Forbidden City Read online

  Ahead was a wide intersection and we drew to a stop at the lights. This street was called Yue Tan Bei Jie. It was wide, with boulevards separating the bike lanes from the main way. Trees in white blossom and shrubs and banks of flowers decorated the boulevards.

  Around us a few cyclists stood like storks resting their weight on one leg. On each of the four corners of the intersection was a pair of soldiers. One pair was questioning a man who looked nervously about him as he held out his ID. Across the street I noticed the snout of a tank’s cannon poking from a narrow alley. I quickly lay down.

  The light changed and we continued north. Shoe-box high rises lined the road on both sides, rising above the trees. The road narrowed. After fifteen minutes or so we passed through another intersection, and Xin-hua braked to a stop at a small hu tong.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I get us a cold qi shui,” she said softly. While she stood quietly, watching the intersection, I reached into my coat pocket and took out one of my pain pills and one of my antibiotics. Qi shui is pop — “gas water”.

  “Our water is almost gone. First wait to see if any PLA around.”

  Across from us there was a small store. Xin-hua decided the place was safe and walked quickly over to it. In a few minutes she returned with two Cokes and a half-dozen plastic bottles of lime green liquid. We poured the Coke down quickly, burping like mad, and while Xin-hua took back the empties I put the plastic bottles in with the food.

  We got underway again. The road was only two lanes wide now, closely lined with trees that formed a canopy overhead.

  “This is the Foreign Affairs College,” Xin-hua whispered over her shoulder as we passed a high wall on our right.

  At least a dozen soldiers lounged around the main gate up ahead. Two or three looked alert. The rest were squatting, playing cards or talking.

  What happened next went past so fast I’m surprised I can remember the details. We hadn’t come abreast of the gate yet. A young guy in a yellow T-shirt with SPORT GAME written on it was cycling towards us. A bulging white plastic bag hung from the handlebars. When he was opposite the gate he yelled to the soldiers and flashed a “V” sign at them, the sign a lot of students had used at Tian An Men Square. One of the troops shouted back. Just as our che drew opposite the soldiers — they were only eight or ten metres from us — one of them brought his AK 47 to his shoulder in a lightning move. The barrel jumped as flame shot out and a fraction of an instant later the wicked crack-crack-crack-crack deafened me. I took a look across the road in time to see the man slam to the pavement as his bike skewed to the curb and crashed to the dirt at the edge of the road. Green apples tumbled from the bag and rolled into the street. The man lay on the road like a doll some kid had thrown away, his yellow T-shirt already soaked with blood.

  By this time the che had passed the gate. I felt it surge as Xin-hua shoved with all her might onto the pedals. I heard one of the soldiers laugh and saw two of the card players rush into the street, gathering up the apples.

  Suddenly we veered into a narrow hu tong. Xin-hua was still pumping like mad on the pedals. We took a sharp turn that almost rolled me off the che. I hung on for dear life as Xin-hua cut right again and rushed across a little intersection without looking.

  “Xin-hua! Slow down! There’s no one behind us!”

  She stopped pedalling and we coasted for a moment. Her back heaved. She lay her head down on the handlebars, not looking where we were going. The front tire hit a piece of brick in the road and the bars twisted, steering the che against the curb. We bumped to a stop.

  Xin-hua got down and turned to face me. She was crying, saying something over and over again in Chinese, pounding a fist into her palm.

  My legs and arms tingled as if I had stuck my finger into a light socket. I knew the feeling — the aftereffect of a sudden adrenaline surge. Then the shaking became more violent. I got down from the che and put my arms around Xin-hua. She trembled as she cried, her face pressed to my chest.

  A woman frowned as she passed us, shaking her head — public displays of affection between men and women are considered very bad manners in China. But I didn’t care what she thought.

  As we stood in the street like that, it started to rain.

