Your forehead will arrive in 48 hours

Yes, yes, I’ve made up my face the same as others have made up stories. You like it? I like it. The eyebrows imported from Japan. The mouth all the way from Liechtenstein. The eyes I designed myself. The chin with its dimples a present from my girlfriend which was really a present for herself cause all girls I don’t know why like dimples, they think they’re cute. The nose I’m only borrowing for the moment but comes all the way from Saudi Arabia, some sheikh lent it to me. Lots of oil. I can still smell the oil. And the money. Weird. So yeah that’s my face. The rest of me like my legs and arms and all that I’m not sure where they all came from. Hey these studio lights are hotter than usual. I’m burning up. Can somebody bring me some water? I remember when I was maybe 6-years old and my daddy was still alive and he took me to KFC for I can’t remember why I think I might have been sick the week before and he’d promised me so we were sitting there in KFC and I had a different face back then and I was tiny, my feet not touching the floor, dangling above the floor, and my daddy was eating a burger and I was, too. Nothing really special happened, I just remember it, and I always remember it whenever I’m sad, or maybe it’s that I get sad because I remember it… Hey! Where’s that water? Can’t somebody adjust these lights? Turn them down a bit? No? Oh fuck it. So you like the eyebrows? What? The forehead? Well the forehead I ordered off Amazon over a month ago and it only arrived this morning so I’m not used to it yet but it looks alright doesn’t it? Comes from some country I can’t remember the name beside what’s that place? Finland? No, no, not Finland, Ukraine? That’s it, somewhere near Ukraine, some former Prime Minister’s forehead. I like it. Makes me feel clever. These? The ears? Ha! Oh it’s a long story but I’ll try make it short see I really wanted these ears but they were in limited supply like there were only three sets of them in the whole world but they came from some special Buddhist mountainous place so I thought now those ears must be good ears, not floppy, not like lazy you know, but precise like a really good microphone, like that one, yeah. Christ where’s my water? Hey, my water! Jesus who hired these people? But yeah I called the company about the ears and they said, ahem, ahem, sorry sir but they’ve been booked over a year ago. Shit, I said. But I’ve never been one to give up that easily. So I got into a plane and headed straight over to the place. And I herded goats for a month. In a field beside the monastery. Got to know the locals. All that kind of thing. Like the shows you see on TV. And the ears I used to have I cut them off, outside the monastery – yeah I was desperate – but it worked, and the monks came running out, their orange robes flapping in the wind, and saw me bleeding and gave me the special ears. I left the monastery pretty soon after. That’s how I got the ears. Brain I stole from… Ha! Haha! You were about to believe me! That I stole my brain! I had you going there for a second! Ha! No. The brain is mine. The brain is mine.

The Rise and Rise of the Venting Room

1. In which a young man reads of the Venting Room

With eyes wide open and heart beating faster than it had been only moments before, the young man reads a story in the Guizhou Daily:

‘In order to help students improve their mental capacity for dealing with stress, Number 1 High School in Guiyang has opened a psychological Venting Room. Principal of the school, Mr. Xi Biao, explained that the Venting Room’s purpose is to help students deal with pressure, particularly in the run-up to the Gao Kao. The room has padded walls and a punch-bag, as well as a mannequin. “When the students are stressed they can go to the venting-room and punch the punching-bag or mannequin.” It is hoped that the room will provide catharsis for those under stress.

‘The Venting Room was proposed by the mother of a former student, who committed suicide last year the night before the Gao Kao was due to begin. She said, “I hope the Venting Room will prevent other mothers and fathers going through the same pain my husband and I have been through this past year.”

‘A local psychologist has said, ‘If pent-up emotions are responsibly vent, they will not develop into more serious mental illnesses”.’

The young man stops reading.

Ten minutes later, he is on the number 48 bus to Number 1 High School. In his right hand is the Guizhou Daily, rolled up.

The school’s driveway and pedestrian entrance, flanked by old sycamores uprooted and transferred from elsewhere, is a gradual upward incline. The young man has walked the path hundreds of times before. When a teenager, he attended the school. Walking, now, along that path, he remembers the daily taunting.

2. In which an entrepreneur sees a gap in the market

Owing to the success of the Venting Rooms opened last year in Guiyang’s High Schools, local entrepreneur Mr. Cheng Xian will open a chain of venting rooms. According to a report recently published, the Venting Rooms have been successful in reducing levels of stress among students.

Mr. Cheng has said, ‘There is a demand among the general population for this kind of service.’ The modern world, he noted, with its various pressures and stresses, is one in which people need opportunities to release and to vent, but in a controlled environment.

Mr. Cheng’s Venting Rooms will be opened next month, with premises in various locations. Each premises will have various rooms, devoted to different kinds of stress. There will be rooms dedicated to men and to women, to different age-groups. Mr. Cheng has employed psychologists as well as feng shui experts to assist in designing the Venting Rooms. More details will appear over the coming fortnight.

3. In which the Venting Rooms’ popularity skyrockets

… supply cannot meet demand. The Venting Rooms are more popular than even Mr. Cheng imagined. People in their thousands flock every day to vent their anger. They smash TVs with baseball bats, punch padded walls, batter mannequins, unleashing in shrieks of violence their angst about various societal pressures, job-hunting, relationship break-ups, inability to meet mortgage payments…

4. In which Confucian philosophy is applied to a theory of the success of the Venting Rooms

A snapshot survery has revealed that the Venting Rooms’ most frequent service users fall into three broad categories: unfulfilled twentysomething sons and daughters; neglected wives; and those who’ve been treated unjustly by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Scholars have argued that the popularity of the Venting Rooms is “a symptom of and response to of the ills of modern society”. The conclusion of the survey, however, calls for a more rigourous and deep-rooted explanation.

