By Royston Tester

I

"In The Second Month Of The Fourth Year Of Established Calm An Earthquake Struck"
                                      Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong

A burgundy pump.

Stiletto heel --- from the foggy sedan on Gongti Beilu, one June morning.

He did not often see that.

There.

No movie crèche, or pixels, either.

A snug, ample thigh. How Wang Jing glimpsed the flesh, and shied away. Thrust his shoulder against the chute cackling cement footings into new, straw-laden ground at Gong San Plaza – 'A Complex Area Between Workers Stadium and San Li Tun,' as the glossy hoardings put it. At this site perimeter, far and near, where the shoe stepped out. 'Drunk in the last minute, then meeting. Tel: 588 8888.'

In a trice, it happened. This Beijing leg – uprighting itself.

The rest, a devastating collision as, spiraling just above him, two umber girders – hoisted by adjacent cranes – glanced off one another. Ch'u pi – ju pi; like a split brushstroke. A disloyalty dance that severed crucial wires and hurled its load, bent-bastard barreling toward earth. Whshh. Chkk. Where Wang Jing stared distractedly – alongside bulldozer and backhoe – cursing.

About to fill a hole.

"'Let's pretend these people are animals…'" Li Fan recited, in her Shanghai way, flushing, haughty; all amateur surprise. A half-dozen students giggled; perched behind yellow desks at Teahouse Corner in Liu Hebei village. "'...and each shoot arrows into the sky.'"

In the commune school that day, nothing was funnier.

Li Fan smirked too – as much because her first day's lesson went so well: Zhao's Orphan, the ancient text she quoted; title scratched on a board, 'Remonstration in the Peach Garden.'

Li Fan was twenty years old – a recent graduate, serious and keen, with slender hands, glossy hair, and barely discernible lisp. A French concession landlord's daughter.

Wang Jing, sixteen, the only son of Xingtai soybean farmers. "What does 'remonstration' mean?" she asked.

Who knew?

He observed her peachy breasts.

Wang Jing did not discover what lay beyond those opening scenes – the 'Crimson Cloud Tower over a terrace,' 'scent wafting for miles around' – dictated, repeated, inscribed in chalk, at single-storey Teahouse Corner, over six weeks.

He never understood Chuang-tzu's 'Parable of Prince Hui's Cook' (of Tuesday and Friday mornings), or why Li Fan handwrote posters of Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms for "our wall."

In forty-odd years in Beijing, wifeless as he was, he pondered these mysteries but could not solve them.

In the loneliest spells – and there were many for such a shamefaced, hardworking man, 'parallel citizen', a legal and not legal migrant, paying his own protection – he would recite verbatim the Orphan passages, the story of a kitchen blade, and titles that once hung beside a window.

This false start in life, its cavities.

How many times you could utter 'remonstration.'

Here.

Where no-one heard a peep from Snail.

Chapter One: 'Remonstration in the Peach Garden'

"It is said that Duke Ling of the State of Jin during the Warring States Period, who came to the throne as a child, was a petulant youngster of unstable temperament. But, fortunately for his realm, the influence of his benign forbears, dukes Wen and Xiang, still lingered, and the people were content and industrious."

"This is the 'nail-headed rat-tail,'" she would say, forming the stroke. "You draw one."

Thick-pawed Wang Jing followed.

"That's more the 'unraveled hemp rope.' Try again."

For hours into the night they created line on scraps of paper – and, in hushed voices, talked of threaded shapes, and dots. As though their lives depended on it.

"These are 'horses' teeth.'"

Everything became lines, that April 1966: out loud in the mildewed classroom; Li Fan's drawing beneath the kerosene lamp when, at 8pm, the electricity shut off; the corners of his eyes; the lines his sentimental Uncle Jia fed him...about Jing's family in Xingtai.

"Where are your parents, Snail?" she asked, using his nickname, fearing they perished in the famine six years before.

"Neighbours are still searching for them," he replied unevenly, gazing into the table; at 'dragon veins' – though he did no know them as that.

March had been a month of earthquake – and suicides of high-ranking government officials in the capital, two hundred miles north.

