EMPIRE OF NO SUN: (1) The Bund

“Empire of No Sun” will be posted in August, free to read, then paywalled after September 1 when the ebook is released.

Chapter 1: Shanghai 1987, the Bund

Five thousand restless men and women mass together on the bank of a muddy river on a gray, mid-winter day. Dressed in crude gowns and tattered garments, they do their best to keep warm, blowing hot air on cold fingers, stamping numb feet and rubbing palms under the watchful eye of uniformed police and plainclothes agents. Squawking gulls dive-bomb the turbid waters while cormorants skim low over the Huangpu.

The humidity is thick, portending a bone-chilling day, if not rain. The roped-in crowd, a trembling mass of students, teachers, clerks, workers, and other denizens of Shanghai who got the call to action, is gathered in knots and tied into tightly-packed clusters in the shadow of an art-deco granite tower that overlooks the iconic waterfront. The triple-arched portico cries welcome, but the front door is locked, the guarded entrance now around back. The pent-up multitude, trucked in from the outskirts of town too early to even think about breakfast, let alone the injustice of a hotel not meant for them. They shift and moan as hunger sets in.

Penned up under the cold eye of local law enforcers, individual discontents take advantage of sheer numbers to flirt, fight, exchange cigarettes, and cut deals among themselves, waiting for the sun to shine.

When the foreigners and their fancy local hires finally start to arrive, stepping out of their chauffeured cars to greet the morning chill, they take up a privileged position atop the pedestrian bridge that overlooks the riverine park and blocked-off road.

Contradictory instructions begin to trickle down from the command post on top of the span, conveyed by relay to translators on the ground who snap commands to the hapless masses, whipping the crowd into shape, getting ready for the big shoot.

—Step forward! Step back!

—Move! Don’t move!

—Shift left, slide right!

—Go here! Go there!

The directions, brusquely translated and shouted out by local interpreters in the pay of the foreigners, put an end to at least one highly promising conversation.

Shau Di, a dapper young man of the street, a man who has been impelled to live by his wits ever since being expelled from his work unit, is making a bid for the attention of a blushing young factory gal with a fresh sprig of flowers in her luxuriant hair. He’s good at girls, that’s why he situated himself in this perfumed corner of the crowd, and given the choice, why stand anywhere else? The object of his affectionate teasing is sassy and not-so-innocent and much to his liking, but he suddenly comes under pressure from a Chinese-speaking foreign man with a megaphone.

“Please return to your work unit!”

Unit? What work unit?

“You! Yeah, you.”

You call me you? Me? And who the fuck are you?

Truth be told, he didn’t have a work unit to go back to, he didn’t even have a job. He wasn’t supposed to be here, nor anywhere else for that matter. No one invited him to be an extra — he had been observing the men and women in weird costumes gather in the gloom just after dawn. He slipped into the crowd on his own initiative, thinking he might score a name, a number or something to eat.

He was tempted to split; he had a small room not far away, illegal lodgings with little more than a pan to piss in, but he couldn’t complain about the location — it put him just minutes from the Bund, right in the heart of things.

“Get rolling! You don’t belong here!”

It’s a Chinese person haranguing him now. Not local, provincial.

Belong? He’s a Chinese in China, a Shanghainese in Shanghai. Where was he supposed to go?

Shau Di curses the rude, rural comprador under his breath and slinks off, reluctantly feigning compliance, ears still ringing with echoes of rejection.

He winks a see-you-later at his would-be conquest and retreats from the girly-girl section of the crowd.

Wandering off, he seeks the path of least resistance until he finds himself standing near the steps of the pedestrian bridge upon which foreign overlords and film studio grandees stand. He cranes his neck to better observe the bosses as they set up equipment and chat among themselves. There were several authoritative men with beards who pointed this way and that, issuing inaudible orders that were then relayed by shouts to a team of translators mixed in with the hoi polloi below.

He’s loitering near the bridge with half a mind to hoof it when a bossy Asian-faced lady confronts him in halting Chinese.

“You. Your clothes. Your clothes not right! No good! Go! Over there! Go over there!”

