Leave Me Alone Read online

  In Praise of Murong Xuecun

  Murong’s dark world view has informed a string of Chinese best-sellers and made him the enfant terrible of the country’s often staid literary scene. Unsurprisingly, the author’s frank depictions of corruption and random fornication have provoked considerable ire.

  Sydney Morning Herald

  Week by week when he got home from work, Murong would post new pieces to a story that painted a bleak yet honest picture of modern urban life in the city where he lived. It contained tales about sex, love, gambling and drugs and became so popular that it soon appeared on numerous other online forums.

  CNN

  Murong is among the biggest stars in a group of young Chinese literati who jumpstarted their careers by publishing fiction online. Though a best-selling author, he still considers himself an outsider. Unlike Mo Yan, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and many other prominent Chinese authors, Murong is not a member of the official Chinese Writer’s Association.

  Foreign Policy

  When the novelist Murong Xuecun showed up at a ceremony here last year to receive his first literary prize, he clutched a sheet of paper with some of the most incendiary words he had ever written. It was a meditation on the malaise brought on by censorship. “Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder,” he planned to say.

  New York Times

  This lively translation, as literary as it is page-turrning … is a heady race into the heart of capitalist China, where hedonism and emotional impoverishment go hand in hand.

  The Age

  One of China’s most celebrated young authors. Murong, whose real name is Hao Qun, has incurred Beijing’s anger by criticizing it over issues including censorship, the Tiananmen Square massacre and religious freedom.

  Daily Telegraph

  Murong Xuecun is considered one of the most famous authors to have emerged in contemporary China. In his damning and unflattering portrait of modern China Leave Me Alone, we follow three young men beset by dead-end jobs, drugs, gambling debts and whoring as they struggle to make their way in Chengdu, the country’s fifth most populous city. Murong attempts to sidestep the absurdities of the censorship system.

  Huck Magazine

  A frank insight into contemporary China … This bestselling author is known for depicting corruption, sex, violence and the truth about modern Chinese society in stark detail. An entire city government tried to speak out about his book, believing that his honest observations would damage their image.

  Global Times

  “At the time Leave Me Alone was first published, the party secretary of Chengdu convened a meeting of people in the arts to criticse the novel,” Murong recalls with a smile. “At the time, I had no experience of this kind of thing and really thought it was a serious thing.”

  South China Morning Post

  “In times such as these, the best thing you can do is to make sure that you don’t do bad things, and try to live a virtuous life.”

  — Murong

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  About the author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  My wife called as I was leaving the office to ask if I wanted to join her at some new hotpot restaurant everyone was talking about.

  ‘All you think about is eating,’ I snapped.

  I was pissed off because Fatty Dong had just been appointed General Manager. Fatty and I started selling car parts in the company’s Chengdu branch at about the same time. All he was good at was sucking up to people, but from now on that idiot was going to be my boss.

  ‘If you don’t want to come,’ said Zhao Yue, ‘then shall I ask someone else?’

  ‘Does it sound like I’m bothered?’

  She cut me off before I’d even finished.

  For a while I stared blankly into space. Zhao Yue hadn’t done anything wrong, but I wasn’t going to take any shit tonight. Snatching up my leather briefcase, I stormed out of the building like thunder.

  Chengdu in March is a miasma of dust and smoke. Out on the street I bought a pack of cigarettes and blended in as I wondered where I could spend the rest of this empty Friday night. After considering my options, I decided to go and see my mate from college, Li Liang.

  Two years after graduation, Li Liang had quit his government job and started trading futures on the internet. Within a couple of years he had somehow made two or three million yuan – which just didn’t make any sense. No one had ever thought at college that my sidekick would turn out to be some kind of genius at investment.

  I figured that if he wasn’t asleep, he must be playing mahjong. It was all he ever did apart from work. At college he once lost all his money in one thirty-seven-hour session and begged me without success to give him 10 yuan so he could get some food. He passed out later in a small restaurant outside the campus gates.

  When I arrived at Li Liang’s, the game was in full swing. I didn’t know any of the others at the table – two guys and a girl wearing a red sweater and tight jeans.

  Li Liang looked up and said I should make myself at home.

  ‘There’s beer in the fridge, music on the stereo, and a rubber doll in the bedroom!’

  The others laughed.

  ‘Get lost,’ I said.

  I put a few hundred on the table and asked what they were playing. The girl told me double or quits, so I checked my wallet. There was more than 1000 yuan, which I reckoned would be enough to see me through.

  Li Liang introduced me to the table. Apparently he’d met the two guys online and they’d come to Chengdu to learn the secrets of his trading success. The girl, Ye Mei, was the daughter of some big shot in construction. I opened a beer and wandered round to check out her tiles. Her assets included big tits, a slim waist and a fine pair of slender legs which she was jiggling under the table. It wasn’t easy to concentrate on the game.

