The Dissident [antikvár]

1. I WAS NOT MEANT TO BE A DISSIDENT. I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO LIVE outside of China. I never intended to be a guest, for an entire year, in the home of strangers, dependent on their charity and kindness. Who would have imagined, watching me grow up in Harbin—sitting quietly with my father in our old apartment behind the Russian church, or clutching my mother's hand as she haggled good-naturedly with Old Yang over the price of scallions—that I would wind up in Los Angeles, living in the guest room of people who could not find the province of Heilongjiang on a simple English map? I am tempted to say it was an accident. Certainly I would not have gotten involved in politics, or in the artistic community of the Beijing East Village, had it not been for my cousin, also an artist—I will call him X. (Because of his continuing activity in China, I am forced to conceal his identity here.) But it also began with my mother, who always hoped I would become a famous artist and go abroad, and with my father, who sent me to have drawing lessons with his old friend, the painter Wang Laoshi. Quite possibly it began with Wang Laoshi, who saw my early efforts, and encouraged me to pursue absolutely any other profession. But I hesitate to put responsibility on others. In the end it's my fault that I am so easily persuaded. I have always been impressionable, skilled at mimicry. I am, as my teacher admitted, a brilliant copyist. On paper, I could reproduce Audubon's and Bada Shanren's birds; I could make my mother laugh by imitating the gestures and mannerisms of people we knew (for example, my father's postprandial expression of despair); even the pronunciation of foreign words was not difficult for me. In school, En-