I WILL NEVER forget the first time fate led me to Glittering, who could not have been more different to Firewood in every respect. I met her through some family friends. She had the most enormous pair of eyes that seemed to take up half her round, rosy face, which shone like an apple ready to be picked. She had always been her grandmother’s favourite topic of conversation, and the darling of her heart. So much so that her mother often had to bite her lip to keep the peace in the family, giving the grandmother full rein to bring up her ‘little angel’ as she saw fit.
Glittering was born into China’s Red aristocracy. Her grandfather is related to Mao Zedong, and came from the same village. He is the only surviving founding member of the Communist Party, an old man who does not mince his words and who, for the last thirty years, has been judging the course of history. He often warns the Chinese people: ‘Struggles in the upper echelons of politics cannot destroy friendship between people . . . The Soviet Union’s technical guidance and selfless aid were good deeds that should never be forgotten. The same is true of the American army’s support in the Anti-Japanese War. The Flying Tigers1 were not supporting Chiang Kai-shek [who was struggling with the communists for control of China], but all the people of China. The Civil War was two political parties fighting each other, in which compatriots treated each other cruelly. The victories and defeats of history are all a waste of life. China cannot live by big words alone, and developing the future does not mean the destruction of tradition.’ I wonder how many of China’s policy-makers have taken in this old man’s wise words.
The two generations before Glittering are seen as treasures from China’s national archive. Glittering grew up bathed in their radiance from above, and showered with envy from countless people below. Her pampered life included a special car to take her to and from school every day, from kindergarten all the way through to university. Her family were treated like royalty, constantly surrounded by cooks, drivers, guards, secretaries, PR managers and other staff. From kindergarten to middle school, her playmates were the grandchildren of central party leaders, all living in the world that ordinary Chinese people call the Big Red-walled Courtyard. From a young age, Glittering believed that every Chinese child lived in this kingdom. It was not until she graduated from university and went to America for further study that she came across a kitchen with no serving staff, and an environment where nobody would help her survive.
When Glittering first arrived in America, she went to live with one of her grandmother’s brothers. He was an old man who had been in the US for more than sixty years, and was not about to pander to every whim of an only child who had been brought up by three generations of servants. Glittering thought her great-uncle very cruel, as nobody was there to make her breakfast or bring her warm milk when she got up. When she returned home in the evening, she had to find her own food. However, she eventually discovered that food could be found in the white box called a refrigerator! It was only after surviving on her own for several days that she realised how different her life up to this point had been from ordinary people’s everyday world. Her three meals a day, the basic rules of eating and drinking, ignorance of her own history and her superficial knowledge of life abroad, all became obstacles that she struggled to overcome in her new life in America. She initially lived off any supermarket ready-meals she thought might be edible, but after a few weeks she could not stand any more American microwave meals. She missed her mother’s home-made dumplings and the extravagant delicacies from ‘mountain top to sea floor’ cooked by her grandmother’s chef.
Glittering told me that the two years spent living independently in America forced her to grow up. Her true education about life had come not from China’s top universities, nor the red-walled compound filled with officials. In fact, it had not come from China at all, despite its surging economy, but from those two years abroad where she had to learn to crawl and then walk! What other people might see as day-to-day reality, even a life of plenty with good food to eat and clothes to wear, seemed to Glittering a weary daily grind. ‘Ever since I was tiny, I’d never for the blink of an eye had to think about how I would live that day. It wasn’t just my three daily meals; whenever I left the house all I had to think about was what I wanted to do that day. But even at parties with classmates I had to watch their faces carefully to judge their moods, because I never understood the way they spoke or the things they talked about; everyone seemed to understand except me. Back in China, my family and teachers would tailor their words to my mood. But at my American university I had to learn how to suck up to people and earn their goodwill. The things I became aware of in those two years completely contradicted all I had learned in the previous twenty!’
Unlike the majority of Chinese students, Glittering did not stay in America to continue her career, but returned to China as soon as she graduated. Was it homesickness that made her so eager to return home? Was she too lonely to carry on? Or was it that in America she had no family to call up the clouds and summon rain on her behalf? Her friends and relatives debated the matter endlessly, as it would have been very easy for her to remain in America. However, she said that it was not because she yearned for the comfortable life of a high official, nor that she missed her family’s influence, but that she wanted to build her future where her roots were. She wanted her parents to have a home where they could all be together as a family, since they were unable to leave China.
