'I've been watching loads of DVDs recently,' said Patton. 'Every night actually.'

'Me too. It's the most popular leisure activity in China at the moment, don't you think?'

'God knows. Anyway my favourite movie last week was The Sixth Sense. I loved the twist at the end, when you understand that Bruce Willis was dead all along…'

'What?' I shouted, choking on a piece of duck. 'I thought Bruce was alive! How could I have missed that? Maybe I was in the kitchen cooking dumplings, or in the toilet.'

Patton seemed upset. 'How can you watch a film like that? Chinese people are terrible movie-watchers. My girlfriend is the same. She'll chat on her mobile during the most dramatic scenes. We watched The Blair Witch Project together. It was unbearable. Do you know what she was doing during the closing scenes, the most intense part of the film? She was on the phone to her auntie in Three-Headed Bird Village, Hu Bei province! Then, afterwards, she had the nerve to keep asking me what happened. It drives me crazy. To be honest, I think one of the reasons I tried to split up with her was because she just doesn't know how to watch a film.'

'Patton, you Americans take watching films much too seriously. It's like going to church for you. For us, going to the cinema is just the same as going to the market to buy cabbages.'

Patton didn't answer back. It seemed like he'd given up.

After that, we didn't talk much. We just stared at the steam rising from the bubbling hotpot. Some families had flooded into the restaurant and occupied all the tables. In the back room, a woman sang karaoke in a horrid voice – Sandy Lam's 'I Love Someone Who Isn't Coming Home'. These days, most big restaurants have karaoke in order to attract customers. The Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant offered free karaoke if you ate two ducks. Anyway, everyone was screaming around us, but Patton and I were as silent as two pieces of tofu. We didn't know what else to talk about. As soon as we left the dreamworld of films, we both became boring and ordinary people again.

Perhaps we should just sing karaoke.

I looked at Patton. He was as frustrated as me. I noticed the empty bottles on the table.

'Right, Patton, time for another Revolution…'

Fragment Seventeen

I DECIDED THAT I HAD TO GET OUT of the narrow cupboard my life had become. I found a proper job at a film and television company. It seemed time to forge my self-centred individualist life into some kind of healthy activity in an official Collective Team. The company I went to work for was called New Century Films.

The night before my first day at work, I watched the state-run TV news. I needed to know the name of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since I didn't read the newspapers. It was 8.30. I washed my face and decided to apply a Korean herbal face pack. I wanted to look like a fresh moonflower when I met my new Collective Team for the first time. I didn't want my face to show that I hadn't seen anyone for days, and that I'd been living in my apartment with only computer cables for company. I brushed my teeth and unearthed some dental floss that I hadn't used for about eight lifetimes. I wanted my breath to be like an orchid's when I spoke. Then it was the outfit. I turned my cupboard upside down looking for a skirt that wasn't too unconventional. I found this bullshit pink suit a costume designer once gave me because it didn't suit the leading actress. I rummaged until I found some serious-looking shoes. By 9 p.m. I had also prepared my office bag. I had no idea what an office worker should carry to an office job. I filled the bag with a notebook, a new ballpoint pen, a women's magazine. I added in all those extra women's props, a lipstick, face powder, lip pen, eyelash brush.

Getting ready like this reminded me of when I'd been a schoolgirl. Every spring, our school had gone on a trip to a mountain or a forest. The night before the trip, I would torture my poor little bag because I could never decide what to take. Then I would be too excited to sleep, and the next morning I'd be so tired I'd be late. Once I even missed the whole trip. We repeat ourselves in life – the same habits, over and over again.

By now it was 10. I needed to go to bed, to rest myself like any peasant does before starting a hard day's work in the fields. I set my alarm for 8.30 a.m. Then I decided to set the alarm on my mobile phone as well. And the clock radio. In fact, I made sure that any piece of equipment in the room that could make a noise would do so at 8.30 a.m. precisely. But then I thought: if I wake up at 8.30 a.m., and arrive at the office at 9 a.m., that might look like I don't take the job seriously enough, which would not be a good first impression to make on my new Collective Team. So I decided I should wake up at 8 a.m., and that an 8.30 a.m. entrance to the new office would be more modest. I changed all the alarms and climbed back into bed. But again, lying there, I decided no, I should get up at 8.30 a.m. because this time was more in tune with my body-clock. I needed to be honest with my body, it wouldn't be happy if it was cheated. I got up and changed all the alarms back to the original time of 8.30 a.m. By now it was 11 p.m. Shit. I lay down and tightly shut my eyes.

Snuggled up under the covers, I felt nervous and excited, like a pregnant woman. Tomorrow I'd be going to work. My first real job. I thought I should write an email to Ben, share this big news with him. I got up, plugged in my computer and waited for it to charge up. I wrote Ben a quick email, then I switched off the computer and jumped back into bed. I lay as still as I could, as though I was playing the part of a Red Army soldier dead on a battlefield, who can't move until the Director says: cut! My mind wouldn't settle. I started to think about how I should spend my first month's salary. Maybe I could buy a kitchen ventilator so I could see what I was cooking. Maybe I could also buy a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the hair on my floor, so I didn't feel as if I lived in a hair salon. Or I could just use the entire sum on phonecards to call Ben whenever I wanted. I tried to imagine where I would be sitting in the office, whether I would have my own desk. I wondered what would happen at lunch, whether I would be invited to eat with the rest of the Collective Team. And at the end of the day, how did they say goodbye to each other?

Then I started to have nightmares. In one dream I missed the subway, just like in that film with Gwyneth Paltrow – Sliding Doors. I was running to make it on to the train, but the doors closed just before I got there, and all I could do was watch as the train left me behind on the empty platform. The dream made me so nervous that I woke up and jumped out of bed. It was still dark. My alarm clock said 1 a.m. Far away from 8.30 a.m. I lay back down and fell asleep. That's when I dreamt of my father, or rather my father's funeral.

An undertaker was working on my father's aged face, as he lay in an open wooden coffin. Everyone was at the funeral – family members, villagers, even the Community Leader was there. But strangely, it wasn't in our village, but one by the sea. The grave was on a sharp, narrow cliff above the water. There was so little space, the mourners had to stand close together and straight like pencils. Any false move and you'd either drop into the sea or into the grave. From the cliff, you could look out over the entire East China Sea, and see Japan and Taiwan. An old man threw earth over my father's face and suddenly the eyes opened. My father looked straight at me. I felt an urge to jump into the grave to help him close his eyes, but the next shovel of dirt covered his face. I woke up. Then bang – 8.30 a.m. Every possible alarm was ringing around me. Officially summoned, I got up. Brushed my teeth. Washed my face. Dressed carefully – knickers, tights, bullshit pink suit. I was as quick as an army cadet in training. And now, there I was, fully dressed, with my bag of props. I locked the door and walked out into the street.