致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第三章 上帝的手术刀 Chapter 3 The Scalpel of God
Part 4.3
"Could you describe a bit what Guo Qingqing looked like after the operation?"
Catherine gives a big stretch, and looks at me with a rather comical expression. "I can't, I'm afraid, but if one day you ever see some woman with eyebrows like of your Chinese state television stars and the breasts and butt of a Hong Kong glamour queen, it might just be Guo Qingqing. Just remember, the Guo Qingqing you remember is gone, and not just in appearance; deep down, in her soul, she's not the Guo Qingqing you used to know."
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Coming out from Catherine's home, both my legs have gone like jello. Tales of ghosts or the supernatural never used to have this effect on me. And so, I hobble to the Brooklyn bridge, and sit there with an empty mind, looking towards Manhattan, sitting there like I had years earlier, when I was studying here. Back then, whenever I had too much on my mind, I'd come sit down beside the Hudson river, just sitting here, waiting for the sunlight to slowly fade[ into darkness] and the lights to start showing in the windows of the skyscrapers all around. I thought of all the stories there must be behind each of those windows, how much joy and worry. I'd think like this until my mind would become as calm as the river I saw before me.
I get up and head to the phone booth nearby to phone my parents, tell them I'm coming home, then phone Liu Mingwei in Washington, to tell him I won't be coming. What my parents tell me is upsetting: just after I left, the Guangzhou Industry and Supervision Bureaus shut down the Pan's corporation, proclaiming the Pan's Nutritious Oral Tonic to have none of the effects advertised by company, and Ah Hua has been laying low, afraid to run into my parents. It's hard hearing that my parents have just found out they'd been taken advantage of again, and twice as desolate knowing that I won't be able to see Ah Hua when I get back. Hearing my parents' clearly aged voices on the phone puts me at an even greater loss. Then Liu Mingwei answers my call and gets worked up while chewing me out, blaming me for not telling him beforehand that I'd be coming to the States. There's nothing much I can say, but before I even get a chance to explain, he's already decided to drive in from Washington, first thing in the morning.
4.26.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (4.2)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第三章 上帝的手术刀 Chapter 3 The Scalpel of God
Part 4.2
Within just a few days of opening, business at the clinic was already taking off. Most of the time, Mike just did the more conventional kinds of cosmetic surgery: breast enlargement, liposuction, butt lifts, rib removal, penis extensions, double eyelids and double chins. Each time seeing those women come sneaking in, leaving with their heads and chests held high, I yearned to look like they did, but every time I mentioned to Mike that I wanted a bigger this or a smaller that he'd just chuckle it off and tell me to be patient. But I also noticed that though Mike was no longer a doctor, in between these routine operations, he was still spending a lot of time researching surgical skin and body construction procedures.
Then came one day, I remember it was one August four years ago. We'd just arrived at the office and I was doing the morning coffee, when there came a soft knock at the door. Pushing it open was a young Asian woman who looked about thirty, very carefully composed: an almond-shaped face, a tiny nose with the slightest upward curve, slivers for lips and, despite her single eyelids, full, large eyes of sharply defined black on white. The only thing was that she looked a little tired. I asked her to sit and she introduced herself, wanting to know more about our clinic. She said her name was Qingqing Guo, so I guess that'd be Guo Qingqing for you Chinese. As we talked, I could feel she was quite familiar with the plastic surgery circle in New York and had obviously done her homework. When she finally said she wanted to speak directly to the chief surgeon Mike, I said that this was out of the question, that Mike's schedule was booked solid for the next six months and he barely had time for his surgeries, so how could he find the time to personally greet clients? Just then Mike happened to pop in to ask about one upcoming operation, and when heard this part of our conversation, stopped to asked this Ms. Guo what she needed to talk to him about.
This Guo Qingqing saw her chance, so she threw her request out, for him to completely change her body from head to toe. By completely, she emphasized, she meant redo each part to the be the best of its kind.
I hadn't even even fully understood what this Qingqing woman wanted when I saw Mike's shoulders twitch a few times. I kept quiet, because I know that Mike's body only twitches like this when he gets quite excited. Then Guo Qingqing said money wasn't a problem as she had just received a large divorce settlement.
"What about time?" Mike asked.
"What do you mean?"
"If we do like you say, it's not just money but a matter of time as well. You're at least going to need over twenty separate operations in total, and time to recover after each one. Under normal circumstances, something like this would take about a year and a half, most of which time you're going to have to spend like any surgery patient would, in bed." As Mike answered her questions, I got even more confused. The kind of full body cosmetic redesign that she's talking about is unheard of. But as he kept answering her questions, especially seeing that Mike didn't even need to think them over, I suddenly began to feel that he had always been waiting for someone like Ms. Guo to come along, even that Mike's only reason for opening the clinic was to wait for a day just like this.
Of course, it didn't take me long to clue in. Ever since Mike had quit at the hospital, he had clearly been waiting for this day. The reason he could never seem to have raised enough breasts, suction enough fat or remove enough tattoos was because all along he had been trying to perfect his surgical skills, waiting for the day when he could use his own scalpel to fully change somebody's entire appearance. Naturally, such an opportunity was rare. First he'd need someone with about a million dollars to spend on the twenty-something operations this would require with about a hundred different knives, and secondly, she'd need to have a year and a half to spare. Even rarer is that she'd need superhuman will to withstand the continuous pain. When Mike explained all this to Qingqing and she still seemed determined to go through with it, it all seemed a little inconceivable. I kept trying to make eye contact with Mike, hoping he wouldn't get too excited and make Ms. Guo any promises, but then he asked her to come back again the next day.
That night, Mike made love to me like he'd gone insane. We don't usually speak when we have sex, but this time Mike was kissing me and ceaselessly caressing me all over, muttering to himself the size of each spot as he stroked it, except only the sizes one finds on the most beautiful women on earth. Then when he came, he almost roared as he told me that he could make each part of my body as sexy and pretty as any other on earth. Completely remaking a person's appearance, Mike said, whether in theory or in practice, was completely feasible, only that since the birth of the cosmetic surgery industry, nobody had ever tried it. He—Mike, would be the first! But because we didn't have the money, he said, or the time, that's why he hadn't started first on me. But now Guo Qingqing had come along at exactly the right time. He wouldn't admit, though, to using Guo Qingqing as an experiment. Instead, Mike said that in two years, after Guo's work was finished, that it would be my turn to be remoulded. The more Mike went on, the more excited he got, finally turning over and pressing me down again beneath his body, panting, "Honey, just you wait, when the time comes I'm gonna make you so pretty it'll put all the stars in Hollywood to shame." Saying this, he excitedly started pumping away again. In the end I agreed to Mike's plan. After all, no matter what he did, it was all for me. When Mike came a second time, exhausted and bent over my body, I felt my luck was just like my womb then, swollen and full[overflowing?].
The next day, Guo Qingqing showed up right on time and everyone hit it off well. Because the sheer scale and medical techniques involved in the plan were unprecendented, we had to operate in secret, unable to even write up a contract. We explained this to Guo Qingqing. She agreed, and so we got started.
That day, we immediately began searching the internet, collecting portraits and body stats of Eastern celebrities, which took quite some time. Our understanding of what passes for a beautiful woman over there in Asia isn't that great, so in the end we had to just let Guo Qingqing choose, and she decided to go with Vicki Zhao's eyebrows, Gong Li's butt and lips and Veronica Yip's breasts and waist.
Then in the operating room, Guo Qingqing stripped down naked, first pacing back and forth, then lying down perfectly still, later swaying from left to right, everything we needed to get all of her into the computer. The three of us sat down afterwards to put all the butts, boobs, noses, eyebrows and everything we had chosen from what we thought were all the most beautiful women in Asia, pasting them one-by-one onto Guo Qingqing's body in the computer. Then as we watched the computer compile the new Guo Qingqing, an Oriental beauty appeared, so perfect that even women would swoon upon seeing her. Looking back at the real Guo Qingqing, I only felt troubled. The woman I saw on the computer screen was no longer Guo Qingqing, but a completely different person. Just to be beautiful, I thought at the time, would I be willing to become a complete stranger? Though, this thought didn't last long. Seeing the two of them so excited they were hardly breathing, so red-faced, I was struck with another thought. Thinking back now, no matter if you're speaking of the Eastern standard of beauty or the Western, Guo Qingqing could have been described as quite beautiful to begin with. The memory's not so clear now; that was the last time I saw the body of the person called Guo Qingqing.
Starting the next day, the surgery began, step by step. The first day we sliced open her stomach, removed some body fat. A few days later we took out a pair of ribs, to bring her waist down to the average size for Miss World contestants. She eventually had three ribs taken out, and by the end, she stood almost fully double-jointed. When the wounds got better, work started on her calves, and then her chest, shoulders and arms. Every day was quite bloody.
If only things had been so simple. Day by day, as Guo Qingqing disappeared and the person Mike was creating gradually took shape, the more I noticed things that just didn't seem right. When I said Mike had thrown his whole being into this clinic, forgetting to eat or sleep, now he was putting everything into this new body; he didn't just stop eating or sleeping, but became unstable too. If he went more than a day without seeing this new Ms. Guo, he'd get abnormally jittery. But this wasn't what began to scare me, what scared me the most were Guo Qingqing's eyes. How can I describe them... You know how eyes are the one part of the body that plastic surgery can't change? That they're the windows to a body's soul? Never mind all the cosmetic surgeries I've seen, the face lifts, the rhinoplasties, you just need to see their eyes to know it's still the same person underneath. But Guo Qingqing was completely different. As the days went by, I noticed the look in her eyes slowly changing until, finally, she seemed like a completely separate person. The more time I spent with her, the stranger I noticed the look in Guo Qingqing's eyes had become, and I was afraid. The way I always saw it, a body and a soul are indivisible, and that the kind of soul you get was given to match your body. Right? But as Mike transformed Guo Qingqing's body, the soul inside clearly became affected somehow. The worst part was seeing Mike bewitched by the new soul. Mike began using examinations as excuses to watch Guo Qingqing undress or lie naked. You have to know, the Guo Qingqing at this point, after having undergone so much careful work beneath Mike's scalpel, even with her clothes on was enough to seduce anyone. When she took her clothes off, with her new clear, sculptured skin and nearly perfect body ratio, not to mention her exquisitely carved face, even I wanted to wrap my arms around her. So the foolish and drunken look that would appear on Mike's face came as no surprise. Ah, what else could I do? I was willing to believe that Mike had fallen in love with his own surgical craftmanship, and not with his creation itself.
As the more unrecognizable Guo Qingqing became, the more of a stranger Mike felt to me. Oh, how naive I was back then. I thought maybe we'd offended God, seeing as how it's him that creates all people. Around this time Mike also had become a bit muddled. Some of the things he'd say were shocking, talking about wanting to make real history out of all the sculptors of the past. He was sculpting a real human body, he said. Who would ever again sigh at a mere plaster statue? He also said that when he was done, all the stars in Hollywood would be ugly little ducklings in comparison, that he had been able to fulfill the mission to which the Declaration of Independence and God had proven unable, that he, Mike, had made it possible for people on earth to be truly equal.
On the morning of September 11th that year, I should have been first at the office to prepare some things, but as Guo Qingqing had a consultation scheduled for that day, Mike went himself earlier than usual. That's how he was, like he'd been possessed; everything revolved around his masterpiece, Guo Qingqing. That day, as terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, I was stuck in traffic on 52nd street on my way to work. When I heard the news: it's over, I thought, both Mike and Guo Qingqing are gone. Around noon, I got a call from Guo Qingqing. I told her, "Mike's in the clinic!"
"Oh no! He hasn't finished the work yet, what am I supposed to do now?!" This was the only reaction I ever heard Guo Qingqing have to Mike's death.
"Well, did the work get finished or not?" I can't help but interrupt Catherine's story, only to immediately feel it wasn't appropriate. Catherine glares at me, then shrugs her shoulders. "I'm not sure, because this project of Mike's was way beyond the traditional, even contemporary, allowed limits of medical science. Each day was a new exploration. The way Mike was so concentrated on it, I had no idea if he was done or not. He'd be tinkering with something one day, slicing something off the next, I was just so scared. Mike had already descended into madness. He didn't just want to [create people like God does]play God, he wanted to make a goddess! As time went on, Mike felt I didn't agree with his work, and eventually we hardly spoke at all."
"After 911, what happened to Guo Qingqing?" I ask, but not without feeling sorry. The main character in Catherine's story is Mike, but the story I want to hear centers around Guo Qingqing.
"Later, we talked a lot on the phone, but we only met once. She wanted to get all the records and medical documentation from the clinic."
"And you refused?"
"Why would I refuse? Because Guo Qingqing's cosmetic surgery case was so special, we were extraordinarily cautious with her therapy records, keeping copies only in the clinic's computer. Mike also kept copies of the related files on his laptop for easy reference in his research, but all this was buried in the ruins on 9-11."
"He didn't keep backups anywhere else? Like the—"
"I told you, Mike's work, sculpting away at people like they were made of plaster, would never have been accepted by the American medical or cosmetic surgery communities. This is why we kept the whole process completely secret. And as it was kept secret, with the harm being done to Guo Qingqing, there was also no way she could have bought health insurance or anything like that. Though, this was all carried out with Guo Qingqing's full understanding and signed agreement."
"But you must have kept a photo of Guo Qingqing, post-operation?" I'm still not willing to give up on any last remnants of hope.
"I didn't. Mike made sure that until the last of Guo Qingqing's operations were complete, it would be impossible for any photos of her to be leaked, so all photos taken during the year and a half were stored on his computer. Mike's plan was to wait until his work was finished, and then shock the world with just two photos: one of Guo Qingqing before the operation, and one of his masterpiece."
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第三章 上帝的手术刀 Chapter 3 The Scalpel of God
Part 4.2
Within just a few days of opening, business at the clinic was already taking off. Most of the time, Mike just did the more conventional kinds of cosmetic surgery: breast enlargement, liposuction, butt lifts, rib removal, penis extensions, double eyelids and double chins. Each time seeing those women come sneaking in, leaving with their heads and chests held high, I yearned to look like they did, but every time I mentioned to Mike that I wanted a bigger this or a smaller that he'd just chuckle it off and tell me to be patient. But I also noticed that though Mike was no longer a doctor, in between these routine operations, he was still spending a lot of time researching surgical skin and body construction procedures.
Then came one day, I remember it was one August four years ago. We'd just arrived at the office and I was doing the morning coffee, when there came a soft knock at the door. Pushing it open was a young Asian woman who looked about thirty, very carefully composed: an almond-shaped face, a tiny nose with the slightest upward curve, slivers for lips and, despite her single eyelids, full, large eyes of sharply defined black on white. The only thing was that she looked a little tired. I asked her to sit and she introduced herself, wanting to know more about our clinic. She said her name was Qingqing Guo, so I guess that'd be Guo Qingqing for you Chinese. As we talked, I could feel she was quite familiar with the plastic surgery circle in New York and had obviously done her homework. When she finally said she wanted to speak directly to the chief surgeon Mike, I said that this was out of the question, that Mike's schedule was booked solid for the next six months and he barely had time for his surgeries, so how could he find the time to personally greet clients? Just then Mike happened to pop in to ask about one upcoming operation, and when heard this part of our conversation, stopped to asked this Ms. Guo what she needed to talk to him about.
This Guo Qingqing saw her chance, so she threw her request out, for him to completely change her body from head to toe. By completely, she emphasized, she meant redo each part to the be the best of its kind.
I hadn't even even fully understood what this Qingqing woman wanted when I saw Mike's shoulders twitch a few times. I kept quiet, because I know that Mike's body only twitches like this when he gets quite excited. Then Guo Qingqing said money wasn't a problem as she had just received a large divorce settlement.
"What about time?" Mike asked.
"What do you mean?"
"If we do like you say, it's not just money but a matter of time as well. You're at least going to need over twenty separate operations in total, and time to recover after each one. Under normal circumstances, something like this would take about a year and a half, most of which time you're going to have to spend like any surgery patient would, in bed." As Mike answered her questions, I got even more confused. The kind of full body cosmetic redesign that she's talking about is unheard of. But as he kept answering her questions, especially seeing that Mike didn't even need to think them over, I suddenly began to feel that he had always been waiting for someone like Ms. Guo to come along, even that Mike's only reason for opening the clinic was to wait for a day just like this.
