EMPIRE OF NO SUN: (5) Foreign Exchange

from the novella “Empire of No Sun”

Chapter 5: Foreign Exchange

Shau Di’s nakwaning ‘friend’ had all the hallmarks of someone whose education exceeded his common sense, who liked talking more than doing, and whose impulse to be generous exceeded his wallet.

Liu-xue-sheng, in a nutshell. Why foreign students who had any choice would choose to study Mandarin in Shanghai, where the national standard speech was spoken poorly and often under duress, was beyond him.

Youthful looking and quick of foot, Shau Di could pass through college gates with little more than a flash of his fake student ID. He found a captive market in the foreign student dorms where the Western bohemians were just as quick to change money on the sly as rich tourists, maybe quicker, because the small difference made such a big difference to them.

While counting out bills under his breath — “...10...30...40...” — he would listen to their complaints about being forced to use phony-looking FEC notes instead of real money in China. “...370...380...390...,” he’d murmur, still counting.

“Official exchange 372, I give you friendship extra,” he would say, handing over a thick wad of stained, crumpled dark red bills in exchange for a single green hundred dollar bill.

After thanking him for the degraded local currency, which they could use to buy noodles on the street and cheap things in the cheap shops, they chimed in again about Foreign Exchange Certificates.

It’s not fair!

Shau Di wholeheartedly agreed. What’s more, he was ready and willing to relieve their angst by relieving them of spare change.

Dreamers with deep wallets made up more than half of his freelance business, so he found it in himself to tolerate their quirks.

The foreign dorm was simply crawling with eccentrics, charity cases, and masochists. What was it with them? They lapped up rotten slop in the mess hall and repeated rote propaganda for class, and...they couldn’t get enough of it!

Definitely Golden Boy country.

Driven by a downwardly mobile inclination of going wide, going local and going low, Golden Boy’s fellow students were foolish in a fashion, but they weren’t complete fools. They had their fun, they fucked around. Fellow foreigners, horny locals, all fair game. Japanese women, French men. Whatever.

Shau Di was bewitched by the underhanded goings-on in the dark corners of campus, but resisted as best he could. Campus might breed discontent, but it also bred snitches. Working the upmarket tourist trade had a lower downside.

His flings with the ladies on tour tended to go like fireworks, a promising glow lighting up the sky, razzle-dazzle-fizzle-fu, and then back to a darkness that was, if anything, darker than before.

The physical entanglements ranged from blah-blah to beastly hot, but sooner or later, and sorrowfully, nationality got in the way. Passport apartheid followed them everywhere — the Chinese-only here, the foreigners-only there. Sometimes even the topic of funny money came between them in bed.

What wasn’t funny was the cops and goons who made it their business to monitor cross-cultural couplings. Shau Di had a long string of police detentions and failed romances to show for it.

Rapid footsteps. A hand on his back.

Shau Di stiffens.

A sustained bout of throat-clearing is followed by an airy “Zan he-ning.”

Is it him? Who else would call a Shanghainese in Shanghai a “Shanghainese”?

It’s him. Golden Boy is back.

“Zan-he-ning. Nung ho, nung ho,” he greets, rubbing it in, in dialect.

Shau Di widens his tight-lipped grin. He isn’t one to smile, not that he’s unfriendly, or anything. His teeth are stained and crooked. He hadn’t been to the dentist since his mother was taken away.

“It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“You are not from Hollywood, are you?”

“Never said I was.”

“Liu-xue-sheng?”

“Yeah.”

“Ha! And they hired you?” Shau Di is at ease enough to openly betray his low opinion of the student crowd.

“Why shouldn’t they hire me?”

“I thought they were all Hollywood.”

“American. I’m American.”

“Sounds big. But you are just a pao-tui-de.”

“A what?”

“I see you. Run, run, run. You are a runner. A good runner.”

“You’ve seen through me...bei-kan-chuan-le, as they say.”

“You speak Chinese. Like this...” Shau Di points his thumb high in the air to punctuate the sentence.

“Za-za nung.“ The American nods contentedly.

