I smiled, all my worries put to rest.
Then, for no reason, she began to criticize Yiban Johnson. “I must tell you, though, he’s awfully serious! No sense of humor! So gloomy about the future. China is in trouble, he says, soon even Changmian will not be safe. And when I try to cheer him up, tease him a little, he won’t laugh. . . .” For the rest of the afternoon, she criticized him, mentioning all his tiny faults and the ways she could change them. She had so many complaints about him that I knew she liked him better than she said.
Not
just a friend.
The next week, I watched them sitting in the courtyard. I saw how he learned to laugh. I heard the excited voices of boy-girl teasing. I knew something was growing in Miss Banner’s heart, because I had to ask many questions to find out what it was.
I’ll tell you something, Libby-ah. What Miss Banner and Yiban had between them was love as great and constant as the sky. She told me this. She said, “I have known many kinds of love before, never this. With my mother and brothers, it was tragic love, the kind that leaves you aching with wonder over what you might have received but did not. With my father, I had uncertain love. I loved him, but I don’t know if he loved me. With my former sweethearts, I had selfish love. They gave me only enough to take back what they wanted from me.
“Now I am content,” Miss Banner said. “With Yiban, I love and am loved, fully and freely, nothing expected, more than enough received. I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.”
I was happy for Miss Banner, sad for myself. Here she was, speaking of her greatest joy, and I did not understand what her words meant. I wondered if this kind of love came from her American sense of importance and had led to conclusions that were different from mine. Or maybe this love was like an illness—many foreigners became sick at the slightest heat or cold. Her skin was now often flushed, her eyes shiny and big. She was forgetful of time passing. “Oh, is it that late already?” she often said. She was also clumsy and needed Yiban to steady her as she walked. Her voice changed too, became high and childlike. And at night she moaned. Many long hours she moaned. I worried that she had caught malaria fever. But in the morning, she was always fine.
Don’t laugh, Libby-ah. I had never seen this kind of love in the open before. Pastor and Mrs. Amen were not like this. The boys and girls of my old village never acted like this, not in front of other people, at least. That would have been shameful—showing you care more for your sweetheart than for all your family, living and dead.
I thought that her love was another one of her American luxuries, something Chinese people could not afford. For many hours each day, she and Yiban talked, their heads bent together like two flowers reaching for the same sun. Even though they spoke in English, I could see that she would start a thought and he would finish it. Then he would speak, stare at her, and misplace his mind, and she would find the words that he had lost. At times, their voices became low and soft, then lower and softer, and they would touch hands. They needed the heat of their skin to match the warmth of their hearts. They looked at the world in the courtyard—the holy bush, a leaf on the bush, a moth on the leaf, the moth he put in her palm. They wondered over this moth as though it were a new creature on earth, an immortal sage in disguise. And I could see that this life she carefully held was like the love she would always protect, never let come to harm.
By watching all these things, I learned about romance. And soon, I too had my own little courtship—you remember Zeng, the one-eared peddler? He was a nice man, not bad-looking, even with one ear. Not too old. But I ask you: How much exciting romance can you have talking about cracked jars and duck eggs?
Well, one day Zeng came to me as usual with another jar. I told him, “No more jars. I have no eggs to cure, none to give you.”
“Take the jar anyway,” he said. “Give me an egg next week.”
“Next week I still won’t have any to give you. That fake American general stole the Jesus Worshippers’ money. We have only enough food to last until the next boat from Canton comes with Western money.”
The next week Zeng returned and brought me the same jar. Only this time, it was filled with rice. So heavy with feelings! Was this love? Is love rice in a jar, no need to give back an egg?
I took the jar. I didn’t say, Thank you, what a kind man you are, someday I’ll pay you back. I was like—how do you say it?—a
diplomat.
“Zeng-ah,” I called as he started to leave. “Why are your clothes always so dirty? Look at all those grease spots on your elbows! Tomorrow you bring your clothes here, I’ll wash them for you. If you’re going to court me, at least you should look clean.”