Although hard to gauge and to verify, some Sinophiles have argued that Confucian philosophy is the biggest quarry of Chinese culture. An important concept in Confucian philosophy is li. An abstract idea, li can be described or translated as customs, etiquette or morals – basically, rules of proper social behaviour. Confucius argued that life can be divided into 5 relationships and that if li was present in each of these relationships throughout society, the social order would be ideal.

The five relationships are:

•         Father to Son – kindness in the father; filial piety in the son.
•         Elder brother to Younger Brother – gentility in the elder; humility in the younger.
•         Husband to Wife – husband benevolent; wife should listen.
•         Elder to Junior – consideration among the elders; deference among the juniors.
•         Ruler to Subject – benevolence among the rulers; loyalty among the subject.

Hypothesis: The absence of li in these relationships is the fire driving people in their thousands to the Venting Rooms. Fathers are unkind. Husbands are uncaring. Rulers are spiteful, selfish and sometimes malevolent.

5. In which a sample of the Venting Rooms’ customers have their say

a. My father does not understand me and is not willing to, it seems. I’ve been back in China for a month now after six years studying in New Zealand. Six years! That’s a long time! I’ve tried to tell him I’m different now, that my mind is not the same as six years ago, that I want different things. But he won’t listen. All he talks about everyday is how I have to get a job here, a job I really don’t want, and that I have to get married soon. But I don’t want to. What I mean is that, ok, ok, I know I’m Chinese, but I don’t feel at home here anymore, you know? Every time I see a foreigner I want to go and talk to them. But my father says I shouldn’t hang out too often with foreigners. Why did he send me to New Zealand for six years then? What did he expect? Did he expect me to lock myself in my room in New Zealand? Never meet people? Did he think I’d return the same person who’d left? No, no, I don’t feel at home here anymore. I mean I love my father. And I know or at least I think he thinks he’s doing the right thing. But everything he says to me just comes across as unfair and unkind. He thinks he owns me, or something. I hate this. I can’t stand it anymore.

b. Before we got married, my husband was a kind man. At least I thought he was. I mean he cared for me, paid attention to me, took me out on dates. But everything changed after our marriage. He began to spend less and less time at home, more and more time with his colleagues. He plays mahjong every night and gambles away most of his wages. I’m also pretty sure he has a mistress. I’ve read the texts on his phone, messages back and forth between him and another woman. If and when I mention any of this to him, he gets angry and threatens me. He says if I leave him he’ll come find me.

c. I’m a farmer. Until two years ago, I’d lived my whole life in a small dwelling in what is now Huang Guo Shu National Park. One day, the men from the government came and said we would have to leave our home, that all houses within the grounds of the park were to be demolished, to make the park “more beautiful” for the tourists, they said. We didn’t want to leave but had no choice. The government said they would give us a new home in the nearby city of Anshun. They said that my daughter would have get a job as a waitress in one of the restaurants in the park. They tore down our house. But our daughter was never given the job. We went to the courts to try get justice but our pleas weren’t listened to. So, the other farmers and I gathered one day at the gates of the park and sat down, blocking the tour buses from entering. We refused to move. The police and the army came. They beat us. We hit them back. They beat us more. All we want is to be treated fairly, with justice.

6. In which the Venting Rooms go national and people replace mannequins

What began as a method of alleviating stress for exam-weary High School students in Guiyang, Guizhou province, and was transformed into a profitable business by a local entrepreneur, Venting Rooms Corporation is now a national franchise and has establishments in every major Chinese city.

Venting Room Corporation (HKSE: VRC) is China’s largest chain of venting rooms, serving around 30 million customers daily in cities and towns all over China. Headquarted in Shanghai, the company began in 2011 in Guiyang’s Number 1 High School as a room in which students could alleviate stress. Businessman Cheng Xian joined the operation as a franchisee agent in 2012. He subsequently purchased the chain from Number 1 High School and oversaw its national growth.

Initally, service users would beat up mannequins. However, in order to make the experience more real and therefore more cathartic, vacancies were created for men and women willing to be beaten up.

One of the Venting Room employees has said, ‘The beatings, although painful, put you into a trance, allowing you to push out everything and dive deep into your mind, finding places you have never been before.’

7. In which we briefly learn of a young man’s inner torment

The young man is intelligent and when at school usually studies well but during exams remembers none of the answers. Only when he has handed his exam paper to the invigilator and has left the examination room do the answers flood into his conscious mind. This happens again and again. He doesn’t know why he hates himself so much and wishes he didn’t hate himself.

People say he’s clumsy is why he often gets scratches and bruises and sometimes a broken arm or leg. He doesn’t believe it’s clumsiness, though. All the negativity in his mind attracts yet more negativity. The negativity in his mind leads him by trembling hand into negative situations. He often watches the happy and contented people. They rarely break their arms or legs, rarely have things stolen from them, rarely get into arguments with taxi-drivers. He wants to be like those people, so much, but doesn’t know how. The more he tries to find happiness, the lonelier and more depressed he feels. Nobody knows about this, not even his family. He can’t tell them, anyway, because his mother is suffering from a terminal illness. To tell his family about his problems would be selfish, while his mother is slowly, agonizingly dying.

