Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

In Uncle Huairen’s house, Levitan landscape paintings hung on the walls, and on the table were sturdy boxes, imported from China’s ‘big brother’ ally, the Soviet Union. Tianyi knew they held fruit candies. She also knew, young though she was, that the better-off of her father’s students had those boxes at home. In the 1950s, they were a sign that a family were going up in the world. Their neighbours, Di and Xian’s family, were like that. Their father Mr Shang had been to the Soviet Union too and the Shang sisters had a prized Soviet-made doll, which they swopped for a painting of a courtly lady Tianyi had painted.

Uncle Huairen was often in the USSR. Each time he came back, it was like a dream come true. The first time, he brought back two pure lamb’s wool scarves, hand-knitted in beautiful bright colours. Most recently, he brought dresses for Tianyi and Tianyue. Tianyue’s was fashionably foreign-looking, of ivory cotton with collar and cuffs with a wide blue and white border, like a girl in a fairy story. Tianyi’s was even prettier, in white seersucker, with a bodice of broderie anglaise flowers, through which was laced a bright red ribbon. Tianyi looked like a doll in it. At New Year in 1961, the sisters put on their new dresses and paraded down the street. They certainly attracted attention, and not just from passers-by; even the local policeman stopped to look.

That evening, Tianyi ran up and down the cobbled pathways on the estate where her Uncle Huairen and Aunt Hui lived, happy in the knowledge that she was going to be called in to dinner at any minute. On the table would be what she and her sister called ‘glass’ eggs. The dark green yolks of the preserved eggs made her feel sick, and once she nearly was sick, when her aunt fed her a spoonful.

There would be steamed shad too, her favourite. It was from her aunt that she learnt that shad should be steamed with the scales on, so that the steaming process dissolved them into fragrant fish oil, even tastier than the delicate flesh itself. Those were happy times for her, before Tianke was born. Everyone petted her, she was everyone’s princess, the family revolved around her. She had good food to eat, pretty clothes to wear and was the prettiest and brightest of children! Everyone loved her. Jealous Tianyue nicknamed her Fat Gesang, after the villain in the play The Fox and the Grapes , by Guilherme Figueiredo, who, like Tianyi, was very plump. Tianyi did not care. Having seen a play called Iris , she nicknamed her sister Old Cat in return, Old Cat of course being the villain of that piece. And so it went on: with each film or book or drama they saw, they nicknamed each other after the baddies.

After dinner, Aunt Hui usually got into an argument. Her opponent depended on who was on hand that day. At one point, the woman she was most irritated with was Aunt Yuman, a young woman who had just married Hui’s brother-in-law Uncle Huaiji. Uncle Huaiji had grown up in his older brother’s house, and was the baby of the family. His sister-in-law browbeat him constantly, so that he lacked self-confidence and allowed himself to be pushed around. It was only when he went to university that he finally acquired a girlfriend, a young woman from a wealthy Shanghai capitalist family, called Sufan. She was very good-looking, with plaits so long they came down to her calves. Not surprisingly, she came in for a heavy dose of my aunt’s criticism too. However, for first time, Uncle Huaiji dared to go behind Aunt Hui’s back and began to conduct their love affair in secret. Needless to say, it did not last long, and in actual fact, Uncle Huaiji only had himself to blame. Apart from the games he liked to play with his two nieces, he had absolutely no experience of women. He soon fell out of favour with Sufan. The final row that finished them off came from an argument about jiaozi dumplings. Uncle had said he liked jiaozi , so Sufan and her one-time capitalist mother made some for him with their own hands. They made more than ninety, and steamed them, and Uncle Huaiji polished almost all of them off without waiting for his girlfriend to come to the table! He left only four, and that was because he had stuffed himself full.

Uncle Huaiji never did understand why, after steadily working his way through all those delicious jiaozi , he was politely shown the door, and then abandoned by his girlfriend.

For a long time after that, Uncle Huaiji went around in a daze, until one day his colleague at work, Yuman, told him bluntly that she had fallen in love with him. Yuman had a pretty name, but an extremely masculine appearance. When she was taken to meet the family, Aunt Hui cold-shouldered her. But regardless of her opposition, the couple eventually married. Worse was to follow: they immediately had a baby, and another, and another, until there were four children! Yuman became the butt of Aunt Hui’s jokes for ever after.

That made Aunt Hui a comrade-in-arms of Tianyi’s mother, Siqin, who only had to see Hui imitating Yuman flapping her fan around and fidgeting on her feet or in her chair, to burst out laughing. Tianyi heard her mother’s ringing laugh and her words: ‘You’ve got her to a tee! I can’t take her off half as well!’ But, child though she was, Tianyi also sensed that if her mother was not there, her aunt’s sarcasm might well find a new target for her jokes instead, and it might just be Siqin. Aunt Hui mimicked her mother’s affected complaints: ‘Oh dear me, how my stomach aches, how my liver hurts …’

But when Tianyi’s grandfather arrived, the butt of her aunt’s sarcasm changed again. It was now an old man, her father-in-law. ‘Such a feudal old stick,’ she said. ‘He comes rushing over here because now he’s got a grandson.’ She threw Tianyi a wry glance: ‘It doesn’t matter how clever you are, or how hard you study, you’re just a girl! Your grandfather’s such a feudal old stick. He’s certainly not come to see you!’

She was right, too. But the trip to Beijing to see his grandson was a disappointment to the old man. Tianke, was stubborn as a mule. Apart from stuffing his face and going out to play around in the streets, and mastering the most basic maths with the greatest difficulty, he never learned anything more. Not that many of his schoolmates bothered to study. As soon as classes were over, the kids ran off to their games. Especially at the height of summer when people came out of their houses to enjoy the cool evening air, it was common to see crowds of boys gathering in the lamplight, arms folded across their chests, laughing and telling jokes. Tianke was a past master at telling tall stories. And of all the kids in their courtyard, there was no one who could beat him at killing birds with a sling-shot! Years later, when Tianke had been fired for the nth time from his job, the only thing he could boast about were those long-unused childhood skills. He would stand there, paunchy, middle-aged, with grizzled hair, and tell his stories: ‘There was one time when my Dad used to be able to shoot a dozen birds in a day! And all you can do nowadays is play on your Gameboys! Once I saw a really fine bird…!’ Every time he got to that point, his wife, Xiaolan, would pull a face. She already had a lover and was demanding a divorce, but Tianke would rather be cuckolded than divorced. How on earth would he look after himself if he divorced Xiaolan, let alone his son and his elderly mother?

Tianyi’s grandfather racked his brains for a way to win the boy’s affections and decided to take him to a film. The weekly showing was Tunnel Warfare , and Tianke had been desperate to go and see it. But as soon as he heard his grandfather wanted to go, he changed his mind. He had so much homework, had to stay at home to do it, and so on and so forth. Tears trickled down his grandfather’s face and he set about buying a bus ticket home. Tianyi’s father was upset at his distress, but he could not control his son. The only thing he could do was sigh heavily and twist his good-hearted eldest daughter Tianyue’s arm. At his instigation, she offered to take her grandfather out for a stroll but the old man shook his head so vigorously, his snowy white hair and beard shook too. To Tianyi, he looked more like a hoary old wizard from a fairy story than a real person. In any case, he sat there in a wobbly old rattan chair, stubbornly refusing to go out with his eldest granddaughter. In those days, they had no TV, only a dilapidated old radio. Her grandfather told Tianyi to turn it on. It was a Story Time programme, Tianyi’s favourite.