I do not know whether it was due to Glittering’s open nature, or because her study of English was useful, but in any case, once she was back in China, she very quickly received job offers from several foreign media companies. At the time, students returning from abroad were known as seaweed, haidai, because of the difficulty in finding jobs.2 They were also called sea turtles, meaning that they were either waiting for something to turn up, or their job search was progressing slower than a turtle! This did not apply to Glittering and in early 2011, after six years in China and a variety of jobs, she was posted to her company’s London office. This gave us more opportunity to get to know each other, and I found that those big eyes hid a multitude of deep thoughts and feelings.
Our chats mostly took place in the evenings. The two of us could talk from ten o’clock at night right through to the next morning, just two women together. Although we came from different generations, we had a lot in common in terms of our attitudes to feelings and emotions. She did not realise it at the time, but most of her conversation revolved around her grandmother, just as her grandmother could never stop talking about her. However, whenever her grandmother cropped up in the conversation, Glittering’s eyes would fill with tears. No matter how I expressed my opinion, or found reasons to explain, Glittering would always ask, ‘Why is Granny so incapable of respecting that I’ve grown up?’
If I were to collate the complaints of grandmother and granddaughter, the result would be a series of dialogues like this.
GRANDMOTHER: You’re all we have in the family, one single sprout for two generations. No matter how old you grow, you will always be a child in the old people’s eyes, and a constant source of worry in our hearts. You should always be answerable to the family in your dealings with others, otherwise how can your family rest easy?
GLITTERING: I’m an only child, not a victim to be terrified over. I’ve been through the education you wanted for me, and done well at it. I have my own career where I can win face for myself. I’ve become an adult, and should be able to choose things for myself. Why should I have to report to my granny every day?
GRANDMOTHER: There’s a whole number of reasons why you are not independent in our eyes. When you think you understand everything, that is precisely the sign of not having grown up yet. Your independence is selfish, because you haven’t considered your family. It’s a sign of naïvety that you feel no responsibility towards your family; this is a very childlike mentality. You can’t even organise your own living space, sometimes you have to get the orderly to help you look for things; quite often, in fact. So how can you take responsibility for us?
GLITTERING: My generation’s principles and ways of living are quite different from yours. Why do you insist on making demands on me based on your own standards? We think and work between two different languages, can you understand that intense mental effort to switch between them? Our speed of life is a hundred times faster than yours, how can you use your ruler to measure our lives? You don’t respect my personal space, and often make that teenage orderly go and clean up my room, rifling through all my personal secret girl stuff with his big boy hands. That’s the tyranny of a feudal matriarch!
GRANDMOTHER: If a girl doesn’t understand cleanliness or respect, or if she has no sense of responsibility, then she’s been badly brought up.
GLITTERING: Cleanliness comes with growing up. I will have a clean house and a comfortable home when I have a husband and child. Before that what’s wrong with just doing what I want? Responsibility is also my choice, nobody in my company calls me irresponsible, not my colleagues or the boss.
GRANDMOTHER: If you don’t learn cleanliness now, how can you be clean in future? When we tidy your things, it isn’t because we disrespect you, it’s that you’ve made such a mess of the house, and is that respecting me? If you can be responsible with people around you who you aren’t related to at all, why do you feel no responsibility towards the family who raised you?
GLITTERING: Some people say that treating your family casually is called ‘Smelling sweet from afar, stinking up close’, but I’ve never agreed with this. My whole family are in my heart day and night, you’re the oxygen I live on, how would it be possible for me not to think of you? But why should it be constantly on my lips? We live in a multi-media age, I send you texts, you never read them, but does that mean there are no feelings between us? Besides, for only children like me, we grew up with so many constraints, always living for other people. All I want is to live the way I want, just for a bit, can’t you allow me even that?
