Free The Fat Years by Koonchung Chan

have to change the sentence. But in this way there would be fewer death sentences, and everybody would be afraid of criticism from higher up. Members of my work unit phoned me and tried to dissuade me from acting the way I was, but I just ignored them.
    Later on, I came to know that even if I had not had an “accident,” my work unit was already planning to transfer me. One night in the county seat, an army vehicle ran into me. This was a common occurrence. In rural areas, army vehicles sped around like crazy and often ran into people. If civilians were killed or injured, they just had to accept their fate. But even though it was a common occurrence, usually if an army vehicle ran into a member of the Public Security authorities, there would be endless wranglings back and forth between these and the military. In my case, however, the army took me straight to Number 301 Hospital, and afterward my work unit didn’t inquire further into the incident.
    After leaving the hospital, I handed in my resignation and became a person without a work unit. And my mother didn’t have a bad thing to say about it.
    I became a privately self-employed person by opening a small restaurant with my mother. We mostly served her Guizhou-style goose. In the 1980s, Beijing was a fascinating place, the heart of an era full of promise. Our first regular customers were natives of Guizhou, especially scholars and writers who had moved to Beijing. They brought other Beijing writers, artists, and scientists and foreigners to eat and to talk. My mother loved to entertain guests and I loved the excitement. Everybody called me Little Xi. We expanded our restaurant and renamed it The Five Flavors. In the autumn of 1988, I met Shi Ping and fell in love.
    He was a poet. There is nothing at all poetic about me, but we both cherished genuine sentiment. Shi Ping said that someday he would certainly receive the Nobel Prize for literature, and I said I would certainly accompany him to Sweden to attend the award ceremony. That was the happiest time in my entire life.
    We didn’t really have too much time alone together, though, because Shi Ping liked to spend time with his poet and artist mates. There were quite a few women around him, but, surprisingly, I didn’t mind.
    Every night The Five Flavors was full of our intellectual and artistic friends debating issues, drafting and signing manifestos, competing jealously for each other’s affections, getting drunk and throwing up. The police visited us frequently, but my mother was very adept at getting rid of them.
    In the spring of 1989 Shi Ping and a group of his friends went to Lake Baiyangdian and stayed a few days—they had been “sent down” there during the Cultural Revolution. I came back to Beijing early. I had the feeling Shi Ping was seeing one of the other women, so I found an excuse to leave. I guess I didn’t want a direct confrontation. That night the authorities closed our restaurant down. They said a group of academics had issued some sort of political statement there a few days earlier, with foreigners present.
    I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I actually went to see Ban Cuntou. He was in my class at university. He grew up in this big courtyard and could be considered a member of China’s Red aristocracy. His whole demeanor implied that this world had been created through his force of arms and therefore it all belonged to him. There were many people like him living in Beijing’s big, old-fashioned courtyards. I’d heard that he was the highest-ranking official among my former classmates, so I went over to ask his advice. When we were in school, he often hinted that I ought to become his girlfriend. He thought that every woman should like him, but I couldn’t stomach his attitude. This time I was really stupid to think that I could take advantage of my “old flame” status to see if he could save my restaurant.
    I was in a rotten mood in the first place, and I was