“Someone had to tell her,” I said.
“I've known her all her life,” Whistle said. “She's practically my little girl, too.”
“Then you should be honest with her.”
“There are ways to be honest without making discouraging remarks!”
“I know, I know, I went too far.”
“Jing-nan,” said Gao, “Whistle's sore because he has some money invested in Mei-ling.”
“Money?” I said.
Whistle sighed. “Big Eye wouldn't pay for the online-song contest. So I spotted her the money.”
“It was a lot,” Gao interjected.
“A lot of these entrance-fee contests are a scam.”
“I know,” said Whistle. “But, hey, she won.”
“Everyone who pays the fee wins.”
“He paid for a photo session, too,” said Gao.
“What photos?”
“The contest required headshots and full-body shots,” said Whistle. “We went to one of Taichung's best studios.”
“Some of those pictures . . .” started Gao.
“Hey!” said Whistle.
“Some of those pictures, what?” I asked.
Gao sniffed. “Inappropriate.”
“She's a girl,” explained Whistle. “She has to look sexy.”
“Whistle,” I said, “this contest is sounding sleazier by the minute.”
“It doesn't matter! She won!” said Whistle as Gao chuckled.
We sat in resigned silence in the car until Mei-ling swung open the door and plopped back in her seat.
“Do you know anything about microphones, Jing-nan?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but show it to me, anyway.”
The box felt solid, but after scanning the specifications, I sounded the alarm.
“Hey, this thing's made in China!”
“What's wrong with that? You hate China?”
“I hate the cheap crap they make.”
“This is the highest-rated PC microphone,” she said before slyly adding, “in this price range.”
“You need a better one?” asked Whistle.
“No. This should be good enough.”
I'm still being too negative, I thought. “You know more about these things than I do, so if you say it's a good microphone, I'm sure it is.”
“Don't patronize me, Jing-nan!”
We looped through another small road to get back to the traffic jam in Xinyi. A bright spot caught my eye. When I turned I saw a single bright flame flicker in a burner in a back-alley temple to the Mother of Heaven, one of Mazu's manifestations. An extended family of about a dozen people was bent at the waist before her, heads low.
Mazu was a goddess whose legend is based on a young girl, a fisherman's daughter, who lived nearly two thousand years ago in China. This young girl could go into trances and rescue people from sinking boats and guide home the lost. Unfortunately she died young, but apparently ascended to heaven immediately and has been worshipped ever since.
When people crossed the strait for a new life, they built temples to Mazu in Taiwan out of gratitude for their safe arrival. Mazu's powers transitioned as her worshippers moved inland. She could make it rain to assure plentiful crops, divert an approaching hurricane, and comfort earthquake victims. Some of her followers still brag that Mazu appeared in the sky and opened her skirt to catch and deflect American bombs during World War II.
My parents believed Mazu could do anything. I was made to bow before her temple throne for the sake of my health and my fortune. I looked at her face behind the beaded veil of her headdress. I saw that her gaze was focused above and beyond us, trying to find people with more status and money to give to the temple.
Chapter Five
Big Eye owned a
condo in a tall, tapered building that had no windows on the first five floors. It looked like a Taiwanese space shuttle with booster jets attached to the left and right sides.
Whistle took us up the short drive to the entrance door. Gao raised a hand.
“All of you wait here. I have to make sure the apartment is clean first.”
When he was gone, I said, “I can't imagine that guy scrubbing toilets and mopping floors.”
“You have no idea what he means,” said Mei-ling before bursting with laughter. “He wants to make sure there's nothing incriminating in the apartment where Big Eye brings his women! Right, Whistle?”
Whistle made a low rumbling sound and stared ahead. Mei-ling slapped his headrest. “Stop making that sound! It's annoying.” She turned on the car radio with her phone and dialed up a death-metal song.
“This is your kind of music, isn't it, Jing-nan?”
“Not quite,” I said. “I like to understand what the singer's saying.”
She turned up the volume. “Is that better?”
“No, it's not better at all. Feel free to change the station.”
Mei-ling did some mock head-banging. I tried to grab her phone but she switched it to her far hand and made it dance in the air, out of my reach.
“Whistle!” I yelled, “can you turn the radio off?”
“Can't. She put it on override.”
Mei-ling stuck out her tongue and threw up the devil horn hand sign.
This was what I was going to have to put up with for the next week. This crazy little demoness and her awful music. Well, it was only a week and she was my cousin, after all. As I watched her continue her antics, something did crack through my thick shell of fatigue and I smiled. She sure wasn't afraid to look stupid. I'm glad she wasn't afraid. Too many kids these days are all about playing it safe and quiet to get into the best schools and then get the best jobs. I'd probably really lose my mind if Mei-ling were meek and sedentary.
Gao came back with a canvas bag about the size of a laptop and shoved it under his seat. He stood outside next to the open door and lit a cigarette. After two quick puffs he tossed it aside and slapped the roof. “Whistle, let's get Mei-ling's bags up there.”
