Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

At dead of night, when all the others were asleep in the tent, Zheng sat quite still outside. Tianyi went out and quietly urged him: ‘Go to bed, or you’ll get bitten by mosquitoes.’

A few days later, when a friend fixed her up with a date, she was happy to go along. He was a salesman with a company set up by a famous politician and entrepreneur, one of the first to make a lot of money in the eighties. He had certainly taken a lot of care with his appearance, he was wearing a white jacket and trousers, with his hair combed into neat waves. He exchanged just a few words with their mutual friend and then Tianyi found herself swept away with him. His idea of a date was comical. He had bought a twenty-one-inch colour TV (beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary Chinese families in those days) but it so happened that the lifts in his apartment block were out of action. So he got Tianyi to help him carry it up to his thirteenth floor flat. They heaved the huge TV up floor by floor and Tianyi gasped for breath. By the thirteenth floor, she was exhausted and sweating profusely — but still immensely curious about Yuan. She always had been incorrigibly curious, and had never been able to resist pursuing the object of her curiosity until it was thoroughly satisfied, even at the price of sweat and exhaustion. When they finally arrived at his flat, Yuan poured her a glass of water and offered her a chair. As he fiddled with the TV, he said: ‘I hear you write novels. What are they about?’

‘People. Life.’

‘That’s a big topic! Life …’ He muttered, with a faint smile. She felt the subtext was: And what would a chick like you know about life?

‘Why do you write novels?’ he asked next.

‘Because I’ve got things to say.’

‘Excellent. That’s a good way to say things.’ He smiled slightly again. ‘But has it ever occurred to you that the China of the future won’t be a world of literati, or of politicos, it will be a world of business people.’ She was startled. What a strange man. She had never come across anyone like him before.

‘Do you know why I’ve never married?’ he asked.

‘You’re a Marcusian?’

‘No, no, no, I’m actually quite traditional in these things. It just so happened that, when I was at university, the girls in our class were so young, they could have been my daughters, so any daughters we had would have been my granddaughters…’ He laughed. ‘You see, I may look very lively and outgoing, but really I’m an old stick-in-the-mud.’

‘You remind me of the story about the man who buried a stash of silver and left a note saying there was no silver buried there. His neighbour A-Er dug it up and left a note explaining that he couldn’t possibly be the culprit!’

‘Shhh,’ he put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t talk so loud. It’s not A-Er who’s my neighbour, it’s the head of the Romance Section of the Marriage and Home Research Institute.’

She burst out laughing. What an interesting man, she thought, he could be a friend. With this thought in mind, she took him to Peng’s. She was obviously getting her own back on Zheng. In the past, when she invited Zheng to a meal, he usually brought along another girl, a dazzling array of them, in fact. Zheng actually had no ulterior motives, except perhaps a desire to show off a little.

She had forgotten that the day of her date was her birthday. Zheng had not, however. He got to Peng’s early and was busy making dumplings, which were cooking when they arrived. Everyone was astonished that she had brought a man along. Zheng exchanged a few brief courtesies with him and soon made his excuses and left. A week later, Tianyi found out he had gone to Changsha, apparently to start up a new company. He did not say goodbye. Tianyi knew that something had changed forever in their feelings for each other. Still, she thought: Why was it OK for him but not for me? What double standards!

Of course, she split up with the man before long. He never did understand it. How had he offended this odd woman?

In reality, Tianyi never stopped loving Zheng, even while she was getting her own back on him. So when The Tree of Knowledge had its first showing in China, he was the first person she thought of. She had dedicated the story on which the film was based, to him. The assistant director gave her a dozen tickets, and she got a friend to give them to him. As a result, half of his institute turned up for the showing. Before the showing, the cast and production team met the audience. Zheng saw Tianyi, petite and beautiful, standing on the platform, and felt a rush of emotion. He had been away from Beijing for not quite three years, and in that time, Tianyi had become a mother. This was the first time he had seen her since then, and his heart ached. Tianyi, for her part, was shocked at how much he had changed. Those sparkling eyes had dimmed, and she wondered what on earth had happened to him.

The opening sequence of The Tree of Knowledge was very interesting. Brilliant red berries gleamed in dense woodland, like the Garden of Eden, from which a young woman serenely emerged. The titles rolled: first came Yang Tianyi, writer of the original work and the screenplay. The theme music was mysterious and evocative, just like Tianyi’s unfathomable inner world. Unfortunately, Zheng did not tumble to the fact that the lead male role was actually him. He had no idea that that was how Tianyi felt about him. He even found the man irritating, unappealingly pretentious.

It was Peng who got the clues. He said to Zheng: ‘The lead character is very like you.’ Zheng was scornful: ‘You’re pulling my leg! I’m not as argumentative as that.’ Tianyi overheard this exchange and was suddenly furious. Tears filled her eyes and it was only with a huge effort that she forced them back. She was a good actress, and her smile took everyone in.

Later that evening, however, Tianyi’s acting skills were to desert her. Lian had made them a huge dinner, including his specialities, winter melon balls, plain-fried beans, red-cooked chicken wings and so on. Tianyi tucked in happily, did the dishes and was sitting in the sitting-room, one leg crossed over the other, reading the paper, when Lian suddenly came out with: ‘So H Z is Zheng then?’

His words hit home. Tianyi looked at him, and seemed to be seeing a stranger. Her head was whirling with questions. Lian calmly carried on reading the paper. She could read nothing from his face. Finally she took a deep breath and came out with: ‘You seem to have been thinking about for quite a while.’ ‘No, it was just a gut reaction.’ Lian looked up, still impassive. ‘It’s obvious you were in love with him, and you still are. No,’ he put his finger to his lips, ‘don’t deny it. I understand. If I were a woman, I’d fall in love with a man like that. He’s very attractive. Do you believe me? I like him.’

Tianyi could think of nothing to say. It occurred to her that either Lian was the most forgiving of men, or the most terrible. She had underestimated him. But she was not to be outdone. ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘if you like him so much, why not invite him over?’ Lian’s smile was genuine: ‘No sooner said than done! I’ll cook, you invite him, and that’s settled!’

It was a lively dinner party. It so happened that their friend Jin was home from the States to visit his family, Di was about to leave for the States, and her sister Xian had just got married, so it was a send-off, a welcome-back and a celebration all rolled into one. Lian bustled in and out the kitchen and in due course, more than a dozen dishes appeared on the table.

Di, who was used to plainer fare in the postgrad canteen, gazed hungrily at the food and exclaimed: ‘Tianyi, you’ve got a house-husband and he’s worth his weight in gold!’ Xian’s marriage must have been making her happy, she seemed to have grown prettier. She laughed and told her sister, that ‘house-husband’ was not a proper word. Di protested: ‘But “house-husband” is exactly what I meant! You know what Tianyi’s like. She’s just the kind of woman to get herself one!’ Everyone laughed, with the exception of Zheng, who was deep in conversation with Jin about the economic reforms. Tianyi had the feeling, however, that he was trying to conceal how despondent he felt.