  After a few rounds, Li Liang got up to change the music and said I should take his place. Ye Mei mugged me straight away to the tune of 200 yuan and my luck continued to slide until pretty soon my 1000 yuan was gone. I asked Li Liang if he could lend me some money. He swore and lobbed me his wallet. Just then my phone rang. It was Zhao Yue.

  ‘What are you up to?’ she said.

  ‘Playing mahjong.’

  ‘Are you ahead yet?’ she asked, dead cold.

  I said I was doing OK and discarded a tile.

  ‘When are you coming home?’ she asked.

  ‘I might play all night.’

  She hung up without another word.

 
After Zhao Yue’s call my luck changed and I started winning big. The guys told me that good luck at mahjong meant bad luck in life – I should watch out my wife wasn’t cheating on me. I just smiled and went on stuffing my pockets with their cash.

  At 3 a.m., after I’d cleaned up for the fourth time, Ye Mei pushed back her chair.

  ‘That’s it. I’m out,’ she said. ‘There’s something wrong here – I’ve never seen such disgusting good luck.’

  I counted my winnings. Not only had I recovered the lost 1,000, I’d made another 3,700 – more than half my monthly salary. I refilled the glasses, leaped up on to the sofa and shouted out a line from one of Li Liang’s poems: ‘Life comes in a rush, damn it!’

  Li Liang and I were the founder members of our university poetry society: I was the president, he wrote the poems. It turned out to be the perfect way to meet girls. As our friend Bighead Wang once said: ‘Your vampire hands are stained with freshers’ blood.’

  I was still pissed off about Fatty Dong. I was dog tired but if I went home then I’d wake up Zhao Yue, she’d ask me where I’d been and we’d fight. The neighbours were already sick of our arguments, sick of the sound of smashing plates, but where else could I go?

  ‘Let’s go and blow my winnings,’ I said. ‘Drinks are on me.’

  Li Liang said he wasn’t in the mood. He threw me his car keys, asking if I could drop the two guys at their hotel and see Ye Mei home. As we were leaving he told Ye Mei to take care around me.

  ‘He’s not a good guy.’

  She laughed and asked if she could borrow a knife.

  ‘No need for that,’ Li Liang said. ‘If he tries anything, just kick him where it hurts.’

  It was really late. As we drove past the Qing Yang palace, I remembered playing a game there once with Zhao Yue. We closed our eyes and reached out to touch the word ‘longevity’ on the temple wall. The part of the character we touched was supposed to tell us our future. It turned out I was on the long, slanting ‘pie’ stroke and she was grabbing the stubby ‘dot’ in the middle.

  ‘At least you’ll enjoy your long life,’ I said. ‘You got his cock.’

  Zhao Yue snorted with laughter. What was she up to now? Was she snoring with the light on, arms wrapped around her pillow? That was the way I always found her after I’d been away on business.

  Ye Mei let out a long, slow lungful of cigarette smoke.

  ‘You have an evil smile,’ she said. ‘Are you thinking about your mistress?’

  ‘I’m thinking of you,’ I said. ‘When we’ve got rid of these two, let’s go back to mine, OK?’

  ‘Don’t you think your wife would be pissed off?’

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  I’ve never been able to resist sexual temptation. I even inspired Li Liang to write a poem:

  Tonight’s bold sunlight

  Crackles with hormones

  Chengdu, your skin

  is soft like my heart.

  Walking naked in God’s smile

  I couldn’t choose at Yanshikou in March

  Couldn’t choose actually meant refused to choose. Li Liang used to give me a hard time about it. He said I had no standards, counting off my girlfriends on his fingers: the PE teacher with blotchy skin, the restaurant owner who weighed 150 kilos, the waitress who was ugly enough to frighten customers, and that girl selling fried breadsticks who ate garlic.

  I told him he didn’t know how to appreciate women. That PE teacher measured 177cm – her nickname was Dark Rose. The restaurant boss was as curvaceous as the legendary beauty and imperial concubine Yang Gui Fei. The waitress was so well-upholstered she looked like she’d topple over as soon she tried to walk – and if she did, her tits would hit the ground way before her face. And didn’t he think my breadstick lover looked like that hottie Ning Dongdong at college?

  ‘Mate,’ Li Liang muttered, ‘you’re not picky at all.’

  After dropping off Li Liang’s two disciples, it was just me and Ye Mei. I drove slowly and stared at her until she blushed. When I started to smirk, she lost it.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  I asked her if she’d ever had a one-night stand. She glared at me.

  ‘Too bad I didn’t borrow that knife.’

  I always think that if a girl is prepared to make a joke at a time like this, she’s already thinking about giving in. And I’d read somewhere that women lose their self-control after midnight. I stopped the car to adjust the wing mirror on her side and brushed against her. She flinched, but didn’t move away, so I crooked my arm round her slender waist.