GRANDMOTHER: You’re thinking about your family? If you don’t say it, if you don’t let us know, how are we meant to know? I can’t use a mobile phone, how am I meant to know about your text messages? If you understood the age that we came from, without electronic communication, would you still look down your nose at us for being stupid? How many people are there in China who enjoy our standard of living? Didn’t we win all this through our struggles? You were born into a family like ours, and still you think you can’t do whatever you want? If you carry on any which way, won’t your family always be fretting over you?
If I were to record all the disagreements I have heard from this pair over the last ten years, they would fill a 100,000-word ‘Anthology of Debates Between Grandparent and Grandchild’.
I do not know whether they had these exact arguments, but I do know that their conflicts at times reached white hot, both of them living under the same roof but neither speaking to the other! In the end, Glittering could bear it no longer and rented a flat to live by herself.
Looking back over these bitter disputes, Glittering said she felt very conflicted. As a white-collar worker whose job brought her into contact with the world outside China, she encountered encouragement and hugs in the open Western work environment by day. However, when she returned home in the evening, it was like being back in the deep well of ancient Chinese culture, dark and cut off from the rest of the world. Back to the traditional regulations of her grandmother’s generation, and the army camp with its clearly defined rights and wrongs of her father’s generation. Glittering found it very difficult to live with one foot in each culture twenty-four hours a day. On one side lay her open life with Western languages, work and friends. On the other, China’s closed-in traditions, ranks and regulations, so tightly controlled that it even affected the way she dressed. She was not allowed to wear clothes that revealed her bare shoulders. ‘This daily chopping and changing between cultures is becoming impossible!’ she eventually said to me.
I remember asking her once, ‘You grew up for twenty-two years in China before you went to America, how come you’ve completely changed your cultural stripes after only two years of Western education?’
Glittering gazed at me, apparently deep in thought. ‘How shall I put it? I like the encouragement in Western culture, the optimism, the forgiveness, it’s a culture of sunshine. Too much of Chinese culture is negative, all about keeping up with the Joneses and complaining. It’s a dark and rainy culture. In the West there is trust and respect between people, who all have the opportunity to think independently, and principles by which they treat one another. The way they communicate and cooperate is a bit like a tangram puzzle, in which every person contributes their own special style and abilities to complete a picture that they have all worked out together. That way of working is such a release, such a freedom, it really lets you take pleasure in being yourself. The managers in Western companies never looked down upon my ideas because I was young, and none of my colleagues felt that just because I was new I should join the queue for any opportunities that were going. I often made mistakes, but nobody came out and blamed me. One boss actually used to come up with excuses for me that I’d never even thought of. I was moved by their goodness and tolerance, and this made me want to exert every last ounce of my strength to repay their understanding and trust.
‘But in the Chinese cultural world, from school and family to work, most of what I experienced was complaining, blame and envy. Every moment I was expected to search my feelings about whether what I had done was right or wrong, so as to avoid getting on the wrong side of people. The older generation, managers, even random people on the street wearing official armbands or uniform, they all act as if they’re messengers from the gods. They wave their hands at me, yell about my words and actions, but there’s no concept of respect or responsibility between people. It’s become impossible for me to breathe freely in the culture where my roots are sunk. Did all this come from two years of study in America? I can’t say for sure. I remember my first day back, I could almost feel it from the first step I took onto the soil of my motherland. As my career in foreign companies continued, it became ever more apparent. It feels like a tear in my culture, ripping apart the life and feelings of every single day; it’s very painful.’
When discussing plans for her future family, Glittering often sketched her own love story for me. Her anxious friends and relatives sometimes wondered if she might be gay. After all, this was no longer something that made headlines in Chinese media.
At the start of the 1980s, China’s economy was surging forward like a tidal wave. The whole population was up to their eyes in work, from villages to cities. It seemed that apart from babes in arms, nobody had a moment to spare. Children were busy with homework, academic achievements and qualifications. Men were hurrying to the cities, ‘jumping the trough’,3 going into business and earning money. Women were busy with life in and outside the home, not to mention with their faces, which had to be regularly ‘upgraded to the newest style’ through surgery, if they could afford it. People were not only seeking a second chance to set up a career in this first period of freedom, they were also seeking rebirth in an age of struggle for opportunity. Rebirth of career, rebirth of family and rebirth of self. It sounds unbelievable, but for many that period of frantic activity left no time for raising children!
