Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

Geng Lianlian, admit you were wrong, and beg her to take you back. What good does face do when you’ve sunk this low? Face? That’s a luxury for the well-to-do, not for the likes of you. Just because she called you a stinking bedbug doesn’t make you one. Or, for that matter, a louse. He berated himself, he begrudged himself, he grieved for himself, he forgave himself, he felt his own pain, he enlightened himself, he talked himself around, he taught himself a lesson, and before he knew it, he was standing at the gate of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary.
    He paced irresolutely. Every time he got up the nerve to go in, he held back at the last minute. When a true man says he’s setting out, a team of four horses can’t hold him back. If there’s no place for me here, there’ll be one somewhere. A good horse doesn’t turn and eat the grass it’s trampled on. I do not lower my head even if I die from hunger; I stand tall before the wind as I die from the cold. I’ll fight over a good showing, but not over bread. We may lack food, but we don’t lack will. Everyone has to die sometime, and we must leave a name for history. He recited one cliché after another to strengthen his resolve, but he’d taken no more than a few steps before he returned to the gate. Jintong faced a dilemma. He hoped against hope that he might bump into Parrot Han or Lianlian there at the gate. But then he heard Parrot Han call out something, and he ran behind a tree. And so he remained, just outside the gate, until the sun went down. Gazing up at the house, he saw soft light streaming out of Lianlian’s window, and melancholy set in. He continued gazing, but nothing came to mind, and in the end he turned and dragged himself off in the direction of town.
    It was the smell of food that drew him instinctively to the night snack market in town. Originally the site of a martial arts training center, it was now the place where tasty snacks were sold. When he arrived, the shops were still open, their neon lights flashing on and off. Shop owners lolled about in their doorways, spitting watermelon seed husks effortlessly into the street as they waited in vain for customers. The scene on the cobblestone street, was more welcoming, the asphalt glistening with water, both sides alight with warm red electric lamps. Proprietors of roadside stands were dressed in white uniforms and high hats, their faces shone. A plaque at the entrance proclaimed:
    SILENCE IS GOLDEN
HERE YOUR MOUTH IS FOR EATING, NOT FOR TALKING
    YOUR COMPLIANCE WILL BE REWARDED
    He never dreamed that the snow market regulations would find their way to this little snack market. Pink mist rose above the street, thanks to the red lamps, framing the shop owners as they signaled passersby with their eyes and their hands, lending the area a mysterious, furtive aura. Clusters of boys and girls in bright clothes, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, cuddling together and passing looks, but scrupulously observing the no-talking ban, were part of a grand spectacle, sharing in the strange, joyous mood of what was neither a game nor a joke, resembling tiny clutches of birds, staggering along, pecking here and there, buyers and sellers alike caught up in the seriousness of the moment. The moment Jintong stepped onto this street of silence, he experienced the rush of returning to his roots, and momentarily forgot his hunger and the humiliation of that morning. It felt to him that the silence had broken down all barriers between the people
    Sometime after midnight, damp, cold winds from the southeast covered him like the skin of a snake. He had walked from one place to another, eventually winding up back in the night market, which had closed up for the night. The red lamps had been turned off, leaving only a few dim streetlights shining down on the street, now cluttered with feathers and snakeskins. Sanitation workers were sweeping up the garbage; some young hooligans were engaged in a wordless fistfight. They stopped when they saw him and simply stared. The hooligans exchanged glances, one of them gave a signal with his eyes, and they swarmed around Jintong. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself on the ground being freed of his suit, his shoes, everything but his underwear. Then, with a loud whistle as a sign, his tormentors vanished like a school of fish in the ocean.
    Jintong went off looking for the thieving hooligans, up one dark lane and down another”, half naked and barefoot.