Blue Jacaranda - Chapter 12
"Pipi Pipi, here, here...” Peter’s mother waved her arm excitedly, leaning forward, ready to break the fence to meet him at the international exit in Chengdu Airport.
Pipi, a pet name given by his parents, meant Tiaopi, ‘naughty’. Whether or not he had been naughty as a boy, he was not very sure. The fact was every time Peter heard it called, either in his bedroom having a bad dream, or at the gate of school after a day’s study, he felt his heart docked home.
So this was home, a place he often forgot when he was happy but missed badly when he was sad.
His father, who had wandered away from the waiting line and missed the very moment of his turning up around the corner, came over to form the reunion of the single-child family.
“Hi, dad,” said Pipi, to which his father only answered with a slight nod. In contrast to Mum's fluid delight and sunny happiness, Dad appeared rather reserved, as if it was necessary for him to keep a distance from the noisy mother and son, and indeed, it had been Pipi’s observation that Dad seemed only willing to spare his wide smiles for his students, or his colleagues, or even the strangers he came across on the street.
On their way to the car park, Mum and Son were competing for the labour of pushing the luggage trolley. Most of the time, the young adult would win, while Mum still placed one hand on the edge of the trolley, another on the arm of her beloved son, getting herself ready for another attempt to swap their positions.
The white Geely, the family car purchased many years ago, was still as shiny as new. In the car park, its waxed surface flew the pretty eddies produced by the watery light. It was his father’s ‘baby’, perhaps a better pet than his Pipi.
Mother and Son sat in the back seat where the mother had to bombard her son with endless questions. “Are you hungry? Did you like the food on the plane? What drink did you choose? Did you manage to sleep a while? Aren’t you cold on this thin T-shirt? I told you Chengdu is colder than Sydney, and I am going to cook your favourite dish Mapo Tofu...”
Pipi’s mouth began to water at the mention of his favourite food, not the popular ones made by every other Chinese restaurant, but only by his mum.
But his father ventured to disagree, “Don’t make such trouble, we will go to a restaurant instead.”
“No, no, the Mapo Tofu at the restaurants are too oily, not healthy,” Mum countered, “and who knows what kind of oil and sauce they are using.”
“But aren’t people all eating it,” Father raised his voice, in an academic style of debate, “are they all unhealthy? Getting some kind of cancer? Do you really think all restaurants in China are using Digouyou, the oil recycled from the oil waste?”
But unfortunately to his questions he couldn’t get any reply from his ‘opponent’, for his wife had already curtailed their debate by talking instead to her son. In fact, in all of the little household quarrels between them, Mum would always have an upper hand, if she chose to exercise her tactical silence or topic diversion as a deciding power. And Dad wouldn’t be sad or in any way angry, because, for him, to exercise his democratic right of making a point was more important than the victory itself.
Mum was born in Hangzhou, and had only a mild love for the generally hot and numbing Sichuan dishes, whilst Dad was a local Chengdunese, who loved them dearly and for every food cooked at home he had to add extra spicy sauce for himself. The only exception was Mapo tofu, for which Mum had also developed a special taste because of her many years of cooking it for Pipi.
Mum, a graduate from Sichuan Science and Technological College, knew Father at a dancing party. Over the years their marriage was like a creek that, although noisy, was never as loud as a thunderstorm, nor as quiet as a lake. Sometimes Pipi wondered if they had really loved each other, them being so different in many ways, and never seen as intimate as a couple of lovers.
The moment Pipi broke into his bedroom, he threw himself to bed, spreading like a starfish. Looking around, everything was very in order, clean and tidy. The book shelf on the wall kept the books he had or had not read since his childhood, and the study desk that had seen his face and eyes drooping on his endless homeworks, waited there in silence for its old friend.
Yes, from today on, this room would be again occupied by its master, and the floor would be strewn again by his smelly socks and underpants, to be tidied up by his mother. In the eyes of his mum, he was always a baby boy, and he had little wish to grow up.
