City Life
From the November 2002 edition of Xiaoshuo Jingxuan - Selected Stories. The author, Liu Qingbang was born in Henan in 1951, and was worked as a farmer and a miner. He is currently working in Beijing.There's plenty of bikes in this city. Maybe even more than there are husbands and wives. A spouse is always for life, you don't change one halfway down the road. You ride her (or him) in and you ride her ( or him) out. Now bikes aren't the same. Who knows how many times a person changes their bike in their lifetime? But the changed bikes don't always get taken care off, they're not thrown away, they're not burnt, they're just left lying at the bottom of the building, piled. At the corner of every building you can see that bicycle wreckage.
Tian Zhiwen rode his bike back from work and saw all the spaces in the bicycle rack were full. The rack was made of reinforced steel, twisted into circles. Put the front wheel of your bike between two steel circles, and it had a place and it wouldn't fall over. He tried to see where the bikes were a bit more sparse so he could push his in and get a foothold. His bike was already very worn-out, grey, you couldn't even tell what make it was. If it was a Flying Pigeon, the pigeon had already flown. If it was an Everlasting, then forever was out of the question. He'd bought a new bike before. It was a lady's bike, very easy to get on and off. But he hadn't ridden it for more than six months when it was stolen, he didn't know which thieves den it'd been ravaged in. His wife didn't want him to buy another new one, she said it'd just get stolen again. She said his having a new bike was like an old man having a young wife, and young wives were always just waiting for someone else. He didn't want to admit he was an old man like that and argued with her. His wife took care of it herself, and bought this bike back from the shop. It saved a lot of worry - a bike this old, you could leave it on the street and nobody would look at it.
He still wanted to find the bike a place. If it didn't have a place it might be knocked over, bullied. Last time, also because the bike rack was full, he'd left it beside the road. He worked for the editorial office of a newspaper, responsible for the finishing touches before it went to press, so he could never get home on time. [query]. He just left the bike beside the road. The next day he came downstairs and saw his bike lying flat on the ground. The road in front of the building was narrow, so when the bike fell over it fell into the middle of the road. He rushed over and lifted the bike up. He pushed it, but it didn't move. The chain was jammed inside the cog. He thought somebody must have been annoyed by his bike blocking the road and knocked it over, and then stamped on it. In the end he had to hammer it for a while and blacken both his hands to get the chain free, and was almost late for work. After that [language note] he didn't dare leave his bike by the roadside again.
Pushing his bike, he looked from one end of the rack to the other. The bikes were packed tight, handlebar to handlebar, saddle to saddle. It seemed there wasn't any place to get even a foothold. But he did see a problem. One bike didn't even have a saddle, just a little metal stump pointing upwards. The front anAt fd back wheels were flat and the tyres were muddy. It was obvious nobody had ridden it for ages, nor could they ride it. In other words, it had stopped breathing. It wasn't a living bike. It was a dead bike. And if it was dead, what was it doing sitting in a live bike's place? He started to feel angry. This wasn't on, that bike would have to be kicked out, to give his ridden-every-day living bike a place. He stopped his bike and looked around to check there wasn't anyone there. Then he pulled that dead bike out of the rack. There was a small restaurant opposite the bike rack and behind the restaurant was a rubbish skip, and behind the skip there was a pile of old broken bikes. With one hand pushing and one hand pulling he put the dead bike with the others behind the skip. There, he said to himself. That's where you should be. There was a space in the rack now, and he put his own bike in. Seeing his bike with it's own empire, he felt calmer. He was also a little worried though, worried that the dead bikes owner would remember where it had been and take revenge. It didn't matter, the next day he saw his own bike was fine, undamaged. He had a look at the dead bike, it was still lying with the others. He couldn't help smiling.
He reckoned the number of bikes in the rack was fairly stable, and he'd have a place from now on. It would be free for him every day. But when he got home that night, he saw the rack was full again. What was going on? He had a look, and started to feel angry. You know what? That bike he'd taken out had come back, in an even better place than before, sitting there like a headless neck. It was like it was saying I'm here, I don't need my head, what are you going to do? He got angrier and decided to deal with the bike again.
