Chapter 27
Next morning Bing and Kai got up early. It was too excited for them to stay in bed any longer, now that their Great Wall trip would include three girls, and it was no other girl but Vivian, Bing’s dream lover, and Lily, with whom Kai seemed to have already stuck together.
On this special occasion Bing decided to bother himself with what to wear. He had only brought two set of clothes with him. The better one in his opinion had already been worn for two days, so he asked Kai if he had anything good he could borrow. Kai’s resource was, needless to say, very limited, but Bing, almost like what a girl has to do prior to an appointment, chose fussily, checked extensively with the assistance of a small mirror in the room, and ended up wearing a sport shirt and jeans. He felt good; even the acnes on his face seemed to exhibit a sort of masculine vitality.
About 9:30am, they were at the bus stop, waiting. Bing, with a hope that made his eyes gleam, and a little reddish, was confident, a bit nervous, but definitely excited. Of course, he knew this was nowhere close to a courting appointment between him and Vivian; and Vivian, no matter how agreeable she had appeared the day before, had so far only expressed a classmate-like courtesy, or some admiration for his guitar skills.
But he couldn’t wish for anything better.
There they came, three minutes overdue. Vivian dressed herself in a different style. With a greyish coat over a snowy white shirt, the neat and starched collars of which framed very well her neck and her slightly pointed chin. Her blue jeans were a tight fit, so that her legs were shaped well, full and sexy. She was taller than 165cm, probably 168cm, as what he had been measuring with his eyes.
The greetings were simple, yet the impression was delicate and joyful. Kai had bought the bus tickets for everyone, and Bing mused to himself that he should pay him back after the trip. The train and the bus in the city were free, but not for their travel to the Great Wall, though Bing had liked it to be. Isn’t this a special holiday for students? Shouldn’t everything be free and happy and charitable to the poor youth? But, Ah! Those hunger strikers on the Tiananmen Square; they are there starving…
On the bus a group of other students were chattering noisily. One of the girls in the group suddenly turned to Bing, and exclaimed, ‘Hey, you...’
He was shocked, and confused, and frowning, and staring at her.
‘You are the one playing guitar on the Tiananmen Square,’ The girl said, her alarming surprise relaxing to a friendly smile, and now joined by others in her group, continued her remarks, ‘You sang, “I Have Nothing”, a great performance…’
‘Well...’ Bing couldn’t say much but smile, clumsily. He was half worried that, because of this unexpected revelation, more people or even his teachers at Shangwai would eventually find out his conduct. The Beijing trip, plus his performance, might unduly label him as one of the enthusiastic activists on politics, which might lead to severe consequences for his future.
But the three girls in his own group were demanding to hear more. Naturally Kai became a reporter. ‘It was really a surprise to me, for I never knew he could play that. He even asked the audience for beer, and drank it a bottle before he proceeded. And hundreds, hundreds of people were swarming over to sing with him. To me, he was then a totally different person. I thought he was completely drunk, but the effect was superb…’
Bing was excessively abashed. ‘Well, Kai, you don’t have to inflate it.’
‘Only one song?’ asked Yang Yang, ‘I can’t wait to hear you play, Wang Bing.’
But she didn’t get her answer, for Vivian took the chance to reply, ‘You will have a lot of chance in Shanghai. You can even learn from him.’
Bing said modestly, ‘But I can’t sing well, my voice is not good enough. Even with “I Have Nothing”, I need the assistance of alcohol.’
‘I like more your classical ones,’ Vivian gave an opinion, that had been rare. ‘The ones you play at the party.’
‘Before you go, you have to play to us,’ Lily said. ‘Otherwise I won’t have a chance. You promise?’
‘Hehe, but you need get a guitar for me.’
‘That is too easy.’
Being, such placed at the centre of attention, especially in the presence of Vivian, was delighted extravagantly. He lost his sense of time, so when the bus arrived at the destination, he had a start of surprise, as if he wished to stay in the bus longer.
The students who had recognized Bing were from Xi’an. They had come to Beijing with free tickets, for a special holiday, for once-in-a-lifetime freedom, and revolution. The cassette stereo they had brought with them was playing continuously some popular songs. Initially Bing was influenced positively by the music, but after a while, it became a kind of noise in his ears. So after passing two pier stands of Great Wall, the two groups separated from each other.
