Read Online Beijing Coma by Ma Jian - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ma Jian
Tags: Literary, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Contemporary Fiction, History & Criticism, Asian, Criticism & Theory, Regional & Cultural
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her red down jacket. We hadn’t spoken to each other since the police had taken us in for questioning.
The headmaster told her to remove her hat. ‘Look at this, students! A high school student wearing nail varnish and rouge! What a disgrace!’ He ran his finger down her cheek, then removed his glasses and examined it closely, searching for traces of rouge.
Finding nothing there, he then rubbed Lulu’s mouth, and this time, despite his poor eyesight, he was able to detect some colour on his finger. ‘Red lipstick? This is a serious case of “bourgeois liberalism”, young girl! How can you hope to join the revolutionary classes after you leave school if you put stuff like this on your face? And look at these waves in your hair. Are you trying to turn yourself into a curly-haired lapdog of imperialist America?’
I wanted to disappear into the ground. I’d never imagined that my actions would get Lulu into so much trouble. The thousands of students in the football pitch who were staring at Lulu’s red lips opened their mouths and let out mocking cries of derision.
After my first trip to Guangzhou, I was able to buy a television, a new bicycle for my brother and a rayon coat and nylon umbrella for my mother.
After my second trip, I came back to Beijing with twenty pirated tapes of romantic ballads sung by the ‘decadent’ Taiwanese singer, Deng Lijun, and made more than two thousand yuan selling them on the black market. I also brought over a thousand cigarette lighters with pictures of naked women stuck onto them. They’d cost me five fen each in Guangzhou, and I was able to sell them for ten times the price in Beijing. I asked the vendor I’d bought them from to post me some more, but he was arrested for trading in obscene products and sentenced to five years in jail.
On my last visit to Guangzhou, I bought twenty copies of the Hong Kong edition of Playboy magazine, and posted them to Beijing wrapped inside a long cotton dress. On the train back, a man from Hunan Province who was sitting next to me was arrested for possession of pornographic playing cards. He’d hidden the cards in a shoebox. When two police officers strolling down the carriage spotted the box on the floor and asked him whom it belonged to, he was too afraid to speak. The officers opened the box, and after they saw what was inside, they put him in handcuffs and dragged him off the train. On his seat he’d left behind a copy of The Book of Mountains and Seas – the book I’d loved so much as a child. I put it in my bag then ate the packet of Silly Boy sunflower seeds that he’d also left behind.
Like a prisoner in an execution chamber, you look back on the life which could end at any moment.
The basal cells of my nasal cavity’s olfactory organ begin to reconnect intermittently with the surrounding nerve fibres. I inhale slowly through my nostrils, and for a second catch a faint whiff of orange peel.
I listen intently for any noise that might help me form a clearer picture of my surroundings. When I first became aware of this hospital, I couldn’t hear a thing. I felt as though I’d sunk to the bottom of the sea. Only the beat of my heart told me that my body hadn’t finished dying yet.
I think back to the morning I left home to go to university for the first time. I woke up on the iron bed. Because I’d suddenly shot up to 1.8 metres, my mother had swapped rooms with me.
In just six months of private study, I’d completed the entire Year Twelve science course, and thanks to preferential treatment given to students with relatives abroad, I’d managed to gain a place at Southern University in Guangzhou City to study for a degree in biology. I’d visited the university on my last trip to the city. Many students from Hong Kong and Macao studied there, and the academic requirements weren’t too high.
My mother handed me a fried dough stick and said, ‘You must study hard. There’s no point going to university unless you get a
The headmaster told her to remove her hat. ‘Look at this, students! A high school student wearing nail varnish and rouge! What a disgrace!’ He ran his finger down her cheek, then removed his glasses and examined it closely, searching for traces of rouge.
Finding nothing there, he then rubbed Lulu’s mouth, and this time, despite his poor eyesight, he was able to detect some colour on his finger. ‘Red lipstick? This is a serious case of “bourgeois liberalism”, young girl! How can you hope to join the revolutionary classes after you leave school if you put stuff like this on your face? And look at these waves in your hair. Are you trying to turn yourself into a curly-haired lapdog of imperialist America?’
I wanted to disappear into the ground. I’d never imagined that my actions would get Lulu into so much trouble. The thousands of students in the football pitch who were staring at Lulu’s red lips opened their mouths and let out mocking cries of derision.
After my first trip to Guangzhou, I was able to buy a television, a new bicycle for my brother and a rayon coat and nylon umbrella for my mother.
After my second trip, I came back to Beijing with twenty pirated tapes of romantic ballads sung by the ‘decadent’ Taiwanese singer, Deng Lijun, and made more than two thousand yuan selling them on the black market. I also brought over a thousand cigarette lighters with pictures of naked women stuck onto them. They’d cost me five fen each in Guangzhou, and I was able to sell them for ten times the price in Beijing. I asked the vendor I’d bought them from to post me some more, but he was arrested for trading in obscene products and sentenced to five years in jail.
On my last visit to Guangzhou, I bought twenty copies of the Hong Kong edition of Playboy magazine, and posted them to Beijing wrapped inside a long cotton dress. On the train back, a man from Hunan Province who was sitting next to me was arrested for possession of pornographic playing cards. He’d hidden the cards in a shoebox. When two police officers strolling down the carriage spotted the box on the floor and asked him whom it belonged to, he was too afraid to speak. The officers opened the box, and after they saw what was inside, they put him in handcuffs and dragged him off the train. On his seat he’d left behind a copy of The Book of Mountains and Seas – the book I’d loved so much as a child. I put it in my bag then ate the packet of Silly Boy sunflower seeds that he’d also left behind.
Like a prisoner in an execution chamber, you look back on the life which could end at any moment.
The basal cells of my nasal cavity’s olfactory organ begin to reconnect intermittently with the surrounding nerve fibres. I inhale slowly through my nostrils, and for a second catch a faint whiff of orange peel.
I listen intently for any noise that might help me form a clearer picture of my surroundings. When I first became aware of this hospital, I couldn’t hear a thing. I felt as though I’d sunk to the bottom of the sea. Only the beat of my heart told me that my body hadn’t finished dying yet.
I think back to the morning I left home to go to university for the first time. I woke up on the iron bed. Because I’d suddenly shot up to 1.8 metres, my mother had swapped rooms with me.
In just six months of private study, I’d completed the entire Year Twelve science course, and thanks to preferential treatment given to students with relatives abroad, I’d managed to gain a place at Southern University in Guangzhou City to study for a degree in biology. I’d visited the university on my last trip to the city. Many students from Hong Kong and Macao studied there, and the academic requirements weren’t too high.
My mother handed me a fried dough stick and said, ‘You must study hard. There’s no point going to university unless you get a
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