Slowly, the soft touch of the pillow lured him to sleep, and then he fell into the soundest slumber he had had in recent years, until the familiar noise of the neighborhood woke him up.
He arose from bed and, leaning upon the window sill, he beheld the tree that had grown up together with him. In the lamplight, its shimmering leaves were smiling and speaking to him, ‘Hi Pipi, welcome home, nice to see you in the window again…’
He strolled to the living room, where Mum was at the tea table drinking a cup of tea. At the sight of him, she sprang up to her feet and strode to the kitchen, “Ah, you have slept so many hours, you must be very hungry. Are you still tired? Come, come, to eat.”
Pipi sat at the dinner table, watching his rice bowl, his chopsticks, and the delicious dishes carried over one after another, growing hungrier with every second.
“Where is dad?” he said, taking in a piece of tofu, measuring with his tongue its slipperiness and spiciness and numbness.
“He had gone to the university for his research,” Mum replied, picking more pieces into his bowl and, as always, finding her satisfaction in watching him eat. “Eat more, eat more, you are thinner, poor food in Australia, see, for nearly two years you had never had this…”
Pipi was very amused, “Come on, Mum, there are actually a lot of Mapo tofu in Australia, but of course, Mum’s is the best all over the world,” then suddenly, Pipi leant over and audaciously kissed her on the smiling face. He couldn’t remember any other time he had done this to his mum.
The face shone instantly, and with her hand Mum was cleaning her cheek. “Xiao Gui - little naughty, you do have grown up, knowing now how to flatter your mummy,” which was a similar comment made by Melody who had once said of him being more ‘mature’ for being able to say sweet words to her.
After eating plenty of food, he went out to have a walk, to relieve the pressured stomach. In Sydney it was about midnight, but he had had enough sleep already.
The residential area, provided by Sichuan University for its teachers and workers, was covered thickly by trees, like a little woods in the heart of Chengdu, which was only a little distance from the famous Tianfu Square. He went straight to his companion tree and gave its hard body a hearty embrace and a passionate shake. And the little sparrows, the only birds around the place, burst out from the leaves and quietly lost their sights into the dusky night.
There was a man kneeling beside a car, with a torch inspecting it. Pipi went over to him, recognizing who he was, “Hi, uncle Bing.”
“Hi, oh, is that Pipi, when did you come back home?”
“This afternoon,” Pipi answered. “Anything wrong with the car?”
“Yeah, there seems to be a strange noise coming from under the body,” said Uncle Bing, standing up, “Well, come to my house to have tea, whenever you have time.”
“Thank you,” said Pipi, “I will.”
Outside on the street, the Yinxing (ginkgo) trees were in full blossom, gleaming like yellow fires, sweeping away the misty feeling of both people and buildings. Nominated as the city tree, it was lighting up the atmosphere in the lamp light.
Everything was the same, and everything was not the same. The street was filled with the hastily swerving cars and some lonely bicycles and grumpy motorbikes. The Chengdu dialect that seemed to tone with a measure of derision, came to his ears as the evident hometown melody. Within 24 hours, his overseas experience seemed to have been wiped clean, and Sydney was like a place in a dream, now gone into vapor. From this time on, he was going to draw a new chapter of his life on a blank paper, like millions of graduates in this big country faced with enormous challenges, loaded with tons of expectation from their parents and the society.
And Peter didn’t wait for his father to pester him about his future. He had resisted his temptation to see his schoolmates, and decided to concentrate on his job hunting until success.
His resume was sent to hundreds of job ads on the internet. Apart from accounting, he had targeted various positions like business administration, international trade, English teacher, to name just a few. The returned overseas students, dubbed as Haigui, were in recent years no more favoured by the picky employers in China. But never mind, he was determined, he could put up with many rejections and no responses, and would try all he could to secure just one starting position in his motherland.