Mei-ling finally killed the music.
The apartment didn't look as good as the building's exterior. The size was obnoxious, half of the eighteenth floor, and the furnishings were stylish to the point of not being functional. But the window in the living room was the main problem. It showed too much of the ugly city environs outside. Some people say the pollution is from China, brought in by the cold front from the northwest, weather warfare meant to break the Taiwanese will for independence. I say the city looks better with the smog. From this high up in the air it looks like used cotton swabs are floating by. That still beats seeing the city for what it is: blocks of squat illegal houses peeking out from behind the office towers of Xinyi Road. Rows of sideways-parked mopeds and motorcycles looking like the exposed gills of poisoned bugs on their backs. All over, single-eyed air-conditioning fans stared out blankly from behind dirty slats.
Mei-ling walked up to the window and touched her fingers to the glass.
“Don't you love this city? It's so exciting to be here!” She squashed her face against the window and looked hard to her left. “I can see Taipei 101!”
“If you think all this is great,” I said sarcastically, “you're going to think your first beer is amazing.”
“I already know how to handle liquor, Jing-nan! Didn't you see me do a shot on the ride up? Let's go back down to the car and see if you can do one!” She glanced at Whistle who curtly shook his head.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You took that shot to show off. That's a lousy reason to drink.”
“What's a good reason to drink? To relax? To get a buzz? Are those good
adult
reasons to drink?”
“Working full time is a good reason to drink.” Man, that was weak. It was annoying that she was challenging me, but even more distressing was that I didn't have good answers. “At your age, drinking will stunt your growth and brain development.” I spoke like it knew it was true.
Mei-ling made a dismissive hand flourish cribbed from Big Eye.
Gao stepped toward the door. “Well, that's it, then. Back to Taichung, Whistle?”
“Wait!” said Mei-ling. “Let's go to Din Tai Fung!”
I suddenly perked up. It had been a while since I've had soup dumplings and that restaurant made the best. I knew they opened at ten and now would be a great time to goâno line! We could easily grab a table for four.
I noticed crestfallen faces on Whistle and Gao, the saddest I'd seen on either. How could Mei-ling not see that these guys were pretty anxious to finally be cut loose?
“You and I can go, Mei-ling,” I said. “You don't want to detain Whistle and Gao any longer, right? They've both had really long nights.”
“Didn't you want to go, Whistle?” Mei-ling asked. “You've never been to the original location. It's right down the street!”
The two men dithered like boys about to be assigned tasks.
“Mei-ling,” I said, “they probably have something else to attend to. Do you want them to get into trouble with Big Eye because of you?”
“They're supposed to look after me. How are they going to get into trouble?”
“You're in Taipei now. I'm looking after you.” I looked at Whistle and Gao. They were relieved. How could they let a teenager wield so much power over them?
I texted Nancy to see if she was up for soup dumplings. Who wouldn't be? She said she'd meet us there in twenty minutes.
Although the restaurant was
on the same street, it was five major blocks from the apartment and each block was about 500 meters long. Mei-ling's shades covered half her face and the skirt she changed into barely covered her thighs. She made sure to lag behind in case some age-appropriate boys (who were supposed to be in school at this time, anyway) wanted to sidle up to her, the latest online pop sensation.
“Too embarrassed to walk next to me, huh?” I called over my shoulder.
“I'm not embarrassed. I just want people to see me completely.”
“No one knows who you are, Mei-ling.”
“Tell that to the thousands of people who voted for me,” she said.
Annoyed, I retaliated by picking up the pace. Everybody these days wants a bit of fame. Andy Warhol said that everyone was famous for fifteen minutes but in this fast-paced age it must be down to five or maybe even one. Maybe Mei-ling would get her time to shine, but when those sixty seconds were over, it was going to be ugly. I knew that Whistle and Gao wouldn't be able to handle it but I hoped that Big Eye or Mei-ling's mom could.
I had never met her mother and I had no idea who she was.
“Mei-ling, tell me about your mother.”
“What's there to tell? You know she's Hakka.”
“That doesn't tell me much.”
“Your parents are dead, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that why you want to know about my mother? Because you don't have one anymore?”
Confucius was right to hate children.
“No, Mei-ling. I'm just trying to understand
you
better. You're a troublemaker in school and yet you want to be a famous singer. Is your mom a singer?”
“She has a beautiful voice, but she never pursued it professionally. She should have, though. When my mom was younger she could have been a model, even after she had me. She's tall and has these big cheekbones. We have mountain-people blood. Big Eye saw her on a bus and he chased after it until she got off because he didn't have the money to get on. You know that he was away for a while and she had to work and raise me at the same time. It wasn't easy for her. I wasn't always a good kid.”
I thumped my chest to cover my involuntary coughs.
“We had to scrimp and save but she was raised that way. Her parents worked seven days a week and they sing, too. The Hakka life is work hard, play hard, but showbiz isn't a part of it.”