He wants somebody to beat him up. This is an impulse he at first tries to ignore.

8. In which the masochist takes the reins, the whip

Alone with himself and facing an alienated and hostile world, the young man applies for a job at the Venting Rooms…

Kingdom of Whispers

1.

The transformation, like a seed becoming a flower, was so gradual, that Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao, failed to detect it immediately. Only when the first shoots emerged did his wife, Liu Yongqing, notice the symptoms.

If a door was shut abruptly, Hu Jintao would grimace, lift both hands to his ears, and sweat would appear on his forehead.

Like waves these seizures ascended, then sunk.

2.

‘A neurosurgeon?’

‘Yes, laogong.’

‘For what?’

‘To inspect your head.’

‘Inspect my head?’ Hu Jintao laughed. ‘Laopo, there is nothing wrong with Hu Jintao’s head.’

3.
The symptoms intensified. With hands cupped over his ears, Hu Jintao pleaded, in a barely audible voice, ‘Whisper, laopo, please whisper. Your words, they hurt my ears.’

4.

WHISPER OR BE PUNISHED; NEW LEGISLATION IN CHINA

Emergency legislation outlawing all talk above the level of a whisper has been drafted by the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. This follows the rumour last week that Chinese President Hu Jintao has been struck ill by an as yet undiagnosed dysfunction of the eardrums.

The new law states that all “avoidable and pointless talk” is forbidden. Anybody caught in violation of the law will have his or her tongue “ripped out.”

Sources inside Beijing report that, throughout the city, nothing can be heard except the swish and rustle of whispers, of restrained voices, of people walking softly, in bare feet, and on tip-toe, across the concrete paths. Along the long, wide streets, in every district, nothing can be heard but the delicate sketch of whispers.

5.

Liu Yongqing stands in Hu Jintao’s bedroom doorway, her shadow cast across the floor. She approaches the bed. Her footsteps smash the floor like bombs. Kneeling on the floor beside the bed she looks into her husband’s feverish eyes. He has never looked so scared. Drops of sweat cling to his face.

‘Your breath,’ he says, breathlessly, barely raising his voice. ‘So close, my eardrums, flooded with fire, a furious roar. So…’

Liu Yongqing stands up, and backs away, and walks backward, ever so gently, out of the bedroom.

6.

Dogbark every second; slammed carhorn tearing the air of Beijing; footsteps scrape old alley stone; the Happy Birthday tune streaming creepily from a little circuit that was once part of a birthday cake candle; drills, hammers, bulldozers; aiyo!; cranes tearing earth; a cat in heat five nights in succession; mosquito whining divebomb; popular songs about love and loss echoing aiyo! from mobilephones’ little speakers; caralarm, dogbark; chains latched rattling onto gates; videoarcades; elevator doors sliding plunk open pouring souls; enginerev, spitpath, clattering masses; oh fuck oh fuck even neon has a sound, drips down the sides of buildings multicoloured and hissing; cigarettes extinguished in ashtrays containing water; six quickfire chirps which from computers’ speakers mean a new QQ message; aiyo!; splashsizzle pork thrown on pan; aiyo!: raindrops biblical now pelting plastic, pelting the delicate inside of Hu Jintao’s pelting head.

7.

Medication was prescribed. The condition, however, proved too stubborn for even the most Herculean of pharmaceuticals, and the symptoms further intensified; even the whispers of those in Hu Jintao’s immediate vicinity slashed like hatchets.

8.

CHINESE NOISE POLICE GRANTED SPECIAL POWERS

The Office of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) was granted special emergency powers by the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party yesterday. Originally established in 1983 as part of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the ONAC has been revived and reorganised to aid in the recovery of Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Mr Hu has been suffering from an undiagnosed illness since July last.

Among the ONAC’s new special powers are arrest and detention of those suspected of making noise above 20 decibels; closure of establishments, such as nightclubs and bars, which contribute to noise pollution; and capture and execution of animals, both wild and domesticated.

Sixty divisions of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and one hundred divisions of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) have been recruited so far by the ONAC. Acting under the special powers, the newly-recruited platoons and divisions are, in essence, the ONAC’s foot-soldiers. Members of the ONAC carry both decibel-meter and tranquiliser gun.

9.

Silence on the streets of Beijing, Silence on the streets of Chongqing, I wonder to myself, Could life ever be sane again? The dim sidestreets that you slip down, I wonder to myself, Hopes may try to quell fear, But honeypie you’re not safe here, So you run over, To the safety of the border, But there’s silence on the streets of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Harbin, Yantai, I wonder to myself.

Burn down the government, Hang the blessed President, Because the words that he constantly says, THEY SAY NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE, Hang the blessed President, Because the words that he constantly says.

On the dim sidestreets that you slip down, Provincial towns you jog round, Hang the President, Hang the President, Hang the President…   

10.

In the garden, outside the mansion, Liu Yongqing speaks with her Personal Assistant. ‘What am I to do? I love him. I want to be with him. I want to be able walk upon sand without leaving a footprint, I want my breath to be so feeble it couldn’t stir even the flame of a candle.’

The leaves of the sycamore tree swish and rustle.