You see? I knew how to do romance too.
WHEN WINTER CAME
, Ermei was still cursing General Cape for stealing the pork leg. That’s because all the cured meat was gone, and so was the fresh. One by one, she had killed the pigs, the chickens, the ducks. Every week, Dr. Too Late, Pastor Amen, and Yiban walked many hours down to Jintian to see if the boat from Canton had come, bearing them money. And every week, they walked home with the same long faces.
One time, they returned with blood running down their long faces. The ladies went running toward them, screaming and crying: Mrs. Amen to Pastor Amen, Miss Mouse to Dr. Too Late, Miss Banner to Yiban. Lao Lu and I ran to the well. While the ladies fussed and washed off the blood, Pastor Amen explained what happened and Yiban translated for us.
“They called us devils, enemies of China!”
“Who? Who?” the ladies cried.
“The Taiping! I won’t call them God Worshippers anymore. They’re madmen, those Taiping. When I said, ‘We’re your friends,’ they threw rocks at me, tried to kill me!”
“Why? Why?”
“Their eyes, because of their eyes!” Pastor shouted more things, then fell to his knees and prayed. We looked at Yiban and he shook his head. Pastor began punching the air with his fists, then prayed again. He pointed to the mission and wailed, prayed more. He pointed to Miss Mouse, who started to cry, patting Dr. Too Late’s face, even though there was no more blood to wipe away. He pointed to Mrs. Amen, spit more words out. She stood up, then walked away. Lao Lu and I were like deaf-mutes, still innocent of what he had said.
At night, we went to the Ghost Merchant’s garden to find Yiban and Miss Banner. I saw their shadows in the pavilion on top of the little hill, her head on his shoulder. Lao Lu would not go up there, because of the ghost. So I hissed until they heard me. They walked down, holding hands, letting go after they saw me. By the light of a melon slice of moon, Yiban told us the news.
He had talked to a fisherman when he went with Pastor and Dr. Too Late to the river to learn about the arrival of boats. The fisherman told him, “No boats, not now, not soon, maybe never. The British boats choked off the rivers. No coming in, no going out. Yesterday the foreigners fought for God, today for the Manchus. Maybe tomorrow China will break into little pieces and the foreigners will pick them up, sell them along with their opium.” Yiban said there was fighting from Suzhou to Canton. The Manchus and foreigners were attacking all the cities ruled by the Heavenly King. Ten-ten thousand Taiping killed, babies and children too. In some places, all a man could see were rotting Taiping bodies; in other cities, only white bones. Soon the Manchus would come to Jintian.
Yiban let us think about this news. “When I told Pastor what the fisherman said, he went to his knees and prayed, just as you saw him do this afternoon. The God Worshippers threw stones at us. Dr. Too Late and I began to run, calling Pastor, but he wouldn’t come. Stones hit his back, his arm, a leg, then his forehead. When he fell to the ground, blood and patience ran out of his head. That’s when he lost his faith. He cried, ‘God, why did you betray me? Why? Why did you send us the fake general, let him steal our hopes?’ ”
Yiban stopped talking. Miss Banner said something to him in English. He shook his head. So Miss Banner continued. “This afternoon, when you saw him fall to his knees, he again let the bad thoughts spill out of his brain. Only now he had lost not just his faith, but also his mind. He was shouting, ‘I hate China! I hate Chinese people! I hate their crooked eyes, their crooked hearts. They have no souls to save.’ He said, ‘Kill the Chinese, kill them all, just don’t let me die with them.’ He pointed to the other missionaries and cried, ‘Take her, take him, take her.’ ”
After that day, many things changed, just like my eggs. Pastor Amen acted like a little boy, complaining and crying often, acting stubborn, forgetting who he was. But Mrs. Amen was not angry with him. Sometimes she scolded him, most times she tried to comfort him. Lao Lu said that night she let Pastor curl against her. Now they were like husband and wife. Dr. Too Late let Miss Mouse nurse his wounds long after there was nothing more to heal. And late at night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep but was not, a door would open, then close. I heard footsteps, then Yiban’s whispers, then Miss Banner’s sighs. I was so embarrassed to hear them that soon after that I dug up her music box and gave it back. I told her, “Look what else General Cape forgot to take.”