A fashion emerged in society that became so widespread it was accepted without comment. Many business people sent their children to be raised in the countryside, or in the homes of poor city folk. However, in order to raise these extra children without spending too much on food, clothes and bedding, these foster families often treated them as the same sex as their own child, explaining it away as ‘standardising their daily life’. These children spent their early childhood without their parents and in an environment where they were forced into a gender that was not always their own. This unsurprisingly led to much gender confusion when they were older.
Nobody noticed that while China was ‘planning a new era’ with great fanfare, it was also creating the most open age for homosexuality in Chinese history. Although homosexuality had existed in China since the dawn of time, it had never been discussed without slight misgivings, or taken as so familiar as to be normal as it is today. I remember when I was presenting my women’s radio programme, if people heard the word ‘homosexuality’ it was as if the enemy were at the gates! Most people felt a deep-rooted aversion, and the government certainly did not permit gay clubs. At the time, nobody had the nerve to declare themselves openly gay. But today, gay clubs, restaurants and tour groups can be found everywhere, so much so that it seems like a fashion among only children.
Was Glittering part of this trend? I did not think so, but she was nonetheless part of the gay community. She once told me that in order to end a painful romantic experience, she had sought release in the gay community. Eventually, she found her feet in Beijing’s gay clubs.
‘To me, it’s not somewhere where I can let loose with my feelings, but more of a space for letting them settle. They’re gay men’s clubs. When I see those men, the looks that pass between them, the way they are in themselves, the way they treat each other, and when I see the determination with which they cling to their love, I ask myself, “I’m straight, so why don’t I have such deep feelings for men?” Everybody there is good to me, and although I’m not a lover in their eyes, the loving care they give me is precisely what I crave. I know that I can never win the love of a man in this community, but through them I’ve found friendship, a network, a rewarding one at that.
‘And helping those gay men deal with family difficulties gives me a feeling of achievement. I don’t know how many people feel the way I do, or share the same aspirations, to help gay only children deal with their family who are keen for them to carry on the family line. As a female friend of many gay men, every Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and other traditional Chinese holidays, it’s a set routine for me to visit their parents at home, to show their friends, family and neighbours that at least there is a girlfriend on the scene. Their sons might not be married yet, but at least they come back home every year to spend time with the family. As the years have passed, I’ve seen more and more people whose full-time job is “pretending to be a partner”. Some people say the Chinese have pioneered this job, creating another first in world history, but I’m not sure about that.’
‘Do their families suspect anything?’ I asked her. It was very hard for me to imagine that these Chinese mothers and fathers could accept gay children, as most of them devoutly believed that ‘of all the sins of the world, being without descendants is the worst’. Moreover, thanks to the one-child policy they had no right to adopt either. For them, there was no second chance to keep the incense fires burning!
‘Oh, I think most parents know. Some know and don’t come right out and say it. Some of them . . . well, they’re completely open about it at home, but still hush it up outside. Only a tiny minority of families cheerfully and freely announce it to the world. Otherwise, we fake girlfriends wouldn’t get such good treatment!’
‘Then how do those parents treat girls like you?’ To me, this was like something out of the Arabian Nights. I had no idea how to react.
‘Well, it all depends on the educational background and general cultural awareness of the family. From what I know, in the main, parents treat their sons’ fake girlfriends pretty well. The more enlightened households thank us for ridding them of a source of anxiety (that their children might be lonely), while the more feudal ones still think we are encouraging wickedness. However, they’re also afraid that we’ll let the cat out of the bag, so it’s quite difficult to know whether they like us or not. The family of the boy I help know that I’m acting a part, they also know that their son has been living with another man for more than ten years, but outsiders still think that man is a colleague. The family is desperate for their son to find a wife. Every time I visit they buy me rings, bracelets, earrings and things like that, and get very hurt if I don’t accept them. We often exchange letters too, just like a real family . . . You don’t believe me? For the last two years, all my friends have been boys, and ninety-nine per cent are gay. So Mid-Autumn Festival and Spring Festival have become my busiest times of year. Sometimes I have to go and act as girlfriend for two or three different boys!’