They tree is chopped down.

11.

Hu Jintao was given a set of protective headphones, similar to those worn in factories, except specially designed and of higher quality. Although the special headphones for a while alleviated his pain, or at least muted its intensity, the symptoms deepened over the following month until his eardrums were so sensitive, so delicate, that even the special headphones could no longer block out sound, and the associated pain.

12.

CHINA CRISIS; RUSSIA TELLS UN IT MAY NEED REFUGEE HELP

Russia has warned the United Nations that it may need help to deal with the number of refugees spilling over its borders from China. The Russian foreign minister has said that 2,500 refugees crossed the border on foot yesterday. It is estimated that over 3,000 have left the province of Heilongjiang in northern China in the past 36 hours. The total number of Chinese who have crossed the border to Russia is said to now stand at approximately 22,000.

People have also moved to towns on China’s national borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Burma, Vietnam, Laos and Pakistan.

The UN Secretary-General has once again appealed to President Hu Jintao to show “vision and leadership” and to keep his pledge to leave China and seek medical help elsewhere, instead of “forcing the ordinary people of China to suffer, too.”

13.

Quarantined in his bedroom, Hu Jintao listens to his fingernails growing, like the grinding of so many stones, and particles of dust, perhaps, bumping into one another, like distant thunder, approaching.

14.

I walk along a silent street. My brain flutters and pulses with a horribly claustrophobic yet compelling desire to scream my head off. I am certain that a howl of some sort will inadvertently escape my larynx, that some awful word is going to spring forth from my throat, some horrible, unprecedented, death-embracing word.

15.

“I can hear molecules of oxygen, perhaps, bumping into one another, like the distant report of shotguns, or bombs in the distance. I can hear so many things, simultaneously. Electrons swirling around the nucleus. My blood flowing. Electricity in my brain. No more, please, I can’t bear it. I can hear the universe expanding, slowly, a sound too horrible to describe. Please, no more.”

Consider the Trees, Mr. Freeze

1.

Icicles dripped from Kevin’s earlobes. His breath was colder than stone. For three days he’d been sitting on the couch with a duvet wrapped round his shivering, bitter-cold body.

For the tenth time I said, ‘Kevin it’s all in your mind man.’

But he clutched himself. His teeth rattled. Every breath was visible, like icy fog.

2.

Outside, the town shimmered. Ice-cream vans jingled from dawn until dusk. Underneath the shade of various trees – the names of which trees I could no longer recall – people stretched out on the grass and read books. Children blew bubbles and chased those bubbles. At the beach, on the town’s outskirts, the Sun warmed the interesting, fish-inhabited rock pools – now pools of gold – where people sat, dangling feet, dipping toes into the water, disturbing the surface.

Icecubes rattled in pints of cider.

3.

I knocked on Kevin’s bedroom door.

Thirty silent seconds passed.

I pushed the door open. Cold air moulded itself to my face. ‘Kevin, Kev? Are you asleep?’

He groaned. Dry ice ascended. His hair, like blades of grass on a winter morning, was coated with frost. And his lips, chapped, had turned blue.

‘Maybe we should go outside. Do you want to go outside?’

Trembling, he shook his head.

4.

Another week passed. Kevin did not leave his room. I phoned Rebecca. She called over.

We stood in the oblong frame of Kevin’s bedroom doorway.

‘Look,’ I said.

‘Jesus,’ Rebecca said.

Kevin was in bed. Icicles dripped from the corners of his mouth.

‘Maybe there’s somewhere he could thaw out,’ she said.

‘Thaw out?’

‘Like Africa maybe.’

‘Africa?’

‘We could get people to donate. Can he hear us?’

‘I don’t know. Like a charity?’

‘Start a campaign is what we need to do.’

5.

The campaign occupied the consciousness of thousands. Send Kevin to Africa, Help Kevin Thaw. Offices, canteens, cafes, social networking sites; everybody had an opinion about the necessity or not of getting Kevin to the Equator.

6.

The place to Africa shook through pools of turbulence.

Kevin fell asleep.

I watched a documentary about Kevin Costner. He said, ‘I’d like to put on buckskins and a ponytail and go underwater with a reed, hiding from the Indians. To me, that’s –’

Rebecca tapped me on the shoulder. I removed the earphones.

‘Fucking Kevin Costner,’ I said.

‘Look,’ she said.

I leaned over her and looked out the window: Africa.

7.

We landed. A driver was waiting for us in arrivals.

‘He’s going to look after us,’ Rebecca said.

I put my arm around Kevin’s back and helped him walk outside.

The heat was merciless. Rebecca put on a pair of sunglasses. ‘This way,’ the driver said. We walked across the hot concrete.

A journalist followed. Mid-stride, she held a Dictaphone up to Kevin’s glacial face. ‘Kevin, are you excited about this trip?’

‘He can’t talk,’ I said. ‘If he tries to talk his teeth rattle like mad.’

‘No family accompanying him?’

I shook my head.

‘Has he any family?’

‘If he has we haven’t heard from them. Have we Rebecca?’

She shook her head.

‘Did he ever talk about family?’

‘No.’

‘What did he talk about?’

‘Did? Why are you using the word “did”? He’s not dead.’

‘Sorry, what does he talk about?’

‘Before his?’

‘Yes.’

‘Same as anyone.’

‘Yes?’

