Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [12]
In the 1980s, Little Xi and her mother were getihu, self-employed entrepreneurs. They ran a small restaurant called the Five Flavors in a one-story temporary shack outside some apartments near the university’s east gate. I called Little Xi’s mother Big Sister Song; her Guizhou-style goose was very popular, but the main attraction of the Five Flavors was that Little Xi and her mates hung around there all day. They chatted all day and all night, so that the restaurant became a sort of Haidian salon for foreigners and intellectuals. They went out of business for a few years, but after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern tour called for continued economic reforms, they found a place nearby and started up again. Whenever I came to Beijing, I would go over there to eat, but I hadn’t been there for years and didn’t even know if the restaurant was still there.
As soon as I reached the east gate, I knew I was out of luck. The surrounding apartments had all been torn down to build office towers. The Five Flavors was gone, the All Sages Bookstore was gone, too, so I left without a backward glance. I decided to walk over to the Photosynthesis Bookstore in the Wudaokou district and browse around. It was better than nothing, and I could kill some time having a cup of coffee. This used to be the rock-music center of Beijing’s Westside, with quite a few performance venues, but I hadn’t followed those guys in recent years and didn’t know if there were any venues left. On Chengfu Road just before Wudaokou, I passed by a restaurant and then felt like I’d missed something, so I stopped. Turning back, I saw that the front was extensively decorated. The place was simply called Five Flavors, with no indication whether it was a Chinese restaurant, a Western restaurant, or some kind of club. I decided to go in and investigate.
The inside was also elaborately decorated, though the tables and chairs were quite ordinary. There was a stage that could just about accommodate a four-man rock band. The front hall was empty, but I heard the sound of a loud, resonant, and very familiar voice ringing out from the back room. I drew the curtain and marched in. “Big Sister Song!” I called.
“Lao Chen!” Little Xi’s mother recognized me instantly.
“I came to see you, Big Sister Song.” It felt a little hypocritical saying that.
“It’s good to see you after all this time!”
She picked up a room-temperature bottle of Yanjing beer and led me into the front hall. “It’s so great to see you, Lao Chen, I’ve really missed you.”
I felt a little ashamed that I’d lived in Beijing for so many years and had never come to see the old lady. “I ran into Little Xi last week,” I said.
Big Sister Song suddenly lowered her voice. “You should talk to her, try to get her to stop all her antics.”
“I only ran into her briefly at a bookstore. Will she be coming over?”
“Definitely not.”
“But do you have her cell phone number so I can give her a call?”
“She doesn’t use a cell phone.” Big Sister Song kept her eye on the door as she spoke. “She’s on e-mail. She spends all her time arguing with people on the Internet, and she keeps changing her address. I wish you’d talk