Ran Chen - A Private Life

2. Feudalism and conservativism are finished. The age of openness has arrived. Once it was revolution that shook up society, now it's love. If you aren't part of the trend, you're shameless.

3. After so many years of being "fake models of male and female virtue," our bodies need to relax in leisure suits. Our brains also need to don leisure suits. If your brain doesn't take it easy along with us, then you're shameless.

4. "Classical culture" is a thing of the past. The "postmodern revolution" is in pursuit of relaxation and superficiality. If you stupidly insist on being or playing profound, then you're shameless.

5. I hate my loneliness. I want to enjoy myself along with everyone else, but I can't throw off my loneliness. I curse myself as a shameless person in order to escape my loneliness.

6. I have no desire at all to change the loneliness I love so much. Before you try to tell me I'm shameless, let me tell you that I'm shameless because that's the way I want to be.

7-

Eventually I gave it up.

I said to myself: You're shameless. Totally shameless!

Then I went to bed, turned out the light, and settled down to sleep.

The flashing red and green neon lights outside had found their way through the window curtains and were dancing like pink fragments of windblown cloud on the wall of the room. I stared at them for the longest time, unable to go to sleep.

For two full hours I lay there pointlessly, wide awake. Through the stillness, from the neighbor's open window, I could hear again and again the unbroken strains of "The Season of Love."

After a while, I had an idea: why not sleep in the bathtub? Its long, warm, and cozy oval shape made it the perfect place to sleep.

I bounced up, pulled my robe over my shoulders, and headed straight for the bathroom.

After wiping the tub dry, I fetched my bedclothes and pillow from the bedroom and arranged them in the tub as meticulously as a bird building its nest.

Finished, I stopped to catch my breath, pleased as punch with my new "bed."

When everything was just so, I tunneled my way into my feathery bathtub nest. Lying on my side with my knees pulled up and my arms folded over my bosom was like lying on a golden beach with the sun-warmed sand pressing against my skin, its heat seeping into my blood. The sun's golden warmth raced through my body like marijuana, leaving me languid and drowsy.

Across from the bathtub there was a big mirror. In it I could see a young woman lying on her side in a tiny, swaying white boat. I watched her. The lines of her face were beautifully soft and gentle; her skin was fair and delicate. Tumbled loosely around her neck, her fragant hair was like a dark glistening flower floating on a pool of water. The light, sweeping curve of her body was outlined beneath the flowing wave of her soft silk quilt cover.

This was the first time I had seen myself lying down. I never knew how intriguingly beautiful the passive languor of a reclining body could be.

This led me to think of the beauty of deep sleep, the beauty of death.

Right then, I made a decision: when it came time to die, I would die in the bathtub. There couldn't be a more beautiful place.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, as if I were judging some other girl altogether. All the joints beween the white tiles were like a great net stretched out behind my body, a kind of still and indifferent backdrop trapping my inner thoughts.

I turned my head and lightly closed my eyes.

Then I did something to myself.

Something you only have to imagine and it's done.

While I was doing this wondrous thing, the two dearest loves of my life flashed through my mind: beautiful but ill-fated Ho, and brilliant and immaculate Yin Nan.

This marvelous combination and sexual confusion operated on two planes.

When my fingers caressed my round, full breasts, in my mind they had already become Ho's fingers, her exquisitely slender fingers, touching my skin, those two spheres soft as swan's down… fingers like pure white feathers floating, dancing, turning… the fragrant delight of rose petals… rich red cherries swollen till they burst… the thick fragrance of maple leaves in autumn brushing your lips, entwining your neck… my breath quickened, the blood in my veins caught fire.

Then the hand, like a freight train, sounding its whistle, huff-huffing nearer and nearer along those familiar tracks toward the fragrant dark grass of the "station," slowly pulled in. Just as it reached the deep place covered over with leaves, Yin Nan suddenly stood there rigid, and filled with the spirit of exploration, he plunged deep and solidly into the center of my breathing…

The experience of beauty and the fulfillment of desire brought perfectly together.

That evening in the bathtub, I sank quickly into dreams.

After not leaving the house for a number of days, I took a very long walk. This walk led me to a much deeper understanding of life and of Beijing.

This is a city completely devoid of any feeling of being shut in. I discovered that the city's broad and long streets in no way separate the people in its different corners, either in terms of space or in their hearts. The streets are filled with modern means of communication so that moving between widely separated places is as fast as making a phone call. In the twinkling of an eye, an uninvited guest who wants to talk to you can be on your doorstep. With the spiderweb network of telephone lines over the city, the noise and clamor of an even more distant world, however you might protest, will force its way into your innocent ears. Like a green wind blowing across the sea of people, postmen whisk everything from far away, the true, the false, before your eyes. You become the news for others; they become the news for you. Endless rounds of information keep bursting like shells all around you. Row upon row of new buildings crowd together cheek by jowl. Windows like endless rows of eyes stare inquisitively into each other from every angle. Walls as thin as insects' wings… whether you're at home or on the street, your breathing, your muttering, your deepest inner thoughts are common knowledge among the crowds…

Because of all the noise and clamor, the city's heart is becoming every day emptier as its arms extend everywhere into the surrounding farms, covering the soft-complected fields of wheat and vegetables with hard asphalt roads, making them its own. It is getting harder and harder to find scenes of country life around the outskirts of this city, or smell the rich fragrance of the vegetables that grace our tables growing in the soil that nurtured them. All we can do is retreat to our balconies, where we can symbolically "promote agriculture" to get a little feel of the farmer's life. As this city grows bigger and bigger, it is becoming more and more stupid and obtuse.

I took a long walk along the streets between the Third and Fourth Ring roads. As I looked around at this huge, crowded city, I thought back over the recent years of my life. I realized that I was becoming like an old woman, my old enthusiasm for dreaming about the future all gone. Aside from observing, there was nothing left in my head but memories.

Senility at my age – how ridiculous!

Maybe I really am sick, but certainly not "agoraphobic" or "mentally disordered" or whatever, as diagnosed by the doctors. My mind is as sharp as ever; I know myself. My problem is "premature senility" – simple as that. And I'm convinced that there are a lot of other people suffering from the same thing. More all the time. It's going to be an epidemic by the end of the century.

When I got home, instead of reporting to the hospital where I had convalesced for a checkup, I wrote them a letter:

Dear Doctors: How are you!