Литагент HarperCollins - Flying High

‘What will you do with them?’ I asked.

‘Eat them,’ said Liang, a mock serious look on his face.

‘But they’re pets, aren’t they?’

‘We don’t have pets here. Only rich people have pets. We like our animals best in the cooking pot.’

I was beginning to understand that my fatuous comment about a carp being a pet was very Western. The idea that eating carp was cruel suddenly struck me as silly in this context – it made more sense to eat them than to have these slithery cold creatures as pets. I had no choice but to start perceiving life around me in a more practical way. I started to see how much I was spoiled, prejudiced and set in my ways. I had recently started to dismiss the voice of Martin that often echoed around in my head pointing out various wickednesses and cruelties. He had started to irritate me. Who was he to impose his pampered views on people?

The visit to the studio was the first time I’d been interested in the real China as opposed to the fairytale version that lingered as a fantasy. I had enjoyed it in an unexpected way. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it at all, but better. It was as if the experience had taught me something, refreshed me. It was Liang who had gradually wrought the beginnings of change in me. I was at last starting to absorb those new experiences I so badly wanted and the catalyst was Liang. It was Liang who made it possible for me to open up. He too was beginning to change. No longer the distant and polite teacher. He began to be aware of me as a person. I was no longer just an awkward and large foreigner, but a source of information about outside, a companion and possibly even a woman. I reluctantly admitted to myself that I was beginning to feel a little excited in his presence. I found myself looking at the back of his neck, noticing his neat ears and his remarkable long eyelashes. I couldn’t stop myself looking at him, partly out of fascination and curiosity at his differentness and partly in the way one looks affectionately on an intelligent pet. He seemed so young. He was about the same age as me, but his cheeks looked boyishly smooth. I wondered if he shaved. His hair had the gloss of a child’s hair, which was a wonder considering the nasty sticky shampoo they used.

‘You know, Miss Alison,’ he said one day, ‘I’m really interested in seeing your country. I often listen to the BBC and VOA. I feel I know the West already. It’s different from here, isn’t it? You’ve got so much freedom. You can choose your job, your politicians, your friends …’

‘But Liang, you can choose your friends too, can’t you?’ It occurred to me that my self-appointed role of ‘friend’ to him was perhaps not exactly his choice.

‘Not really. We don’t have many friends here, not in the sense you mean it. People suspect one another, and besides you’ve probably noticed that we often say “classmates” when we’re referring to people we know. That’s because they’re people we studied with. What chance do we have to meet anyone else? You can see what it’s like in my unit. Apart from them you’re the only person I see. You’re the only outsider in my life.’ The idea that I was now ‘in his life’ sent a small shudder through me.

‘What about your family?’

‘Relatives,’ he said with a grimace.

‘What’s wrong with relatives?’ I asked, knowing what he was going to say.

‘Obligation,’ he said. ‘My wife was given to me by my uncle. She’s the daughter of some remote member of his wife’s family. When I got to twenty-seven and I wasn’t married, they said, “Liang, it’s time you had a child.” They’re peasants, you see. Within six months I was married to Wang and a year later my son was born.’

‘Couldn’t you have chosen your own wife? Why did you let them do this to you?’ I was beginning to feel resentment towards these primitive people who were his family. Didn’t they realize that he had the right to make his own choices in life? How could they foist some stranger on him like that? It was absurd.

‘It must have been awful for you.’ I realized this sounded feeble, like a schoolgirl commiserating over an embarrassing parent.

‘Not awful. I just did my duty to my family. They were right. I needed to get married and I hadn’t met anyone suitable. A man of twenty-seven can’t stay single.’

I’d been in China long enough to know he was right. He would have been regarded as a freak or people would have suspected his reasons for avoiding women.

I wanted to ask him if he loved her. I needed to know. But I was certain he didn’t. He was obviously trapped for eternity in an enforced relationship which was meaningless and gave him no joy. But he always seemed joyful enough as if it was never on his mind. He never mentioned the child.

We were seeing each other more and more. He was obviously growing fonder of me, wanting my company. And I wanted him too. I thought about him a lot. I often found myself daydreaming about him as I stood before my forty undergraduates, crammed into filthy Classroom Number Three where I attempted to teach the rudiments of English Literature. The uncomprehending faces stared back, obedient but totally unabsorbed. I must have looked as uninterested as they did. My mind was elsewhere too.

One day a group of runners training for a sports meeting ran past the open window. My adrenalin suddenly whirled as I saw Liang among them. But no, it was just someone who looked like him. It couldn’t have been him. He was wearing blue cotton running shorts and a white singlet with a figure of eight on the back and grey plimsolls without socks. His thin legs were spattered with mud and his shoulders were hunched in the cold. So unlike Martin’s rugby player’s physique. I watched him as he ran, unaware of me, intent on his task of forging ahead of the others. I thought of Liang’s slight body, unclothed – his knees and elbows, his small buttocks – and felt a blush spreading over my neck. I was jolted back to my yawning class who had noticed nothing. They sat impassively picking their noses, scratching their armpits and staring blankly through me as before.

How Liang managed to get away from his unit I never discovered. The painting lessons continued, sometimes at my flat and sometimes at his studio and I eventually managed to produce a passable, rather sentimental picture of kittens and peonies which I had mounted on a scroll. We both began to be aware that painting was no longer the only interest we had in common. I positively looked forward to his visits. We would both invent reasons for him to come.

‘I’d better have a look at your bike,’ he’d say, knowing full well that the University Bicycle Workshop checked it regularly for me.

Or he’d say, ‘Have you taken your winter ginseng? I’ll get you some at the medicine store.’

And I would cut out articles about life in the West for him and save him my Guardian Weekly . Without a telephone, we had no choice but to meet often.

He helped me with many of the small things I found so taxing in my first months in China.

It was him who showed me how to eat properly. I had been trying to survive on boiled eggs and boiled vegetables which was all I could manage to cook on the pathetic gas ring provided in my kitchen. The oil smelt so vile I couldn’t fry anything. When I tried, the wok sent up clouds of smoke and the food tasted as if it had been cooked in engine oil. Liang primed my wok for me and expertly showed me how to heat the oil to the right point. He flicked vegetables and fatty scraps of pork around and made feasts.

I gave up going to the market by myself. I waited for him to come and we would set out on an adventure. What used to be a painful experience became fun. We tried out anything new that came into season and rushed back to the flat to cook it. I ate everything: eels, their tiny heads nailed to a board while their long bodies were split with a sharp knife, rabbits bought live and their fragile necks cracked, their white fur peeled off like peeling an orange, tiny salty dried shrimp, sweet creamy yoghourt in chunky pottery jars, and delicate translucent hundred-year-old eggs with their glinting green and orange hues. Food became a fascination to me and I even discarded the fork and spoon I’d carried everywhere and learned awkwardly to wield chopsticks. I still couldn’t bring myself to use the bamboo ones in restaurants which you had to clean up with a bit of exercise book kept in the pocket for the purpose.