‘But aren’t you afraid people will get the wrong idea?’ I asked. ‘You’re not worried that this will influence your future husband? Aren’t you afraid that your grandmother will find out and go through the roof?’ Seeing Glittering’s earnest appearance, my brain churned with questions from several generations.
‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t given it much thought. Anyone who loves me should know who I am and how I deal with the world. In my experience, there are no longer any secrets or stories too shameful to be told in society. As for my grandmother? I can’t let her find out, it’d be the end of her for sure! I’ve never had an opportunity to make her proud, so what would happen if I made her die of rage? After she crossed over to the next world, wouldn’t she be on my heels every moment of the day and night? I’d never be able to grow up in her eyes for the rest of eternity, and that would never do! Every time I can’t go home at New Year or a festival, I tell her I’m off to do some charitable work, and there’s nothing she can say about that, as she taught me from a young age never to do anything for myself, but to work primarily for the benefit of others. Do you know, even in trying to find a boyfriend, she tells me that it’s more important to consider his family. Aiya, Xinran, tell me, what kind of logic is that? I’m the apple of her eye, what are other people’s family to her?’
I had heard Glittering’s grandmother mention a boy Glittering liked, a friend of hers from university. However, eight years had passed and nothing had happened between them, though neither had married anyone else. The old lady kept pestering Glittering, ‘What’s wrong with that boy?’ She even went so far as to rope in her friends and relatives, telling them, ‘If anyone can talk Glittering round, I’ll worship them as a god!’ But even she knows that nowadays marriage is a life contract between the man and woman and cannot be imposed on others. I myself have never had the nerve to try.
One time, Glittering and I visited one of London’s oldest and most famous pubs, the Dove. In order to avoid the crowds and make it easier to have a private chat, we arrived just after opening time at twelve o’clock. By the time the main customers of the day came trooping in, we had already polished off a bottle of red and were decidedly tipsy. I plucked up the courage to ask Glittering about her love life, and she, bolstered by some Dutch courage, dropped her usual defences and told me her true feelings.
‘Xinran, I’m nearly thirty and still not married. In China they’re already starting to call me a leftover woman or a nun. You say I’m in no hurry, but is that actually possible? At the same time, this isn’t something that can be rushed. I remember when I was at middle school, boys would chase me and buy me ice creams. When I got to university, I would be in the student union and the little cockerels would strut around me all squawking in turn! But I didn’t give a fig about any of them. They had none of my father’s wisdom, let alone his spirit and energy. They all thought they could hit on me because of their good looks or some new electronic gadget, but how does that make any sense? Still, there was a boy who was very close to me, who did everything I wanted and listened to me in everything. Our parents knew each other, and at one point they were setting out a timetable for our marriage, but I went to America instead, and that put everything on hold. After I came back to China, I began to realise that we were not the same type of people. I wanted to find a husband I could respect, not a meek, slavish pretty boy. But he didn’t take my words seriously, saying that if he couldn’t marry me he wouldn’t marry anyone. It’s been eight years now, and he’s still waiting for me.
‘The man who really made a woman of me was my lecturer from night school, more than ten years my senior. He used to introduce me to all sorts of new ideas, and we’d spend hours debating social trends. With him I allowed my fancies to roam free without fear of god or man, and I thought that I had met the match of my dreams. We debated truth and falsehood, right and wrong. I could yell at him till I was hoarse, but he never allowed me to give way to my temper. Gradually, being with this man made me feel safe and relaxed, up to a point. Perhaps that’s what they mean when they speak of happiness? Maybe jealousy is also a side effect of love? When I found out that he was like this with other girls, I was very hurt. In order to show that I was different from the rest, I decided to move in with him. But after we started living together, I found out that he was still going around with other women. I was devastated, but he told me that before we had a family, what right did I have to prevent him from spending time with other people? I told him that we belonged to each other, but he said that wasn’t the same as hogging another person’s freedom! We started having fierce arguments, so I came up with a gutsy plan to see how many days I could survive without him and test the extent of his love for me. I moved back home. I never expected that just two months after our split he would actually be married to one of my colleagues!’