On the wall, Bing’s group raced, competing to see who would reach a pier first. Bing and Kai would let the other three run in advance, but they would always win. Vivian, with her long hair wildly billowing, was the fastest runner among the three. And Yang Yang, soft, and boneless as she seemed to be, always lagged behind. But she was giggling, incessantly, seeking chances to play tricks. She would pretend she couldn’t run any further, and let others reduce their speed to a walk, and suddenly start to run again. However, her trick did not help her win a single time, because she was too excited even to walk, even if she had already succeeded by sneaking a few steps ahead.
All was fun and joy. Vivian was in full charm and vivacity, though her outfit was not as sparkling as how she often dressed herself in the university. She looked more mature. Her graciousness was so remarkable that Bing decided to regard her as a different person, such as someone from Sichuan, instead of Shanghai. The girls had brought their cameras. When Lily asked Vivian and him, the two classmates, to take a photo together, Vivian did it happily, without the least of reluctance. At certain points of time, Bing even suspected she had even attempted to hold his hand as they stood together, sensing her definite willingness to get closer to him. Whether this was out of friendship, or closeness for classmates, or a tendency of love, Bing dared not to speculate as yet.
Presently Bing, after running, arrived first at a castle, and leant against the wall. He lay his hands in the gap between the bricks, looking at the undulating hills on the misty horizon. The vista was fantastic, serene, and awe-inspiring; the Great Wall, like a streamer, endless, wound through the vast landscape. He heard people, on the top of a pier, singing ‘Descendants of the Dragon’. The Great Wall had the spirit of dragon; its teeth and edges resembled a dragon’s scales. It was tough, defending, and masculine, in sharp contrast to the tender Summer Palace. However, without his encounter with Vivian, his impression of both would have been just plain.
‘Hey, Wang Bing…’
He turned and saw Vivian stepping up towards him. ‘Wooh, Vivian, you are so good at running, now taking over Kai to be the second.’
‘Your friend is waiting for Lily, can’t you see that?’ she said, panting, and smiling, slyly. ‘I believe they will fall for each other.’
‘Haha, you think so?’
‘Yes, very sure, I see it very well from the way they talk and walk. Aren’t they just a couple who haven’t seen each other for a long time?’
‘Well, if it is the case, they will have our best wishes, and our Beijing trip will be more fruitful.’
She stood just one step down to his left. For a long while, they didn’t speak, looking far ahead, drinking the splendid view.
Then she turned to him, ‘The view is magnificent, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, dryly. He was about to say more, or attend to her in a friendly or even loving manner as he should have wished, but for a reason unexplainable to himself, he remained motionless. And the silence went on, and soon became awkward, and unendurable. It was then Vivian that managed to break it.
‘Hehe, you look very solemn, as much as the wall. Are you thinking of something?’ she said, ‘thinking of some story, such as Meng Jiang Nu weeping for her husband?’
He turned to her, and in a happy voice, replied, ‘Yes, how do you know? Are you able to read my mind?’
‘Well, no, actually I may have mistaken your mind. It was perhaps your girl friends that you had been thinking of, haha.’
This was not a little surprise to him. ‘Girl friends?’ he wrinkled his eyebrows. ‘I don’t have a girl friend.’
‘You don’t need to deny it, we girls know every romance that goes on in the class.’
Very amused, Bing tried to suppress a chuckle, but only half successful. ‘Then, we boys know every romance that goes on in the class.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what you mean.’
‘You mean I have a boy friend?’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’
‘Haha, Wang Bing, for these two days you are such a different person. You are so shy and quiet in the class.’
‘Well, I can’t say I am that shy, at least not in my dormitory, or when most of the time on the stage. But to you, or to the girls in the class, I don’t know. I have not been given much a chance.’
She said, ‘But, you have a girl ...’, the rest of her speech was interrupted by the other three, who had just then caught up with them, panting, bending to draw their breath. Lily was complaining, as soon as her breath allowed her to do so. ‘Vivian, Yang Yang was always dragging my clothes, otherwise it must be me who would have arrived here first, not you, not even your classmate. She is so naughty, we need to punish her.’
Vivian replied, like a fair judge, ‘Yes, Yang Yang is today very tricky. We must force her to drink a full bottle tonight. No one is to help her any more.’
‘Please, please,’ Yang Yang was pleading, first to Vivian, but running as if into a wall, she turned to Kai, ‘Kai, my brother, you must stand up as a knight, to stop them ill-treating me, otherwise, I…’
‘What?’ was the question of the rest four in the group.
