Xu Zechen - Running Through Beijing

What was really fun was being on the pedestrian bridge. From that vantage point he could see how the streets and the low residential buildings had all turned the same dirt-yellow color overnight, the way winter snows might blanket the earth. But the feeling was completely different; it made the dustcovered buildings and streets look like ancient ruins, silent and deathly. It was hard to believe there was something besides snow that could make the whole world appear so simple and two-dimensional, and at the same time so decayed and desolate. Watching the expressionless faces of the people hurrying by, Dunhuang was overcome by a sudden hopeless lust, and he shouted, “Xia — Xiao — Rong!”

No one knew who Xiaorong was, but they all turned their heads to look at the curious madman. He nodded and smiled at them with private pleasure, the way they abruptly turned their heads and bodies in concert seemed to swing the whole world into motion. He noticed a car parked by the side of the road, in the dust covering it, someone had written:

Fucking sandstorm

This seemed like fun to Dunhuang, so he trotted down from the bridge and added: But of course. He observed his handiwork with pleasure, feeling a bit of his old calligraphic skills returning. When he was in middle school there was a bit of a calligraphy fad, and anyone who could hold a pen was practicing. He went along with the fad, first using a broken branch to practice in the sandy riverbank outside the school gates — he’d write, let the waves wash it away, then write again. Later, he used a brush and water, writing on the concrete in the sunlight. By the time he got to the end of what he was writing, the beginning had begun to dry, and he would trace over the disappearing characters. There were crowds of kids out there on the sidewalk at noon, their rear ends all raised high — quite a sight. Writing “But of course” wasn’t enough, though, so he went around to the trunk of the car and wrote: I didn’t write this.

Then he went on his way. He noticed a BMW parked on the street, so he went up to it and wrote: Fucking BMW

He did it on three more cars in a row, changing the brand for each one. He reached the fifth car and was about to write “fucking,” when he remembered how they’d once left ads for fake IDs, in permanent ink or spray paint, in places where pedestrians might notice: Fake IDs, call 130. . Why not leave an ad for DVDs? So he wrote his own number: DVDs, call 133. .

He was pleased with this small stroke of genius. He kept it up, writing on every car he passed, on the hood if no one had wiped it off, on the trunk if they had. One after another, until his finger was tingling, his arm sore, and his right hand looked like it was made out of mud. He ignored the people watching him, he concentrated on his writing, and when he was done he moved on. At two in the afternoon he stopped and made a rough tally — at least three hundred cars. He found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and ordered two beers and a couple of dishes to reward himself. As he drank, he thought with satisfaction, Now I’ll just wait for the orders to come in. He imagined that, years from now, other DVD sellers would remember him with gratitude as the originator of the DVD delivery service.

Before he finished his meal his phone rang, and he picked up enthusiastically. The caller said, “Are you the guy selling DVDs?”

“That’s right. What would you like to see, miss?”

“Are you a fucking idiot?”

That wasn’t what he’d intended. Dunhuang tried to lighten the tone: “I’m sorry, miss, I don’t think I’ve got that one.”

“Don’t play cute with me. Listen, don’t go scrawling on everything you see, if your little claws itch you can scratch them on a rock!” Then she hung up.

Dunhuang was energized. He took another swallow of beer, and said to himself, I’ll scratch them on your mom’s leg!

Fake ID sellers dealt with this sort of thing all the time. They’d leave an advertisement right where it would piss someone off, or glue a flier to something important, and then get a phone call from some idiot with a temper. Dunhuang was thrilled because his advertisements were having an effect. If one person was willing to spit on him, another might do business.

As he was settling the bill his phone rang again. It was a young man, asking if he had DVDs to sell — he’d seen the ad on a car. Dunhuang said, “That’s right, what do you want?” The man said his office was at Changhong Bridge, and he had some co-workers who wanted to browse. Once he got the address, Dunhuang got on a bus. It was four thirty when he arrived. The man, named Yu, was on the fifth floor, and Dunhuang told him he had a big bag of movies he could look through. Several colleagues crowded around, all of them knowledgeable about film. Their offhand comments were all right on the mark, and Dunhuang noticed it was an arts management company. The whole building was arts related — fiction, poetry, theater, and also dance, music, film, and nonfiction publishing. The man named Yu said a DVD seller used to come regularly, but they hadn’t seen him in three months. Dunhuang said he’d come regularly from then on, and if they wanted something in particular they could call ahead. The workers were impressed with the quality of his merchandise — something Dunhuang was fairly confident about. They were pirated, but they were pirated well. Honor among thieves, right? He sold thirty-one DVDs.

As he was leaving, Dunhuang asked tentatively: “Can I try these other companies?”

“Sure,” said Yu, “just knock on some doors. That’s how the last guy did it.”

Dunhuang nearly fainted from happiness. Heaven had dropped a penny straight into his pocket. He wandered the building, which was more than ten stories tall, but only got through two floors before the end of the work day. On those two floors alone he sold more than eighty DVDs. More than eighty. . it was unreal. Two or three hundred in pure profit. On his way out he grinned so hard at the door guard that the man looked at him uneasily.

“What are you grinning at?”

“Just saying hello,” Dunhuang said. “I’ll be back tomorrow. They told me to come.”

Dunhuang bought a newspaper before he got on the bus, and got a shock. The paper said that the night before more than 300,000 tons of dust had fallen on Beijing. His only handle on the idea of 300,000 tons of dust was to imagine how many grave mounds you could make with it. The paper went on to say that a part of these 300,000 tons was produced in Beijing itself — the city was one huge construction site, and even without the winds the dust still flew. The other part had blown in from the deserts of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Wind was pretty goddamned amazing, carrying all those grains of dust from thousands of kilometers away. Quite a project. There was another bit of startling news — a train in Xinjiang was caught in the sandstorm, and the windows on one side of the train were all broken. The passengers had stuffed the windows with blankets and mattresses to fend off the sand that had come to do battle with them. Dunhuang guessed it wouldn’t have been much fun to be there, but he loved reading about it, and wanted to tell someone. But who? There seemed to be no one but the elusive Qibao. Qibao, Qibao. . where are you?

Another trip to Changhong Bridge, another stack of DVDs. He’d have to go restock that afternoon. Kuang Shan was shocked at how often he was coming back to Cosmic, and how well he was doing selling on his own. Dunhuang said, “I’ve just got one rule: it’s life or death. Or if you want to be pretentious about it: professionalism.”

And Dunhuang was a professional. Every time he restocked from the shop, he tried the DVDs in his own player to make sure he wasn’t selling his customers duds. He’d test at least one movie from each batch. When restocking he picked the highest-quality movies from among the pirated offerings. It didn’t matter that they were more expensive — at worst he’d earn a little less — his reputation was paramount. It was another lesson from selling fake IDs: repeat customers were essential. If they were satisfied, they’d do your advertising for you. Timely delivery was also key. And his game with the cars had given him a taste for advertising — he bought a few boxes of self-adhesive labels, wrote his ads on them, and then stuck them in places where people lingered: apartment gates, elevators, lobby entrances. The increased coverage had a noticeable effect: he’d often get calls with orders. Calls from individuals were small sales, sometimes just one or two films, but Dunhuang still did his best to deliver. When he arrived at the meeting place, he’d run his mouth and do his best to sell a few extra. One girl in particular, though, seemed immune to his patter: she only bought one or two movies, never more, and they were always gory horror films.