One by one the servants left. By the time the air was too cold for mosquitoes to come out at night, the only Chinese who remained at the Ghost Merchant’s House were Lao Lu and I. I’m not counting Yiban, because I no longer thought he was more Chinese than Johnson. Yiban stayed because of Miss Banner. Lao Lu and I stayed because we still had our duck-egg fortunes buried in the Ghost Merchant’s garden. But we also knew that if we left, none of those foreigners would know how to stay alive.
Every day Lao Lu and I searched for food. Since I had once been a poor girl in the mountains, I knew where to look. We poked in the places beneath tree trunks where cicadas slept. We sat in the kitchen at night, waiting for insects and rats to come out for crumbs we couldn’t see. We climbed up the mountains and picked wild tea and bamboo. Sometimes we caught a bird that was too old or too stupid to fly away fast enough. In the springtime, we plucked locusts and grasshoppers hatching in the fields. We found frogs and grubs and bats. Bats you have to chase into a small place and keep them flying until they fall from exhaustion. We fried what we caught in oil. The oil I got from Zeng. Now he and I had more to talk about than just cracked jars and eggs—funny things, like the first time I served Miss Banner a new kind of food.
“What’s this?” she asked. She put her nose to the bowl, looked and sniffed. So suspicious. “Mouse,” I said. She closed her eyes, stood up, and left the room. When the rest of the foreigners demanded to know what I had said, Yiban explained in their language. They all shook their heads, then ate with good appetites. I later asked Yiban what he told them. “Rabbit,” he said. “I said Miss Banner once had a rabbit for a pet.” After that, whenever the foreigners asked what Lao Lu and I had cooked, I had Yiban tell them, “Another kind of rabbit.” They knew not to ask whether we were telling the truth.
I’m not saying we had plenty to eat. You need many kinds of rabbits to feed eight people two or three times a day. Even Mrs. Amen grew thin. Zeng said the fighting was getting worse. We kept hoping one side would win, one side would lose, so we could return to life being better. Only Pastor Amen was happy, babbling like a baby.
One day Lao Lu and I both decided everything had become worse and worse, until now it was the worst. We agreed that this was the best time to eat duck eggs. We argued a little over how many eggs to give each person. This depended on how long Lao Lu and I thought the worst time would last and how many eggs we had to make things better. Then we had to decide whether to give the eggs to people in the morning or at night. Lao Lu said the morning was best, because we could have dreams of eating eggs and have them come true. This, he said, would make us glad if we woke up and discovered we were still alive. So every morning, we gave each person one egg. Miss Banner, oh, she loved those green-skinned eggs—salty, creamy, better than rabbits, she said.
Help me count, Libby-ah. Eight eggs, every day for almost one month, that’s what?—two hundred and forty duck eggs. Wah! I made that many! If I sold those today in San Francisco, ah, what a fortune! Actually, I made even more than that. By the middle of summer, the end of my life, I had at least two jars left. The day we died, Miss Banner and I were laughing and crying, saying we should have eaten more eggs.
But how can a person know when she’s going to die? If you knew, what would you change? Can you crack open more eggs and avoid regrets? Maybe you’d die with a stomachache.
Anyway, Libby-ah, now that I think of this, I don’t have regrets. I’m glad I didn’t eat all those eggs. Now I have something to show you. Soon we can dig them up. You and I, we can taste what’s left.
M
y first morning in China, I awake in a dark hotel room in Guilin and see a figure leaning over my bed, staring at me with the concentrated look of a killer. I’m about to scream, when I hear Kwan saying in Chinese, “Sleeping on your side—so
this
is the reason your posture is so bad. From now on, you must sleep on your back. Also do exercises.”