Although he could only understand half of what she was saying, the gist of her disdain was transmitted plain and clear. She doesn’t like the way he’s dressed! Of all the ways to tell a bad egg to roll away, that was one that hurt.

As a man who lived by his wits, he couldn’t afford the latest fashion, but he did take appearances seriously, and his wardrobe, limited and threadbare though it might be, was carefully selected to impress. He only had one good outfit, but it was good enough to wear every day. What’s more, he was wearing his best shoes.

Look at her! Who does she think she is? She’s not even from here. Clothes not right? The cow should talk! She’s wearing jeans! Definitely a foreign Chinese, probably American.

The lady translator appeared to pride herself on speaking Mandarin, at least speaking it better than most Americans who don’t speak it at all, but her halting, rough-edged words were not exactly music to his ears and she wasn’t going to win a lot of respect with this crowd.

In Shanghai, where hometown pride is second to none, just the sound of Beijing-accented Mandarin grates, let alone half-assed Mandarin with a foreign accent.

She might as well be speaking Hungarian.

Not wanting to draw any more negative attention, he stomps off, smoldering at the way she dissed and dismissed him for his clothing.

Who the fuck do they think they are, telling a proud man his clothes don’t pass muster?

The musty humid air is crisscrossed with the static of incomprehensible commands in English, echoed in translation with a short delay. Prickly about being bossed around ever since the day he was fired, especially because he wasn’t allowed the option to quit, Shau Di pretends not to hear any of it.

A volley of awkward pleas and requests for cooperation rush in one ear and out the other as he bobs, ducks, twists, turns, and otherwise tries to work his way through the roped-in multitude.

At one point he gets stopped by a kindly-looking foreign lady with a huge head of golden hair. He smiles rakishly in return, reflexively touching his finger to the ear where he kept a spare cigarette tucked, but he knew little bribes like that didn’t work with foreigners, especially if they didn’t smoke.

She’s saying something, not yelling at him like the others, but something rather more agreeable though exactly what she’s saying, he’s not sure. He didn’t need to know the content of her gentle commands to know it was expedient to play it dumb, charming, and agreeable.

The big-haired lady pauses, not sure if she’s been understood. She gestures at a table on the edge of the roped-in area where what looks like a shopping frenzy is underway. A batch of late-arriving extras can be seen trying on various articles of hats and outerwear. Still nursing a bruised ego, but quick to spot an opportunity, he decides to examine the handouts on offer.

Piled high on the supply table can be found everything from ragged old coats, dainty foreign hats, silky mandarin robes, and flimsy gowns. The costumes are being poked through, fingered, measured, and tried on for size.

No one invited him to be here, that was problem number one, but being inside the festive, restive crowd seemed more interesting than being on the outside looking in. Too much of his life was window shopping, he wanted to step it up, step inside for a change.

The factory girls he had been chatting up earlier were already talking about lunch — it was reputed to be deluxe, expensive, and delivered from one of the big hotels on the Bund — so if nothing else, there was lunch to look forward to.

He obediently joins the line and waits his turn to poke through the pile of old clothes for a handout.

He knew the thing to do was to keep a low profile, and to keep expectations low, too, with an ear cocked for useful gossip. He had already overheard a considerable amount of back and forth grousing about being asked to stand around in the cold all morning in the name of “friendship.”

— Don’t you wanna be in a movie?

— They should pay us, don’t you think?

— They paid. The foreigners paid good money for us to be here.

— Is that so? How come we don’t get to see our share?

One of the wags standing within earshot, currently trying on hats, was mouthing off. One of those boastful know-it-all types, he slyly suggested that the Shanghai party bosses had already pocketed the dough. “It’s not for nothing and it doesn’t come free, does it, for the party to close down a busy thoroughfare and field 5,000 extras?”

Shau Di flashes a grin in agreement. The man in the ridiculous top hat has the same low opinion of the party commissars that he does. The people who run this city are running it into the ground with their stupid principles, which in a way is even worse than their greed, so he is receptive to the idea that a party man took the money and ran.