He didn't do anything then though. He saw the guy who took the rubbish sitting nearby. The old man was wrinkled and bent, with an old Mao cap he wore all year. From when the rubbish skip had appeared and the residents started throwing in rubbish every day, he'd appeared too. He'd stick his head into the skip, rumaging back and forth. He found plenty of things every day. The skip was like his treasure trove and he regarded all the old food and broken bottles as valuables. Tian Zhiwen had heard he sold what he found for money, and could have supported three old men with no trouble. After a while things changed and Tian Zhiwen noticed that the one person going through the rubbish had become four, one of whom was a fat old woman. At first only the old man had been there, but the others had seen there was profit to be made. He'd doe the only thing he could do, to sit there all day waiting, guarding the rubbish. If he saw somebody carrying something valuable to the skip, he'd take it from them. If he saw it was just tissues he'd pretend he hadn't seen it. Tian Zhiwen thought the old man was looking at him. If he'd moved the bike now he'd be seen, and that was no good, it might affect what the old man thought of him. Forget it, after dinner, after the old man had left, it wouldn't be too late to come down and act. He left his bike by the road, temporarily. As he was walking towards the steps, that old woman who went through the rubbish appeared. As soon as she saw the old man guarding the skip she knew she'd have no luck. She asked anyway, what are you doing here? The old man seemed to have been ready for her and spoke loudly. What's your problem? I'm watching the skip. Tian Zhiwen heard the conversation. Out of the habits of his work he turned their behaviour and conversation into theory. thinking that there was competition even in the rubbish business, and fierce competition at that.
He lived in a 25-story building, on the 12th floor. One day he was walking in the park below the building and looked up and had a very strange thought. If people weren't seperated by concrete floor, but by panes of glass, you'd be able to see that there were people above people, 25 stories of people piled up, living. All those men and women, peel off the camoflage, like little animals in glass cages playing every type of game. It'd be fun to watch. And if you slid out the glass floors and let those on top fall down, how confused and terrible would that be? After dinner Tian Zhiwen went onto the balcony and looked around. Only when it was dark did he take the lift down. It was drizzling and the ground was damp. The saddles of the bikes had been covered with white plastic bags, like a layer of snow. Again, he didn't act right away. The old man had gone, but there was a young woman. Beside the door to the lift was the entrance to the basement. Two entrances going in the same difference, with just a wall between them. It was a lattice wall. The woman was just standing there like she was avoiding rain or waiting for someone. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse and cut-off jeans, with a cape draped around her shoulders, so it seemed more likely she was waiting for someone. It seemed he could almost smell the girl. He wasn't rushed, he knew he had to outwait the girl before carrying on. The basement had orginally been an open space, and the residents kept bikes and motorbikes there. As more and more people moved to the city looking for work the estate managers had partitioned the basement into small rooms to rent out to incomers. There were all kinds of people down there, every kind of people. Some with suits and leather shoes going in and out with briefcases and mobile phones on their ears, like businessmen. Or maybe conmen. Some of them were young women following older women, like mothers who'd come to accompany their studying daughters. More of them were young girls in pairs and threes, hair dyed red or yellow, with platform shoes on their feet, who didn't know what their business was? Tian Zhiwen thought the basement represented the depths of this city, a secret place and maybe a rich and colourful one. Sometimes he thought about going down to the basement, in the name of investigation. He always abandoned the idea though. He was a houseowner, he lived in the building above, a man with an identity. He thought he'd lose his identity if he went to the basement, and worried that he'd get trapped, unable to escape. Everyday as he went upwards he always looked down, but still walked his own route.