“Do you get along with her?”
Mei-ling wiped her eyes. “I actually get along with Big Eye better. He tries to tell me what not to do. She tries to tell me what to do. There are a lot more options with the former.”
I didn't know much about Hakkas except that their language sounded like Cantonese. The stereotype was that they were really cheap but that idea was probably propagated by other Chinese who tried to take advantage of them, and nobody took advantage of Hakkas. If Hakkas are anything, they are tough as nails. Historically they worked backbreaking jobs from sunup to sundown. Hakka women did the same physical tasks as the men.
Most of the early Chinese settlers lived in Taiwan's lowlands by the shore but the Hakka were driven into the mountains, where they established the camphor and logging industries. The Hakka villages borderedâsome say overlappedâareas claimed by different aboriginal tribes, who were already being marginalized. The Hakka depended on the protection of the Lords of the Three Mountains to keep the savages at bay. In time, of course, the two communities were bound by intermarriage and they both found common struggles in the coming centuries against other Chinese immigrants, the Japanese, and an authoritarian government that wouldn't recognize the legitimacy of Hakka culture and language.
When I saw someone like Mei-ling, I had to wonder if she was what her ancestors had in mind for the sacrifices they made for later generations.
“You're looking at me funny,” she said, lifting her shades. “Stop it.”
“I can't help it,” I said. “You're acting ridiculous.”
“How much farther is this place? We should've taken a cab!”
“Don't you want to give your adoring public a chance to see you up close?”
Three boys, aged between fourteen and eighteen, walked by. The youngest happened to glance at Mei-ling and she smiled too hard at him. An apologetic look came over his face and he dashed to hide behind his two brothers, who continued walking with their eyes fixed to Taipei 101's ghostly outline against the oily sky.
When they were too far to hear, Mei-ling said, “What's wrong with that boy? Is he gay?”
“He may or may not be,” I said. “He's not local, though. He and his family are on vacation here, from Japan, I'll bet. The parents look Japanese.”
“Where are the parents?”
“We're just passing them now.”
“How do you know that's them?
“The mother's holding the youngest boy's coat.”
Mei-ling nodded and gave me a half-smile that was tempered with a newfound respect. “That was very observant of you.”
“If you watch people closely, you'll know how to sell to them.”
I felt triumphant as
we crossed the street to Din Tai Fung. No crowd waiting on the sidewalk, just Nancy in tapered slacks and a collared charcoal shirt. It was one of her professional looks and a departure from her standby indie-rock style.
“I'm meeting one of the sponsors of the foreign students orientation today,” she said as a disclaimer. Mei-ling latched on like a younger sister.
“You're very pretty. What are you doing with this troll?”
Nancy didn't miss a beat. “I have to serve him because in a former life I was a farmer and he was my water buffalo.”
Mei-ling gave a genuine laugh. I liked that she liked Nancy right away.
“You don't look so bad for not sleeping last night,” Nancy told me.
“I dozed in the car coming back,” I said. I answered her raised eyebrows with a knowing look.
More on this situation later
.
“I've been so busy getting ready for these new students, I haven't been sleeping enough, either.” She gave Mei-ling an encouraging look. “After you spend some time here, you'll see that nobody sleeps in Taipei. We just work all the time.”
“I like it already,” said Mei-ling. “I want to work hard on my singing.”
I had told Nancy on the phone that Mei-ling was going to start high school in Taipei in the fall, but I hadn't mentioned the teen's star aspirations, so this was a surprise.
“You're a singer?” Nancy asked. “What do you sing?”
“I sing everything. Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Jess Lee.”
“I'll bet you're really good,” said Nancy with a smile. I couldn't help crossing my eyes.
“Thank you,” said Mei-ling. Turning to me, she said, “Your girlfriend is very nice and pretty. You should marry her, Jing-nan, because you can't do any better.”
“Maybe you can sing at the wedding,” I said. Mei-ling slapped my arm and Nancy kicked my leg both at the same time. We all laughed and then turned to the menu. I don't know why Nancy and I bothered to. We always got the same things.
“It's Mei-ling's first time here,” I said. “Why don't we let her order?”
“I don't like soup dumplings,” she said, dismissing the signature dish.
I shifted in my seat. “That's the most popular thing here,” I said. “Din Tai Fung is famous worldwide for them.”
“All their food is good, though, isn't it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Nancy.
“Well, let's order them anyway,” said Mei-ling. “Maybe their soup dumplings will blow my conception about them.”
“Seriously,” I said. “These soup dumplings are the best food outside of the night markets.”
Nancy and I watched Mei-ling tick off items on the order slip, silently regretting that she selected shrimp fried rice and left empty boxes by the spicy cucumbers and pea shoots.
“Let me see that,” I said. I added the two vegetable appetizers to our order. A waitress took our slip and scanned it. With a small nod she left.
“This is one of Jing-nan's old haunts,” Nancy told Mei-ling. “He started coming here when he was your age.”