He continues to listen with interest but keeps his jaded views to himself. Unlike those forced to be here, he hasn’t been shanghaied to the waterfront to stand around without compensation, so why should he put up with these clowns and their complaints? He gives serious thought to quitting the whole circus.

It was easy enough to steal past security and slip into the roped-off crowd, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get out. Why not spend what was left of this chilly morning changing money at the usual money-changing spot by the Friendship Store down the road?

With Hollywood in town, business was bound to be good.

“What are you supposed to be?” asks a well-dressed lady from the film studio. She has the soft-spoken, debonair bearing of a Shanghainese of her generation. She stands behind a table, supervising the handout of costumes.

“Me?” Shau Di freezes for an instant, she reminds him of his mother, and then relaxes, realizing her question is neither philosophical nor unfriendly but rather addresses a practical matter. “Businessman…”

She directs his attention to a pile of old-style hats. No stranger to the black market, he’s not only looking for something that suits his sense of style, but also minutely examines the goods on offer for quality of stitching and durability of fabric. He tries on several hats in quick succession, but can find nothing he wants, not even for free.

“Do you want a Pork Pie, a Panama, or a Homburg?” The wardrobe lady sounds knowledgeable, probably on loan from the local studio.

“I don’t know yet,” he answers honestly, not having a clue as to what she was talking about, although she was speaking Chinese. With a furrowed brow he fingers the contours of several more hats, then tries them on for size. He finds a fedora he likes; it’s slightly gangsterish, but it doesn’t fit.

At the urging of the wardrobe supervisor, he tries on a skullcap. It was supposed to make him look like an old-fashioned scholar or something. She claims that it suits him, but what self-respecting scholar would wear something so cheap?

Reluctantly, he takes it. Most of the articles of clothing on offer were knock-offs, not made to last; it was all clown wear as far as he was concerned. But he was already inside the big tent, inside the ring, so he might as well hang around for the show.

The wardrobe staffer locates for him a long gray tunic and hands it to him.

“It’s a gown,” he starts to say, but before he can get his complaint in, she tells him it suits his skinny build well. He was self-conscious about his thin frame, so she has a point; even by his own reckoning he could do with some padding. He dons the scholar’s gown under her watchful eye, slipping it over his street clothes with ease.

Wearing the old time clothes makes him feel like a fraud, but he’s willing to play along with the movie make-believe, if only to make a better impression when he goes back to find that dolled-up factory girl who’s probably waiting for him somewhere on the far side of the crowd.

He thanks the lady and leaves, grabbing a padded jacket from the table as he departs.

“One costume per person, please,” the wardrobe lady reprimands sharply. Busted, he sheepishly puts the jacket back and quickly makes himself scarce. He next presents himself at the table where meal chits are being handed out.

The threadbare clown gown won’t offer much protection from the chill of the elements, but it will protect him from being tagged as someone who didn’t belong. He scores an extra set of meal chits without arousing any visible suspicion. Good for three hotel-catered box lunches. Just the thought of this windfall is enough to warm his empty gut.

For commoners to be herded around like cattle, stripped of residual dignity and autonomy, was par for the course in a land lorded over by the control-conscious commissars, but Shau Di was a survivor, and despite the effort of the local party hacks to crush him, he had kept most of his personality intact. He was fluent in all the quiet ways to rebel. The thing to do was not to get mad, getting mad only got you in trouble, but to find ways to make money.

Versed in the basics of guerilla warfare from patriotic books and anti-Japan war films, he knows enough not to stand in any one place too long. Keep on the move, keep in motion. He plows into the nether recesses of the crowd, eyeing the women and sizing up the men along the way, looking for a place to pretend to belong.

Beholden to nothing but his instincts, he unobtrusively works the captive crowd, which is seething and unwieldy in certain corners, despite being monitored and strictly divided into units. It’s the unguarded cracks in the crowd he’s looking for, the little pockets of hidden potential.

How many truckloads of volunteers it took to artificially fill a normally busy street stripped of traffic he didn’t know, but it went without saying that the foreigners were paying top dollar for it. The extras didn’t have to be paid, but police didn’t do favors for nothing, nor did their political bosses.

