Chapter 14: Main Text Chapter Fourteen Business

Main Text Chapter Fourteen Business

The battle was drawing to a close, sporadic gunfire still popping up and down, smoke filled the positions, and corpses lay piled haphazardly in the trenches.

There were still about six or seven surviving Vietnamese troops in the tunnel; I led my men to seal all the exits and shouted at the tunnel entrance: 'Also Bong Gong Ye, Song Kuan Hong Du Bing Nei!'

The other soldiers also joined in shouting: 'Also Bong Gong Ye, Song Kuan Hong Du Bing Nei! Also Bong Gong Ye, Song Kuan Hong Du Bing Nei!' (Vietnamese: 'Surrender, not killed; preferential treatment of prisoners.' At the time, frontline combat units were all issued a field manual containing common Vietnamese phrases with Chinese characters indicating pronunciation, for example: 'Gang dai nai lai' meaning 'raise your hands,' 'Bu ku dai yi nai lai' meaning 'hold your hands and not move.' These were used when capturing enemies and urging surrender; additionally, some were used to promote our army's policies, spoken to Vietnamese civilians. In fact, in northern Vietnam, where many ethnic groups reside, the official Vietnamese language was not as widespread as Chinese, and most Vietnamese soldiers could speak Chinese.)

The Vietnamese surrounded in the tunnel answered with a burst of bullets deep inside.

I threw my helmet to the ground and cursed: 'Damn the bastard's ancestors, still refusing to let me take him alive.' Turning to the soldiers behind me, I ordered: 'Grenade bundles, flamethrowers, all fire at the bastard.' Grenade bundles and flamethrowers are the most effective means against enemies holding out in tunnel bunkers—first suppress with a volley of grenades, then sweep with flamethrowers.

Bundles of grenades were thrown into the tunnel; after a series of violent explosions, Chinese soldiers pressed flamethrowers to the opening and sprayed fiercely.

Smoke and the stench of burning flesh made it hard to keep my eyes open; I grabbed my submachine gun and led the way into the tunnel, wanting to see what those scrawny Vietnamese brats looked like after being burned.

In the tunnel, more than ten charred Vietnamese corpses were scattered about; at this point it was impossible to tell whether they died from the blast or the fire.

In the innermost part I found a large bundle of unexploded grenades; I hurriedly tried to lead the men out, but it was already too late—a muffled explosion blasted me with a shockwave, knocking me down; my vision went black, as if a layer of mud had been smeared over my eyes, and I could see nothing.

I frantically grabbed at nothing with my hands, overcome with indescribable panic; then someone seized my wrist and said, 'Comrade, wake up—are you having a nightmare?'

I opened my eyes and looked around; two train attendants and the full car of passengers were staring at me, everyone smiling. Then I realized I had just been dreaming; I let out a long breath, still shaken by the nightmare.

I never expected to dream while riding the train home; this time I've lost all face. I gave an embarrassed smile to everyone—possibly the ugliest smile I've ever made in my life—but fortunately there was no mirror, so I couldn't see my own face.

Seeing me awake, the attendant told me we were about to reach the terminal and to get ready to disembark. I nodded, grabbed my luggage and squeezed into the space between the two carriages, sat on my bag, lit a cigarette and took a few deep drags, still worrying about my comrades at the front.

Wearing a uniform without collar insignia or cap badges was awkward enough; I could barely walk. How would I explain this to my father when I got home? If the old man found out the unit had kicked me out and sent me back, he'd surely whip me with his belt.

After ten or so minutes we arrived at the station; I walked to my front gate, circled it once, didn't dare go in, and wandered aimlessly down the street, thinking up a lie to fool my father.

As evening fell and dusk deepened, I entered a restaurant hoping for a bite; seeing the menu shocked me—I hadn't eaten out in years, and now the prices were outrageous: a plate of fish‑fragrant shredded pork cost six yuan, meaning my three‑thousand‑plus yuan discharge allowance would barely cover five hundred such plates.

I ordered two bowls of rice and a plate of Kung Pao chicken, plus a bottle of beer; the young waitress insisted on recommending garlic‑braised big shrimp, which I flatly refused. She muttered a curse, rolled her eyes, huffed, and turned to bring my food.

I didn't want to stoop to her level; I'd served ten years, sweated, bled, faced life and death, and was worth only five hundred plates of fish‑fragrant shredded pork—thinking that made me want to laugh and cry. But then I thought: compared to comrades who sacrificed on snowy battlefields, what right do I have to be dissatisfied?

