“Zhang-xiansheng, I must say, fantastic performance tonight.”
In the dusty theater, benches of chipped paint watch as the lights begin to dim; from the beads of her gown, Zhang Yangjing reflects each fragment of every flame, an apparition of a bonfire sending ghost-sparks into the night.
“Thank you,” she says, subdued. “The audience was few.”
“Well, in these times, getting good plays is hard.” The custodian tips his broom from one palm to the other, each of his fingers worn by weather and work. “But they stay for the performers.”
“You flatter me,” Yangjing replies, and she clears her throat when her voice falters. The last riff may have busted something in her lungs. “We do as much as all the theaters.” Which, at this point, is just their best.
“I really mean it,” he says, and he sighs. Yangjing has acted enough plays to know he is reminiscing on something. It’s the glint in his eyes, and how she has seen it in the mirror before. “You have quite the voice for a man.”
“You flatter me,” Yangjing says. Because there’s not much else you can respond with to false praise.
Sometimes, when I came home, it would already be dark.
Down by the shore, on a cliff just in front of the rice fields and the city’s skyline, my family sat on a precipice between the heaven and the earth. When I walked up the path, I could see the ocean split parallel to the clouds, the little cottage touching the dirt and the sun.
Sometimes, when I came home, we would have to light matches in the cold.
Away from the wood and the hay mattresses, or the torn cloth curtains, what we pretend is a tabletop, the maps, the papers, the taxes, we would cup it in our hands like cigarettes, looking through the skin of our fingers to spot our blood— red. Glowing so brightly it could be a candle of its own.
And we would know that we were still alive.
–
“Humble yourself.” It’s what my mother always said, when the candles were already lit and they would have radishes again for dinner, some animal crying outside. “Qian shou yi, man zhao sun.” Modesty benefits. Arrogance hurts.
One day, my brother had come back from the market beaten through with dirt and bruises, a weeping cut on his cheek. His straw hat barely hanging to his ears.
“What did you do?” Mother had asked. No, “Are you alright?” Simply: “Ni gan le she me?” What did you do?
He had sat down at the table. I was already digging through the drawers for anything— bandages, ripped clothing, too expensive medicine. I had set the bucket of catch for the day by the window, residue liquid staining the wooden floors. I pulled out a basin and washed the red from his body.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I was just selling the rice. They hit me first.”
“Don’t tell lies to me,” my mother had said, and worry had turned her eyes into sharp lines of anger. “I’ve seen the pamphlets you bring back. Don’t tell lies to me.”
Then, it was silent. I rinsed the washcloth and pretended the red spilling through my fingers was a second sunset. The crashing of the waves let me pretend I had the sea in my hands.
“Tell me the truth,” my mother said, and this time, she was just tired.
“…I went to the rally.”
And this time, mother kicked the basin over. The bloody water in it slid across the floor, fleeing down the panels of wood, over the rusting nails. Brother bit his lip. He knew what he was getting into.
“The rally?” Mother said, raging. She was a fire. An exploding candle let off its wick. “Why did you go to the rally? Have I not taught you well enough?”
“You’ve taught me well,” brother said back. “You’ve taught me enough for me to go.”
“Don’t be stupid,” mother spat back. I had continued to wash the dirt and blood from brother’s leg. “There is no righteous reason for you to have gone.”
“You’re the stupid one,” brother said. “I see you carrying jugs up and down the rocks. Rubbing at your knees. Lighting candles at night to file more taxes and to save more money. In the city, they all have lightbulbs. But we all sit here with our wax and our wicks like dogs at the door.”
“That doesn’t mean you should’ve gone!” She said. “It is a problem but what you did was stupid.”
“Then what should I have done?” Brother said. “What should we have done?”
In the distance, by the shore, a bird had called. I remember this clearly because sometimes I still stand in the mirror’s light and recall it. But there had been a tense silence in that moment, desperation and resignation in one foul swirl that clouded the air so presently I felt it was hard to breathe. The sun had set perfectly so that it caught mother’s face in its golden touch, kissing her eyes so that the sheen over them had twinkled too bright to be forgettable, and it had made the coal of them appear brown. Lit up, for once, instead of shadowed and hooded.
“You should’ve stayed humble,” she said. “Qian shou yi, man zhao sun.”
In the dressing rooms, Yangjing presses the cloth to her face and her eyes, washing off the makeup that had taken hours prior to do— lost causes, futile starting points. She never learns better.
Placing the headdress delicately on the countertop, Yangjing lets the jewels drape themselves over the edge, pristine in their cleanliness. Against the rotting wood of the rest of the room, they feel foreign. Almost like a blessing.
Life is good here, Yangjing thinks. She’s one of the few that live in the opera house, residing in the attic that had been cleared out for a futon and a small shelf, a little bathroom a staircase away. She does not have many possessions up here, memento mori against the shelves: her mother’s last kit of needles and thread. Sometimes the wind blows the spools until they untangle slightly from their beams, and Yangjing would pick them up and rewind them for the day. She would place it against the needle, wash up, go to sleep, wake up the next day, perform.
Yangjing is lucky that she is flat-chested. She supposes that it’s what a decade of radishes for dinner does to you.
