“Take it easy, Uncle. Listen carefully. The new mayor of Dalan isn’t just anybody, it’s none other than your very own mentor, Ji Qiongzhi, and the first person she inquired about as mayor was you. Just think, Uncle, after all these years, you’re still in her thoughts. Emotions don’t get any deeper than that.”
“So I go see her and say, mentor Ji, I'm Shangguan Jintong, and Fd like you to lend my niece several million yuan for her bird sanctuary, is that it?” Jintong said.
Lianlian laughed hard. Gently pounding Jintong on the shoulder, she said, “Silly Uncle, my silly Uncle, you sure have earned your reputation as an innocent man. I’ll teach you how to do it.”
Over the next couple of weeks, Lianlian put Jintong through the sort of day-and-night training that Parrot used on his birds, instructing him on what a powerful woman likes to hear. On the day before Ji Qiongzhi’s birthday Lianlian conducted a dress rehearsal in her bedroom. Dressed in a sheer white nightgown, she played the part of Mayor Ji, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of fine wine in the other, a love potion on the pillow, and embroidered slippers on her feet. Jintong, wearing a tailored suit and French cologne, was holding an array of peacock feathers in one arm and a trained parrot in the other as he gently pushed open the leather-trimmed door -
– The moment he stepped into the room, Ji Qiongzhi’s prestige and manner froze him in his tracks. Unlike Lianlian, she wasn’t dressed in a revealing nightgown. Instead, she was wearing an old army uniform, buttoned all the way up to the neck. And she wasn’t smoking a cigarette or holding a glass of wine. Needless to say, there was no love potion on the pillow. In fact, she didn’t receive him in her bedroom. She was smoking a Stalin-era pipe filled with reeking coarse tobacco, and was guzzling tea from an oversized mug with chipped porcelain and the words “Flood Dragon River Farm” stamped on one side. Seated in a beat-up rattan chair, she had her feet, encased in smelly nylon socks, on the desk in front of her. She was reading a mimeographed document when he entered. She tossed it aside when she saw him. “Bastard! Lousy bedbug!” Jintong’s legs nearly buckled, and he all but threw himself to his knees in front of her. Taking her feet off the desk, she slipped into her shoes, caving in the backs, and said, “Come here, Shangguan Jintong. Don’t be frightened, that wasn’t meant for you.”
In line with Lianlian’s instructions, Jintong should have bowed deeply at that moment, and then, with tears in his eyes, gazed at her soft bosom, but for only about ten seconds. Longer than that would give the impression of unwelcome intentions; less than that implied disrespect. Then he was to say, “My dear teacher, Ji Qiongzhi, do you still remember that useless student you once had?”
But she’d called him by name before he could open his mouth and looked him over from head to toe, the same liveliness in her eyes as before. He felt prickly all over, and wished he could drop what he was carrying and get away as fast as his feet would carry him. She sniffed the air. “How much cologne did Geng Lianlian spray on you?” she asked mockingly.
She got up and pushed open a window to let in the cool night air. Off in the distance, arc welders raised sparks on steel girders high above the ground, like holiday fireworks. “Have a seat,” she said. “I have nothing to offer you, except a glass of water.” She picked up a mug with a missing handle from the tea cart, studied the gunk at the bottom, and said, “Maybe not. It’s filthy, and I’m too lazy to go wash it out. I’m getting old. Time is unforgiving. After running around all day, my legs have swelled up like leavened bread.”
“When she brings up her age and complains about getting old, Uncle, you mustn’t agree with her. Even if her face looks like a dried-up gourd, what you have to say is” – now he parroted the exact words Geng Lianlian had coached him to say: “Teacher, except that you’ve filled out a little, you look just the same as when you were teaching us songs all those years ago. You look like a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, certainly no more than thirty!”
With a sneer, Ji said, “Geng Lianlian told you to say that, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” He blushed.
“Jintong, you can’t sing a song well just by memorizing the lyrics. I assure you that that sort of ass-kissing is wasted on me. Under thirty, indeed! That’s crap! I don’t have to be told that I’m getting old. My hair’s turning gray, my eyesight’s getting worse, my teeth are threatening to fall out, and my skin sags. There’s more, but I’d rather not talk about it. People out there praise me to the sky to my face, but curse me behind my back, silently if not out loud. That old deadbeat! The old witch! Since you owned up to it, I’ll overlook it today. I could just as easily have thrown you out. But have a seat. Don’t just stand there.”
