20 Fragments Of A Ravenous Youth

Spectacle Boy: What blood type are you?

Spectacle Girclass="underline" Type B.

Spectacle Boy: That's a selfish blood type.

Spectacle Girclass="underline" But you said I was nice and sweet.

Spectacle Boy: I do think you're nice and sweet.

Spectacle Girclass="underline" But now you know my blood type. You still have time to reconsider your position.

Spectacle Boy: I don't regret anything.

Spectacle Girclass="underline" If that's what you want, we can go our separate ways when we leave this place.

Spectacle Boy: I told you, I don't regret anything.

I took a deep breath and dashed past them to the door.

'The Theory of Relativity!' announced Patton as soon as he arrived at my table at the Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant. He took off his multi-pocketed big brown jacket, and put his famous laptop on the table.

'Theory of what?' I had no idea what he was talking about.

'Einstein,' said Patton. 'The Theory of Relativity. So, last month I told my girlfriend to come back and live with me. But now, of course, I want to leave her again. I can't do my own thing any more. I have to switch off the light before midnight so she can get her sleep, and I have to wake up before nine to clean the kitchen and take a shower. When I lived alone, I didn't give a damn about dirt – my own, or the kitchen's. It's like being a married couple, it bores me to death. But it's all my fault – I was the one who asked her to come back because I was scared of being lonely.'

'But, what's this got to do with the Theory of Relativity?' I was confused.

'Don't you think that is the Theory of Relativity?'

'Sounds more like the Theory of Independence,' I said.

'Whose Theory of Independence?'

'Oh, I don't know. Maybe that American President's. Didn't he write some Theory of Independence?'

'Okay, Fenfang, let's have some beer.'

But I didn't feel like having beer, somehow beer doesn't make people happy.

'What about having some sake?' I suggested. 'Sake is light, it makes you light-hearted.'

'Shit, that's way too expensive. Let's have beer, and we'll make it the cheapest one too – Revolution Beer.'

I nodded and Patton ordered us two Revolution Beers in his formal Chinese.

'What happened to that wild ex-boyfriend of yours?' he asked as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

I thought about Xiaolin and felt like it was a story from a previous incarnation. Since I moved to Haidian, I hadn't heard from him. He didn't know the phone number of my new flat, and I had changed my mobile. My nights were no longer interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

Without answering, I changed the subject.

'Listen, Patton, you're American. What do you know about Tennessee Williams's writing technique?' I asked.

'You want to know about Tennessee Williams? Jesus, he's as old as a dinosaur, I must have read him when I was twelve.'

'So you mean he already died?'

'Oh, ages ago. He choked on a bottle top.'

'He did what?' I was horrified.

'Yes, a disgraceful way to die. He was a very sad man. He was an alcoholic and a homosexual, his lover died long before him, from cancer. He lived almost completely alone for his last twenty years

Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I didn't want to hear depressing things about Tennessee Williams. I wanted to hear about his Streetcar of Desire, and his method for writing first drafts. And if this Williams guy's life was really as tough as Patton made out, I wanted to discover that fact for myself.

I broke off the conversation and turned my attention to the menu. Summoning the waitress, I ordered us the spicy duck soup hotpot. There would be tons of chillies and garlic in the broth. Patton and I could enjoy torturing our tongues instead of dwelling on the sad life of Tennessee Williams.

Almost immediately a large, steaming pot arrived. We began sweating like the soup in front of us, and Patton started taking off layers of clothes until I could see his chest hair through his thin, damp shirt. I did the same, and kept stripping until there was nothing reasonable left to take off. The other customers just stared at us.

With his face red and dripping wet, Patton said, 'Fenfang, I have a great idea for a script.'

'Oh? Has it got anything to do with drinking duck soup?'

Patton nodded. 'Yes, definitely. It starts like this. Two aliens arrive from another planet to study humankind. They land on Beijing 's Third Ring Road, take a look around, and transform themselves into an American and a Chinese scriptwriter. They're starving, so they head for the nearest restaurant, the Chong Qin Red Mountain, and order spicy Ma La hotpot. The food is so hot that they start removing bits of their equipment, until they realise they've become the centre of attention. Suddenly they get worried that their true identities might be discovered.

'And then?'

'I don't know, I haven't got that far yet. But anyway it's about these two aliens at the Chong Qin Red Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant, trying to bring some civilisation to this earth.'

' Not Red Mountain, Gold Mountain,' I said. My mouth was stuffed with seaweed and duck. But even as I was swallowing it, I still felt hungry, even when the food dropped into my stomach.

'I've been watching loads of DVDs recently,' said Patton. 'Every night actually.'

'Me too. It's the most popular leisure activity in China at the moment, don't you think?'

'God knows. Anyway my favourite movie last week was The Sixth Sense. I loved the twist at the end, when you understand that Bruce Willis was dead all along…'

'What?' I shouted, choking on a piece of duck. 'I thought Bruce was alive! How could I have missed that? Maybe I was in the kitchen cooking dumplings, or in the toilet.'

Patton seemed upset. 'How can you watch a film like that? Chinese people are terrible movie-watchers. My girlfriend is the same. She'll chat on her mobile during the most dramatic scenes. We watched The Blair Witch Project together. It was unbearable. Do you know what she was doing during the closing scenes, the most intense part of the film? She was on the phone to her auntie in Three-Headed Bird Village, Hu Bei province! Then, afterwards, she had the nerve to keep asking me what happened. It drives me crazy. To be honest, I think one of the reasons I tried to split up with her was because she just doesn't know how to watch a film.'

'Patton, you Americans take watching films much too seriously. It's like going to church for you. For us, going to the cinema is just the same as going to the market to buy cabbages.'

Patton didn't answer back. It seemed like he'd given up.

After that, we didn't talk much. We just stared at the steam rising from the bubbling hotpot. Some families had flooded into the restaurant and occupied all the tables. In the back room, a woman sang karaoke in a horrid voice – Sandy Lam's 'I Love Someone Who Isn't Coming Home'. These days, most big restaurants have karaoke in order to attract customers. The Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant offered free karaoke if you ate two ducks. Anyway, everyone was screaming around us, but Patton and I were as silent as two pieces of tofu. We didn't know what else to talk about. As soon as we left the dreamworld of films, we both became boring and ordinary people again.

Perhaps we should just sing karaoke.

I looked at Patton. He was as frustrated as me. I noticed the empty bottles on the table.

'Right, Patton, time for another Revolution…'

Fragment Seventeen

I DECIDED THAT I HAD TO GET OUT of the narrow cupboard my life had become. I found a proper job at a film and television company. It seemed time to forge my self-centred individualist life into some kind of healthy activity in an official Collective Team. The company I went to work for was called New Century Films.