Of course, it didn't take me long to clue in. Ever since Mike had quit at the hospital, he had clearly been waiting for this day. The reason he could never seem to have raised enough breasts, suction enough fat or remove enough tattoos was because all along he had been trying to perfect his surgical skills, waiting for the day when he could use his own scalpel to fully change somebody's entire appearance. Naturally, such an opportunity was rare. First he'd need someone with about a million dollars to spend on the twenty-something operations this would require with about a hundred different knives, and secondly, she'd need to have a year and a half to spare. Even rarer is that she'd need superhuman will to withstand the continuous pain. When Mike explained all this to Qingqing and she still seemed determined to go through with it, it all seemed a little inconceivable. I kept trying to make eye contact with Mike, hoping he wouldn't get too excited and make Ms. Guo any promises, but then he asked her to come back again the next day.
That night, Mike made love to me like he'd gone insane. We don't usually speak when we have sex, but this time Mike was kissing me and ceaselessly caressing me all over, muttering to himself the size of each spot as he stroked it, except only the sizes one finds on the most beautiful women on earth. Then when he came, he almost roared as he told me that he could make each part of my body as sexy and pretty as any other on earth. Completely remaking a person's appearance, Mike said, whether in theory or in practice, was completely feasible, only that since the birth of the cosmetic surgery industry, nobody had ever tried it. He—Mike, would be the first! But because we didn't have the money, he said, or the time, that's why he hadn't started first on me. But now Guo Qingqing had come along at exactly the right time. He wouldn't admit, though, to using Guo Qingqing as an experiment. Instead, Mike said that in two years, after Guo's work was finished, that it would be my turn to be remoulded. The more Mike went on, the more excited he got, finally turning over and pressing me down again beneath his body, panting, "Honey, just you wait, when the time comes I'm gonna make you so pretty it'll put all the stars in Hollywood to shame." Saying this, he excitedly started pumping away again. In the end I agreed to Mike's plan. After all, no matter what he did, it was all for me. When Mike came a second time, exhausted and bent over my body, I felt my luck was just like my womb then, swollen and full[overflowing?].
The next day, Guo Qingqing showed up right on time and everyone hit it off well. Because the sheer scale and medical techniques involved in the plan were unprecendented, we had to operate in secret, unable to even write up a contract. We explained this to Guo Qingqing. She agreed, and so we got started.
That day, we immediately began searching the internet, collecting portraits and body stats of Eastern celebrities, which took quite some time. Our understanding of what passes for a beautiful woman over there in Asia isn't that great, so in the end we had to just let Guo Qingqing choose, and she decided to go with Vicki Zhao's eyebrows, Gong Li's butt and lips and Veronica Yip's breasts and waist.
Then in the operating room, Guo Qingqing stripped down naked, first pacing back and forth, then lying down perfectly still, later swaying from left to right, everything we needed to get all of her into the computer. The three of us sat down afterwards to put all the butts, boobs, noses, eyebrows and everything we had chosen from what we thought were all the most beautiful women in Asia, pasting them one-by-one onto Guo Qingqing's body in the computer. Then as we watched the computer compile the new Guo Qingqing, an Oriental beauty appeared, so perfect that even women would swoon upon seeing her. Looking back at the real Guo Qingqing, I only felt troubled. The woman I saw on the computer screen was no longer Guo Qingqing, but a completely different person. Just to be beautiful, I thought at the time, would I be willing to become a complete stranger? Though, this thought didn't last long. Seeing the two of them so excited they were hardly breathing, so red-faced, I was struck with another thought. Thinking back now, no matter if you're speaking of the Eastern standard of beauty or the Western, Guo Qingqing could have been described as quite beautiful to begin with. The memory's not so clear now; that was the last time I saw the body of the person called Guo Qingqing.
Starting the next day, the surgery began, step by step. The first day we sliced open her stomach, removed some body fat. A few days later we took out a pair of ribs, to bring her waist down to the average size for Miss World contestants. She eventually had three ribs taken out, and by the end, she stood almost fully double-jointed. When the wounds got better, work started on her calves, and then her chest, shoulders and arms. Every day was quite bloody.
If only things had been so simple. Day by day, as Guo Qingqing disappeared and the person Mike was creating gradually took shape, the more I noticed things that just didn't seem right. When I said Mike had thrown his whole being into this clinic, forgetting to eat or sleep, now he was putting everything into this new body; he didn't just stop eating or sleeping, but became unstable too. If he went more than a day without seeing this new Ms. Guo, he'd get abnormally jittery. But this wasn't what began to scare me, what scared me the most were Guo Qingqing's eyes. How can I describe them... You know how eyes are the one part of the body that plastic surgery can't change? That they're the windows to a body's soul? Never mind all the cosmetic surgeries I've seen, the face lifts, the rhinoplasties, you just need to see their eyes to know it's still the same person underneath. But Guo Qingqing was completely different. As the days went by, I noticed the look in her eyes slowly changing until, finally, she seemed like a completely separate person. The more time I spent with her, the stranger I noticed the look in Guo Qingqing's eyes had become, and I was afraid. The way I always saw it, a body and a soul are indivisible, and that the kind of soul you get was given to match your body. Right? But as Mike transformed Guo Qingqing's body, the soul inside clearly became affected somehow. The worst part was seeing Mike bewitched by the new soul. Mike began using examinations as excuses to watch Guo Qingqing undress or lie naked. You have to know, the Guo Qingqing at this point, after having undergone so much careful work beneath Mike's scalpel, even with her clothes on was enough to seduce anyone. When she took her clothes off, with her new clear, sculptured skin and nearly perfect body ratio, not to mention her exquisitely carved face, even I wanted to wrap my arms around her. So the foolish and drunken look that would appear on Mike's face came as no surprise. Ah, what else could I do? I was willing to believe that Mike had fallen in love with his own surgical craftmanship, and not with his creation itself.
As the more unrecognizable Guo Qingqing became, the more of a stranger Mike felt to me. Oh, how naive I was back then. I thought maybe we'd offended God, seeing as how it's him that creates all people. Around this time Mike also had become a bit muddled. Some of the things he'd say were shocking, talking about wanting to make real history out of all the sculptors of the past. He was sculpting a real human body, he said. Who would ever again sigh at a mere plaster statue? He also said that when he was done, all the stars in Hollywood would be ugly little ducklings in comparison, that he had been able to fulfill the mission to which the Declaration of Independence and God had proven unable, that he, Mike, had made it possible for people on earth to be truly equal.
On the morning of September 11th that year, I should have been first at the office to prepare some things, but as Guo Qingqing had a consultation scheduled for that day, Mike went himself earlier than usual. That's how he was, like he'd been possessed; everything revolved around his masterpiece, Guo Qingqing. That day, as terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, I was stuck in traffic on 52nd street on my way to work. When I heard the news: it's over, I thought, both Mike and Guo Qingqing are gone. Around noon, I got a call from Guo Qingqing. I told her, "Mike's in the clinic!"
"Oh no! He hasn't finished the work yet, what am I supposed to do now?!" This was the only reaction I ever heard Guo Qingqing have to Mike's death.
"Well, did the work get finished or not?" I can't help but interrupt Catherine's story, only to immediately feel it wasn't appropriate. Catherine glares at me, then shrugs her shoulders. "I'm not sure, because this project of Mike's was way beyond the traditional, even contemporary, allowed limits of medical science. Each day was a new exploration. The way Mike was so concentrated on it, I had no idea if he was done or not. He'd be tinkering with something one day, slicing something off the next, I was just so scared. Mike had already descended into madness. He didn't just want to [create people like God does]play God, he wanted to make a goddess! As time went on, Mike felt I didn't agree with his work, and eventually we hardly spoke at all."
"After 911, what happened to Guo Qingqing?" I ask, but not without feeling sorry. The main character in Catherine's story is Mike, but the story I want to hear centers around Guo Qingqing.
"Later, we talked a lot on the phone, but we only met once. She wanted to get all the records and medical documentation from the clinic."
"And you refused?"
"Why would I refuse? Because Guo Qingqing's cosmetic surgery case was so special, we were extraordinarily cautious with her therapy records, keeping copies only in the clinic's computer. Mike also kept copies of the related files on his laptop for easy reference in his research, but all this was buried in the ruins on 9-11."
"He didn't keep backups anywhere else? Like the—"
"I told you, Mike's work, sculpting away at people like they were made of plaster, would never have been accepted by the American medical or cosmetic surgery communities. This is why we kept the whole process completely secret. And as it was kept secret, with the harm being done to Guo Qingqing, there was also no way she could have bought health insurance or anything like that. Though, this was all carried out with Guo Qingqing's full understanding and signed agreement."
"But you must have kept a photo of Guo Qingqing, post-operation?" I'm still not willing to give up on any last remnants of hope.
"I didn't. Mike made sure that until the last of Guo Qingqing's operations were complete, it would be impossible for any photos of her to be leaked, so all photos taken during the year and a half were stored on his computer. Mike's plan was to wait until his work was finished, and then shock the world with just two photos: one of Guo Qingqing before the operation, and one of his masterpiece."
4.21.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (4.1)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第三章 上帝的手术刀 Chapter 3 The Scalpel of God
Part 4.1
Back when I was in New York studying at Columbia, I used all Sundays and public holidays to go around nearly every street in the city. It's the best way to get to know a city, and of course you also get your money's worth. Since then, whether it was when I went back to Beijing or off to Guangzhou, I use the same approach to find my way around. At the beginning, it was a bit exhausting and boring, but as I followed road after road, I grew more deeply with the city without even being aware of it, and this process of change from the quantitative to the qualitative was pretty much complete by my third worn-out pair of running shoes. Though I've only lived a few years in each of New York, Beijing and Guangzhou these three cities, I feel I know them just as well as any of their locals.
On my second day in New York, I pulled out the address to Catherine's place that Director Zhou had given me. I took a good look at it, then closed my eyes, more or less bringing to mind the look of the road and that of the residents there. The road is just a little street across and behind the Brooklyn bridge just three blocks to the left, situated in a ghetto in an borough with one of the highest concentrations of black people. As I made my way over, I felt a bit spooked; the buildings on both sides of the road didn't go any higher than four floors, and it was almost hard to find any that didn't have any broken windows. Walking down the street you have to be a bit careful or something might trip you up. What something? Well, that something could be some trash, or it could also be some drunk dude lying in the street, maybe even a junkie or a corpse. Sometimes things trip you up and you can't even tell what on earth it was. Except for these unknown somethings, the thing that left the deepest impression was the smell of death there and the lack of lifeforce in its residents, with their eyes like those of dead fish. All of this just just gave me an intense feeling of being in a far-off foreign land. I've been to a lot of cities in China, even to their so-called poor or vagrant areas, and though they're just as filled with trash, with unknown 'somethings' of their own, namely dilapidated housing or even iron huts, despite the smells there, the people's eyes at least give one a sense that hope still exists.
A thirty-something year old white woman who lives alone in a small apartment on this street, and I can already imagine just what kind of person and what kind of life. Coming out from the hotel, I find a taxi, and when I tell him the name of the street, the forty-something Afghani drive just sits there, doesn't start the car. I know he doesn't want to go, but when I repeat the address in standard New York English, he reluctantly starts the engine. On the way, he grumbles in English you have to stretch your ears out just to understand: 'whenever I go to this place every time I am losing money, it is very common for people to not pay, and the worse is when you get robbed. Sometimes you're lucky you can back out safely, but the car cannot avoid the bottles which drop down and smash.' Hearing him tell me this is really too much, so I agree to let him stop the car two blocks away and get out, taking the risking of walking in myself.
Catherine lives on the second floor of a run-down little three-story apartment building. Climbing up a wooden stairwell which looks like it would collapse if given a little push, I find the door. Probably because I phoned beforehand, I've barely just knocked when someone opens the door: "are you Yang, from China?"
It's a chubby white woman. I smile and nod as I push past her. As she lets me in she mockingly says, "standing here in front of the mirror, seeing this face and body of mine, I sure don't feel like like smiling, so what are you smiling at?"
I keep smiling politely at her.
I size up everything in the room, it's actually not that messy, probably because there's no furniture anywhere. Catherine's just the kind of Caucasian woman I'd imagined she'd be, which luckily wasn't as a skin-and-bones junkie or a cheap whore caked in make-up so thick some drops off her face every time she smiles. She's the kind of fat woman that's built solid like a German beer mug, arms as thick as my legs. Her chin is like a scrunched-up napkin hanging off her neck, swaying back and forth as she moves.
"Yang, help yourself, my home is your home. I don't have any tea, will pop do?"
"Sure, thanks." I take out the present I brought for her from China, handing it to her: "just a little something I thought you might like." Catherine takes the wrapped box and keenly rips it open. It's a Suzhou style Chinese silk scarf I went out of my way to get. She anxiously wraps the scarf around her fat neck, and I breathe freely when I see she manages to tie the scarf's ends together.
"Yang, do you think I'm fat?" Without even waiting for my response, she laughs: "you don't need to answer that, I don't want to hear you say 'no, not at all, you look great,' because you'll just be laughing inside. I'm fat and I know it." She has a little trouble bending down to pull a yellowing photo album out from under the coffee table. "Yang, these are all photos of what I used to look like, take a look if you want."
I open the album and flip through a few pages, noticing the same slim, blonde young woman in each photo. I know this is the old Catherine, but I still try and hide the awkwardness of seeing these, because I don't know what I ought to say.
"Yang, that's what I used to look like. Back then, I'd put a picture of myself in every week, but I stopped after 9-11. These last three years I haven't let anyone take my picture. You think I was pretty, don't you?"
Catherine's questions are in the past tense, so I just politely answer in the present: "you look good."
"Yeah, I looked really good back then; even though I didn't have much money, I pinched and saved enough to rent a place in the trendy area downtown. I still had hopes then. Looking like I do in those photos was one of those hopes; the other was him. Now, I have neither; everything makes sense to me now, not that it does me any good." Catherine lets out a deep, futile sigh. She stops, looks scrutinizingly at me for a minute, then asks: "Yang, tell me, back in your country, how do you look?"
At first, I can't tell what she's asking me; I'm confused, don't know how to answer. Catherine rephrases, and then I understand. It's an interesting question, so I tell her the truth, that a look like mine is extremely common in China, that at 5'7" I'm the average height for a Chinese man, that my eyes aren't so big, and they don't have double eyelids, that statistics show roughly two-thirds of Chinese men my age don't have double eyelids. My face shape is also quite common, there must be five or six hundred million people in China with this face, the kind you'll never read about in Chinese literature: not friendly, but not wicked either. Then there's my body. There was a time when I used to work out like a madman, but I grew up only able to eat meat once or twice a month and now you can't tell for looking that I'd ever been to to a gym in my life.
Hearing this, Catherine chuckles and says, candidly, "well, if you really want to stand out from others, you're just gonna have put in twice the effort." Then she adds, "I don't know what it's like over there in China, but from what I've seen on TV, whether it's your Communist or government officials, they all look pretty tall, on average at least more than 5'9", and every one of them seems to have two eyelids. Ha ha."
"But then again," Catherine sounds a bit serious, "here in America we really judge people by the way they look. Just go down to any high-class spot and you can see what I mean. There was some statistic a while back, it said all the top executives of the five hundred biggest corporations in the world all rate at above-average appearance. Especially for women. If a woman wants to get ahead, the first and most important thing she needs isn't talent, but looks. You know, the money we spend on make-up and facelifts each year here in America by far exceeds the amount we spend on education. They say God created people as equal, and the American constitution states that all people are born equal, but it's all bullshit. That what's-his-face of mine, he didn't buy into any of that, he said his job was to complete the unfinished causes of God and the American Constitution."
I yawn and stretch, then sit up; Catherine has finally reached the crux of the matter. Though I only gave her a simple reason for my visit over the phone earlier, since our meeting began this nearly two hundred pound heavy woman has known straight through what the real subject is, that being the guy she mentioned: Mike, both her former employer and lover.