The young woman didn't outlast him, she went down to the basement. The basement was silent, with many steps, as many as the subway. There was no time to waste, he started to act. When he grabbed that detestable bike he didn't forget to look upwards, scared the owner could be watching him from some window and when he saw Tian Zhiwen moving his bike he'd shout out and ask what he was doing. That would be trouble. Never mind, he didn't see a single shadow moving from the top to the bottom of the building, just felt the drizzle landing drop by drop on his face. He carefully pulled the dead bike out, measuring his effort so there was no sound. His heart was jumping and he felt like he was stealing, doing wrong. He told himself it was ok, its your own bike, you're just moving your own bike. His building had three units, three entrances, he lived in the third. He pushed the bike from the third to the second, heading to the first. It was a big building, about one hundred meters from the third to the first entrances. He had to lift up the locked back wheel, and the airless front tyre pressed into the ground, so it wasn't easy to move the bike. His face and back were sweating. His foot caught on something and he almost fell. If he'd fallen he would have landed on the bike, hugging it. Anyway, his foot jumped and he didn't fall. But he sweated even more. He cursed lightly, not sure if he was cursing the bike or himself. There was another pile of old bikes by the first entrance. When he threw the dead bike down into the pile it was like a burden was lifted from his shoulders and he felt relaxed. He clapped his hands like he was washing them and cursed. You won't find it this time. Now he knew who he was cursing, it was the unknown owner of the dead bike.
After he'd put his own bike in the rack and gone upstairs he couldn't help but be happy. His wife asked him what he was happy about. He said there was nothing. His wife asked him if he'd had a rendevous with a lover. As if that broken old bike could be a lover. He said yes, a rendevous with a metal lover. His wife never believed he could find a lover and said well done, you've made progress.
At work Tian Zhiwen thought as he looked at the newspaper, would the owner of the dead bike look where'd he'd put it? He started to daydream, not focussing on the words and he had to start again. Their newspaper claimed to be printing news, but really it was more or less propoganda, without any interest. He was already tired of the job. But they paid him, so it was his ricebowl, and it was no good to not have a ricebowl. He finished work late again. When he got home the first thing he did was to see if that dead bike had been put back or not. Good, it wasn't there. It looked like he'd succeeded this time. To check if he'd realy succeeded he pretended he need to go to the shop to buy something, just to look at the place where he'd left it. As soon as he looked he was ecstatic. Really, his happiness was from the bottom of his heart, it was genuine happiness, he hadn't felt that kind of happiness for ages. He wanted to laugh, but he just allowed himself a huge smile. He said to himself, excellent. Excellent. All because he saw that dead bike he'd thrown there last night was still lying in the middle of that pile of broken old bikes. It seemed the bike recognised him, but it couldn't talk or resist, there was nothing it could do. Tian Zhiwen also noticed those other bikes were really ugly. If you compared them with people, then as long as people were alive they couldn't look too bad, but as soon as they died they were all ugly. Bikes were like this, he thought. When they are ridden every day, it doesn't matter how old they are, they won't be too ugly. But as soon as they die they're as ugly as a human corpse. When a person dies, you get rid of it. When a bike dies, they just get left, sunburnt every day, wet in every rain [query]. They'd never rot, it was really repulsive.
His happiness only lasted three days before it was cut off. He found that dead bike back in the rack again. This surprised him. He'd pushed the bike so far, how had the owner found it? He could almost see it, the owner searching around the building, looking anxious. And in the end the owner had found the bike. When he saw it in the pile of broken old bikes he would have been angry, and probably cursed. Tian Zhiwen thought the owner must be a woman, a middle-aged woman. Maybe even older. ONly that kind of woman would take it so seriously. It couldn't be a man. Men didn't take look at things so seriously. An old bike, if it's lost it's lost, there's no need to look everywhere. He was an example, when his new bike was lost he hadn't gone searching. It was even less likely to be students. They would be spending their parents money, they could afford to be generous. They all rode good bikes, racers or mountain bikes with hundreds of gears. They wouldn't go looking for a lost bike, they'd just get their parents to buy a new one. Tian Zhiwen thought the owner was battling with him. You don't want to let my bike have a place, but I'd like it to stay there. Does my bike offend your eye? Good, I want it to offend your eye, damn you. Throw it away again if you've got the time, you can through it away forever, I'll keep bringing it back. Ok then, if you want to struggle, lets have a go. You want to have a tug-of-war, lets see who can pull hardest. Tian Zhiwen didn't get angry, actually he was a little happy. Usually he didn't have much to think about. This fight with the nameless owner was a kind of hobby.
