Return to the Edge of the World
1
I was born in Guangzhou, before the millennium. Nobody knew the city back then. According to my mother, she and my father had come to work here only because it was the only sizeable city near their hometowns. ‘Otherwise, of course, Shanghai,’ my mother said. Yes, who wouldn’t want Shanghai? the sleepless city of blinding lights that appeared in dreams, nothing at all like Guangzhou. Guangzhou in those days was a small city. The three great towers had not yet risen into the clouds; the Pearl River at night merely flowed, slow as moving glass, southwards towards the edge of the world. My mother said that was Hong Kong over there. Unlike the north, people there spoke the same language as us. I was not very interested. I still preferred Shanghai.
When I was small we moved constantly. From Panyu to Dongshan, from Dongshan to Liede, then back to Panyu when I started high school, as though my parents were following some hidden plan. My mother said fallen leaves return to their roots; we were always going to end up where we began. My father was more pragmatic: according to him, we went back to Panyu because the rent in Liede was rising fast. Around 2010, when we were still in Liede, a tower went up by the river, twisted into a spiral, thin in the middle and thick on the ends, hence bearing the ugly name ‘Slim Waist’. The river lost its former gentleness; on the warm-winter banks tourists packed in. My mother said the Asian Games had come. That was why. Every Cantonese was excited for Guangzhou; everyone was like a parent of a twenty-year-old who had made something of themself, dragging them out to show off to relatives. Guangzhou had even launched some kind of aerial photography campaign at the time; word spread, and when my auntie next door came for dinner at our house, she told me to stand up straight whenever I went out and to smile at the sky if I heard a helicopter. But it was the third year of middle school, the entrance exams were looming, and while standing up straight was manageable, smiling was beyond me.
Around the time of the entrance exams, which must have been my rebellious phase, I told my parents I didn’t want to go to an ordinary senior high. Most of my class was preparing to compete for the ‘Big 3’ high schools in Guangzhou: one morning before the reading hour, L, my desk partner, took a pencil (the school forbade knives, so carving into the desk was out of the question) and scrawled furiously onto the pale yellow deskwood, with apparent righteous indignation, eight words: ‘I’ll eat shit if I don’t get into Zhixin.’ I still don’t know whether she was admitted. I only remember that she was seeing this boy Z from the next class. Once, apparently because of grades, they argued; L, in a fury, slammed her freshly filled thermos onto the desk. Water splashed all over me and blurred the blood-red score ‘89’ on my maths paper that I’d just got back that morning. Now, I was especially annoyed that day, one reason being that L held the highest score in the class: 150 out of 150. So I stared at the two of them and, in my rage, managed a single curseword and nothing more. I asked the form teacher to change my seat. The form teacher, presumably not wanting L contaminated by a poor student, agreed with good cheer and moved me to a corner, adding the disingenuous remark that with nobody to distract me there, I would do better. Study my arse. I did not want to go to senior high.
To return to the point. That evening I told my parents I did not want to go to an ordinary senior high. My mother went pale. She asked what I intended to do. I said I wanted to go to a private school. I remembered that in my first year of middle school, there had been a craze for these fancy schools. Some middle school graduates went to ordinary senior highs; others went to these so-called ‘private schools’, whose fees were staggering, tuition alone twenty or thirty thousand yuan a term, but the marketing claimed a ‘liberal arts curriculum’ imported from Shanghai, an education system moulded on the American model. My heart was set, and set hard. I told my mother I absolutely had to go. My father asked why. I could not articulate a good reason, so I told him I would die if I did not go. This alarmed him. He said if I went, he would die. My mother seconded this. I did not dare talk back to my father, so I turned on my mother and shouted at the top of my voice. Her eyes reddened at once. Watching her face on the verge of tears, my vocal cords felt as though pressed under a heavy stone slab; I was suddenly mute. Seeing me turn on my mother, my father drew his belt without a word and pulled off my shirt. It was winter in Guangzhou. Warm winter, but the night wind still made me shiver.
Before bed I looked in the mirror and found that the belt had left my back red to the point of seeping blood. Perhaps because of the cold, there was no great pain. But lying on the wooden bed that night, tears suddenly streamed down for no reason I could name. The next morning, unexpectedly, my father came to me. I knew full well the family was not wealthy, but he must have softened. He wanted to grit his teeth and pay. He pulled me to the dining table. Do you really want to go that badly? After the previous night my resolve had also weakened. Probably, I said; I feel ordinary senior high is a bit boring, a bit too not-for-me. He said fine. Promise me a few things: from now on, no more losing your temper at your mother; no dating during the three years; study hard; get into a good university. Where do you want to go? I said I wanted to go to Shanghai. He said fine, which university? I said I did not know. Jiaotong, maybe; Jiaotong is decent. He said, right. Remember our deal.
