Black-headed Gulls
Standing abruptly in front of me on the left, was the Yunnan Provincial Library, which I had never set foot inside, except once at an opulent restaurant on its first floor. I took out of my rucksack a book I’d been reading recently, The Moor’s Last Sigh.
“You truly like to read, you always have a few books with you whenever you’re on the road.” Bin, who was sitting on my left side, said to me.
“I was reading The Story of Mr. Sommer the other day. While waiting for a train at the Jianshui Railway Station, a little girl struck up a conversation with me. I then told her what claustrophobia was. She asked me if it was like being afraid to take a train, and I said that trains were fine, after all, passengers could walk around and there were such big windows. For people with claustrophobia, flying was scarier. You couldn’t move and the space was so small that you felt suffocated. The little girl said she took a flight last year, from Kunming to Beijing, and she wasn’t scared at all.”
“I don’t know what to say to kids, I think kids are pretty stupid sometimes.”
“They’re rather straightforward. Whether they are rejecting you or welcoming you, they show it. If they don’t like you, they don’t pretend they like you. If they think you’re ugly they’ll say you’re ugly, unlike adults who are used to putting on airs and graces that they don’t know how to tell the truth anymore.”
“You’re still doing AIDS-related work?”
“Yes, a while back I was at a private foundation for war veteran relief. Now I’m kind of back in the old business.”
“How long can a person with AIDS live? Five years? Ten years?” Bin’s expression became all the more eager.
“It’s not AIDS, it’s HIV. AIDS is the final stage of HIV infection. As long as it is treated early, HIV infection will not progress to AIDS. With good treatment, life expectancy is about the same as an ordinary person.” I didn’t quite understand why ordinary people were so concerned about how long they would live when they had a major illness as if living a few more years would mean they could do something great.
“It’s usually through sex that people get HHHHIIIIIVVV, isn’t it?”
“Now yes, the vast majority acquire HIV through sex. Why do you take a sudden interest in this?”
He stared at the flock of silly birds flying up in the air. “How much does the treatment cost?”
“It’s free. But if a patient needs a better drug, or develops resistance and hence has to change his regimen, he’ll have to pay for it out of his own pocket. A lot of people travel to Thailand or India to buy generic drugs.”
“Can a normal person get HIV?”
“What makes a normal person? It seems to me that my colleagues are quite abnormal.”
“I might need an HIV test. I’m a bit scared.”
I wasn’t in the least surprised; Bin had been working for a construction company for a few years now, staying in Kunming for a handful of days a month. A stroll through a red-light district wasn’t much of an overkill when stationed in those remote towns across Yunnan. But, I wasn’t about to get into the details.
“So have you thought about getting tested yourself?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for the past year, but I’m afraid to go.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid to let anyone tell me the test result, and what should I do if I have it?”
“Have it treated — as simple as that.”
“People with AIDS are discriminated against by others, aren’t they?”
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I turned a few pages of the book in my hand, I no longer wanted to correct his choice of words. “I don’t know how to put it simply. But I always feel that many HIV-infected people who claim they are discriminated against are doing it more to gain sympathy, and gaining sympathy is to get more resources, it’s profit at work.”
“I remember that Milan Kundera expressed dismay at a slogan in his Encounter. A march used a slogan like ‘Proud of Those Who Died of AIDS’ or something like that. Kundera said that expressing sympathy and fighting for their rights was something he could understand. But was there anything to be proud of about the disease itself?”
Bin didn’t say anything, so I continued, “My colleagues are sensitive about their HIV status. Anything uttered by another person could be interpreted as a deliberate insult to their ‘dignity’, even if that person knows nothing about HIV. Maybe they need a country where they can live together without ‘outsiders’. Ironically, if one day the government says every HIV-infected person can receive one thousand dollars a month, they’ll be very motivated to show their identity and sign up for the money. Such things have happened before, in Liangshan.”