As she is ascending the staircase in her night robes, Yangjing is stopped by the theater master, her recruiter. He, along with a few of the cast, are some of the only people in Peking that know of her true identity: a skinny fisher girl from the edge of the sea with her ribs sticking out, hands worn from climbing.
“They know about you,” he says, and that is enough.
“I know about you,” is the first thing that he said, and it was enough.
I had set down my fishing rod, lifted my hat just a little so that I could see who was talking to me. “What do you know?”
His eyes weren’t as worn with age at that time. He was wearing a richer man’s jacket, a polo shirt from the west, and silken socks. “I’ve heard that you’re a springy one. Different from the boys in the village. A voice that cries with the gulls.”
In my mind, I had heard: stay humble. Qian shou yi man zhao sun. And so I acted it: “You flatter me. But what for?”
“I’m from Peking,” he had said next, and I’m sure he could see the ways my eyes had widened. Peking— a distant paradise. Though our cottage sat between heaven and earth, Peking had been kissed by God and touched by deities. In Peking, there was money, there were jobs, there was food. “I was wondering if you would want to learn to sing opera.”
In that moment, I forgot how to be humble.
“Yes,” I said, because Peking meant money meant happiness meant survival. “What do I need to do?”
–
The previous night, mother had given up on me. She watched me prick my hands with the needle, one, two, three times before she scoffed and lit another candle to go file the month’s fines. The fines that came with brother.
Brother had left three weeks prior and no one knew where he was. We had no friends; just us and our lonely cottage in our lonely world. We had each other’s backs but we didn’t have each other’s hearts. We were living but we were not alive. But then brother left, and no one knew where he went. We lost money. The savings in the drawers were gone with his clothes and sheets.
He did not leave a letter, he barely left any care.
And so, when the recruiter came to the house, bowing to mother and unrolling the contract, she had forgotten how to be humble in the face of her desperation. Just as I had.
So, with a signature and a smile, I was gone and forgotten.
Before I left though, mother took my palm in hers and put three needles and two spools of thread into it, closing it up tight. I could feel, through her blood glowing in the candlelight, a resignation.
“Burn bright, Yang-Yang.” A nickname I will never hear again. “Burn bright. But do not burst.”
We both knew what she had meant. Qian shou yi, man zhao sun.
I descended the hill. I said I would come back.
I burned before I could.
“They know about me,” Yangjing says, in a haze. “Did the others get out in time?”
He takes my shoulders, and leans his wrinkled forehead against my chest, white hairs glancing at my chin.
“They are gone. But we haven’t, yet.”
Yangjing shakes. Like a good opera singer, she does not let it topple her. “Then you leave,” she finally manages, lifting up his body from hers and nudging him down the stairs. “I must go to my room.”
He looks at her with something like what her mother used to see her with: a sinking type of thing that goes through the eyes and out, projecting like a plume of smoke through the air. It vanishes, and he moves down the stairs, almost leisurely for someone escaping hell.
She continues up the steps, padded shoes soft, familiar creeks guiding her along. The door spins open, and suddenly, she can hear the crying from outside of the window, the unfamiliar lights along the ceiling.
She realizes that they are chanting.
Sha Zhang Yangjing!
Sha Zhang Yangjing!
Sha Zhang Yangjing!
Xia, xia, xia!
Though there are lights here, she still lights a candle. She holds her hand up to it so that she may see through her skin, at the red of her own blood: I am still alive.
I learned how to sing.
Yangjing settles near the spools of thread, which have come untangled from the rage outside. Delicately, she winds them up again. The pink one first, then the red one, for good luck.
I learned how to dance.
Once she is done, she pockets them, removing them from their place on the shelf. She takes it to the balcony by the attic, and she slowly opens the door with a deep breath.
I learned how to pretend and forget.
The heat is immediate.
Down below, crowds of supporters from the revolts gather, raising their torches, some with rifles and some with gardening hoes. She appears, and they scream. They shout.
She looks to the beams of the opera house and finds them already aflame. It crawls up, slowly— an upside down candle, consuming all the same. She raises her hand to the light—
I was alive.
sees red,
“Stay humble.”
Is humble being on a stage? Is humble hiding your lashes and your dresses, is humble singing to an audience, is humble actually humble if I’m still here?
Ma, where did you go?
and she sees a face in the crowd
wearing a familiar straw hat;
worn with age. Perhaps.
Scratched. Scar on his cheek, taller
than before, torch leaving his
hand
in a wild throw,
arc going
Up
up
up
up
up
Until brother’s flame lands
at her feet,
a desperate little thing,
and she feels it settle:
resignation.
We had cupped our fire
between our hands when
it would burn,
it is a candle
and it is dangerous
in the house of dry
wood, straw, papers.
sometimes I would come home and it would already be dark,
lighting fires, lighting fires,
lightning fires in each other’s eyes when we prayed:
we were alone, together alone, but not alone together;
When they said that our lives would flash
before our eyes, I doubt this is what they meant
Because all I see is red
& brother is in the crowd. Wide-
eyed, the realization in
his veins palpable.
Zhang Yangjing stares him down as she sees red;
& he sees red too, both of them knowing,
Zhang Yangjing is no longer skin or blood.
She is a myth made of ashes.
Melody Zhang 
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