The Boat Rocker Read online

  Katie said I should take the nomination seriously because it could lead to other things. As in academia, where a grant in hand could qualify you for more funding, Katie believed that my candidacy might open greater avenues in my career.

  When I went to the Village to spend Sunday with her, she pulled two books from the bookcase I had just built her and handed them to me with a twinkle in her eye. “You should read these,” she said. “They will help you understand your new role.”

  One of the books was a collection of essays by Noam Chomsky and the other a slim volume of lectures titled Representations of the Intellectual, by Edward Said. I knew the authors’ names but hadn’t read either of them. I flipped through one of the books and saw some marginalia in Katie’s neat, loopy hand.

  “Are they good?” I asked.

  “They’re great.”

  “Then I’ll read them from cover to cover.”

  Usually I wouldn’t finish a book if I found it tedious. I also had the habit of reading some books backward, one chapter at a time, as though first to find out how they ended, and to ascertain whether they’d be worth my effort. But I trusted Katie’s opinion. I valued the way our relationship put me in contact with academia, a world of ideas, books, arts, and intellectual pursuits, which seemed extraordinary to me and beyond my reach. While it might be rife with politics, controversy, and strife, one could still exist more freely there.

  THIRTEEN

  By mid-October I had read the Said and the Chomsky. I liked their views and arguments but was somewhat underwhelmed by their writing. The authors’ sense of the essay form seemed rather weak—most of the pieces were not carefully written stylistically, and some lacked shape and structure. In Said’s case, this defect might be due to the fact that his essays had originally been a series of lectures delivered on the BBC, their lengths limited by the half-hour segment on the air. But both authors’ thoughts and insights were rooted in their independent spirits and a constant engagement with the world. Their discussions of current issues often quickened and intensified their prose. Both were serious scholars, distinguished in their fields. Yet I doubted if either of them would have rejected an opportunity that could place them at the center of political power, say, overseeing a major ministry in the U.S. government. One can always march into the political arena under the banner of “get involved” and “make a difference.” So many intellectuals passionately criticize power, typically when they are not political insiders, but once they become part of the structure, they talk and act differently, and even their personalities undergo a metamorphosis. Few have the integrity to stay above the temptation of power.

  I know a number of Chinese in North America who became dissidents mainly because they had failed to land suitable positions in the Communist Party. Some of them still dream of becoming president of a major Chinese university, whose official rank is equal to a vice minister’s. A few sick, old exiles, whenever I ran into them in New Jersey or Connecticut, griped that they didn’t have free health care like the officials back home—they believed that China ought to have picked up their medical bills here. That was out of the question, so they felt disgusted with the United States, the richest country in the world, which forced its people to pay for their own medical insurance. One of them went so far as to claim that the United States had violated human rights, because the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that everyone has the right to medical care.

  Whenever I think of those men, my heart is full of pity and contempt. Many of them are like dazed travelers, jettisoned by the ship of politics but still fantasizing that they are on board with their former peers. They cannot put down roots anyplace, nor can they imagine life without a country or affiliation. They exist mainly in the past and in the clouds of memory. Their exile hasn’t changed their psychology—they are still political animals.

  I’m not positive that I could resist the temptation of a big offer from China. A consequential job usually comes with a high rank that guarantees a comfortable, secure life. Just work hard for a decade or so, make sure to follow the right superiors, and avoid stepping on any toes, and the Party will take care of you for the rest of your life. I have a distant uncle, a retired major general, a large barrel of a rustic man, who still receives his full salary. (In fact, he gets thirteen months’ pay a year, because he joined the revolution during the Sino-Japanese War.) He also enjoys free milk and vegetables every day, complimentary theater and movie tickets, forty gallons of gasoline a month (his rank entitles him to use a chauffeur-driven Audi with tinted windows), a monthly periodicals stipend comparable to a menial worker’s earnings, an allowance for a maid. His confidence in the Party remains unshakable. On my last visit to him, three years before, he had raved about the superiority of China’s unique path, which combined one-party rule with a free-market economy. He even believed that China was becoming a model for other developing countries, an alternative to the Western democracy, which could easily fragment a sovereign nation. In his view, a third-world country simply could not afford democracy, which was like a strong medicine that not everyone could stomach. Look what had happened in Russia! Democracy would mean the end of the Party and the disintegration of the country. So we had to strive to blaze “the Chinese way.” He was so convinced of this “Chinese path” that he’d have kicked me out of his home had I raised a word of objection.