‘Otherwise, I will cry for three days and three nights, here on the Wall, until it collapses.’
They laughed, their laughter rippling in the air, where, a huge black crow was gliding majestically, and screeching.
Bing said, ‘Yang Yang, Meng Jiang Nu was crying for her husband, who had been buried under the wall, not for the sake of a bottle of beer.’
Kai asked, ‘Well, who knows best the story of Meng Jiang Nu crying at Great Wall?’
Three girls raised their hands at the same time.
‘Fairly enough. Now, can you tell me how she got her name?’ Kai asked, like a teacher in a classroom, with a smile dangling at the corner of his mouth.
But he got no answer. ‘So, none of you knows the full story,’ he said. ‘Now, apart from the story of Meng Jiang Nu, do you know any other stories about the Wall?’
The class was quiet. He beckoned the rest to sit down around him. They were indeed tired and thirsty and hungry. So in the end, they were having a little picnic. The biscuits and other little things the elegant Shanghai girls had saved in their elegant bags were taken out, and eaten.
And the story began. ‘Once upon a time, there were two families, living next to each other. Each had only a wife and a husband. In spite of their efforts in the bed, neither had any children. As they got old, their longing for offspring, so as to continue their bloodlines, was elevating. But still, no matter how hard they had been trying, the wives couldn’t conceive.
‘One day they noticed a pumpkin growing in the boundary between their houses. It was of course a wild plant, because none of them had ever planted it. And being idle in their everyday life, they nursed the pumpkin, checked and touched it every day, with four pairs of old hands, full of wrinkles and veins, and watched it grow, until the time had arrived for the harvest.
‘Even if there was only one pumpkin, no dispute was expected to rise, because, they would just cut it in half for fair distribution. But, to their surprise, inside the pumpkin was a baby girl. They knew it was a baby girl, because the first thing they did was to check between the legs, and found no such a thing of a boy.’
The class laughed, attracting curious eyes of other tourists. And Kai continued, ‘Now, a dispute, a big one indeed, was coming up between them. Even if the baby was a girl, instead of a boy they had desired, it was still better than nobody. But who was to have the baby? The baby couldn’t be divided, could she?’
Knowing his students were soundly enraptured, Kai took his time to drink water.
‘Come on, don’t keep us in suspension...’ Yang Yang was the most impatient.
‘So they went to the local court, lodging their case. It happened that the judge was a migrant from Sichuan province, very clever, very just, very intelligent, very handsome, almost as good as me, and Bing…’
‘Come on, you shameless fellow,’ Lily urged.
‘The judge told them that, since the pumpkin had grown on the border, it should belong to them all. So they should bring her up together. Without further grudge, the couples accepted the verdict. After all, it was better for the baby to be looked after by four parents.
‘But what name should they give to her? This time, they sorted it out themselves. May I ask to test the intelligence of you three Shanghai girls, how did they work out her name?’
Yang Yang rebuffed, ‘No, no, just tell us the answer!’
‘Hang on, I think I know,’ Vivian said, ‘the surname of one family must be Meng, other Jiang, so the baby is a girl, coming up a combined name Meng Jiang Nu.’
‘Ahah, how smart you are! But, to think again, why not Jiang Meng Nu, instead of Meng Jiang Nu?’
A time of mental exercise was taking place, before Vivian gave her answer, ‘Because Meng’s family was older than the other? Well, maybe, I don’t know.’
Yang Yang kicked the teacher, ‘Tell us now…’
‘I would if I knew myself, but I don’t,’ Kai laughed. ‘The rest of the story I suppose you already know.’
But Bing said, ‘Just complete it, in case we have heard it differently.’
‘Okay,’ Kai assented. ‘The girl, under the extensive care, enjoyed very much her babyhood, and childhood. She was a beautiful girl, but of course, not as beautiful and elegant as any of you,’ he paused to throw his flattering smiles to the girls in the circle. ‘Then a bad guy in the village wanted her badly, trying to win her love. But she didn’t like him; instead, she met a tramp who had become homeless after escaping from the labour camp of building this Great Wall, and fell in deep love with him.
‘Now, why did she fall for him?’ He stopped to glance around at the three girls.
‘You are not going to say again that the tramp was from Sichuan, are you?’ Lily spoke out quickly.