‘Look if you’re looking for a quote about Mr. Freeze I don’t have one.’

‘Was there any inkling this might happen? Any?’

Rebecca and I looked at each other.

‘No,’ I said.

‘How long are you prepared to stay in Africa?’

‘Couple weeks, a month, depending,’ Rebecca said.

‘And you, Dave?’

‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘Christ I’m burning up. Here, Kev, give me a hug.’

‘Were you surprised at the response to your campaign?’

‘Restores you faith,’ Rebecca said.

‘Is anyone else burning up?’

‘In humanity.’

8.

The jeep rattled north across potholes and stones. Through the windows and sunroof, the Sun poured ferocious heat but, because of the cold air which crept from Kevin’s body, we were forced to wear coats.

Beyond the window to my right, unfolding toward the horizon, was Africa. Until that moment I’d only ever seen such a landscape on BBC documentaries. Yet, even now, although surrounding us, the landscape seemed unreal and, paradoxically, had seemed more real when I’d seen it on those BBC documentaries. I looked to my left, at Kevin. Sitting between Rebecca and I, he was curled up and wrapped in a rug; his eyes immobile, oblivious.

I was tired after the long flight. But I didn’t want to fall asleep. Instead I held my eyes open, resisting sleep, drinking in the grassy flatlands, the afternoon.

9.

We arrived, four hours later, in the village. Stepping out of the jeep, I tore my coat off and gasped. Sweat fell like huge drops of translucent blood from my forehead.

‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I’m burning up.’

10.

The villagers had been told about Kevin. Banners of welcome were draped from hut to hut; a group sang and played drums.

A woman approached. Our driver spoke to her, nodded.

‘Her name is Asatira. You will be accommodated in her home.’

We took our rucksacks there. Made of clay, rods, and cow dung, the house was adjacent to a small farm.

‘She is a respected woman in the village,’ the driver said. ‘But her husband is dead and her sons have left to find work in the city. She will be glad of the company.’

We returned to the village square. The TV crew had built a canopy and set up the camera and microphone. The Sun thrashed down wave upon wave of blinding white heat. A chair was placed in the centre of the square

The driver said, ‘Sit him here.’

I helped Kevin to the chair. The locals stood in a circle around the village square.

And we waited.

Rebecca and I sat in a patch of shade provided by a tree on the square’s perimeter. Neither of us moved a muscle; the sweat dripped and dripped.

I looked at Kevin. He had his arms wrapped round his body and was trembling.

‘Surely he’ll melt,’ I said.

Rebecca fixed her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. ‘Surely,’ she said.

We stared at him.

We waited.

11.

A fortnight passed. Most days Rebecca and I sat in the shade, glancing occasionally at Kevin.

‘What if he doesn’t melt?’ Rebecca said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘All the donations we got.’

12.

At night we ate dinner on Asatira’s porch. Kind eyes, fifty years old, she knew some English.

‘Your friend,’ she said. ‘Problem?’

I nodded.

‘Too many cold,’ she said. ‘Baridi.’

‘Baridi. Cold?’ Rebecca said.

‘Yes. Cold. Baridi.’

‘Baridi,’ Rebecca said. ‘Baridi.’

‘Mr. Baridi,’ I said.

13.

Kevin froze completely.

It was three weeks after we’d arrived, a cruel afternoon. I found him outside Asatira’s house: motionless; his whole body, frozen.

‘Kevin? Kev? Kevin can you hear me?’

I carried him to the village square and lay him on the ground.

The villagers gathered.

Rebecca, on her hunkers, said, ‘Look though. You can see his heart is still beating.’

Asatira shook her head. ‘Big problem.’

‘Baridi,’ I said. ‘Baridi, baridi.’

The villagers murmured.

A pole was hammered into the earth. Kevin’s body was tied to the pole. The icicles flashed in the screaming African sun.

14.

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to melt.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe he wants to be frozen. Maybe he’s happy that way. Maybe he prefers being Mr. Baridi.’  

15.

A bus trundled into the village and a group of people tumbled out onto the scorched earth.

‘You must be Dave.’

I stared at them.

‘And Rebecca?’

Rebecca nodded.

‘We’re here to see Mr. Freeze.’

‘His name’s Kevin.’

‘We heard about him on TV.’

‘Oh Henry look at that.’

‘Oh my oh.’

‘Can you tell us about him? I mean you must really. You must really have some insight.’

‘You came all the way here to see Kevin?’ Rebecca said.

They nodded.

I shook my head and looked at the earth.

‘I mean it’s the story of the year, it’s… We just had to come.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Quiet,’ I said. I swiped a mosquito from my face.

16.

The trickle of tourists became a flood. The villagers set up stalls and sold fruit juice. One carved unnervingly perfect wooden models of Kevin’s frozen body.

17.

‘And was he in a relationship?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Well he said something once about an ex-girlfriend but.’

‘Yes?’

‘I didn’t want to probe.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That he had one.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

18.

Rebecca said she couldn’t stay any longer. Her tears as she spoke fell onto the dusty earth and evaporated. ‘If they had the Internet I’d stay here forever.’

‘I think I’ll stay a while longer,’ I said.

19.

Without much conscious effort I was soon able to tell the time by the position of the shadow cast from the top of Kevin’s head. The tip of the shadow, like a pen without ink, from dawn until dusk, drew an invisible elliptical curve across the dust.

20.