  That visit made me see how easily perks could trump principles. The Party is like the superintendent of a large warehouse, to which the common citizens are made to contribute parts of their incomes. Yet the superintendent alone has the right to decide who can have what from the warehouse. The privileged and the powerful enjoy the lion’s share, while the rest of the citizens must shut up about the unfair distribution, because their role is simply to meet their obligations to the national treasury. All the cutthroat struggles and the lofty rhetoric about the necessity for authoritarian socialism (really a more brutal form of capitalism) boil down to this: everyone wants to secure the right to a bigger personal share from the warehouse. All the ranks and appointments are essentially certificates of different sizes of shares. Sometimes I cannot suppress a vision of the warehouse in flames. What will happen if it burns down or collapses or changes hands? This is the root of fear shared by all those who receive generous provisions from this warehouse, so they fight tooth and nail to maintain one-party rule and perpetuate the lie that the superintendent works diligently for all citizens.

  If only I could sell my soul without a qualm! If only I could be happy with nothing more than fine food and wine. If only I were still an obedient child or a credulous fool. If only I specialized in official stratagems, smoother and more adaptable. If only I were a fearless statesman with nerves of steel, snugly wearing a flak vest of patriotism.

  The truth is that when I was going through my naturalization ceremony, I knew I was relinquishing any chance of rising through China’s officialdom to become a big man above tens of thousands of people and to glorify my ancestors. To be a free man also means to come to terms with my commonality, earning my bowl of rice with my own labor, taking responsibility for myself, body and soul, and accepting loss, uncertainty, solitude, grief as the human condition, as opposed to the slave’s security and the caged contentment of a well-fed bird.

  Katie also gave me a copy of The Foucault Reader, of which I read parts and then stopped. Though impressed by the philosopher’s intelligence and incisive eloquence, I was puzzled by his writings. Perhaps I wasn’t smart enough to perceive his intentions. Try as I might, I could find no enjoyment in his cynicism and his detachment from the world we live in.

  —

  PEOPLE OF CHINESE BACKGROUND like me have little sense of identity. In fact, the word identity is alien to us, and I still don’t know precisely how to translate it into Chinese. I can approximate it by stringing together several terms, each covering a part of the English word, like sameness and distinctiveness and status, but there’s no real equivalent. Its absence fr
om our vocabulary might indicate a deficiency in our awareness of self, just as we don’t have the word bacon because there’s no such product in Chinese cuisine. (Another word Chinese doesn’t have is solitude—as a result, we tend to confuse solitude with loneliness, an accursed condition often believed to be a Western malaise: “You’ll end up a loner!” people will say. Or, “I love that great novel by García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Loneliness.”) Growing up, we were all taught that we make our lives meaningful through serving the people and the country, that a good person must be selfless and think only of the larger group. In college I was assigned to major in journalism, and after graduation I worked at a state-owned newspaper. My role as a reporter was a given—I accepted it without question and even with gratitude. Most of my generation would have killed for a job like that. I tried to do good work and write well to carry out what my profession demanded of me. I made no real impact, though, since I had no say in what got printed. Like others, I had no will or voice of my own. I was more like a bolt or nut in a titanic machine.