“But no Chinese now,” Shau Di snaps, looking over both shoulders. “We speak’n English, okay?”

Golden Boy winces as though it were a hardship to speak his own tongue, but then notices the growing knot of onlookers, the hot gazes boring into them.

“Ho, ho. Ah. Okay.”

“English, right. Right, English it is. So where’d you learn English, my good man?”

“Yes. Quite so. I do, sir. You are correct. That is correct.”

“Do I detect a British accent?”

Brilliant!

His British friends told him he sounded American, his American friends told him he sounded British.

Given the encouragement, Shau Di couldn’t help but ham it up.

“Do you know the way to Buck-ing-ham Palace?” he asks in an earnest tone, all focus on pronunciation. Speaking rote words from an old practice tape was not just his way of sounding fluent, but a ruse to keep the eavesdroppers at bay.

The fledgling conversation, already hemmed in by fear of being overheard, gets cut short when the Mao-capped wonder boy is called away by one of his associates. One of the bigwigs up on the bridge is in need of an interpreter.

“Time to run?”

“Yep. By the way. You asked about Buckingham Palace? Go straight along the Bund, then turn west on Nanjing Road. Then go north until you reach the Great Wall, where you hang another left. Continue for about ten thousand kilometers, then ask again.”

“Haha.”

The sight of the funny man bounding up the bridge steps leaves him with a lingering feeling of kinship. So much talent, so little to show for it.

Or maybe Golden Boy was smarter than he looked. He could almost pass for one of the principals now, up there, mingling with the stars, if he weren’t so eager to be of help. He should cool his heels a bit, in keeping with their laidback style. No need to snap to attention every time someone drops a hat.

Does he really think the Hollywood radiance could rub off on a runner? Not gonna happen. Money doesn’t work that way. Power doesn’t work that way, either.

Now look at him. He’s really at ease, up there, just palsing around. He’s teasing the pink-cheeked kid. The English boy. The runt, the star, the star of the show.

Few of the otherwise savvy extras realize the crowd they portray is all about that scrawny schoolboy in the maroon uniform, not them.

Watching the American shoot the bull with a kid half his age, Shau Di finds it a joy to behold. In addition to Mandarin and Chinese, he speaks British.

Golden Boy’s fellow translators, mostly Shanghainese, some wickedly bilingual, issue a series of ear-piercing announcements, more noise than message, a mix of reprimand and praise, snapping about breaches of discipline and then coddling them in cloying tones, telling what good sports they are.

The cheerleaders for hire are laying it on thick, trying to placate and pacify the hungry crowd. Delicious words, but inedible. Hardly distinguishable from political slogans. Sounded good but meant nothing.

“You are all really special!”

“Each and every one of you makes a difference!”

Fuck the flattery. Who wouldn’t gladly trade all the verbal ass-patting for a bit of moola, but it’s easier to go around patting asses, isn’t it?

Look at the translator up there, he’s still at it. Now he’s shooting the breeze with the money guy, the bald man in the expensive suit. Probably trying to impress him. Does the money man realize the guy’s not even a real interpreter, just a liu-xue-sheng winging it?

Ah, but to be foreign and a student! Rich enough for tickets and tuition in search of an impoverished life. Not poor, yet too cheap to lodge in a foreign currency hotel with their own kind.

Still, deprivation is relative, isn’t it? If the likes of him bought a bike, it was a Friendship Store-stocked Flying Pigeon, overpriced, but the latest model. If he had a hundred bucks to his name, he had more cash on hand than the Chinese students on campus.

Even his Mao cap was top of the line.

The penny-poor foreign students rode their Flying Pigeons with unbecoming pride. They crisscrossed the joyless streets of Shanghai jingling the bell on the handlebar with a wild kind of glee, momentarily at one with the moving mass of Chinese cyclists. As much as they liked to think they fit in, they stuck out like nails that needed a good hammering.

When the foreign students went poking around in back alleys to take photos of laundry hanging from weathered eaves, or paused to decipher Chinese-language signboards on busy roads, they became instant traffic perils. Their eye-popping presence alone was enough to cause a crack-up, one bike banging into the next, until a dozen or more bikes got tangled up, bringing traffic to a halt.