"Yang, can you tell why it is you want to know more about him and I?" The way Catherine suddenly changes the subject, I guess she's worried about divulging her clients' information.
"Like I told you on the phone, I lost my job recently, my girlfriend just died, and then I was arrested by the Chinese police and locked up in prison for a few weeks. All of sudden I felt quite lost, things seemed meaningless. Over the last while, I've found that only old memories give me the strength to pull myself back together. You know, Guo Qingqing and I went to college together. I don't know if you could say she was my first true love, but I've always been in love with her, though I don't know if she loved me back. After working for a few years following graduation, the two of us happened to come to New York at the same time to do our Masters, but for a variety of reasons we just weren't able to stay together. A while after that, I suddenly decided to look her up, though at the time I still wasn't sure what I was going to do when I found her. I would have at least asked one question, though: whether or not she ever did love me during those years."
I haven't finished talking, but Catherine's eyes have already started to well up with tears, and she mumbles to herself: "did you ever love me? Did you ever love me?" Her voice is actually pleasing to the ears; if only she didn't look like a human version of Dumbo, I could easily imagined it was one of those loving, passionate heroines from Chinese martial arts novels speaking, with their sighs that seem to promise unconditional love. I see there's no need for me to say more. Sure enough, Catherine gets up to go to the bathroom and when she sits back down, spends two hours telling me the following story.
Yang, I might not be all that pretty, but I'm not ugly either. Look at the photos, not how I look today, and you'll see what I mean. Most importantly, I'm not stupid. Do you know which kind of men are the most handsome and succesful? I'll tell you, they're the ones in the courtrooms and hospitals, all the hunky young lawyers and medical interns. You wanna find yourself a lawyer, you can try taking someone to court, but it wouldn't be that much fun. Doctors, though, they're different; you can just say you're not feeling well and you're in. That's how I met Mike, in Queen's Hospital. Oh, how stylish and handsome he was. And professional. He was so set on medical research, spending all his time with seniors and patients, he was almost thirty and still a bachelor. The first time I went to see him I was stuck on him, and from then on I couldn't help but pretend to be constantly sick, just so I could see him again. You know he's a surgeon, and faking diseases that need surgeons' treatment isn't so easy. Things got pretty twisted for me back then.
With me taking the initiative, Mike and I quickly got it on. It was only later that I saw we weren't actually all that suited for each other. He wasn't just hunky and handsome with one of the highest-paying professions there is, he was as respected as one can get in America. And me? Of average looks, no steady job, I was pretty bummed for a while. When Mike found out why, he couldn't stop laughing. He never paid any attention to my looks, he told me, but that even if he did, he still wouldn't mind. He can say what he likes, but while I knew that marrying a man like this would only one day end up with me regretful and hurting, one the other hand, not marrying him, starting right there and then, would mean regret and hurt, day in and day out. So we got married. After that, we still often talked about people's looks, and from looks to jobs, success and destiny. In the end we agreed, that in this world looks are still the most important; the better you look, the easier it is to get ahead, and with the right looks, you're pretty much set for life. You could even, I said, find yourself a good husband or wife. Aye, if only I'd known then how deeply all this talk would affect Mike. He went from deep consideration of all this, to action. One day, he held me as we sat on the sofa and said:
"Honey, I'm thinking about quitting, and opening up a plastic surgery clinic."
So shocked I almost jumped up, because you know how respectable being a doctor is, and that the public sees plastic surgery as some sort of heresy. Mike's explained, saying the main reasons society doesn't accept plastic surgery lie with outdated concepts and religious retraints. In the East, the common view is that skin and hair are given to us by our parents and can't be changed, while in the West, things used to be bound by the philosophy of God's creation of man; you were the way God made you. Later, the West started pushing for freedom and democracy, coming up with the Declaration of Independence and all people being created equal. Nothing wrong with that. But, no matter how righteous Eastern sages, God, or the Declaration of Independence all appear to be, they still overlook an injustice that even a blind man can see: the adults who after just three months see their baby is going to be attractive and smile to themselves; the charming little boys and girls who get favored by their teachers; all the successful women in this world most of whom get by on their breasts and not their brains. Mike said his plan to open a plastic surgery clinic came from wanting to complete the unfinished business of God and the American Constitution.
Mike said his research into body structure and dermatology had gone so deep that he didn't just know how to use a scalpel to completely change a person's appearance, but also that with the development of modern medicine, full-body cosmetic surgery would have almost no side effects. He gave an example: remember when you were a kid all the places on your body that got hurt, cut or even broken? And what side effects do you see now?
I was totally persuaded by Mike; we made our minds up and we went to it. Cosmetic surgery clinics aren't medical care facilities, so I just had to take a crash course in nursing, and then I was a clinic nurse. Mike had been putting money away for a few years already, so we chose to open the clinic on the sixty-ninth floor of the North tower of the World Trade Center. As far as we knew, there were a few clinics inside the twin towers, but this was the only one doing cosmetic surgery.
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第三章 上帝的手术刀 Chapter 3 The Scalpel of God
Part 4.1
Back when I was in New York studying at Columbia, I used all Sundays and public holidays to go around nearly every street in the city. It's the best way to get to know a city, and of course you also get your money's worth. Since then, whether it was when I went back to Beijing or off to Guangzhou, I use the same approach to find my way around. At the beginning, it was a bit exhausting and boring, but as I followed road after road, I grew more deeply with the city without even being aware of it, and this process of change from the quantitative to the qualitative was pretty much complete by my third worn-out pair of running shoes. Though I've only lived a few years in each of New York, Beijing and Guangzhou these three cities, I feel I know them just as well as any of their locals.
On my second day in New York, I pulled out the address to Catherine's place that Director Zhou had given me. I took a good look at it, then closed my eyes, more or less bringing to mind the look of the road and that of the residents there. The road is just a little street across and behind the Brooklyn bridge just three blocks to the left, situated in a ghetto in an borough with one of the highest concentrations of black people. As I made my way over, I felt a bit spooked; the buildings on both sides of the road didn't go any higher than four floors, and it was almost hard to find any that didn't have any broken windows. Walking down the street you have to be a bit careful or something might trip you up. What something? Well, that something could be some trash, or it could also be some drunk dude lying in the street, maybe even a junkie or a corpse. Sometimes things trip you up and you can't even tell what on earth it was. Except for these unknown somethings, the thing that left the deepest impression was the smell of death there and the lack of lifeforce in its residents, with their eyes like those of dead fish. All of this just just gave me an intense feeling of being in a far-off foreign land. I've been to a lot of cities in China, even to their so-called poor or vagrant areas, and though they're just as filled with trash, with unknown 'somethings' of their own, namely dilapidated housing or even iron huts, despite the smells there, the people's eyes at least give one a sense that hope still exists.
A thirty-something year old white woman who lives alone in a small apartment on this street, and I can already imagine just what kind of person and what kind of life. Coming out from the hotel, I find a taxi, and when I tell him the name of the street, the forty-something Afghani drive just sits there, doesn't start the car. I know he doesn't want to go, but when I repeat the address in standard New York English, he reluctantly starts the engine. On the way, he grumbles in English you have to stretch your ears out just to understand: 'whenever I go to this place every time I am losing money, it is very common for people to not pay, and the worse is when you get robbed. Sometimes you're lucky you can back out safely, but the car cannot avoid the bottles which drop down and smash.' Hearing him tell me this is really too much, so I agree to let him stop the car two blocks away and get out, taking the risking of walking in myself.
Catherine lives on the second floor of a run-down little three-story apartment building. Climbing up a wooden stairwell which looks like it would collapse if given a little push, I find the door. Probably because I phoned beforehand, I've barely just knocked when someone opens the door: "are you Yang, from China?"
It's a chubby white woman. I smile and nod as I push past her. As she lets me in she mockingly says, "standing here in front of the mirror, seeing this face and body of mine, I sure don't feel like like smiling, so what are you smiling at?"
I keep smiling politely at her.
I size up everything in the room, it's actually not that messy, probably because there's no furniture anywhere. Catherine's just the kind of Caucasian woman I'd imagined she'd be, which luckily wasn't as a skin-and-bones junkie or a cheap whore caked in make-up so thick some drops off her face every time she smiles. She's the kind of fat woman that's built solid like a German beer mug, arms as thick as my legs. Her chin is like a scrunched-up napkin hanging off her neck, swaying back and forth as she moves.
"Yang, help yourself, my home is your home. I don't have any tea, will pop do?"
"Sure, thanks." I take out the present I brought for her from China, handing it to her: "just a little something I thought you might like." Catherine takes the wrapped box and keenly rips it open. It's a Suzhou style Chinese silk scarf I went out of my way to get. She anxiously wraps the scarf around her fat neck, and I breathe freely when I see she manages to tie the scarf's ends together.
"Yang, do you think I'm fat?" Without even waiting for my response, she laughs: "you don't need to answer that, I don't want to hear you say 'no, not at all, you look great,' because you'll just be laughing inside. I'm fat and I know it." She has a little trouble bending down to pull a yellowing photo album out from under the coffee table. "Yang, these are all photos of what I used to look like, take a look if you want."
I open the album and flip through a few pages, noticing the same slim, blonde young woman in each photo. I know this is the old Catherine, but I still try and hide the awkwardness of seeing these, because I don't know what I ought to say.
"Yang, that's what I used to look like. Back then, I'd put a picture of myself in every week, but I stopped after 9-11. These last three years I haven't let anyone take my picture. You think I was pretty, don't you?"
Catherine's questions are in the past tense, so I just politely answer in the present: "you look good."
"Yeah, I looked really good back then; even though I didn't have much money, I pinched and saved enough to rent a place in the trendy area downtown. I still had hopes then. Looking like I do in those photos was one of those hopes; the other was him. Now, I have neither; everything makes sense to me now, not that it does me any good." Catherine lets out a deep, futile sigh. She stops, looks scrutinizingly at me for a minute, then asks: "Yang, tell me, back in your country, how do you look?"
At first, I can't tell what she's asking me; I'm confused, don't know how to answer. Catherine rephrases, and then I understand. It's an interesting question, so I tell her the truth, that a look like mine is extremely common in China, that at 5'7" I'm the average height for a Chinese man, that my eyes aren't so big, and they don't have double eyelids, that statistics show roughly two-thirds of Chinese men my age don't have double eyelids. My face shape is also quite common, there must be five or six hundred million people in China with this face, the kind you'll never read about in Chinese literature: not friendly, but not wicked either. Then there's my body. There was a time when I used to work out like a madman, but I grew up only able to eat meat once or twice a month and now you can't tell for looking that I'd ever been to to a gym in my life.
Hearing this, Catherine chuckles and says, candidly, "well, if you really want to stand out from others, you're just gonna have put in twice the effort." Then she adds, "I don't know what it's like over there in China, but from what I've seen on TV, whether it's your Communist or government officials, they all look pretty tall, on average at least more than 5'9", and every one of them seems to have two eyelids. Ha ha."
"But then again," Catherine sounds a bit serious, "here in America we really judge people by the way they look. Just go down to any high-class spot and you can see what I mean. There was some statistic a while back, it said all the top executives of the five hundred biggest corporations in the world all rate at above-average appearance. Especially for women. If a woman wants to get ahead, the first and most important thing she needs isn't talent, but looks. You know, the money we spend on make-up and facelifts each year here in America by far exceeds the amount we spend on education. They say God created people as equal, and the American constitution states that all people are born equal, but it's all bullshit. That what's-his-face of mine, he didn't buy into any of that, he said his job was to complete the unfinished causes of God and the American Constitution."
I yawn and stretch, then sit up; Catherine has finally reached the crux of the matter. Though I only gave her a simple reason for my visit over the phone earlier, since our meeting began this nearly two hundred pound heavy woman has known straight through what the real subject is, that being the guy she mentioned: Mike, both her former employer and lover.
"Yang, can you tell why it is you want to know more about him and I?" The way Catherine suddenly changes the subject, I guess she's worried about divulging her clients' information.
"Like I told you on the phone, I lost my job recently, my girlfriend just died, and then I was arrested by the Chinese police and locked up in prison for a few weeks. All of sudden I felt quite lost, things seemed meaningless. Over the last while, I've found that only old memories give me the strength to pull myself back together. You know, Guo Qingqing and I went to college together. I don't know if you could say she was my first true love, but I've always been in love with her, though I don't know if she loved me back. After working for a few years following graduation, the two of us happened to come to New York at the same time to do our Masters, but for a variety of reasons we just weren't able to stay together. A while after that, I suddenly decided to look her up, though at the time I still wasn't sure what I was going to do when I found her. I would have at least asked one question, though: whether or not she ever did love me during those years."
I haven't finished talking, but Catherine's eyes have already started to well up with tears, and she mumbles to herself: "did you ever love me? Did you ever love me?" Her voice is actually pleasing to the ears; if only she didn't look like a human version of Dumbo, I could easily imagined it was one of those loving, passionate heroines from Chinese martial arts novels speaking, with their sighs that seem to promise unconditional love. I see there's no need for me to say more. Sure enough, Catherine gets up to go to the bathroom and when she sits back down, spends two hours telling me the following story.
Yang, I might not be all that pretty, but I'm not ugly either. Look at the photos, not how I look today, and you'll see what I mean. Most importantly, I'm not stupid. Do you know which kind of men are the most handsome and succesful? I'll tell you, they're the ones in the courtrooms and hospitals, all the hunky young lawyers and medical interns. You wanna find yourself a lawyer, you can try taking someone to court, but it wouldn't be that much fun. Doctors, though, they're different; you can just say you're not feeling well and you're in. That's how I met Mike, in Queen's Hospital. Oh, how stylish and handsome he was. And professional. He was so set on medical research, spending all his time with seniors and patients, he was almost thirty and still a bachelor. The first time I went to see him I was stuck on him, and from then on I couldn't help but pretend to be constantly sick, just so I could see him again. You know he's a surgeon, and faking diseases that need surgeons' treatment isn't so easy. Things got pretty twisted for me back then.
With me taking the initiative, Mike and I quickly got it on. It was only later that I saw we weren't actually all that suited for each other. He wasn't just hunky and handsome with one of the highest-paying professions there is, he was as respected as one can get in America. And me? Of average looks, no steady job, I was pretty bummed for a while. When Mike found out why, he couldn't stop laughing. He never paid any attention to my looks, he told me, but that even if he did, he still wouldn't mind. He can say what he likes, but while I knew that marrying a man like this would only one day end up with me regretful and hurting, one the other hand, not marrying him, starting right there and then, would mean regret and hurt, day in and day out. So we got married. After that, we still often talked about people's looks, and from looks to jobs, success and destiny. In the end we agreed, that in this world looks are still the most important; the better you look, the easier it is to get ahead, and with the right looks, you're pretty much set for life. You could even, I said, find yourself a good husband or wife. Aye, if only I'd known then how deeply all this talk would affect Mike. He went from deep consideration of all this, to action. One day, he held me as we sat on the sofa and said:
"Honey, I'm thinking about quitting, and opening up a plastic surgery clinic."
So shocked I almost jumped up, because you know how respectable being a doctor is, and that the public sees plastic surgery as some sort of heresy. Mike's explained, saying the main reasons society doesn't accept plastic surgery lie with outdated concepts and religious retraints. In the East, the common view is that skin and hair are given to us by our parents and can't be changed, while in the West, things used to be bound by the philosophy of God's creation of man; you were the way God made you. Later, the West started pushing for freedom and democracy, coming up with the Declaration of Independence and all people being created equal. Nothing wrong with that. But, no matter how righteous Eastern sages, God, or the Declaration of Independence all appear to be, they still overlook an injustice that even a blind man can see: the adults who after just three months see their baby is going to be attractive and smile to themselves; the charming little boys and girls who get favored by their teachers; all the successful women in this world most of whom get by on their breasts and not their brains. Mike said his plan to open a plastic surgery clinic came from wanting to complete the unfinished business of God and the American Constitution.
Mike said his research into body structure and dermatology had gone so deep that he didn't just know how to use a scalpel to completely change a person's appearance, but also that with the development of modern medicine, full-body cosmetic surgery would have almost no side effects. He gave an example: remember when you were a kid all the places on your body that got hurt, cut or even broken? And what side effects do you see now?