  My nomination as a public intellectual triggered an implosion in me, and I fell to thinking about my identity. A vista of possibilities suddenly opened in my mind’s eye, and for the first time in my life I longed to become someone, to create an identity for myself to fit this nomination. I knew that people had nominated me not because I was learned and experienced, but because they wanted an honest voice that could articulate their feelings and opinions in the public discourse. A little guy like me must by chance have risen to the expectations of a frustrated, oppressed, silent multitude. I felt uncomfortable about becoming their spokesman, but I did want to be a voice others would listen to. Ideally I wanted to be independent of any group or cause and just speak from my heart, guided by my own sense of justice and decency. But how could I do that?

  For days I’d been pondering these questions as I went about my life. Meanwhile, rumors about me began to circulate online, on social media, and in comment threads on The North American Tribune, as the inevitable backlash took hold. One claimed that I was a misogynist and that I’d once told a TV anchorman that Chinese women were materialistic and fetishized white men. Never had I appeared on TV or spoken to an anchorman. Another person insisted that I was a disciple of Ayn Rand, “the pseudophilosopher of the so-called objectivism,” whose books I had never even read; all I knew about her was that she was an Americanized Russian émigré. A third person, a rumormonger through and through, asserted that I had always advocated the secession of Taiwan and Tibet from China. “As a traitor of our nation, Feng Danlin should be elected a public enemy, not a public intellectual,” the person declared. “If he sets foot in China again, the government should slam him into jail or a madhouse.” “Yes,” another chimed in, “they’d best vaporize him like a fly.” One woman even argued, “If I have the hots for a white guy or a black guy, it’s my personal preference. Nobody has the right to interfere with my love life.” It was my first taste of fame, which made me see that a public figure must endure public abuse and pressure, and understand why celebrities are often so passionate about their privacy—every blemish in their lives or personalities is magnified by the public while most of their virtues are ignored. Kaiming once told me that the biggest bore in the world is a proper celebrity, as if such a person by definition must have some character problem.

  True, I had attended several meetings organized by the Tibetans and the Taiwanese living in New York, and on occasion I had stood up to speak my mind, but never had I said I supported any group that wanted to secede from China. I just told the audience, some of whom were mindlessly, rabidly patriotic, that we were not entitled to interfere with others’ choices. If the Tibetans or the Taiwanese decided on independence, it was their choice, and we Chinese or Americans had better shut up about the ways others wanted to live. I also questioned the principle of so-called national unification, which is based on the assumption that the larger a country is, the more its citizens can benefit from it. “But what if a bigger country only makes people’s life more miserable?” I asked. “Then how can such unification be justified? Why can’t a country break up if smaller countries can improve people’s lives? A large, multiethnic country’s existence must be justified to its citizens, or else it will fall apart sooner or later. Without such justification, a bigger country can guarantee nothing but a larger national treasury, from which corrupt officials can steal more and the privileged can consume more.” The Tibetans and the Taiwanese applauded my remarks and regarded me as their sympathizer. (Once a squat man stood up in the audience and declared in a booming voice, “I completely agree with Mr. Feng Danlin. So many of China’s problems have in fact originated from the so-called national unification. The Chinese government always justifies its harsh one-child policy by insisting that the country can no longer sustain 1.3 billion people, so we have to control our population strictly, allowing every family to have no more than one child. But what if China were broken into several smaller countries? Surely that would solve the population problem. Think about Japan and Vietnam and Korea—they are all densely populated, but nobody in the world complains that those countries have too many people.” Some angry attendees booed the man, but he weathered their scowls and deliberately remained on his feet for an extra few moments.) Of course, my liberal views tended to offend my compatriots, especially those from mainland China. At best, they considered me impractical and hotheaded. But unlike some dissidents, who believe in the use of force to topple a dictatorship, I balk at resorting to violence, which I dread might perpetuate bloodshed and destruction.