‘Unfortunately, and fortunately he was. A nice guy, from Sichuan. Very soon they were married, for her parents couldn’t wait to have grandchildren. But they had only spent three days of their honeymoon, before he was captured again by the army, and sent back to work on the Great Wall. Because, the bad guy who had not succeeded in winning her love, was upset with their marriage, and avenged himself by reporting her husband to the local authority.
‘Meng Jiang Nu was very sad, very miserable. Now, without her husband, how could she live on? There seemed no light, no hope, no purpose in the world wherein she lived. Every day, she worked alone in the fields, for long hours, late into the dusk, and tried to forget him. But could she forget him? She couldn’t; her loss, her pain was interminable, and as her days went on, it was getting even worse.
‘But there was no news about him. Her parents, as sad as herself, were beyond their capability to console her, and no more were they able to make their child happy again.
‘Until one day Meng Jiang Nu couldn’t bear it any longer. She decided to go, and look for her husband. So after spending many nights knitting a pair of cloth-shoes and a coat for him, she set off. The road to the Great Wall was very long, and treacherous, with the cutting wind and ice of winter. And there were always enough bad people in the country, who would rob and hurt a weak woman like her.
‘Before long she had to beg for food, or do anything to survive her journey. Her clothes were torn, and wretched, but she held her bag tightly, in which the coat and shoes stored, and had never thought of wearing them herself, or exchanging them for food.
‘Finally, after months of hardship, and destitution, she arrived at the foot of Great Wall, in clothes that could only be seen as patchy leaves, with a face that could only be regarded as shattered glass, but with a hope that was even greater than the heaven’s.’
‘But she was told that, her husband had already died, a long time ago, soon after he was sent back to the Wall.
‘Upon the news, she didn’t break her heart, because she no longer had a heart to break. But she had a lot of tears in her; in fact, she had nothing else but tears.
‘So she began to cry, at the foot of the Wall, and kept on crying for three days and three nights. She was exhausted, fatigued; her whimper was weaker, and weaker, until the last drop of her tears, when she heard a thunderous sound, and saw the Wall collapsing in front of her.
‘From the rubble, her husband, in fact, a skeleton, was arising. He shook off the dust, and stumbled towards her. She crawled to him, and using her last strength, put the shoes and coat on him.
‘Then, they embraced and entwined each other, and died peacefully.
‘All this time, in the sky there was a huge black crow witnessing. So dramatic was the collapse, and so sorrow-stricken was the morning wife’s voice, that the crow, since then, that was thousands of years ago, had never stopped the sort of cry it had imitated from her. In fact, it had passed from generation to generation, from country to country, and now, all over the world crows are crying her cry…’
…….
Later in the evening the group dined together again, each drank a fair amount of beer. The dinner was fully paid for by Vivian, who fought for the chance of payment with greater effort than the boys. Then, in a state of intoxication, they dawdled back to the university, like a loose pack of monkeys. Lily’s mood was in prime, and she didn’t forget to ask Bing to play guitar.
‘So, you two go to our dormitory?’ she said, then, only to Kai, ‘or yours?’
‘The guard may not allow us to stay in your place, unless you are on good terms with her.’
‘Don’t mind about her,’ she said boldly, ‘no trouble, just follow me.’
So, they all trailed after her to her dormitory building. And to their glad surprise, the guard was not at the entrance.
‘She must have gone to the toilet,’ Lily whispered, ‘she doesn’t usually take long over there, let’s run fast.’
So they ran. The boys ran upstairs three at a time, in no time up to the third storey, and realized they were not even told which storey Lily was on. So they came back down a few steps, waiting for the girls.
Lily said, ‘You guys are like fishes jumping into a pool.’
‘No, they are more like wolves, plunging into a chicken’s house,’ Vivian corrected.
‘No, I am not a chicken, I am a lamb,’ Lily said.
‘Yes, you are a lamb,’ Vivian emphasized, her finger pointing at Kai, ‘waiting for a wolf.’
Kai chuckled, ‘All right, so long as you are not tigresses.’
Lily laughed, ‘Tiger, we are tigresses, aren’t we?’ Then she yelled, ‘Yang Yang, quick, are you drunk?’
‘Yes, I am drunk, all your fault.’
At the doorstep, Lily announced to her roommates, ‘I have the prince of guitar from Shangwai. He was going to play in our room. If you are interested, stay, otherwise, leave the room, thanks.’ She went straight to the bed at the window, and threw herself down.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ a number of girls, firing up from their idleness in the beds, began to clap their hands. One of them got up to prepare the stools for the visitors. The room was messy and crowded, not much different from the boy’s. But the clothes and lingerie hanging over the bedsteads, and the scent of certain cosmetics, were sweet, distinctively, and fascinating.
