hao An is confused. Is the man asking him to leave? The man smiles at him the way he has smiled all night and pulls back the sheets that cover Hao An. Hao An continues to be confused for four seconds. After five seconds, he finally understands what the man is doing and pushes him away. There is a scuffle. Hao An's push was gentle, but the man grabs at him, forcing Hao An to fend him off. As quick as he can, Hao An climbs out of the soft bed, scoops up his things and runs out of the room.
In the lift, Hao An catches a reflection of himself in the metal doors. His cheeks are red. He can't remember blushing before. As soon as the doors open he rushes across the Grand Lobby, pushes open the heavy glass doors and flees into the night.
If he hadn't been running, he would have noticed that, as he went out of the glass doors, the woman from the bar in Sanlitun, Li Li of the Bloody Mary, was coming in, accompanied by a man in a black suit. Hao An and Li Li's bodies are no more than 317 millimetres apart when they pass each other. Hays of fate bounce off both of them and die out unnoticed.
Scene 15
There is a saying that 'when an old century is ending and a new century is about to be born, people's tastes become more extreme'. Spicy Ma La hotpot was all the rage in late twentieth-century Beijing, and the hotpot restaurants were raking it in.
Hao An can't afford to buy a restaurant, but he sees the potential. As his seventh job, he sets up a stall by the side of a busy main road, selling hotpot so full of red chillies, garlic and ginger that it blows the roof off your mouth. Come rain or shine, Hao An is there at his stall, as reliable as a lamp post. Next to Hao An is another street vendor – a man who sells roasted chestnuts. The chestnut man keeps Hao An entertained with elaborate stories of UFOs. He tells Hao An he's seen one in the town of Changping, 30 miles away from Beijing: a real UFO, 'round as the bowls you serve your Ma La hotpot in'. He's convinced it's a sign that the end of the world is near.