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Fan gave Sparrow a pamphlet that listed the demands of the hunger strikers. There were just two: immediate dialogue on an equal footing, and an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the student movement.
“What would you like to do, Comrade Sparrow, if you were free to choose a vocation?” He didn’t hesitate. “I’d like to play the piano.”
“But the piano kind of thing, Comrade,” she said, turning serious, “is a hobby and can be done in addition to a steady job and what I meant with my question is the kind of vocation that requires a lifetime’s commitment.
“Remember that musician in 1968, the composer from Shanghai,
“He Luting.”
“I remember.”
So we all heard it when he shouted, ‘How dare you, how dare you….Shame on you for lying.’
had the desire, but never the will.” “And now?” Fan asked. He shook his head, but it occurred to him that now, finally, when he had the will, desire itself might have disappeared.
Time remade a person. Time had rewritten him. How could a person counter time itself?
The grand celebration that had been planned for Tiananmen Square, intended to celebrate the first visit by a Soviet head of state since 1959, had been cancelled.
an expression of Big Mother’s caught in his mind, Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind
In two weeks, he would fly to Hong Kong to see Kai, yet he had neglected to tell Ling or his daughter this important detail, and the fact that he was hiding so many crucial things could no
longer be brushed away.
Can lies go on ...
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Sparrow could not imagine what this scene would like through Zhuli’s eyes, at the age she would be now.
How could a lie continue so long, and work its way into everything they touched? But maybe Ai-ming would be allowed to come of age in a different world, a new China. Perhaps it was naive to think so, but he found it difficult not to give in, not to hope, and not to desire.
His new composition was almost done.
He called it, tentatively, The Sun Shines on the People’s Square, a title that echoed Ding Ling’s novel of revolutionary China, The Sun Shines over Sanggam River.
Instead it was multiple places from throughout his life: the Tiananmen Square he had walked on in 1950 with Big Mother Knife. The People’s Square of Shanghai. The square courtyards of the laneway house, the sheets of Zhuli’s music, the portraits of Chairman Mao, the bed he shared with Ling, the square record jackets he had burned, the frames of the radios that he built every
day.
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Weren’t the works of Bach, the folded mirrors, the fugues and canons, both square and circular?
Perhaps tonight he would tell them both that he was leaving for Hong Kong. He would be gone briefly; before they knew it, he would be home again. He would not abandon his life, but find a new beginning that included them.
Set in motion again, his own life was finally becoming clear. But Ling knew, he thought, of course she already knew this.
She whispered to him, “How do they dare? How do we dare?”
He saw a look of pain pass over Ling’s face. Only it wasn’t pain, he realized, but fear.
Late the next morning, when he woke, disoriented, he heard Yiwen telling everyone that General-Secretary Zhao Ziyang had been removed from office.
The army had already arrived at the perimeter of the city.
the 1977 questions. That year, the national essay had been: “Is it true that the more knowledge, the more counter-revolutionary? Write at least 800 characters.” What if a similar question appeared on this year’s test?
It was the whole idea of answering, the fear that every word had multiple meanings, that she was not in control of what they said.
Army trucks, stretching as far as she could see.
I’ve got nothing to offer you kids but these noodles. They’re good noodles but they won’t change the world.”
“Um, Chinese history.” The woman pulled her head back like a bird. “What’s the use of that? Well, at least you know that my generation was tossed around by Chairman Mao’s campaigns. Our lives were completely wasted…We’ve pinned all our hopes on you.”
“That’s what we need!” the vendor said, smacking her chopsticks against the metal pot. “Real numbers. Without real numbers, how can we fix our economy, make plans, understand what we need? Young lady, I don’t mean to be rude but you should really think about studying mathematics, too.”
In 1977, Wei Jingsheng got seventeen years in solitary confinement for writing one wall poster.”
Do you even know what they did to the protesters in 1977? That’s what scares me. Nobody even remembers.”
On the public speakers, the grating repetition of the martial law announcement had started up again. In accordance with Article 89, Item 16, of the Constitution of the People’s
Under martial law, demonstrations, student strikes, work stoppages, are banned…
What’s the date today? May 20.
The most important people in her life were Sparrow, Ling, Big Mother Knife, Ba Lute, and now Yiwen, and it was like they had all been raised on different planets.
You think that the things that matter are more difficult than words–to retreat from a confrontation, for instance, to work at changing something, truly changing something.”
“Ai-ming, you’re studying history to prepare for the examinations. What if revolution and violence are the only way?”
What about the students’ desire, their idealism, their righteousness, how many contradictory desires did it serve?
How could a person know the difference between what was real and what was merely illusion, or see when a truth transformed into its
opposite? What was theirs and what was something handed down, only a repetition?
Hadn’t the Red Guards tried to destroy the old language and bring to life a new one? What if one had to create a whole new language in order to learn to be oneself?
think we keep repeating the same mistakes. Maybe we should mistrust every idea we think is original and ours alone.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and recited the only words that came to her, the poem at the opening of Chapter 41 of the Book of Records: “ ‘Of course, no one knows tomorrow. Tomorrow begins from another dawn, when we will
be fast asleep. Remember what I say: not everything will pass.’
For this new recording, Glenn Gould had instilled a continuous tempo, a pulse, so that all thirty variations more clearly belonged to a unified piece.
He regretted all the radios he had ever built. He wanted to find some way to cut all the wires, to hush all the voices, to broadcast stillness, quiet, on this city that was coming unmoored.