Outside, the black-headed gulls were having a lunch break, and none were flying anymore. I was reminded of a time fifteen years ago when I walked into Cuihu Lake from the East Gate for the first time. An entrance fee of five yuan was charged. It was a Sunday morning, and retired locals were singing and dancing inside. My travel companion asked me, “Are you sure you want to go in?” I replied, “Ticket money has been paid.” Not far away, a senior woman about sixty years old, wearing lipstick and eyeliner, sang into a grenade-like microphone, “If you want to marry someone, you must marry me, you must marry me.”
After a long silence, Bin said, “Can you take me to a safe place to have a test?”
“Sure. When?”
“Now.”
I took Bin to a public hospital, and two other private health consultation centers for testing, and the results were: negative, negative, negative. He suggested taking me to Haigeng Dam to continue watching those silly birds. Why not?
“You know, in my daily work, I have come into contact with people who are very HIV-phobic, who may not necessarily be infected, or have done nothing that could make their chances of contracting HIV greater than the chances of dying from a bike fall. But they are so afraid that they can’t live a normal life. Kind of like my OCD, when it’s severe, I’m at home for an hour or two checking to see if this and that are put in the right places. And all they do all day is worry about infection, and unlike you, they do a test every three days or so.”
“It’s a sickness in the mind, isn’t it?”
“What else? A British colleague once told me that some people in the UK are in the same situation, they sometimes find HIV-infected people, have a sex party, and take the initiative to get infected with HIV. Their logic is: I’m afraid of getting infected with HIV, instead of letting this fear ruin my life, I’ll take the initiative to get infected. And then they’ll just take pills every day to treat the infection so that at least they’ll be able to normalize their lives.”
“This is hard for me to imagine, but I’m really happy to know that I’m not infected.”
“Well, it’s certainly good that you are not infected. But what I’m trying to tell you is that illness is a part of life, not the opposite of life, and it’s important to learn to live with it. Besides, who is perfectly healthy?” In fact, I didn’t say the last sentence that day, now that there is no longer an opportunity to do so.
The drive to the Dam took almost an hour, and in this rainy season, more people were traveling than ever. On the Dam, every twenty to thirty meters there was a stall selling fried potatoes or tofu. The silly birds here were a little fatter and had stronger wings than those at Cuihu. A group of students from Yunnan University were doing publicity to protect those black-headed gulls.
“I quite miss the days at school. Now it seems I am freer in the company, but I can’t feel much joy. Once I was playing a computer game in the office and the manager asked me if I was doing anything, and without hesitation I answered that I wasn’t. I couldn’t pretend to be busy, right?” Bin took the initiative to digress and I felt happy for him.
“Oh no, you couldn’t and you shouldn’t. But you have a lot to learn from my colleagues. When the boss is around, everyone pretends to be busy, even going to work earlier. When the boss is away, some keep asking where the boss is. I’m just wondering, what does it matter to them where the boss is?”
“Haha, you guys do that too?”
“People are the same. Sometimes these so-called charities are even more corrupt than government departments. The government has an accountability mechanism, but in our organization, we can’t even find the person ultimately responsible for the shit we’ve done. The consequence of fucking up a project and failing to satisfy the needs of disadvantaged people is nothing worse than less funding. When a government department gives an order, regardless of whether or not it’s doing shit, at least the government employees work efficiently. My colleagues are a bunch of Donghong. And to say they’re Donghong is even a sort of overestimation.”
“‘Donghong’, what does that mean? Is it a word in your dialect?” Bin knew I was from Tengchong.
“It pretty much means stupid. Have you seen enough stupid birds? Let’s go back to Cuihu, I have a dinner party tonight.”
“Okay, I’ll drive you there then.”
“I am going to meet a former colleague, now a good friend, someone who would burn books he didn’t like at home.”
“Wow, he does have a character. And where do I drive you to?”
“Find a place to park over at Yunnan University, there’s a car park by Cuihu. You can go to dinner with me, but we’ll be talking about stuff that you won’t be able to follow. Just play video games on your phone if you don’t want to listen.”