  We continued north as soon as we hit a major road again. The rain wasn’t very heavy but a wind had come up and dark ugly clouds were moving in. It wasn’t long before we came out onto Xi Zhi Men Street across from the zoo. I pictured the map of the city in my head, and knew that we were still pretty much on the route Xin-hua had planned out. This was almost as far north as she had intended to go.

  As we headed east on Xi Zhi Men, the dome of the Exhibition Hall came into view. As soon as it did, the brakes of the che squealed and we came to a quick stop. The big parking lot of the Exhibition Hall was packed with tanks, troop trucks, and armoured personnel carriers. PLA milled around the lot. A cold hand wrapped icy fingers around my spine. I guessed the same hand grabbed Xin-hua because she did a U-turn as soon as there was a break in the traffic and pedalled west.

  We trundled along past the Capital Gymnasium — the parking lot was deserted and the big iron gates were shut tight — and the bus terminal where hundreds of people waited under coloured umbrellas.

  We should have known that the PLA would be massed somewhere near here. The Xi Zhi Men Train Station was nearby, and about half a kilometre from the Exhibition Hall there was a major intersection with the Second Ring Road.

  Xin-hua turned north just past the Capitol Gym. I knew this road — Bai Shi Qiao. In fifteen minutes or so we’d reach the Friendship Hotel.

  The rain came down heavier and the sky darkened. The che‘s tires hissed on the pavement. Xinhua turned onto a dirt road that followed a small creek. Within minutes my leg was all pain from the hip down from the bumping and bashing.

  The rain seemed to fall more heavily with every metre of bare ground we covered. I began to wonder if Xin-hua had gone nuts from the strain of the last few hours. Where was she taking us?

  She finally brought the che to a stop in front of a high wall. You could tell it was old from the big grey bricks and the little roof of glazed green tiles on the wall like you see at the Forbidden City, except there the tiles are orange. The gate was gone — burned away it looked like from the marks on the wall.

  Once inside the wall Xin-hua jumped off the che and pushed it through the long grass towards a small makeshift brick shelter built near the east wall of the compound. It had a roof of corrugated metal but no door. We hurriedly lifted down the box, collected our packs, and took them all into the shelter. Xinhua went out again and pushed the che out of sight behind the building.

  Inside, the only light came from an open window on the front wall beside the door. By “open” I mean just that — no glass, no frame, just a square hole in the wall. Rain swept in through the window and the roof leaked in one corner, but otherwise the dirt floor seemed dry enough.

  Xin-hua leaned against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting. She let out a long, tired sigh, folded her arms across her chest, and drew her knees up. Her hair was plastered to her head and water dripped off the ends of her braids. Her face was drawn.

  I sat across from her against the back wall so I could see out the door. The rain drummed on the metal roof. I was wet through and uncomfortable, but not cold.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “Workers who are repairing the temple built this to store things and maybe sleep.”

  “No, I mean that strange building outside.” As we ducked into the house I had noticed five tall shapes rising into the gloom of the ram.

  “Oh. This place is Wu Ta Si, means … mmmm … five something temple. How I should say those buildings with many roofs?”

  I thought for a second. Maybe she meant pagoda.

  “Yes. Five Pagoda Temple. My elder brother worked at the zoo. He was ground cleaner. Sometimes I would go visit him at his work and we came here to eating our lunc
h. Zoo is across the river there. That’s how I know this place.”

  “When was that?”

  “Maybe five years ago. My brother works in another unit now.”

  “So this place is deserted?”

  “Should be workers here, but now most workers are staying home. Streets are too dangerous, and some are on the strike.”

  “Because of what happened in Tian An Men Square?”

  “Yes.”

  We were silent for a couple of minutes, as if the name of the place was sacred.

  A gust of wind drove rain into the hut. The drops spattered on the hard-packed dirt.

  “Xin-hua, what did happen in the square? I don’t understand what it was about. The PLA didn’t have to do what they did. They didn’t have to —”

  I couldn’t say it.