But still, it seemed he had overestimated the acceptance of his overseas study in China, and had thought too well of his ‘good’ English as an advantage in the job market. Of the dozen interviews he had fetched, none had turned out to be successful.
His father, seeing him idle in and out of the flat everyday, began to lose patience, asking him to consider further study, instead of finding an ‘impossible’ job. “How can you find a job with only a bachelor degree these days? Master’s is the minimum, see, in our university, Doctor’s is a requirement.”
But Peter couldn’t bear the thought of doing more study. He had already spent over a million yuan of his parent’s money for the study in Sydney. And what was the payoff out of that? He couldn’t even get a simple job! And even if he could, the average salary of those jobs was no more than 5000 yuan a month, an amount he could barely survive if he didn’t live together with his parents. There was no way he could have a positive ROI (Return Over Investment), the very terminology that he had learnt from his pricey courses in Sydney.
Oh, what a stupid decision, to think that, with one million yuan his parents could have just paid him a salary for nothing for as long as 20 years!
Of course, if he had followed his previous ambition and had tried to stay in Australia after graduation, his fate might have been very different. At worst, he could continue to work as a lamb-stick chef in Jason’s BBQ and nobody would give a damn of what he was doing in Australia. But him as a chef, cooking lamb-sticks here in China? People would laugh their teeth out, and his father would condemn him as a useless outcast till the last day of his life.
As days went by, his hope to find a job was fading. Now without a keen heart for anything, he slept during the day, and wandered about the place, no longer excited by the scarce interview emails arriving in his inbox. Some interviewers had been very rude. One had invaded his privacy by asking him whether he had a girlfriend; one questioned the genuineness of his overseas degree; one suggested that the reason he had gone abroad was because he could not get into a Chinese university. So many odd questions, not work-related, were raised without the least of their conscience. Discrimination against the job seekers, based on age, gender, looks, the place you were born, and the school you had studied, seemed taken for granted in the country.
But still, he had persuaded himself to accept the reality, no matter how harsh it was, only if they could give him a job after humiliating him sufficiently.
Yet, they still refused him, kept disappointing him, even if he was laid low and humble, as a dust.
He began to frequent the bar again, this time because of lacking a job, not because of lacking a girl’s love. The popular Jiuyanqiao bar-street was close to where he lived. He could just walk there whenever he felt his bedroom was increasingly becoming a prison. He stared at the singers, his eyes becoming moist as he heard the song ‘Chengdu’, feeling as sentimental as the bubbles swirling up in the glass of beer.
‘The street lights had dimmed out, but still we walked on
You held my sleeve hard, but my heart was not strong
The gentle mist touched my face, cooling my tears
Until we had reached the little bar featured with a lantern and five fingers
Do you remember the tales in Dufu’s Thatched Cottage
Have you been amazed by the ripples of Yinxing leaves
There we read the ancient words, and sing the modern song
Chengdu, flirting with my mind, was always you.
Can ‘t you see my freedom and struggles, wo, wo
Will you forgive me for my past, if I have been wrong
You kiss my sadness, I plant you a happy seed
Without the hot pot and tea games, we sit and drink our memories.’
He was deciding he should find time to visit the mysterious little bar with a lantern and five fingers, when a girl came over to sit opposite. “Hey, Shuaige, my handsome brother, buy me a drink please?”
He didn’t like her face, less so her dress. “Why?” he asked, arching his brows at her.
The girl, denied by his ‘unfriendliness’, threw him one word, “Miser.”
Peter pointed at his own face. “Me, miser?”
She laughed, showing her better-looking teeth, “come on, don’t get angry, Shuaige, buy me a drink, please?”
Peter pointed at his own face. “Me, angry?”
She replied this time with a mirthful laugh, “Hah, Shuaige, you are so funny, I can’t help but love you.”
Peter pointed at her, “You,” then back at himself, “Love Me?”