Despite coming to Shanghai to learn Chinese words and Chinese ways, most Caucasians remained deaf and dumb to the cutting comments left in their wake:

— Look at the Whitey!

— Look at foreign fat ass!

— Look at bag-o-bones!

— Look at Goldilocks!

It was only natural. Shao-ba, the whiteys, were the quintessential nakwaning. The zup-buh-ning didn’t stand out as much, but were often called “L’il Japs” behind their back. But the production didn’t call on them when they needed extras to play Japanese soldiers. That was a job for thick-skinned Chinese to grapple with.

Shau Di had his share of dealings with ah-san Indian types, and of course the shao-huh, mostly from Africa. Everyone wanted to trade money. If there were a few bucks to be made, he didn’t care about white, black or tan. He was in the people business. The code he lived by wasn’t egalitarian, but it wasn’t particularly prejudiced, either. It was “buy low, sell high.”

Foreigners came in all shapes, shades, and sizes, but they had one important thing in common. They were all alike in not being Chinese. Lucky them.

When it came to an awareness of what was going on around them, the students were slightly more savvy than the tourists, which is why he gave them a slightly better rate. All he had to do was humor their halting Chinese to gain the upper hand. Those who always had their heads in the books had a lot of unlearning to do if they were to ever see things as they really were, but that wasn’t his concern, was it?

The fair-haired runner is back.

“Sir?” starts Shau Di, eyes darting left and right. “Sir?”

“You calling me sir?”

“It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”

“Oh. Oh. Right. Righty-oh.”

A press of bodies is closing in. Soon they are up to their necks in stares.

“People mountain, people sea,” quips the American, injecting Chinese grammar into English words.

And the idiom made sense. They were drowning in a throng.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

And then he is gone, gone with the flash of a smile, running off to wherever they needed legs next.

The knot of onlookers collapses in the wake of Golden Boy’s abrupt departure, creating the opening Shau Di has been waiting for. He brushes past all the brash looks, looking to reunite with the sing-song girl section of the crowd.

But Golden Boy intercepts him before he gets even halfway there.

“Hey, man,” he coughs, out of breath. “You, you interested in being in the movie?”

“I am an extra.”

“No you’re not, but that’s okay. People are seldom what they seem.”

“Pardon me?”

“I was just talking to the producer. She says they’re looking for locals. Acting. What they call bit parts. The pay is real.”

“Pardon me?”

“I was just talking to the producer. She says they’re looking for locals. Acting. What they call bit parts. The pay is real.”

“Pay?” Shau Di is shaken, albeit in a positive way.

“Would you rather play a Japanese soldier or a Chinese beggar?”

“Beggar?” Shau Di bristles. They couldn’t pay him enough.

Shau Di pauses to consider the pros and cons of the other one. To don the uniform of the enemy was to invite the wrath of the crowd.

“Sorry, I can’t act.”

Golden Boy gives him a funny look, then bounces back.

“Do you know how to drive?”

“Of course,” Shau Di lies.

“Great. They’re looking for someone to play a driver, you know, an old Packard. It’s the boy’s family car. You have to be willing to go to England, though.”

“Isn’t it a story of Shanghai?”

“Yes, it is. But some of the interiors will be filmed overseas. Shanghai is mostly outside shots.”

“England?” Shau Di’s eyes flutter as he sinks deep into thought.

A paid trip to England? Hmm. He tries to picture it. He should be figuring out how he could possibly play a limo-driver when he’d never driven anything bigger than a bicycle, but instead, the first thing that comes to his mind is that English woman. He wrote her once but she never wrote back. Well, they had their fun while they had it. And he still had her address, didn’t he?

“So, what do you think?”

“I don’t have...a passport,” Shau Di replied blankly.

“Just apply for one.”

Not so easy, but what would a liu-xue-sheng know about that? He came from a place where passports were a right, not a favor granted by authorities. He opted to live in a place they knew was neither free nor fair, but he didn’t know half of it.

Just apply for one? Maybe he wasn’t so sharp after all.

“What happened to the first driver?”

