Everyday movement, p.9
Everyday Movement, page 9
* * *
—
It was nearly four when she arrived at her apartment. As usual, her daughter, Ning Yuet, wasn’t there. On the living room floor lay a crumpled face mask, a single glove, and several snipped zip ties strewn haphazardly near the front door. Ning Yuet had clearly rushed out without tidying up first, like an infant leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Ning On picked up the loose objects, suddenly exhausted. She decided to put showering off for now. Instead, she washed her face and switched on the TV.
It was already September and school had resumed. The boundary between the movement and everyday routines was dissolving. Demonstrations were no longer limited to the weekend. This afternoon, people were clashing with the police throughout the city’s districts. The news channel cycled through these sites at regular intervals: one minute it focused on Hong Kong Island; the next, it moved north across the harbor to Kowloon; then, it went farther north to the New Territories bordering Shenzhen.
Ning On muted the TV. She didn’t know which district her daughter had gone to. She hadn’t asked. The message from Ning Yuet read: “I’m going to a classmate’s place to do homework. I’ll be home a little later.” Ning On knew her daughter probably said so to save her from worrying all night, so she didn’t call out the white lie. She had been caught in a web of good intentions. One day she was cleaning up when she accidentally discovered a gas mask in the girl’s backpack. Ever since then, every weekend Ning Yuet spent “going to a classmate’s place to do homework” left Ning On on edge.
She could never tell if her daughter was out on the streets, or if she was really doing homework in the safety of a classmate’s home.
Sometimes, amid this torment, she managed to prepare a meal of three dishes and a soup, so that when Ning Yuet came home, they could eat together as if nothing were wrong. Other times, such as today, the strain of apprehension drained her. She had been working since early morning, and fatigue set in as she kept an eye on the TV. Half an hour went by. The broadcast was still showing various civilian-police confrontations. The footage played in silence, looping over and over like the demo reels in an electronics store. It was surprisingly hypnotizing. Ning On lay down on the sofa and drifted off to sleep.
The sound of running water from the bathroom roused her from her slumber. She looked around the room. On the dining table, two take-out bowls of crossing-the-bridge rice noodles had been set out along with a side dish of century egg with chili peppers. Feeling relieved, Ning On realized she was quite hungry, so she dug in without waiting for her daughter. Immediately, she was comforted by the spicy broth. The noodle soup was their favorite.
As she enjoyed the food, a faintly acidic smell drew her attention to Ning Yuet’s forest green backpack on the floor. There was a dark blotch on it. The stain was brown and had dried through. She couldn’t tell whether it was sauce or something else. She didn’t dwell on it.
Her phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at it and popped a piece of century egg into her mouth. It was too late when she realized that she had bitten down on the head of a chili pepper. Her face flushed from the heat, and she broke into a coughing fit.
The sound of running water stopped. Ning Yuet emerged in a light pajama set. Towel-drying her hair with one hand, she poured her mother a glass of water with the other. Ning On gave her a quick once-over, inspecting from head to toe for any injuries. There were none that she could see. She downed the water. The burn in her mouth calmed temporarily.
They ate their rice noodles in silence. Ning On wanted to remind her daughter to dry her hair first—and that she shouldn’t scroll through her phone while eating, that it could lead to indigestion. But Ning Yuet barely touched her food, clutching her chopsticks mid-motion while tapping away at her phone. She was so absorbed that she didn’t even notice when the towel slipped from her neck onto the floor. While clearing the table, Ning On saw that most of the noodles in her daughter’s bowl remained untouched. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them out, so she covered the bowl and placed it in the fridge.
After Ning On washed the dishes, her daughter was still sitting there glued to her phone. Ning On fetched a blow-dryer and began drying her daughter’s hair. It used to be carefully maintained and cascaded down her back, as glossy as a raven’s feathers. Since a few months ago, Ning Yuet had started keeping it short, just grazing her neck, and rarely used hair products anymore. It felt stiff and prickly to the touch.
Caressing her hair, Ning On felt a rush of emotions. The girl before her had once been carried inside her. An existence as intimate as a tiny growth of her own flesh. In what felt like the blink of an eye, that same child now was decidedly her own person. They could be eating the same food, yet the teenager was unwilling to share a single thought with her. Ning Yuet’s hair was still damp, but she couldn’t sit still any longer. Without saying anything, she shook her head, stood up, and darted to her room. She switched on her computer and closed the door behind her.
Those fine strands of hair had slipped so swiftly from Ning On’s palm, as if they’d already gone far beyond her reach. She unplugged the blow-dryer, untangled the cable, and put it away.
Sitting back down at the table, Ning On clicked open the message from half an hour ago. “I’m free now. Still want to meet?”
* * *
—
As soon as Little Professor and Ning On entered the hotel room, he wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissing her hair at the nape of her neck. He drew his nose close, inhaling the faint fragrance of her skin, then exhaled softly. It sent goose bumps rippling across her flesh. He said he missed her; that he’d been thinking about her. Ning On couldn’t tell if those were just sweet nothings. She ceased thinking. The tip of his tongue was grazing her ear now, teasing it with dampness. She always got queasy when he did this. Her body shuddered in a wave of tremors. Just as she was about to turn around and kiss him hungrily, she caught a whiff of a light but acrid smell emanating from him. It made her wince.
