Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

Tianyi was flabbergasted. At first, she simply froze, and even allowed Xi to remove her top for her. Xi was dazzled: Tianyi was wearing a rose-red, floral bra whose brilliant colour set off her alabaster white skin. Xi exclaimed joyfully at Tianyi’s unimaginably deep cleavage: ‘What a stunning body you have, Tianyi! It’s so beautiful, I don’t understand why you don’t dress up more! You should wear tight-fitting tops and show a quarter of the breast, and you’d have men all over you!’

It was many years later, in a foreign country, when Tianyi heard that phrase ‘show a quarter of the breast’ again. She could not help secretly admiring Xi for having picked all this up on her own. But Tianyi was just too inhibited to go on, and so Xi, who dared to experiment where Tianyi did not, was left disillusioned and had to go and find herself another partner.

Tianyi still remembered how she turned away and went and locked herself in the kitchen, refusing to open up to Xi who pounded on the door and cried bitterly. Xi kept it up for an hour or more, before finally flouncing off. Several months later, Xi came to see her again, her eyes shining with excitement, and told Tianyi she had found a lover. He was an artist in the Central School of Arts Woodblock Printing department. ‘His name’s Lang, and he’s a real man!’ Xi exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘We have sex on the floor, a dozen times a night! Oh, Tianyi, now I know how good it feels to be a woman!’ As Tianyi listened, she felt envious, but also fearful, it seemed a little unfair on Tong, but before she could say so, Xi had further denunciations of her husband: ‘Tong can’t get it up more than once a month! He marks it on the calendar when we do! I can’t bear a man like that, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable and capable he is! But now I’ve got this relationship with Lang, so I’ve got a husband and a lover, and what more could a woman want? What about you, Tianyi? It’ll be more than ten years before Zheng gets out, shouldn’t you find someone else?’ Tianyi flushed scarlet and said nothing. She was actually thinking that at least Tong did the business once a month, whereas Lian had not even broached it for as much as half a year. Tianyi had far too much self-respect, she would have died rather than talk to Lian about it. She was utterly conflicted: intellectually open-minded, in her behaviour very conservative. In those days, she believed that the man should always make the first move. If she had initiated it, she would not have felt happy even if the man actually responded. As day after day passed in their busy lives, Lian never wanted intimacy. They had changed, it seemed, from being lovers to being friends, and from friends to comrades.

At least she still had the film company, and work to do for it. Wei Qiang talked to her about Old City and she got on the phone to the author. Wusheng was self-deprecating: ‘Tianyi, is it really you? What an honour to hear from you! Six years ago, I had the privilege of reading your masterpiece, The Tree of Knowledge —that was such a good film — I read it through twice.’ Tianyi hurriedly brushed the compliments aside: ‘Oh, that’s all in the past now! What I’m phoning about is your novel, Old City . I’ve heard a number of publishers are bidding hard for it, and my boss read the reports and asked me to contact you to ask if you would let us read the proofs?’ Wusheng’s voice instantly cooled: ‘Ah, so it was your boss who asked you to contact me. Well, let me give Golden Autumn magazine a ring, they’re previewing it. They can let you have a proof copy. But you may not like it when you’ve read it!’

Tianyi, however, was still brimming with enthusiasm for the project, or rather, to be truthful, for her boss Qiang. So she leapt on her bicycle and pedalled off to the Golden Autumn magazine offices where an old friend, Huilan, was the deputy editor. Huilan had been on the literary scene since the eighties, and was known for being blunt in her dealings with people. She was bit past her prime nowadays, but her fighting spirit was undimmed. When she met Tianyi, she gave her the low-down on Old City and how it was written. This was early in the nineties, and few authors had made it into film and TV. Talking to Tianyi about her company’s interest in the book, Huilan was not slow to see an opportunity, and was canny enough not to commit herself to terms and conditions. The gist of it was that as soon as the film company had bought the rights, she wanted to be Planning Director. Tianyi thought a moment: ‘I don’t think that will work. As far as I know, we won’t be doing any of that. The most we could swing is to get you made literary consultant.’ ‘Sure, that’s fine,’ said Huilan. ‘At least I’ll get something out of it.’ And she gleefully got out a set of proofs and handed them to Tianyi.

That evening, Qiang called as usual and Tianyi gave him the good news: ‘I’ve got a copy of Old City. ’ Qiang was delighted. Unluckily, Lian was in a foul mood that day. As deputy CEO, he felt he was really somebody now and, after going out to work all day, he was annoyed when he got home and Tianyi nagged him to do chores like give Niuniu a bath. In fact it drove him mad. Besides, the little boy was at a particularly mischievous stage and that added to his aggravation. So just as Qiang was settling down to his usual lengthy natter with Tianyi, he heard a roar at the other end of line: ‘Get your clothes off!’ Poor Qiang was so startled he nearly dropped the receiver.

Lian was of course directing the order to his son, who customarily dawdled over this duty for half an hour. But he was really getting at Tianyi. Why did he have to work all day and then come home and bath his son? While Tianyi, who didn’t have to go to the office, could not even attend to her son’s bath and spent all the time chatting endlessly on the phone. He was not going to stand for it a moment longer!

Little did he imagine that his shouted command had stirred sexual fantasies in Qiang. What would it be like, he wondered, to see Tianyi take her clothes off? What would she look like? He was certainly not unaware of her slender waist and full breasts, and when he was alone with her, he found her femininity thoroughly distracting.

A few days later, Wusheng arrived in Beijing. In high spirits, Qiang fixed up to go and meet him with Tianyi. He was banking on the fact that although Wusheng was now a celebrity author, he was an unsophisticated countryman at heart, and would be only too eager to accept an invitation from a film company. But when they arrived at the rather ordinary guesthouse where he was staying, he was taken aback to discover that Wusheng was in an uncooperative mood. Clutching his belly, he refused to get out of bed and complained: ‘I’ve got terrible stomach ache, I’m not going anywhere!’ Qiang had to grab hold of him: ‘Hey, Wusheng, old man! The company bosses have invited you to a banquet! Don’t mess us around like this!’ Wusheng’s reaction was to ignore Tianyi’s presence and pull up his sweatshirt to reveal a sallow belly neatly covered in five big plasters: ‘Just take a look at this! I’m not kidding you! I’m ill, I’ve got terrible belly ache!’

With the greatest difficulty, they managed to get Wusheng up and march him down to the Shunfeng Restaurant, famous throughout Beijing for its lavish dining. Here the deputy director of the film company, Mr Feng, splashed out on delicacies like shark’s fin with papaya especially for Wusheng, but the author just sat there, pecking at his food, pale and morosely silent. Even when others spoke, he said nothing. It was Tianyi who finally succeeded in drawing him into the conversation: ‘I’ve heard you’re a master of the art of doing horoscopes, and your readings are very accurate,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you do one for Mr Feng?’ At that, Wusheng’s thick lips parted and he turned to the director, speaking in a thick rural drawl: ‘May I ask when you were born, sir?’ The combination of the accent and his rather quaint way of expressing himself was comical, and Mr Feng suppressed a smile: ‘I was born in 1944, the thirteenth day of the first month by the old calendar, between 5 and 7 in the evening.’