Beijing Bastard (19 page)

I organized a lunch for my parents to meet my friends. We went to Jin Ding, a raucous dim sum palace, and sat around a lazy Susan covered with tiny plates. Anthony was there, as were Jade, Cookie, Rachel, Yang Lina, and a few others. We went around in a circle and each of us solemnly stated how many years we'd been in China. When we were done, my dad chuckled and said, “You all sound like you're talking about your prison sentences!”

My mom chimed in, “Val's always complaining about the pollution here—it's really not so bad!”

I had instructed everyone to keep mum about Anthony but halfway through lunch, Rachel forgot and dropped an allusion to my boyfriend. Everyone froze, silent.

“What was that?” my mom asked.

I shook my head slowly at Rachel.

She warbled something unintelligible in a British accent and I quickly changed the subject. There were still limits to what I would show my parents of my life and what they were willing to see.

I gently refused to let them visit my apartment, saying that it was too far away and not worth the time. Not only would the local sex shops, prostitute neighbors, and bomb-shelter décor of the apartment have upset them, but also I would have had to systematically efface all signs of Anthony's presence there, just like that character in Ang Lee's
The Wedding Banquet,
who in a fast-cutting montage takes down all his photos and packs away all his boyfriend's clothing when his parents come to New York from Taiwan for his green card wedding. It's a funny conceit for a movie but such a hassle in real life, and depressing also to confront the lies I had to tell in order to live the life I wanted.

Of course I didn't mention my dream of making a documentary. I knew they would have thought it a waste of time, just more evidence that I was ruining my life. I didn't need to reinforce those naysaying voices in my head that I'd tried so hard to drown out. Sometimes living a double life is easier for everyone.

•   •   •

As
the week went on, my parents and our relatives became more relaxed with one another. Once at lunch, when Bomu wheeled a dish around on the lazy Susan for Dad to try and Bobo scooped up a big spoonful of it, Dad moved in to receive it, but Bobo just deposited the food onto his own plate, leaving Dad hanging. Bomu, sitting between them, nudged Bobo and they all laughed at his rudeness. Dad wasn't a guest anymore, just one of the family.

Spending a week with my parents would normally leave me curled into a defensive crouch, but for once they were out of their comfort zone, and I was in mine. My mom talked about me in the third person as usual, but what she said surprised me. (“Val does all of the talking in the cabs. We don't even open our mouths. They would know instantly that we
weren't from here.”) My parents did seem somehow out of place in Beijing, like rubber figures among people hewn of wood. She also asked me if I had learned any “authentic Chinese cooking” I could teach her. Bobo talked about me in the third person too. (“Her Chinese has improved so much since she first came. We're so impressed at how capable she is, coming here with nothing and making a successful life for herself.”) While their praise may just have been a way to be polite to one another, I lapped it up.

•   •   •

On
the last day, Bobo finally took us to see Nainai's courtyard house. Unlike my dad's childhood recollection, it was not on a wedge of land at all but rather at the corner of a quiet hutong and a busy street, across from which was a huge modern office building, which Bobo said was a “Grade A” building and would greatly increase the property value of the house. The shiny modern building and the low, gray houses didn't seem to fit together in the same frame. We walked in through the open red door and confronted not a huge open space but a narrow corridor that ran around the perimeter of the courtyard. After all the families had been moved into the house years ago, the space hadn't been big enough, so they started building sheds in the middle of the courtyard to put coal burners, kitchens, and extra bedrooms.

“My, it's old,” said my mom.

Bobo stood in the middle of the corridor with his arms outstretched.

“The Second Door was here.”

“I remember,” said my dad, and pointing to one of the rooms, said, “I lived there.” Walking a little farther, he said, “And Shushu was born here. That was Mom's bedroom.”

We walked all the way around the narrow corridor, which was jagged with things constructed only of the simplest materials. A metal shed lashed crookedly together with wire and topped with a makeshift roof patched with plastic held down with bricks. A tarp-shrouded pile of
something used as a shelf for small pots of plants and bright plastic soda bottles. Loose, thin underclothes drying on wires. There were no sign of the locust tree, flowering crab apple tree, and grape arbor that Bobo said originally stood in the huge courtyard.

