Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

Old City had been widely headlined in the newspapers as, ‘Ten years in the making … the modern-day Red Chamber Dream,’ and so on. Actually, in spite of the novelty of this media hype, it made little impact. Most ordinary folk just ignored it. On the other hand, the author’s name was very well-known, it almost advertised itself. His novel The Snare of Love had been adapted into a hugely popular TV series which had the entire population glued to their TV screens, handkerchiefs at the ready. All of this spurred Qiang to take a punt on Old City —he badly needed to make his mark in the company.

Tianyi had the failing common to so many women, that she would do anything for the man she loved. And she had another failing too, one few women did, and that was pride. There was no way she wanted the man to know just how much she was doing for him, as if he would respect her less if he knew. That was why she had particularly liked the story Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig. The heroine was a girl in her early teens whose unrequited love for a certain man lasted her whole life — the man did not even know who she was. Finally, on her deathbed, she wrote the man a letter, pouring out her feelings. And what a love it was! It put traditional love stories like The Red Chamber Dream, firmly in the shade! For a very long time, Tianyi was fixated on one-sided love, secretly convinced that it was the only true and beautiful form of love, the acme of love in fact. So much beauty and suffering emerged from loving and not receiving love in return; unrequited love gave the lover so much, forcing her to strip away the mask and expose the lies that lurked in her subconscious. That kind of beauty and suffering was absolutely authentic. As a writer, Tianyi was convinced of that. Over the years, she had revelled in the pain of platonic love, unquestioning love that asked for nothing in return. For Tianyi, the love that lived and died in her heart alone, had grown into an enormous tree, nourishing her soul, nurturing her creative urges. The trouble was that worldly relationships gave her nothing, and never would.

She did not know if she was in love again. Some vague thing swelled in her heart, swelled erratically and inexplicably until it completely took her over. Around then she received her first screenplay fee and she invited Qiang to a meal in a restaurant in Muxidi, just west of the centre of town, old-fashioned but clean. As he got off the metro, he saw her waiting for him, clearly anxious, waving a frantic greeting, anything but graceful and relaxed. She was wearing an ill-fitting crepe georgette, pale pink short-sleeved blouse, over a black skirt she was fond of. Her new glasses seemed constantly in danger of sliding down her nose and every time she spoke, she had to keep pushing them back again, a gesture that he found almost comical. Then he stopped finding her comical and began to compare her to all the glamorous actresses he was normally surrounded with. This middle-aged woman in front of him seemed to give off a wholly different aura, one that was intriguingly unfamiliar. Qiang, who knew a thing or two about seductive women, felt Tianyi lacked all seductiveness because she was incapable of dissembling, and yet was peculiarly seductive for that very reason.

She had brought some gifts for him. And what gifts! Eight weighty cans of eight-treasure rice, a Playboy T-shirt, a Reebok neck tie, an imported cigarette lighter. As she laid them all before him, he wondered if it was simply to show how grateful she was for the work he had put her way, or was there something more? The canned eight-treasure rice had just come on the market and was a luxury. She had brought such a lot no doubt envisaging how pleasurable it would be for a man living on his own, as he was, to go home and relax on his sofa, and eat a piping hot bowl of it.

Qiang could not help being touched. His wife and child were living abroad and when he was not at work, time hung heavy on his hands. He was a highly intelligent man, but he had the kind of intelligence that would never become wisdom. Wisdom required something a little bit more than intelligence, something of a different quality. A moral quality. Be that as it may, Qiang was very acute, indeed ruthless, when it came to other people’s characters. He had seen through Tianyi instantly. She might write good love stories but her knowledge of love was purely theoretical, her practical experience in these matters very superficial. She had not had many deep-going relationships, and was especially inexperienced where sex was concerned. She was so innocent, still like a girl, even though she was a mother. He had once joked that she acted as if she was suffering the pangs of first love. She was so startled that she nearly dropped her glasses on the floor. It was as if he had found that chink in her armour.

Qiang began to be interested in this woman who wrote about love yet clearly did not understand it, who had reached middle age yet had the mentality of a girl. He pursued her with phone calls, on any pretext that came to mind. They were very relaxed in these conversations, forever cracking risqué jokes, although at work they kept up a dignified appearance as if, face to face, they were two completely different people. Sometimes they were on the phone for a couple of hours, or more. It has to be said that Lian was remarkably tolerant of this, no doubt because he had absolute trust in his wife. After all, he had never had any cause to complain.

There was also another reason: he was quietly preparing to quit his government job and start work for a commercial company. To his surprise, the ‘personal report’ he had worked so hard on after his return from America had not received the rapturous reception he had anticipated, even after it was cascaded to the other departmental Party Committees. He had the impression that his superiors were not going to get around to promoting him for a while. So he decided to move to B.O. Holdings, a company that was making a lot of money. Post-America, Lian had made up his mind to become rich and powerful, like so many of his contemporaries. He was so fixated on the idea that he hardly noticed his wife spending hours chatting on the phone. So Lian started work as Deputy CEO in charge of Finance in the kind of big company where so many people dreamed of getting a job in the mid-nineties. The company CEO, Qiankuan, was a good friend of his. In the 1980s, he had often dropped by with his wife, lured there by Tianyi’s fragrant roast chicken.

Qiankuan was originally from Hunan province, and was an only child like Lian. There, the similarities ended: Qiankuan was tall and slender, and carried himself with an easy grace. His wife, Yufan, had a figure like a model, and was ultra-fashionable. Tianyi was fond of Yufan and always liked trying out some new delicacy on them. When Yufen was pregnant, Tianyi felt that she should make a special effort to be kind to them as neither sets of grandparents were in Beijing. Very soon, the couple were treating Tianyi’s house as their second home, dropping in whenever they felt like it. The two men would go outside to talk politics and economics, while the women stayed inside chatting. So when Qiankuan was head-hunted by the B.O. Chairman of the Board, the first person he thought of was his old mate, Lian.

Everybody wanted to be rich nowadays and Tianyi was no exception. She and Lian had been married ten years and Niuniu was now nine. She felt it was time to draw a line under their hand-to-mouth existence. This has got to stop, she thought, looking around her cramped, shabby study. She had had enough of visitors staring and exclaiming: ‘So this is where you do your writing?!’

Lian’s new job brought a succession of changes — first, he started bringing home presents from clients, followed by gift vouchers, then one brilliantly sunny day, a shiny blue Chevrolet drew up in the courtyard below their apartment. Niuniu had always had an eye for cars. Even as a small child, he could tell one make from another, however far away they were. Standing at the window, he shouted in excitement: ‘Mum! Come quick! Dad’s got a car!’