  “When I was a little kid, in elementary school, we were taught PLA were the heroes.” Xin-hua spoke almost in a whisper, almost as if I wasn’t there and she was talking to herself. “Sometimes the PLA soldier would come to the school and talk to us, tell us how PLA liberated China before we were born. Since then they fought imperialists in the Korea, fought Russians in the north because of the border argument, fought Vietnam, who were Russia’s friends at that time.”

  I remembered that Lao Xu had told us the Twenty-seventh Field Army were Vietnam veterans.

  “We called those PLA guys Shu-shu, means “Uncle”. My elder brother, when we were very small, had a PLA uniform he wore all the time, even to school.”

  Xin-hua wasn’t exactly answering my question, but I let her talk without interrupting her. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that something she had believed all her life had blown up in her face and that she was having a tough time coping with that.

  As if she had heard my thought she said, “I don’t know what happened, Shan Da. But I think the Party and the government, especially those old leaders, lost face when Gorbachev was here and we students were demonstrating in the square. We made them look like they couldn’t control the country. We made a big mistake. We wanted them to lose face, so they would pay attention to us.”

  She began to cry. “We never thought,” she sobbed, “we never thought they would do that to us!”

  Cao chuan jie jian, I thought. “Straw boat borrow arrows”. The government had used the People’s Army against the people.

  Xin-hua covered her face with her hands and cried harder. I crawled across the dirt floor and sat beside her. I didn’t know what to do, so I put my arm around her.

  Her crying, the dreary rain, homesickness — everything started to work on me, and I felt my throat thicken. I choked back a sob and tried to keep control.

  Xin-hua raised her face from her hands and looked at me. Drops of water stood out on her straight lashes. “So many of my friends, my classmates, were shot down,” she whispered, “even one of my teachers. My friends,” she sobbed again, “I lost my friends.”

  I began to cry. “Me too,” I said.

  We sat like that for a long time.

  The drumming of the rain on the roof decreased slowly to a light patter. My arm was beginning to feel numb and when I removed it from Xin-hua’s shoulder I was glad to see she had dropped off to sleep. Her arms were crossed on her knees and her forehead rested on her arms. Who knows how much sleep she had managed over the last week?

  I crawled back across the floor and retrieved my cane. I pulled myself to my feet and hobbled to the Peony box. I pulled off the lid and lifted out the camcorder. It was dry. I put it back into the wire cradle, squeezed the lid onto the box, and hobbled to the door. Outside, rain drizzled out of a heavy grey sky. It was 5:00 P.M. I went outside and walked through the long sodden grass to the walkway. I took a look out the gate, scanning the dirt road in both directions. To my right, in the distance, light traffic moved along Bai Shi Qiao Road. A solitary man fished at the culvert, his long bamboo pole arched over the water. Outside the gate the water meandered slowly around rocks, through the wide riverbed.

  I went back inside the temple grounds, walking up the pathway to the tall platform. There were lines of Buddhas carved into the light orange marble wall. Dozens of them. The five pagodas were clearly visible, now that the rainfall had lessened, one at each corner of the platform, the fifth, taller, in the middle. Bells hung from the ends of some of the eaves. Lao Xu had once told me the bells were to keep evil spirits away.

  I walked around the platform. All over, in the long grass, were fallen pillars, rubble, pieces of green tile — not the kind of destruction that the passing of time would cause. Then I remembered that, during the Cultural Revolution that ended about ten years ago, gangs of Red Guards would swarm into temples, museums, and other historical monuments, smashing things up and defacing everything they could reach. Something to do with stopping the worship of old customs.

  When I got back to the little house the rain had come on strong again. Xin-hua was still asleep. I lowered myself to the floor again, opposite the door, staring out at the rain beating the grass, listening to the hammering on the roof.

  I looked at Xin-hua, hunched over, her head on her slender arms. If I ever got to the embassy, ever got out of this place, I would hate to leave her behind. I don’t mean I was falling in love with her, or any of that soap-opera stuff. I was worried about her. What would happen when I left? It was easy for me. I could leave this country — at least, I hoped I could. But what would happen to her?