The girl finally lost her interest in him. “A real miser, bye, bye.”
But he called her back, “okay, okay, Meinv, pretty girl, here is a miser’s money, you buy the drink yourself,” he fished out from his wallet a note of one hundred, “but stay away from me please ...”
The girl took the money, her eyes glaring at him, then slowly but surely, she began to tear the note into half, and put the wretched Renminbi down on his table. “Keep the miser’s money to yourself, lone wolf! Nobody is going to sit with you.”
After she left, he felt a sudden shame and sadness climbing over him. Since when he had become so cynical, treating a ‘friendly’ girl like that? After all she was his hometown fellow; it would have been a precious encounter had they met in other cities.
Next day at noon, he decided to contact his schoolmates, not waiting until he had found a decent job that could in some way prove the worthiness of his overseas study which had been well-known among his classmates.
“Hi, Xiaobai,” he sent the message to his best mate at high school, who had gone to Wuhan University and with whom he had not been in touch for the last two years.
The reply came back only one hour later. “Hi Peter... How are you? Long time no see, hehe.. “
“Yes, long time no see,” replied Peter, not sure where his friend was right now but deciding to try his luck. “Let’s see each other at Laoma Rabbit Head at 6:00 pm tonight.”
“What? Today? Tell me you are not joking...”
“Of course not, haha, see you then…”
“Oh really, but I am not in Chengdu. I am in Gongxing town. But if you are not kidding me, we will surely go back to meet you today.”
The town was about a two hours drive from Chengdu. “Yes, you must, by the way, did you say ‘We’? Who else?”
“Ming Ming, my girlfriend.”
“Oh, very good, see you at 6:00pm then.”
Xiaobai, Little White, was a nickname among his classmates given for his pale small face, delicate features and slender figure. To many, the name was nearly insulting, hinting he was not a capable man but someone who had to live upon women, perhaps as a ‘duck’, a male escort or ‘prostitute’. But Xiaobai was never quite offended by the name, who would just shrug it off, “Yes, I am Xiao Bai Lian, so what? Isn’t it an enviable advantage? Not everyone has it anyway, and it is good enough that a man can be well looked after by women.”
At the porch of the restaurant, Xiaobai hugged Peter passionately. Peter noticed Xiaobai’s strange hair arrangement, done in a half-shape of the Chinese Tai Chi symbol. Peter patted his head and said, “You have really turned into a fashionable monkey, hahaha.”
“Yeah, doesn’t it look nice?” Xiaobai turned to Ming, a girl with big eyes and a round face and short hair, “Ming loves it.”
“Really?” Peter turned to Ming and decided to be humorous. “In that case, I suppose Ming,” he had already begun to laugh, “you arrange your hair to the second half of the Tai Chi, and dye it white to match Xiaobai’s black. Won’t it be wonderful that you two make a complete circle of it, and imagine you walking side by side in the street, I bet you would become internet idols, attracting millions of fans.”
Ming broke out into ringing giggles, flashing her big charming eyes, “What a fantastic idea! We should do it right away,” she patted the head of her boyfriend, “What do you think? My Bai Bai, Would you mind me doing that?”
Xiaobai chuckled, “Not at all!”
Half an hour later, three of them were there sucking into the delicious Rabbit Heads, and at the same time telling their catch-up stories.
Xiaobai and Ming were classmates. But three years into their study, they made a bold decision to quit it, and went to the countryside raising pigs.
“Oh my god, raising pigs!” exclaimed Peter in disbelief, hanging a rabbit head in mid-air, “No wonder I could smell something piggy on you, haha,” he paused to look at Ming, “excuse me, Ming, no offence...”
Xiaobai began to pretend to sniff around, and toward Ming’s hair, “Oh, what a smell…” He covered his nose and made his face look disgusted. Ming started to pinch his cheek with her oily fingers, until he had to kiss her cheek countless times with his oily lips. Then, laughing hilariously, they both took tissues to clean each other’s smudged face.
