Forbidden City (22 page)

“Hao!
” said the soldier, and the
che
began to move away. Xin-hua swung to the right in a gradual curve. As we turned I got a good view of the roadblock. Two
PLA
stood at the end of the bridge with AK 47s in their hands. Beyond them, on the bridge, I counted six tanks, deployed to fend off attack from the west or from the Ring Road below on either side. These guys weren’t kidding around.

The
che
picked up speed, bumping down the wide ramp to the Second Ring Road. Xin-hua took us north for fifty yards or so to an intersection then did a U-turn — which was easy because there was no traffic on the road except for a few bikes — and headed south. I lifted my head and looked ahead. When we got back to the bridge she went under and used the momentum from our descent, swinging onto the ramp and pedalling furiously to get up it. Two-thirds of the way up she was puffing like mad and the
che
almost stopped. She jumped off, grabbed the
che
, one hand on the bars, one behind the seat, and heaved, trotting alongside. I’ve never felt so useless in my life, watching that small woman shove the heavy vehicle up the curved ramp. I knew it would be pointless for me to try to help.

When we got back on Fu Xing Men, Xin-hu jumped on again and pumped the pedals. Her breath rasped in and out. I knew she didn’t want to
stop for fear of attracting too much attention. We were still very close to the tanks.

We crossed the avenue and turned west again. The avenue on this side of the bridge was only a little less like a war zone. To my relief, the
che
turned right onto a tree-lined street — a bumpy street. It was strange. Suddenly the world looked normal again. A few people walked along the sidewalk. More bikes appeared. Now that we were past the roadblock and I was feeling only scared instead of terrified, my leg began to remind me that there was a groove torn out of my calf. I sat back up again. We passed an intersection with a
hu tong
and I saw a road sign. We were on Zhan Lan Lu. Exhibition Street.

We turned into a little alley and stopped.

Xin Hua’s chest was still heaving and the back of her coat was wet through. I was soaked too, but not from working.

“Let’s take a short rest,” she puffed. I handed her the water bottle.

“I think I’ll turn off the camera, now.”

She nodded, gulping down the water.

I inched myself to the edge of the
che
and let my legs dangle over the side, facing the street. To my left, I could see Fu Xing Men Avenue about a hundred metres away. Across the road was a movie theatre with a big billboard beside it advertising a Gong Fu movie, Bruce Lee style. There were three guys pictured, with fierce faces and sparkling teeth as they sneered, one of them in mid-flight of a flying kick.
To the side stood a beautiful woman wearing a long dress with a slit up the leg. She looked scared and helpless and excited, all at the same time.

I looked from her to Xin-hua, squatting on the sidewalk, her breathing regular now, holding the water bottle. Her cotton shoes were frayed at the soles and she had patches on both knees of her slacks. She looked at me and smiled. I think it was then that I understood her courage and how terrified she was.

Standing, she held out the water bottle. “Thirsty, Shan Da?”

“Thanks.” I took a pull at the bottle and offered it back to her. She shook her head and began to back the
che
out into the street. I put the bottle into her bag with our food tins.

Xin-hua mounted the
che
and started pedalling. We bumped along, continuing north on Exhibition Street. Above the trees that lined the street the grey sky threatened rain. It was quiet, almost peaceful. Xin-hua puffed rhythmically, the
che
creaked, the long bicycle chain from the pedal sprocket to the rear axle rattled softly. Bikes slipped past us, once in a while another
che
.

Ahead was a wide intersection and we drew to a stop at the lights. This street was called Yue Tan Bei Jie. It was wide, with boulevards separating the bike lanes from the main way. Trees in white blossom and shrubs and banks of flowers decorated the boulevards.

Around us a few cyclists stood like storks resting their weight on one leg. On each of the four corners
of the intersection was a pair of soldiers. One pair was questioning a man who looked nervously about him as he held out his ID. Across the street I noticed the snout of a tank’s cannon poking from a narrow alley. I quickly lay down.

The light changed and we continued north. Shoe-box high rises lined the road on both sides, rising above the trees. The road narrowed. After fifteen minutes or so we passed through another intersection, and Xin-hua braked to a stop at a small
hu tong
.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I get us a cold
qi shui,”
she said softly. While she stood quietly, watching the intersection, I reached into my coat pocket and took out one of my pain pills and one of my antibiotics.
Qi shui
is pop — “gas water”.

“Our water is almost gone. First wait to see if any
PLA
around.”

Across from us there was a small store. Xin-hua decided the place was safe and walked quickly over to it. In a few minutes she returned with two Cokes and a half-dozen plastic bottles of lime green liquid. We poured the Coke down quickly, burping like mad, and while Xin-hua took back the empties I put the plastic bottles in with the food.

We got underway again. The road was only two lanes wide now, closely lined with trees that formed a canopy overhead.

“This is the Foreign Affairs College,” Xin-hua whispered over her shoulder as we passed a high wall on our right.

At least a dozen soldiers lounged around the main gate up ahead. Two or three looked alert. The rest were squatting, playing cards or talking.

What happened next went past so fast I’m surprised I can remember the details. We hadn’t come abreast of the gate yet. A young guy in a yellow T-shirt with
SPORT GAME
written on it was cycling towards us. A bulging white plastic bag hung from the handlebars. When he was opposite the gate he yelled to the soldiers and flashed a “V” sign at them, the sign a lot of students had used at Tian An Men Square. One of the troops shouted back. Just as our
che
drew opposite the soldiers — they were only eight or ten metres from us — one of them brought his AK 47 to his shoulder in a lightning move. The barrel jumped as flame shot out and a fraction of an instant later the wicked
crack-crack-crack-crack
deafened me. I took a look across the road in time to see the man slam to the pavement as his bike skewed to the curb and crashed to the dirt at the edge of the road. Green apples tumbled from the bag and rolled into the street. The man lay on the road like a doll some kid had thrown away, his yellow T-shirt already soaked with blood.