The extras mill about, bristling with impatience. Dressed up as they are, they don’t look like captives, but not one of them is free. They arrived as members of a unit and would depart as a unit, under the watchful gaze of unit supervisors.

Seeking out the perimeter of the huddled masses for a breather, Shau Di reaches behind his ear for a ready cigarette. He lights up.

It’s hard to impress the girls in a silly costume. Buried under an extra layer is his best shirt. It was a respectable shirt, you could hardly tell it was a knock-off. Often the counterfeits were near identical to the real thing, the only difference being they were made after midnight on a special shift for special purposes.

He drags slowly on his cig, waiting for the show to begin. The extras, most of whom are trapped in the company of co-workers, like them or not, are not easy to talk to despite all the talking they do. They’re not likely partners in changing money or talking business, instead they’d rather vent spleen, trade gossip, and stoke conspiracy. Accusation, innuendo, caustic digs, and indignant claims ricochet back and forth across this living, breathing mass of humanity wedged between the cold stone walls of old colonial buildings and the denuded riverfront, awaiting orders from on high.

Shau Di stubs out his cigarette and plunges back into the clamor, darting fluidly this way and that like a fish in the sea of the people. He doesn’t come up for air until he reaches the bridge up front upon which the foreigners preside.

Nakwaning! Look at them. So many white faces up there! Most wear sunglasses, not for the winter sun that refuses to shine, but for what? Looks? They look cool, in a way, don’t they? Shau Di was the proud owner of a good pair of shades, good enough he still hadn’t peeled off the tag. But they were for special occasions.

The commanders up on the bridge issue indecipherable words in English. Just so much noise, until their running dogs rendered the instructions into Chinese. When the megaphones started blaring, it was harder to play deaf and dumb.

So many willing enablers and not a few collaborators, too. It falls on hired hands, at least a few of whom are heavies from the local studio, others from the police, to deal with the crowd. Thousands of people roped in, firmly and authoritatively. It falls on the paid facilitators to persuade the unpersuaded and cajole the uncooperative.

— Move over!

— Stand still!

— Come forward!

— Step back!

Shau Di isn’t sure what to make of the Hollywood royalty barking instructions from the bridge. Most of them look like fish out of water. Harmless enough, not unlike the hapless foreigners he made trades with. Do they even realize there are hot currents surging through the crowd, a crowd bubbling with resentment, adulation, fear and envy.

Look at those fancy fuckers up on the bridge!

The altitude gave the foreigners an attitude they hadn’t really earned, that much was true, but that wasn’t the half of it. Visitors from the mythic Hollywood could get away with just about anything on goodwill and the awe factor alone, though it took the ministrations of the local commissars to make sure they got it.

One thing you could be sure of. Wads and wads of money would have had to change hands before good patriotic guardians of Shanghai would even begin to think about ceding a small piece of their city to the foreign interlopers, even for just a few hours. But the big Hollywood entourage had come to town, so the deal, whatever the deal was, was done.

Director, actor, producer, cameraman — even the caterers — were objects of fascination and envy. While none of them looked rich, let alone like exotic stars from a faraway universe, many of them had the kind of lifestyles people here could only see in the movies. They were from hao-lai-wu, the real deal, the real Hollywood! That alone accounted for something in the starstruck eyes of city dwellers who had been isolated from the world for thirty years.

Even those locals who were disinclined to like Americans for reasons of nationalism or pride were smitten by a mix of curiosity and movie magic, though precisely where, when, and how the magic manifested itself was not immediately clear.

Shau Di has been quietly working the crowd for two hours now, disappointed at the small pickings, and the aching absence, so far, of any trickle-down benefits that might accrue when Hollywood comes to town.

Judging from the small talk, many of his fellow extras were so mesmerized by the idea of being in a movie they didn’t realize what they were in for, though it was getting harder to maintain illusions about it now that they were on the ground, especially with those loudmouth minders and bilingual lackeys taking stage center.

The staff hustle and bustle about, patrolling the crowd, supposedly on behalf of the foreigners, but really for the party bosses, moving with impunity inside and outside the ropes, hissing rejoinders and issuing commands.

