本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Early spring, 1993, when everyone in my class was preparing for the graduation, I was offered a job, the first job in my life.
The owner of a small restaurant near my campus offered me an opportunity to make some money. Actually, the offer was made to everyone in my class. It was quite simple: he would pay everyone in the class 50 yuans to line up to buy stock vouchers for him, because a buyer needed to show his/her ID and pay 10 yuans for the purchase. Of course, our recruiter would supply all the necessary purchasing cost. 50 yuans could last half a month and that was why I was not surprised when everyone in the class, including me, had signed up.
Stock, a symbol of capitalism and something China had been condemning and eradicated for nearly half a century, came back to bite us - with a vengeance. It was the first time in this city since 1949 that anyone could own a part of a business. However, a stock voucher was not a stock by any means: anticipating an overwhelming investment demand from the citizens of the city, the government came up with this brilliant idea that anyone who had a valid ID could buy a stock voucher that cost 10 yuans. The stock voucher would qualify its possessor to participate in a lottery process, of which the chosen stock vouchers would qualify for buying real stocks. Although the stock voucher was one step away from stock in a transaction but miles away in economic significance, it by all means had all the risks of stock.
No one had a clear idea what a stock was, but it was widely understood stock meant money. Thus, this restaurant owner, who had not graduated from high school, recruited all the business students in my class, to queue to buy stock vouchers for him. But we were too excited to notice the irony and decided to start early next day.
5:30 am, I was rocked out of my deep slumber by someone and followed the whole class setting off for the task. It was still dark outside and quite chilly, but the excitement and thrill of making quick money had expelled any remaining drowsiness.
6:15 am. We arrived at one of several stock voucher distribution centers in the city. We were dumbfounded to see layers of layers of people, who must have been queuing since the night before. They brought benches, foldable stools, blankets, food and drinks, and cards for killing the time. The only problem was that there were no queues at all, but clusters of people here and there with more and more people coming and converging to the center.
6:45 am. We found a place, settled down and formed a new cluster, chatting, laughing, joking, smoking and playing cards.
7:30 am. Our recruiter came to give us a pep talk and reiterated at the end of the talk that we should deliver the vouchers to him as soon as possible. 10-yuan bills were distributed around and we all promised unequivocally we would send vouchers to him once we bought them.
8:00 am. More people were coming, as if the whole city was excited about and doing one thing – buying stocks.
8:30 am. People who were sitting stood up; people who were standing moved forward; waves of people were inching aimlessly. There were several times when we believed we were moving forward, only finding ourselves moving farther and farther away from the distribution center. There was shoving, pushing and jostling. Then, there was some more shoving, pushing and jostling. People coming from all sides started to spill out on to the streets, into the alleys, filling all possible alcoves between buildings. The scene was scary.
8:45 am. A man came out from the distribution center, using a bullhorn and blaring that everyone should remain in the line and anyone with a legitimate ID would be guaranteed to purchase a stock voucher. No one was listening, or people listened but unable to do anything – the place was packed and no one wanted to lose his/her spot. All the girls in my class had left or been pushed out. We soldered on.
9:00 am. The four vending windows were open. There was an obvious excitement rippling through the crowd, because all of sudden, there was a greater force from that excitement plastered me to the back of the people in front of me. There were still no lines. People simply filled up all the possible spaces that were big enough to hold a pair of feet.
10:15 am. I was push closer to a vending window, with my left hand on the shoulder of a man in front of me and my right hand holding high a 10-yuan bill and my ID. The air stank of sweat, smoke, body odor and urine. I guess someone would rather pee on himself than lose the spot. Besides, there was no toilet in sight.
10:27 am. Among a forest of stretched out arms, I thrashed my hand that was holding the 10-yuan bill and my ID into a vending window. At that moment, I pressed my cheek on the back of a person in front of me so that my arm could extent a bit longer, just as someone pressed his on my back doing exactly the same thing. Everyone was using his body to push and twist forward. Someone inside the window snatched the money and ID out of my hand and quickly squeezed the ID and a paper back into my hand. The transaction was completed at a blink of an eye and I assumed that paper was stock voucher. Then, without further verification, I fought my way out of the crowd. I barely contained my jubilation and already started thinking of ways to spend that 50 yuans, as people all around me anxiously pushed me out.