By this time the
che
had passed the gate. I felt it surge as Xin-hua shoved with all her might onto the pedals. I heard one of the soldiers laugh and saw two of the card players rush into the street, gathering up the apples.

Suddenly we veered into a narrow
hu tong
. Xin-hua was still pumping like mad on the pedals. We
took a sharp turn that almost rolled me off the
che
. I hung on for dear life as Xin-hua cut right again and rushed across a little intersection without looking.

“Xin-hua! Slow down! There’s no one behind us!”

She stopped pedalling and we coasted for a moment. Her back heaved. She lay her head down on the handlebars, not looking where we were going. The front tire hit a piece of brick in the road and the bars twisted, steering the
che
against the curb. We bumped to a stop.

Xin-hua got down and turned to face me. She was crying, saying something over and over again in Chinese, pounding a fist into her palm.

My legs and arms tingled as if I had stuck my finger into a light socket. I knew the feeling — the aftereffect of a sudden adrenaline surge. Then the shaking became more violent. I got down from the
che
and put my arms around Xin-hua. She trembled as she cried, her face pressed to my chest.

A woman frowned as she passed us, shaking her head — public displays of affection between men and women are considered very bad manners in China. But I didn’t care what she thought.

As we stood in the street like that, it started to rain.

We continued north as soon as we hit a major road again. The rain wasn’t very heavy but a wind had come up and dark ugly clouds were moving in. It
wasn’t long before we came out onto Xi Zhi Men Street across from the zoo. I pictured the map of the city in my head, and knew that we were still pretty much on the route Xin-hua had planned out. This was almost as far north as she had intended to go.

As we headed east on Xi Zhi Men, the dome of the Exhibition Hall came into view. As soon as it did, the brakes of the
che
squealed and we came to a quick stop. The big parking lot of the Exhibition Hall was packed with tanks, troop trucks, and armoured personnel carriers.
PLA
milled around the lot. A cold hand wrapped icy fingers around my spine. I guessed the same hand grabbed Xin-hua because she did a U-turn as soon as there was a break in the traffic and pedalled west.

We trundled along past the Capital Gymnasium — the parking lot was deserted and the big iron gates were shut tight — and the bus terminal where hundreds of people waited under coloured umbrellas.

We should have known that the
PLA
would be massed somewhere near here. The Xi Zhi Men Train Station was nearby, and about half a kilometre from the Exhibition Hall there was a major intersection with the Second Ring Road.

Xin-hua turned north just past the Capitol Gym. I knew this road — Bai Shi Qiao. In fifteen minutes or so we’d reach the Friendship Hotel.

The rain came down heavier and the sky darkened. The
che
‘s tires hissed on the pavement. Xinhua turned onto a dirt road that followed a small
creek. Within minutes my leg was all pain from the hip down from the bumping and bashing.

The rain seemed to fall more heavily with every metre of bare ground we covered. I began to wonder if Xin-hua had gone nuts from the strain of the last few hours. Where was she taking us?

She finally brought the
che
to a stop in front of a high wall. You could tell it was old from the big grey bricks and the little roof of glazed green tiles on the wall like you see at the Forbidden City, except there the tiles are orange. The gate was gone — burned away it looked like from the marks on the wall.

Once inside the wall Xin-hua jumped off the
che
and pushed it through the long grass towards a small makeshift brick shelter built near the east wall of the compound. It had a roof of corrugated metal but no door. We hurriedly lifted down the box, collected our packs, and took them all into the shelter. Xinhua went out again and pushed the
che
out of sight behind the building.

Inside, the only light came from an open window on the front wall beside the door. By “open” I mean just that — no glass, no frame, just a square hole in the wall. Rain swept in through the window and the roof leaked in one corner, but otherwise the dirt floor seemed dry enough.

Xin-hua leaned against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting. She let out a long, tired sigh, folded her arms across her chest, and drew her knees up.
Her hair was plastered to her head and water dripped off the ends of her braids. Her face was drawn.

I sat across from her against the back wall so I could see out the door. The rain drummed on the metal roof. I was wet through and uncomfortable, but not cold.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Workers who are repairing the temple built this to store things and maybe sleep.”

“No, I mean that strange building outside.” As we ducked into the house I had noticed five tall shapes rising into the gloom of the ram.

“Oh. This place is Wu Ta Si, means … mmmm … five something temple. How I should say those buildings with many roofs?”

I thought for a second. Maybe she meant pagoda.

“Yes. Five Pagoda Temple. My elder brother worked at the zoo. He was ground cleaner. Sometimes I would go visit him at his work and we came here to eating our lunch. Zoo is across the river there. That’s how I know this place.”

“When was that?”

“Maybe five years ago. My brother works in another unit now.”

“So this place is deserted?”

“Should be workers here, but now most workers are staying home. Streets are too dangerous, and some are on the strike.”

“Because of what happened in Tian An Men Square?”

“Yes.”

We were silent for a couple of minutes, as if the name of the place was sacred.

A gust of wind drove rain into the hut. The drops spattered on the hard-packed dirt.

“Xin-hua, what
did
happen in the square? I don’t understand what it was about. The
PLA
didn’t have to do what they did. They didn’t have to —”