Ma Jian - Red Dust

In the afternoon, Hu Sha comes from Beijing, and Yang Ming from Chengdu. They arrive on the same train, so I presume they met up at a town along the way. Yang Ming is wearing leather boots. We exchange a smile. She thanks me for inviting her and asks whether the post she sent on for me arrived.

Chen Hong turns up the following day, but Fan Cheng ignores her. Yesterday, he told me, ‘I have no intention of going back to her. Horses never eat the grass behind them.’ I wrote to Chen Hong a while ago, suggesting she forget about him and start a new life for herself, but she wrote back and said: ‘That’s easy to say, Ma Jian. If you lose a finger it takes your body two years to readjust. And what I have lost is a hundred times more vital.’

I invited Wang Ping too, but she wrote back last week to say she couldn’t make it. ‘The leaders refused to give me leave. Hangzhou Daily published "Escarpment" last month, so I’ve enclosed a postal order for 70 yuan. I hope you like the T-shirt. Thank you for the Hong Kong birthday card. It’s beautiful. I passed it round the office and everyone was very jealous.’ Those birthday cards are sold in every shop in Guangzhou. I sent one to my sister as well, along with a leather satchel with shoulder straps which I asked her to give to Nannan.

Everyone from Beijing uses my hut as a meeting point. It takes me back to my life in Nanxiao Lane. Chen Hong and Hu Sha decide to visit Shenzhen, and ask me to help them apply for the permits.

The opening ceremony is a great success. Everyone from the local media and arts turns up, even the mayor makes an appearance. The black-bean soup, rice gruel and pork dumplings our Beijing cook made are finished in a flash. Pan Jie is dressed to the nines, she looks like Imelda Marcos. Shen Chao is wearing a suit and tie and is walking through the crowd shaking hands like a proud father at his daughter’s wedding. He has reason to be pleased. He spent two years in Yunnan taking the photographs for this exhibition. The men and women in Dai, Tibetan and Jingpo dress are the friends he made there. This is his dream come true, and I am happy for him.

The Qingke wine he has brought from Yunnan is very strong. Six Lishu women invite the male guests to drink from their cups. They have got quite a few of them drunk already. When dusk falls, we light the bonfire, and our friends from Yunnan perform their dance. After the official guests leave, we laugh and hug and take jovial group photographs. The Jingpo men fill our bamboo cups and teach us the pony dance. Then the Lishu women stand up and sing ‘We came into this world weeping, but we will leave it with a smile. .’ At midnight we retire to my hut. I lay the leftover snacks on my table and sneak in another bucket of Qingke wine.

Hu Sha has drunk too much. He has been sick twice and is now sprawled on my camp bed cursing the city. ‘All these bloody crooks think about is money, money, money. .’

‘Stop flinging your arms about. If this net tears, the mosquitoes will bite us to death!’

Hu Sha bought a tape recorder in the market yesterday but when he came back and opened the box there was nothing inside. I put a Jean-Michel Jarre tape into my cassette player and turn the volume up.

Fan Cheng examines the exhibition poster on the wall. ‘I like this photograph, Ma Jian. You’ve made the site look like the paradise garden in A Dream of Red Mansions.’

Yang Ming wipes the sweat from her brow. ‘Transplanting a primitive village into a modern city — it would be a good subject for an avant-garde poem. Are you tempted to visit Yunnan after this, Ma Jian?’

‘Yes, I would like to explore the whole of the south-west, and then perhaps move on to Tibet. I try not to make any fixed plans though. I prefer to follow my instincts. So, Fan Cheng — what do you think of the south?’

‘The north is a yellow wasteland, the south is a green wasteland.’

Li Tao is sitting in the corner, having a serious conversation with Chun Mei. Last night he drank so much, he sweated like a pig and stripped to his underwear. ‘My job at the bank was a nightmare,’ he says. ‘I had to have lunch every day with our Party secretary. He didn’t have a clue about finance. This province shows us the way forward. Social progress depends on a strong economy. .’

‘Stop lecturing the poor girl,’ Fan Cheng says, snatching a Marlboro from Li Tao’s pocket.

Chen Hong is standing in the doorway. She is still wearing her sunglasses. Her hair is a mess. ‘Our Beijing circle is falling apart,’ she tells me. ‘Everyone is just out for themselves now. They all want to move to Shenzhen. Hu Sha is the only one with any ideals left. By the way, did you see my poem in this month’s New Era?’

Lingling has started an argument with Hu Sha.

‘In Beijing, people just sit back and complain,’ she says. ‘But in Guangzhou, we get on with the job. Now that the economy is booming, you politicos have become irrelevant.’

‘Bullshit! We need politics more than ever, now. These reforms have given us freedom of thought. You southerners don’t know how to take advantage of that.’

‘It’s not what you think that matters, it’s what you do. The future is forged through action.’

‘All right then. Let’s build that cattle ranch in Hebei. Ma Jian! Show them your photographs!’

‘I left them in Beijing. I can draw a picture though.’

Fan Cheng rises to his feet. ‘Ma Jian and I have been planning this for a year now. Each member invests a thousand yuan. It’s a beautiful spot. We can live surrounded by nature and concentrate on our writing.’

‘I thought you wanted to move to Shenzhen and write stories for the government. You won’t find much nature there.’

‘We could buy some horses and run riding holidays. I could set up a travel agency here.’

‘No. We should turn the place into a country club. We could restrict membership to people in the creative arts.’

I draw a sketch of the site on the wall. ‘There’s a lake on the right and a forest on the left. We can put the ranch in the middle and the house here. It’ll be a wooden house with a large veranda where we can store our gumboots and farming equipment. It will have fourteen single bedrooms and a large sitting room where we can sit around a kerosene heater and talk about art.’

‘Can women join?’

‘Of course. We can’t leave the kitchen empty!’

The Lishu women, Cangcang and Caidan, walk in and ask me to drink from their goblet. We have spoken a lot over the last days. They have told me many interesting folk tales. Caidan complained that Shen Chao never said she would have to perform. She hates wearing her national costume in this heat. Cangcang presses her lips next to mine and we drain the goblet dry. The wine burns down my throat. Shen Chao flushes a deep red and raises his glass. ‘I’m so happy that you are all here today. Any friend of Ma Jian’s is a friend of mine. Stand up, everyone! To your health!’

Before I go to sleep I take a photograph of Chen Hong for her Shenzhen permit. When she removes her sunglasses, I notice her eyes are red with tears.

The next day we sell just twenty-seven tickets, and no one stays for the bonfire dance.

The opening ceremony could have doubled as the closing ceremony. We call an emergency meeting and decide to split forces. Lingling goes to stick posters up at the universities. Pan Jie returns to Beijing to pressure the national media to cover the event. Shen Chao talks to Guangdong Television about filming a documentary and I offer to repaint the sponsors’ advertisements that have washed away in the rain.

But our problems begin to multiply. The clay figurines Shen Chao commissioned his friend to produce for our gift shop were so ugly we had to send them back, but now the factory insists we cover their costs. Our guests from Yunnan go shopping and fall prey to southern ruthlessness. Li Xueyong from the Jingpo tribe buys a watch, but when he opens the box he finds a nut and bolt inside. The Wa man comes back with a new cassette player, but when he opens the box he discovers a red brick. Tsering the Tibetan buys a Hong Kong T-shirt, but on his way back to the park the design washes away in the rain and leaves red blotches of ink on his chest. The exhibition room is in chaos. The women are in tears, the men are shouting and cursing. Their families have toiled for years to make the money they have lost in just three days. There will be terrible trouble when they get home. The Beijing cook is complaining about the lack of customers and is threatening to pack up and leave.