北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)

北 Beijing 2008 - 14

19

Why would this never end? She wondered this every time she called a distant number and heard that terrible voice that wanted to be with her. And she wanted them to end too, until the voice came, and she had to ensnare the belly of the beast - and touch the tender robin redbreast which lived under the sea, with the Sparrow of Beijing.

She remembers in hallucination, in the time of the Accident, when everything was still new. She remembers a quote: (She wrote in her diary.)

“26 April 1989 - Wednesday”

“I realize that nothing is as it seems - the dream of rain, desert rose. Repetition compulsion as a drawing emerges from compulsion compactification manifold radio, ga-ga.¹ Who wants to live forever?² Syntactical Synecdoche, NY³ simplify sonority synthesizer shalom. Electroacoustic polyphonic musique concrète Synket in drag by pseudo-electric potential. Concinnity modalities on the flute arpeggiator, my brother hears Concertinas bootstrap errorditian on the Second row in a hovel-born Hangzhou do minho arcos de valdevez. Try as she might, jazz pharmaceuticals infected mon frère from le Composition for ‘Jazz’. Its countermelodies metonymy slipped in krautrock par Dixieland appropriately tresillo Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine) clave in Ragtime tinge cinquillo spiritual-esque habanera harmonic substitution chords, reinterpreted in Blue. Toucha brass. I can smell the chemicals.”⁴ How do I feel?

“Smugnorant doubling-redoubling as the spades cool wall to the back against circled porcelanosa scabbed sunlight 中国音乐学院⁵ between hands of contract bridge. Steam from Shaokao which is a hanger-on used hongbao to buy chabuduo 邮政报刊亭.⁶ Arboretum in xiāng-fáng hútòng siheyuan-style.

The leaves crumple under ancient embroidered lianlǚ.”

“I do this because of melancholy somnambulant mèngxiǎng.”

“Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming,⁷ because she blinded me with science.”⁸

Le mariage est une forteresse assiégée, ceux qui sont dehors veulent y entrer, ceux qui sont dedans veulent en sortir.

There is no political solution to our troubled evolution.⁹

20

Foreign Books in Beijing

“Amassed all of the late 20th century buildings, some that are designed to flout all sense of style, and assault the heavens with a sense of purpose, there are those people who will not look twice at the Chinese television building – called CCTV Headquarters, designed by Ren Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. They were interested in doing business with the Chinese government per se. They have settled into Beijing because it is newer and ever been New York City will be in a long time. Some of us are here for books. Many of them are found in places on the book tour because everything has toured in China. After all, it is Beijing - though one quickly learns that 北京 is the Mandarin, it is on all of the license plates. But then there are those who come added from a different angle and do not want to be distracted by such things. Largo is the way it should be enunciated.” Grow cold.

“If you take the tour of Beijing in English they will probably stop by 'The Bookworm' - a lovely place with neat standing shelves, and a décor which cannot be matched anywhere. The Bookworm is the place where people see other people, and buy one or two things that they will show off in their loft in New York City, or San Francisco. And maybe they will talk about Peter Hessler - who wrote Oracle Bones - or John Pornfret - who penned China Lessons - as if they knew them in a personal kind of way. Maybe their daughter will talk about meeting an idol of hers, Rachel Dewoskin – whose squib Foreign Babes in Beijing was passed along from one side of the school to the other, all in female hands. If all of this sounds Jeux Jeune, it shows the disconnect between what parents want for their children, and what the almost adult see for themselves. Because high school is the age – especially for daughters – that young people think they are adult enough. We who know better will not be listened to until much, much – and sometimes much – later.” Too much for even Oscar Wilde could find a paradox in seven deadly virtues as interpreted by Ai Wenwen.

“The one thing that you will not notice because if you did you would not be here, is everyone speaks English. People who will – go once, recognize it, and then never set foot in it again. They could hear English back in the UK or the US – what they want is Mandarin. Only they will pronounce it: Putonghua - which is the Mainland version of the official tongue, and, mainly, it is the Beijing dialect - with a few exceptions.”