I was totally persuaded by Mike; we made our minds up and we went to it. Cosmetic surgery clinics aren't medical care facilities, so I just had to take a crash course in nursing, and then I was a clinic nurse. Mike had been putting money away for a few years already, so we chose to open the clinic on the sixty-ninth floor of the North tower of the World Trade Center. As far as we knew, there were a few clinics inside the twin towers, but this was the only one doing cosmetic surgery.
4.20.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (3.3)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.3
Seeing Wang Xiaohai standing there like that makes me think. He came to America in the early nineties, then disappeared from contact with everyone he'd gone to college with. They say he only got in touch again after he'd gotten his green card. He's not that tall, he wears glasses, carries himself with a rather refined sort of elegance. At least that's how he was more than ten years ago when we were still in school. The Wang Xiaohai I see walking towards me now looks a little rough. He looks like he could be fifty already. It might just be the light here in the airport, because from where I'm standing he looks a bit hunched over. We don't hug; the two of us just shake hands and stare at each other carefully in the eyes; we each see excitement, and a tinge of regret, then we both start laughing freely.
Sitting in Wang Xiaohai's recently-purchased second-hand Honda Accord on the way to his house, he tells me what he's been doing over the past few years—more than a few mouthfuls of complaints and grievances which, being his old college friend, gets me right worked up. I've found that for the most part, friends of mine who've gone abroad, especially those who get green cards, when old school friends like me roll around, they tend to put on a happy face despite anything which might be worrying them, trying to one-up us any way they can. But not Xiaohai. He whines all the way, starting first with having left the country two years too late, missing his chance at a 'Tiananmen' green card, all the way to when he made the decision to major in politics, ending up unable to find work after graduation and how he settled for a job at a diner, or how hard it was getting a green card with forged documents, then struggling to save up even the tiniest bit of money, only to one day notice his youth having passed him by. And how, when he began to have the time and mind to be around old acquaintances out from China again, be they his former college buddies or friends, how they all looked to be getting by a whole lot more sweetly than he was, and how hard that was for him to see. So then Xiaohai solemnly asks, has China, these last few years, really been growing as fast as they say? Are there really that many people making money now? How could things be so different from what government statistics say? He says he's just bought himself a small condo, that he put up fifty thousand for the down-payment and it'll take twenty years to pay off the other two hundred and fifty thousand, that this is why he really has no desire to come back to China to see things clearly for himself, but that he hopes I might help him with this.
I don't know how I ought to answer. "You know, you already have your own car and your own place, even if you only have paid off fifty thousand so far, we wouldn't be talking pocket change here if we were back in China. Besides, the old friends you're still able to see from here aren't doing so bad either.
"Ha. I bet you're doing pretty well for yourself, eh bud?" Xiaohai chuckles. "You didn't just come to get your diploma, did you? If that were case, you could've just got the school to send it to you. What other missions are you on?
"What are you talking about. Mission? It's not like you don't know I already left the Ministry. I also came partly for old time's sake, and to see if post-911 New York looks like it used to. If I can, I also want to stop by Washington to see Liu Mingwei."
"Just seems strange. You and Guo Qingqing were on and off for so many years over in New York, and the whole time we never got together. Now the two of you have been split up for so long and you come halfway across the world just for a visit? Yeah, you must be feeling pretty nostalgic." Suddenly, Xiaohai looks a bit lonely. We drive on for a while, then he lets out a drawn-out sigh: "there's only just a few of us still here; Haipeng went back, so did you. A class of forty, there's just three of us here now, and you can see how useful I ended up. Of everyone who went into science and tech back then, at least twenty people from each year would come to the States; now whenever they have science or tech alumnus get-togethers at Peking University or Tsinghua, there's always more of them here in the States than back in China. Not us, though, the miserable few who are left. Just because we chose to major in bullshit politics and international relations, we've been useless since the day we left school."
He stops, then mumbles, "not totally useless, though, if you're willing to forget everything you learned. I hear Liu Mingwei's been doing pretty well over in Washington."
From the airport to Xiaohai's new place it's about a two-hour drive. The whole way, we laugh and we yell, going quiet from time to time; just as old friends are when they meet, we're both relaxed. I reach over and turn on the car stereo, only to find out there's no tape inside. Then I remember the tapes Xiao Hai had asked me to bring over with me. I open my bag and pull them out, sort of a gift for Xiaohai. Most of the tapes are full of clanging revolutionary songs that were popular in China back in the seventies and eighties, from 'The Red Sun' series to 'Song of the Prairies,' from 'Up on the Gold Mountain of Beijing' to 'Free Yourself, Slaves, and Sing!,' with the newest album being of songs that were popular on campus at Peking University during the early eighties. I want to put one tape on, so I flip through them.
"I guess you never really liked any of these songs, hey?" Xiaohai sees that I can't find anything that I think will sound good.
I say I don't really care, it's just that I think these songs are too old. They stopped selling most of them around the time we graduated. As I say this, I realize that I don't know the names of any songs that have come out since then.
"I don't know why, but I just can't seem to get into popular music these days," Xiaohai says, "but the songs we had when I was a kid and at school, I could listen to them a hundred times and still never get sick of them."
"Well if you put it like that, I'd have to agree. I used to think that was the reason I stopped listening to music after college, but now that I think about it, I can't name a single song that's come out in the more than ten years since we finished college."
"Go back a generation, and people just hummed the same few songs their whole lives; at least we had a few more. But now, you see new songs and singers popping up every day, and the pop charts change from week to week."
"Seems like now, there's a pop song for any mood anyone might ever be in. If you're feeling annoyed, there's 'Today I'm a bit Annoyed,' and if you've just broken up with someone, well, there's at least a hundred songs to match that, songs that almost make you feel like they were written just for you. If you're feeling elated or you've had a bit to drink, there's more songs that talk about flying high up in the sky than there are drops of rain."
"Yeah, a lot of pop songs are written to match your mood; when you're sad they make you sadder, or if you're happy, happier." I nod in agreement.
"The thing is with songs from back in our day, though there weren't so many, just hearing any of them was enough to set your heart afire, so uplifting they were," Xiaohai says with excitement.
I smile and nod, pulling a tape out and sticking in the second-hand car's stereo. I think of another advantage to meeting up with old friends: nobody feels like they're old-fashioned or obsolete.
From here on we just enjoy these songs we used to sing back in our college days, talking and laughing as the car rips down the freeway towards Xiaohai's home.
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.3
Seeing Wang Xiaohai standing there like that makes me think. He came to America in the early nineties, then disappeared from contact with everyone he'd gone to college with. They say he only got in touch again after he'd gotten his green card. He's not that tall, he wears glasses, carries himself with a rather refined sort of elegance. At least that's how he was more than ten years ago when we were still in school. The Wang Xiaohai I see walking towards me now looks a little rough. He looks like he could be fifty already. It might just be the light here in the airport, because from where I'm standing he looks a bit hunched over. We don't hug; the two of us just shake hands and stare at each other carefully in the eyes; we each see excitement, and a tinge of regret, then we both start laughing freely.
Sitting in Wang Xiaohai's recently-purchased second-hand Honda Accord on the way to his house, he tells me what he's been doing over the past few years—more than a few mouthfuls of complaints and grievances which, being his old college friend, gets me right worked up. I've found that for the most part, friends of mine who've gone abroad, especially those who get green cards, when old school friends like me roll around, they tend to put on a happy face despite anything which might be worrying them, trying to one-up us any way they can. But not Xiaohai. He whines all the way, starting first with having left the country two years too late, missing his chance at a 'Tiananmen' green card, all the way to when he made the decision to major in politics, ending up unable to find work after graduation and how he settled for a job at a diner, or how hard it was getting a green card with forged documents, then struggling to save up even the tiniest bit of money, only to one day notice his youth having passed him by. And how, when he began to have the time and mind to be around old acquaintances out from China again, be they his former college buddies or friends, how they all looked to be getting by a whole lot more sweetly than he was, and how hard that was for him to see. So then Xiaohai solemnly asks, has China, these last few years, really been growing as fast as they say? Are there really that many people making money now? How could things be so different from what government statistics say? He says he's just bought himself a small condo, that he put up fifty thousand for the down-payment and it'll take twenty years to pay off the other two hundred and fifty thousand, that this is why he really has no desire to come back to China to see things clearly for himself, but that he hopes I might help him with this.
I don't know how I ought to answer. "You know, you already have your own car and your own place, even if you only have paid off fifty thousand so far, we wouldn't be talking pocket change here if we were back in China. Besides, the old friends you're still able to see from here aren't doing so bad either.
"Ha. I bet you're doing pretty well for yourself, eh bud?" Xiaohai chuckles. "You didn't just come to get your diploma, did you? If that were case, you could've just got the school to send it to you. What other missions are you on?
"What are you talking about. Mission? It's not like you don't know I already left the Ministry. I also came partly for old time's sake, and to see if post-911 New York looks like it used to. If I can, I also want to stop by Washington to see Liu Mingwei."
"Just seems strange. You and Guo Qingqing were on and off for so many years over in New York, and the whole time we never got together. Now the two of you have been split up for so long and you come halfway across the world just for a visit? Yeah, you must be feeling pretty nostalgic." Suddenly, Xiaohai looks a bit lonely. We drive on for a while, then he lets out a drawn-out sigh: "there's only just a few of us still here; Haipeng went back, so did you. A class of forty, there's just three of us here now, and you can see how useful I ended up. Of everyone who went into science and tech back then, at least twenty people from each year would come to the States; now whenever they have science or tech alumnus get-togethers at Peking University or Tsinghua, there's always more of them here in the States than back in China. Not us, though, the miserable few who are left. Just because we chose to major in bullshit politics and international relations, we've been useless since the day we left school."
He stops, then mumbles, "not totally useless, though, if you're willing to forget everything you learned. I hear Liu Mingwei's been doing pretty well over in Washington."
From the airport to Xiaohai's new place it's about a two-hour drive. The whole way, we laugh and we yell, going quiet from time to time; just as old friends are when they meet, we're both relaxed. I reach over and turn on the car stereo, only to find out there's no tape inside. Then I remember the tapes Xiao Hai had asked me to bring over with me. I open my bag and pull them out, sort of a gift for Xiaohai. Most of the tapes are full of clanging revolutionary songs that were popular in China back in the seventies and eighties, from 'The Red Sun' series to 'Song of the Prairies,' from 'Up on the Gold Mountain of Beijing' to 'Free Yourself, Slaves, and Sing!,' with the newest album being of songs that were popular on campus at Peking University during the early eighties. I want to put one tape on, so I flip through them.
"I guess you never really liked any of these songs, hey?" Xiaohai sees that I can't find anything that I think will sound good.
I say I don't really care, it's just that I think these songs are too old. They stopped selling most of them around the time we graduated. As I say this, I realize that I don't know the names of any songs that have come out since then.
"I don't know why, but I just can't seem to get into popular music these days," Xiaohai says, "but the songs we had when I was a kid and at school, I could listen to them a hundred times and still never get sick of them."
"Well if you put it like that, I'd have to agree. I used to think that was the reason I stopped listening to music after college, but now that I think about it, I can't name a single song that's come out in the more than ten years since we finished college."
"Go back a generation, and people just hummed the same few songs their whole lives; at least we had a few more. But now, you see new songs and singers popping up every day, and the pop charts change from week to week."
"Seems like now, there's a pop song for any mood anyone might ever be in. If you're feeling annoyed, there's 'Today I'm a bit Annoyed,' and if you've just broken up with someone, well, there's at least a hundred songs to match that, songs that almost make you feel like they were written just for you. If you're feeling elated or you've had a bit to drink, there's more songs that talk about flying high up in the sky than there are drops of rain."
"Yeah, a lot of pop songs are written to match your mood; when you're sad they make you sadder, or if you're happy, happier." I nod in agreement.
"The thing is with songs from back in our day, though there weren't so many, just hearing any of them was enough to set your heart afire, so uplifting they were," Xiaohai says with excitement.
I smile and nod, pulling a tape out and sticking in the second-hand car's stereo. I think of another advantage to meeting up with old friends: nobody feels like they're old-fashioned or obsolete.
From here on we just enjoy these songs we used to sing back in our college days, talking and laughing as the car rips down the freeway towards Xiaohai's home.
4.12.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (3.2)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.2
The psychologist's conclusion slowly spewed out from his mouth, like he was deliberating on every word; as I listened I began to shake and sweat, worried at how long this conclusion was going to take, eating into my living money for the month. He must have misread this, thinking he'd just hit the bullseye, and seemed all the more confident in his conclusion, talking all the more non-stop. He admired how uneasy I seemed, sitting on the edge of the chair, with pins and needles, gripped in a cold sweat, at the same time making slices through my soul, deep and with ease. "This just shows how far down your extreme fear of death is buried. That this fear only bursts to the surface when you're on an airplane goes to show how straight-laced a person you are. You don't just calculate your own life, but an appropriate time for your own death as well. This is why any chance of an accidental death is unthinkable for you, and going down on an airplane is one of the most unpredictable kinds of death there is. There's another reason, and that's your rather strong sense of individual responsibility. For your age, you still don't have the spare cash to just go hop on a plane and fly around; when you do fly, it's always for some company trip or task or something, so there's the subconscious feeling of doing something mischievous. Before your task's even complete you've already resigned yourself to plummeting to your death..."
The psychologist kept rambling on, but I didn't say much. I just remembered he was right on one thing, my deeply buried fear of death. Then his talk took a different turn, with him encouraging me to be brave and face down death, to reflect on death. He said that only the greatest of thinkers ponder death, and only the confused masses see humans as in control of everything in life, or death as just an instantaneous ending, when in fact it's much more. Death is not only just the end to all life, it's also the beginning of all life, and from birth to death it's death which rules over everything. The psychologist patiently looked at me and said, "think about it. The only thing that keeps this kind of life reproducing is the human fear of extinction, of complete perdition. The little lives we give birth to are so frail and delicate, and from the time they're born to the day they die, their lives will be spent in escaping death, an endless struggle against starvation, disease and adversity. Is human society's establishment of nations and laws anything more than the result of fear of death? If you imagine for a moment that there were no threat of death, be it modern medicine, science or technology, none of these would have been seen the light of day, and, especially, would never have reached the level they have today. In the absence of the oppressive shadow of death, humans would surely have remained idle and ignorant, no different from pigs. There would be progressive daily degeneration. Even literature and philosophy are born of consideration of the human fear of death. One only need look to the great philosophers to see how thinking about death began to reveal to us the mysteries of things like life."
I guess he saw from the look on my face that I wasn't totally keeping up with his train of thought, and the doctor stopped and sighed, "I'll tell you what, let's not drag this out any longer. Let's take you as an example."
He took a sip of coffee and asked, "tell me, when you're up in the air, so nervous that you start dripping in sweat, what is it that you think about?"
I thought seriously about this. I think many things at times like that, but mostly just ask myself how it is that I might die then and there. There are so many books I've yet to read, so many things I'd be leaving half done or not started at all, so many friends I want to get in touch with but have no time to do so and...and...I didn't let my parents know where I was going when I left. Does that sound like enough thinking to you? I can't die now!
"Right, it's precisely this unreadiness to confront death, this idea that you're not prepared to die that leaves you fearing death, but at the same time makes you think. I'd even go so far as to bet that this is the only time that you do think about death. I'd now like you to tell me, when you find yourself in life-and-death situations, when the state of terror of being up in the air has passed, when once again the plane unexpectedly arrives safely at the airport, when you see that you're still alive, what is it that you think about then?"
Again I think, and tell the doctor, "every time the plane lands, it gives me a sense of renewal, almost like I've become a new person. In the days that follow, I hurry to come up with a life plan, to actively set out on a future life. Of course, this drive doesn't take me very far; a month or two later and I'm just back to my old self."
"That I can understand," the psychologist says, his face covered with a smile. "You probably know what I'm trying to get at now, right? It's precisely the appearance of your dread of death when you board airplanes that leads you to begin considering the value of life, which in turn makes you think of the life you've wasted, and all the things you should have done with it but didn't. And it's this that leaves you feeling like a new person. Just think, if it didn't take you getting on an airplane in order to start thinking more about your own death, imagine how much richer a life you'd live, and how much sooner you could have realized the goals you have which until now remain mere fantasies. Wouldn't you agree?"
