Year of the Tiger (3 page)

‘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.’

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.’

British John keeps giving me looks, like he thinks I’m going to lose it.

‘Hey, we need more music,’ Xiaowei pipes up. ‘What should I play?’

‘You choose, luv,’ says British John. ‘As long as it’s none of that fucking awful Korean pop.’

Xiaowei pouts. She loves Korean pop, which as British John points out, really is fucking awful.

‘Reggae!’ shouts Hank the Australian.

‘It was America’s criminal invasion of Iraq,’ the Norwegian chick drones on. She’s kind of drunk by now, too. ‘Everyone involved is a criminal. You know, Falluja, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, these are war crimes …’

Hank and the other Norwegian girl, meanwhile, have gone over to the jukebox, draped over each other like partners in a three-legged race. ‘Redemption Song’ booms over the speakers.

‘These soldiers, they killed innocents, and you Americans call them heroes.’

‘Why don’t you just shut the fuck up?’ I finally say. I’m not mad. I’m just tired. ‘You Norwegians are sitting on top of all that North Sea oil or you’d be making deals and screwing people like everyone else. Plus, you kill whales.’

Supermodel straightens up. Actually, she looks more like a Viking. All she needs is a spear. ‘Norway contributes more percentage of its income to foreign aid than any other country. While you Americans –’

‘Oh, it’s wrong to kill whales,’ Xiaowei says, her eyes filling with tears. ‘And dolphins. They are so smart! I think they are smarter than we are.’

‘Darts, anyone?’ British John asks.

I end up crashing at British John and Xiaowei’s place, finally dragging myself off their couch the next day around noon to make my way home.

Of course, I run into Mrs Hua, who is hustling her kid into their apartment, him clutching an overstuffed, greasy bag of Mickey D’s.

‘Somebody looking for you,’ she hisses, her little raisin eyes glittering in triumph. ‘You in some kind of trouble!’

I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Foreigners,’ she continues. ‘In suits! You in trouble.’

I freeze, but only for a moment.

‘Whatever.’

I unlock the door and make my way through the living room, which is cluttered with all kinds of random stuff: books, magazines, dirty clothes, a guitar amp, and a cardboard standup figure of Yao Ming draped with a plastic lei. My roommate Chuckie has the blackout curtains drawn, and I can hardly see a thing, just Yao Ming, the red of his jersey blanched gray by the dark.

Foreigners in suits. It doesn’t make sense. How can Lao Zhang be in trouble with foreigners in suits?

Then I think: maybe it’s not Lao Zhang they’re looking for.

I’m not in trouble, I tell myself. I’m not. All that shit happened a long time ago, and nobody cares about it any more.

‘Cao dan! Zhen ta ma de!’

‘Chuckie? What?’

Chuckie bursts out of his bedroom, greasy hair bristling up in spikes, glasses askew, Bill Gates T-shirt about three sizes too big, knobby knees sticking out beneath dirty gym shorts.

‘That fucking bastard stole my seventh-level Qi sword!’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ I say. ‘Who stole your sword?’

‘Ming Lu, the little shits! I should go bust his damn balls!’

I try to picture Chuckie busting much of anything and fail. The reason I have such a good deal renting this apartment is that Chuckie gives me a break in exchange for tutoring him in English conversation. Sometimes I listen to him and think that I’m not really doing my job.

‘So … Chuckie … I don’t understand. This sword, I mean, it’s not a real sword, is it? It’s like … it’s part of the game, right?’

Chuckie stares at me like I’ve suddenly grown horns.

‘Of
course
it’s part of the game!’

‘So, um … if it’s not real, how did Ming Lu steal it?’

Chuckie paces around the dim, dank apartment, which I notice smells like some weird combination of sour beer and cement dust. ‘I lend it to him,’ he mutters. ‘I
trust
him!’ He slaps the cardboard Yao Ming for emphasis. ‘And that turtle’s egg,
jiba
son of a slave girl go and
sell
it!’

I had a lot to drink last night and I’m pretty sleep-deprived, so maybe if I had some coffee I could follow him a little better. Still, he’s talking about a virtual sword in an online game. How can I take it seriously?

Chuckie’s game is
The Sword of Ill Repute
, the same game Lao Zhang plays. That’s how I met Lao Zhang, actually, through Chuckie. Lao Zhang was throwing a party at this space off the 4th Ring Road, and he’d invited his online friends to attend. Chuckie hadn’t really wanted to go. He didn’t approve of Lao Zhang’s gaming style. ‘Too peaceful!’ he complained. ‘He don’t like to go on quest, just sit in teahouse and wine shop and drink and chat all the time.’

Me, I was tired of virtual reality and thought an actual party might be fun. I’d thought maybe I was going crazy, sitting in that apartment all the time. I was having a lot of nightmares, not sleeping well, and I needed to get out.

So we went to the party, which was at this place called the Airplane Factory (because it used to be an airplane factory). When we got there, a couple of the artists were doing a piece, throwing dyed red mud at each other and chanting slogans every time they got hit. A DJ was spinning tunes while another artist projected images on the blank white wall: chickens being decapitated and buildings falling down and Mickey Mouse cartoons. At some point, this fairly lame Beijing punk band played, though I had to give them points for attitude.

I wandered around on my own, not talking to anybody, because even though I’d wanted to come, once I got there I felt awkward and nervous, like I couldn’t have been more out of place. Eventually I saw Chuckie standing over by this installation piece, a ping-pong table that lit up and made different noises depending on where the ball hit. That’s where the beer was, iced for once, in plastic tubs.

Chuckie was talking to this big, stocky guy with a goatee and thick eyebrows, wearing paint-splattered cargo shorts, an ancient Cui Jian T-shirt, and a knit beanie. The guy had just opened a bottle of Yanjing, and instead of drinking from it, he gave it to me, eyebrow half-cocked, grinning. There was something about his smile I liked, something about how it included me, like we were already sharing a joke. ‘You’re Chuckie’s roommate,’ he said. ‘Chuckie says you’re crazy.’