“The literate will find a girlfriend or boyfriend at 'All Sages' which is near the southern gate of Tsinghua University, which is also in the northern part of the city. Of course, the artistic will be near Sanlian Taofen¹⁰, which from time to time has a good selection of speakers. While not as well-known as The Bookworm, it is the place for all of the detail-oriented sort of books that a bilingual needs. The hip with interior decorating will be at Designer Books, also in the northern part, but in the second Circle. You will learn that that is important, the business of government is in the First Circle; therefore all of the important people are there. The Second Circle is where education is; all of the bright people who only occasionally work for the government are in this circle. So one of these bookstores will be the hub of a certain kind of visitor - and after the third visit, or about a month of just knowing that they are going to be a Beijing – they will hang their hats in this place permanently – because for each of them 'where else is there?' Where else?”

This is not a place that is on any map that tourists draw from. No, this is not like that at all, not near an English language-friendly group of restaurants in the North Road, or anything like it. Not for tourists at all.¹¹ The name is 'Le Petit Gourmand', and it is the place where people who like to burrow into the wee hours of the morning go. It is a true library, and for 200 renminbi you can borrow three books at a time. It is where the mixed couples go, especially if they're not formally connected. Or at least not to each other.”

“Unlike other places, you will surreptitiously engage someone in flirtatious conversation, which must look formal if it is to work at all. It is a language that covers the rustle of magazines, and that casual way of standing, which is too casual, for Beijing. There is not the long line of books that you might expect, but there are old books that have had too many hands on them and been circulated back into the general run of books.”

“That is the thing: in China, everything is passed from one end to another, as the books between almost adult high school students. Because, as of right now, people either have money or do not. And of those who do not have money, but have voracious reading habits, the coin is passed from hand to hand, each one reading and then passing along a book that will be read many times. As opposed to being read and left on some old bookshelf in the back. Waiting for the arms of another, to bless them with knowledge from the time when their grandparents talked about the opening of Asia and thus China. Much as Sinclair Lewis propped up each chapter of Arrowsmith with some reference to Grey's Anatomy.”

“Mostly there will be two cliques of people: the people who sent themselves down in Shanghai, and the people who do business with the government - which means Beijing. Because remember, in 50 years, it will have been open for some time and the young will listen intently to what it was like in the beginning. Because they will know that something happened before their lifetime started and they want to hear about it, in North America or Asia.”

21

Li Bao

烏夜啼

黃云城邊烏欲栖

歸飛啞啞枝上啼

机中織錦秦川女

碧紗如煙隔窗語

停梭悵然憶遠人

獨宿孤房淚如雨

Wū yè tí

huáng yún chéng biān wū yù qī

guī fēi yāyā zhī shàng tí

jī zhōng zhījǐn qín chuān nǚ

bì shā rú yān gé chuāng yǔ

tíng suō chàngrán yì yuǎn rén

dú sù gū fáng lèi rú yǔ

Dark Night Cry

Yellow cloud cityside crows

Return fly, yaya, branch go up

In the machine weaves Qin river girl

Blue yarn girlish smoke across window language

Stop shuttle despair rush remote soul

Solo stay solitary - Tears in the room.

22

Enwimpershuttle.

Entscheidungsproblem. Church on Turing’s grave ascends.

1 Queen, “Radio GaGa”

2 Queen, “Who Wants to Live Forever?”

3 From the film of the same name.

4 Thomas Dolby, “She Blind me with Science”

5 Chinese Conservatory of Music. (Zhōngguó yīnyuè xuéyuàn)

6 Postal news stand. (Yóuzhèng bàokān tíng)

7 Thomas Dolby, “Dreaming”

8 Thomas Dolby, “She Blind me with Science”

9 Police, “Spirits in the Material World”

10 English Language Bookstore.

11 In the fine script, Ardelle Li wrote, as if a Foreigner in distant land and for the first time:s

Cold as ice

Half life alcohol

Young teacher subject

Spirits Material evolution

Modern English

#bunkerboy in confession

authoritarian spectacle

tragic menacing absurd

Histoire de la sexualité

Lafayette Square

denounced desecration abomination.

Beaux-Arts residence