Every morning, as the sun was ascending, I’d walk to the well to collect water. The sun sparkled. Water splashed on stone.

The women, dressed in bright colours, talked and laughed and argued. Some washed their hair. Through them I began to learn the names for the plants and the animals.

‘And that is mti.’

‘Mti.’

We were walking around the village. The girl was telling me the names of things.

‘Jiwe.’

‘Jiwe.’

Mid-step, I stopped. A strong sense of what felt like déjà vu had suddenly come over me. The girl, who’d walked a few steps ahead, turned around.

21.

I began to forget about my old life. All the memories I had of before I’d arrived in Africa adopted the quality of a dream.

22.

One year after arriving, I proposed to the girl.

23.

The wedding ceremony was held in the village square. Music was played and food was served. We danced and danced under the big red sun. And the elderly men and women stood beside Kevin, talking, laughing, and relaxing in the cold air which pulsed from his frozen, frozen body.

Why did you come to China?

A question ex-pats in China are often asked is: Why did you come to China?  Here, by way of fiction, is an attempt at an answer:

The Screen Room

1.

There’s a photograph of Earth, taken by one of the Apollo 11 astronauts, on the wall of my apartment. I lie on the bed and look at that photo, too drunk to do anything more than just get my shoes off. The photograph, a poster approximately one metre by half a metre, is old. I look at it. I think of the places I’ve been, now all blurred together like a chalk drawing under rain; I’ve been travelling back and forth for years. I trace my forefinger across the oceans, across the continents, tracing the paths I’ve made, the paths I’m yet to make…

2.

There was a gathering of magicians one day in the town. The mayor had requested their presence. ‘The people are restless,’ he said, ‘they are bored, and I want you magicians to do something about it.’ The magicians, Mr. X, Mr. Y and Mr. Z, left the mayor’s mansion and conferred. ‘Are the people restless?’ Y said. ‘They don’t appear particularly bored to me,’ Z said. ‘If the mayor says they are restless and bored, they are restless and bored,’ X said. That evening the magicians took their response to the mayor. ‘If the people are bored,’ said the chief magician, X, ‘perhaps we can inundate them with new information, thereby stimulating their brains to an intense degree, in which case they will have no option but to not be bored.’ The other magicians, Y and Z, who flanked X, nodded. The mayor put his thumb and forefinger to his chin, looked silently a moment at the magicians, before saying, to himself, ‘Yes, new information,’ and then, to the magicians, ‘Begin! As soon as possible!’

3.

The next morning the mayor left his bedroom and before eating breakfast strolled down the corridor of his mansion to the Screen Room. The wall opposite the door was covered with television screens. Each screen relayed images from CCTV cameras placed all over the town, on telephone poles, outside shops and pubs, and three screens, in the centre of the wall, relayed images from cameras attached to three unmanned aircraft, which hovered daily above the town, like metal insects, droning. The mayor sat in his leather adjustable chair and watched the screens. On each was a scene of the town, and the town’s inhabitants who, that morning, had woken up to the magicians’ subtle but unsettling changes. The magicians entered the Screen Room. The mayor pointed at one of the screens. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘See those men arguing…’

4.

‘… neighbours but I guess I was wrong.’ ‘Look, you’ve got it all wrong.’ A tree that the previous evening had been in one of the men’s gardens was now in the second man’s garden, causing the first man, Jimmy, to accuse the second, Ivan, of thievery, an accusation Ivan tried, but failed, to refute. ‘But why in the name of God would I steal your tree, Jimmy. Christ I thought you knew me better than that.’ ‘I’m standing here looking at the tree, Ivan, and it’s in your garden, not mine.’ ‘Logic, Jimmy, logic. You’re not thinking straight. If I stole your bloody sycamore I’d hardly plant it in my garden, in full view, now would I?’ ‘You’re double-bluffing me, Ivan.’ ‘We’re not playing poker, Jimmy.’ ‘I want my bloody tree back.’ ‘Take your bloody tree back.’ ‘I fucking…’

5.

In the Screen Room, the mayor laughed. ‘This is excellent, excellent,’ he said. ‘Keep it up, keep up the good work.’ The magicians glanced at one another and smiled. That night, and the night after that, and after that, on and on and on, the magicians rearranged the town. And everyday the mayor spent at least three hours in the Screen Room, watching the people’s reactions, chuckling, laughing, rolling on the floor. One afternoon, however, a month after the magicians had first gathered, the mayor yawned and, standing up, left the Screen Room. The magicians watched him leave. X looked at his watch. ‘He usually stays for longer,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he is getting bored,’ Y said. ‘Yes,’ said Z. ‘We have to… up the ante,’ said X. ‘We have to keep him interested. It is in our interest to keep him interested.’ Y and Z nodded.

6.

The following morning, the people awoke to a new sight outside their houses. The town, which, the previous night, as it had always been, set upon the valley floor, surrounded by black mountains, was now set upon the coast, beside a raging ocean.

7.

The mayor watched the screens. The magicians, X, Y and Z, stood behind him, also watching. The expressions of bewilderment on the people’s faces as they wandered about the streets were highly entertaining, better than television. ‘Very good,’ the mayor said, ‘very good.’ ‘Well,’ said X, ‘the people are no longer bored.’ The mayor laughed. ‘Certainly not,’ he said. And, without turning around to face the magicians, he said, ‘Good work, keep it up…’

8.