  ‘You are bad,’ she protested. ‘If you try that again, I’ll have to get out of the car.’

  Reluctantly, I drew back my arm.

  ‘Bad boy,’ she murmured. ‘Who said you could win all my money anyway?’

  Finally I realised what she wanted and took her into my arms.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Chengdu I knew was like a chaotic courtyard with hundreds of different families. When I was in junior high I lived on Jinsi Street, just a hundred metres away from the fragrant incense of Wenshu temple. I used to go there with my parents to burn joss sticks and drink tea with friends and strangers alike – whole afternoons would drift past. Now that my parents were old and I was grown up, Chengdu life was so dull that any novel I read, any drama I saw on TV seemed completely fantastical.

  I was knackered after seeing Ye Mei home, with a damp patch on my pants – clearly I hadn’t cleaned up all that well in the dark. Worse still, Ye Mei didn’t seem to think much of my performance, coming over all cold when she got out of the car. I drove to the underground parking lot at Vancouver Square, wound back the seat and crashed out right there in the car.

  When I woke up my back was killing me. I looked at the clock – nearly eleven. Some guy was knocking at my window and asking if I had any petrol. I got out and gave him a can of petrol from the boot – these were cans I’d got from the company, so there were at least a dozen in the back of Li Liang’s Audi.

  Our company was owned by a family of once-mighty government officials. The big boss had loads of connections with state-owned enterprises. We sold car parts and petrol and also ran garages in several cities. Business was hot, and in less than 10 years he’d made several million.

  It was all pretty depressing. Over the last few years I’d made a good 100 million in sales and 20 million in net profits for the company. Fatty Dong had done nothing but suck up, but he’d managed to become my boss.

  The sun was shining on Chengdu, though like most creatures of the night I tended to avoid the sun. According to an article in the Sichuan Legal News ‘dark things can never bear the light’. I was well on the way to becoming a dark thing myself, even though I had been an idealistic student just a couple of years before.

  A Mavis Hee song was playing on the radio:

  They say that tears can tear down a city

  Red eyes staring sadly at a lonely city

  Fireworks melt away

  Songs fade

  I thought of Zhao Yue and felt guilty, so I went to the People’s Department Store to buy her a German-engineered bra that cost more than 700 yuan. She’d been saying she wasn’t getting much exercise and worrying her breasts were starting to sag. I wasn’t taking good care of her. When I looked at the clothes I was wearing – all designer stuff she’d paid for – I felt even worse about what I’d been up to the night before.

  Zhao Yue was sat on the couch at home in a T-shirt watching TV. She acted as if she hadn’t seen me, and so throwing down the bra without giving it to her, I went into the bathroom and took a cold shower. Afterwards I emerged to find her already in bed, facing the wall. When I got in and hugged her, I didn’t get any response, and so I drifted off to sleep.

  Confused with the conversation of a dream I heard her muttering on the phone.

  ‘Can’t talk now, my husband is home. Call me some other time.’

  Opening my eyes, I asked, ‘You’ve got a lover now
?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Your life is really on the up.’ She smiled, and nodded. ‘I’ve always tried to better myself.’

  ‘What does the guy do?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s an entrepreneur.’

  I sat up. ‘Let’s make a deal. When you’ve cheated him out of his money, give me half.’

  Zhao Yue had been in the year below me at university, one of the three most beautiful girls in her class. Our campus had a problem with townies breaking in, and one time a gang caught Zhao Yue and her then boyfriend making out in the woods. Her ungallant lover ran away before he’d even pulled up his trousers and it was said that when he got to the dorm the condom fell out of the leg of his pants. Zhao Yue was screaming and railing at her attackers when Bighead Wang and I literally stumbled across them on our way home after a drinking session, and we fought those thugs to protect Zhao Yue’s honour My belief was that any man’s heroic instincts would have been aroused seeing Zhao Yue wearing just a shirt with her panties round her knees. Bighead colourfully speculated afterwards that Zhao Yue and her boyfriend were expert at doing it from behind — the college slang for this was ‘getting fire from the mountains’. If Zhao Yue wasn’t my wife, I’d be happier to dwell on this image but even now, Zhao Yue tried to avoid Bighead.

  Zhao Yue didn’t deserve the reputation she acquired as a result of that incident. She’d only had a couple of college boyfriends and on getting to know her, I’d found her to be quite shy and refined. She was gentle, sweet and loyal to me. But due to my perverse mind, whenever I thought about the condom falling out of her abscondent lover’s trousers that day, I felt depressed. Life: you just needed to see a few things clearly. You didn’t need to look into all the particulars, otherwise it became meaningless. For example, Fatty Dong had a friend who’d opened a wife-swapping club called the Same Music Private Members Club, where everyone fucked other people’s spouses and saw their own spouses being fucked by others. I didn’t believe Fatty however that ninety per cent of couples divorced straight after leaving the club.