In the lobby three female employees with nothing to do would be sitting at the front desk. Behind their heads were three big clocks showing the time in London, Tokyo and New York. I couldn't see why they needed international clocks since only peasants would stay at the Just Like Home guest house. Not that it was very homely. You had to be brave walking across a lobby like that, with the eyes of three women fixed on you. Especially in dark glasses and an oversized coat. I knew what would be going through their square brains. They would be thinking I was a prostitute. Why else would a young woman rent a room alone? It's not standard in China. And, in China, anyone who does something 'not standard' is immediately suspicious.
Anyway, at the door, I'd be met by the doorman, a skinny young boy all in red like a ceremonial imperial guard. Instead of opening the door, though, he would be practising martial-arts moves in front of the mirrors. Monkey Finger. Flying Limb. Double Leg Kick. Classic moves picked up from popular martial-arts films. When he wasn't busy with his routines, his nose would be pressed to the window. He'd be staring intently outside, even though there was never anything to stare at.
I'd push open the lobby doors myself and walk out into the world of dust. About 100 metres on, in the middle of all this dust, was a shabby canteen called Little Chilli Pepper. Inside was a permanent swarm of flies and three or four middle-aged men with cigarettes glued to their lips playing mah-jong. Outside was the constant rumble of lorries and tractors carrying coal from deserted west China to crowded east China. I would look down at my feet to see my shoes covered in Xi'an dust. Usually I would give up at this point, turn around and walk back to my room. That was generally the full extent of my inspirational morning walk.
I had wanted to be in a place where I could walk around and meet interesting people. Good old people. Smiling kids. Pregnant women. Gas-canister delivery men on their bicycles. School students running home in the rain. Couples arguing. Policemen dozing in their cars. Boy racers screeching past on scooters… These were the people I wanted to draw into my stories. I had wanted to find a place where I could be myself – the real Fenfang, not just some bit-part extra.
On my last night in Xi'an I had a sudden urge to see the city centre and its famous Ming-dynasty bell tower. Before I went back to brand-new Beijing, I thought it would be good to see some 600-year-old bell. So I got up from my laptop and went down to the lobby to find a taxi. It was 11.30 at night. The taxi driver sped through the streets like a maniac and then left me. I stood alone in the middle of the road. Beside me, the bell tower loomed, solemn and silent. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. Everything around me was shut and it was impossible to find out what the bell's story was. This made me sad. Whenever I wanted to learn more about the places I belonged to, I found myself at a dead end. I sniffed. Despite the darkness, I could sense Xi'an 's thick dust blowing in on the wind from over the old city wall. I spotted a light bulb ahead. I started to walk towards it. A barbecued fish stall. I sat on a wooden bench next to a few men with the same build as the Terracotta Warriors. Ancient bone structure must have run through the generations of Xi'an citizens.
I started eating splintered skewers of barbecued fish, one after another. I would finish one and lay the chewed wooden stick on the table before taking another one. My face was a statue too as I listened to the descendants of the Terracotta Warriors joking and laughing, drinking beer and eating barbecue. I finished 10 skewers. The sticks on the table were like dead soldiers in a Qing grave. I looked up. Unfamiliar streets extended into darkness beyond the stall. I held onto the table tightly, feeling as though I might drift off into the night if I didn't.
The ring of my mobile jolted me back to reality. Across the screen was a string of numbers with four zeros at the beginning. Ben.
'Fenfang, I've been trying to reach you at home for days. Where have you been?'
'I'm in Xi'an.'
' Xi'an?'
' Xi'an, you know. The ancient city of warriors made from cooked earth. I'm just having barbecue fish.'
'What? Cooked warriors and barbecued fish?'
I listened to Ben's slow voice on the other side of the Pacific. It sounded as if he were on tiptoes in front of a large map of China trying to locate me.
'Yes, I'm in Xi'an, Ben, and everything's fine. Do you want to hear the wind?'
I lifted my phone to the night sky, high up to the wind and the dust.
Soothed by the familiarity of Ben's voice, I stood up from the fish-stall bench and called a taxi. The driver was the same maniac as before and he soon deposited me outside the Just Like Home.
Back in Room 402 I climbed into the unpredictable bed and lay there listening to the sound of the woman weeping. It was like a tide coming ever closer. Suddenly I felt terribly alone. I longed to be back in Beijing. The city that had become my home. The city where I had fallen in love for the first time. The city where rice and noodles awaited me in a kitchen cupboard. I thought about Xiaolin. Beijing was where Xiaolin and I had bought orange curtains together. A 1.8 x 2-metre red bedspread for a double bed. Where we'd held hands in the cinemas in Xiaoxitan. Where we'd eaten barbecued squid from street stalls. The city where we'd argued on street corners and eventually tried to forget each other.
I thought about the days when Xiaolin and I had lived together. His tiny apartment with the two old brown cats and the white dog that was always shitting beside our bed. And I thought about his immortal old grandmother and the bottle of Eight Dragons Soy Sauce that sat on the kitchen table, 24 hours a day, four seasons a year. Thinking of that flat made me feel like crying.
I recalled what Huizi said to me: 'Fenfang, never look back to the past, never regret, even if there is emptiness ahead.' But I couldn't help it. Sometimes I would rather look back if it meant that I could feel something in my heart, even something sad. Sadness was better than emptiness.
Fragment Fifteen
THE IDEA HAD BEEN GROWING quietly inside me for some time, the idea of returning. Back to the place I had run from at 17. I'd heard the village had been transformed – like so many other quiet corners of China. Hillsides had been flattened, supermarkets had been built, roads had been laid through the sweet-potato fields. The forgotten village of my childhood had become a bustling town. Even the name had changed. It wasn't Ginger Hill Village any more, it had been renamed Great Ginger Township. My father had retired from his travelling salesman job, and my mother didn't work in the fields any more, but was running a shop instead.
It was a bitter winter day and Beijing was being battered by a violent dust storm when I wrote to my parents:
Father, Mother,
I'm coming to visit. I think New Year's Day is on February 5th. So I will probably arrive on the 4th.
Your daughter Fenfang
I wrote my telephone number at the bottom and posted the letter.