Creative talk
Zhang Lingling, female, born in Jiangsu in 1986, her novels have appeared in Writer, October, Mountain Flower, West Lake, Novel Selection, Novella Selection, Chinese Literature Anthology, etc. In 2019, he published the novel collection "Jealousy".
Zhang Lingling's "Farewell Year" - Creation Talk
The Year of Farewell (Excerpt)
Lingling Zhang
One
Youth is almost synonymous with poverty – every month when the cost of living is just fine, the situation begins to deteriorate in the middle of the month, and by the end of the month it is often destitute. At that time, I stood on the bulletin board of the teaching building every day before class to read various part-time advertisements, and read them again after class, so as not to be covered by other notices such as learning pairing and club recruitment. The contact number of the person in charge is written at the end, sometimes the number is vertically typed, and the lower end of the A4 paper is cut into a row of slender strips like a bunting flag, torn off and carried into the pocket. I interviewed four in a month, none of them followed, and gradually I thought that work might be an illusion. A girlfriend listened to my complaints and gave me a number and said you can try to contact him, he has a company or a studio or something. When I was going to save the number, I found out that I already had his contact information. For some reason, never dialed. One summer evening in 2005, before I could eat dinner, I hesitated at my desk and dialed down the eleven-digit number. The phone rang for a while and was picked up, and I asked if there was a job over there, and he said, yes, but it depends. What's the situation? Height and looks. Hearing this I don't speak anymore. He paused for a moment, his voice slightly tired, so let's have an exhibition interview tomorrow at 4 p.m. on Building A 103, and you can come over and have a look and remember to bring a two-inch photo. The next afternoon, I walked into the classroom in a pair of silver lace-up stiletto shoes and saw Song and a few boys sitting in the first row, with file bags and notebooks spread out on their desks. He sat on the far right, near the aisle, with a black water pen in his hand, his hair shaved very short, like a blue flame, which stood out among a bunch of people. He told me to stand against the wall, take off my shoes, turn around, and face him. I stood against the wall but refused to take off my shoes. The heel is ten centimeters high, I said. So how tall are you? he asked. One meter six three, I said. Are you sure? He smiled, all right. What's going on with this dress? I looked down at my skirt and wondered what could happen. It was a light black denim skirt borrowed from her roommate, the side pockets were studded with silver studs, and the top was a translucent light green silk blouse printed with roses. Seeing that I didn't answer, he laughed again. It's okay, you go, there's news I'll let you know. Then knock on the table and tell me to leave the photo and clip it into a transparent file bag. The plastic skin reflects the girls' dull faces, overlapping each other. On the way back, I thought, it wasn't a normal part-time job, and he was holding the pen triumphantly like he was holding a gun, and looked at you like you were wearing nothing. Universities are going to come across businesses like that, and we're often just a step away from those. I think it should be out of play. A week later, an unfamiliar number hit my phone, hey, it's me, remember? He said. Seeing that I was silent, he continued, calling you the other day, but the phone didn't work. I said yes. I lost my phone. Last night I attended a hometown party with a senior, and I knew at ten o'clock that my phone was lost. After going back, I almost didn't sleep all night, and I ran early in the morning, and the room was a mess, and the fruit shells, drink bottles and cigarette butts replaced the darkness and laughter of the night. In such a space, it is not surprising to find one or two used condoms. The phone was not lost, it was cushioned at the foot of the log table, and the royal blue flap had been cracked. I started the computer and restarted several times, found that it had no effect, and had to borrow money from a friend to buy a new one, and promised to return it to her after a while. But paying back money has also become difficult. At that moment, I didn't seem to have a few hairs left in my pocket. Contact details were also lost, all numbers were unfamiliar, and the vast majority were sales calls. I didn't explain, but suddenly remembered who he was. What's wrong? I asked. He said that the exhibition interview passed, do you have time? No problem, I said, always available. He said well, I'll come to you later, and you'll be waiting for me in Building J at six. I got downstairs early and sat down the steps, and he slowly appeared in the dusk, his little finger on his right hand hooking a large bunch of keys, clanging as he walked. Surrounded by the smell of night and pine, the white T-shirt on his body felt more like (or rather, more ought to be) a Cossack leather jacket that had just broken free from something dark and heavy.
Part-time was the next morning, and I thought he probably forgot what I looked like, so check again. There were a lot of girls who attended interviews that day, and when I went out, there were more than a dozen queues in the hallway. We walked around the school wall and he asked questions: where he was born, what department to study, hobbies, etc. Then he spoke of himself, a Yunnan, a mixture of Yi and Bai. His mother was of mixed Yi and Bai ethnicity, and his father was a Shanghai Zhiqing. The father is in Shanghai and the mother is still in Yunnan. He didn't talk about the major he studied. His fluent shanghainese, like a living swallow of Mr. Qian Nairong's lessons, made me suspect that his so-called Yi-Bai mixed blood was just inventing an unusual life for himself. After a while, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said yes. He paused for a moment and said yes. At this point I reacted, he had some interest in me, not much, not to want to develop into a formal relationship. At the same time, I guessed that he should be in touch with a lot of people, and he had many options. The next morning he drove to pick me up and a couple of other girls. I'm in charge of cos (role-playing) Ofa Mori from Grim Reaper. There was Ding Baili in the same class. At a great distance, I saw her, wearing a red and white split sweatshirt emblazoned with the game slogan, and expressionlessly handing out DM (direct advertising) flyers to a group of girls. There is no one more beautiful than her, I suppose. The show lasted three days and I was exhausted every day when I returned to school. After the end Song gave me a white envelope. I had heard about six hundred dollars a day, and when I opened the envelope, I found that it was much lower than that. Maybe he took off the draw. But the money solved my urgent needs, I paid off the debt, and I still had some left. Since we met, I've met him more often at school. Most of the time he was walking alone, sometimes with a few girls standing next to him. I had never seen Song in class, as if his studies were just hanging out.
The money ran out quickly. The show is long over and new part-time jobs must be re-found. One afternoon, I called and asked him if there was anything he could do, and he hesitated for a moment and asked, would you like to fill the bar? Don't do anything, just sit overnight. I thought about it and said yes. After hanging up the phone, I told my boyfriend about this, he was sitting on the bed board of my rented apartment, trying to walk away impatiently, I quoted Song as saying, don't do anything, just sit. Boyfriend does not comment. The first night, he changed into a light brown suit for me—he called it a "suit"—and hooked up with the girl's childhood robe, which was the only good one he had. On our first date, he sat in this suit on the railing of the stone bridge in Panchi and talked to me about a series of jokes he and his partner had concocted because of their height (this group of boys over two meters tall passed through the street, and auntie asked, "Do you play basketball?"). He said, no, we play table tennis. After saying that, laughing), inexplicably exclaimed, what an old egg, and then kissed me, allowing the smoke on his left hand to burn, almost burning me. It didn't take long for us to live together. I moved out of the school dormitory and rented a room in an off-campus apartment—one of the two bedrooms, seven or eight square meters, barely enough to fit a bed, a desk, a chair, and a simple wardrobe. The roommate next door was a young couple – I thought it was a couple at first and later found out it wasn't. The two had a pine lion, and quarrels and dog barking were often mixed. Two months after the girls moved away, the boys also moved in, and a twenty-seven-year-old Swiss student moved in, and the first time I met, he gave me a postcard with Lake Geneva printed on it, blue like a jewel-like dream. The day after check-in, he broke the bathroom towel rail, repaired it for an afternoon, didn't fix it, and then broke it, and the stainless steel rod hung loosely on the tile, like an arm dislocated.
/ End of Trial /
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