Glittering’s face was streaming with tears, which mingled with her red wine. I thought to myself that the art of life is formed in this way, through a blending of joy, anger, grief and happiness, mingling and separating, with nothing certain, and its logic and principles murky and confused . . .
Glittering paid no attention to the wine in front of her. ‘I just don’t understand how a man who could swear such solemn vows to me, with such deep emotion and intense love, could, in the space of only a few weeks, switch it all off just like that. And that wasn’t all: my friends heard him announce at his marriage that what his home needed was a wife not a lover! To him a lover was just seasoning for life. To be honest with you, there was a time when I spent more nights than I care to remember pacing back and forth underneath the window of his new home, spying on him and his new wife. The more I saw, the more convinced I became that there was no love between them. I never once saw them throw themselves into each other’s arms or kiss passionately. They seemed to be a very cool, calm couple. Once I watched them for two weeks on the trot, until he sent me a text: “I know you’re watching our new married life!”’
Glittering downed the remains of her wine in one gulp. ‘When I saw that text, I felt a mixture of hate and regret. He did love me after all, but he was using another woman to get revenge! Without love, how can there be hate? If he hated me so much, it must be a very deep love that I had injured, for him to be hurting himself in order to get back at me! It’s been two years, he’s been married two years, but every time I have a birthday or an important festival comes around, he visits me with a big present. He’s given me a ring, like for an engagement, and sometimes he gives me a night. It’s happened so many times now, and is showing no signs of stopping. What should I do, Xinran? I don’t have the courage or will to refuse him, and it makes it impossible for me to have feelings about other men. Luckily I have those gay guys, who’ve given me space to bury myself for a while. But, but . . .’ Glittering paused. It looked like she was not drunk at all, for drunks do not hesitate.
‘Do you know, I feel very conflicted. He often phones saying he wants to come and see me in London. A part of me wants to say, “Come on then, life’s too short, there’s no need for all those scruples.” But another me says, “No, a love affair unbounded by any sense of morality will only lead to pain and regret.”’ Glittering’s eyes burned with both longing and helplessness.
‘He’s coming to London to see you? How long is he going to stay? Is he still in his marriage?’ I felt a bitter taste well up on my tongue.
Glittering nodded blankly, adding, ‘He’s just had a daughter.’
‘Do you really believe that this man loves you?’ I said. ‘That his getting married was to get revenge on you? If that’s so then why hasn’t he got a divorce? And he’s got a child? Have you tried to find out anything about him? Perhaps he has more than one girlfriend as well as his wife? Also, aren’t the pair of you deceiving his wife, hurting her? And his daughter, aren’t you worried that one day that little girl will come looking for you, to get revenge for her mother?’
By this time I had sobered up, but I still had no real idea what to say. Yet another sacrifice to a certain sort of man! Yet another girl giving herself willingly to their ravages. Most infuriating of all, they use sex to crush young love underfoot. The girls are left drowning in their own tears, unable to tear themselves away, while those men indulge their fantasies on another girl’s body, directing scene after scene in a ‘tragedy of love’. The real tragedy in this drama is that these girls believe it is true love.
Glittering ordered a glass of water and drained it in one gulp. ‘Tell me, am I finding it so difficult to come to my senses because this was my first love? I’ve heard that first love is imprinted on the heart, and follows you to your death. But my grandmother says that her first love was my grandfather, which I don’t believe. My mother says she’s never had a first love, so what about my father? Has she never been in love with anyone, ever? I just don’t get it, life is really hard!’
What was I supposed to say? Instead, that day, over British afternoon tea, I told her about Turgenev’s First Love, his story of passionate but fruitless love.
On the way home, Glittering said, very slowly, as if she were teasing out the threads of her ideas one strand at a time, ‘I . . . think I have two selves that are in conflict. One wants to be a good daughter and granddaughter. The other says why should I care about being either of those things? Have you experienced love the way they do in my family, Xinran? In a space where there’s nowhere without someone in army uniform . . . can you call that a home? My grandfather is always surrounded by crowds of attendants, inside and out of the house. You can’t even go for a stroll with him alone. And not a day goes by without my grandmother giving every one of us a good telling-off. It’s as if whatever she believes has to be right for the entire world. Dad seems to work at least fifty hours every day, even at mealtimes he’s on the phone.
