Summer, 1965. A white-hot, endless afternoon. Narrow alleyways flanked by ramshackle sheds; cicadas screech nonstop, near, far, everywhere. We stir awake from our naps, sweat imprinting our contours on bamboo sleeping mats. We fan ourselves with palm leaf fans, gulp water still cool from the clay jug as tall as our shoulders. Bored, we test doorknobs, hoping to escape and play. But of course, every door is locked from outside, as our parents still toil in factories, making Type 56’s and mortars. We understand. Chairman Mao has warned us to stay vigilant—Brezhnev, Johnson, and Chiang Kai-shek are all vulturing for their next chance.
Nearby, tires screech on asphalt; men’s voices cut through the thick air. We peer down to see two shirtless men unloading a bed frame from a truck, another in a tank top piling storage trunks and cookware onto a pushcart. Then we see her, in a moon-white cheongsam fitting so snugly to her curves, the proud twin mounds mirroring the soft knolls of her rump.
Awestruck, our eyes widen, our throats go dry. Our gaze circles her, trembling and ravenous, scampering around her porcelain thighs flashing through high slits, reeling tight along the curve of her willow waist. You see, we’ve never seen a figure like hers; our mothers wear frumpy uniforms even at home, our aunts always crop their hair before it reaches their ears.
Now she leads the porters down the alley, her heels clicking nonchalantly on slate. Now she passes right outside our windows, jasmine perfume teasing our nostrils. Our hearts pound louder, our blood boils faster. The four of them continue down the alley until they reach the far end, almost on the bank of the big river. The men unload the bed and then the dresser, all the trunks, woks, and pots piling on the curb. Out of nowhere, she conjures a watermelon, slices it, and distributes the moon-shaped pieces like a gracious hostess.
Our new neighbor, then. We exchange glances and whistle our excitement. A ranked cadre’s wife, someone suggests. No, another counters, a cadre wouldn’t live in a shack like ours. A capitalist’s widow, perhaps, relocated here after donating their factory to the government. We chatter on, forgetting how hot the afternoon still is, forgetting how long we still have to wait until our parents return. We even forget the fun we’ll have once released to play on the pebbled beach, in warm breezes and beneath a sky full of mosquito-hunting bats.
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Summer, 1966. A white-hot, endless afternoon. Narrow, restless alleyways flanked by sheds festooned with slogans; rallying cries blare incessantly, near, far, everywhere. Naps are a thing of the past now; a revolution is in full swing around us. We watch our parents storm offices and drag out fat cadres; we follow our older siblings to libraries and burn all bourgeois poison masquerading as books. Our blood boils, our eyes gleam with a red tint.
We are returning from a struggle session when we see her again, back from the market, her basket heavy with vegetables and watermelon. Her tight-fitting, moon-white cheongsam still clings to her curves, her shell-shaped bun still piles high like an exclamation mark.
Why is she wearing white? one of us asks. Shouldn’t she be wearing red to celebrate our proletarian revolution?
Hear! Hear! we concur.
And those clothes? another demands. She must be a capitalist’s concubine.
Agree! Agree! we holler.
We form a circle, trapping her in the middle. Her eyes sweep across us, shuddering, pleading.
Little generals of the Cultural Revolution, her voice shakes as she offers the watermelon. It looks like you could use some refreshment!
How dare you bribe us? One of us grabs the watermelon, smashes it on the slate. We command you to cleanse your dirty bourgeois thoughts, starting with that junk you’re wearing!
Yes, yes, young generals, she cowers. I will change, I will change.
You think we’ll let you walk around in that any longer? The oldest among us doesn’t budge. Who are you mourning with that white color?! He scoops up handfuls of watermelon and hurls them at her waist. Splat, splat, splat!
We all lunge forward, watermelon dollops staining her finery. She writhes violently, limbs flailing. We seize her arms to fix her in place, our hands grasping at her cheongsam to smear more red. She struggles fervently, and the silk tears at the waist; another frantic shove, and she’s buck bare in the harsh sunlight, her purplish pink nipples searing our eyes like branding irons. She lets out a desperate cry like a wounded dog, her arms rushing to cross over her chest. We take a step back, dumbfounded by her nakedness and our actions.
Fuck, the oldest of us mutters, spitting in contempt. Hope you have learned your lesson bourgeois cow!
She hunches over, pulling what remains of the cheongsam around her, hands clutching the fabric to her collarbones. We part to let her pass, watching her shrunken figure tumble down the alley. The big river shimmers at the end, backlighting her as she hurries home; the layered city floats across the river, twinkling like a mirage in the liquid heat.
The next time we see her is a month later. The air is sultry after a heavy shower. We stand by the alley, watching as three porters load a truck with her bed frame and cookware. She stands by, hair cut short, all curves hidden underneath a loose blouse. Upon sighting us, she sidles around the truck and sinks into the passenger seat, sinking and sinking until she disappears.
We are silent. The truck rumbles to motion and shrinks in our vision, stirred slurry hitting its mudflaps.
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Summer, 1970. Then, in a blink, the shocking summer of Lin Biao’s demise, the golden summer of Xidan Wall. We sojourned in the countryside and then returned; we believed in communism, then capitalism, and finally nothingism. We married. We had children. We forgot our old dreams and began new ones.
And through all these summers, the big river always shimmers at the end of our alley; the layered city floats like a mirage across the river. Shimmering and floating also are the moon-white curves, the shades of watermelony red on the once-white silk.
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Summer, 1996. A sultry, endless evening. Narrow, grimy streets. Our first-ever karaoke night out, at the invitation of a Hong Kong real estate developer. We sit stiffly in a line, deep in the sofa, hesitant to touch the cups of water on the coffee table—would they cost a tenth of our salaries? Relax, relax, the Hongkonger chuckles in broken Mandarin. He shows us how to use the remote, coaches us in Cantonese. He belts out off-key lyrics as if no one is watching, so we clap, drink the water, and ask for watermelon juice. When our turn comes, we start with 80’s songs and then move on to recent hits—all about love, all from Hong Kong and Taiwan. As baijiu flows, business seeps between beats: our terms for him to rebuild our factory; ways to import machinery from Russia and export toys to Ukraine. Pleased, the developer calls in hostesses to sing with us—young women barely of age, all in moon-white cheongsams. They weave among us, perfumed and lithe, breasts grazing our shoulders in seemingly innocent brushes. Our eyes widen, throats go dry, but hands burrow deep in pockets. You see, even our first time this close to temptation, even buzzed, and even though our wives eschew makeup, we have come to know there are boundaries, watermelon is watermelon, and silk is silk.
We stumble out of the karaoke parlor past midnight, so drunk we have to lean on each other’s shoulders. One of us stops and throws up by the curbside. Another unzips his fly in the middle of the road and takes a long piss.
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Summer, 2016. A white-hot, long afternoon. A gated, gardened residential compound. Air-conditioners hum in the house, this room, that room, every room. I wake up from my nap and drift into the living room. Bored, I give my son a call, asking about my granddaughter’s reaction to her birthday present—a moon-white cheongsam I chose, cut from the finest silk.
She likes it, thank you, my son replies blandly, but Dad, can I call back later? Need to pick her up from a piano lesson.
Okay, okay, I nod and hang up.
I turn on the TV. Groups of brisk girls are dancing in unison on stage, all in tight, revealing clothes. Seeking something more to my interest, I switch to the news channel, but the anchor drones on and on about our Leader’s latest activities. Before long, I doze off again on the sofa, oblivious to the drool trickling from the corner of my mouth.
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Hantian Zhang’s writing has appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Diagram, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco, where he works as a data scientist by day.