Searching for ZZ

By Sun Huifen

ZZ is an anomaly in a world of power and money. His name is Zhang Zhan, which connotes 'stretching' and 'spreading of wings', and his parents are fiercely ambitious minor party officials, climbing the lower rungs of what they see as a golden ladder to influence and success. ZZ is their only son and what they need was a perfect son, an aspir

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books Ltd
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9789888843305

Book preview

1

The original idea to look for Zhang Zhan came from my son Shen Yishen when he asked in a WeChat message if I still remembered his former high school classmate, whom I’d never met. A vague image was all I could recall—a figure with no height or facial features, but linked somehow with an airplane. The name Zhang Zhan, which has connotations of ‘stretching’ and ‘spreading of wings’, can be easily linked with birds and airplanes, and I remember Zhang Zhan precisely because of an airplane accident in June 2009 when Air France Flight 447 crashed. Zhang Zhan’s father died in that crash, less than a week before he was to take the National College Entrance Exam, the gaokao.

My son is pursuing a Ph.D.­­­­­ degree in bioinformatics at a university in California. He said that he wanted me to find Zhang Zhan because he could be a big help in his research. I was not gung-ho about this assignment because we had quarreled about a month before, after which he warned me against meddling in his academic affairs. Plus, he has stopped talking to me since then. What made him think he had the right to ask me to search for Zhang Zhan and ‘meddle’ in his research project? A rage began to swell in my chest and I almost uttered the ‘F’ word.

Honestly, I seldom meddle in his academic affairs. The only time I got involved was when he was bickering with an academic adviser in the biology department, who suggested he take a cutting-edge bioinformatics class he didn’t like. He ended up choosing something else because it was optional and he had the right to choose whatever class he wanted. The adviser said she had previously never met any student who rejected any class she had recommended. That does not make an elective class a compulsory one, my son retorted.

I can imagine the way he spoke eloquently in fluent English with the adviser. He is articulate and he thought once he was in the United States, he would enjoy freedom and equality just like anyone else in that country. He thought he could ignore differences in age and status and argue as they do in Hollywood movies.

Although I thought he made sense, I still got angry.

You act like a rebel wherever you go! Why can’t you just amend your ways? Why can’t you just follow the adviser’s advice like everyone else?

I said that from a vulnerable mother’s perspective. I feared the United States might not be as free and equal as he thought and I didn’t want to see him get trapped or frustrated in an alien land far away from home, but he reacted with fury.

Mom, I’ve told you all this only to let you know what I’m thinking. Mind your own business and don’t worry about me. I know how to manage my courses. We belong to different generations, and we have different codes of conduct.

I hate you for saying that! I said lividly, "Is not Yao Jiaxin part of your

generation? What’s your take on the hit-and-run driver who said, ‘My dad is Li Gang’?"

Yao Jiaxin was a piano student known for fatally stabbing Zhang Miao, a restaurant waitress, after he had knocked her off her bike with his car. He killed her for fear she might ask for compensation if she lived. Yao was sentenced to death on April 22, 2011, and executed several weeks later.

In the same year and month, Li Qiming, the drunken son of Li Gang, a local deputy police chief, in Baoding, Hebei Province, mowed down two female students on the campus of Hebei University. One of them died and the other was badly injured. Sue me if you dare. My father is Li Gang, Li Qiming was quoted as saying by witnesses. And he drove away.

After these cases were reported, I had a heated discussion with my son through WeChat and I gave some extremely negative comments about the younger generation.

I regretted having brought that up again, but in a fit of rage, I could find nothing else to say. I realized how short of wisdom I was in dealing with my son.

The label of ‘rebel’ got on my son’s nerves and made him speechless for quite a while, but instead of squabbling with me, he simply said in a suppressed voice, Mom, let me say this. Never jump to any conclusions before knowing the truth of the matter. How much do you know about our generation? How much do you know about my research area? Leave me alone, okay?

The way he made me irrelevant but demanded my help upset me immensely, and because I was upset, I didn’t want to hear what else he had to say, but I do remember his saying how hard it had been for him to get a clue as to Zhang Zhan’s whereabouts. He said his internet search of the name Zhang Zhan generated only 37 results, of which only one student from Bincheng University was admitted at about the same time Zhang Zhan would have been in college. Though he knew Zhang Zhan went to Bincheng University, he lost track of him after September 2009. I decided to dig into my memory for clues related to Zhang Zhan and the plane crash.

A flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris mysteriously disappeared 4,000 meters above the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009. Five days later, pieces of the plane debris surfaced; one month later, the wreckage of the aircraft was salvaged; in the summer of 2011, along with the discovery of the black box, 104 bodies were salvaged. The cause of the crash was pilot error.