‘How lovely is this couple!’ Peter sighed, witnessing the demo of an unusual version of ‘love’. Peter couldn’t remember he had ever interacted with Melody with such affluent affection.
“So how is your pig farm, are you doing all right? Without losing money?” Peter asked, admiring their love that looked so very natural and intimate, but more by their adventurous decision.
“Well, we are still learning things, we have lost some money, haven’t we, Ming?” replied Xiaobai, turning to his darling.
“Yes, we have,” answered Ming, “But it is getting better now, and this year, we shall be cash positive for sure.”
“That is good,” said Peter, picking up another rabbit head, “I wonder how your parents could allow you to do such a thing?”
“I know what you mean,” Xiaobai replied, “It was a crazy idea that would be definitely opposed by all parents in town, but eventually we had convinced them, and they even agreed to lay the startup capital, but on a condition that if we fail, we must return to university to continue our studies,” he paused to drink his beer, “anyway when you go to see our farm? We are currently upgrading our control system.”
“Control system?” Peter asked curiously.
“Yeah, don’t think pig-raising is a simple thing, we need special treatment for things like disease control, waste processing, drinking, etc. See, the little things I have learned from school are all put into good use.”
“How many pigs?”
“300, to start with,”
“Oh, that is a lot…”
“Well, our plan is to have 3000 or more in five years, the money, if we could make it every year by then, will be put back to the farm for expansion.”
The next day, Peter went to the farm, which was not at all as what he had imagined. The establishment consisted of an administrative cottage with two bedrooms and a kitchen, plus a separate one-level factory-like building for housing the pigs.
“This division is for young piglets, and that is for growth, and that is for breeding,” Xiaobai explained to Peter about the quarters of the layout.
Peter, who had never seen a single pig in real life, was awed by the widespread presence of the pinkish animals, although he felt a little revolted as the pigs somehow reminded him of the crawling worms. “Hah, they are so fat,” he commented, suppressing the threads of bad feelings, “it looks like you are accounting for all stages of a pig’s life.”
“Yeah, we are like parents, but instead of the kids, we care solicitously for these pigs.”
The rows of pigs, stirred by their visit, began to grunt noisily, pricking up their ears, poking and twisting their snouts, staring at them with their bleary innocent eyes. Their short, S-shaped tails looked exceedingly funny, sticking in such a way out of a massive body.
Xiaobai went on explaining the control system, sewage system, the waste processing, etc. “All of these things were installed by myself,” he added proudly.
“Really, you are so very good,” Peter complimented, patting the back of his friend whose thin body was far from that of a handyman.
And there were not only pigs that the young couple had been raising in the farm. On the hills, there were groves of orange and apple trees and at the foot of the hills lay multiple fields for assorted vegetables. Not far from the fields, there was a lake in which a flock of ducks were for the time quacking loudly, with their necks jerking skyward, their wings flapping like giant fans.
“See, no land is being wasted here,” said Xiaobai, “it is an ecosystem, organisms are all being recycled. We are very self-sufficient, except for rice, we eat what we grow.”
The lunch was served with fresh vegetables and duck, prepared by the cook they employed for the farm. Xiaobai was telling more of his story, “I didn’t do my study well and when I had failed two of my subjects, I began to really hate the exams. Then I read a newspaper about an old man in the city who had gone to a village growing quality oranges, and seeing the wonderful pictures of rows and rows of trees and fruits, I began to speculate that life must be very beautiful in the countryside, and began to toy with the idea of doing similar things. Then, knowing that China had to close many small family-based pig farms, due to their heavy pollution, and needed to develop large-scaled, modern farms, I went for it.
“My parents, and all the people around me, were sensationally shocked by my ideas. My dad opposed it fiercely, but then, with Ming fully supporting me, see, my darling always supports me,” he smiled at Ming, clutching her body closer to his, “so we had the patience and persistence to persuade them, and eventually they yielded.”