Then it dawned on her: It was the same smell that had radiated from her daughter’s backpack. The thought made her stiffen with fear. She didn’t want to know where the smell came from.
Little Professor must have observed this mood shift. He looked at her, sorry as a scolded pet. “I already rinsed off once. Is it still too strong?” He launched into a long-winded explanation. “I couldn’t help it. There weren’t many of us today. Now, everyone has grown afraid of getting rounded up, no one dares to—ow!” Ning On bit his shoulder, cutting him off with seductive provocation.
She didn’t want to hear more. Not wanting to know what her daughter had been up to was the reason she came here. He, however, never seemed to get tired of sharing, but it was always the same stuff: dodging bullets, evading arrest, racing like it was a matter of life or death. Blah blah blah blah. He always recounted everything in vivid detail, letting on his survivor’s guilt. It was laced with a smug sense of superiority.
She didn’t care in the slightest.
In the wide world outside, a hail of tear gas and rubber bullets rained down. Inside the elegant confinement of this room, she just wanted to concentrate on making love, pure and simple. She was so tired. She wanted to disappear into a strong, muscular body. Why did everyone have to express themselves? Why the rush to open their mouths, repeating their scripts over and over?
Of course, Ning On locked these thoughts tight in her throat. She clenched her legs firmly around his solid, lean waist. Lost in the animalistic frenzy, she moaned in scattered bursts. She submerged herself in the moment. She feared that sharp, biting complaints might slip past her lips as soon as she let up. No, she was just ignorant and uncomplicated Ning On. At least, that’s what he seemed to believe. That’s what everyone—her clients, her daughter, her ex-husband—expected her to be.
Perhaps she believed it too. Better to be ignorant. Ignorant people were the happiest.
* * *
—
Ning On was thirty-five and divorced. She saved up to open her beauty salon on her own. Her daughter had just started high school. These were things she never told her clients. Sharing personal details with them was a bit of a gamble, like tossing rainbow-colored rings in a game. If a ring landed just right, you gained a reward. But when it missed, it knocked things over, creating a mess. Ning On knew sharing details of her life or views might appeal to some customers and help her lock in a loyal clientele. However, it might also rub some individuals the wrong way, and then she would not only lose out on business but also risk becoming fodder for gossip. The last thing she needed was the kind of politely packaged advice steeped in condescension. Hence, she became a quiet listener.
Her tiny shop front was divided into two private rooms. When things got busy, she’d finish extracting blackheads for a client in one room, then rush to the other for a laser hair-removal session. When it was inevitable, she cut some corners to make do, but people didn’t stop coming. It was largely thanks to her quiet bedside manner, or so she believed. Some of her clients had vented that when going for a haircut, a massage, a facial, or some other services that entailed one-on-one interaction, what they dreaded most was a chatterbox who needed to fill the air with endless babble. Even with a highly skilled practitioner, if he or she didn’t know how to read the room, the hours of service could feel like pure torture, paying good money just to suffer. Some of them asked intrusive questions about personal matters; others ranted about social issues, acting like know-it-alls.
In the last few weeks, Ning On saw a number of long-lost clients returning to her salon again. Apparently, as politics became heated, they couldn’t stand the opposing views expressed by their regular aestheticians. Protest supporters and opponents alike came to her shop, drawn by her lack of a public stance.
“I’ve missed your salon, Ning On. Much more relaxing when I’m not bothered by any annoying comments.” Clients fawned over her silence, but usually went on with their own drawn-out monologues. Some of them poured out their arguments; others merely rambled. Ning On had heard fragmented words in every shape and form imaginable. Amid all these, Ning On focused on her work, applying pressure to the flesh beneath her hands, or guiding a machine across skin. She offered no response. Only her ears half-tilted, picking up the endless stream of stories.
Some bodies were plump like ripe, glistening fruit; others were scrawny like parched earth. But that was on the outside. Beneath each surface lay an immense ball of tangled thread. Once the tip of the thread was tugged from one’s lips, the talking would start to unwind, and go on and on and on. The spool inside a body spinning fast. The more words it churned out, the greater the desire to go on talking.
Perhaps it was not her body or her personality that kept Little Professor coming back to her, she thought. He was so full of himself and so starved for affection. He needed a quiet, obedient listener in these chaotic times. And she played the part well.
The customer was king. Many people had been saying that capital was the lifeline of this city, so resistance didn’t necessarily have to mean blood and sweat. Consumption, too, could be weaponized to express allegiance or mete out punishment, a way of establishing an economic circle based on political priorities. The public scrutinized every business—the decor, the staff’s remarks—to figure out their stance on the movement, sorting them into categories for support or boycott. This raging tide swept away the practical considerations for service, quality, and price. The primary standard for evaluation became Do you share my politics?