Tian Zhiwen didn't like playing Mah-jong or poker, or playing chess. He didn't like to drink. He thought mah-jong could damage your friendships, poker could damage your wallet, chess could damage your brain and drinking could damage your liver. He didn't think there was anything worth watching on TV. He liked arguing with his wife. His wife was from the north-east, and she liked arguing even more than he did, she was addicted. She always wanted to argue with him. Sometimes after they'd argued he'd asked why she always did this. She said, go and find someone else if you can. I never said you couldn't find someone else. Ok, he said. I will, I'll find a lover one day. His wife agreed, but she had three conditions. Don't let her know about it, don't spend money and best of all find someone who would support him. You're talking nonsense, he said. If there wasn't anyone to argue with, what would you do? What do you mean, she said, you call this arguing? He smiled. I can't even win an argument about arguing. Tian Zhiwen knew there were plenty of fun places in the city. Like the Dream Karaoke parlour he passed every day on his way back from work. As soon as it got dark the door was light up with lanterns. Some made-up girls standing and leaning at the entrance, as soon as they saw a man passing they'd welcome him in. In the shadows of the trees beside the parlour there were men and women, ear to ear and head to heard, who knew what they were discussing? When he rode past he glanced at the trees and caught glances of half-exposed breasts. He would have loved to stop and look at the parlour some more, but he just slowed down a little as he rode past. He was scared that as soon as he stopped someone would greet him and invite him inside. He was scared that it would be hard to refuse if he was stopped by a soft warm hand. Another example was the bathhouse at the entrance to his compound. He'd gone there for a shower once. Two attendants asked him if he'd like a massage, making it sound like some kind of forbidden fruit. They said some thinly-veiled stirring things. From what he said, he guessed the bathhouse had many different sides to it. But he didn't have the guts to test any of them. The back door of the bathhouse faced his building and sometimes he'd see the girls from the bathhouse standing at the door eating their lunch out of takeaway boxes. If he was massaged by one of the girls, then recognised by her, that'd be bad, bad at home. Tian Zhiwen floated in the city, he didn't visit the depths. His heart was a lonely heart. There were lots of people in the city, but that didn't change his loneliness, it made him more lonely. Look at the Milky Way. There are lots of stars, but it turns out they all have their own orbit and massive distances, so cold. So it's easy to understand why he took so much pleasure in moving a bike.
This time he tried a trick. He didn't move the bike that day. This trick had two reasons behind it. Firstly, the owner had just brought the bike back, so she'd still be vigilant, maybe even in a hiding place watching that dead bike. If he moved the bike now, he'd be on the hook. The second was to pretend he'd accepted the bikes existence on the rack, pretend he'd given up the fight, let the owner be happy for a day or two. Wait until the dead bike's owner thought the bike had a stable place and let down the guard, and then he'd launch a new attack. After two days he pushed the dead bike out of the compound and onto the street. There was a restaurant on the street and he left the bike propped up against the restaurant wall. It was already dark, and the restaurant was closed, the curtains drawn. There wree very few people on the street, and just the occasional cab passing. TianZhiwen didn't leave when he'd placed the bike. He pretended to be exercising, two eyes watching the bike, two hands on his waist. In front of the restaurant was a parking lot. In the daytime there were people coming and going, it was a good business. Two long-waisted girls in red qipaos greeted customers with permanent smiles. Tian Zhiwen imagined, tomorrow when they opened, the boss or the waitresses would find the bike and think it didn't suit the restaurant. They'd probably think the bike's rider was an acrobat, otherwise there was no way it could be ridden. Thinking about that, he couldn't help but be happy again. This time he'd killed two birds with one stone, the bike's owner wouldn't be able to find north, and the restaurants boss would have a riddle to solve. The restaurant boss might not care, but he might get someone to smash the bike and throw it into the rubbish, with the chicken feathers and fish scales. That's be good, and the bike's owner could stop worrying about it. This is how Tian Zhiwen had planned it. He'd slept first, until footsteps stopped, then gone down to move the bike. The lift had already stopped. That didn't matter, if you are happy then 8 or 10 floors are nothing to speak of. Also, it meant he could avoid meeting the lift attendant and keep things more secret.
