Part III
Chapter 19
But the great Shanghai was not so great, at least judging by what the railway station had ever tried to represent. The station looked unbelievably small and disordered, as he paused to conjure up his first impression of the city after being pushed and kicked on heels out of the gate. The noise, produced by the buses and the humans, was constant, and the little stalls of peddlers were numerous, and the rubbish didn’t seem to be less than anywhere else.
To this minute, his final extrication from the train had hardly helped alleviate the weariness and dirty feeling he had soaked up from a lengthy travel of more than fifty hours.
It was a fine day; there was a sun, smothered in grey cloud, of which shape was indistinct. He was sweltering, his body clammy. The manly stuff, owing to his romantic minutes on the train, was in his pants congealed, stretching the hair. He could have done something about it in the train toilet, if he had forced himself to do so, but the idea doing that sort of thing, in that sort of place, was no less repulsive and disgusting than the dirt itself. Indeed, every part of his body was in its lowest possible decency; one bit was scarcely better than another.
Though he had noticed the banners of many universities that had come here to greet the fresh students of the season, he didn’t rush to them. For a minute or two he stood there looking around in a free but wretched state of mind, like a prey who has just escaped a chasing predator. His white shirt, washed clean by his mother on the day prior to his great departure, had turned almost black at the cuffs and collars. The stain was not like mud, nor like the shit or some creatures’ urine, but its foulness felt just the same.
It was all buzzing and beeping. On the other side of the road, there were many buildings that looked very different from any human shelters in his knowledge. Unlike the houses made of soil or bricks, they seemed to have been constructed solely by heavy stones. And the arched entrance, so harsh and grim and almost sad, only reminded him of a tombstone in a graveyard or a blockhouse in defence.
Dragging his feet and his luggage, he went towards where the red banners were clustered. His eyes searched the name of his university and in no time found the words of ‘Welcome to Shanghai International Studies University’, which reached him like a new home or like an oasis for an adventurer in a desert.
The girl behind the desk, seeing him approach, got up and smiled. Wearing a yellow blouse, round-collared and short-sleeved, as well as a skirt, she appeared cleaner and tidier than any girlish form in his mind.
‘Ni Hao, Shangwai?’ she asked amiably, quoting the simple name of his university.
‘Yes,’ he answered simply, taking out the letter and placed it on the desk for her inspection.
But she didn’t check the letter, only tipping her finger across a sheet of paper. ‘What is your name?’
‘Wang Bing.’
‘Wang Bing?’
‘Yes,’ he affirmed, ‘from Sichuan.’
The finger travelled only a little distance before it stopped. ‘Here it is!’ she exclaimed, with a joy as if she had found a treasure.
Oh, she was so lovely; for a moment, he was thinking if he, in his haggard and aghast form of existence, should deserve such a nice regard from her. A self-consciousness was suddenly becoming very active - how dirty he must be; how unsightly his face must be with those acnes that had not been checked and cleaned during all those days on the train!
But he had only suffered from it for a short time, for he was soon given an envelope which, as she told him, contained the information of registration and accommodation, and then led to the bus stop by another male student who had just turned up.
‘No. 115, it will take you to Cifeng Station, where you can walk to the dormitory,’ the boy instructed him. The railway station was also a bus terminal. A bus of No. 115 was already there waiting. Old and rusty it had a very long body, of which middle was joined by a buffer like the blades of an accordion. He got on; the driver was not yet present. Seeing some vacant seats at the back, he moved towards the end, gingerly carrying his bags to avoid scraping the legs thrust out from other passengers. Along the way, he saw quite a few young but worn and greasy faces that must mirror very much his own.
Inside the bus, the noise seemed to have diminished all at once. The passengers, seated with their dim eyes gazing out of the window, were waiting with patience, or with boredom. Whatever hope lurked at the back of their minds was for the moment unperceivable.
As soon as the driver, followed by a conductor, stepped on the bus, the air and the inhabitants of the bus stirred to animation. The conductor, a young slim lady in a blue uniform, cast her eyes long enough to cover the whole bus interior. By this time, no seats were available to newcomers, who had to stand wherever they could plant their feet.
The conductor began to sell the tickets. In Mandarin the conversation was brief and transactional. The price was mostly one Jiao. A ticket was ripped off with a nice jerk of her hand, and, together with the change if any, were thrust into the hand that was uplifted more like begging.
Half way through in her duty, the bus started and rumbled to the road. Immediately the standing passengers raised their arms to hold the overhead bar for support. Only the conductor, with her hands both employed in her task, stood apart and fast, keeping her delicate balance on the wobbly bus. She had a pale and clean face, her lips was faintly glowing with a touch of rouge.
In a while, she reached him who had already had a note of one-Jiao ready.
‘To Shangwai,’ he said.
