‘So what will you do?’ Tianyi was genuinely concerned. She was surprised that he was talking about such a grave matter apparently so casually. As if it had nothing to do with him. ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Xiaoming smiled. ‘Just get on with things, right? For the sake of the child.’
Tianyi said nothing. For the sake of the child, it was a phrase she had heard countless times, although she did not know whether the sentiment was uniquely Chinese or universal. Were human individuals really so acquiescent, so obedient to the diktats of fate? Why did Chinese men always put their mother and their child in first place, but treat their partners or lovers as if they were expendable? Did all Chinese men want to turn the women they loved into prostitutes, at their beck and call, without ever considering the woman’s feelings? Suddenly she wanted to cry.
Xiaoming must have sensed a change in Tianyi, because he asked anxiously: ‘What’s up?’ Tianyi made an effort to hide her distress. ‘Nothing.’
He gave her a cautious glance and said in a low voice: ‘I’ll tell you something. You see, this place is my base.’ ‘Yes, I can see that,’ she said vaguely. He dropped his voice even more. ‘Please don’t ever tell the boss. This is where my lover lives.’
She took a moment to react. ‘What?’
He repeated it, then went on: ‘I brought you here to meet her, but unfortunately she’s gone home this evening.’ Tianyi suddenly felt a wave of distress, which left her utterly drained.
Because of her fatigue, they started back late at night, driving slowly home through the fog. In all her forty years, she had never experienced fog this thick in Beijing. The car seemed to be floating in a cloud. Who knew where they were going? It was actually rather exciting.
Xiaoming was in good spirits. ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked her. ‘No. Not at all,’ she said. What’s to be afraid of, she thought to herself. Better to die in this godforsaken place than to struggle along as she had been doing. She had a sudden vision: early dawn, the mist still lingering; a car crash, the vehicle smashed to pieces, the still-warm corpses of a man and a woman. Reports circulating that the pair had been carrying on an illicit affair. Then Lian’s face, looking stunned. She found herself smiling a little.
The car nosed its lonely way through the mist. It was very, very late, two o’clock in the morning, when they finally arrived at her door. She had a sudden realization that this was not her home, it was a cage in which she was imprisoned. She had been delivered back to prison and she did not want to go in. He was puzzled at the dazed look on her face. Softly he leaned forward and planted a kiss in her cheek.
She was startled out of her dream. Instinctively, she knew she did not want to go back into that house, to that life that was like a living death, to that persistent smell of oestrogen. And her heart broke.
She suddenly flung her arms around him and burst into tears, clinging to him like a drowning person grips a lifebuoy. She was quite well aware that the lifebuoy would not save her because there were too many people drowning and the lifebuoy was destined to go to someone else, not to her. The tears scared him out of his wits. She wept and wept, a life-time of tears. He stammered some words, but she did not take them in.
Tianyi went into the house, her head spinning, too dazed to do anything. Then she gathered herself and sat down at the typewriter. It was 1994, and she did not have a computer yet, just a Sitong 2403 word-processor. She typed a title: Drowning. And so, that fog-laden night in the mid-nineties, Tianyi wrote the story of an ordinary Chinese woman. At the time, she just felt as if her heart was breaking. She had no idea that years later this story would get her into further trouble with the authorities.
Life did have its lighter moments, however. Tianyi took her material on trafficked women, called Fenhe Bay Adventures, to Tong. Tong, twice-married, twice-divorced, was now in charge of a TV production company. She got an answer a few days later. Tong had only two questions: ‘What’s this screen play about?’ Trafficked women, said Tianyi. ‘Who wrote it?’ Me, she told him. ‘In that case, I don’t need to read it. Come and sign the contract tomorrow,’ said Tong. It was as simple as that. Tianyi sold the screenplay, ten episodes, for 3,000 yuan per episode.
30,000 yuan was a huge sum for a media work in mainland China in the mid-nineties. When Tianyi actually had the money in her hands, and counted, she was half-aware of a smile on Tong’s face. She suddenly felt that it was an immensely sunny smile. It warmed her to think of it for many years afterwards. It had emerged like the sun from behind clouds, and brightened the gloomy innermost recesses of her heart.
The year that followed was full of sunlight. In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women chose Beijing for its venue and instantly China’s women, especially the intellectuals, came to life. A leading scholar brought out a collection of women’s writing, and a piece by Tianyi was included. The concept of ‘Women’s writing’ made its debut in the literary world and, more interesting still for Tianyi, she gained critical recognition as a representative of the genre. This was partly due to her old publication, The Tree of Knowledge, and even more because of Drowning.
Drowning caused an unimaginable commotion. It was as if this was the first time since the founding of New China, indeed since ancient times, that women’s sexual needs, their deep inner suffering, and their ways of dealing with it, had been laid before the reader so clearly, so determinedly, so boldly, so painfully. Up until then, women’s eternal diffidence (‘Hiding half her face behind the pipa’ in the words of the Bai Juyi poem) had caused people to misunderstand their sexual desires. It was as if Chinese women did not need sex, and were only passive partners, coerced into it by men. Chinese women’s sexuality had always been an absolutely taboo topic. Only a fool would have tried to rip away the veil that covered it. And that fool was Yang Tianyi, and she was a fool through and through.
Not unexpectedly, retribution was swift. Although Drowning was chosen unanimously for a literary prize soon afterwards, it was subsequently dropped. The reason was an anonymous letter whose author did a thorough job of demolishing Drowning, and in the voice of sweet reason and moderation, too. The writer had even saved the authorities the trouble of reading the book, by meticulously going to the trouble of cutting and pasting sections of it into the letter, like a good, considerate Party comrade. The letter made its way right up to the Literary Censorship Bureau, where the cut and pasted excerpts stirred up a hornet’s nest amongst its top brass.
Many years later, Tianyi found out to her amazement that the culprit had been Xi, Tong’s second wife. She was divorced now, and a writer, having started first with flattering articles about her rock star boyfriend, Meng. With her passable English, she had then worked her way into the Foreign Languages Research Institute. Most recently, she had started writing novels.
Xi was generally a very mixed-up young woman, in and out of relationships like a yoyo. However, her relationship with Meng helped boost her career because he was convinced she had talent and encouraged her to write fiction. He was a bit of a connoisseur of good literature and well-connected too, being on back-slapping terms with all the most important people in the literary world. Meng’s efforts were not wasted: Xi’s success was a credit to him But as soon as he read Tianyi’s Drowning, Meng began to have sleepless nights.