'Ben, Ben!'

'What is it, Fenfang. I'm just brushing my teeth and I've got to be in college in fifteen minutes.'

I could hear running water in the background. I suddenly started sneezing and coughing.

'Sounds like you've got a cold, Fentang. Did you go to the doctor?'

'What?' I sniffled down the line. 'Don't be ridiculous. Chinese people can't go to see the doctor every time we have a stupid cold.'

'Well, if you won't go see a doctor, then at least buy some cranberry juice, it's good for fevers and colds,' said Ben impatiently.

'Cranberry juice? Are you crazy? In all of Beijing, you can only buy weird stuff like that at the Jian Guo Men Friendship Store and the supermarket under the China World Trade Centre. There's no way I'd be able to afford it. Thirty yuan for a taxi there to buy a tiny bottle of some extravagant American juice that will cost about forty yuan!'

Ben got impatient again. 'Whatever, just take care of yourself, Fenfang.'

'Okay, okay, I will. I just wanted to say hello to you. There's a crazy wind out here today. Sorry, I have to go now, I'm in a hurry.'

'Me too,' said Ben. 'Speak soon.'

I put my phone back in my pocket. I suddenly realised the whole business with Ben just didn't make any sense. Why did we carry on talking on the phone? Didn't we realise there were 18,400 miles between us? Couldn't we admit that we knew nothing about each other's lives? I didn't even know how old Ben was, or what his family was like, or whether his parents were together or divorced. As for Ben, he had no idea where Ginger Hill Village was, or of how I had dreamt of a different future. I felt desperate.

With so little money in my pocket I couldn't get a taxi. I had no choice but to get the bus halfway across Beijing, through Ditan to the Jiang Su Hotel. My shoes were dusty from all the people stepping on my feet as they squeezed on to the bus. My long hair was full of knots. I'd forgotten to put on make-up and I was wearing an ugly coat to protect my body from the spitting sand. I had none of the charms a woman should have when she goes out to meet a man. But fuck all that fake stuff, what did it matter here anyway? I was going to meet an Underground Director. A real one. A seriously anti-mainstream guy.

I had to change buses twice. I could feel my temperature rising. It was already after nine o'clock, but still the buses were so packed the conductor couldn't get through to collect the tickets, and kept shouting. My head was throbbing, and the script in my hand was getting crumpled. When I finally managed to extract myself from the jammed bus, I moved like an old dog. I could see the Jiang Su Hotel towering ahead of me. I was cold and hungry. Be patient, be patient, I kept repeating to myself. Soon you'll get Hao An's story made into a film and you'll earn enough money to buy hot duck soup every day.

I hurried up to the second floor and found the Huai Yang Cuisine restaurant. But there were no men on their own. I looked around and around. No sign of anything like an Underground Director. Had he left already? What if I wasn't going to get any money today? I bent over the bar, grabbed a phone and punched in the number he'd given me.

'Hey, it's me, Fenfang. I'm here! HuaiYang Cuisine on the second floor of the Jiang Su Hotel. Where are you, Underground Director?'

'I said the Jiang Su MOTEL, not Jiang Su Hotel!' he said. 'You need to take a bus a couple more stops.'

Who the fuck would put a Huai Yang Cuisine in the Jiang Su Motel and in the Jiang Su Hotel? Desperately, I hung up and ran back downstairs into the dark night.

As I hurried into the street, I felt my body temperature jump from 36.5°C to 37.2°C and then keep on going straight up to 39.5°C. I was having trouble breathing, it was like an asthma attack. Everything around me went blurred. I couldn't tell the difference between the Jiang Su Hotel behind me and the Jiang Su Motel ahead of me. The buildings looked the SAME, the characters on the signs looked the SAME too. The wind persevered in its howling and the moon had disappeared behind the sand swirling in the sky. It was the end of the world. I could still just about hear the latest news being broadcast via the loudspeaker hanging on the electricity pole:

Again, a violent storm has taken our city by surprise. According to the Beijing Meteorological Centre, at 4 p.m. today the concentration of sand in the city's air reached a peak of 1,012 milligrams per cubic metre. This evening a gale-force-eight north-westerly wind reached the Haidian area of the city. The storm originated in the Gobi Desert region of Inner Mongolia and will continue on its course into northern China, before making its way south…

The weatherman's last few sentences were drowned out by the sandy wind. This was Beijing. A city that never showed its gentle side. You'd die if you didn't fight with it, and there was no end to the fight. Beijing was a city for Sisyphus – you could push and push and push, but ultimately that stone was bound to roll back on you.

The wind was as solid as a pot falling on my head as I stumbled through the streets. A man trembling in the cold passed me, so I asked him the direction to the Jiang Su Motel. 'What motel?' he barked at me, with clearly no idea where the hell it was. He pushed past. An idiot. 'Life is just like those stewed pigs' trotters. Sometimes you just have to eat what you're given.' Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I was repeating Comrade Loaded-With-Gold's words again.

The neon lights of the high building in front of me gradually focused into characters, a name, a motel, the Jiang Su Motel. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, it wasn't an illusion, I was there.

That night I sold Hao An's destiny and received 5,000 yuan from the Underground Director. As I was leaving, he said to me, 'Fenfang, I never expected you to be so young – or to have such a red face and hot hands. You look like you could play the Bloody Mary woman in your story.'

I thanked him and then I thanked him again, before I sank into the darkness of the stormy Beijing night.

Fragment Twenty

TWELVE BOXES ALL TOGETHER, small and big, I counted.

I sat on the edge of my bed, looking around the empty room. Everything was packed, and the storage company was coming tomorrow morning. This place was half dead. A naked bulb was dangling from the ceiling. A broken plastic chair standing alone by the door. Two packets of instant noodles past their sell-by date abandoned on the table. The broom propped silently in a corner. The walls marked where I had taken down the posters. It was strange to see how memories can be packed into boxes – 10 years of living in Beijing wrapped up in cardboard. Tomorrow, all these boxes would be stacked into a warehouse. Tomorrow, I would receive a piece of paper with a number. Then I could go anywhere I wanted, travel anywhere without worrying about paying rent. That number would be my home, the digit home in my brain.

Perhaps I would go to Yun Nan in the south, and live on a mountain. I could ask the locals to teach me how to find mushrooms in the forest. Or I could go to Da Lian, the seaside town, and discover the Yellow Sea and its fishing boats. Or perhaps I could go to Mongolia, to live in a tent, look after sheep and lie in the grass looking up at the big sky. But before going anywhere, I needed to get hold of the script for a play, a play by Tennessee Williams called A Streetcar Named Desire. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I was determined to know what this Tennessee guy was all about. I wanted to see if I could find the shiny things in life all by myself. I wanted to know if I could sleep by myself and not yearn to feel next to me the warmth of a 37.2°C man. While I thought about all this, I toyed with my address book, opening it, flipping from beginning to end, and back from end to beginning.