“It's so broken,” said my mom as she peeked into a curtained room, reporting that things were piled up haphazardly inside. Mom could have been talking about the house's Confucian unity, which indeed was broken. The layers of other people's used and unused things, piled up like a collage, made distinguishing the original layout of the house nearly impossible, and heartbreaking. There was no way to delete all that mess and rewind fifty years to when the courtyard was empty and peaceful, and my dad a little boy. My dad said he vividly remembered going from this house to Great-Aunt Mabel's house.

Bomu said that the house actually looked better than usual. The government had painted the outer walls for the anniversary and hung up some red lanterns.

A woman wheeled in her bike and went inside, but we exchanged no words. For a moment, I saw us as cartoon characters in a Communist textbook: the evil, well-fed landlords (Americans, no less) coming to survey their property and the noble workers full of dignity.

Outside, Bobo and my dad huddled to one side, whispering about what would need to be done next. My dad looked appalled, as if he wanted nothing to do with this house, its history, and all its complications. The web he'd wandered into was stickier than he'd imagined and I saw he wanted to return to a place where the rules were clear and people actually followed them. I gave up the secret hope I'd been harboring of living there. We snapped some photos to show Nainai, and left.

•   •   •

Just
before the fiftieth anniversary, my parents prepared to join their tour. I stood in their hotel room as they packed their suitcases. Before we parted, I wanted to tell them about some of the things I was now beginning to understand about them, little things like why my mom always
carried clean toilet paper around in her purse, and bigger things too, about our family's past and the ways it affected us today. Their peripatetic childhoods, recounted as stories, sounded so glamorous to me, but only now could I begin to imagine their reality. So much loss. So much beginning again. And then to have children who were so different than you, who had different values. Plus, could we talk for a second about the absurdity of our situation? My mom had asked me to teach her authentic Chinese cooking. But these weren't things I knew how to talk about with them. I just told them I was glad they'd come, and they told me they were glad to see their relatives after so many years and glad to see that I had friends and what seemed to be a stable life.

Then my dad started talking, surprising me.

“Did you notice how I was able to connect with my cousin? Almost instantly?”

“Childhood companions,” said my mom cheerfully.

“No, because—” said my dad, drawing a breath that shook with emotion as he tried to formulate his thought. He exhaled heavily. “My cousin is just that type of person.”

“Yes, he's really great,” I agreed.

“He's very friendly,” said my mom.

“And his father was like that,” he said, and then, shaking off his sentimentality, added brusquely, “His father never worked for one day in his life. Rich family. Didn't have to.”

On the day of the anniversary, Anthony's parents switched from the hotel in the courtyard house to one overlooking the Avenue of Eternal Peace so they could watch the military parade. Anthony and I joined them. Tanks and missiles rolled majestically down the wide avenue, followed by phalanxes of goose-stepping soldiers, then more tanks, more missiles, more soldiers. Jets cruised in formation through the sky. It was breathtaking and impressive and grotesque. I was relieved to see it through their eyes, as some buffoonish show of might that bore no relation to me at
all.

R
eporter Wang?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Reporter Wang?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Guess.” It was a middle-aged man with a Beijing accent. I'd interviewed so many people who fit that description.

“I really don't know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” I said impatiently. “Just tell me, all right?”

“It's Zhang Laichun.”

“Oh, hi!”

“We haven't heard from you in a long time.” It had been a month or so since my Peking Opera story had come out.

“I've been so busy with other stories.”

“You should call us.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, kicking myself for my knee-jerk apology.

“What are you doing on Saturday?”

“Nothing special.”

“We'd like to invite you to my father's birthday party at noon on Saturday.”

Though I had met many other people since Grandfather Zhang, his words still grated harshly on my ear:
Even if I talked to you every day for ten years, you still wouldn't know anything about Peking Opera.
He had lodged himself in my mind as nothing less than the decomposing heart of Old Beijing itself. An idea had been percolating in my mind.

“Would you mind if I videotaped you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Great. I'll be there at noon.”

I immediately called Yang Lina. We had become friends, whatever that meant in Beijing. Life here was still governed by
guanxi,
connections, and friendship felt like wampum, something to be bartered for the stuff you needed.
Old Men
had gone on the international film festival circuit and she needed letters and résumés to be translated to and from English, always at the last minute. In exchange for my help, she offered me many things. Her equipment. Her ex-boyfriends. Her advice.
Never date a poor artist. Always use protection.
I refused everything, especially the condescending advice. In America, we learn about sex in elementary school, I said. At this, she erupted into an oddly violent giggle and told me I was even more adorable than ever. If I'd wanted an older sister, I'd gotten one, with all the bossiness and superiority built right in.