10:30 am. As soon as I made my way assiduously out of the crowd and before I had a chance to digest what had just happened, someone yanked the stock voucher out of my hand and dangled a stack of money in front of my nose and yelled, “sold, 350 yuans, yes?” Without thinking much, I nodded and grabbed that stack of money before he changed his mind.
11:17 am. One by one, we all made it back to the dorm. None of us kept the voucher. We all cashed in. Deducting a cost of 10 yuans, we all made a decent profit of about 300 yuans to 350 yuans. The sensation of a windfall was so intense that, for nearly one hour, we talked intermittently our respective experiences, which were basically the same. To celebrate this timely victory before graduation, we decided to dine out. As business graduates, we felt we were entitled to the profit.
12:30 pm. Some students from other departments also came back, all with a beaming face an ear-to-ear smile, because the market price of the stock voucher had skyrocketed to 750 yuans! And they all regretted to some extent selling the vouchers so soon! The rumor on the street was that market price was on its way toward 1000 yuans and no one was thinking the market could go the other direction. We all instantly felt depressed, cursed our useless academic learning and realized bitterly that we were no smarter than our recruiter. My explanation of “opportunity cost”, a concept I have learned in the library, had set the dorm into an even more mortifying mood.
1:15 pm. Market had changed right after the lottery. The news from the street was that, within 10 minutes, the vouchers were worth nothing. Some people were crying. The capital was at work. Once the news that the voucher market (not stock market) had crashed reached us, we started to congratulate ourselves once again and headed off to a restaurant. We were business graduates after all! Everyone was winning, except the restaurant owner.
1993 was a special year for China. US Federal Reserve was invited to visit China and advise on China’s economic reform. Delegations were sent abroad to learn how to do it. No one raised any questions or debates; no one made any slight effort to “cross the river by touching boulders”. In a transition of morphing into a market economy, China established a full-functioning central bank, using monetary methodology to monitor economic activities – a direct copy from the industrialized world. Furthermore, micro-economically, China required businesses of all types to change their accounting systems to one that was compatible to international standards. All of sudden, China’s academic world scrambled to do one thing and only one thing they were allowed to do and good at doing: to prove the correctness of those decisions from the government. Two months before graduation, we were required to take a two-month crush course on western accounting system, at a time when what we really needed was to find a job. We became outdated the moment we graduated! Everyone was cursing, smashing things over the frustration and betrayal. To vent the anger, students shoved trashed directly out of window. I did not feel infuriated, because I did not learn anything during four years in the university, like in a downward spiralling market, not losing was winning.
We, business students of 1993, wobbled into a completely different job market naked.
I wrote Xie my last short letter, telling her my go-to-US plan had failed and now I was about to drift to I-don’t-know-where. The night before leaving the campus, everyone was drunk. Enemies became brothers again; lovers gave each other one last kiss; roommates throwing reunion promises at one another. It was very sentimental and depressing.
Off we went the next day.
Since I had worked, Xie and I stopped writing each other. But we gave each other a call from time to time to check how the other was doing. She worked for a local import and export company after graduation. We were further and further away from each other. Space and time did kill intimacy. But I sincerely hoped she could meet a good man and settle down. My mother still asked about her whenever I went back home, and she started to accept the fact that Xie and I were only friends.
Maybe we were a pair of parallel lines after all. As it says in Qi Qin’s song “No Need to Force Yourself”, human love has its own will.
http://youtu.be/JNRTJg15k9Y
At each place we break up, there are always messy footprints.
Who hasn’t been hesitating?
Who hasn’t been lingering?
I will bury my love in an unforeseeable reunion.
In a lonely and cold night, I left you without a word, with tears in my eyes.
There are tons of words, but I don’t know where to start,
only quietly waiting for the wounds to heal.
It is not easy to break up with you,
I can’t stop thinking about you;
If you really care, don’t need to force yourself.
I don’t blame you.
If your diary is too crowded, just gently erase me.
In countless disturbed nights, I called out your name in my dreams;
I miss your smile; I miss your figure; my love is turning into a fading memory.
In every sad and beautiful love story, there must be a hurtful rendezvous.
I can’t stop thinking about you; I can’t forget you; I will bury the memory in an unforeseeable reunion.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net