‘And Mum lives in the shadow of my grandparents’ power, always fitting in with whatever is going on. No one seems to realise, not even the staff, that she’s from an eminent family too. She’s the daughter of one of our national leaders, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes I want to stick up for her, but she always stops me. She says what kind of family will we have left if everyone tries to go their own way, pursuing independence and freedom? She thinks the family is not a place to let oneself go, but a place where one should feel free from worry. She says our family has such powerful personalities that it’s too crowded, so she doesn’t want to take up too much space or limelight. She shrinks, or even loses herself, at home. When she comes back from working at the museum, she either sits quietly reading a book or keeps to herself in front of the TV. At weekends she makes her speciality noodle dish for everyone in the family, old and young. It’s been like that for over twenty years, ever since I can remember, never changing! I often wonder whether she’s ever noticed that times have changed?’
‘Perhaps it’s precisely your mother’s immutability that brings stability to the thousands of other changes going on in the family?’ This was a heartfelt belief of mine.
‘Perhaps,’ said Glittering, without much conviction.
‘If you could make a plan for your latter years, what would it be?’ I asked her, really wanting to know her ultimate goal.
‘I’ve thought about this,’ she said, waking up as if from a profound dream. ‘Believe it or not, I really have thought about it. Recently my grandfather hasn’t been well. Sometimes he doesn’t recognise people, and one time he even asked who I was. I cried for a long time after that, as I thought I was the apple of his eye. The doctors and nurses told me he’s never failed to recognise my grandmother. No matter how ill he is, she only has to go and take his hand and he will call her by her pet name. His eyes shine with happiness and sometimes he even sheds a tear. Sometimes he tries to stroke her hair, as if she’s still the young girl he knew over sixty years ago. Xinran, they’ve spent sixty years of their lives together, and they’re still so close, so loving. I think that’s the picture I have for the last years of my life.’
How do you view the Yao Jiaxin incident? Why is Chinese society debating him (a post-80s man) so fiercely?
The reason why the Yao Jiaxin incident has become such a hot topic in China is not because there is anything representative or typical about it. To put it another way, it is because of today’s social media and because the broadcasting power of the internet has far surpassed our imaginings. I believe that over the last few years there have been very many similar incidents all over China, it’s just that this time loads of well-known figures in society have got involved, along with social media sites such as Weibo, and this is what has given rise to these debates.
As to why everyone is discussing this issue, first it’s because the people born in the 1970s and 1980s now make up the mainstay of society. They are probably the people across all forms of media who take the strongest exception to the late post-80s and the post-90s generation. They’re not so dissimilar in age, but they were brought up in very different circumstances, and this has formed a sharp contrast between them. Second, as social media opens up, people realise that society is not as peaceful and kind as they used to think, and this has given rise to a lot of fear and questioning. Over the last few years, so many people have been banging on about how today’s young people lack faith and conviction, but in fact they are the ones who are suffering torments. They suspect and question, yet they cannot find the answers or a solution. Of course, it is also impossible to overlook China’s present speed of development. Once you’ve opened up Pandora’s box, all kinds of values flood in. Plus we now have increasing economic power, regardless of whether it’s a bubble or true progress. In any case, people born in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are all coming under attack.
1 The Flying Tigers were a group of volunteer American airmen based in Burma during the Second World War, who fought the Japanese in China. Because of the political situation at the time, they worked with the nationalist Kuomintang government led by Chiang Kai-shek rather than the communists. Once the communists took over, the Tigers received little credit for their efforts because they had worked with the non-communist forces. (Translator’s note)
2 Seaweed, haidai, is a pun on words meaning to wait around for work when back from study abroad. Hai can mean ‘sea’ or ‘overseas’, while dai can mean ‘weed’ or ‘to wait for work’.
3 Tiaocao, literally ‘to jump the feeding trough’, means to change jobs or move to a new work unit. The phrase became popular in China because of its freshness and cheekiness.