"Shaking the four seas, shaking the five continents," his uncle kept muttering; Jia's phrase for any upheaval. A short-tempered man – known as Short-Arse Jia – who, as commune leader, housed refugees, as well as his relatives, fleeing the Xingtai destruction. "Eight thousand lives lost," he would intone, pacing the courtyard. Adding it up.

"I hope your mother and father are found," said Li Fan, tailing off 'bundles of brushwood,' touching his forearm.

"A month," he replied, acknowledging her sweep across the page.

Fingertip through down.

"There is always jihui," she reminded him.

A chance.

Snail knew what he knew.

Uncle Jia would eventually say.

Chapter One: 'Remonstration in the Peach Garden'

"As the years went by and Duke Ling attained manhood, his nature became even more depraved, his extravagance knew no bounds, and he plundered the people mercilessly to pay for an orgy of constructing palaces and pleasure domes. He held human life in complete disregard; if anything, no matter how slight, irritated him, he would unleash a whirlwind of executions of innocent people."

Wang Jing slept fitfully on the schoolroom floor amongst the other evacuees – and near Li Fan. In the mornings, his aunt Dong Mei prepared corn cake. The group drank tea. Every eighth day, and for good fortune, she cooked an egg.

More recently, when the loudspeaker announced a call on Liu Hebei's village phone, a jumpy Wang Jing girded himself to learn nothing. Or worse. There was chatter from Beijing – and not only of General Ruiqing's leap from a third-storey window; an unsuccessful suicide.

"His colleagues are laughing at him," Li Fan heard. "Our Head of State, Liu Shaoqi, told everyone, 'You have to have technique...heavy head and light feet, but he arrived feet first.'

Wang Jing lit the kerosene lamp in his uncle's courtyard on Crabapple Blossom Road; took out sheaves of crumpled paper, ink. He did not want to understand this gossip or the political reasons for his uncle's meetings in Beijing. Li Fan handed him a brush – to practice 'wrinkles on a demon's face.'

In the brisk evening, early May.

"The leaders are throwing themselves out of buildings?"

"Some are," she replied, a line spilling from beneath Snail's nervous grip. "Den Xiaoping said Ruiqing 'jumped like a female athlete diver...a lolly on a stick.'"

"They must be frightened," said Wang Jing, thinking of his unsuspecting father and mother, silent by the unlit hearth – and how mudbrick walls could part like lips. Of trembling hands, fresh air, and dust upon his cheeks. Why would anyone choose death? Or mock someone spared?

"Nice," remarked Li Fan of his strokes across the paper – avoiding further word of grisly Beijing and its hasty summoning of Party officials.

Snail blushed.

He felt enraged by anything that moved.

Save the lines of Li Fan teacher – steadying him.

"Try these," she would say.

Chuang-tzu's 'Parable of Prince Hui's Cook' (of Tuesday and Friday mornings)

"Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chkk of the chopper was in perfect harmony – rhythmical like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chord of the Ching Shou. 'Well done!' cried the Prince. 'Yours is skill indeed.'"

In the lamplight, Li Fan trotted out series of 'bands dragged through the mud chopper' – which brightened Snail's eyes; so eager for a precise beginning, and a careful tailing off.

With close-touching dots, Li Fan soldiered across the plain.

"Rat footprints, Li lao shi?"

She shook her head.

"Mi Fei dots," Li Fan told him. "Like broken ink."

"A dot or a line?"

Wang Jing gazed at the watercourse magic.

"Neither."

"You're teasing me Li teacher."

"They help build 'dragon veins,'" she explained. "The invisible part, like breath."

Wang Jing frowned.

"It gives a painting life, Snail."

"I preferred 'cow hair'" he said, grabbing the brush.

"You're past that."

Lifting it back.

To and fro they struggled.

"Shanghai made you like this?" he gasped.

"To behave so rudely to a man?"

"Yes."

"You're not a man," she whispered.

He dashed his hand against the paper.

"Living in the French concession made you smart?"

"I'm you're elder," she replied. "You ask too many questions."

Li Fan looked about – at Uncle Jia's chipped window-frame.

"Settle down, Wang Jing."

He snatched the brush.

"Let go, you freak," she ordered. You bing. Yanking it back.

