HINTS (Ah Shi)
by Fang Fang, c.1991

In "Hints" ("Ah Shi") Fang Fang examines the problem of fidelity in love and marriage. She shows an example of the tragic consequence that can result when the restraint that moderates and regulates human appetites is overcome by sexual desire. Such regulation is required by civilized life. The Chinese philosopher and teacher Confucius, who concerned himself with the problem of self-control and with the moral duties a man owes himself and his government, summed up the matter when he said, "If a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him."

In "Hints" Fang Fang describes the lack of personal integrity in the lives of several members of two generations of a modern Chinese family. Their lust causes pain and suffering for themselves and for innocent members of the family. The story is told in the voice of the narrator, and it is divided into four segments with differing locations and times.

The first segment takes place in Nanking over a two-day period in the mid-1940s. It begins with Ye Sang washing her husband's blue-striped "Crocodile" shirt while her husband, Xing, is talking on the telephone. In checking Xing's shirt pockets, she finds a "red cinema ticket." The item is to her a "hint" that her husband may be cheating on her. When she confronts him with the ticket, he offers an innocent explanation. Later, however, Ye Sang discovers a note in his shirt pocket, which again arouses her suspicion. On the note is a message for him that requests a further rendezvous. Confronted with this, Xing simply smiles and asks, "What are you driving at?" Then he leaves for work, but he does not return that evening. The next morning, convinced of her husband's betrayal, she packs her bag and hails a taxi. The driver takes her to Nanking's Xiaguan dock, where she boards a Yangtze River steamer bound for Hankou.

The second segment consists of Ye Sang's overnight voyage down the Yangtze to the port of Hankou, where her parents and sisters live. In light of her suspicion of Xing's betrayal, the refrain of a pop song on the radio explains Ye Sang's flight, "Let me move along, and find a home for my heart." Her trip turns out to be miserable, however. She chooses to take a fourth-class cabin, which accommodates up to 25 passengers, and the stench from the crowded cabin drives her to the deck. Standing by the railing, she hears an "aged voice" and sees the figure of an "old man with silver beard and hair." He says to her, "Child, you are taking this too seriously?" The old man is apparently the ancestral figure of Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, who taught that one should follow nature's way, the working of the universe, which "does without doing" and accomplishes things without strain or stress.

Ye Sang's family consists of her father, mother, second sister, and third sister, she herself being the elder sister. The second sister has had tragic mental problems. At college she fell in love with a boy she was dating. He, however, did not take her seriously. When he realized how she felt, he tried to hint what his real feelings were. She failed to understand his hints, and so he was blunt about the matter. When he told her that he did not love her, she was devastated. She left college never to return and became schizophrenic. She developed the habit of listening to conversations and interrupting the speaker by saying, "That's a hint." The third sister is engaged to be married to a postgraduate student named Ning Ke, who often comes to the house of Ye Sang's parents and who shows a decided interest in the oldest sister. Soon after Ye Sang arrives at her parents' home, her husband telephones her, but she refuses to talk to him. Later, when her father suggests that she call Xing, since, after all, he is her husband, she replies, "I intend to follow my own ideas."

The father invites Ye Sang to accompany him to honor her aunt at the temple where her ashes have rested in an urn for 20 years. She remembers that her father had gone berserk when the aunt committed suicide, although she did not know why. She watches her father caressing the photograph of the aunt that is attached to the urn. As they are leaving the temple, the father tells her of "the pain he had endured all these years."

It is at this point that the frame story is introduced. Thirty years earlier the father and her aunt had fallen in love while in college, and they had vowed that they would marry each other. They had sexual relations, and he made it a habit to slip into her bedroom after dark and not leave until the crack of dawn. One day, however, the aunt was delayed and unable to get a message to her lover. While she was away, her sister, later Ye Sang's mother, unexpectedly came home and occupied the bedroom. As was his habit, that night he slipped into the bedroom and threw himself upon the woman, almost literally raping her and impregnating her. The sisters' parents wanted to have the man sent to prison, but the aunt prevented it. He then promised to marry the aunt's sister if she would abort his child. She did so, and they were married. Her father's story has a profound effect on Ye Sang, who realizes that the pain of her own tragedy is far less than his many years of suffering.

Ning Ke later comes to the house with two tickets to a concert. He intends to take the third sister, but she cannot go since she has promised to show some tourists around Hankou. The father proposes that Ning Ke take Ye Sang instead. The mother agrees, and Ye Sang accepts the invitation. But she is well aware that Ning Ke has sexual designs on her, and before she leaves with him, she deliberately dons a "sexy undergarment." After the concert she and Ning Ke take a cab to Ning Ke's quarters, where she allows him to have his way with her. When he declares his undying love for her, she says coldly, "Your wild thoughts are your weakness."

When Ye Sang returns to her parents, she is ready to go home. She has adopted a philosophy of nonresistance to the natural flow of the universe. She no longer expects human society to be perfect. Hence, she phones her husband in Nanking, who replies to her in a calm manner, asking, "What are you up to?" She says, "From now on, I won't care who you sleep with, me or that Ding Xiang of yours." She then adds, "It's cold," and she tells him where to find his warm jacket.

The fourth and final segment describes Ye Sang's voyage up the Yangtze River to Nanking. As the ship moves out of Hankou Harbor, she sees the third sister standing beside Ning Ke and waving good-bye to her. Ye Sang has justified her adultery as triumphs over what she considers two lecherous men, and she says to herself, "I simply did what he [Xing] has been doing, and more beautifully." But as Ye Sang sees her sister standing beside Ning Ke, she wonders how she can repay her sister for what she has done. She then wonders if her sister will do something to punish her. During the voyage home Ye Sang feels as if she were walking on water. She thinks that living on earth cannot be the only form of existence, and she again sees the "beckoning hand," an image that becomes a leitmotiv in the story. The aunt then appears in the fog and says, "I can't stand sin."

Perhaps the central theme of "Hints" is that "evil delights" end in sorrow. Another is that a few hints or clues do not make a case. When Ye Sang tells Xing that she is coming home, he assures her that he can explain everything. "It is not," he says, "what you have imagined." Hence the story ends on an ambiguous note.

Some of the features of Fang Fang's style ought to be noted. She tends to support her themes by the repetition of key words that she then develops into leitmotivs. She transforms thoughts into concrete images, as in the following, "Ye Sang felt as if she could see fragments of Second Sister's thoughts floating through the forests like so much gossamer in the wind." Fang Fang also makes effective use of archetypal images to suggest the development of morality through the ages. Finally, in developing her plots, she repeatedly contrasts routine, everyday events with the anomalous, tragic events of evil delights.

—Richard Benton