That was my one and only time visiting a psychologist, and thinking back to it now, I'm still just as unable to deal with these things as I was then. My fear of death is just buried too far down in my soul, and this has become the cause of my fear of flying disease. The doctor's interpretations might not have helped reduce my fears, but I have to admit, there was some gain from listening to the doctor's philosophical speech on life and death.
I'm relieved that the plane steadies as it flies out over the black expanse of the Pacific, and I ask the passenger sitting next to me to let me up to go to the washroom as an excuse to strike up a conversation, and waste no time announcing to him new discoveries from modern medicine, particularly modern Western medical science's discovery that fear of plane travel is a disease, and not a manifestation of fear of death. He watches me in amazement, putting on a look of sudden understanding, and one of feeling very sorry for me, but this does nothing to ease my mood. As we talk, I learn that though just in his early forties, he's already opened two processing plants, one in Dongguang and one in Shenzhen. Several years ago he sent his wife and two kids to live in Los Angeles, and has flown to the States almost every month since. This trip, he says, he wants to find a bigger house. "The kids are almost ten, they need their own space; not just their own bedrooms, they want their own game room, study and activity room too." He shakes his head as he speaks, "turns out six rooms isn't enough, so this time I've decided to buy something bigger, which in L.A. means you're looking at like two million dollars." Having said this, he scowls, but then it looks like he's just thought of something. "At least business is going well, but I'm gonna have to push back plans for opening the third plant."
I half-attempt a smile as I listen to his story, but I've got plenty on my mind. I make some quick calculations of how much this business trip is going to cost me in hopes of saving some of the allowance Director Zhou gave me, then start wondering what kind of house two million American dollars can buy. Looking around at the passengers on all sides of me, though we are in Economy, they're almost all rather unisghtly. As it strikes me how similar so many of them are to this factory-owning mini-boss beside me, financially successful, with homes and families, puzzling over things like life and death suddenly seems a bit silly.
And so my thoughts meander, and then the airplane is gently descending upon Los Angeles International Airport. I know well that forty percent of airplane accidents take place during descent, but this time I haven't just kept from breaking into a cold sweat, but after an entirely sleepless night, I'm full of energy as I step off the plane.
I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Not so bad, breathing in the smell of America. Just like everyone's body has its own unique smell, every country does too. If people's smells are concentrated in their armpits, then you could say a country's smells are concentrated in its international airports. That's not to say the smells there are especially strong, it's that you've just arrived, you're stepping into this land for the first time and can vividly sense the smells of a different place.
I purposely take my time walking, letting the indescribable American smells work their way deep into my mind. On the twelve-hour flight over, except for chat all I did was mull esoteric philosophy over in my mind, keeping it from going idle up in the sky eight thousand feet above the Pacific. That's why, at this moment, as my body touches down on American soil, my mind is still back in China.
I need these few minutes as we move from the plane to Customs to let my mind make the switch, at least let it get used to the smells here. In any case, I know that both Customs and Immigration tend to go easy when checking the travellers in the midst of the pack. At Immigration, a black Immigration officer pats me down thoroughly from my head to my feet, and seems unsatisfied with my reason of "coming back to see my old Alma Mater," and the diploma already conveniently in my hand; I hear the sound of keys on a keyboard being struck, and then I pass through. I pull my small suitcase down off the luggage conveyor and head towards Customs. Possibly from spending a little too much time with the Immigration official, I'm feeling a bit tense.
"Please open your suitcase." This time it's a white officer.
I open my suitcase, and the white officer carefully searches through it with his hands, which are enclosed in white gloves. As he sticks his hands inside, I suddenly notice a strange look on his face, and as he raises his hands, he pretends to look calmly at me. I notice one hand of his has already pressed the red button below the counter. Sure enough, the two armed Customs officials standing on both sides of the corridor immediately rush over. Presumably because both my hands are where their eyes can see, they only handcuff me, but do they look grim. The travellers around me appear more nervous than I am. As I'm taken into the small Customs room, I see the guy who owns two plants that I'd just been sitting beside staring at me with his mouth open, and another exaggerated look of sudden understanding on his face.
In the small Customs room, the other Customs officers one by one start to leave. The two armed officers, right behind me to my left and right, stand in position as the officer who first opened my suitcase, along with another officer of seemingly higher rank and more experience, begins picking things out of my luggage, item by item. It's a good thing, I'm thinking, that I buy two to three new pairs of underwear each time I go away on business; having foreigners check through my underwear and find stains would be more embarrasing than having them find drugs in there. As they carefully pick through everything I spent an hour packing, one plainclothes dressed in a business suit quietly walks in. I guess he must be the FBI agent stationed in the airport, and I breath a sigh of relief.
And now I suddently feel the two burly men to my left and right twitch as the younger Customs officer slowly pulls a transparent plastic bag filled with a white powder out from the bottom of my suitcase. I see the FBI agent's expression tense up, and the two armed officers on each side automatically take a step closer.
"What is this?" The Customs officer looks at me with sharp blue eyes, picking up the small knife at his side and making a light tear in the bag, using the tip to scoop some out, lifting it, sticking out his thick tongue and taking a lick.
"Drugs! And very high purity." He lets his hand drop, acting relaxed, "Sir, I think..."
"Officer, I think before you say anything you should hear me out first," I cut him off without the least bit of courtesy. "That's laundry detergent, it smells almost identical to high-grade mixed heroin!"
The Customs officer is briefly taken aback, and he looks to the suit for help. The suit walks over and takes a taste, but it seems he can't tell either. The suit and the two Customs officers step into the neighboring small room, and the two armed officers at my side motion for me to sit down. I don't know which of the two it is whose body smells, but it's so bad that I can't sit still.
A few minutes later, the three come out, and one of them explains that they need to carry out some further tests. Then the FBI agent and another officer go out with my laundry detergent, leaving just the officer old enough to be a school headmaster, who takes a chair and sits down across from me, asking me some simple questions. What he's most interested in is why I would want to bring laundry detergent with me. I say it's the same reason I brought several packs of instant noodles, for convenience and to save money. He presses on with his questions, asking why I put the laundry detergent into a different bag. I tell him that laundry detergent bags in China aren't that strong and that they're not made for taking on business trips, that's why I packed it in a secure plastic bag. In any case, I didn't need the whole bag. Eventually he stops asking questions, and goes next door to take care of other work, though the two guards on each side dutifully remain to stand guard over me.
Following forty full tormenting minutes, they finally speak up, apologize for having taken up my time, and let me leave. As I exit Customs, I see my old classmate Wang Xiaohai waiting with anticipation. He seems oblivious to the fact that he's standing on the yellow line around the restricted area, and seeing him like this moves me. I don't keep that many friends, so when I go to other countries, if I have any old university classmates in the area, I always get in touch with them first. It's been almost twenty years since we graduated, so we're always looking for chances to get together. This kind of wish to keep in touch with old school friends is usually strongest around ten years after graduation, the reason not being hard to understand. As the years fly by, you and the things around you can't help but change, and every time you look into the mirror, the harder it gets to remember what you looked like back then. Then, one day, you suddenly feel the need to see some old school friend or another. Meeting them, though, typically happens under two kinds of circumstances. Either they've kept themselves in good shape, all the angles and edges look the same, and you say, "you're still so young, you haven't changed at all!" Or else you meet and that old friend you used to be so close with looks nothing like they used to and, shocked, you think to yourself, "damn, he's gotten so mature!" Though, no matter how these meetings turn out, the only thing you'll be wondering is how your friends think you've changed, or not.
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.2
The psychologist's conclusion slowly spewed out from his mouth, like he was deliberating on every word; as I listened I began to shake and sweat, worried at how long this conclusion was going to take, eating into my living money for the month. He must have misread this, thinking he'd just hit the bullseye, and seemed all the more confident in his conclusion, talking all the more non-stop. He admired how uneasy I seemed, sitting on the edge of the chair, with pins and needles, gripped in a cold sweat, at the same time making slices through my soul, deep and with ease. "This just shows how far down your extreme fear of death is buried. That this fear only bursts to the surface when you're on an airplane goes to show how straight-laced a person you are. You don't just calculate your own life, but an appropriate time for your own death as well. This is why any chance of an accidental death is unthinkable for you, and going down on an airplane is one of the most unpredictable kinds of death there is. There's another reason, and that's your rather strong sense of individual responsibility. For your age, you still don't have the spare cash to just go hop on a plane and fly around; when you do fly, it's always for some company trip or task or something, so there's the subconscious feeling of doing something mischievous. Before your task's even complete you've already resigned yourself to plummeting to your death..."
The psychologist kept rambling on, but I didn't say much. I just remembered he was right on one thing, my deeply buried fear of death. Then his talk took a different turn, with him encouraging me to be brave and face down death, to reflect on death. He said that only the greatest of thinkers ponder death, and only the confused masses see humans as in control of everything in life, or death as just an instantaneous ending, when in fact it's much more. Death is not only just the end to all life, it's also the beginning of all life, and from birth to death it's death which rules over everything. The psychologist patiently looked at me and said, "think about it. The only thing that keeps this kind of life reproducing is the human fear of extinction, of complete perdition. The little lives we give birth to are so frail and delicate, and from the time they're born to the day they die, their lives will be spent in escaping death, an endless struggle against starvation, disease and adversity. Is human society's establishment of nations and laws anything more than the result of fear of death? If you imagine for a moment that there were no threat of death, be it modern medicine, science or technology, none of these would have been seen the light of day, and, especially, would never have reached the level they have today. In the absence of the oppressive shadow of death, humans would surely have remained idle and ignorant, no different from pigs. There would be progressive daily degeneration. Even literature and philosophy are born of consideration of the human fear of death. One only need look to the great philosophers to see how thinking about death began to reveal to us the mysteries of things like life."
I guess he saw from the look on my face that I wasn't totally keeping up with his train of thought, and the doctor stopped and sighed, "I'll tell you what, let's not drag this out any longer. Let's take you as an example."
He took a sip of coffee and asked, "tell me, when you're up in the air, so nervous that you start dripping in sweat, what is it that you think about?"
I thought seriously about this. I think many things at times like that, but mostly just ask myself how it is that I might die then and there. There are so many books I've yet to read, so many things I'd be leaving half done or not started at all, so many friends I want to get in touch with but have no time to do so and...and...I didn't let my parents know where I was going when I left. Does that sound like enough thinking to you? I can't die now!
"Right, it's precisely this unreadiness to confront death, this idea that you're not prepared to die that leaves you fearing death, but at the same time makes you think. I'd even go so far as to bet that this is the only time that you do think about death. I'd now like you to tell me, when you find yourself in life-and-death situations, when the state of terror of being up in the air has passed, when once again the plane unexpectedly arrives safely at the airport, when you see that you're still alive, what is it that you think about then?"
Again I think, and tell the doctor, "every time the plane lands, it gives me a sense of renewal, almost like I've become a new person. In the days that follow, I hurry to come up with a life plan, to actively set out on a future life. Of course, this drive doesn't take me very far; a month or two later and I'm just back to my old self."
"That I can understand," the psychologist says, his face covered with a smile. "You probably know what I'm trying to get at now, right? It's precisely the appearance of your dread of death when you board airplanes that leads you to begin considering the value of life, which in turn makes you think of the life you've wasted, and all the things you should have done with it but didn't. And it's this that leaves you feeling like a new person. Just think, if it didn't take you getting on an airplane in order to start thinking more about your own death, imagine how much richer a life you'd live, and how much sooner you could have realized the goals you have which until now remain mere fantasies. Wouldn't you agree?"
That was my one and only time visiting a psychologist, and thinking back to it now, I'm still just as unable to deal with these things as I was then. My fear of death is just buried too far down in my soul, and this has become the cause of my fear of flying disease. The doctor's interpretations might not have helped reduce my fears, but I have to admit, there was some gain from listening to the doctor's philosophical speech on life and death.
I'm relieved that the plane steadies as it flies out over the black expanse of the Pacific, and I ask the passenger sitting next to me to let me up to go to the washroom as an excuse to strike up a conversation, and waste no time announcing to him new discoveries from modern medicine, particularly modern Western medical science's discovery that fear of plane travel is a disease, and not a manifestation of fear of death. He watches me in amazement, putting on a look of sudden understanding, and one of feeling very sorry for me, but this does nothing to ease my mood. As we talk, I learn that though just in his early forties, he's already opened two processing plants, one in Dongguang and one in Shenzhen. Several years ago he sent his wife and two kids to live in Los Angeles, and has flown to the States almost every month since. This trip, he says, he wants to find a bigger house. "The kids are almost ten, they need their own space; not just their own bedrooms, they want their own game room, study and activity room too." He shakes his head as he speaks, "turns out six rooms isn't enough, so this time I've decided to buy something bigger, which in L.A. means you're looking at like two million dollars." Having said this, he scowls, but then it looks like he's just thought of something. "At least business is going well, but I'm gonna have to push back plans for opening the third plant."
I half-attempt a smile as I listen to his story, but I've got plenty on my mind. I make some quick calculations of how much this business trip is going to cost me in hopes of saving some of the allowance Director Zhou gave me, then start wondering what kind of house two million American dollars can buy. Looking around at the passengers on all sides of me, though we are in Economy, they're almost all rather unisghtly. As it strikes me how similar so many of them are to this factory-owning mini-boss beside me, financially successful, with homes and families, puzzling over things like life and death suddenly seems a bit silly.
And so my thoughts meander, and then the airplane is gently descending upon Los Angeles International Airport. I know well that forty percent of airplane accidents take place during descent, but this time I haven't just kept from breaking into a cold sweat, but after an entirely sleepless night, I'm full of energy as I step off the plane.
I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Not so bad, breathing in the smell of America. Just like everyone's body has its own unique smell, every country does too. If people's smells are concentrated in their armpits, then you could say a country's smells are concentrated in its international airports. That's not to say the smells there are especially strong, it's that you've just arrived, you're stepping into this land for the first time and can vividly sense the smells of a different place.
I purposely take my time walking, letting the indescribable American smells work their way deep into my mind. On the twelve-hour flight over, except for chat all I did was mull esoteric philosophy over in my mind, keeping it from going idle up in the sky eight thousand feet above the Pacific. That's why, at this moment, as my body touches down on American soil, my mind is still back in China.
I need these few minutes as we move from the plane to Customs to let my mind make the switch, at least let it get used to the smells here. In any case, I know that both Customs and Immigration tend to go easy when checking the travellers in the midst of the pack. At Immigration, a black Immigration officer pats me down thoroughly from my head to my feet, and seems unsatisfied with my reason of "coming back to see my old Alma Mater," and the diploma already conveniently in my hand; I hear the sound of keys on a keyboard being struck, and then I pass through. I pull my small suitcase down off the luggage conveyor and head towards Customs. Possibly from spending a little too much time with the Immigration official, I'm feeling a bit tense.
"Please open your suitcase." This time it's a white officer.
I open my suitcase, and the white officer carefully searches through it with his hands, which are enclosed in white gloves. As he sticks his hands inside, I suddenly notice a strange look on his face, and as he raises his hands, he pretends to look calmly at me. I notice one hand of his has already pressed the red button below the counter. Sure enough, the two armed Customs officials standing on both sides of the corridor immediately rush over. Presumably because both my hands are where their eyes can see, they only handcuff me, but do they look grim. The travellers around me appear more nervous than I am. As I'm taken into the small Customs room, I see the guy who owns two plants that I'd just been sitting beside staring at me with his mouth open, and another exaggerated look of sudden understanding on his face.
In the small Customs room, the other Customs officers one by one start to leave. The two armed officers, right behind me to my left and right, stand in position as the officer who first opened my suitcase, along with another officer of seemingly higher rank and more experience, begins picking things out of my luggage, item by item. It's a good thing, I'm thinking, that I buy two to three new pairs of underwear each time I go away on business; having foreigners check through my underwear and find stains would be more embarrasing than having them find drugs in there. As they carefully pick through everything I spent an hour packing, one plainclothes dressed in a business suit quietly walks in. I guess he must be the FBI agent stationed in the airport, and I breath a sigh of relief.