  I imagined her in Canada, goggle-eyed at all the strange things she’d see. Especially how rich people are. The freedom we have. And then I began to compare her to the kids I knew, the ones my age, the older ones who had gone to university. That gave me a funny feeling. Things at home would seem different now. I knew, I just knew that from now on there would be some kind of gap between me and the other kids. We were all pretty well off, at least the people I hung around with. All the guys could drive. They all lived in nice houses, some with pools in the yard, most with basketball hoops over the garage door. Colour TVs, VCRs, a late-model car in the driveway. And that’s what most of the guys wanted when they got through school. A good job, meaning one that paid lots of money. A cottage in Muskoka.

  If I told them that in China one of those little washing machines was a status symbol, they’d laugh. If I told them about Nai-nai’s house and how peaceful her courtyard was, they’d tell me to get real. But whose world was more real? Ours, or the world Xinhua lived in?

  She was different from the girls I knew, too. Really different. Their idea of a tragedy was running out of mousse or breaking a fingernail. They were a lot like the woman I had seen this morning on the movie billboard. They were almost all heavily into feminism and talked about being taken seriously as persons while they put on purple lipstick. I don’t know. Maybe I was being too hard on them. But nobody I knew was like Xin-hua. To me, she was a hero. A strong woman with more character than most of the kids I knew, male or female, put together.

  Including me.

  It was five o’clock and still pouring rain so I lay down on the dirt and tried to get comfortable. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  It was a long night. The rain came and went. The wind blustered, hissing in the long grass, moaning around the pagodas. At least a thousand times I imagined I heard a platoon of PLA come charging through the gate, equipment rattling, to drag us out of the brick hut and throw us against the ancient wall of the temple and shoot us. After the first dozen times I stopped getting up and checking the gate.

  Towards dawn the wind came up stronger and I guess it blew away the rain, because when I finally decided there was no use trying to sleep anymore the rain had stopped. I went outside to go to the bathroom — only there wasn’t one, of course. It was still grey outside, but the cloud was higher up and moving at quite a clip. Xin-hua woke up when she heard the lunch tins rattling as I pried off the lids. I was starving and I was pretty sure she was worse off than me.

  She smiled at me and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

 
“Hungry?” I asked.

  She nodded and looked a little embarrassed. “I back in a minute.”

  She went outside. While she was gone I took the top off the washing machine box and set it on the dirt floor as a makeshift table. I put a lunch tin on each side, along with two of the plastic bottles of green stuff. Luckily Nai-nai had put a set of chopsticks in with each lunch.

  We attacked the rice and pickled vegetables. The green stuff Xin-hua had bought the day before tasted like sugar with sugar added, but at least it was wet.

  My leg seemed better. I could put more weight on it. I hoped it wouldn’t flare up too much with the travelling it would get. I had two pain pills left, and I wanted to save them until I needed them.

  Xin-hua and I figured that with luck and without any mishaps, we should be able to get to the embassy sometime during the afternoon. The thing was, she emphasized, not to try to move too quickly or else we would attract attention. I knew what she meant. We had to blend in, which was hard enough with my tall lanky build and my sunglasses on a cloudy day. We had to be two workers, delivering a washing machine for a lucky owner, taking it easy along the way.

  We set out into the teeth of a stiff wind, bouncing our way back to Bai Shi Qiao Road, the tires of the che squishing and slipping in the mud. We turned north. Bikes hissed past, bells jingling, as people went to work. Soon we passed the wide front gate of the Friendship Hotel. When I had been there with Eddie and Dad the place was bustling, with taxis and tour buses and bikes going in and out of the open gates. Now it looked like the place was closed. There was a soldier by the gate house and the wide gates were shut. Xin-hua pedalled more slowly as we passed.

  “Seems the foreigners have all left,” she commented.

  I didn’t say anything. I was thinking. Past the hotel, near the intersection with the Third Ring Road, I called out to Xin-hua.

  “Hold up a sec.”

  “What?” she said, still pedalling.

  “Stop, please.”