《孽子》

To those kids,

Who in deepest black of night,
pace the streets alone,
And have no one but themselves.

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Three months and ten days ago, on a unusually cloudless afternoon, my father drove me out of the house. The sunlight shone onto our alley like a bright sheet. I tried my hardest to drive my bare feet out of that alley, running over it, looking back, and seeing that my father was there behind me. He seemed to be moving faster than his tall figure would allow, unsteady, and with one hand kept firing the weapon he had once used as a captain on the Mainland. His hair was bright like that alleyway, on end, and a pair of bloodshot eyes flared with rage. His voice, full of grief and resentment, trembled and yelled, "Animal! Animal!"

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Notice:

At 11pm on the the 3rd of this month, 12th-grade student Li Qingyu of night class C engaged in obscene behavior with Lab Manager Zhao Wusheng in the chemistry laboratory and was apprehended by school police officers onsite. The student's moral character is dishonorable, and his great wickedness has affected the reputation of the school. In addition to receiving 3 demerits, he will be expelled from the school as an example to others.

Gao Yitian, Principal of Shengli High School

The People's Republic of China, May 5th, 1959

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Chapter One

In our kingdom it was always nighttime, never daytime. At first light, the regal sun would hide itself because this kingdom of ours was an illegal nation.

We had no government and no constitution, and we were neither recognized nor respected. The only thing we had is a mob of citizens.

Sometimes we would put forth a a head of state -- someone who was senior, poised, directed, and well-liked. However we were also capricious, and would topple him in rather unruly fashion. We grew bored quickly and liked having something new. We were a people who didn't abide by the rules.

To speak of our territory, it was actually pathetically small: less than two or three hundred meters long, and less than one hundred meters wide. It was limited to just the ground surrounding a rectangular pond in the garden on Taipei's Guanqian street.

Around all the boarders of our land, overlapping topical thickets grew utterly tangled together: green coral, breadfruit trees, palm trees whose hair had fallen with old age, and a line of King Palms lining the road who shook their heads and sighed all day long. They were like a fence of inseparably close fields circling and concealing our kingdom, and temporarily separating us from the world outside.

Even then, the threat of the world outside the fence was always a dull worry upon our minds.

Out by the broadcasting platform outside the thicket, a clamoring loudspeaker often sent us the latest ear-catching news.

One of Zhongguang Company's female radio announcer's menacingly announced in standard Beijing accent, "American astronauts have landed on the moon!"
"The Hong Kong and Taiwan international drug trafficker Si Xiao has been caught!" "The water and fertilizer department's corruption case begins tomorrow!"

Each of us would prick up our ears as if we were in forest full of tigers and wolves, a herd of elk ready to flee, listing with intent alertness. As the wind blew across the grass, each sound was a warning. Were the iron studs of the policer officer's leather boots to ever crunch into the ground and our territory invaded, we, within that thicket of palms, had an unspoken plan to scatter in all directions. Some would flee in front of the broadcasting platform, mixing in with the group of people there. Some would get into the bathrooms, pretending to pee or defecate. Some would run to the park gate, on those ancient-mausoleum-like museum steps, and hide behind the towering obelisks there, concealing themselves in the temporary cover of the shadows.

This government-free kingdom of ours had no way to offer us shelter, and we all had to rely on our own instincts, fumbling in the dark for the road of of survival.

Our kingdom had a rather vague history. I don't know when it was founded or when it started, but even in those few years, no small number of song-worthy and tragic events -- the kinds of aches you couldn't bring up with outsiders -- occurred in our very secret and very illegal small assembly of a country. The few grey-haired seniors among us told about those things, always with an air of sadness, and would alway sigh knowingly, "Ah, life back in those days..."

It's said that that a certain number of years before, red water lilies used to grow in the lotus pool. In summer, the water lilies would bloom one by one, each floating on the water like a glowing red lantern. But for some reason the city government decided to have people come and remove each one of the water lilies and put up an 8-sided pavilion in the center of the pool. They also built a number of red-pillared pavilions with green tiles all around the outside of the pool, adding fake traditional culture to our once extremely simple and primitive land. When those seniors among us came to this point, they would never fail to to sigh remorsefully, "Those red lilies! Their beauty was truly moving."