Lily asked the boys who still stood bewildered at the threshold of the door, as if they were indeed lambs suddenly facing a group of tigresses, to come in and sit down on the stool made ready for them. Then she said to one roommate, ‘Ping Ping, can you go bring over Yin’s guitar?’ Ping Ping obeyed and scurried out, and in a little while returned with the instrument, to be followed by five more girls into the room. Now, filled with nearly twice the number of its normal inhabitants, the small room was a version of train carriage. They sat on the upper bunks watching, loftily. Bing felt his face hotter than the alcohol could have done to him.
But the spectators didn’t end here, more and more were entering. Their voices were sweet and cheery, like that of birds’. Bing felt his heart beating in his ears, his hands quavering on the strings, as if revisiting the stage fright for his first performance. Lily asked him to sit close to the window, with his back against the sill so that he could face the audience.
He calmed himself, ‘Well, you don’t have to be nervous; you had drunk enough to be careless. After all, you have played many times on formal stages, in classrooms, and in casual spaces like this.’ However, this time his ‘self-talk’ didn’t seem to work, for he felt his fingers were still unstable, lacking the strength and nimbleness for the upcoming task. The whole room, full of tigresses or lambs or chickens, were quietly waiting. Their patience would soon evolve to impatience, and they would jump to attack him, should he make them wait any longer.
Now, inadvertently, the pair of her eyes, Vivian’s, came to him. Almost concealed herself in the bed with Lily, along many others, she had only her face exposed to the reach of his glance. Her eyes, dark, and full, gazed at him, steadfastly, and thoughtfully, and from that moment of their eye contact, he had read a hint of tenderness, that somehow he knew for sure was only for him. How could Vivian, who had been always active, vivacious, and conspicuous, make herself so quiet, in such a mesmerizing tranquillity? Wasn’t it all because of him, and for him?!
Instantly he was elated; in his chest a type of stream stirred to flow, soothing the restless passion that had agitated unduly his fingers.
He was ready. ‘Let me play first, the one you all must be familiar, Romance De Amor.’
The clapping was fading off. So many times had he played for others, but this time, it was for Vivian, the first time for her, to reward the tenderness she had imparted to him, to reward the minute of her acquiescent care, that had melted him, that had mellowed his fingers, all at once.
Though his eyes were open, he didn’t see her. In his mind, a remembered image of her was reviving. In the whispers issued from his heart, passing through the instrument, he said to her:
‘Vivian, do you know
I fell in love with you a long time ago.
Are you aware
Your eyes are my constant wear.
I have travelled far and alone
Looking for you, yet you have never known.
I go to a hill, to bury my will
Trying to forget, but miss you still.
There the moonlight, is cold and slippy
I see my shadow in such a flight, a misery.
Upon the dawn, I drift to the stream
I see your smile and taste the spring.
Oh, Vivian, it is so sweet!
But you must be here to make it complete!
Arising there is a fresh sun,
But without you here, that is none.
The meadow is near and rich in colour
Let’s hold our hands and pace the heather.
We race and fly and kiss the wind
Our naked hearts are free to sing.
Oh, Vivian, where are you
I can’t see you, please mend my view.
Please, don’t leave
We can share a faith we both believe.
There are so many skies we haven’t seen
So much happiness is yet to begin.
Oh, Vivian, stay with me
For without you, I am a tree.
Oh, Vivian, stay with me
For without you, I never free…’
He was then asked by the girls to play more, and sing, and drink, together with them. Some of them were in tears, which, like that of dear sisters, were so beautiful. To think thousands of students, perhaps some of their classmates were at the time still lingering in Tiananmen Square, with their hearts and souls wrenched and desperate.
At their departure, Bing and Vivian agreed a time to meet at the station the next day. Bing was happy. He detected her keen admiration for him. And the tenderness that had earlier struck him was still in her eyes.
Later in Kai’s dormitory, Kai said, ‘I’m not flattering if I say you played really well. You are going to be a star.’
Bing replied, ‘You had told a great story on the wall, especially about the crow. How could you invent that? I know it is only your own version.’
‘I don’t know. I saw a crow just then in the sky, so, probably like when you play guitar, I had followed my heart.’
‘See, your narration had made the girls cry. You are going to be a good writer.’
