Nan grieved in his own way. He didn't hear any voices or see any images, but he was depressed. For months after the loss of the baby, he couldn't pull himself together to do anything other than run the restaurant. A numbing pain was sinking deeper and deeper in him. He felt deceived by fate. Originally he had thought that the arrival of his daughter would bring him a lot of joy and solace and would open a new page of his life. Even though his life had been truncated and enervated by the immigration, even though he had accomplished nothing here, even though he was a total failure in others' eyes, he'd still have a lovely daughter to raise, to love, and to be proud of. How often he had pictured the girl as good-looking as her mother. He imagined teaching her how to read and write, how to ride a bike, and how to drive, then seeing her dress up for her high school prom, taking her to college, and eventually walking her down the aisle and handing her to a fine young man. Having her would have made his life more bearable and lessened his misery and loneliness in this place. She could have become his American dream.
Now all the figments of his imagination were gone and he was thrown back to the hard reality again. He realized that he had been selfish in a way, eager to make his daughter's life a part of his own; that's to say he wanted her to come into this world for his sake, so that he wouldn't have to live his life fully or wage the fight against adversity. In other words, subconsciously he wished to use her as a pretext for wasting his life. The truth was that he had been frightened by the overwhelming odds against writing in English artistically, against claiming his existence in this new land, and against becoming a truly independent man who followed nothing but his own heart. To date he had tried every way to wriggle out of the struggle. For several years he had devoted all his energy and passion to the restaurant business and gotten the mortgage paid, but the disappearance of the debt had also ended his excuse for not writing, for not doing something his heart desired. Then he was obsessed with his unborn daughter so as to have his energy and life consumed in another way. Not until now did he understand his mind-set. What a shirker he had been! How disgusted he was with himself!
His self-hatred paralyzed his will to do anything other than his routine business. For months he was in despair and acted like a robot moving between the Gold Wok and his house. At times he felt the urge to write something, but whenever he took up his pen, his mind remained numb and vacant, a coldness still permeating his being. He knew he had to get out of this lethargic state before long. No matter what kind of destiny awaited him, he'd have to put up a fight. He must resume working on his poetry. By now it was clear that he should write exclusively in English, which was the only way to go. He had been shilly-shallying for too long; it was the radical beginning that had intimidated him. This realization made him loathe himself more, but it still couldn't motivate him enough for a wholehearted start. These days he thought a lot about writing as if it were a new subject to him.
"Have you read the novella Good-bye, My American Boss?" Niyan asked Nan one afternoon. The waitress liked reading popular magazines, and her husband would write short articles for some Chinese-language newspapers every now and then. "No, who wrote it?" asked Nan.
"Danning Meng. It's a very interesting story that shows how badly some Americans treated the Chinese in Philadelphia. You should read it. It's in the last issue of October Quarterly."
"I know the author. We're friends."
"Really? He's famous."
"I got a letter from him two weeks ago."
Nan had noticed several new titles by Danning in the World Bookstore. He had read two of them, but was underwhelmed. Danning, despite his fame as the leading figure in the overseas student literature, pandered too much to the Chinese readers' taste and depended too heavily on exotic details and on nationalistic sentiment to make his stories work. That in effect made his fiction simplistic, glib, and even clunky in places. Nan didn't mention to Niyan that he disliked his friend's work. If he went on to write, he'd emphasize similarity instead of difference. He imagined a kind of poetry that could speak directly to the readers' hearts regardless of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Above all, his work should possess more strength than beauty, which he believed often belied truth. He wanted to produce literature, or else he ought never to bother about writing at all.
16
THE WUS didn't go to the Olympic games because of the traffic in downtown Atlanta, but they watched TV and followed the news. It was so hot that some athletes fainted during competitions. The local Chinese-language newspapers carried articles on how the American staff at the Olympic Village based at Georgia Tech had inconvenienced the Chinese athletes to ensure they couldn't perform at their best. One night the fire alarm in the dorm building housing the Chinese women swimmers went off, and the police came and ordered everybody out. The athletes stayed in the damp night air a whole hour, and few of them could sleep well afterward. As a result, they did poorly in the events the following day. What's worse, the schedules and maps provided by the Olympic Headquarters were often inaccurate, and some people missed their events or arrived so late that they had to forfeit their games. The Chinese officials lodged a complaint; so did some other countries.
The Wus half believed those reports, but Shubo and Niyan were convinced of them all. There was also a long protest letter in the local newspapers, condemning the NBC commentator's remarks on China at the opening ceremony. The protesters were soliciting more signatures. True, the commentator had criticized China 's human rights record, its military threat to Taiwan, its athletes' doping, and its tolerance of counterfeiting intellectual property. Many Chinese here resented his comments, believing this was another case of China-bashing. These days torrents of angry words had poured in to the Olympic Headquarters, demanding an apology from NBC and from Robert Coleman, the commentator. Some Chinese students urged people to fax more letters to the media company so as to "jam their machines." Funds were being raised for a full-page protest in the New York Times.
Nan said to Shubo, "If China is so sensitive to criticism and public opinion, why doesn't it apologize to its people for the Tiananmen massacre? Compared with the Chinese government, this NBC man is completely innocent. I don't see why people are so furious and even want to have him fired."
"This isn't just politics. It's about national pride," said Shubo. He had come in to watch the games on the TV hung in the corner, which had a larger screen than the one in his home.
"National pride, my butt," Nan said. "What can the Chinese be proud of nowadays? The largest population and cheap labor?"
"Still, that anchorman had no right to condemn China at the opening ceremony."
"How come? Only because he's an American, not entitled to criticize China? I don't understand why the Chinese here also believe that domestic shame mustn't be made public."