My mother told me later that the next morning my father went out to borrow money from everyone he could. I did get into the private school, and looking at my classmates I could only feel surreal. It was 2011, the year after the Asian Games. Guangzhou had already boarded the express, accelerating along the road of national development, and never looked back.
Around the second year of senior high, I became friends with P and M. P was a cool boy: long, naturally curly hair, large black-framed glasses, a prominent mole on his left cheek; he said he had been playing bass since he was small, eight or nine years. M was a cool girl: medium-length hair, long neck, tall, and when she was not playing guitar she spent her days slumped over her desk watching Adventure Time. I still remember the goofy yellow thing whose arms could stretch to five metres. One advantage of the private school was the lack of constraints; having nothing else to do, we started a band. As for me, I could not play anything, so I had no choice but to sing. We performed at various school events. We started with AC/DC’s ‘Shoot to Thrill’, then decided it was too hard for shoegaze kids like us and switched to playing Radiohead. In an era when melancholy was chic, everyone at lunch compared who had the lowest essay score, and the bands that people liked were always Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Blur and the like: hymns to decadence, hymns to depression, until decadence and depression actually arrived.
Later, P fell for a girl in the class next door. According to M, he spent every day waiting for a chance to talk to her. M and I were preparing for the gaokao, while P, a year below us, had no exam pressure. I did not ask him about it much, but M told me he had grown quite depressed: the girl was neither accepting nor rejecting him, giving no signal at all. We did not think much of it at the time. Being a bass player was already isolating enough; could he become more so? He could. We later learned that P had gone to a hospital on his own and been prescribed Prozac. For the months that followed he shut himself in his room reading manga. No more bass; no more classes. The school, being a private school, turned a blind eye. I only remember that one day, passing his classroom, the wooden chair in the corner that had been empty for months was occupied again: the same curly long hair, his eyes unfocused as though half-asleep. I told M. She said she had run into P that very morning; he seemed like a different person. She asked if he still played bass. P flicked his hair and said, yes. I said, well, so not really ‘a different person’. She said, no, it is just a feeling, he is not the same as before. Neither of us could say what had changed. We heard he went through two more failed crushes during our final year, but neither was as severe as the first, and so we felt reassured: he was probably handling things better now.
I remember the night after the gaokao ended. The school, because of the exams, had not locked the back gate to the athletic field. The three of us slipped in, threw ourselves onto the grass, then rolled over and lay on the prickly blades, looking at the stars. P said he wanted to play guitar. At this, M and I had a sudden realisation: P had changed. He really had. I asked him why he wanted to play guitar. He said he did not know, then flipped his phone over. His phone had a speaker case attached. He opened our band’s playlist and played Radiohead’s ‘Thinking About You’. After the twenty-second acoustic intro, Thom’s voice came in, and the three of us sang along. At ‘But I’m still no one and you’re my star’, P said again he wanted to play guitar. This time M asked why. P thought for a moment and said, if I play guitar, someone will like me. His tone was not joking; we were facing the predicament of a bass player who wanted to change career. M said, fine, play guitar, I will teach you. Then she sat up, brushed the grass from her trousers, pushed off the ground, and half-jumped to her feet. She began to walk anticlockwise along the innermost lane. P and I stood up and followed, walking anticlockwise along the innermost lane, as though by doing so we could turn back the clock. M walked on ahead, then said, suddenly: I love you two so much. I hope we never separate. Then she turned. P was holding me, and I did not know what to do. P was crying. I looked at M’s red eyes, glinting under the big white light of the stands, and then I was crying too. That night I dreamed the three of us were standing in a patch of inexplicable snow. P was clutching M’s sleeve, saying, don’t leave, please, you’re all I have. When I woke, I found blood on the sheets. Mosquito. I had forgotten to close the window again.
The day the gaokao results came, my father was happy. So was I: Jiaotong had admitted me; I could go to Shanghai. That evening my father, making an exception, took me to Din Tai Fung, allowing me to order four steamers of xiaolongbao. The two of us ate with abandon, feeling it was not so expensive after all. At the bill we discovered that there was a service charge. Full and suddenly broke, my father was still happy; at least university tuition was cheaper than the private school. Apart from being far from home, there was nothing else to worry about for the time being. After dinner I called P and M. P said ‘Congratulations’ in an extravagantly theatrical voice. M told me her results were poor. Her parents were making her repeat a year, then try her luck at a university abroad. ‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked. ‘Canada, probably,’ she said. ‘Does your mum agree?’ ‘It was her idea.’ ‘Do you want to go?’ ‘Probably.’ A few more pleasantries and we hung up. Over the summer, P and I met a few times, but neither of us managed to see M; she was apparently confined at home for university prep. P was also thinking about going abroad. He told me the application forms at foreign universities were much more comprehensive than our gaokao, asking about everything. I asked, curiously, how they ensured fair admissions if they know about everything. He said, grades; whoever has the best grades gets in.