She took the money, quickly produced the ticket and gave it him. She didn’t even look at him, all the while her eyes were on her money bag and the stack of the tickets in her hand. Elegant, self-assured, a bit haughty, she acted as if detached from her surroundings, not belonging to the social rank of the customers on the bus. The manner she regarded her customers were supercilious and patronizing.
The bus reached the next stop and he heard her saying something like ‘Give way, give way...’ repeatedly in a language foreign to his ears. She reached out her hand and kept banging the bus to rhyme her voice. Apparently she was warning, in Shanghai dialect, a crowd of people outside, who were rushing dangerously close to the rapidly moving bus.
The bus ride turned out to be very much like a train; every soul had a tangible fear of being left behind, and as always, at every stop, more people seemed to mount than alight. The passengers would pack more into the space, and the conductor would squeeze her way selling the tickets. But she didn’t appear to have any trouble in dong her job, and instead of Mandarin, she now uttered every note in Shanghai dialect, which sounded pretty like happy birds chirping.
Outside the bus was a lot of moving things, familiar and unfamiliar to him. Bicycles and tricycles and pedestrians and cars and the trees with yellowish patchy leaves and the stony buildings and the multi-storied shops, were flashing by. The vast quantity of them impressed him with a magnitude that was supposed to match the grandeur of Shanghai.
Now he closed his eyes and really longed for a doze; the shapes and forms that had sustained his first-time curiosity had become the sort of irritants rather than stimulants.
But he couldn’t have his wished-for rest, for in a minute the bus grounded to a sudden stop with a screeching sound tearing his nerves. Darting open his eyes, he saw a bicycle-rider falling at the kerb along the bus. The bus driver cursed something very loud, sharp and crude.
The rider, obviously without being hurt, immediately pulled himself up and pedalled away fleeing, as if he would face a charge if he had stayed a second longer.
It was another stop; the door swung squealing open; people got off and on again.
At this very moment, coming to his eyes from one of those stony arches was a woman in Chinese traditional Chi-pao; scarlet, sleeveless, with a swirling phoenix picture on her front. Her arms were both bared, pale and full; her breasts, seized and shaped by the garment, were high-hitched, protruding and aggressive; her belly and her haunches were in a perfect wavering harmony as she took her split steps. The figure seemed familiar in his mind, but it must have come from certain books he had read, for he couldn’t possibly have watched such a live Chi-pao display.
The bus moved, and he turned to catch a last sight of the woman. The spectacle, out of the drab and coarse arch, was so remarkable that his long, dirty weariness was spontaneously shattered, as if he had just drunk a bowl of rice-wine.
In spite of everything he had thus far observed as unimpressive, the girlish or feminine phenomenon in the city seemed exceptionally more inspiring than elsewhere.
He licked his dry lips, and just as he wondered how much longer the bus would take him, the conductor announced, this time in friendly Mandarin, ‘Arriving at Cifeng station; arriving at Shangwai.’ Apparently this Shanghai lady was able to switch languages to suit the passengers’ origin she was able to detect.
Preparing to get off the bus, he had waited much longer than a time hinted by the conductor, who had said ‘arriving’. As soon as it stopped, he pawed his bags, brushing at people’s legs and buttocks towards the door. It was rather fortunate that he got off the bus safely, without stumbling over the steps.
On the ground, he was not alone; three girls and another boy were also present. They had similar disposition as his. All had one or two sizable trunks; and with considerable wonder in their face, they looked exactly newcomers to the city.
Standing there and wearing the expression of one who has lost his way, they didn’t speak to each other. There was no sign of the university. At last, one girl initiated a dialogue with the boy closest to her.
‘Classmate,’ she asked, blushing, ‘are you also going to Shangwai?’
‘Yes,’ the boy answered, also blushing, ‘which way to go?’
The boy looked around, as if an answer could come from the air. But they, five of them, were the only souls in the place. Then the boy went on, ‘Let’s ask someone.’
The rest of the listening youths, now realizing they were all in a same boat waiting to dock, silently agreed. They waited, until a middle-aged man came forward.
‘Comrade…’ the boy began politely, ‘which way to Shangwai?’
The man regarded him curiously, before he answered understandingly: ‘Oh, Shangwai, this way, go about five-hundred meters, and turn right to Eastern Tiyu Hui Road, then go straight and you will get there.’
In a minute, with the boy now as the leader, the group made their way to their destination, hauling various sizes of bags, like some soldiers reunited after losing a battle. They began to talk in an easier manner, making a little self-introduction. Three girls were from Hubei, Shandong and Beijing; their majors were German, Japanese, and German. The boy, as tall as Bing, with healthy, sun-tanned skin, was from Guangxi, and his major was Russian. When Bing told them of his major, their eyes had shown a trace of admiration. They said English was the hardest one to get in, because it was very popular. Bing told them it was actually his teacher who had put English as his first choice, Japanese and French as the second and the third.