Jintong handed her the array of peacock feathers. “Teacher Ji, Geng Lianlian asked me to give you these and told me to say, ‘Teacher, these fifty-five peacock feathers are a birthday gift that mirrors your own beauty.’” “More crap!” Ji said. “A peacock is beautiful. But a peahen is uglier than a roosting chicken. Take those feathers back to her. And what’s that, a talking parrot?” She pointed at the cage he was holding. “Uncover it and let me have a look.” Jintong removed the red silk cover and tapped the cage. The sleepy parrot inside ruffled its wings and said angrily, “How are you, how are you, Teacher Ji?” Ji Qiongzhi smacked the cage, throwing such a scare into the bird that it hopped up and down, its pretty feathers banging loudly against the cage. With a sigh, Ji said, “How am I? No damned good, that’s how.”
She refilled her pipe and sucked on it like a toothless old man. “Birdman Han planted a dragon seed,” she said, “but all he got for his efforts was a flea! Why did Geng Lianlian send you here?”
Jintong stammered, “She asked me to invite you to take a tour of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary.”
“That’s not the real reason,” Ji said as she picked up her mug of tea and took a drink. She banged it down on the table and said, “What she really wants is a bank loan.”
5
On one glorious spring day, Ji Qiongzhi elevated Jintong’s status in the eyes of others by leading a delegation of Dalan’s most influential officials and, by special invitation, the managers of the Construction Bank, the Bank of Industry and Commerce, the People’s Bank, and the Bank of Agriculture on an inspection tour of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary. Lu Shengli, a woman of majestic bearing, dressed very simply that day, but any discerning individual could see that this very simplicity was in itself a fashion statement, and that her “simple” clothes were all designer imports.
Forty or more expensive sedans pulled up at the gate of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary, where a pair of red palace lanterns three meters in diameter, filled with more than a hundred silver-throated skylarks, hung. Parrot Han had trained the birds to start singing as soon as they heard the sound of automobile engines. The lanterns vibrated with the skylarks’ songs, natural music of unsurpassed and unforgettable beauty. The arched roof of the gate was home to more than seventy nests of golden swifts, also trained by the magical hand of Parrot Han. A wooden plaque standing alongside the gate gave the English name of the swifts and a Chinese and English detailed description of the birds. Of special note was the fact that the nearly transparent nests were famous for their high nutritional value; a single nest sold for 3,000 yuan. For this occasion, Geng Lianlian had secretly installed several hundred audio speakers on nearby trees, which flooded the area with taped birdcalls. Just inside the gate, four wooden plaques proclaimed: Birds Call Flowers Sing, one gigantic word on each plaque. At first, the observers assumed that the word “sing” was a mistake, but they quickly realized that it was the perfect choice, since the flowers of the Eastern Bird Sanctuary did in fact appear to be singing as they swayed along with the nearly deafening birdcalls. A flock of well-trained wild chickens performed a welcoming dance in the middle of the courtyard, pairing off as couples one minute and spinning in the air the next, in perfect cadence with the music. These can’t be wild chickens! They’re nothing less than a flock of young gentlemen (for the sake of aesthetic continuity, Parrot Han had trained only male birds), a flock of young dandies forming a multicolored chorus line that dazzled the observers’ eyes. Geng Lianlian and Jintong led the visitors into the sanctuary’s performance hall, where Parrot Han, wearing ceremonial dress with embroidered red flowers, waited impressively, baton at the ready. Once the visitors were inside, a young female attendant threw a switch, flooding the hall with light, and twenty tiger-skin parrots on a horizontal perch directly opposite the entrance sang out in unison: Welcome welcome, hearty welcome, welcome welcome, hearty welcome! The visitors responded with ecstatic applause. Before the sound had died out, a flock of little siskins flew out, each carrying a folded pink slip in its beak, which they dropped into the hands of the visitors. Opening their slips, the visitors read the following: Greetings to your honorable personages! Your advice and guidance will be much appreciated. The recipients clicked their tongues in amazement. Next came two mynahs dressed in red jackets and little green hats; waddling up to a microphone at the center of the stage, one of them announced haughtily, Ladies and gentlemen, how do you do! The second mynah translated into fluent English.