Finely honed to the degrading scent of power, the running dogs might lift their noses high, but in the end, they were just ass-sniffers, that’s all.

Shau Di drops his hand and presses it against the hollow of his belly. His gut gnaws for food but there’s not much he can do about it. He skipped breakfast, his first mistake of the day, but nothing was open on the Bund at that hour, and even now there are precious few places for locals to eat along the touristy waterfront.

Sniff, sniff — Hmmm. Mmmm. What’s that?

He can smell something cooking and it’s coming from somewhere close.

Just beyond the footbridge, there’s a white van parked next to a roped off section of sidewalk. The rope is not one of those ropes meant to keep the extras in, rather it’s meant to keep them out, and it’s a velvety red, as if to clarify any possible confusion.

Shau Di goes right up to the edge of the red rope to see what’s going on. Tea, coffee, toast, and sandwiches are being served. Not for the bored, irritable, envious, and mutinous multitudes who’ve been on their feet since the crack of dawn, but for the handful of grandees in the Hollywood crew and their arrogant local assistants.

The coveted patch of ground from which the scent of breakfast beckons is oddly empty. A few foreign crew members mill about, getting tea and whatever, but most of them are too busy working to take advantage of the spread set out for them. Instead, the dining area is currently populated by local VIPs who strut about the foreign refreshment stand like they own the place, and in a way they do.

Some people are more equal than others; that’s the way communism works. You’re either on the side of those in power, or on no side at all.

That the huge cash injection of Hollywood coming to town should mainly benefit the party elite, and their privileged enforcers, was no surprise to Shau Di. Stark inequality was a way of life here. In the name of serving the people, the reds who ran the place put themselves out of reach of the people, invoking the name of the people, and without a hint of shame.

The hunger is general, but the food is only for a few.

The higher-level party members are easy enough to spot, especially those with the thick waists, thinning hair, and bad taste in Western suits.

Few of them look local, their lack of Shanghai smarts gives them away right away. They most likely hail from backwater provinces, or wherever it is that the natural-born bureaucrats reside. Dimwits they might be, but you didn’t make fun of ‘em, except behind their back, because the party had their back and that was no joke. Made men, they were.

But how ridiculous they looked in the eyes of a true son of Shanghai. The rusticated functionaries are simply unable to shake the whiff of the barn and the barracks. As clumsy as domesticated beasts in suits, they flash nervous smiles as they ape foreign manners, clumsily struggling with the handles on their teacups and the unfamiliar finger food. They are out of their element of back-rooms, spittoons, overflowing ashtrays and mao-tai toasts.

Shanghai sophisticates may roll their eyes and exchange knowing glances, but there is despair for the future, knowing the future is in the hands of such men. As savvy as locals might be about things urban in their naturally urbane way, they were out of sync with the times. The pride about what Shanghai once was, and would hopefully once again be, was down and out but not dead. The downtrodden progeny of yesteryear’s capitalist elite were biding their time in the hopes that history would turn once again.

High above the fray, too engrossed in their work to take the time out for the catered tiffin and tea, the Western work crews huddle together on the bridge, urgently attending to the task at hand.

A handful of the men looking out over the waterfront are clean-shaven and pink-faced, but most of them sport beards. Facial hair ranges from black and brown to red, but no matter the color, they all look like pirates.

But they don’t dress like pirates, do they? Nor do they dress with the opulence of your textbook imperialist or colonial master. What do they dress like? They dress like tourists! And dumpy middle-class tourists at that.

Not at all like some of the well-dressed chaps and ladies that can be found by the gate of the Friendship Store or the Jade Buddha Temple. Why even your average camera-toting slob waiting on line to board the Huangpu River cruise dressed better!

Around the mostly bearded principals, a crew of working-class technicians is busy adjusting tripods, mounting lights, and lifting heavy-duty equipment for the shoot. For men like that, workers’ denim made more sense.

Baseball caps, sweatshirts, and windbreakers seem to be the norm, even for the elite. Has Hollywood fallen on hard times?

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