  Many people responded to the rumors about me and expressed misgivings over my nomination as a top public intellectual. Some said I could be too radical or too controversial, considering my attitude toward China and women. Some believed I thought and acted like an American—too individualistic, self-centered, without any sense of ancestral memory. One even remarked, “Honestly, Feng Danlin often gets under my skin. His writing lacks sunlight. Why can’t he write about some upbeat aspects of life? Why does an author have to upset and outrage people without end? He should relax a little and have a sense of humor.”

  “Sunlight on your ass, and I humor nobody but your mother,” I snorted to myself.

  I must admit that those people’s blind acceptance of the rumors disturbed and hurt me more than the fabrications themselves, and made me feel as though I were facing a crazed rabble.

  Now who can the rumormongers be? I wondered. My top suspect was Niya, because so much of the discussion about my candidacy had transpired on the site of The North American Tribune, which she managed. I took a deep breath and telephoned her, but she was not in her office, so I left a message.

  That evening she called back. As soon as I heard her voice, I bristled and blurted out, “Why did you lie about me? When and where did I ever advocate the fragmentation of China? When and where did I say that Chinese women were masochistic, that they fetishized foreign men, turned moony-eyed in their presence, and enjoyed being sex slaves? When and where did I ever mock Chinese women as ‘tofu burgers’? My mother and my sister are Chinese women, after all.”

  “Stop it, Danlin,” Niya said. “I shouldn’t have rushed into this mess in the first place. I didn’t expect it would turn so ugly, so political.”

  “You haven’t answered my questions.”

  “I didn’t say anything like that about you. I helped Haili in the beginning only because I believed you were determined to wreck her marriage. You’re still doing it, aren’t you?”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “To tell the truth, her marriage might be falling apart—she just moved out.”

  I paused. “She and Larry have separated?”

  “I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but that’s what it looks like. Now you can celebrate.”

  “No, I’m not happy to hear that. Can you stop spreading rumors about me?”

  “I told you—I’m not involved anymore. I don’t want to get mi
xed up in politics. It’s messy and ugly. You know I hate many of the Chinese government’s policies. The moment I saw Haili and her partners using national politics to attack you, I called it quits. There are lines I’ll never cross.”

  “So you’re no longer against me?”

  “I’m neutral from now on.”

  “How can I believe you?”

  “All right, let me tell you this: you won’t be able to stop the novel from becoming a best seller. The publisher has too much official support. His parents have infinite pull in Beijing. If I were you, I’d give up and let Haili go. What you’ve been doing won’t heal your old wounds.”

  “All right, I hear you. Can you assure me that you won’t meddle with this case anymore?”

  “You have my word.”

  That pleased me. Taking heart, I offered to treat her to coffee or lunch that coming weekend. She tittered and said, “Don’t bribe me. I won’t do anything against Haili either—she’s still my friend. But I wouldn’t mind having a cup of coffee with you on Saturday morning.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. I wanted to spend some time with her to find out more about my ex-wife’s plans. Ideally, to work out a countermove.

  Hanging up, I felt relieved. If Niya was no longer involved, I could focus on Haili and the two men behind her. I began drafting the next day’s column—an article about the three degenerates, and how they’d been spreading lies about me with the intention of intimidating me into silence.

  FOURTEEN

  Haili published an article in The North American Tribune under the pen name Aurora Borealis. She called me “a megalomaniac and psychopath who is too big for his britches—a poseur whose personality defines malice.” She added that I couldn’t go a day without defaming others, that I had enough venom in me to poison a whole town, and that the only thing I knew how to do was tear down people who did better than I did. “It’s understandable,” Haili wrote. “We all relish seeing others fall, because someone else’s spectacular failure can be a solace for our own mediocrity and ineptitude.” (She could never kick her addiction to fancy words.) “He is a snitch whose long nose sticks out a mile ahead of his face. He is the kind of man who will do anything for five minutes of fame. If he wants to be famous for longer, he should throw his sorry self under a train after finishing a book. I am sure that some publisher out of pity would print it and use his death to promote it.”