He hadn't defeated the endless fighting spirit and uncontainable power of this opponent. He'd moved the bike in the middle of the night, and when he came back from work the next day, it was back in the rack. He felt like he'd been hit. He'd tried so hard, and been defeated so quickly. He had to reevaluate his opponent. His oppenent must have been some kind of investigator to find and bring back the bike so quickly. Maybe retired, with nothing to do so they could concentrate all their energies on finding the bike. At this time he had a longing, to know his opponent, to know what kind of person it was.
He hardly knew anyone in the building. Even the people on his own floor, let alone those above and below him. He din't know their names, their surnames, where they worked. Opening and closing the door he might see them, but there was no difference between seeing and not seeing. Nobody said hello. They just closed their door and left, or went in. He could be sure of one thing, his opponent lived in this building, and went in and out of the same lift. But knowing who it actually was, that was difficult. Perhaps it was his neighbour opposite. He could hypothesise, but if he couldn't make sure it was no use. What if it wasn't only the people in this building, but everyone in the city who led this kind of enclosed life, everyone anonymous. You can look upwards at the Milky Way and see the twinkle of endless stars, but you don't know where they've come from and you don't know where they're going.
You couldn't say he knew nobody apart from his wife and daughter in the building. His daughter had a friend from school in the same building. Sometimes she'd come and ask his daughter about homework, so he knew her, knew her names was Xinxin. He knew she had a grandfather who carried her bag for her everyday when he took her across the road to school. When she went to school he sat on the concrete stools in the park below the building, sat there half the day. One day he asked Xinxin, how come I haven't seen your grandfather lately? Xinxin said her grandfather had died. Tian Zhiwen was surprised and asked when. Xinxin said she couldn't remember the exact day, but a bit more than a month ago. He didn't ask any more and he didn't know how he'd died, if it was an illness or an accident. An old man, looked very healthy, how could he just die? What Tian Zhiwen could never accept was that he had lived in the same building as that old man, someone died without a sound and without a whisper, without disturbance or news. Tian Zhiwen had come to the city from a village, and if someone died in the village then everyone within 5 kilometers would hear of it quickly. When the funeral took place there'd be firecrackers and music, the dead's sons and daughters crying, a very solemn scene. In comparison, the village took people's life more seriously. In the city birth and death were nothing to get excited about. Just worry about yourself and your family, other people don't matter.
Tian Zhiwen didn't have a chance to find out who the owner of the dead bike was, but he saw that bike every day. He didn't accept defeat, he had a plan to finish it once and for all. He would put the bike in the skip, and let the rubbish man think it was the bike's owner who'd put it there. There was a huge skip in the compound, as soon as it was full it would be taken outside the city. Then the bike would be gone for good.
In the end he didn't carry out his plan, because one day his imagination ran wild and made a story seem true. A beautiful young girl had ridden that bike to school every day, or maybe to work. Suddenly one day, the girl had been in a traffic accident, or maybe in a fire in an internet bar, and died. Of course, the mother had been devestated. Fortunately, she still had the bike, and she took it home and kept it as a memorial. She'd look at it once or twice every day, and it was just like she was looking at her daughter. If she couldn't see it she'd get nervous and impatient. Tian Zhiwen was shocked by his imagination. That's it. That's got to be it! Otherwise the owner wouldn't find it and bring it back again and again. He looked again at the bike, carefully this time. A woman's frame, red. It looked more and more like the kind of bike a girl would ride. Tian Zhiwen started to feel guilty Just to get a place for his own bike he'd plotted to get rid of someone else's. So selfish, so heartless. When he saw the bike again he didn't think it was ugly, it seemed sacred. He didn't move it again.
Of course, this was just imagination. He could only imagine, because in the city you only see the result, not the process. Sometime you even have to imagine the result.
From then on he thought of the bike as a gravestone, and thought up a few more stories. We won't go into them all here.
One story he though of recently, The owner had nothing to do all day, and wanted to find some amusement. Tian Zhiwen had moved his bike, and the owner had thought someone was playing hide and seek with him, just having fun behind his back. Thinking about this, Tian Zhiwen felt flat and insipid, regretful.
That bike still lives in the rack, impressively.