Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

‘Our great pleasure,’ the manager said, and then he waited while I gathered an armful of clothes and tucked them into the laundry bag. ‘All was respected,’ he said gently. He seemed to sense my discomfort. ‘None was disturbed. We cleanse by two hours. Three at latest.’

He closed the door behind him and left me alone with Dr Yu. She wandered around the room, fingering the white drapes, the tan upholstered chairs, the beds and the metal console between them, which had taken me hours to figure out. She pushed one button and lights came on over the beds. She pushed another and the radio blared. ‘Most amazing,’ she said. I realized this was the first time she’d seen one of the guest rooms. She drifted into the bathroom and ran the taps and flushed the toilet.

‘Where do you think Walter is?’ I called.

She emerged from the bathroom wiping her hands on a thick towel, which she then refolded carefully. ‘Amazing,’ she repeated. ‘Extremely hot water on demand, at all hours of day. And such a deep tub. And visitors’ soaps …’ She held out a stack of smooth pink soap bars wrapped in creamy paper. In his house in Cambridge, Uncle Owen had kept round Spanish soaps wrapped in pleated paper and tied with flat ribbons. ‘We cannot stay here,’ Dr Yu said. ‘Even if one night’s room did not cost one month’s salary, even if Foreign Exchange Currency was not needed for payment. It is completely disapproved.’

‘Who’s “we”?’ I asked. ‘You mean you and me?’

‘Us — Chinese citizens. Some places like this, even overseas Chinese are not allowed.’

‘But the staff is Chinese.’

She shrugged. ‘They select those of good background and loyalty, then teach them to guard against foreign influences. “Spiritual pollution,” they call it. We had a campaign against this several years ago, which Deng launched. “Guard against corrupt and decadent ideologies of exploiting classes,” he said. “Guard against stinking bourgeois life-styles.”’ She laughed. ‘Guard against this soap, he means. But you are here, smooth pink soap is here, tourists are here with clothes and cameras. Some of us go to meetings in places like this. Of course we see. Of course we want.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, the government pulled back when the campaign interfered with business. We were told to take from the West what is good and leave the bad behind. Take technical knowledge. Leave ideas.’

She put the soap down with a sharp crack. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Enough politics. Walter should be here in two or three hours, but first we will get some air — fresh air is curative. We will go for a walk and I will show you something from when I was a student.’

‘That sounds good,’ I said. ‘Let me take a quick shower first.’

‘Wet your hair,’ she said. ‘Do not dry it. We will fix it before we go.’

When I came out of the bathroom she wrapped a towel around my neck and shoulders and cut off my hair with the scissors she’d bought. Snip, snip — she left it all one length, pushed behind my ears and level with my chin. Then she toweled what was left and combed it and smoothed it with a drop of conditioner until it came alive again and began to gleam. I watched in the mirror, interested despite myself. I hadn’t worn my hair short since Zillah’s death.

‘There,’ she said. ‘You like it?’

‘It’s good,’ I said. No pins, clips, barrettes, or scarves; no fuss. Just a smooth blond cap that made me look young. ‘I like it,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should have done this before.’

‘Could be,’ Dr Yu said. ‘You are regretful?’

‘Not at all,’ I said.

Because it was daylight, and because I was with Dr Yu, the park that had rebuffed my nighttime exploration ten days earlier opened to me now. We walked on winding paths through the park, past dusty flower beds and tiny houses and small pavilions and pagodas. Many of these were in ruins, chipped and shattered and plastered over with notices I couldn’t read, but a few had been restored with gold leaf and paint and one was under construction that afternoon. Three women on rickety ladders were repainting the stylized chrysanthemums and the decorative borders and the tiny landscape scenes, and a man was repairing some broken tiles while another scraped layers of handbills and notices from the lower walls. I stopped to watch, amazed that they were doing everything by hand, but the sight made Dr Yu impatient.

‘What is the point?’ she asked. She gestured toward some old graffiti. ‘Earnestly Carry Out Struggle, Criticism, Reform!’ she said in a mincing voice. ‘Put Politics in Command, Let Thought Take the Lead!’ She made a disgusted sound and turned away. ‘They ruined all these old places during the blood years,’ she said. ‘Now they are embarrassed for foreign visitors to see. So they paint to make them nice again, but it means nothing — it is only for show.’

‘You think?’ I said.

‘Better they should leave ruined,’ she said. ‘For remembering. Come. I will show you something good.’

She led me down another path, to a small shabby building wrapped twice with a long line of people. ‘Cable-lift,’ she said. ‘I hoped it was still here. It climbs up Incense Burner Peak.’

Double chairs hung from a rusty cable and moved slowly up the hill that blocked our view. The chairs swung around a huge wheel sheltered by the eaves of the building, and they scooped up squealing couples from a square of cracked concrete. Babies giggled at me as we waited in line. Men pointed and women smiled and then covered their eyes. I was the only Westerner there.

‘They didn’t tell us about this at the hotel,’ I said. ‘It’s not even on the park map.’

‘People who live here know it,’ Dr Yu said. The line moved slowly toward the lift, which resembled an old ski lift back home. ‘Families take the bus here from Beijing, for afternoons off. It is inexpensive, provides fresh air and famous views from the top. Meng used to bring me here in the old days, when we were courting. I am very pleased it is not destroyed.’

She had to buy our tickets when we finally got to the counter; the ride cost ten fen and the smallest note I had was a five-yuan FEC bill, which the ticket-taker pushed back to me. Ten fen , as best as I could figure, was worth about four cents; my five yuan could have put fifty of us on the swaying chairs. When we climbed on, I realized that the lift brought people down as well as up. Every fifteen seconds or so, a couple facing us passed by our chair.

‘ Ni hau ,’ Dr Yu said to each couple who passed. The riders dissolved into giggles as they stared at me and tested their English across the air between us. ‘Hal-loo!’ one would call; ‘LAA-dee!’ the next. Most often we’d hear an excited guess at my nationality. ‘ Meiguo ren! MEIGUO REN! ’

‘ Ni hau! ’ I called back to them. I didn’t mind their stares; I was happy to be outside. As we rose I could see the pagodas scattered beneath us like colorful stones, the rolling hills worn old and smooth, the narrow dark paths and roads ribboned in every direction. Small pools dotted the landscape, as blue and artificial as the pond in Boston where the swan boats sat. Dr Yu led me through the smiles and stares to a quiet, sheltered rock that overlooked the entire park. ‘You are enjoying this?’ she asked.

All around me were faces as singular as stars; if I could memorize them, I thought, they might unlock my life. ‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘There’s so much to see. I could watch all day.’

‘The world was not put here for you to watch it,’ she said. Her voice was tart, and her comment so out of character that I opened my mouth in surprise but then closed it again. Somehow her words seemed to link to what I’d felt in the morning, when I’d first woken up.