Finally there was something I needed from her.

“Can I borrow your camera?”

“Of course. You finally have an idea for a documentary?”

“Yes. It's about this old family that does Peking Opera. The grandfather was crippled years ago during a performance and he has been lying in the same bed for thirty years. He yells at everybody from the bed and they all perform Peking Opera too,” I said. I imagined my experience with the Zhangs would be like hers with the old men. I would shift gears, stop pressing them for information, and let their lives unfold naturally.
The resulting film would be a document about the dissolution of Old Beijing as seen through the eyes of one family.

“Do you like Peking Opera?” she asked.

“Well, not really,” I said. I thought back to a performance Bobo had taken me to at the Workers' Club, a huge unheated theater whose hard wooden folding seats were filled with the thickly bundled forms of old people. Martial operas are full of exuberant acrobatics, manic backflipping, and spirited swordplay, but of course Bobo had taken me to see a literary opera: a long philosophical argument sung in a slow screech and acted out with tiny but meaningful movements—here a mincing step, there a flicking sleeve—and accompanied by the arrhythmic clanging together of what sounded like pots and pans. The costumes I could appreciate—long brocaded gowns, three-inch wooden platform shoes, headdresses from which sprouted wide fins, colorful flags or pompons on springs—but even they formed part of the crust of Peking Opera that I found impossible to break through. Robots could have been operating the figures from underneath for all I knew. If the theater hadn't been freezing cold, I would have fallen asleep. “But the family—there is something about them that draws me in. Something deep.”

“Trust that feeling,” she said, and lent me her camera.

•   •   •

My
entrance into the Zhang house, I was happy to find, did not make a huge splash. An assortment of relatives was already twittering around the large room and the TV was on, blaring with a Peking Opera performance. I had brought a copy of my article (titled “Peking opera hits low notes”) and they gathered around as I translated it for them. The story portrayed them as tragic heroes battling the tides of history and the scrofulous policies of the state-run troupe to keep the ancient art alive. They began arguing among themselves.
You said too much. No, he was just telling the truth. I never said that! This is going to get us in trouble with the troupe. What is there to be afraid of anymore?

They certainly were in party mode. The room was claustrophobic,
and unlike on other days, when the house had seemed a continuation of the street below, tonight I felt cut off, in a hermetic bubble locked away from society. Round folding stools were scattered around the room. I sat on one on the periphery and took out the video camera. I looked at the crowd of relatives chattering loudly to one another and remembered from my childhood how much Chinese sounds like yelling when people are happy. Grandfather Zhang would be the main character of my documentary, of course. He was the nucleus of the family, in the same way my Yeye had been. Supporting characters would include his wife and high-kicking sons Zhang Laisheng and Zhang Laichun. I still had a hard time telling the two apart. I clung to oversimplifications: Laisheng was known in the family as the one who said too much, Laichun for being incomprehensible.

I concentrated on the images in my viewfinder and watched greedily as it took everything in. The other relatives visiting for the day and milling around the room would make colorful extras. Grandpa Zhang's other two sons hadn't fallen far from the tree. One was a producer of kung fu films and the other, the eldest, his face ghoulishly frozen on one side by a stroke, told me about the twenty-part miniseries he had written about his father's life. It made a good story, he said, because their family was still “slightly feudal,” which I took to mean that they all, like me, lived in fear of the autocratic patriarch barking out mean things from the bed. The grandmother, overhearing our conversation, insisted that it was my responsibility to find funding for the filming of the miniseries. I nodded weakly.

We ate hotpot together, our chopsticks dipping into the roiling pot in the middle of the table, fishing out meat and vegetables that others had put in. One portly middle-aged relative became drunk and sat rubbing his bare belly after the meal. When I pointed the camera at him, he launched into an extended monologue about how rich and complex the language and lives of a cultured Peking Opera family like theirs was. The liquor made his thick Beijing accent even more incomprehensible. My mind drifted.
And the winner is . . . Val Wang for
Peking Opera & Sons. A bright
light shone on me.
Thank you so much for this honor. I never imagined I'd be standing right here. I just had a video camera and a dream—to tell a simple story about the richness and complexity of a family steeped in Peking Opera. There are so many people to thank. Yang Lina and Wu Wenguang for all of your help and encouragement, Cookie for your support, the Zhang family for opening your home to me, my own family in Beijing, and last of all, Mom and Dad for your patience, I told you this whole artist thing would pay off.
When I returned to the room, he was still talking, saying that their language was so full of literary allusions that mere commoners wouldn't be able to understand them, much less a foreigner.