And now I suddently feel the two burly men to my left and right twitch as the younger Customs officer slowly pulls a transparent plastic bag filled with a white powder out from the bottom of my suitcase. I see the FBI agent's expression tense up, and the two armed officers on each side automatically take a step closer.
"What is this?" The Customs officer looks at me with sharp blue eyes, picking up the small knife at his side and making a light tear in the bag, using the tip to scoop some out, lifting it, sticking out his thick tongue and taking a lick.
"Drugs! And very high purity." He lets his hand drop, acting relaxed, "Sir, I think..."
"Officer, I think before you say anything you should hear me out first," I cut him off without the least bit of courtesy. "That's laundry detergent, it smells almost identical to high-grade mixed heroin!"
The Customs officer is briefly taken aback, and he looks to the suit for help. The suit walks over and takes a taste, but it seems he can't tell either. The suit and the two Customs officers step into the neighboring small room, and the two armed officers at my side motion for me to sit down. I don't know which of the two it is whose body smells, but it's so bad that I can't sit still.
A few minutes later, the three come out, and one of them explains that they need to carry out some further tests. Then the FBI agent and another officer go out with my laundry detergent, leaving just the officer old enough to be a school headmaster, who takes a chair and sits down across from me, asking me some simple questions. What he's most interested in is why I would want to bring laundry detergent with me. I say it's the same reason I brought several packs of instant noodles, for convenience and to save money. He presses on with his questions, asking why I put the laundry detergent into a different bag. I tell him that laundry detergent bags in China aren't that strong and that they're not made for taking on business trips, that's why I packed it in a secure plastic bag. In any case, I didn't need the whole bag. Eventually he stops asking questions, and goes next door to take care of other work, though the two guards on each side dutifully remain to stand guard over me.
Following forty full tormenting minutes, they finally speak up, apologize for having taken up my time, and let me leave. As I exit Customs, I see my old classmate Wang Xiaohai waiting with anticipation. He seems oblivious to the fact that he's standing on the yellow line around the restricted area, and seeing him like this moves me. I don't keep that many friends, so when I go to other countries, if I have any old university classmates in the area, I always get in touch with them first. It's been almost twenty years since we graduated, so we're always looking for chances to get together. This kind of wish to keep in touch with old school friends is usually strongest around ten years after graduation, the reason not being hard to understand. As the years fly by, you and the things around you can't help but change, and every time you look into the mirror, the harder it gets to remember what you looked like back then. Then, one day, you suddenly feel the need to see some old school friend or another. Meeting them, though, typically happens under two kinds of circumstances. Either they've kept themselves in good shape, all the angles and edges look the same, and you say, "you're still so young, you haven't changed at all!" Or else you meet and that old friend you used to be so close with looks nothing like they used to and, shocked, you think to yourself, "damn, he's gotten so mature!" Though, no matter how these meetings turn out, the only thing you'll be wondering is how your friends think you've changed, or not.
4.04.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (3.1)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.1
Maintaining my composure, I say goodbye to Director Zhou and try my best to walk like people in lobbies of five-star hotels do, holding my head high as I move towards the hotel front door. As I pass through the hotel's majestic pillars, I see a reflection of Director Zhou, still standing in the coffee shop, watching intently as I leave, and I suddenly feel both perplexed and uneasy. Sitting in the coffee shop, Director Zhou noticed the three times I looked at my watch, at each mention that he had phoned my parents. I really would have liked to stay with him a bit longer, but today is Sunday, and now it's almost dinner time. I haven't been to see my parents for three weeks already.
Trotting out the hotel doors, I wave down a taxi, pulling open the door before the car even stops, and jump in. I tell the driver my parents' address, close my eyes and try to relax, but my mind won't stop racing. On my first Sunday in the police station, I thought about giving mom and dad a call, but then I didn't know then how long I was going to be in for, and I wasn't going to lie to my parents in front of the police, not to mention that I had no phone number to give them, so I let that thought go. Then for the two weeks after that I didn't call either; at the time, I just thought that they'd have gotten over me not coming over for dinner the first week, so there was no reason they couldn't in the weeks after. At least that's what I thought at the time.
Dad's a retired high school teacher, mom's a retired doctor. Dad's already 77 this year, and mom just had her 75th birthday. In hopes they'd enjoy their old age, a few years ago I brought them down to Guangzhou from my home in Hubei and put them up in an apartment I'd bought on the south bank of the Pearl River, myself moving up to Huiqiao New City in the new development district in the north side of the city. Ever since, when I haven't been away on business, I go to my parents' place for dinner every Sunday night. Though even now my parents still don't understand a word of Cantonese, and their range of activity is limited to the few surrounding blocks and the boulevard next to the river, nor do they know many people, the climate is pleasant here, the city bustling; compared to the lifelessly cold winters and hot summers back in Hubei, here my parents are usually full of smiles, never letting people forget, exaggeratedly, just how filial and able a son they have. All in all, they are growing old gracefully; but even a more comfortable environment, a better climate or mood still won't take back the years. What is messed up, though, is that just when they started enjoying the good life, they became that much more aware that they don't have that much time left. And the more sentimental they get, the more alarmed they are. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I've done the right thing; doing all I can to make them as comfortable and happy in their final few years has just made them all the more attached to life. Naturally, fear of death is growing in their hearts, but there's nothing else I can do. It's taken me years of struggle to even just get them out of the countryside.
The taxi stops at our community gate. I don't have change, so I hand the driver a fifty and tell him to keep the change. I dash into the building and step into the elevator. As it slowly climbs up to the tenth floor, I work out how I'm going to explain myself. I'll tell them I was out of the country, but with the time difference I could only phone them between six and seven at night, when I knew they'd be out walking on the riverbank. And the international lines were busy. Then I'll pretend to complain that they didn't answer my calls, or that they don't have an answering machine or something.
When mom opens the door to find me standing there, my I don't get to use my excuses. Mom just looks at me with a smile.
"Hurry, hurry, get in here," mom says in a thick, throaty Hubei accent, pulling it up into a wail.
"We've just finished cooking dinner," declares dad. He says this in Mandarin, which is strange, but after I enter the room, I understand. Someone else is here, she's in the kitchen, busy helping dad cook. I'm a bit surprised, this is the first time I've seen anything like this.
"Dad, mom, how've you been? I—"
"So good, so good," mom cuts me off, wailing into the kitchen, "Ah Hua, come out here, I want you to meet my son."
This woman called Ah Hua pokes her head out of the kitchen, takes a look at me and whips the towel off the stove, carelessly rubbing her face with. I almost laugh; her face was clean right up until she wiped it.
Dad comes out of the kitchen, rubbing his hands. In Mandarin, he introduces Ah Hua to me: "Ah Hua here is a youth ambassador from Pan's Nutritious Oral Tonic, she's been here showing us how to use Pan's Anti-aging Essence Formula for over two weeks already. So tell us, how do we look?"
Dad makes like he wants my opinion, but what can I say? This isn't the first time. Dad's always bringing home nutrition products; from honeybee extract to ginseng essence, they've tried them all. Yet every time, even though it annoys them, I always pour cold ideas on these ideas. But today they went and brought the product salesperson home—what did he call her? 'Youth Ambassador?'—with them, so of course I can't really say anything now. In any case, I'm lucky this "guest" is here, this way mom and dad won't ask where I disappeared to for over three weeks. If they knew I'd just spent three weeks in prison, for sure they'd break down.
Perhaps mistaking my hesitation for consideration, dad gets excited and mom presses close. "Doesn't your dad look so much better? He's only been taking it for two weeks."
Dad's colour does definitely look good, but then I also know that you can tell dad anything is good for him—say, drinking hot water—and his face start giving off a healthy glow. I mumble in agreement and nod my head, then shift my vision towards Youth Ambassador Ah Hua as she carefully sets the table. "Miss Ah Hua, is your company well-known?"
"You can call me Ah Hua, and it is. Our company uses a recently developed American formula in our DNA and metabolism-configuring nutritional products," Ah Hua firmly answers my question, continuing to place down the bowls and chopsticks in her hands, keeping her head down as she does so, avoiding eye contact with me. I guess she doesn't know this old couple's son is a Peking University grad, otherwise she wouldn't dare come in here. But, watching Ah Hua's unnatural and uneasy movements, I can't help but feeling a bit of sympathy for her. Everyone's gotta eat, no need to push the issue. Anyways, mom and dad have only been using it for two weeks, couldn't have put them back more than five hundred yuan. Tomorrow I'll find a way to talk them out of this.
As we eat, mom and dad yak on about the healing effectiveness of new nutritive tonics, telling me all about each and every celebrity who has been rejeuvenated by taking these things, making the old young and strong again and whatnot. Ah Hua sits silently off to the side, smiling from time to time, or cautiously throwing in a word or two, correcting mom and dad's exaggerations. You could say Ah Hua is acting generous and in good taste, not like one of those bloody pyramid scheme pushers you can spot from a mile off. This piques my interest, and I unconsciously keep glancing up at her eyes. She still hasn't wiped her face clean, but it's undeniable that she is one extremely enchanting woman. I reckon she's in her early thirties; she has a high forehead, a full face and loose clothes that still hardly conceal her finely detailed body when she moves. What's especially enchanting are her swollen breasts and, with her back to me, watching her stand up every time she bends down to scoop rice, her round, clearly-defined butt leaves me spaced out more than once. I put my head down and hurriedly gulp down my rice, blaming these things as the reason I've just spent nearly a month in prison.
Over dinner, Ah Hua keeps avoiding my gaze, but every time I even so much as see her in the corner of my eye, I feel my heart give a slight quiver. Her hair is disheveled and her face isn't clean, but I can clearly sense a kind of seductiveness coming from her, the kind of seduction that I can usually forget, but right now she's sitting across from me. That, and I've just spent over three weeks in prison. A kind of lust and desire makes me decide, for the moment, not to expose this pyramid scheme lady as a fraud. Either that, or I'm hoping I'll be able to see her again when I get back from the States.
After dinner, when Ah Hua stands up to leave, my eyes follow her to the door, and I surprise myself by thanking her: "Ah Hua, thank you for introducing my dad to your nutrition tonic, and thank you for taking care of them. I'll be going the US soon for a business trip, but I hope you'll stay on looking after them."
Ah Hua looks back at me, her face flushed red, which puzzles me. This woman must be at least thirty; her skin is white, but a man who looks like I do can turn her face bright read with just a 'thank you'? She might have seen that I have ulterior motives, which is good. These thoughts, they flash through my mind. With the look in her eyes that I've just seen, I once again feel ill at ease.
Dad's probably afraid I'm going to start lecturing them, now that Ah Hua is gone, so he rushes to say, "Ah Hua is a good girl. She used to work in a state-owned factory in Changsha, but lost her job after the factory was privatized. She came by herself to Guangzhou to look for work, and now she's got this pyramid scheme job. But you know, she doesn't seem like most pyramid schemers, she's not out to deceive anyone, she's just promoting a product she herself believes in. We ran into her in Liberation Park, and she kindly invited us to a sales exhibition at their company. The director of the Guangdong Province Health Department was even there, and lots of reporters. Everyone got to treated to a buffet meal, to try their tonic.
Mom throws in a line too, "Ah Hua sure is a good person, so worried that we wouldn't understand the instructions or that we might not know how much to take, that she comes to our house everyday to serve us for free. Like a daughter, she's so filial and smart, and she's as pretty as a painting..."
Mom and dad go on listing all of Ah Hua's good points, and I start to get the picture. Everything they're saying is word-for-word the lines crooks around the streets of Guangzhou have been using lately. I just silently think about leaving soon for a month-long business trip, and calculate that mom and dad's losses won't come to more than two thousand yuan, still within a range that I can handle. So I decide to keep quiet and not expose this fraudster's game.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The plane slides as it takes down the runway at Hong Kong airport. As it slowly rises into the air, my fear of flying begins to torment me again. My hands tightly grip the arm rests on both sides, my eyes are squinted shut, my teeth clenched, and a minute later, my clothes are soaked with sweat. About twenty minutes later, after I feel the airplane steady, I slowly open my eyes, only to see a man beside me with a sneer still on his face. There's nothing much I can do, but if I find a chance during the twelve hour flight, I'll explain to him, I have to let him know, I'm actually not scared of dying, that fear of flying is a kind of disease. Even if we are just strangers who met by chance on a flight, I still don't want to leave people with a bad impression. I think back to when I used to fly around alot, when this thing Westerners call fear of flying used to torment me to no end, which brought me to my knees in front of many an unknown flight passenger. Later, at an American friend's introduction, I went to see a doctor, wanting to find out the reason, but also hoping for some kind of sedative or sleeping pill miracle drug that will keep me as calm as water when I board airplanes, or else knock me out cold. In the end the doctor told me that while fear of flying is a disease, it's not within his field to treat. From there it was suggested I go see one renowned psychologist in New York.
The psychologist charges by the minute, not wholly unlike the 3P girls we have in Guangzhou. Except that massage misses rely on their own hands and other body parts to rub your whole body down and, finally, if the price is right, they'll even make all the foul things exit your body, leaving you in physical and mental ease. But psychologists rely on their words and eyes to help clean your spirit up which, if successful, clears all the hidden shadowy recesses out from your soul, leaving you feeling relaxed. Of course, New York psychologists are are lot more expensive than Guangzhou massage ladies, not to mention that I hadn't been to this clinic before, and the first visit requires "the full service", so as to say starting with my birth, all through growing up into adulthood. Thinking back now, at the time it felt a bit like how I felt up in the Guangzhou police station. It felt different in that at the police station there wasn't ever any hurry, time was on my side, different from being at the psychologist's, where I had to be fast, where I had to answer questions whether I wanted to or not, questions that the psychologist deliberately asked slowly, all while sneaking frequent looks at the clock hung on the wall. My misgivings were later proved right when I got the bill, which showed that every minute of those three hours at the psychologist's office that day cost me five American dollars. I remember when I was answering questions like what I liked most when I was a kid, what I hated, what my hopes were, a few dozen like that, and when I cautiously declared to the doctor that I'm not afraid to die. I told the psychologist that I've always known that motorbikes are the least safe mode of transportation in the world, that I know this to be fact. I also told him that I ride a motorbike to work every day, to save time, and that sometimes even the police can't keep up with me. I wanted to know how it is that people like me, who don't fear death, the second they get on board a plane start sweating like their lives depend on it, cold sweat that just doesn't stop.
Several times during my statements, that blue-eyed, Caucasian psychologist would take off his glasses, then put them back on again, like he wanted to use different lens angles to examine my inner being. In the end, he said, "you say you have no desires or needs, and that you have no personal belongings, no money in the bank, and no women you long for in your life, no hate or grudges to settle up, nothing in your heart that keeps you clinging onto life, no grand ambitions or ideals to realize. None of these mean that you're not afraid to die. Saying you don't fear death only goes to show that you haven't yet had a chance to properly consider death, because in your life there don't exist very many life or death scenes, and that being on a plane is the only time when you can actually consider death, because, deep in your heart, you feel that being on airplanes is as close to death as you get in your life. Am I right?"
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第二章 毒品惊魂 Chapter 2 Drug Scare
Part 3.1
Maintaining my composure, I say goodbye to Director Zhou and try my best to walk like people in lobbies of five-star hotels do, holding my head high as I move towards the hotel front door. As I pass through the hotel's majestic pillars, I see a reflection of Director Zhou, still standing in the coffee shop, watching intently as I leave, and I suddenly feel both perplexed and uneasy. Sitting in the coffee shop, Director Zhou noticed the three times I looked at my watch, at each mention that he had phoned my parents. I really would have liked to stay with him a bit longer, but today is Sunday, and now it's almost dinner time. I haven't been to see my parents for three weeks already.
