Xiaobin Xu - Crystal Wedding

Wusheng picked up two chopsticks and made a lengthy show of turning them this way and that. Then he pronounced: ‘It would not be appropriate for me to tell you now. I’ll write you a letter informing you of my reading after I return home.’ That certainly made the diners curious and there was a stream of questions. Tianyi hastily added her own time, day, month and year of birth. As she did so, she caught a slight smile at the corner of Qiang’s lips, the sort of indulgent smile an older man might give a junior he had taken a fancy to, and she could not help blushing.

The dinner grew more uproarious, and no one mentioned Old City again. But just as the meal was ending, Wusheng suddenly said: ‘You’ve been in such a hurry to get hold of the proofs, but I don’t think you’ll want it.’ He was only too right.

Distressing times followed for Tianyi. Head office came down very hard on Qiang. When the company’s executives read Old City they deemed it pornographic; Tangtang Film Productions would be mad to go for a work like that. It would be absolutely the wrong way to go! At the directors’ meeting, Qiang was subject to heavy criticism. In turn, he dumped all the blame onto Tianyi. This was no surprise; almost any man in his position would have taken the same decision to save their jobs. In the Chinese media and cultural world a ‘Duke of Windsor’ who preferred a beautiful woman to his country would be a laughing stock!

Tianyi was completely isolated. For a long time, she did not know what was going on in head office meetings. All she knew was that Qiang had grown thinner, more taciturn and more guarded in his speech, all of which distressed her. She put out very discreet feelers but never got any real answers. She just had the impression that a gloomy Qiang was growing distant from her. She saw the situation deteriorate but could do nothing to redeem it. It felt like a knife turning in her gut.

She summoned up her courage and went to his office. Quietly, she asked him: ‘Qiang, has there been a problem with Old City ? If there has, then just dump the blame on me. Really, it doesn’t matter a bit. I’m not planning to join the Party or become an official, so there’s no way it can harm me.’ For an instant, Qiang was genuinely moved. But the very next moment, he hardened his heart and waved her away.

Many years later, when Tianyi finally found out what had been going on, she smiled cynically. What had made her imagine that her love was returned?

At the time, the next thing to happen was that that she received a letter from Wusheng. It contained the horoscope he had done for her, telling her that if she took a trip to the South-West this springtime, romance might ensue. She threw the letter onto the table with a wry smile. However, some days later, she received an invitation from Yunnan TV to go to Xishuangbanna. By nature, Tianyi preferred to avoid confrontations by keeping out of the way. This invitation had come just at the right time. The one person she would miss was Qiang, but on the other hand, he might be in a better frame of mind by the time she got back.

Of course, there were strings attached. Yunnan TV wanted Tianyi to collaborate with a young local screen writer, Mo, on the script for a film about animal protection, and then get her company to invest in it. She and Mo went to a valley of wild elephants around sixty kilometres from Jinghong, the chief city of the Xishuangbanna area. It was very much off the beaten track. Tianyi was a well-travelled woman but the unusual scenery of this place truly amazed her. There was something uniquely chilling and mysterious about the atmosphere of the place. There had been no building at all here with the exception of some wooden shacks that did duty as guest houses. They were built up in the branches of lofty trees, and connected by rudimentary wooden steps and bridges. The tree canopy that hid the sky above and the rivulets that glittered beneath made this primitive valley look like something out of Dante’s Divina Commedia . It was stunning and Tianyi was amazed that in their industrialized society, scenery as primeval as this still existed.

The screenwriter, Mo, was a local youth, and talked to Tianyi in a thick Yunnan dialect. They were eating their dinner outdoors that evening and Tianyi told him that this was the best and most special meal she had ever had in Yunnan. There were fragrant wild mushrooms and meat and greens, all mixed with rice. Exquisite.

The dusk seemed to last forever; the sun hung over the western horizon, a sharply outlined pale red globe, its lingering rays very soft while the colours reflected in the clouds glittered brilliantly. Tianyi and Mo walked down to the stream, to capture the last moments of the sunset. Dense layers of clouds were reflected in its waters, an array as gorgeous as one of Levitan’s landscape paintings. The locals said that elephants relished salt, and on dark, windy nights when they came for water, they would eat up salt left to dry in the sun on its banks. Tianyi was captivated.

As night fell, they sat talking on the wooden veranda. There was no lighting so they each had a torch to guide them back to their sleeping quarters. Tianyi’s room was built in the branches of an enormous, ancient tree. Inside, it was primitive but clean. There was a bed, a small table which held a lamp and a thermos, and a separate toilet. She put the padlock and the torch down on the table and her handbag by the pillow. Then she pulled back the blue-and-white batik curtains. From here she could just see the stream, glinting in the darkness.

It took her a long time to get to sleep, but very soon after, she was shaken awake from a dream that she was being chased by a black bear by a terrific trumpeting. She was instantly alert: it was a wild elephant! It must be! She jumped out of bed and pulled back the curtain. A gigantic elephant stood beside the stream. The beast was bigger than she could have imagined, and in the darkness, its sensitive ears gleamed like carved moonstone. As she watched, it was joined by another, then another. My god, there were four of them!

She turned on the torch and ran down the steps, shouting: ‘Elephants! Come quick!’ but by the time she had roused Mo and the driver, the elephants had melted away in the darkness. The two men calmed their shaken nerves by teasing Tianyi. She was just hallucinating, they insisted. There could not possibly have been any elephants. And Tianyi was never able to produce any proof. Perhaps she had dreamed it all.

Tianyi now took in young Mo for the first time: he was tall with the physique of a body-builder or, as the Yunnan TV station editors put it: ‘a fine figure of a man’. Apparently he was also the son of a famous local painter. However, she found he made her uncomfortable. He had a lecherous look about him, and avoided her eyes.

Mo took her to visit the White Bird Garden, or rather, ‘peacock garden’ as Tianyi felt it should be called, because that was mostly what it contained. The birds were quite fearless. When a male displayed, you could walk quite close to one and have your photo taken next to it, with no fear that it might wander off or suddenly close its fan.

That day had a strange feeling about it, as though she had walked into the sort of fairy tale kingdom she used to long to enter as a child. You could communicate with all the birds and the beasts here. She even thought of having her picture taken with a peacock in her arms, but the young man looking after the garden would not let her. ‘It’ll peck you,’ he warned.

She understood that. What these beautiful birds most prized was their freedom. They ambled around among the flowering bushes, uninterested in contact with any other creatures. She supposed all wild creatures were the same in that respect. In fact, surely all humans were too. In the west, when you were with strangers, you avoided physical contact like the plague. If you accidentally brushed against someone in the street, you both backed off immediately, saying ‘Sorry’. That way, you maintained your freedom. When people came close, physically and emotionally, especially with those they loved, it was a trap, no matter how beautiful a trap.