We later learned that it was not quite so simple. M’s grades during her repeat year improved dramatically; she was preparing TOEFL, SAT, Advanced Placement, all of it. Every time P and I called her, P listened enraptured, as though this were the life he longed for. He said: like that, life would be nothing but study and guitar, no other worries. If you are sad, you study; once you understand, you are no longer sad. I thought about it and felt that everything was like this: once you understand, you are no longer sad. The sad people are those who do not understand, and sadder still are those who don’t but believe that they do. M admired P’s way of thinking and had high hopes for him; she was certain he would get into the university he wanted. P and I were also certain M would get into the university she wanted. She did not. Her grades were more than sufficient, but in the end she was not admitted. Her family sent her to Canada anyway. But that is getting ahead of things.
The bustle of Shanghai did not come as much of a surprise. Walking alone at night under amber street lamps, I still thought of Guangzhou’s familiar quiet, as though my stride had been too long and nothing had had time to change. I still called P and M regularly, asking after M’s repeat year. Her family seemed unstable; her parents argued often, mostly about money, occasionally about infidelity. P was studying hard for the gaokao. I did not ask about his grades, but from his tone, he seemed to be doing fine. As for me, I lived the life I was living, spending my meagre allowance on books, slowly working through Dazai Osamu and Natsume Soseki by the lake, then moving on to Western literature. Unlike Guangzhou, autumn in Shanghai seemed not to bring much rain, and reading by the lake became a lasting habit. It was during this time, on a bench by the lake, that I met X. She immediately reminded me of P, not only because she too played bass, but also because she too wanted to learn guitar. I told her I also wanted to learn guitar. She said, good; should we learn together? Her eyes were beautiful; when she spoke, they did not flinch, aiming straight at me with their black pupils. I said, of course.
2
After winter set in, I called P and M less often. My days, aside from reading, were spent with X. In late autumn we still played guitar by the lake, but winter brought a cold wind that Guangzhou did not have, blowing on her guitar from the water’s surface. We still walked around the lake. X was fine-featured, with short black hair trimmed carefully at the tips. I still liked her eyes best: a pool of the clearest water. ‘Such clear water,’ she would say, stopping occasionally to point at the lake. In winter the lake was still; even the leaves that had fallen in autumn had sunk completely to the bottom. On the clear days that followed, we would walk in circles around the lake, waiting for the sunset to burn slowly across the far side of the world. Then we would sit in the lakeside pavilion, watching the earth’s shadow rise from below, devouring the fading amber. I told her: it feels as though the sun is absconding with the light, fleeing to the edge of the world.
The first time we left campus together was at the start of the first winter break. It was a not especially cold afternoon; we went to a cinema in the city centre. I have entirely forgotten the plot, partly because it was a dull domestic film, and partly because halfway through she took my hand. ‘Is it any good?’ she asked, leaning towards my ear. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Then let’s go,’ she said.
We left the cinema. Standing at the entrance, the sky was already six-tenths dark. She suggested going straight to dinner. I had no objection. I only wanted to keep holding her hand. She did not refuse; she threaded her fingers through the gaps between mine. ‘So cold,’ she said. The surroundings felt like a great glass house; I was aware only of her hand and her warm breath, and everything else became irrelevant. We settled on a Japanese restaurant: Malaysian owner, Chinese chef, but we had walked a long way and it was the only place with the eel rice she wanted. After ordering, she said, let’s drink. I had no desire to refuse, but did not want to return to the dormitory drunk, so I chose a fruit wine of low concentration. It was my first drink in life. Before the food arrived, the first sip sent something stinging up my nose, and then I was immediately somewhat drunk. X asked why I was drinking before eating. I asked what the problem was. X said she would not be responsible for getting me home. Then I really was drunk, and ordered two plates of salted edamame and ate all of them myself. After that X ordered two or three more bottles of something I did not understand. The two of us drank as though in competition; not to be outdone, she grew drunk herself, ordered two more plates of edamame and lobster sushi, then poured the wasabi, blackish-green, into the edamame bowl. I said, you are out of your mind. She looked up at me, said nothing, then grabbed a handful of wasabi edamame and placed them on my plate: they’re delicious, eat, look how drunk you are, eat more. I ate a few, choked, and turned to look out of the window.