A weird thing happened to me during the months preceding the Flight 447 airbus crash. In January 2009, my published novel To Infinite Relationships was carried by several magazines. Six months later, I did a title search of the novel on the internet and found a blog article written by someone pen-named Hermit of Hongdong Mountain. He wrote that a friend of his had recommended the novel to him before taking a business trip on board Air France Flight 447. The novel is about the close family ties of a young couple going home for Chinese New Year holidays. It’s a very touching story. The blogger then bought a magazine that carried the novel and he read it in a breath. He even spent time patiently retelling the complicated story in his blog.

A crash victim had read my story just before he boarded another 447 flight so my writing somehow got involved with a dead person. I was shocked and speechless, as if I had come across some belongings of a deceased person who had something to do with me or encountered something that shed a light on us both, and even on Zhang Zhan.

Before all this happened, I knew my son had a classmate whose father died in a plane crash. He was the district Party secretary of a city of Shanxi Province. The Party

secretary had sent his son and daughter to Dalian for high school. If Zhang Zhan’s father was the person who had read my novel when he was alive, I then became inevitably connected with Zhang Zhan, however far-fetched that might be. At least, that was how I remembered his name and became interested in knowing more about him, such as whether he took the National College Entrance Exam, whether his father’s death affected his performance in the exam, which college he eventually attended and so on.

Nevertheless, the limited information I got from my son was enough to sadden me: The death of his classmate’s father did not seem to cause him to react at all. In order to sit for the exam, he did not go to France with his mother to join the Air Crash Victims’ Family Group, but he underperformed in the exam and could only attend an average school in Dalian. However, what really saddened me was his breakup with his family in high school, three years prior to the plane crash. During the first year of that breakup, he did not even spend Spring Festival with his parents, even though they had booked an air ticket for him. After that, his parents never wanted to see him again. In other words, he had parted with his father three years before he died.

The Air France crash occurred in early June 1 and I read the blog written by the Hermit of Hongdong Mountain on July 17. Because Zhang Zhan’s father had read my fiction, I had special compassion for his bereaved son and wanted to see him and give him some help. Whatever caused the breakup with his father, the death of a loved one must have been very hard for him. But my son insisted Zhang Zhan would never see me. Plus, he reasoned, he could have gone back to his hometown in Shanxi when the national college entrance exam was over. He might not be in Dalian at all.

After thinking it over, I decided to put off seeing Zhang Zhan. After all, one must respect a victim and leave him alone until he is ready to see and talk to people.

Later, my son intermittently told me more about Zhang Zhan. He did that not because he wanted to help me, but because he couldn’t let go of some memorable things they did together after the college entrance exam. My son is a deeply nostalgic guy. His room is piled up with everything he has ever used and played with—electronic pets, four-wheel drive car models, electronic trains, used school uniforms, even all his exam papers from first grade to the end of high school. When idle, he would spend time there digging into the past and sigh and toss his head like an 80-year-old man. I was pretty sure he enjoyed talking about Zhang Zhan simply because he wanted to review part of his past life and I was a willing listener in his eyes.

Zhang Zhan is the most stubborn and wayward guy I’ve ever seen. Did you know the hair salon girl he was dating was eight years older than him? He’s a freak who never takes the initiative to socialize with people but is always surrounded by people. He never studied hard, but loved to paint, and sometimes he would even paint during class. Nevertheless, he ranked 80 among 300 fellow students. He was a good cook, capable of preparing Shanxi-style potato entrees, and he kept his rental apartment on Xi’an Road spotless. By his parents’ arrangement, he had an ‘exchange mother,’ a district official of the city. On every holiday and festival, she would offer to take him to dinner in a fancy restaurant, but he kept turning her down and wouldn’t let his sister go with her, either. During one of his birthdays, he invited us over to his house for potato pancakes. The exchange mother came with a birthday cake, but he flatly refused to open it. When she saw that, she angrily flung the cake at us. I admired him!

At this point, my son’s spirits suddenly plummeted. Like a pony running

in the wilderness that was suddenly left behind by his companions, he looked frightened and confused, and began to seek my help.

Mom, I, I hurt Zhang Zhan. Following his father’s death, his Laolao (maternal grandmother) suddenly died as well. Do you know what text message I sent to him? I said, ‘Don’t grieve, God is molding you. God loves you! You will have a very successful career’! I didn’t mean God was going to give him success at the cost of bereavement. You know what I mean, but he has since stopped contacting me."

I certainly understand what he was saying, but it takes hindsight to see misfortune as fortune. Comforting words of that nature may backfire because they border on derision. That was when I discovered that my son’s negative reaction to me was due to his failure to find Zhang Zhan. I knew my son was babbling about him not out of nostalgia, but because of his failure to reach him by phone when he wanted to explain himself to him. I also realized where my son was when he was out during holidays and I found out what a municipal district official could do.

