Read Online Beijing Bastard by Val Wang - Free Book Online

The bars are going to blow this place sky high! Wait—there is a woman in our building who got a petition signed by a thousand local residents. Let me find her.”
    A petition! Who in China dared to circulate a petition? Here was my story. She found another woman who nodded and told me to wait. I was passed from neighbor to neighbor like a hot potato until a plump, middle-aged woman introduced herself and, looking around with a suspicious glance, said that we shouldn’t talk in the street. She led us upstairs to her top-floor apartment and sat us down on a butter-yellow couch covered in thick plastic. She gathered several other neighbors and they poured us tea and offered us snacks. She leaned in, pinioned me with her eyes, and, her voice rising two octaves, began reciting the litany of their complaints: The outdoor seating of the bars forced the cars normally parked on the sidewalk into the bike lane, which forced the bikes into the lanes of movingtraffic, which made the whole street such a snarl that elderly people were afraid to cross it to get to the vegetable market on the other side.
    â€œLast year a man, and not just any man but one who was deemed a model worker by his work unit, was hit crossing the street and now he has to walk with a cane! How can they treat the
laobaixing
this way? Is this just? Is it, Reporter Wang?”
    I shook my head no as I scribbled furious notes. The
laobaixing
, or the “old hundred surnames,” were everyday Chinese people who had a reputation for getting the short end of the stick. She sounded just like my relatives, and unlike with the bar owners I had no trouble understanding her.
    â€œIs that all?” asked Jade.
    â€œThen there is the urination. And the noise. There are bands playing and people yelling all night.”
    â€œWho
bang-bang
break bottles everywhere!” said the woman from outside.
    â€œSchoolchildren are being kept awake at night and their grades are falling. We have to keep the windows closed in the sweltering weather or buy an air conditioner, and who can afford an air conditioner? And poor Teacher Ma with the heart trouble. She came home from heart surgery last summer and wanted to open the windows to air out her apartment but couldn’t because of the noise. It was so hot in her apartment that she died of a heart attack!” She took a deep breath and went on. “You know what the locals call this place? A red-light district. There are prostitutes everywhere, and beggars and flower sellers. I really sympathize with the girls who are being hurt by this.”
    Her husband interjected. “Would a decent girl be out at dawn?”
    â€œI tell you none of us are sleeping,” she said. “The bar owners don’t sleep because they’re earning money. The local residents don’t sleep because it’s too noisy. The reporters don’t sleep because they are investigating. The cadres in the local council, now they sleep well.”
    â€œAh ya, why are you always repeating what you hear on the TV news?” asked her husband.
    My head was spinning from the verbal ping-pong and the intensity of their emotions.
    â€œSo you wrote a petition?” I asked.
    They pulled out a copy of the petition they had presented to the local management commission and the press. Signed by hundreds of residents, it detailed their grievances about the traffic, the neon lights, the noise, the lack of public bathrooms, the trash, and the shame of having little Chinese children running after foreigners for money and said that if Beijing hoped to become a “cultured and sanitary city,” that Sanlitun was a blot on their reputation. If no action was taken, they threatened to form a delegation and visit the State Council.
The State Council would squash these grannies,
I thought.
    â€œAren’t you afraid of being punished for speaking out?”
    â€œIf we don’t say anything, no one will do anything,” said a