Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 High Test: A Collection of Short Stories Wei Xiong Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES HIGH TEST: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES By WEI XIONG A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012 Wei Xiong defended this dissertation on October 29, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Elizabeth Stuckey-French Professor Directing Dissertation Feng Lan University Representative Robert Olen Butler Committee Member Daniel Vitkus Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To my mother and stepfather iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincere gratitude to Elizabeth Stuckey-French for all her perceptive counsel and steadfast encouragement, to Robert Olen Butler for his prescient advice, to Dan Vitkus for his inspiring commitment to the precision of expression, and to Feng Lan for his invaluable perspective. Thanks also to Diane Roberts, Julianna Baggott, and Mark Winegardner for their feedback and guidance in these past years. Lastly, thanks to my family and friends for their support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………..……………………………………… vi 1. BOTH WOMEN……………………………………………………………………………..... 1 2. LITTLE GRASS…………………………………………………………………………….. 20 3. FUNI……………………………………………………………………………………....… 50 4. HIGH TEST…………………………………………………………………………………. 81 5. INFINITY…………………………………………………………………………………... 117 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………………………………......……………………………… 156 v ABSTRACT HIGH TEST: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES features five linked stories of lives in flux in the fast-changing landscape of contemporary China. From migrant workers in coastal factory towns to a nouveau-riche millionaire immigrating to the West, this collection presents a mosaic portrait of characters teetering in the wake of China’s sweeping economic and social transformations of the past three decades. Through closely focused first-person points of view and crisis-inducing circumstances that fragment the individual identity, these characters negotiate the understood boundaries of culture, gender, and class. Their grappling with the changing rules of familial relations, the complications of money, the expectations of gender, and the ever-shifting social definitions converge to make this collection a portrayal of the universal search for individual identity and equilibrium. vi Both Women “I have money now. Please come back.” Even though I’d never met him. Even though my daughter-in-law hadn’t mentioned this ex-boyfriend of hers for a year. I knew immediately the text message was from him. My first impulse was to delete it. But the keypad of the Nokia phone was a grid of incomprehensible buttons. To a sixty-something woman like me, used to steaming tea and cool abacus, the beeps and chimes of electronics these days were like squawks from alien birds. Would I leave a trail if I went in pushing buttons trial-and-error style? And then it was too late. Keke came out from the inner chamber where she was getting a facial, her hair wrapped in a white towel. In my panic, I tossed the phone back in her bag with the text message still front and center. She extended her hand toward me and I handed her the bag. She took out her shiny crocodile wallet and headed toward the cashier counter. Sometime during dinner, I knew that she knew. She hadn’t looked me in the eye since before Gan’er got home from work, when she’d brushed past me cutting eggplants during the commercial of the evening news to toss away her soymilk carton. “Remember you’d agreed to only make one dish,” she’d said. “The rest is my duty.” She used to smile obsequiously when she said things like this, but now she’s comfortable enough with me to forego it. I felt a little pinched about this development in spite of myself. What else was she going to forego in the future? And she was not even pregnant. When Gan’er praised Keke’s spicy tofu over my sautéed eggplant, she’d hardly reacted. Then, she took longer than usual washing the dishes. After she’d gone into the master bedroom and shut the door, I checked the dish rack. Trails of bubbling suds laced the idle bowls. She never did this. Something was on her mind. In the living room, Gan’er laughed along with the audience on a game show. Outside, the dogs of two neighbors called to each other in long wails. I pressed my nose to the window screen and inhaled the scent of garlic and propane on the evening chill. This was the unchanging smell of ordinary life: hot food shared amongst family, absentmindedly needling each other 1 while gazing off into a darkening sky. In all my life here in this mid-sized inland city, I’d been comforted by the rhythms of the meals, the predictability of the conversations. Even through the worst zigzags of changes during the Cultural Revolution, my mother, father, and two brothers kept these basic daily routines intact. By the time I had my own family, meat dishes on the table became more frequent and the sound of car horns instead of bicycle bells came from the window, but the routines remained the same. Now that the air had grown permanently hazy and a shut window could not mute the noise from the stores and restaurants downstairs, we still cooked and ate together. The only things that’d changed were the people. Briefly, for a few months after Keke had moved in and before Gan’er’s father passed away, mealtimes had been a bundle of nerves. Keke’s high-strung vivacity had us all teetering. Gan’er sat straighter and ate more daintily, one minute grinning adoringly at his wife’s chatter and the next peering sheepishly at his father and me. My husband, who I knew was embarrassed rather than displeased under the solicitousness of his young daughter-in-law, answered her questions with mumbles, scowling to preserve his gravity. And me, I knew well what I was. I was the keeper of the peace, the smoother of the waves, the one whose face everyone checked for the right times to frown and smile until we tided into routine again. In the dark hall, I pasted my ear against Keke and Gan’er’s bedroom. Nothing. But I knew her phone’s keypad was noiseless, and for a second I envisioned her texting away, tears of passion rolling down her cheeks. She was a Hunanese girl, hotheaded but tenacious. When Gan’er first took me to meet her at a neighborhood noodle joint, she behaved liked an overeager kindergarten teacher, attempting to flood me with overfamiliar vivacity. I was conscious that I was setting a tone. Gan’er’s choice of restaurant and his waiting until his father was on his daily walk should have meant that things were casual enough for me to veto. But then he’d handed a cup of tea to me across the scarred table with both hands like it was a formal occasion, and I looked at the girl more carefully. She was small and provincial looking: single-lid eyes, flat nose, too-long hair that bristled at the tips. Her accent was murky but her enunciations forced, like she was straining to keep her tones straight, like she was a foreigner learning Mandarin. She caught me looking at her despite my trying to be discreet, held my gaze with hers, and nodded. It was a nod of understanding: I submit myself to be judged. Her presumption agitated me. Later, after Gan’er had paid the bill, he asked me how the meal was. “Alright, but too expensive,” I said, and Keke chuckled. 2 “That’s what my parents say too. It seems like something everyone from the old generation says,” she said, looking to my son for commiseration. He obliged her, matching his laugh to hers and squeezing her hand like I wasn’t even there. As soon as Gan’er and I were out of her earshot, I’d quickened my pace. He understood my displeasure and sighed loudly. When I had to be the one to speak first, I knew that his mind was already made up about her. “What kind of school did she go to?” I asked finally. “It’s a night training program over at the PingAn Center,” he said. “That place above the vegetable market that always smells?” “Some businessmen from Shenzhen bought the upper stories. It’s a technical college now.” His tone took on the same whine from his childhood, when he made excuses about why his test scores were so low. “And she’s training to be a what?” “An impressions coach,” he mumbled. “A what?” I stopped in place under a sycamore tree. The sidewalk was cracked under my heels. “I’ve been with her for almost nine month already, Ma. If it wasn’t for her, I would never have gotten the vice manager position last month. She came over to my apartment in the evenings with winter melon soup. She did my laundry when I was out.” “Does she know you own that apartment?” I was thoroughly alarmed now and felt my cheeks inflame. “Yes, she knows.” He planted his feet shoulder-width apart and clasped his hands. “She wants to get married.” In the two months that followed I filled in the blanks with information gleaned from her more than from him.