The tail end of December was Western holiday season. The festooned city, like the youth of nineteen-year-olds, had at last acquired its unnecessary splendour. Two drunken children were unremarkable in the crowd. The cruelty of time in passing is that it grants a particular illusion: one believes one’s first drink, one’s first escape, one’s first kiss are momentous occasions. But nobody cares; nobody truly cares; not until much later does one discover that perhaps one does not care either. In this contradiction and confusion, I did not know what feeling I held for the singular human being before me. I did not want the wasabi edamame on her plate. I only wanted to kiss her flushed face, then wait for the light at the horizon to tell me that this happiness was real.
When we left the restaurant, the waiter at the door said something in unintelligible Sino-Japanese. X was muttering. At first I could not hear clearly; after a moment I understood: she said she was sleepy and that we should go to a hotel. I said, we’re not going back tonight? She said she did not want to. I said, fine. We found a hotel near the restaurant whose exterior looked reasonably tidy. A red banner hung across the front: ‘Merry Christmas’, followed by a line of small text. I was fairly drunk myself, so I did not look closely; I only wanted to sleep.
Our room was on the second floor, up a small spiral staircase to the right of the front desk. Spiral in name; in reality it was an ordinary granite staircase arranged in a vague helix. Halfway up, X stopped. She sat down abruptly on the cold floor and began to murmur. I recognised it: she was reciting poetry, the Dylan Thomas we often read together in the lakeside pavilion. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees / Is my destroyer.’
I pulled her arm and drew her upright, kept her balanced step by step, and finally got her into the room. Card in, lights on. Warm light, amber like the sunset by the lake. She was already slurring. She shouted: why aren’t you reciting? I was a little hazy myself. I asked, where did you get to? She shouted: you weren’t even listening! I said: ‘that blasts the roots of trees / is my destroyer.’ Carry on. ‘And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose / My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.’
I turned on the heating. She removed her jacket in an extremely awkward fashion, then claimed the bed nearest the door by lying face-down on it. I considered asking why she was going to sleep without brushing her teeth, but she appeared already half-asleep, so I left her alone. Five minutes later I was face-down on my bed as well. The next morning I woke at first light. Outside the window was a glow like sunset, but an entirely different feeling. I remembered the poem; it seemed to be the only thing I recalled on waking. In her jacket pocket I found a few unused sheets of white paper and wrote the poem from memory on one of them. From ‘The force that through the green fuse’ to ‘how time has ticked a heaven round the stars’, but after thinking for a while I still could not recall the last line. I gave up, put the paper back in the pocket, and went to shower. When I came out, X was up. Her short black hair was puffed out, like a slightly misshapen spherical cage around her head. Quiet. Outside, rain was beginning; it seemed to be her favourite weather. I sat at the desk to read. She put on her jacket, felt the pocket, then announced at considerable volume: ‘I’m leaving!’
‘So early? Rushing back to campus?’
‘No. I just want to be alone. Thanks for last night!’
‘I should be thanking you. Do you want me to walk you down?’
‘Let me tell you something… lucky we didn’t go back last night. Apparently there was an incident on Line 5.’
‘Hm?’
‘So you see, only when you’re drunk do you make the best decisions. I’m off; no need to walk me down.’
‘Fine.’
She came closer and said, a hug.
Before I could react, her oversized jacket was folded around me. I looked at the heavy wood-coloured automatic door, listening to the rain behind the window, the urge to kiss her cheek coming and going, no different from the night before. Strange: such a fine stretch of time, and yet I had a feeling of being swept away by the rain, of having no say, as though this story had no beginning and no middle, only the stub of an ending. In retrospect, I should have held on to that stub. What matters most in life is probably the ending. The beginning can be inexplicable, the middle can be absurd, but the weight of the ending gives life all its meaning.
That embrace became two lasts: the last time I held someone without tears, and the last time I saw X. I tried waiting beneath her dormitory building for her figure to pass, until the warden eventually noticed me and informed me that no student by that name lived in the building. After that I never contacted her again, as though the heavy wood-coloured automatic door had locked shut behind her retreating back, leaving me alone inside the glass house. I tried not to ask why. I know that people are capable of entirely incomprehensible things, and that however much one considers the reasons, a satisfying answer will never come. So I gave up thinking, returned to the lake, left the blank spaces blank, and continued my spotless, changeless routine. A long time later, I remembered the Dylan Thomas poem. The last line goes like this:
‘And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb / How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.’
Originally published in Chinese as 「返回世界边缘（上）」 and 「返回世界边缘（下）」 on 阿莫東森的無聊生活.
