Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [29]
Winter passed, and people suddenly became more prosperous and everyone started smiling. But then something hard to understand happened to Miaomiao. She suddenly didn’t recognize me, didn’t recognize anyone. Whenever she met anyone, she just nodded and smiled but didn’t say a word. She only took care of her dogs and cats, baking some sugar-free cookies for them every couple of days. She no longer wrote articles or played the guitar. When she felt the need, we would make love, but she no longer discussed anything with me.
I always knew that all the time I was in Beijing she was taking some sort of drug when she thought I wasn’t looking. Then she would be completely spaced out for a while and would not recognize anyone. This usually lasted for only about half an hour, but this time she didn’t recover.
I knew it was now time for me to take care of her, but I couldn’t support us on part-time work alone. So I did something that I hoped Miaomiao would forgive me for—I secretly began to sell off our cats and dogs, beginning with the new kittens and puppies. Of course, I didn’t sell them to the dog-meat dealers. Because the economy was good, many people had started to keep household cats and dogs again. I was already very good at breeding and raising them. I would raise a few and sell off a few. We always had cats and dogs in the house, and Miaomiao would feed whichever ones she saw because she loved them all equally.
I still practiced my guitar for three hours a day. Some nights, I would tell Miaomiao I was going out to listen to music, but she wouldn’t respond. I took a long bus trip to Wudaokou and went to some places Miaomiao used to take me where I could see live performances. I felt pretty bad if I didn’t get to listen to live music. I would always meet some vaguely remembered people there and played a few numbers with them. They often told me how much they liked my Spanish guitar and if they needed a guitarist for one of their gigs they would ask me to join them. Then I went home and practiced even harder—mastering all the chords and techniques you taught me, Miaomiao—and waiting to go to Wudaokou to perform.
I never imagined that something would happen to me the first night I went on stage.
When I got a call asking me to perform, I prepared dinner for you and our cats and dogs at five o’clock, then said good-bye and took off for Wudaokou. As usual the performance would end too late for me to get home, so afterward I was going to find a place to take a nap and wait for the first bus back in the morning. This time when I went into town, I went first to a small restaurant in Lanqiying to have something to eat. The place was small and crowded, with little room between the tables. There was a man and a woman at the next table and the man was talking nonstop in an accent just like that Taiwanese variety-show host. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, but suddenly the woman started talking in a Beijing accent. Then I realized that she was actually cursing the government.
Ever since China’s Golden Age of Ascendancy officially began two years ago, I’ve noticed that everyone was getting pretty strange—everyone I met was extremely happy and you would hardly ever hear anyone say anything unpleasant. I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so weird, so I just pretended to be happy, too. So I had a very unusual feeling when I heard this auntie cursing the government. But I never imagined that the Taiwanese guy would actually start having a go at her. “Your government is wonderful,” he said, “they take such good care of you. You mainlanders don’t know how to be grateful. You think it’s an easy thing to feed 1.3 billion people? What right do you have to criticize the government? What do you women know anyway? …” Maybe it was because he kept saying “you” and “we” that it made me feel uncomfortable. When I’d paid my bill and was about