Trotting out the hotel doors, I wave down a taxi, pulling open the door before the car even stops, and jump in. I tell the driver my parents' address, close my eyes and try to relax, but my mind won't stop racing. On my first Sunday in the police station, I thought about giving mom and dad a call, but then I didn't know then how long I was going to be in for, and I wasn't going to lie to my parents in front of the police, not to mention that I had no phone number to give them, so I let that thought go. Then for the two weeks after that I didn't call either; at the time, I just thought that they'd have gotten over me not coming over for dinner the first week, so there was no reason they couldn't in the weeks after. At least that's what I thought at the time.
Dad's a retired high school teacher, mom's a retired doctor. Dad's already 77 this year, and mom just had her 75th birthday. In hopes they'd enjoy their old age, a few years ago I brought them down to Guangzhou from my home in Hubei and put them up in an apartment I'd bought on the south bank of the Pearl River, myself moving up to Huiqiao New City in the new development district in the north side of the city. Ever since, when I haven't been away on business, I go to my parents' place for dinner every Sunday night. Though even now my parents still don't understand a word of Cantonese, and their range of activity is limited to the few surrounding blocks and the boulevard next to the river, nor do they know many people, the climate is pleasant here, the city bustling; compared to the lifelessly cold winters and hot summers back in Hubei, here my parents are usually full of smiles, never letting people forget, exaggeratedly, just how filial and able a son they have. All in all, they are growing old gracefully; but even a more comfortable environment, a better climate or mood still won't take back the years. What is messed up, though, is that just when they started enjoying the good life, they became that much more aware that they don't have that much time left. And the more sentimental they get, the more alarmed they are. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I've done the right thing; doing all I can to make them as comfortable and happy in their final few years has just made them all the more attached to life. Naturally, fear of death is growing in their hearts, but there's nothing else I can do. It's taken me years of struggle to even just get them out of the countryside.
The taxi stops at our community gate. I don't have change, so I hand the driver a fifty and tell him to keep the change. I dash into the building and step into the elevator. As it slowly climbs up to the tenth floor, I work out how I'm going to explain myself. I'll tell them I was out of the country, but with the time difference I could only phone them between six and seven at night, when I knew they'd be out walking on the riverbank. And the international lines were busy. Then I'll pretend to complain that they didn't answer my calls, or that they don't have an answering machine or something.
When mom opens the door to find me standing there, my I don't get to use my excuses. Mom just looks at me with a smile.
"Hurry, hurry, get in here," mom says in a thick, throaty Hubei accent, pulling it up into a wail.
"We've just finished cooking dinner," declares dad. He says this in Mandarin, which is strange, but after I enter the room, I understand. Someone else is here, she's in the kitchen, busy helping dad cook. I'm a bit surprised, this is the first time I've seen anything like this.
"Dad, mom, how've you been? I—"
"So good, so good," mom cuts me off, wailing into the kitchen, "Ah Hua, come out here, I want you to meet my son."
This woman called Ah Hua pokes her head out of the kitchen, takes a look at me and whips the towel off the stove, carelessly rubbing her face with. I almost laugh; her face was clean right up until she wiped it.
Dad comes out of the kitchen, rubbing his hands. In Mandarin, he introduces Ah Hua to me: "Ah Hua here is a youth ambassador from Pan's Nutritious Oral Tonic, she's been here showing us how to use Pan's Anti-aging Essence Formula for over two weeks already. So tell us, how do we look?"
Dad makes like he wants my opinion, but what can I say? This isn't the first time. Dad's always bringing home nutrition products; from honeybee extract to ginseng essence, they've tried them all. Yet every time, even though it annoys them, I always pour cold ideas on these ideas. But today they went and brought the product salesperson home—what did he call her? 'Youth Ambassador?'—with them, so of course I can't really say anything now. In any case, I'm lucky this "guest" is here, this way mom and dad won't ask where I disappeared to for over three weeks. If they knew I'd just spent three weeks in prison, for sure they'd break down.
Perhaps mistaking my hesitation for consideration, dad gets excited and mom presses close. "Doesn't your dad look so much better? He's only been taking it for two weeks."
Dad's colour does definitely look good, but then I also know that you can tell dad anything is good for him—say, drinking hot water—and his face start giving off a healthy glow. I mumble in agreement and nod my head, then shift my vision towards Youth Ambassador Ah Hua as she carefully sets the table. "Miss Ah Hua, is your company well-known?"
"You can call me Ah Hua, and it is. Our company uses a recently developed American formula in our DNA and metabolism-configuring nutritional products," Ah Hua firmly answers my question, continuing to place down the bowls and chopsticks in her hands, keeping her head down as she does so, avoiding eye contact with me. I guess she doesn't know this old couple's son is a Peking University grad, otherwise she wouldn't dare come in here. But, watching Ah Hua's unnatural and uneasy movements, I can't help but feeling a bit of sympathy for her. Everyone's gotta eat, no need to push the issue. Anyways, mom and dad have only been using it for two weeks, couldn't have put them back more than five hundred yuan. Tomorrow I'll find a way to talk them out of this.
As we eat, mom and dad yak on about the healing effectiveness of new nutritive tonics, telling me all about each and every celebrity who has been rejeuvenated by taking these things, making the old young and strong again and whatnot. Ah Hua sits silently off to the side, smiling from time to time, or cautiously throwing in a word or two, correcting mom and dad's exaggerations. You could say Ah Hua is acting generous and in good taste, not like one of those bloody pyramid scheme pushers you can spot from a mile off. This piques my interest, and I unconsciously keep glancing up at her eyes. She still hasn't wiped her face clean, but it's undeniable that she is one extremely enchanting woman. I reckon she's in her early thirties; she has a high forehead, a full face and loose clothes that still hardly conceal her finely detailed body when she moves. What's especially enchanting are her swollen breasts and, with her back to me, watching her stand up every time she bends down to scoop rice, her round, clearly-defined butt leaves me spaced out more than once. I put my head down and hurriedly gulp down my rice, blaming these things as the reason I've just spent nearly a month in prison.
Over dinner, Ah Hua keeps avoiding my gaze, but every time I even so much as see her in the corner of my eye, I feel my heart give a slight quiver. Her hair is disheveled and her face isn't clean, but I can clearly sense a kind of seductiveness coming from her, the kind of seduction that I can usually forget, but right now she's sitting across from me. That, and I've just spent over three weeks in prison. A kind of lust and desire makes me decide, for the moment, not to expose this pyramid scheme lady as a fraud. Either that, or I'm hoping I'll be able to see her again when I get back from the States.
After dinner, when Ah Hua stands up to leave, my eyes follow her to the door, and I surprise myself by thanking her: "Ah Hua, thank you for introducing my dad to your nutrition tonic, and thank you for taking care of them. I'll be going the US soon for a business trip, but I hope you'll stay on looking after them."
Ah Hua looks back at me, her face flushed red, which puzzles me. This woman must be at least thirty; her skin is white, but a man who looks like I do can turn her face bright read with just a 'thank you'? She might have seen that I have ulterior motives, which is good. These thoughts, they flash through my mind. With the look in her eyes that I've just seen, I once again feel ill at ease.
Dad's probably afraid I'm going to start lecturing them, now that Ah Hua is gone, so he rushes to say, "Ah Hua is a good girl. She used to work in a state-owned factory in Changsha, but lost her job after the factory was privatized. She came by herself to Guangzhou to look for work, and now she's got this pyramid scheme job. But you know, she doesn't seem like most pyramid schemers, she's not out to deceive anyone, she's just promoting a product she herself believes in. We ran into her in Liberation Park, and she kindly invited us to a sales exhibition at their company. The director of the Guangdong Province Health Department was even there, and lots of reporters. Everyone got to treated to a buffet meal, to try their tonic.
Mom throws in a line too, "Ah Hua sure is a good person, so worried that we wouldn't understand the instructions or that we might not know how much to take, that she comes to our house everyday to serve us for free. Like a daughter, she's so filial and smart, and she's as pretty as a painting..."
Mom and dad go on listing all of Ah Hua's good points, and I start to get the picture. Everything they're saying is word-for-word the lines crooks around the streets of Guangzhou have been using lately. I just silently think about leaving soon for a month-long business trip, and calculate that mom and dad's losses won't come to more than two thousand yuan, still within a range that I can handle. So I decide to keep quiet and not expose this fraudster's game.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The plane slides as it takes down the runway at Hong Kong airport. As it slowly rises into the air, my fear of flying begins to torment me again. My hands tightly grip the arm rests on both sides, my eyes are squinted shut, my teeth clenched, and a minute later, my clothes are soaked with sweat. About twenty minutes later, after I feel the airplane steady, I slowly open my eyes, only to see a man beside me with a sneer still on his face. There's nothing much I can do, but if I find a chance during the twelve hour flight, I'll explain to him, I have to let him know, I'm actually not scared of dying, that fear of flying is a kind of disease. Even if we are just strangers who met by chance on a flight, I still don't want to leave people with a bad impression. I think back to when I used to fly around alot, when this thing Westerners call fear of flying used to torment me to no end, which brought me to my knees in front of many an unknown flight passenger. Later, at an American friend's introduction, I went to see a doctor, wanting to find out the reason, but also hoping for some kind of sedative or sleeping pill miracle drug that will keep me as calm as water when I board airplanes, or else knock me out cold. In the end the doctor told me that while fear of flying is a disease, it's not within his field to treat. From there it was suggested I go see one renowned psychologist in New York.
The psychologist charges by the minute, not wholly unlike the 3P girls we have in Guangzhou. Except that massage misses rely on their own hands and other body parts to rub your whole body down and, finally, if the price is right, they'll even make all the foul things exit your body, leaving you in physical and mental ease. But psychologists rely on their words and eyes to help clean your spirit up which, if successful, clears all the hidden shadowy recesses out from your soul, leaving you feeling relaxed. Of course, New York psychologists are are lot more expensive than Guangzhou massage ladies, not to mention that I hadn't been to this clinic before, and the first visit requires "the full service", so as to say starting with my birth, all through growing up into adulthood. Thinking back now, at the time it felt a bit like how I felt up in the Guangzhou police station. It felt different in that at the police station there wasn't ever any hurry, time was on my side, different from being at the psychologist's, where I had to be fast, where I had to answer questions whether I wanted to or not, questions that the psychologist deliberately asked slowly, all while sneaking frequent looks at the clock hung on the wall. My misgivings were later proved right when I got the bill, which showed that every minute of those three hours at the psychologist's office that day cost me five American dollars. I remember when I was answering questions like what I liked most when I was a kid, what I hated, what my hopes were, a few dozen like that, and when I cautiously declared to the doctor that I'm not afraid to die. I told the psychologist that I've always known that motorbikes are the least safe mode of transportation in the world, that I know this to be fact. I also told him that I ride a motorbike to work every day, to save time, and that sometimes even the police can't keep up with me. I wanted to know how it is that people like me, who don't fear death, the second they get on board a plane start sweating like their lives depend on it, cold sweat that just doesn't stop.
Several times during my statements, that blue-eyed, Caucasian psychologist would take off his glasses, then put them back on again, like he wanted to use different lens angles to examine my inner being. In the end, he said, "you say you have no desires or needs, and that you have no personal belongings, no money in the bank, and no women you long for in your life, no hate or grudges to settle up, nothing in your heart that keeps you clinging onto life, no grand ambitions or ideals to realize. None of these mean that you're not afraid to die. Saying you don't fear death only goes to show that you haven't yet had a chance to properly consider death, because in your life there don't exist very many life or death scenes, and that being on a plane is the only time when you can actually consider death, because, deep in your heart, you feel that being on airplanes is as close to death as you get in your life. Am I right?"
3.27.2007
Fatal Weakness—Yang Hengjun (2.3)
致命弱点 Fatal Weakness
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第一章 我是谁? Chapter 1 Who am I?
Part 2.3
By Sunday afternoon, I was already feeling back to normal. Around just after four, the guard came and told me someone had come to get me out. They didn't take me to the interrogation room, but into a room marked "Police Chief's Office". Inside I saw my old superior, Director Zhou, head of the Ministry of State Security. He was looking kindly towards me, I thought if I hadn't cried myself dry the night before, I'd have cried then. I quickly said my goodbyes to Chiefs Zhang and Li, who were both present, and to someone else who looked to be the station chief or something, and then with Director Zhou I left the police station at which I'd just spent three weeks.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"How'd you know I was in the police station?" I ask Director Zhou after we've already sat down at the tasteful, tranquil coffee shop inside the five-star China Hotel.
"I went to the apartment at the address you'd given us and saw the mailbox was crammed full of letters, some of which had even fallen on the floor. I picked them up and saw they were bills."
"Of course they were bills. Nobody would write me. Nobody writes letters these days anyway," I say, woodenly.
"The problem was, I saw that most of the bills were overdue. 'Hah, I thought. Would our little Yang go and stop paying his utilities bills? He must be in trouble.'" Director Zhou says this humourlessly; as he's speaking I almost start laughing, but don't. He must have noticed my expression, and asks with concern, "they didn't torture you in the police station, did they?"
"No, it's not cool to force confessions through corporal punishment and torture these days." For three weeks I was in there, sitting when I wasn't lying down, that's why my back's all stiff now. I say, "actually, the police comrades don't really like all that, it's just sometimes they're in a hurry to solve a case, with pressure coming down from above and all. Not to mention, a faster confession from a suspect not only saves on state spending, but sometimes even saves a life.
"They told me they had you in there for three weeks, but no matter what tactic they used, you just wouldn't crack. On the surface it looked like you were going along with their interrogations, but then time after time you let them down. They couldn't help but admit, you're the toughest suspect they've come across in years...heh, heh." Director Zhou, seeing me furrow my eyebrows and saying nothing, asks with a serious tone of voice, "I'm asking, did they torture you or not?!"
"They didn't. Under national law, torture isn't allowed; the cops are very clear on that."
"Well good, good." Director Zhou relaxes, adds some sugar to his coffee. "So you're saying, you didn't confess to anything?"
"Nothing. Though I think I was about to; I wouldn't have lasted for much longer!" I take a sip of my bubble tea, and for a moment I feel at ease. To tell the truth, when I was inside, I sure missed these tough little pellets it's become so popular to put in milk tea over the past few years.
"What would you have to confess?" Director Zhou almost sprays coffee out his nose. "I mean, would you confess to murdering that woman?"
"Maybe, but I didn't kill her, you know."
"Uh-huh. I had no idea police interrogation techniques had improved so quickly these last few years. They actually almost made you confess." Director Zhou smiles again, "that's good to see."
"After the first week inside, there were a few times when I thought about just confessing. I stopped wondering if it were possible that I might kill someone, or if I already had. Though I hadn't in fact killed anyone, I didn't just have motive to, but in my heart and in my bones I felt it completely possible that I was a murderer. Thinking about it now, it seems impossible. Tell me, Director Zhou, what do make of all this?"
Director Zhou took a long look at me and shook his head. "Little Yang, the highest level of interrogation techniques will make anyone confess to whatever the interrogator wants them to, whether it's a crime they actually committed or not."
My mouth hangs open with shock, and I look at Director Zhou's benevolent face with disbelief. I know that just after Liberation, there was a time when Director Zhou worked in counter-espionage and reconnaissance. From his appearance today, I have no way of imagining what he was like back then, but someone at the Department once told me that at the time, Director Zhou was a master interrogator. Back in the early days of Liberation, well-trained Taiwanese spies suffered through the stormy Taiwan strait and when they finally got to shore, snuck into Beijing. After they were caught, it took less than an hour of sitting in front of Director Zhou for them the break down and confess everything. Thinking of this, my curiosity peaks and I lift my body up out of the deep, soft sofa, and probe: "Director Zhou, you're saying that if one just acquires the highest levels of interrogation technique, you believe they can make anyone confess? Even those who didn't commit any crime?"
"Not bad, kid." Director Zhou takes a sip of coffee, his voice clearly lowered. "As long as they're human, they'll have weaknesses. Those doing the interrogating just need to seek out the suspects' weakness, then everything is solved."
But Director Zhou doesn't look the least bit like he's got 'everything solved'. He finishes his sentence, lowers his head and continues drinking his coffee. I don't speak either, just look away from Director Zhou and let myself fall back down into the sofa. I'm not fully convinced by what Director Zhou has just said; or rather, I haven't yet fully absorbed it. Like, some people's weaknesses are hidden deep down, so deep they themselves don't know they have such a weakness. Then there's the weaknesses some people appear to have but aren't fatal. Then again, some people, like me, toil through life with no desires or needs. Save dying, I don't know what 'fatal' weakness I have. There's one more kind of person, the kind who aren't even afraid to die; even if you get hold of their fatal weakness, what's the use?