More importantly, I got to know about an outlandish school where they would enjoy certain privileges or stand better chances of being admitted to an Ivy League college. Such children typically lived in the custody of a local official and called that official ‘father’ or ‘mother’. I just can’t imagine how a district official in the city of Taiyuan and one in the city of Dalian, which are so far apart, could somehow get connected.

My son’s account of Zhang Zhan certainly served to increase my interest to see him, although that interest was more about not wanting to see him suffer more than he has already suffered than about comforting him or building a bridge of understanding between the two, for I had no idea how close they truly were.

I told my son we could also try to find Zhang Zhan’s exchange mother if Zhang Zhan could not be found first. However much he dislikes her, she is one who has helped him in his growth path. Though he rejects any material support from her, he might as well accept spiritual counsel and comfort from her.

As it turned out, however, my son didn’t want me to contact her at all. Stop making a fool of yourself, Mom. She would never bother to talk to intellectuals like you! he said.

I didn’t quite buy that, but I gave up the idea as I ferreted out of memory more and more information about the exchange mother. I recalled seeing her at numerous parents’ meetings. She was tall, had a long, thin, oval face, and wore professional outfits in all seasons. The most impressive thing about her was her short hair that gave her an air of arrogance as she stormed into the meeting places, with no show of nervousness or humility typical of parents.

Since she was not Zhang Zhan’s real mother, she certainly had no need to be nervous or humble at all. When she showed up with her shiny black hair before me, I could easily guess she was the type of woman who had nothing but power in her eyes.

Nevertheless, that was not the key reason I didn’t see her; the key reason was that time and space were changing. Before long, Zhang Zhan and my son graduated from high school and went to different colleges. I had an empty nest and said good-bye to all types of exams and parent-related meetings, and routines related to my son drifted away like clouds.

My son busied himself with matters of his own concern after telling me that finding Zhang Zhan would do him a lot of good. He would never know how, like a wisp of breeze, his words would have blown back the drifting clouds and unveiled a kid hidden therein. By and by, that breeze would turn into a storm and cause me to lose sleep for several nights running. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see a plane crash in front of me, followed by rising dark clouds and family members of the victims, crying uncontrollably at the airport terminal, their eyes resembling ashes; and as these scenes fade away, Zhang Zhan’s eyes blinking with apathy would drift into view. He seemed close to me and within my reach, but if I watched him intently, he would suddenly go far away, as if he were nonexistent. Next, opening my eyes with a jerk, I would realize he was already permeating my entire nervous system, because I would repeatedly ask a stream of questions: Where is he? What’s he doing? What does his father’s death in the plane crash mean to him? Why did he break up with his father? Would his father be angry with him still?

It was then that I learned how little I knew about Zhang Zhan.

He was a former classmate and good friend of my son. If they were good friends, why would they end up losing touch just for one hurtful expression? Is it because something bad, either physically or spiritually, has happened to him or someone else in his family? Also, why would my son want to find him? Is it because he still feels guilty for what he has said? Is it because Zhang Zhan could be of help to him on his project,

just as he has claimed? Or simply because he is nostalgic?

My son is currently studying psychology and philosophy in his spare time, especially the works of Freud and Heidegger, and his ultimate goal is to get into the field of philosophy through the threshold of science. Will Zhang Zhan’s growth indeed be of value to his research?

2

Following my son’s tips, I surfed the internet and searched for ‘Zhang Zhan’ on Baidu.com, finding 37 people by that name, mostly under the age of thirty, and I realized that the name somehow reflects the vogue of the time: Only after opening up (zhang) can one spread (zhan) one’s wings.

Under the query ‘Zhang Zhan of Bincheng University’, the only entry I found was: Zhang Zhan, class of 2009, Bincheng University. By logic, I would have found a clue to his whereabouts once I found the university he was attending. Bincheng University was in the suburbs, more than 40 kilometers away from downtown. It meant I had to drive through heavy traffic and go past the congested economic development zone—it would take me at least three hours back and forth. Years of indoor living have produced in me a laziness that causes me to neurotically dread long distance, and this dread is enhanced by my inability to drive. The good thing is that a lazy person may have a diligent mind. After some quick thinking, I came up with an easily workable plan. I would visit his high school teacher in her office, which is just five bus stops from my home or less than 20 minutes by taxi. I would be able to save a lot of time if she told me where he was.

The high school is right behind the Dalian municipal government building. In front of the school is a tramway built during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in the 1940s, behind it stretches a bus route leading to the pier, and on the east and west wings of it are busy commercial streets.

