Dialogue

Chapter 10

10 We returned to Hangzhou. Standing outside my parents’ house, I stopped and stared at the mat in front of the door and scraped my shoes back and forth on it. It was like when I had done something wrong as a child and was reluctant to go home. I accidentally knocked my head against the door. My parents opened it and looked at me strangely. “You’re back!” “Nh.” I waited for them to start asking me questions. “Yu Jian is in Hangzhou. He’s been here a number of times looking for you.” My mother didn’t say a single word about what had happened in Beijing. “Oh!” I took this in mentally, got a drink from the fridge, took a breath. “I know.” I agreed to meet Yu Jian in a restaurant by the West Lake. We awkwardly chatted about this and that for a while, until finally he was the one to crack: “They say in town that you and Lan Jun are together.” “Yes. It’s true.” “How could you do that?” “I….” I put down my chop-sticks and wanted to say something, yet how was I going to make it clear? If I thought of what had happened in Beijing, the closure of the National Art Museum of China, the police cars, the police, my surrender, the detention, the media of the world paying attention to me…. My God! It seemed my thought processes had stopped, had stopped the moment I fired the gun. I stared out the window and went into a stupor. I felt I was on a surreal train which was carrying me somewhere at great speed. I didn’t know where it was going, nor where I was to get off. I was myself, yet not myself. Yu Jian’s voice interrupted me: “What really happened to you in Beijing?” “The events in Beijing were so sudden, I haven’t had time to tell you, but that’s it: I’ve fallen in love with him.” Dialogue 110 “You….” “Please forgive me! It’s my fault.” Next day, I took him to the station. At a small restaurant near the station we ate together one last time. He ordered steamed crucian carp in a clear soup for me. When we were together, as he knew I liked to eat fish, he used to bring a fish whenever he came to see me. Steamed in broth, braised in soy sauce, he would cook it for me in different ways in turn. “The fish isn’t as good as when you cook it.” As soon as I started speaking, I quickly stopped. “I won’t be able to cook for you again. This is your own choice. However, if you want me to stay, it’s not too late.” I lowered my head and said nothing, looking at the plateful of fish, feeling as if my whole body was being steamed. We separated at the station, and gazing at his back as he walked off, I felt a pang of remorse, although I had no thought of stopping him. We never met again. Returning from the station, I looked all over for Lan Jun. I found him in the Jiexun Coffee House in Nanshan Road. He was sitting in a corner. I walked over and in one breath poured out everything that had just happened. “Out with the old, in with the new. Trust me, I’ll be very good to you.” “What about that French girl of yours then?” “We’re not together any more.” Hangzhou in the early spring is romantic. We strolled by the banks of the West Lake, chatted in coffee bars. Staying out of the way of gossip and slander, I invested my entire affection in his person. Nothing else existed in my sight anymore. I seemed to think that this love was the true meaning of my life, and I threw my whole body and soul into it. Lan Jun rented a small house off campus, and we often met there. Love is like a drug. It can turn you on. It can numb you, and it can destroy you. Not long after the exhibition ended, Zhongguo Meishu Bao published in its eleventh issue of 1989, Song Liwei’s article entitled: “Two Gunshots: The Curtain Call of the New Wave in Art!” In it, he says: Speaking on the basis of its lack of an avant-garde directing theory, the China Avant-garde Art Exhibition...