Just then another customer came in from outside, wearing imitation US‑imported frog‑eye glasses; I thought his attire was quite stylish for the time and glanced at him twice.

He also noticed me, stared at me for a while, then walked over and sat opposite me at my table.

I wondered what he was up to—with so many empty tables, why come crowd mine? Was he a hoodlum looking for trouble? 'Fuck you ***'—it hit right where I itched; I held my breath, itching to pick a fight, but his face looked somewhat familiar, half hidden by the frog‑eye glasses, and I couldn't recall who he was.

He pushed up the frog‑eye glasses on his nose and said, 'Heavenly King covers the earth tiger.'

I thought, 'How familiar this phrase is,' and blurted out, 'Pagoda suppresses the river demon.'

He then asked, 'Why is your face red?'

I raised my thumb and replied, 'Can't find a wife, so I'm anxious.'

'Then why did it turn white again?'

'Married a female tiger, so I'm frightened.'

We both embraced each other at the same time, and I said, 'Little Fatty, you didn't expect the Central Red Army to come back, did you?'

Pangzi nearly cried with excitement: 'Lao Hu, our various Red Army units have finally rendezvoused again in Northern Shaanxi.'

In recent years we'd also exchanged many letters, but being ten thousand miles apart we'd never met face to face; who would have thought we'd run into each other in a restaurant upon returning to the city—what a coincidence.

Pangzi's father held a higher rank than my own dad, but during the Cultural Revolution he couldn't escape persecution and died in a cattle shed. A few years after Pangzi returned to the city he found a job, worked over a year, then got into a fight with his supervisor and became a itinerant dealer, transporting cassette tapes of popular songs from our area northward.

After not seeing each other for years, we drank until our faces flushed and necks thick; I forgot about the lie I'd fabricated, got home, spoke drunk truth to my father, and to my surprise he wasn't angry—he was pleased. I thought, 'This old man, the older he gets, the lower his awareness—seeing his son spared the front lines makes him happy.'

The Resettlement Bureau assigned me a post as deputy head of the security section at a food factory, but having spent too long in the army I didn't want a regular nine‑to‑five life, so I declined; instead I went into business with Pangzi in the north.

Time flew; before we knew it we were into the eighties, we'd both grown a bit older, yet our business grew ever more bleak—we couldn't save enough to marry, putting food on the table was becoming a problem, we often had to beg money from family to meet urgent needs; according to the Third Plenum, the nation had basically solved food and clothing, but I felt we still lived as if before liberation, exploited and oppressed, underfed and underclothed.

The weather was fine, cloudless; we each wore sunglasses and bell‑bottoms, pushing a tricycle through Beijing's streets, with a board mounted on it loaded with cassettes, a battered tape player hooked to two busted speakers blaring the then‑popular Taiwanese tunes.

A bespectacled female student came over, browsed for a while, and asked, 'Do you have anything by Wang Jiesie Xie Lisi?'

We'd carried that before, but it had sold out two days earlier. Pangzi grinned and said, 'Hey sis, what era is this, still listening to their stuff? How about Deng Lijun, Qian Baihui, Zhang Aijia? Give it a few spins—I promise Chairman Mao, the better it sounds, the better it sounds.'

The female student thought Pangzi looked shady, turned and left.

Pangzi muttered behind her, 'That dumbass, pretending to be some hotshot, still wanting to hear gold‑and‑silver shuttle tapes—she looks just like a shuttle herself.'

I said, 'Your accent's turned all Beijing‑now; can't you speak proper Mandarin instead of pretending to be a capital resident? Business in Beijing is too tough these days—let's head to Xi'an in a few days.'

Pangzi tried to explain that his ancestors were from Beijing, but before he could finish he pointed down the street and shouted, 'Fuck, the industry‑and‑commerce bureau's coming to sweep—let's run!'

We shoved the tricycle and took off, zigzagging until we hit a street; looking around I wondered how we'd ended up, without realizing it, at the Panjiayuan antique market.

This street dealt in secondhand goods of every sort—even old Mao badges and Little Red Books had collectors. Everything from jars and bottles, old pocket watches and wristwatches, embroidered shoes for bound feet, piles of copper coins, snuff bottles, assorted antique furniture, pipes, calligraphy and paintings, carved inkstones, yellow paper for brush and ink, old tobacco pipes, cricket cages, porcelain, lacquerware, and jewelry of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and various stones—basically anything old could be found here.