Ning On had heard as much when she recently joined a few salon owners for tea. “I’ve got so much business, I can barely keep up,” said Aesthetician A. One day during a protest, a few young people were hit by water cannons and cried out in pain on the street corner near her shop. Upon hearing their voices, Aesthetician A picked up a handful of towels in her salon and rushed over to help. Within a few days, requests for bookings flooded in via phone, email, and text messages. Only then did she realize that those young people had posted their experience online and expressed gratitude to her while naming her business. The post made the rounds, spurring customers her way.
“Is it that easy? Maybe I’ll make a little extra by having my son hype me up online,” Aesthetician B scoffed. “Might as well say I ran out and got hit by tear gas…wouldn’t exactly be a lie, either. This area is always getting hit. A hundred-something rounds in one night is nothing. Plenty of times, I sat at home and choked on the fumes. It stung like hell.”
“It’s not right to lie,” chimed in a third woman, Aesthetician C. “She really did hand out those towels. What have we done to deserve being hyped up? Besides, taking a stand is risky. Who knows when the other side might come looking for trouble? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Both sides are pretty scary. I came down from the mainland to do business here precisely because I liked that Hong Kong didn’t mess with this kind of thing. Now, it’s gone to the extreme. Even beauty has to be political.” Many business owners and workers in the industry were from the mainland, and C had been the first among those at the tea gathering to move to Hong Kong. She ran a hair salon in Sham Shui Po, and after closing time, a few fellow mainlanders would gather there to chat over tea.
“You don’t say,” Aesthetician A said. “Just a few days ago, an older woman working at a department store rushed a few customers at the sample counter before closing, saying, ‘Hurry up, I need to get off work. Those thugs will come to riot again soon, and once the roads are blocked, I won’t be able to get home.’ One of the shoppers posted it online. That led to lots of complaints to the store, and the company announced she was suspended, effective immediately. It’s so scary—with just one sentence, they can take away your job. They think they’re buying not only the products but also how you’re allowed to think.”
Ning On was familiar with the incident. Little Professor had played a video for her. The woman in the department store incident was delivering a public apology. He introduced it as a victory of mass mobilization, the first step in overturning capitalism. On the screen, the woman sat blank-faced before the camera, holding a sheet of paper, reading its content mechanically. She stumbled through the lines, pausing a lot. At the end, she bowed her head in apology, pleading for forgiveness. It was like a public punishment.
As Little Professor watched, he critiqued her performance: she seemed insincere; she bowed while remaining seated; she obviously hadn’t practiced the script enough; the whole thing was so perfunctory.
Ning On felt like puking. The world had gone mad.
People like Little Professor seemed to expect the pain and anger of everyone to be calibrated into a single, precise aim and fired at a common enemy. Instead, this hate festered like spores of mold, scattering in fine specks, multiplying, floating aimlessly, seeping into everyone’s system.
* * *
—
By the time she woke up, it was already noon the next day. The TV was playing a live news broadcast, the volume turned down to a whispery hiss. A protest was probably about to begin. The journalist on the scene reported the crowd size, traffic conditions, and the police deployments. Little Professor was on the phone, keeping his eyes on the news. “I’ll skip today. You didn’t show up yesterday. Hardly anyone was there. It’s impossible to operate with so few people. The folks in the middle and back were all scared, bailing faster and faster. The kids up front, on the other hand, were too reckless, provoking the police line without thinking ahead about how to get away. They were just draining our resources. I’m not going. This is becoming impossible.”
He spoke a little longer on the phone. Before hanging up, he said, “If you do go, remember to swap out your SIM card. Don’t waste your time going to Victoria Park. At this point it’s just helping these organizers pad the turnout. For what? So they could jerk off to vanity numbers? Do you still buy into that pan-dem crap? There’s no democracy in Hong Kong because too many idiots still can’t tell if we are having a social movement or a revolution. Are they still dreaming that just by showing up a few times they would be able to force Beijing to hand us real universal suffrage? Fucking morons.”
Ning On’s body was all soft. Her throat felt dry and sore. Her bones ached like they were coming apart. All she wanted was to sink back into sleep. She didn’t want to hear any more of his grand theories. But Little Professor came over and urged her to get up. “You awake? Lounging in bed all day will just make you more tired. I told the front desk that we are checking out a little later. We can have lunch together first.” She saw two plates of food on the table.
Classic Little Professor. When he lectured you on the downside of one thing, he was in fact pushing you into doing another. “Lounging in bed will make you tired” really meant “Get up already and eat with me.” “Do you know how many calories are in a can of beer?” meant “Watch your weight.”
“You’re wrong” meant “I’m right.”
* * *
—
Since the beginning of the year, twice a week, Ning On stayed out late. On these days, she usually smoked a cigarette after closing up shop and heading to the fitness center for yoga.
When she finished a class package, it was already August. By then, even on weekdays, protests and clashes were happening everywhere in the city. Tear gas was deployed as unpredictably as a lottery drawing. No one ever knew which day or what time it might descend on their own neighborhood. The center was conveniently located between her work and home, and yoga had been a welcome reprieve, so she went to buy another package. Maybe it was the economy, and there was a new promotion posted at the front desk: Pay a little extra and get full access to the gym facilities. Like getting a bundle of free scallions with your groceries. She thought it was a good deal, and swiped her card on the spot.
