Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

When I offered him a cigarette, he pushed it away and said that smoking was forbidden in the hotel, and that I’d have to go to the forecourt if I wanted a cigarette. The truth is, I hadn’t wanted a cigarette. I’d only offered him one out of politeness.

His new wife, Mabel, was a second-generation Chinese American. She was twelve years younger than him and had the small, round face typical of women from southern China. Her parents were born in Fujian Province. She spoke some Fujianese but very little Mandarin.

After a brief exchange of civilities, I went down to wait in the lobby with my brother, mother and Tian Yi, while Mabel had a shower and changed into clean clothes. I flicked through the photocopied documents Kenneth had brought to support my American visa application. He’d included some recent bank statements and a copy of his passport.

My mother wandered through the hotel’s gift shops. This was the first time she’d visited a luxury hotel. Tian Yi was wearing the same clothes she’d worn for the last week. When we’d walked into Kenneth and Mabel’s room, she’d apologised for looking so scruffy and then scurried into their bathroom. When she came out again, I noticed she’d washed her face and combed her hair into a neat ponytail. The dirt under her fingernails had vanished and there was lipstick on her lips. I didn’t know she owned a lipstick. Perhaps she’d borrowed one from Mimi.

The hour we waited in the elegant lobby passed quickly. After Kenneth and Mabel came down, we all crammed into a taxi which delivered us to the Forbidden City. The ticket office was in the courtyard behind Tiananmen Gate. There was a long queue outside it. Tian Yi and I were dismayed to see a large number of provincial students among the crowd.

‘They came to Beijing saying they wanted to join our movement, but they spend all their time sightseeing,’ Tian Yi said angrily. ‘Where do they get all the money from?’

My brother had travelled up from Sichuan the day before. He said he’d gone straight to the Square when he arrived, but couldn’t find me, so had spent the night at the flat. Tian Yi linked arms with my mother and stood with her in the queue. She didn’t want to speak English with Mabel. She told me she found her American accent hard to understand.

Mabel gawped up at the majestic walls flanking the Forbidden City’s main southern entrance, and repeated in English, ‘ It’s amazing, amazing …’ The yells and cries from the crowds and loudspeakers in Tiananmen Square four hundred metres to the south echoed faintly against the huge red walls. I could just about pick out Chen Di’s voice, reading out an announcement. Mimi’s wavering voice also cut through the din.

When we reached the front of the queue, we huddled around Mabel, trying to pass her off as a local so she could get a Chinese ticket. Kenneth, whose foreign features were impossible to hide, had to buy a foreigner’s ticket, which was double the price.

Kenneth and Mabel walked ahead of us, swinging their arms merrily. Mabel stood out from the crowd in her organza knickerbockers and white vest.

‘Why do Overseas Chinese women walk around in their underwear?’ my mother whispered to Tian Yi as we followed them through the central arch of the ancient entrance gate. ‘In China only men strip to their vests.’

‘Foreign men go around bare-chested when it’s hot, so vests aren’t considered to be particularly revealing,’ said Tian Yi. Then she turned to me and said, ‘Dai Wei, shouldn’t you go and get everyone something to drink? Your cousin paid for our drinks at the hotel.’

‘Yes, go and buy some cartons of orange juice,’ my mother said. ‘They’ve already spent a hundred Foreign Exchange Certificates on us. Don’t get one for me, though. I’ve brought a jar of tea with me.’ She took out a ten-yuan bill and pressed it into my palm.

‘I don’t want orange juice, thank you,’ Mabel said to me before going off to take some photographs. ‘Just some water.’ I felt embarrassed. I assumed she was trying to save us some money, then I remembered that A-Mei didn’t drink orange juice either. She said it was bad for her teeth.

‘Foreigners like to choose what they want themselves,’ my brother said to Tian Yi. ‘There are some foreign students at my university. When they have a cigarette, they never offer one to anyone else.’

On a vast marble terrace before us rose the red pillars and two-tiered golden roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Tourists streamed in and out of its central doorway like ants scavenging for food. Kenneth and Mabel kept stopping to hug or kiss each other, which made the Chinese tourists around them step back in fright.

‘This was a terrible idea of yours, Mum,’ my brother said. ‘Foreigners like to visit places on their own. They don’t want us tagging along.’

I was carrying the cartons of orange juice that no one wanted to drink. The memory of Mou Sen’s unblinking gaze suddenly flashed into my mind.

‘Go and tell them a bit about the history of the Forbidden City,’ I said to Tian Yi. My brother was too embarrassed to speak to them, and I didn’t know much about the place. So Tian Yi walked over to Kenneth and Mabel and said, ‘The Forbidden City was completed in 1420, and was home to twenty-four successive emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. We are now standing in the Outer Court, which is known as the “sea of flagstones”. This is where the emperors held grand ceremonies and reviewed their troops. Inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony up there is the Dragon Throne, on which the emperors would sit every morning to discuss matters of state… There are 9,999 rooms within these palace walls. Most of them were occupied by the emperors’ numerous concubines…’

Mabel took off her sunglasses and wiped the sweat from her forehead. There was a look of astonishment on her face. Her gold earrings swung back and forth.

Throngs of tourists swarmed through the vast, stone-paved courtyard, buying trinkets from souvenir stalls and taking photographs. Kenneth gave Tian Yi his camera and asked her to take a photo of him and Mabel.

We headed north through the Gate of Heavenly Purity. Tian Yi was now happily babbling away in English to Mabel. I stood beside her, and caught the gist of what she was saying. ‘We’ve now entered the Inner Court, which was the emperors’ private quarters. In the Hall of Earthly Tranquillity over there is the red bridal room where the emperor and empress would retire for three days after their wedding. The concubines lived in these chambers on the west and east. And those halls are the Treasure Houses. They house thousands of imperial relics and artefacts. All the foreign tourists like to visit them. We should take a look. The tickets aren’t too expensive…’

‘It’s so uncouth, carrying your jar of tea around like that, Mum,’ Dai Ru whispered. ‘Look how grubby the plastic holder is.’ My brother had picked up some foreign affectations since I’d last seen him. He was continually running his fingers through his hair or rubbing his sideburns pensively. My mother had always clipped his hair when he was younger, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her touch it now.

‘What do you mean, uncouth? These plastic covers are all the rage. Didn’t you see that stall at the entrance? It was selling them in four different colours.’

‘Those emperors really knew how to live,’ Kenneth said with a smile. ‘Imagine lying in these sumptuous halls, surrounded by thousands of beautiful concubines…’

‘Emperor Shizong kept the largest harem,’ said Tian Yi. ‘He had nine thousand concubines, some were as young as ten years old. Hardly any of them ever got a chance to meet him. Many ended up starving to death in their chambers. When Emperor Chengzu suspected a few of his concubines of disloyalty, he had all 2,800 members of his harem executed.’