The day was 31st August, the first day to register. It was about the mid-afternoon, exactly what time he didn’t bother to check. They dragged on, but after ten or twenty minutes still finding no sign of Shangwai, they became disconcerted and had to confirm their route from another passer-by before going further. Bing was longing for a place to wash and to become himself again, but the trip seemed endless.
However, some time later, like all the toiling labour in a life that would sooner or later come to an end even if temporary, they reached the residential area of their university, number 411 Eastern Tiyu Hui Road.
A red banner, ‘Welcome New Students to the University,’ hung conspicuously between the two cement pillars at the entrance. A uniformed security guard came over to look at them; his eyes seemed to say they were no doubt fresh students, and questioning them was unnecessary.
They entered. There were four adults, or teachers, sitting behind a row of desks covered by a long red cloth. Some students stood bending over the desk, while others sat on the stools writing. And with five of them newly arrived, the place turned live in a little flurry.
In the queue for English, only Bing was waiting. The teacher was presently serving another student, who sat there filling a form. She was a girl.
Bing stood there, upright. He composed himself, assuming a shallow dignity to the best of his ability, shunning the very idea of his dismal appearance at this particular time.
The sitting student, with her back to him, had long and black hair. It tumbled down from her head, parted at her nape, its main part spreading well over her shoulders; the rest slipped hidden in her front. With a ball pen she was filling a form; her sleek hair was sliding and shaking, swiftly but gently in time with the movement of her head and her arm.
Her shirt was white, short-sleeved, and her skirt, partially exposed in her sitting, was striped with red and white, very sharp and eye catching.
‘Thank you, Ms. Tang’ she said to the teacher. ‘So I go to my room.’
‘Remember to take your desk and stool,’ the teacher, Ms. Tang, said, pointing to the place where a lot of square, one-seat desks and stools were stacked, and then pointed again to the two-storied building near the entrance, ‘and go to the canteen for supper over there.’
‘Yes, I know, thank you,’ she rose and turned, and, noticing his existence, she threw him a large but brief glance, which was still long enough to impress him with her beauty, and more, her pride.
With a nice bag on her arm, she flashed away.
‘What is your name?’ Ms. Tang asked kindly, as he went forward to sit on the stool.
‘Wang Bing.’
She checked her paperwork. ‘Oh, you come from Sichuan, far, far away, a long trip.’ She smiled a smile of considerable compassion, ‘You must be very tired.’
‘Hehe, not too bad,’ he said humbly, producing his first smile since he landed in Shanghai.
In about ten minutes, the registration was completed. He was given a stack of meal-vouchers for one month as well as a key to the room 504 of building 6. Ms. Tang said she was the director of his class.
The door was in the middle of the building, easily noticed by its outstretched awning, which looked like the visor of a hat. A middle-aged woman, who sat inside the room knitting, guarded the entry. After checking his identity, she said: ‘If you need to buy things, you can get most of them here.’
‘Okay, thank you,’ he replied, noticing the heap of things on the shelves at the back of her room. ‘I may buy some after I put away my luggage.’
The door of 504 was open; there were four bunk beds inside, two at each side against the wall. The room had a capacity for eight students, which was the same as his high school. The advantage here was that they had a desk and a stool of their own, though very small; while in Sangton, there was only one shared desk.
Six beds were already taken as indicated by the mosquito nets installed or being installed. But Bing saw only two fellows in the room setting up their nets. There was a chart at the back of the door indicating the bed allocation. Bing checked for his bed and went to the upper bunk near the door. It was good he could have the upper one. The upper ones and those closer to the windows were presumably better than the rest. The last one unoccupied, as he checked, was opposite his but at the lower level, and because it was also close to the door, supposed to be the worst in the room.
After exchanging brief greetings with the two roommates, Bing started to unpack his things, throwing all he had onto the bed. There would be many things awaiting his hands to get them ready, but the first thing he couldn’t wait to do was to wash his body. To do this, he needed soap.
So fetching some money, he ran down the stairs to the ground level, and bought from the guard a towel, a tooth paste, a basin, a block of soap, and a mosquito net.
The bathroom was at the end of the narrow hallway. Two rows of sinks were attached to walls. The taps, six in one row, some of which were still dripping, availed graciously their nozzles to the service he had been desiring during last three days. First things first, he went to the toilet, then he brushed his teeth, with plenty of paste on the new brush. The water tasted strange and unnatural, but it hardly mattered. Some chemical was okay, for it should help kill the germs, bringing back the whiteness of his teeth.
Then he slipped off his clothes, going under the head of the shower, screwing the valve to its extreme capacity. The water shot very hard on his head, cooling all the way down to his toes. Then turning off the water, he rubbed himself fully with the soap branded as Bai Li - Beautiful White - until his skin was well covered with the slippery foam.
