Finally, Lao Zhang gave up on Beijing proper. “Tai dade mafan,” he’d say. Too much hassle. Too expensive. So he led an exodus to Mati Village, a collective farm that had been practically abandoned after the communes broke up. A place where artists who hadn’t made it big could live for cheap.
“You think they’ll bust you here?” I asked once.
Lao Zhang shrugged. “Who knows? It lasts as long as it lasts.”
I have to wonder. Because even though Mati Village is pretty far away from Beijing proper, far from the villas and townhouses on Beijing’s outer fringes, people still find their way here. Foreigners, art-lovers, journalists.
Me.
And that Prada chick from the jiaozi place tonight. Lucy Wu.
“Jianli, it’s been a long time.” Lucy Wu smiles and extends her hand coyly in Lao Zhang’s general direction, having spotted us hanging out by the café, behind the PA speakers where it’s not quite so loud.
“Luxi,” Lao Zhang replies. He takes her hand for a moment; it’s dwarfed in his. He stares at her with a look that I can’t quite figure out. “You’re well?”
“Very.” She takes a step back, like she’s measuring him up. “I met your friend Yili earlier this evening. Did she tell you?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I forgot.”
Lucy giggles. “Not to worry. I knew we’d find each other.”
I watch them watching each other, like a couple of circling cats.
“I’m going to get a beer,” I say.
Back in the main room, muffled thuds come from inside the “concrete” block (I’m pretty sure it’s plaster). Cracks appear, then a little chunk falls out, then more pieces, and all of a sudden there’s a hole, and you can see this skinny, shirtless man covered in sweat, swinging a sledgehammer against the walls of his prison. The room is flooded with a rank smell, which makes sense, considering the guy’s been in the box for a couple of days.
Everybody cheers.
I drink my beer. Grab another. The crowd starts to thin out around me. Show’s over, I guess. It’s been almost an hour since I’ve seen Lao Zhang.
I think about looking for him, but something holds me back. Someone, more accurately.
She’s got to be an old girlfriend. Except I couldn’t tell if he was really happy to see her.
“Sorry.”
It’s Lao Zhang, who has appeared next to me, without Lucy Wu.
“How was it?” he asks.
“Okay.”
He rests his hand on my shoulder. But it’s not a friendly gesture. I can feel the tension in his hand.
I look behind him and see Lucy Wu, standing over by the entrance to the video gallery, too far away for me to make out her expression, except I can tell she’s watching us.
“Let’s go,” he says.
We go outside. I start to turn down Heping Street in the direction of Xingfu Road, toward Lao Zhang’s house.
“Wait.”
I turn to look at him. The frown from earlier tonight is back. “It’s better if you don’t come over tonight,” he says.
I shrug. “Fine.”
I should’ve figured. No way I can compete with a Lucy Wu.
“Here.” He digs through his pockets and pulls out some cash. “Some money. For a taxi.”
I don’t take it. “Why didn’t you just tell me not to come?”
“I didn’t think…” He grimaces, shakes his head. “I should have. I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to say. I zip up my jacket and wonder where I’m going to find a taxi this time of night in Mati Village. Down by the bus station, I guess.
“Yili…” Lao Zhang reaches out his hand, rests it gently but urgently on my arm. “Don’t go home tonight. It’s better you go someplace else. Visit some friends or something. Just for tonight.”
That’s when everything shifts. I’m not mad any more.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Are you in trouble?”
He hesitates. “You know how things are here,” he says. “Anyway, it’s not the first time.”
“Can I help?”
I don’t know why I say it. I’m not even sure that I mean it.
I still can’t see his face very well in the dark, but I think I see him smile.
“Maybe later. If you want.”
CHAPTER TWO
THERE AREN’T A lot of places I can think of to go in Beijing at one in the morning.
I tell the taxi driver to take me to Says Hu.
It’s eleven thirty now, and it’ll be dead by the time I get there in an hour and a half; I figure I can hang out, while British John closes up, and decide what to do next.
I forgot it was Karaoke Night.
People come out of the woodwork for this: expats from the Zhongguancun Electronics District, students and teachers from the Haidian universities, ready to get loaded and give us their best rendition of “You Light Up My Life” or “Hotel California.”
When I walk through the door, the place is packed, and a rangy Chinese girl with dyed blonde hair is singing “My Heart Will Go On.”
I almost turn around and leave, but British John has already spotted me. He tops off a pitcher of Qingdao and comes out from behind the bar, beer belly leading his narrow shoulders, face permanently red from too much sun and alcohol.
“Ellie! Good, you’re here. Rose didn’t show up. Boyfriend crisis. Stupid bint.”
“I’m not here to work.”
“When are you ever?”
“Fuck you,” I mutter. Maybe I’m late sometimes, but I do a good job for British John.
Some days it’s hard to leave the apartment, that’s all.
I pick up a rag and start wiping down tables.
Says Hu is an expat bar on the second floor of a corner mall next to an apartment complex, above a mobile phone store. It’s dark, furnished in cheap plastic-coated wood, with dartboards, British soccer posters, and jerseys on the walls. Old beer funk mixes with that bizarre cleaner they use here in China, the one that smells like acrid, perfumed kerosene.
I work here a few shifts a week. That’s plenty.
I don’t mean British John’s a bad guy. He’s not. He’s hinted about hiring me to run this place so he can start another business, making me legal and getting me a work visa, which god knows I need.
But doing this?
“And my heart will go on and on!”
I duck behind the bar, pour myself a beer, and swallow a Percocet.
Between pouring drafts and mixing drinks, I think about what happened in Mati Village.
Lao Zhang has to be in some kind of trouble, but what? The central government doesn’t care much about what anybody does, as long as they don’t challenge the government’s authority. Lao Zhang’s not political, so far as I know. He doesn’t talk about overthrowing the CCP or democracy or freedom of speech. Nothing like that. He talks about living a creative life, about building communities to support that, places that encourage each individual’s expression and value their labors-the opposite of the factories and malls and McJobs that treat people like trash and throw them away whenever they feel like it.
Maybe that’s close enough to freedom of speech to get him in trouble.
But why am I in trouble?
You’re a foreigner, you cause problems, usually they just kick you out of China. Which, if I don’t get my act together, is going to happen anyway.
He told me not to go home tonight.
Maybe it’s not the government, I think. Maybe it’s gangsters. Or some local official Lao Zhang pissed off. A back-door deal gone wrong.
And then there’s Lucy Wu. Ex-girlfriend? Undercover Public Security Officer?
He should have told me what was going on.
My leg hurts like a motherfucker, even with the Percocet, so I start drinking Guinness, and I end up hanging out in the bar after we close, drinking more Guinness with British John, his Chinese wife Xiaowei, an Australian named Hank, and two Norwegian girls. One of them, the taller of the two who looks like a supermodel, is a bitch. She keeps going on about the evils of American imperialism. “It was American imperial aggression that created the desire for a Caliphate,” and “The Taliban was a predictable response to American imperial aggression.”