She is a woman; I am also a woman

Literary Review, Fall, 2004 by Wong bikwan

I had counted on Zhixing and me being together, for the rest of our lives.

Her name was Xu Zhixing. The first time I saw her, we were still first-year students. I was taking the course, "The Art of Thinking," a requirement for first-year students. That was where I met her.

She was the only student I knew who wore qipao and embroidered shoes to classes; though affected, she caught the eye. I remember her brilliantly red embroidered silk shoes. Her hair was cropped short; and with her head bent taking notes, she had the demeanor of a model student. In contrast to all this, she wore peach-red nail polish; girls who sported nail polish were usually loose. But the really loose girls are the ones who seduce in little, quiet ways. I didn't know I would be the kind to like these types of bad girls.

In truth, her name began to spread far and wide. The male students in my class told me she was called Xu Zhixing, majored in Chinese, graduated from Suzhe public school, and lived on Blue Pond Road. When we were attending classes on Plato, they grouped themselves in twos and threes in the dorm discussing Xu Zhixing. I clapped my hands laughing; inside I was beginning to feel contempt for my male schoolmates. Still they delighted in talking about her, calling her "Little Garden Balsam."

Zhixing started to disappear from classes. I ran into her at the train station. She was walking with her head down. Behind her there was a male student eagerly trailing her.

Next year we met again at an introduction to sociology class. The elderly lecturer, in order to avoid taking attendance, required us to sit in the same seats, so he only had to glance our way quickly to check who was there. I took the opportunity to sit next to Zhixing. I remember that day she was wearing a straight plain white and muted purple cotton qipao. Her arms were covered with very fine hairs. And she emitted a special scent--a mixture of face powder, perfume, milk and ink--thereafter I called it the "Garden Balsam" scent. Her hands were smooth, luminous and cold as ice. I wanted so much to touch her. But I didn't, as she wasn't aware of my existence.

She was absent from class again. Not until we came to the discussion of Marx's "Theory of Surplus Value" did she show up, asking to borrow my notes. I let her look at them and said, with a laugh, "Lending them to you is not going to be helpful. Only I can understand them." She arched her brow, "Well, not necessarily." Because I was lazy, I wrote my notes in short shorthand. My classmates called them "Morse code notes," and no one ever borrowed them. But I saw her fly over the paper with her pen, actually transcribing my notes with complete accuracy--I guess it took real ability to afford missing classes for over a month. Liking bright and clever people, I found myself attracted to Zhixing.

I said to her, "I'll buy you coffee." She said, "Fine." This conversation resembled a telegram.

We sat in the slanting sunlight for a while without talking, I looked closely at her. She also examined me, and said, "I have seen you, Lan Ye Xixi. You played the Japanese flute one time at night, alone in the classroom. I heard you." She was wearing a bunch of silver bracelets, rattling, glittering, and making jangling sounds. "I know you lost a pink Maidenform bra. I read it on the bulletin board at the meeting room in our dorm. That was you, wasn't it?" She laughed, the whole dorm knew about it. Even the boys' dorm heard about it. "You lost a pink 32B Maidenform bra, that was really stupid!" I said, "Wrong, it was a 32A. I'm thin." I watched the rise and fall of her bosom. I laughed, "I bet you are at least 34B. After you are married, you may become a 38!" Zhixing placed her hand lightly on her chest. "Aiya, that's what I am afraid of!" Our verbal understanding began with a Maidenform bra.

She subsequently attended every class. We talked. This elderly lecturer was such a pansy, with his flesh-colored nylon socks. I asked her where she bought her qipao. She said that it was a trade secret. I asked her to see a film on campus. They were showing Liu Chang Han's The Flames of Passion Consuming the Zither. There we were consumed with laughter. I dragged her to Eisenstein's October (Potemkin). We fell asleep and didn't wake until everyone had emptied the place out. We went to have a midnight snack. Zhixing occasionally wore jeans, like when we ate sauteed clams. Nonetheless, she always insisted on wearing her embroidered shoes.

Second semester of our third year, her roommate left, but she did not notify her dorm supervisor. I then moved in with Zhixing. In fact, this was the real beginning of Zhixing and me.

To be honest, I found Zhixing very alluring; she had a certain amount of intelligence and an easygoing temperament. But I really didn't have a complete understanding of her character. Perhaps this is where we had a love most like that between a man and a woman. From the beginning our mutual attraction had been based on what we advertised as our selling points--even though I was not a beauty, and I didn't have Zhixing's allure, I still understood very well how to market myself in a low-key manner. I thought Zhixing would fall for someone like me. I practiced a very subtle form of seductive posturing. And her qipao and embroidered shoes could also be considered the same.