A high school is the kind of place where, regardless of how many crowded restaurants and shops surround it and regardless of the busy commercial atmosphere it’s shrouded in, you would be assaulted by a sense of isolation and incarceration the moment you stepped inside its perimeter walls. The stress, tension, intensified expectations and fear of the weight of the last straw are palpable everywhere. This is the case during class breaks, during PE classes when students run or play soccer on the playground and when the early winter sunshine sways warmly back and forth on their tender cheeks.

It looked as if luck was coming my way because, without making an appointment in advance, I was able to catch break time and recognize that baby face in the far distance. She was standing quietly at the entrance to the classroom building, with waves of students pushing around her back and forth.

I yelled out, Miss Wu, but she didn’t recognize me at all. She looked blankly at me, as if I was an extraterrestrial. Not until I mentioned my son’s name did a sign of familiarity begin to emerge from her eyes.

Miss Wu, my son wants me to help him get connected with Zhang Zhan. Do you have his contact information? I went straight to the topic.

Miss Wu looked at me and shook her head, as if stunned at my question, when the bell rang and students immediately ran past her for class like water out of a floodgate. On hearing the bell for class, she looked even more entranced and anxious, although she did not immediately turn in the direction of the classroom as the students did. The deep furrows across her forehead curved up repeatedly as she smiled at me apologetically and waited for the noise to die down.

I never contact graduated students. Instead, they come to see me. Zhang Zhan never came back, she said.

Is he working now or going to graduate school?

I don’t know.

What was his major at Bincheng University?#

I don’t know.

Do you remember that exchange mother of his? What’s the name of the district she leads?

She looked stunned, as if not knowing what exchange mother meant, and the wrinkles on her forehead looked more conspicuous in the sun.

I mean his chaperon in Dalian who came to attend parent-teacher meetings on behalf of his own parents, I explained.

After thinking for a while, she shook her head again and said, "I forgot.

Forgot even her last name. She’s chief of Donggang District."

Right. Zhang Zhan has a younger sister who goes to school in Dalian, too. Is she still around?

I don’t know. Maybe not.

I was disappointed, especially when she quickly returned to the classroom, but I couldn’t blame her at all. After being done with my son and Zhang Zhan’s class, she taught five more graduating classes. If she had to keep all the students’ information, she would probably have a huge database to manage.

I felt bad anyway and began to lose interest in finding Zhang Zhan. I didn’t want to keep acting as my son’s slave any more after being at his beck and call for so many years. To stay away from the noise of his demands, which seemed so much louder to me in quietude, I decided to get out of the house to hang around with friends or go to the movies or something.

I ended up visiting my friend Yan whom I haven’t met for quite some time. She had a family cinema and a café in Dalian. Unlike me, who would be at a loss what to do whenever I hit the slightest snag, she would be just fine, even if she screwed up everything got everything screwed up. The Yans were both well-paid construction engineers, but because they had no time to take care of their son Bao Yuan, they pretty much left him on his own. Bao Yuan was seven years older than my son. Ten years ago, right after graduating from high school, he made up his mind to study hotel management in Switzerland, so Yan and her husband had sent him there. Three months later, Bao Yuan quit, claiming that Switzerland was no good and that the hotel industry sucked. So he went to Russia to study fashion design. And he was in Russia for six months only, because he was bored again after spending all the money he had with him. He said he didn’t like fashion design but preferred to learn movie directing in the US. A US school accepted him after he had met its minimum TOEFL and GRE scores and other requirements. You probably guessed right what happened next. He was doing exactly what the Yans have been doing constantly in their career: tearing down an old building to build a new one. Later, when the Yans retired and were unable to build any more high-rises, their son stayed where he was—his parents’ home, to watch as many as a thousand movies over a continuous span of several years.

Every time I visited the Yans, I could see a disheveled and gaunt Bao Yuan watching a movie in the dark. He was obviously being consumed by the ups and downs of the lives of the characters in the movies, for he looked much older than his age. Yan didn’t seem bothered. I’ll see what he’ll do when he spends all the money, she said. Go begging, robbing, or what? I couldn’t care less. I won’t give him any of my pension for retirement, no way.

I knew what she was saying. She simply had to face the reality, although not every mother could come to terms with a son like that. What I later found out was that, if you just don’t panic, nothing terrible could ever happen. For example, for years, I’ve had trouble falling asleep every time Bao Yuan crossed my mind, until one day Yan told me happily that her son was now making money. He doesn’t need to rob a bank anymore, she said on the phone. He had written movie reviews for several magazines and had made quite a bit of money that way, she explained. Happy-go-lucky people have their own way of turning things around, but you can’t use them as a mirror to see your own life. In order to forget my son’s demands, I lent my ears to Yan’s talk about Bao Yuan’s movie reviews on Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction so as to better understand those articles.