Free Beijing Coma by Ma Jian Page A

and rice.
    At dusk, the few female students would emerge clean and dry from their dorms, having taken showers and combed their black hair. They wouldn’t play basketball, rush off to the library, or read books under the lamplight like the boys. Instead, they would slowly stroll back and forth along the open passageway, walking in pairs, holding a handkerchief or a fan in their hands. The sight of them strolling along was as refreshing as a gust of cool air.
    I felt like a fish swimming in water. I gradually grew accustomed to living in the sea of perspiration. Like any other animal, I had to adapt to my new environment. My pores enlarged so as to release more moisture. My feet, which had previously always been clean and dry, were now constantly drenched in fetid sweat.
    The science block stood in a windless spot at the foot of a steep hill. In the afternoon, the windows and whitewashed walls became scorched by the sun. We grew drowsy as the electric fan on the ceiling circulated the hot air through the room. I spent my first term sweltering in that southern furnace, studying Darwin’s theory of evolution.
    I started reading The Book of Mountains and Seas again. As a child, I’d loved this survey of ancient China for its magical descriptions of gods and monsters. But now I began to read it for the interesting scientific data it provided. Over two thousand years ago, the anonymous author of the book set out to explore China’s landscapes and myths. He travelled to the four cardinal points of the empire, and to the wildernesses beyond, and reported back on what he saw. Although modern scholars believe the book to be a work of the imagination, I was convinced that it was based on real experience. I decided that, after I graduated, I would follow in the footsteps of the unknown author, and compare the plants and animals I found to those described in his text. I wanted to identify the strange species he listed, and investigate their evolution. I suppose The Book of Mountains and Seas had become my favourite book.
    Only at university did it occur to me that I could perhaps make a name for myself as a scientist, and no longer be brushed aside as merely the son of a dead rightist. As it turned out, my father’s persecution and my arrest at fifteen helped raise my status among my classmates, who were also impressed that I’d peddled pornographic magazines on the black market. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of self-worth.
    We were a generation with empty minds. We thirsted for knowledge. Now that China had opened its doors to the West, we devoured every scrap of information that blew in. China had emerged from the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, and we were eager to build our country up again. We were fired by a sense of mission.
    In my first term at university, the Hemingway craze was soon superseded by a craze for Van Gogh, which was fanned by the recent Chinese publication of his fictionalised biography, Lust for Life . Van Gogh’s madness and creative individuality taught us our first great lesson in life, which is: believe in yourself. Everyone copied out quotations from the book and passed them around.
    During a dissection class at the start of the second term, I met a medical student from Hong Kong called A-Mei.
    Her face was smooth and almost expressionless, although sometimes she looked as though she were secretly smiling to herself. Her eyes were as clear as glass and as calm as water in a well. She was very different from Lulu.
    Her mother was a professional folk singer, and when I told her that my mother was a singer too, we struck up a friendship. She was born in Zhongshan County in Guangdong Province. Her family had emigrated to Hong Kong when she was one.
    I bumped into her one day in the library. She was wearing a white dress, and her clean black hair was coiled into a neat bun. She knew that if we wanted to read a newly published book, we had to submit a reservation card, then wait for