I turned my camera to Laisheng and Laichun. Natural performers, they came alive in front of the camera. They had a spirited debate about what I should do with my life.

“She shouldn't stay in Beijing too long,” said one of the sons.

“She should,” said the other.

“No, she shouldn't.”

“Maybe you're right. Beijing is too complicated, too chaotic for her.”

“No, that's not why. She shouldn't stay in any place for too long.” I noted the envy in his voice. He turned to me and said, “Your life is about going many places and seeing many things, not like us. We can only do one thing: Peking Opera.”

They envied my mobility and I envied their permanence. The Flying Pigeon and the Forever. I thought it might be nice to have a place to call home and one thing I was really good at.

One of the two said, “People say I drink too much.” Both of them drank too much, downing glass after glass of
erguotou,
the toxic local firewater whose heavy, sickening bouquet filled the air. I would drink a lot too if I belonged to this family. How could they stand to be in that room together day after day? Didn't they drive one another crazy with the scrutiny, the guilt, the recriminations? Just being there for a few hours made me feel like a fish gasping for air. Maybe, come to think of it, having a place to call home was overrated.

I remembered what Xiao Ding had said about Chinese relationships existing as a series of concentric circles. I was still in their outer orbit; I would have to get closer to make a better movie like Yang Lina had done with the old men.

The family gathered around the grandfather's bed. I turned my camera toward them. Were they about to sing a birthday song and eat the sticky rice cake with the character
, meaning “long life,” written on it in hawthorn candy, which sat on a side table? The cake was lightly dusted with tiny black specks of soot and all night I had been mentally rehearsing my excuses for not wanting any. They wrestled with something and I saw they were emptying his colostomy bag together. Even this was a family affair. It was my cue to leave. I turned off the camera and said my good-byes. The cake sat untouched on the side table.

Laisheng gripped my arm and walked me outside. I breathed much easier in the cool night air. He told me, “In Peking Opera, I play the warrior. Laichun plays the clown, so he likes to joke. I don't like to joke.” The family was right. Laisheng was chatty. He then said that he felt very close to me and was sure that we were good friends. I could barely tell him apart from anyone else in the family and I wasn't sure I felt very close to him, but the polite thing to do was agree, so I did.

•   •   •

Old
Men
started winning international awards. The Award of Excellence at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. The Golden Dove prize at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. The SCAM Award at the Cinéma du Réel festival. A French TV station bought the documentary. International curators, Beijing Film Academy professors, and underground filmmakers showered Yang Lina with invitations to international festivals and private screenings of films. And so of course I was in constant contact with her, helping her to communicate with the outside world. Every time we met she would greet me with an inchoate gurgling of my personal name—Zhenluo!—and a pronouncement of how she perceived me at that moment. Some
days it was
You are so adorable and so naïve!
or
You are so well-behaved and serious!
Her idea of me as a prim little violet grated on me; it was so different from my idea of myself as a swashbuckling bohemian. After all, hadn't the fortune-teller said I
zixun fannao
, sought trouble for myself?

She began to throw references to obscure directors into our conversations.

“
Bu-lie-song
is so simple and so strong.”

“Ji-ya-luo-si-ta-mi
's films about Iran have helped me to see my own culture more clearly.”

“I've been watching too many French films and they've made me want to be passionate and sexual.” She erupted into her violent giggle again. Unlike most Chinese people I knew whose inner lives seemed to be locked away in top secret underground vaults, Yang Lina's spilled out all over the place like jelly from a powdered donut. It would have taken at least four shots of espresso or a high fever to whip me into the state of giddy, bright-eyed frenzy she seemed to be in all the time.

Bu-lie-song?
Ji-ya-luo-si-ta-mi?
If I could decode the names, I was sure I would know whom she was talking about. I was American, more modern, more culturally sophisticated, with more knowledge of obscure films than someone who had grown up in a country completely cut off from the world. But even when I found out who they were, I realized with a pit in my stomach that I hadn't seen any Bresson or Kiarostami films, and I had no idea what they were like. Zhang Yuan's words came back to me: Was a fundamental condition of being Chinese to feel inferior—to the people around you, to the rest of the world? Was a fundamental condition of being American to feel superior?

•   •   •