He tickled her ribs – hill-valley-hill – until she squealed. Well...squeaked. Clouds around her arms and wrists. White, pink.

In Snail's shadow across the table.

"Eh, ye!"

Kissing her lips.

Bird on a high branch – nest below.

Chapter One: 'Remonstration in the Peach Garden'

"The tower commanded a panoramic view which reached to the horizon; the whole of the capital city and its inhabitants came under the gaze of the viewer from its height. Duke Ling was transported with joy to receive this unexpected gift from Tu'an Gu, and straightway concluded that his chief bodyguard was the most devoted, loyal and capable of all his subjects."

II

"In The First Year Of Radiant Harmony Hens Were Transformed Into Roosters"
                     Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong

"Look out, Wang Jing!"

It near killed him; the umber crane-bird of steel and cables tumbling from such height. Its wing clipping his yellow helmet, shoulder; slamming into crawler tracks at Gong San Plaza.

Pain, sudden and intense, like a nudge become a stabbing, claw. Cutting down the fifty-eight year old man – in seconds.

He sought an exit. An opening.

Walk, stride, he told himself.

"It needs the hospital," several co-workers agreed, running past a muddied forklift; two Harbin men pressing rags into the base of Jing's neck. His head undone.

Only walking will matter, Wang Jing thought. I must march.

"Let's get the foreman's van."

"Jing, Wang Jing?"

At this instant, a mother would recall her child; a husband, his wife. Wang Jing – blood across his throat – remembered wire.

A young woman's torn flesh.

"I know Beijing hospital," he told his Shenzhen outrigger boss. Or believed he did. "I can walk to the hospital." Confidently. As Li Fan strode into his uncle's village for six weeks – into the Liu Hebei schoolroom, all those years ago.

The work gang restrained him. It felt like that. Wang Jing on his feet, pushing men aside. It felt like that too.

"There are emergency rooms nearer," the company supervisor, an Urumqi migrant, told him.

"Bollocks," replied Wan Jing. Did he say that?

He knew Beijing Hospital.

That was it.

I can tread in reverse, he consoled himself. To ease the spine – strengthen my heart. I will speak in Li Fan's tongue. Talk her talk. Like tunes in a parade: Zhao's Orphan. Recite lines. I will smoke.

Protesting, the crew released him.

Wang Jing shrugged the bloody cloths. Tight.

Felt nothing.

Like a cat – from a tall tree – that regained its nerve, or filled its belly, he crept backwards, inch by inch, finding ground. His compass, fissures in a tea egg; momentum, slithering down – like skin without joint or bone.

"He'll never make it." Said the faces of Gong San Plaza.

As Wang Jing – Snail – shuffled from the site.

Chapter One: 'Remonstration in the Peach Garden'

"Zhao Dun kowtowed before the duke's carriage. 'Your unworthy servant,' he said. 'Ventures to have something to inform you of, Your Majesty. I hope you will have the magnanimity to indulge me. I have heard that a virtuous ruler uses music to gladden the hearts of the people, while a ruler who lacks virtue uses music only to gladden his own heart. From ancient times, it has been the practice of rulers to take their pleasure either within the palace with the courtesans and servants or abroad hunting and sightseeing. Never has it been heard that an upright ruler kills people for sport. Such atrocities as setting savage mastiffs on, or shooting, harmless passersby, and dismembering a cook for some trifling misdemeanour are unheard of even for unrighteous rulers. But Your Majesty has been guilty of all these things! If you spill blood so promiscuously, the common people will rebel and the other feudal lords will invade our state, and then the disasters attendant upon the fall of the tyrants Jie of Xia Dynasty and Zhou of the Shang Dynasty will befall Jin! It is because your humble servant cannot bear to sit by and watch the ruin of our country that I dare to risk death by speaking so bluntly. I beseech Your Majesty to turn your carriage around, return to the court and mend your ways by devoting yourself to affairs of state. No more frittering away day after day in petty pleasure-seeking, and no more taking of innocent lives! Only then will Jin be pulled back from the brink of disaster, and Your Majesty follow in the footsteps of the sage kings Yao and Shun.' Having said this, he kept kneeling in front of the duke's carriage."

(RED GUARDS SING IN UNISON):