The magicians obliged. The following morning, and the morning after that, and the one after that, day after day, the people awoke to a new sight outside their houses. The town was transported, each night, by the magicians, from one part of the globe to another, from the Sahara to the Arctic, from the grasslands of Patagonia to Australia’s red centre, from riverbanks to the hard shoulders of motorways. At first, this was a novelty, and the people – some, not all – enjoyed or at least tried to enjoy the daily relocation. Soon, however, the instability began to make the people dizzy and sick, and uncertainty took hold, boring holes in their stomachs, churning their stomachs’ contents and the novelty, cooled down, was replaced by a kind of nausea, travel-sickness, weariness, suspicion, disorientation, and the people wanted routine, wanted to wake up where they’d fallen asleep the night before.

9.

Of all the town’s inhabitants, Ivan Pitts had the most difficulty dealing with the daily inundation of new information. Ivan was a mathematician. When the town’s daily relocations began, Ivan tried to retreat to the world of absolutes: one plus one equals two, that sort of thing. Numbers provided him some comfort, especially now, now that the town had become so incessantly and painfully, tortuosly, complicated and unstable that it was difficult to live without either surrendering to apathy and/or ritual or, as Ivan had done, finding temporary solace in the realm of absolutes, the unchanging realm of geometry and numbers. Ivan had innumerable notebooks, a sequence of them, which he’d begun scribbling in since the magician’s spells had intensified. On the first notebook, on the top of the first page, he had written 0., zero, that is, followed by a decimal-point, and had followed that decimal-point with the number 3. Every day he filled pages upon pages with the number 3. One-third is infinity. He called the notebooks, each of them, A Little Piece of Eternity and had decided that as long as every morning brought new surroundings for the town, outside his window, he’d continue filling up pages with the number 3, 3, 3, 3, 3… 0.3333333333… Zero, followed by a decimal-point, followed by a repeating sequence of 3s. God is an irrational fraction, the eternity between the numbers 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, etc., etc., etc.. If only he’d enough notebooks and enough time to fill the entire Universe with notebooks so that the Universe was nothing but a clutter of notebooks, and every notebook a piece of the irrational fraction. Infinity is a fraction. Fractions, one number over another, one integer over another integer as an algorithm of eternity, unlike pi which can be written simplified as π because only the Universe knows accurately the circumference of a circle, which, Ivan thought, is appropriate, since eternity and circles are equated symbolically and, he thought, the value of π (the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, a transcendental number, its decimal representation never ending or repeating, a dimensionless quantity, a number without physical units) is something that, if scribbled down, non-stop, forever adding digits to the 3.14159265… etc., etc., etc., that person would need to be immortal and would need to keep writing but would not be able to keep up with the Universe which knows π because it knows no changes, knows no instability, but is, at the same time, ignorant of time. The circumference of a circle is an immortal number. Though will the Big Crunch destroy numbers, too?

10.

The mayor stepped into the Screen Room, followed by the three magicians. This morning, twenty-five of the thirty screens showed a group of people on their knees, staring up at the cameras. The expressions on their faces were fearful and submissive, like scolded dogs, about to be shot. The mayor stopped mid-step. Behind him, the magicians bumped into one another and into the mayor’s back. ‘Why are these people staring up at the cameras?’ the mayor said. ‘What in the name of…’ ‘Ritual,’ said X. ‘Worship,’ said Y. ‘Ritual? Worship? I don’t follow,’ said the mayor. ‘Well, Mr Mayor, you see, because the cameras are parctically the only things which remain the same, despite the town’s constant relocation, because the cameras are always there, the people…’ ‘Some of the people,’ said Z, interrupting. ‘Yes, some of the people have begun to, well, I don’t know if worship is the proper word, but in any case they, you’ve heard of the Hindus, Mr Mayor?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Every morning a Hindu places some food or offering to the god of his or her choice, in their houses they have little shrines, a picture or statue of the god and they place an offering in front of it, every morning.’ ‘And you’re saying what’s going on here’ – the mayor pointed at the screens – ‘is the same thing?’ ‘Similar, Mr Mayor, similar.’

11.

Every morning, no matter where they awoke, whether surrounded now by a teeming metropolis, now by a quiet village, now by stifling desert, the people bowed down in front of the CCTV cameras and repeated mantras. As time passed, the rituals became increasingly detailed. But there remained those whose minds had been so damaged by the daily relocation that they did not even trust the cameras and were afraid that they, too, might disappear. These people believed the rituals, although useful, to be frail, and prey to interference. So, instead of every morning,noonand evening bowing down to the cameras these people looked inward. Many of them sat meditating all day. These people retreated inward, and tried to ignore the outside world. It was as well not to sense anything, not to feel anything, in such a world.

12.

The mayor pointed at one of the screens. ‘Look at him,’ he said, ‘look at that man.’ The magicians looked at the screen at which the mayor was pointing. The man on the screen was standing on a bridge wall, above a river. He was looking down at the water. ‘It looks like he is thinking of throwing himself in, Mr Mayor,’ X said. ‘It does, doesn’t it,’ said the mayor. ‘I’ve never seen somebody commit suicide before,’ he said. He sat forward.

13.

From upriver swept a damp cold wind, which played with Ivan’s hair. He watched the river. In order to definitively figure out the circumference of a circle, you must look forward to your own death, you must not be of the flesh, because 22 above 7 is only an approximation of eternity. Closing his eyes, Ivan rose his arms…

14.

