24 City Page #4

in three days.

Every day

I am wandering

Every morning and night my heart is adrift

How I long for someone to be with me

To make my heart stop drifting

The day you come

Will you tell me tenderly

That you accept to be the one

I want to be sure that the person before me

Will be faithful to her promises

Sister Lin comes down from heaven

Like a wispy cloud

from behind the mountain

He who loves her seems

outwardly dissolute

But he is actually pure in heart

This young lady is graceful like

a flower gazing at itself in the wave

She moves delicately

like the wind in the willows

Her eyes give off a mysterious charm

Her voice and her smile

reflect her tender soul

This person seems to be from far away

Yet my heart thinks

it recognizes an old friend

Little Flower,

you brought nothing to eat this morning?

We went up Qingcheng Hill yesterday.

I'm tired, I don't feel like cooking.

So you'll go out to eat?

Does your brother like spicy food?

Yes, he does.

He's been everywhere

and tasted everything.

Before Liberation,

Shanghai had Sichuan restaurants.

My Grandpa used to say

the Jinjiang Hotel

served good Sichuan food.

He also said Sichuan food

was fashionable in Shanghai.

-You know why?

-No.

During the war against Japan,

Sichuan was at the back.

Many Shanghainese fled into Sichuan.

When they went home after the war,

they saw themselves as war heroes.

They ate spicy food in public

to show they'd been in Sichuan.

Shanghai has changed a lot.

I went back once in 1993.

There's a street where they serve lamb stew.

I never ate lamb when I was young.

It was always cooked with garlic.

Where are you two going to eat?

My brother went to Shanghai this morning.

His unit called him.

I'll be off, Little Flower.

I need to get changed.

Little Flower

Little Flower, do you get nervous?

Not usually, only when I'm in costume.

Sister Wang,

can you bring my bag upstairs?

I left my phoenix in it.

Beside the green lake

Under flowing willows

Along the flower-strewn path

The burial of flowers

(Dream of the Red Chamber)

Yue Opera

Out of nowhere

A flute's lament

Is heard in the breeze

For me it was in 1978.

I was assigned to 420

from the Shanghai Aviation Academy.

Around graduation time we heard

some of us would be sent to Chengdu.

Those who didn't want to go

used their connections to stay in Shanghai.

But I didn't.

That was when those who'd been sent

to the country began getting back.

My brother came back from Jiangxi,

my elder sister, from Heilongjiang

and my second sister, from Anhui.

So the family was reunited.

And the house was full of people.

With them three

and my kid brother in high school,

there were seven of us in all.

The house was only 20 meters,

how could seven of us live there?

We had to divide each room in half.

And we built a temporary attic.

We say "an elephant

in the stomach of a sparrow".

I slept in the attic with my sisters.

So I thought I should leave.

At that time,

there were far more men than women

in Factory 420.

Girls from Shanghai like me were very few.

On my first day at work,

I went to Canteen 2 for lunch.

It was terribly crowded.

I later found out the men

who ate in Canteens 1 and 3

had come to see the girls from Shanghai.

Especially the younger men,

they made comments about us.

Things like that went on

for quite some time.

Later some guy, I never knew who,

gave me the nickname

"Standard Component".

What did that mean?

At first, I had no idea what it meant.

Later I came to know

it meant "flower of the factory".

After that, people began calling me

"Little Flower".

There was a movie called "Little Flower",

with Joan Chen, Tang Guoqiang

and Liu Xiaoqing.

Our factory showed that movie

for a whole week.

Many people saw it several times.

They came out saying

I looked like Little Flower,

the heroine, played by Joan Chen.

At first, they used the name

behind my back. Then, to my face.

After a while, my real name

was known to very few people.

What is your real name?

Gu Minhua.

"Hua" as in Zhonghua, China.

I guess you had many admirers.

Back then,

people weren't as open as they are now.

And everyone was so busy,

overtime every day.

One time,

on the workshop notice board,

someone put up a photo.

There was no caption.

It showed a young guy,

good-looking, sporty type.

During break times,

we all gathered round to look at it.

Some of the girls began guessing

who he might be.

Some thought he was from the Youth

League and due to visit the factory.

Others thought he was our representative

to comfort the army in Vietnam.

Staring and speculating

went on day after day.

Then it went even further.

"Little Flower,

"This guy is

as handsome as Tang Guoqiang.

"You two would make a beautiful a couple."

My colleagues in the factory

were all matchmakers.

Two people who had nothing in common,

if they had matching names,

would make a good couple to us.

Some of them really did get married.

I was pretty annoyed at first.

I thought:
"How dare they

"try to match a living person with a photo?"

But later, very gradually,

my thinking began to change.

I imagined he really was coming

to our factory.

In fact I imagined him

turning up the very next day.

I was 20 years old.

I'd never been in love.

Some days later, there was

a big meeting in the factory.

The leaders asked us

if we'd seen the photo.

Did we know who the man was?

Everybody stayed silent.

The Party Secretary said

the man was a pilot our country

had trained for eight years,

which had cost more than 200,000 yuans.

Something went wrong with his plane.

Trying to save the plane,

he didn't parachute to safety.

He was just 24.

The Secretary went on:

"The accident happened

"because some components we'd produced

"had gone wrong."

He added:
"Amongst you

"there's someone who was responsible

for this tragedy."

We should reflect on our mistakes.

After that,

many people introduced boys to me.

I started going out with a boy.

He taught on the factory's

educational TV channel.

The son of high-ranking officials

who worked in the ministries.

Good family background.

But then something bad happened.

In neighboring workshop 34,

there was a guy

who was apparently in love with me.

He wrote love letters to himself in my name.

Hard to understand, isn't it?

He wrote love letters to himself

and signed my name at the end: Gu Minhua.

Then he showed off the letters

to his workmates.

Soon enough, everyone was talking

about our supposed love affair.

And everyone thought I'd taken the lead.

My boyfriend heard about this

and got quite angry.

I tried to explain to him,

but he wouldn't listen.

So I had no choice

but to break up with him.

After that, I decided to go back to Shanghai.

If I got married in Chengdu

that would be an obstacle.

The easiest way to move

was to make an exchange.

I had to find someone in Shanghai

who wanted to move to Chengdu.

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