Xu Zechen - Running Through Beijing

“Well, okay.” The landlady pinched her chin thoughtfully, a very Party secretary gesture. “I’ll need a month’s deposit, though. This month’s rent now, and next month’s in advance.”

Dunhuang knew what “deposit” meant. She was afraid her renter would skip out, possibly cleaning out her valuables in the process. There’s just these two pieces of broken furniture, thought Dunhuang, they’re no treasure. You couldn’t even give them away. He rented the room, though, paying two months’ rent — nearly everything he had. After cleaning up a bit he sat on the edge of the bed and discovered he was starving. He’d get some food, then go sell DVDs. He needed money.

With lodgings taken care of he felt like he’d finally put down roots. Now he could proceed with a more orderly plan for the future. He would spend his days selling DVDs to make money, of course, but he would also find some time to visit Bao Ding. Ideally, he’d locate Qibao before that — he didn’t want to disappoint Bao Ding.

The problem was where to look. Besides her name and the fact that she sold fake IDs, plus that one glimpse of her back, he knew nothing about her, not even her surname. As long as she was still in Beijing selling fake IDs he stood a chance, otherwise he wouldn’t even know which haystack to go needle-hunting in. If only Bao Ding had seen fit to mention her earlier, instead of waiting until the police were hauling them off. It was his fault too — he’d thought that, as long as he had his freedom, finding someone would be a piece of cake, and he hadn’t asked for more details. His preliminary plan was to sell DVDs and look for her at the same time — his chances of finding her rose with the number of places he visited. He’d get to know the fake ID crowd, make some inquiries. He’d keep an eye out as he sold movies, and look over the girls, specifically their backs and asses. He thought he would be able to pick her ass out of a crowd.

He looked at countless asses over the next few days — big and small, fat and skinny, round and flat, overripe and undeveloped, shapely and shapeless — until he began to see cheeks even with his eyes closed. The majority of asses are unappetizing. Dunhuang realized that the plan was impractical, he simply couldn’t keep them all straight. The unpleasant ones were each unpleasant in their own way, but the nice-looking ones were more or less similar. It would never work. He asked various fake ID peddlers in various places if they’d heard of a girl named Qibao. A third shook their heads. A third responded by asking him if he wanted a fake ID — they could get him anything. The last third just glared or swore at him. Dunhuang had to admit it was laughable to go around asking everyone he met, as if he were a character in some fairy tale.

It didn’t hurt to ask, however, and not asking was guaranteed to get him nowhere, so he kept it up. But he’d mostly given up any hope of getting results. There were so goddamned many fake ID sellers in Beijing, enough to make up a little town of their own. To keep the search interesting, he thought of it as a special way of interacting with strangers, beyond selling them DVDs. Sometimes, after the movies were sold, he’d ask his customers randomly, “Do you know a girl named Qibao?”

The customers looked at him quizzically, and hurried off. He’d smile apologetically at their backs.

As long as the weather held, he could make money every day. He saved what he could, calculating how many days it would be before he could buy a television and a DVD player. When he needed more DVDs he didn’t call Xiaorong, he went straight to the store called Cosmic that Kuang Shan ran with his friend — he didn’t want to disturb Xiaorong at home. But they continued their relationship quietly. Put gently, they lent each other warmth. Put less gently, it was adulterous.

Dunhuang couldn’t care less about adultery — as a single man the worst he’d get was a beating. But he worried about Xiaorong. He could tell she was the sort to take things to heart, but when they met they couldn’t help themselves. Afterwards, he’d pull on his pants and take off, but how much longer could she be caught between two men? It had to end — they should end it. He thought she probably felt the same way. One day she called him, at first accusing him bitterly of not coming to see her, but soon softening. Dunhuang said he’d just gone to Kuang Shan’s place to pick up movies, then added that he would come see her whenever she was next free. She fell silent, and they ended the conversation without her ever telling him when she would be free. So Dunhuang made the sad decision. A short, sharp pain was better than dragging things out, and as the man he should be the one to end it.

Then it was done, and after that they met only rarely, and hardly even talked on the phone again.

* * *

Cosmic was in an alley off Saoziying, and its walls were plastered with garish movie posters. To the left of the door was the shop name, and on the right a sign: guaranteed legal! The shelves in the shop held mostly authorized copies, but that was just for show. The pirated stuff was through a side door, and that’s where most of the business went on. The first time Dunhuang went to the store, Kuang Shan introduced him to Boss Zhou, his partner, and to the two shop assistants, introducing him as Xiaorong’s adopted brother. He’s a buddy of mine, give him a discount. The shop assistants, a girl and a boy, both in their early twenties, seemed to know a lot about movies. Hand them a DVD and they could tell you all about it: the story, the director, the actors, its critical reception, its meaning — they even knew the secret behind-the-scenes gossip. Dunhuang said he was in awe. They said, “It’s no big deal. We just watch a lot of movies.”

Thirteen days after moving into Weixiuyuan, Dunhuang bought a television and a DVD player. The DVD player was new; the TV came from a secondhand market, lightly used, two hundred kuai. It looked good. He ate two packets of instant noodles that night, and watched four movies in a row. Well after midnight he went out to use the bathroom. A strong night wind was blowing over the asbestos tiles, and grit got in his eyes. Instead of going to the public toilet at the mouth of the alley, he just pissed beneath the scholar tree at the entrance to the yard and hurried back. Fucking sandstorms, showing up in the middle of the night.

The next morning he heard someone talking excitedly outside his window about the dust. He couldn’t get back to sleep, so he got up and went outside to find them still talking. His landlady pointed at his feet and said "Look, young man, dust." Dunhuang looked down to see a thick layer of fine yellow dust under his feet. He stomped one foot and raised a little cloud, then stomped again and raised another. He stomped a dozen times and dust rose into the air; his landlady and neighbor backed away yelling, “Stop it! Stop it! We’re choking!”

He stopped. “Where’d this come from?” Everything around him was covered with a thick layer of yellow. “The sandstorm?” The wind had stopped and the sun was in the sky, though it looked white from all the sand still in the air. Yellow sky, white sun.

“It rained dust!” his landlady said excitedly. “The heavens rained dust on us!”

All the neighbors were excited, old and young. All these years — who had ever seen it rain dust? Dunhuang had never seen it, anyway. He gave the scholar tree a kick, and yellow dust came floating down. It had actually rained fucking dust. Dunhuang got excited too. He washed, packed his bag, and got to work. Everything he saw was covered in dust, glistening yellow or dingy gray. Plenty of kids were stomping, too. In some places the street-sweepers were still sweeping, and the dust was piled high at the sides of the streets. Bizarre. No wonder he and his friends had all ended up in prison — it was a year of bad omens.