There's a depressed feel in the air, and minutes later Director Zhou raises his head, saying silently, "everyone has a weakness." I notice his eyes are a bit moist from the coffee, and I guess he must be thinking back to his Cultural Revolution days. According to the rumors back at the Ministry, back in the day, the rebels figured out Director Zhou's fatal weakness, killing his wife and son. They say at the time his kid was only three. I don't know all the details, but nor do I want Director Zhou to be thinking about this, so I change the subject.
"But if the suspect hasn't even committed a crime and still confesses, what good is that for the interrogator? How can they crack the case?"
"Such is the high art of interrogation," Director Zhou says, drifting back out of his memory, "grabbing hold of the suspect's fatal weakness, and using means of mental or physical torture until the suspect comes close to crumbling. This is when suspects break, and spill everything out. Those who have done this will tell you, in most cases, so they can escape sooner, even the innocent will confess; sometimes they'll even exaggerate, or describe things down to the last detail.
"Director Zhou, I don't believe it. You call this the high art of interrogation?" I can't even hide that I'm puzzled and displeased.
"Just let me finish. Reaching this step requires a high level of learning in interrogation, especially when use of physical torture and anesthetic drugs isn't allowed; to reach this stage, the interrogator needs to grasp two points: one is the suspect's fatal weakness; the second is to have a certain knowledge of psychology, and no lack of either. Getting the suspect's oral confession is only the first step; the next step is what's crucial in breaking the case, that being knowing which parts of the suspect's oral confession are real, and which parts are false."
I make like I understand, but I really don't; you know, books have been written about everything on the planet, but there's no book that teaches you how to force a confession!
"At this point, the interrogator must be clear; the suspect's confession was forced out, some of it will be untrue. Because they're about to break down, it's easy to tell the difference between the truth and their lies. It's always easier at this point for the interrogator to tell the difference than at the beginning, when suspects will put on an air of speaking from the heart. Take you, for example, if you'd really murdered Rong'er, you'd have confessed to giving her some drug or another and described how you committed the crime. But these details would only have been known to the police after a careful autopsy. If the details you gave had matched what the police have, then the chance that you made them up would have been one in a million. This would have proven beyond a doubt that you are guilty! But there's another scenario, where in an attempt to free yourself sooner, you start lying through your teeth. Like when you said you fed her some sleeping pills, because you thought that's how most people kill themselves. Or like when you admitted to having had a sexual relationship with her, these things of course could be found out by the police through an autopsy. But when you're about to break down, whether you're lying or telling the truth, it's all done unconsciously. That's why interrogators with grasp over the highest level of interrogation techniques can determine the veracity of confessions made on the brink of emtional collapse.
"Brutal!" I can't help but sigh.
"Of course, this kind of interrogation isn't suited for most criminal cases. I'm talking about cases of national security, of espionage or terror cases that pose serious risk to public safety." Stopping for a sec, with a serious look, Director Zhou shakes his head. "It's just too bad that so many interrogators make the mistake of using these interrogation tactics. They get suspects to confess while in a state of mental disarray and think they've completed their task and can report back to their superiors, when really they haven't reached step two. Who knows how many false convictions confessions forced under torture have resulted in."
I think out loud, "nearly forty years old and I have no idea what my own fatal weakness is, or else I could have prevented all this. See, I'm a person who worries so much about even letting his bills go unpaid that you could tell from looking at them that something must have happened to me, yet—"
"Little Yang, it wasn't from your overdue bills that I knew you were in trouble," Director Zhou softly cuts in, "I phoned you before I came, then phoned your parents' home—"
"My parents?" I ask nervously, "they don't where I've been."
"Right, they didn't know where you were, and they told me you hadn't been home to see them for two weeks straight, hadn't called either. So I knew something must have happened to you."
"I tense up at the mention of my aged parents, but try my best to keep my cool in front of Director Zhou. Deep down, though, I know that no matter how cool an exterior I try and keep my nervousness behind, hiding it from Director Zhou's sharp eyes will just be in vain. I'm lucky Director Zhou came to find me, just like a parent would. As I rush towards forty, he's the only person who can call me Little Yang and still leave me feeling warm; with him, there's no need to hide everything.
"Little Yang, I'll try and hurry up with what I have to say, you ought to be getting home," Director Yang says, staring at his coffee as he speaks. He's already on his third cup, and a lazy aroma rises up from the coffee and spreads through the air. "Of all the young people I know, you're the one I like the most. When you first left the Ministry for State Security, I lost track of you for a while. Though, I respect you, especially your choices. You weren't paid that much working for us, and your parents weren't used to Beijing's climate. You came to Guangzhou to look for work, so I had no way to help you out; luckily you get paid a lot more than you did in Beijing, that at least makes me feel better. Only that I hated to see you leave, I feel you you would have made one extremely outstanding intelligence agent."
I'm a bit moved, my eyes a bit watery. These last few years since I got out of the game and came to Guangzhou, I haven't done too badly for myself, but I've always something wasn't right. Just take what Director Zhou said; none of the bosses I've worked for over these past few years have ever given me this kind of praise. They've all did their best to give free rein to my abilities and were never been stingy in raising my pay, but they still almost never gave me compliments. I think mostly they we're afraid I'd get too proud, or that complimenting me would lead to me recognising my own worth, and demanding higher wages. Of course, not long after the boss praised them, some staff did take off for better jobs.
"Little Yang, I didn't come just to see you, there's another thing, I wonder if you can help," Director Zhou says quietly, quickly, clearly, "you could say it's an assignment..."
扬恒均 Yang Hengjun
第一章 我是谁? Chapter 1 Who am I?
Part 2.3
By Sunday afternoon, I was already feeling back to normal. Around just after four, the guard came and told me someone had come to get me out. They didn't take me to the interrogation room, but into a room marked "Police Chief's Office". Inside I saw my old superior, Director Zhou, head of the Ministry of State Security. He was looking kindly towards me, I thought if I hadn't cried myself dry the night before, I'd have cried then. I quickly said my goodbyes to Chiefs Zhang and Li, who were both present, and to someone else who looked to be the station chief or something, and then with Director Zhou I left the police station at which I'd just spent three weeks.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"How'd you know I was in the police station?" I ask Director Zhou after we've already sat down at the tasteful, tranquil coffee shop inside the five-star China Hotel.
"I went to the apartment at the address you'd given us and saw the mailbox was crammed full of letters, some of which had even fallen on the floor. I picked them up and saw they were bills."
"Of course they were bills. Nobody would write me. Nobody writes letters these days anyway," I say, woodenly.
"The problem was, I saw that most of the bills were overdue. 'Hah, I thought. Would our little Yang go and stop paying his utilities bills? He must be in trouble.'" Director Zhou says this humourlessly; as he's speaking I almost start laughing, but don't. He must have noticed my expression, and asks with concern, "they didn't torture you in the police station, did they?"
"No, it's not cool to force confessions through corporal punishment and torture these days." For three weeks I was in there, sitting when I wasn't lying down, that's why my back's all stiff now. I say, "actually, the police comrades don't really like all that, it's just sometimes they're in a hurry to solve a case, with pressure coming down from above and all. Not to mention, a faster confession from a suspect not only saves on state spending, but sometimes even saves a life.
"They told me they had you in there for three weeks, but no matter what tactic they used, you just wouldn't crack. On the surface it looked like you were going along with their interrogations, but then time after time you let them down. They couldn't help but admit, you're the toughest suspect they've come across in years...heh, heh." Director Zhou, seeing me furrow my eyebrows and saying nothing, asks with a serious tone of voice, "I'm asking, did they torture you or not?!"
"They didn't. Under national law, torture isn't allowed; the cops are very clear on that."
"Well good, good." Director Zhou relaxes, adds some sugar to his coffee. "So you're saying, you didn't confess to anything?"
"Nothing. Though I think I was about to; I wouldn't have lasted for much longer!" I take a sip of my bubble tea, and for a moment I feel at ease. To tell the truth, when I was inside, I sure missed these tough little pellets it's become so popular to put in milk tea over the past few years.
"What would you have to confess?" Director Zhou almost sprays coffee out his nose. "I mean, would you confess to murdering that woman?"
"Maybe, but I didn't kill her, you know."
"Uh-huh. I had no idea police interrogation techniques had improved so quickly these last few years. They actually almost made you confess." Director Zhou smiles again, "that's good to see."
"After the first week inside, there were a few times when I thought about just confessing. I stopped wondering if it were possible that I might kill someone, or if I already had. Though I hadn't in fact killed anyone, I didn't just have motive to, but in my heart and in my bones I felt it completely possible that I was a murderer. Thinking about it now, it seems impossible. Tell me, Director Zhou, what do make of all this?"
Director Zhou took a long look at me and shook his head. "Little Yang, the highest level of interrogation techniques will make anyone confess to whatever the interrogator wants them to, whether it's a crime they actually committed or not."
My mouth hangs open with shock, and I look at Director Zhou's benevolent face with disbelief. I know that just after Liberation, there was a time when Director Zhou worked in counter-espionage and reconnaissance. From his appearance today, I have no way of imagining what he was like back then, but someone at the Department once told me that at the time, Director Zhou was a master interrogator. Back in the early days of Liberation, well-trained Taiwanese spies suffered through the stormy Taiwan strait and when they finally got to shore, snuck into Beijing. After they were caught, it took less than an hour of sitting in front of Director Zhou for them the break down and confess everything. Thinking of this, my curiosity peaks and I lift my body up out of the deep, soft sofa, and probe: "Director Zhou, you're saying that if one just acquires the highest levels of interrogation technique, you believe they can make anyone confess? Even those who didn't commit any crime?"
"Not bad, kid." Director Zhou takes a sip of coffee, his voice clearly lowered. "As long as they're human, they'll have weaknesses. Those doing the interrogating just need to seek out the suspects' weakness, then everything is solved."
But Director Zhou doesn't look the least bit like he's got 'everything solved'. He finishes his sentence, lowers his head and continues drinking his coffee. I don't speak either, just look away from Director Zhou and let myself fall back down into the sofa. I'm not fully convinced by what Director Zhou has just said; or rather, I haven't yet fully absorbed it. Like, some people's weaknesses are hidden deep down, so deep they themselves don't know they have such a weakness. Then there's the weaknesses some people appear to have but aren't fatal. Then again, some people, like me, toil through life with no desires or needs. Save dying, I don't know what 'fatal' weakness I have. There's one more kind of person, the kind who aren't even afraid to die; even if you get hold of their fatal weakness, what's the use?
There's a depressed feel in the air, and minutes later Director Zhou raises his head, saying silently, "everyone has a weakness." I notice his eyes are a bit moist from the coffee, and I guess he must be thinking back to his Cultural Revolution days. According to the rumors back at the Ministry, back in the day, the rebels figured out Director Zhou's fatal weakness, killing his wife and son. They say at the time his kid was only three. I don't know all the details, but nor do I want Director Zhou to be thinking about this, so I change the subject.
"But if the suspect hasn't even committed a crime and still confesses, what good is that for the interrogator? How can they crack the case?"
"Such is the high art of interrogation," Director Zhou says, drifting back out of his memory, "grabbing hold of the suspect's fatal weakness, and using means of mental or physical torture until the suspect comes close to crumbling. This is when suspects break, and spill everything out. Those who have done this will tell you, in most cases, so they can escape sooner, even the innocent will confess; sometimes they'll even exaggerate, or describe things down to the last detail.
"Director Zhou, I don't believe it. You call this the high art of interrogation?" I can't even hide that I'm puzzled and displeased.
"Just let me finish. Reaching this step requires a high level of learning in interrogation, especially when use of physical torture and anesthetic drugs isn't allowed; to reach this stage, the interrogator needs to grasp two points: one is the suspect's fatal weakness; the second is to have a certain knowledge of psychology, and no lack of either. Getting the suspect's oral confession is only the first step; the next step is what's crucial in breaking the case, that being knowing which parts of the suspect's oral confession are real, and which parts are false."
I make like I understand, but I really don't; you know, books have been written about everything on the planet, but there's no book that teaches you how to force a confession!
"At this point, the interrogator must be clear; the suspect's confession was forced out, some of it will be untrue. Because they're about to break down, it's easy to tell the difference between the truth and their lies. It's always easier at this point for the interrogator to tell the difference than at the beginning, when suspects will put on an air of speaking from the heart. Take you, for example, if you'd really murdered Rong'er, you'd have confessed to giving her some drug or another and described how you committed the crime. But these details would only have been known to the police after a careful autopsy. If the details you gave had matched what the police have, then the chance that you made them up would have been one in a million. This would have proven beyond a doubt that you are guilty! But there's another scenario, where in an attempt to free yourself sooner, you start lying through your teeth. Like when you said you fed her some sleeping pills, because you thought that's how most people kill themselves. Or like when you admitted to having had a sexual relationship with her, these things of course could be found out by the police through an autopsy. But when you're about to break down, whether you're lying or telling the truth, it's all done unconsciously. That's why interrogators with grasp over the highest level of interrogation techniques can determine the veracity of confessions made on the brink of emtional collapse.
"Brutal!" I can't help but sigh.
"Of course, this kind of interrogation isn't suited for most criminal cases. I'm talking about cases of national security, of espionage or terror cases that pose serious risk to public safety." Stopping for a sec, with a serious look, Director Zhou shakes his head. "It's just too bad that so many interrogators make the mistake of using these interrogation tactics. They get suspects to confess while in a state of mental disarray and think they've completed their task and can report back to their superiors, when really they haven't reached step two. Who knows how many false convictions confessions forced under torture have resulted in."
I think out loud, "nearly forty years old and I have no idea what my own fatal weakness is, or else I could have prevented all this. See, I'm a person who worries so much about even letting his bills go unpaid that you could tell from looking at them that something must have happened to me, yet—"
"Little Yang, it wasn't from your overdue bills that I knew you were in trouble," Director Zhou softly cuts in, "I phoned you before I came, then phoned your parents' home—"
"My parents?" I ask nervously, "they don't where I've been."
"Right, they didn't know where you were, and they told me you hadn't been home to see them for two weeks straight, hadn't called either. So I knew something must have happened to you."
"I tense up at the mention of my aged parents, but try my best to keep my cool in front of Director Zhou. Deep down, though, I know that no matter how cool an exterior I try and keep my nervousness behind, hiding it from Director Zhou's sharp eyes will just be in vain. I'm lucky Director Zhou came to find me, just like a parent would. As I rush towards forty, he's the only person who can call me Little Yang and still leave me feeling warm; with him, there's no need to hide everything.
"Little Yang, I'll try and hurry up with what I have to say, you ought to be getting home," Director Yang says, staring at his coffee as he speaks. He's already on his third cup, and a lazy aroma rises up from the coffee and spreads through the air. "Of all the young people I know, you're the one I like the most. When you first left the Ministry for State Security, I lost track of you for a while. Though, I respect you, especially your choices. You weren't paid that much working for us, and your parents weren't used to Beijing's climate. You came to Guangzhou to look for work, so I had no way to help you out; luckily you get paid a lot more than you did in Beijing, that at least makes me feel better. Only that I hated to see you leave, I feel you you would have made one extremely outstanding intelligence agent."
I'm a bit moved, my eyes a bit watery. These last few years since I got out of the game and came to Guangzhou, I haven't done too badly for myself, but I've always something wasn't right. Just take what Director Zhou said; none of the bosses I've worked for over these past few years have ever given me this kind of praise. They've all did their best to give free rein to my abilities and were never been stingy in raising my pay, but they still almost never gave me compliments. I think mostly they we're afraid I'd get too proud, or that complimenting me would lead to me recognising my own worth, and demanding higher wages. Of course, not long after the boss praised them, some staff did take off for better jobs.
"Little Yang, I didn't come just to see you, there's another thing, I wonder if you can help," Director Zhou says quietly, quickly, clearly, "you could say it's an assignment..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)