It was strange to think that the skin of human being, for some odd reasons, should be cleaned so as to feel comfortable. Other living creatures on the earth, like cows and pigs and rats, seem not to have such a desperate need to trouble themselves with the length of washing. To many of them, the dirtier it is, the more comfortable they are.
He washed all over twice; the refreshment was immense and satisfying. Using his little towel, he sponged his front, flapping his back where it was hard to reach, managing a sawing gesture with two hands slanting against it, as he had used to do as a child after swimming in a stream.
He studied his skin with his fingers, and felt happy with its cleanness and smoothness; he brushed his face with his hand, feeling unhappy about the acnes that seemed rough against his finger pads. He needed a mirror; he searched around, but finding none in the room.
After gathering the dirty clothes to be soaked in the basin, he put on new set of clothes, and went back to the room. Nobody was presently in the room; they must have all gone for supper. He saw a mirror standing on one of the little desk. He took it and sitting on a bed, employed his time to check and test and nurse the acnes on his face, until he was reasonably satisfied with his recovered self-image.
He knew it was vanity. All he did was vain and useless, but he had no sense to stop it. In his young mind, there lurked so much hope and desire and pleasure, of which fulfilment seemed to have a great deal to do with his appearance.
How good would it be if he had a nice and straight nose, with a solid quality like stone? How good would it be if he had a pair of eyes, not necessarily big but thoughtful, full of wisdom and sentiment? How good would it be if he had a forehead that was fine and broad, expressing a sort of generosity and good possibility? How good would it be if he had a hair that was thick yet flexible enough to certain manly styles? How good would it be if he had a mouth, with clear edges and deciding lips? How good would it be if he had a clean skin without those troubling acnes? How good would it be if his height was not at 173cm but stretched a few more centimetres, up to 180cm…
He meditated upon himself in the mirror, long enough to forget his hunger, and long enough to remember his hunger.
The canteen, was just meters away from the entrance. It was near dusk; registration was already closed for the day, leaving only the bare desks and stools. There would be another day for registration, as indicated in the notice letter. So tomorrow he would be free. The formal class assembly was the day after.
The dining hall had only one window left open. The lights were on; the air looked vast and empty, with three of four diners individually sitting and eating at separate wooden tables. Bing reached the window and gave a voucher and the rice-box to the woman inside, who took it, and started immediately filling up his box, without asking what he wanted. Bing soon realized there was not much food left, only cabbages and green beans.
It was only now, when looking at the lukewarm content in the box, that he realised how hungry he was. The gnawing of his stomach was sensational, reminding him of the hungry piglets at the food-trough. It was as if the cool shower he had just taken and the regained feeling of cleanness had finally awakened his appetite to eat, which must have been subdued by the dragging vulgarity of the tedious journey.
But he didn’t wolf down the food as one could have imagined under the circumstances. He chewed slowly and forcefully, feeling the strength of his young teeth and jaws, teasing his hunger ever more bits by bits. He sat there musing. Oh, to think he had travelled across half of China, from the far west to the far east! To think about everything that he had seen and had happened during the time: his crazy dissipation in the train with the young woman; the Shanghai lady in a scarlet Chi-Pao, so glamorous and attractive, emerging from the stony arch; and the girl at the registration desk, so striking, so full of pride and arrogance in her face, but whose features he failed to catch and study carefully.
Well, she must be in his class…
The dinner took him much longer than ordinary. As soon as he got back to his room, he began to set up his mosquito net. There were bamboo sticks erected at the corner where there was no sidewall to hold the net. Four hooks were needed to put it up. Having to rely on bamboos and walls for the fastening task, instead of the wooden framework available in the lower bed, was a slight disadvantage living at the upper level.
But it was not a difficult task for him, who had dealt with bamboos nearly all his younger years in the village. However, he noticed a roommate who was supposed to have already finished the job, still busily working on the bits and pieces for his net, crawling in the bed, pulling, crouching, kneeling, resting, sighing, in very much the manner of a dog struggling in a cage.
After finishing his own job, he lay on the bed, and looking at the roof and the sides of net with a feeling of achievement. The mosquitoes, who like to hide in the folds and nooks of the net before launching their bloody attack, would now find themselves easy targets in his sovereign territory. He had gained a lot of experience in his constant battle with mosquitoes. He knew the drapes of the net must be laid seamlessly under the straw sheet or books or folded clothes, and at least three clips were required to close its door. The important thing was not to give any possible holes for the intrusion of the most annoying creature on the earth.
With a clean body, and a full stomach and a tired mind that had ceaselessly digested the scenes and swarming humans along his journey, he drifted, very soon after he closed his eyes, into a long sleep that had never been so sound and thorough in his living history.
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