The mayor gasped. ‘Did you see that?’ he said. The magicians said, ‘Yes, Mr. Mayor, we did.’ ‘Rewind the tape,’ the mayor said. Y stepped forward, rewound the tape and pressed play. All four watched Ivan throw himself in the river again. And again. And again. The mayor shook his head. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Unbelievable.’

15.

Ivan’s suicide was the first, but not the last. Every day contained a new suicide for the mayor’s flickering eyes, which suicides kept him occupied and entertained, for a while. He’d ask the magicians to rewind the tape so that he could watch again. Most suicides threw themselves into water, from a bridge, from a cliff, depending where the town had been relocated to. Some shot themselves in the head. Some hung themselves from trees or lampposts. (Some hung themselves from the poles upon which the CCTV cameras were attached. The mayor watched these suicides in close-up). Others stabbed themselves in the heart or slashed their wrists. On occastion, two, even three, suicides occurred simultaneously, on different screens, and the mayor, flustered, would say, ‘Oh I need three pairs of eyes for this, three pairs of eyes…’ But the suicides, too, after a while, no longer excited the mayor. And one day, after watching another… ‘Will I rewind the tape, Mr Mayor?’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘No?’ ‘No.’ The magicians glanced at one another, apprehensive.

16.

Intervals between uprootings/relocations were shortened from each night to every twelve hours, then every six hours, every three hours, until uprootings occurred every hour, on the hour.

17.

The mayor watched the people collapse, laugh dementedly, kill themselves, kill each other, laugh dementedly, collapse…

18.

I was five years old, maybe six, maybe seven, when the mayor was ousted from power. The men who took his place in the mansion remembered the time before the mayor, when all was stable and predictable, when everything was fixed, when you’d wake up in the morning and know what was beyond your window, when you’d be fairly certain of where you were. But, with the mayor gone, a certain amount of stability and familiarity entered our lives. And those, like me, who were born during the mayor’s reign, were, as you can imagine, unsettled by this renewed solidity and stability, a state of affairs we’d never known. We’d grown up expecting incessant flux, we’d grown up with the knowledge that nothing was stable, with the expectation that every morning the world would be different from the day before. But now, everyday, everything was the same. All that instability of our early, formative years had soaked so deeply into our bones that the sudden renewal of external stability frightened the hell out of us. Some adapted. Some didn’t. And those, like me, who failed to adapt, found themselves terribly restless. We left our families. We began long, sometimes lonely journeys, walking every day, no matter how blistered our feet were, in order to satisfy the cravings that had been implanted in us since birth, in order to wake up in a different place, trying to recapture the constant novelty of the surroundings of our youth. And now we constantly wander. But, unlike nomads, it isn’t the seasons or herds of buffalo or reindeer or livestock we follow, it’s the impulse, the need for new sights, new surroundings, everyday.

http://mp3skull.com/mp3/bob_dylan_billy_main_title_theme.html

Rotten Axe Handle (For Flux Ache)

Most people probably remember the old American story Rip Van Winkle, in which the title character wanders into the mountains outside his village, falls asleep for twenty years and, after waking up, returns to his village to find that everything has changed; his wife has died, his friends have died, his daughter has grown up. The story, however, is not unique. It has forerunners in the folklore of many cultures, in Hebrew, in the Orkney Islands, in Germany. In Ireland it is the legend of Oisin and Niamh. And in China it is a third-century tale, called Rotten Axe Handle.

Here’s the story:

Wang Chi was a hardy young fellow who used to venture deep into the mountains to find suitable wood for his axe. One day he went farther than usual and became lost. He wandered about for a while and eventually came upon two strange old men who were playing Go (a traditional Chinese boardgame), their board resting on a rock between them. Wang Chi was fascinated. He put down his axe and began to watch. One of the players gave him something – it looked like a date – to chew on, so that he felt neither hunger nor thirst. As he continued to watch he fell into a trance for what seemed like an hour or two. When he awoke, however, the two old men were no longer there. He found that his axe handle had rotted to dust and he had grown a long beard. When he returned to his native village he discovered that his family had disappeared and that no one even remembered his name.

I’ve thought of that story from time to time, wandering the streets of Guiyang. After arriving in July 2010, I’d often walk from my flat on Wenchang Road to the park along the banks of Nanming river. The route took me past a fenced-off area of wasteland, nothing but dust and scrub and stones. By Christmas, however, that dust and scrub and stone was no longer visible. Now rising up all 21st century from where the wasteland had been was a massive multistorey shopping mall, the Hunter Plaza – http://newhouse.gy.soufun.com/video/3315037986_66948.htm –  in which you can consume Dairy Queen and KFC. Construction took only five months.

Tall, multistorey buildings that were not there two months ago now scrape the bellies of grey clouds. Where once you had to dodge traffic to cross the road there is now a pedestrian overpass. Things are built quickly here. And so I think of Wang Chi, and how he fell asleep and, returning to his village, saw that everything had changed.

Here in my hometown

things are not as I knew them.

How I long to be

in the place where the axe-shaft

moldered away into dust.

And yet, and yet, the only stable thing is flux.

Heraclitus: Nothing ever is, everything is becoming.

But is there a speed beyond which development – which term itself is weird and perhaps misleading – is just too damn fast?