“Oh, there was some kind of political problem. Nice guy. From Shanghai, like you. I talked to him. Know what he said to me? — Yao houhui yi beizi…”

Shau Di’s eyes widened. He shivered in sympathy for the man who almost got out but didn’t. Just when the door looked like it was open, it was slammed closed. The regret of a lifetime, indeed.

“Why?”

“His application for passport was turned down by the Shanghai authorities.”

“But why?”

“That’s the question they don’t have to answer.”

Didn’t he know it. Shau Di knew it, all too well.

He pitied the man whose life had been upended by a dour clerk at a desk. He could have been behind the wheel of a vintage Packard. When you’re stuck in a pigsty ruled by petty rules and hypocrisy, it doesn’t get much sweeter than to drive your way out of it.

“Think about it, man. I gotta run.”

And Golden Boy was off in a blur.

The visiting Hollywood royalty up on the bridge knew a thing or two about class, class in the best sense of the word, and class, according to Shau Di’s decidedly uncommunistic outlook, was a liberating thing.

The best hotels. The best restaurants. The best clubs. The best clothes.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Not the likes of Golden Boy. Perhaps he thought living in Chinese housing, busting around on his bicycle and speaking the language might make him less of a foreigner.

Less foreign? Maybe. But definitely not more Chinese.

The flaxen-haired fixer wasn’t so different from the other foreign students slumming it, living the ‘socialist dream.’ He had the disheveled look, the earnest airs, the crippling idealism. Touched in the head with the kindly but ultimately insupportable notion that being one with the people was more important than being comfortable.

“What’s wrong with a foreigner-only hotel?” Shau Di had asked. “You’re a foreigner.”

“It’s a cocoon. Too indulgent. You lose touch with the masses.”

Ha! That’s a good one!

Time for a stretch.

Shau Di limbers up his arms and legs, while searching for a unit of extras where his unauthorized presence might be less remarked upon.

A long-distance glimpse of the actress who played the boy’s mother brings back to mind that English lady he once exchanged money and other things with.

Mature, but what a nice ass. He told her so and she took the compliment in stride. They flirted some. When he told her he could find her anything she needed, she said:

“I need a good bonk.”

“How much do you want to change?”

“Pardon?”

“The bank rate is bad. You can change with me.”

“Change? Oh. You silly. Bonk, not bank.”

He played it innocent even after it dawned on him what she was after, and as luck would have it, her hotel was not far away.

Shau Di took it as a testament of his personal powers of persuasion that a double transaction had been consummated.

The second time they met, she took him inside the foreigner-only Friendship Store. He was transfixed with the quality of merchandise on display when she admitted she had been drawn to him from the start.

“I have a thing for Chinese men. My fortune teller told me I was Chinese in my past life.”

But she also had a country to go back to in her present life, so whatever it was they had, it didn’t last. It did leave him convinced, however, there was more value to English than negotiating sums and numbers, and thereafter, he made a good faith effort to learn the lingo.

He went to the state-run bookstore and bought himself an English textbook published in Beijing. The book was crammed full of real English words, of course, but they were mostly useless communist phrases in translation, about the wonder known as New China. His next lovely British lassie, the one he liked enough to write to, laughed hard and long when he recited passages out loud for her. She especially liked his line about “moaning in the motherland.”

As for his slightly off-the-mark accent, she told him he sounded like a Yank, which he took as a compliment until he got to know her better.

There were others after her, but her mockery was the most memorable.

Shau Di’s extracurricular English “study flings” were not only tuition-free, but offered diversions with dividends.

The black sheep son of category five black intellectuals, he’d never even gone to college, but he was good at learning. His romances, however fleeting, illegal and ill-conceived, taught him enough rude, rudimentary English to go a long way, and he parlayed what little he knew for all it was worth.

Still, consorting with the other side was not without its psychic toll. At times it made him ashamed of being Chinese, always doing things on the sly. The rules against inter-racial mixing didn’t bother him as much as the popular prejudice against it.

After getting detained twice, on top of multiple police warnings about illicit fraternization, he doubled down on stealth.

(previously…)

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