Peter sighed, “I wished my father could be as reasonable as yours.”
“Well, your father is indeed different, he being a professor, who would certainly plan a better future for you.”
“What the hell is the future,” said Peter vehemently, “you know what, during the last two months, I have submitted hundreds of resumes, and except for a few boring interviews, I got nothing, and to imagine I have spent four years overseas spending millions for the study, it was a joke, was it not?”
Peter emptied the bottle of the Snow-flake beer, wishing he could just get drunk and forget the entire world.
The couple across the table, for the first time, looked serious. “Well, Peter,” said Xiaobai carefully, “I know, the job market for graduates is very tough, actually always tough, especially for those from not-so-famous universities. But don’t be upset, trust me that you haven’t wasted your study, after all your English must be very good. And listen, Peter, you are welcome to join us, and we can work and live happily in the farm, to grow the business bigger and bigger, one day becoming the number one in China…”
Peter, thinking of those scrawling pigs, was not much in favour of the great prospect thus painted by his friend, although he said, “Hahah, it sounds enormous, only if my father is not going to kill me for that. After spending so much on me for my studies, do you think he, and even my mother, would allow me to come here raising pigs?”
“Well, our door is alway open to you,” said Xiaobai, “you don’t have to make a quick decision, but you can come to try it for any length of time, and at the same time you can still apply for your other jobs.”
That night, Peter tossed and turned long in bed, unable to sleep. Xiaobai and Ming had given him a new perspective of seeing life and work, and love. They were just so happy, doing things they liked, and most of all, the couple looked so much in love. Between them there didn’t seem to have any other possibilities but living happily together and forever. In his own limited experience with Melody, there had always been some confusion and distrust, living together mostly for convenience, notwithstanding moments of animal passions.
In the following month, his failures in the job market continued to frustrate him, making him desperate. One night at the dinner table, he dared to mention to his parents his wish of joining Xiaobai.
His father exploded, “What? Raising pigs? Are you mentally normal? Is that what you want to pay me back for the millions we spent on you? And for all these years since your kindergarten we have been worried about you?”
Peter stayed defiant, “Dad, I just want to try for a few months, killing the idle time, and see I can still keep on looking for jobs.”
“No, never, don’t ever think of it,” shouted his father who was usually incapable of loud voices, “as long as I am still alive.”
Nor, this time, was his mother on his side, “Pipi, I have to agree with your father, you should focus on finding a proper job, or otherwise going for further study, and don’t worry about the money, we will manage it, see, we can always sell our second flat for it.”
Peter, agitated, muttered helplessly, “No, no, no, Mum, and Dad, I don't want to spend more of your money on my study, and who can guarantee for a good outcome in the end? What have I got now from my Australian study? Nothing whatsoever, not even a shitty job of three or four thousands a month.”
For a moment Father’s fury seemed to abate, his loose hair settling on his half-bald head, “Well, as a teacher, I know it is hard, but that is the only way out, you are not alone. And how can you focus on your job searching, if you stay with Xiaobai on the farm? You would certainly drink everyday and spoil your life, and get nothing but a body of pig shit on you...”
At last, Peter’s determination was bent, saying resignedly, “Okay, okay, I won’t go, okay? Are you both happy now?” Then he ran into his room, slamming the door behind him as hard as he could.
And lying on the bed, he suddenly missed Australia, missing those free days with Melody, and Lotus, where his parents had not been there monitoring every of his movements. If they had, they would never have permitted him to cook the lamb-sticks, let alone to work as the receptionist in a brothel…
‘So old-fashioned, and very stubborn,’ he sighed, and started to think of Melody, missing her body that must rouse him at this minute. But her body was no longer his, the breasts and the comforting vagina were gone forever.
‘And how about Lotus? Is she getting any better at Changchun?’
-- to be continued -
can to Follow
選擇“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
選擇“don't run on pages on this domain”