She snaps on the light and proceeds to demonstrate, hands on hips, twisting at the waist like a sixties PE teacher. I wonder how long she’s stood by my bed, waiting for me to waken so she can present her latest bit of unsolicited advice. Her bed is already made.
I look at my watch and say in a grumpy voice, “Kwan, it’s only five in the morning.”
“This is China. Everyone else is up. Only you’re asleep.”
“Not anymore.”
We’ve been in China less than eight hours, and already she’s taking control of my life. We’re on her terrain, we have to go by her rules, speak her language. She’s in Chinese heaven.
Snatching my blankets, she laughs. “Libby-ah, hurry and get up. I want to go see my village and surprise everyone. I want to watch Big Ma’s mouth fall open and hear her words of surprise: ‘Hey, I thought I chased you away. Why are you back?’ ”
Kwan pushes open the window. We’re staying at the Guilin Sheraton, which faces the Li River. Outside it’s still dark. I can hear the
trnnng! trnnng!
of what sounds like a noisy pachinko parlor. I go to the window and look down. Peddlers on tricycle carts are ringing their bells, greeting one another as they haul their baskets of grain, melons, and turnips to market. The boulevard is bristling with the shadows of bicycles and cars, workers and schoolchildren—the whole world chirping and honking, shouting and laughing, as though it were the middle of the day. On the handlebar of a bicycle dangle the gigantic heads of four pigs, roped through the nostrils, their white snouts curled in death grins.
“Look.” Kwan points down the street to a set of stalls lit by low-watt bulbs. “We can buy breakfast there, cheap and good. Better than paying nine dollars each for hotel food—and for what? Doughnut, orange juice, bacon, who wants it?”
I recall the admonition in our guidebooks to steer clear of food sold by street vendors. “Nine dollars, that’s not much,” I reason.
“Wah! You can’t think this way anymore. Now you’re in China. Nine dollars is lots of money here, one week’s salary.”
“Yeah, but cheap food might come with food poisoning.”
Kwan gestures to the street. “You look. All those people there, do they have food poisoning? If you want to take pictures of Chinese food, you have to taste real Chinese food. The flavors soak into your tongue, go into your stomach. The stomach is where your true feelings are. And if you take photos, these true feelings from your stomach can come out, so that everyone can taste the food just by looking at your pictures.”
Kwan is right. Who am I to begrudge carrying home a few parasites? I slip some warm clothes on and go into the hallway to knock on Simon’s door. He answers immediately, fully dressed. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits.
In five minutes, the three of us are on the sidewalk. We pass dozens of food stalls, some equipped with portable propane burners, others with makeshift cooking grills. In front of the stalls, customers squat in semicircles, dining on noodles and dumplings. My body is jittery with exhaustion and excitement. Kwan chooses a vendor who is slapping what look like floury pancakes onto the sides of a blazing-hot oil drum. “Give me three,” she says in Chinese. The vendor pries the cooked pancakes off with his blackened bare fingers, and Simon and I yelp as we toss the hot pancakes up and down like circus jugglers.
“How much?” Kwan opens her change purse.
“Six yuan,” the pancake vendor tells her.
I calculate the cost is a little more than a dollar, dirt cheap. By Kwan’s estimation, this is tantamount to extortion. “Wah!” She points to another customer. “You charged him only fifty fen a pancake.”
“Of course! He’s a local worker. You three are tourists.”
“What are you saying! I’m also local.”
“You?” The vendor snorts and gives her a cynical once-over. “From where, then?”
“Changmian.”
His eyebrows rise in suspicion. “Really, now! Who do you know in Changmian?”
Kwan rattles off some names.
The vendor slaps his thigh. “Wu Ze-min? You know Wu Ze-min?”
“Of course. As children, we lived across the lane from each other. How is he? I haven’t seen him in over thirty years.”
“His daughter married my son.”
“Nonsense!”
The man laughs. “It’s true. Two years ago. My wife and mother opposed the match—just because the girl was from Changmian. But they have old countryside ideas, they still believe Changmian is cursed. Not me, I’m not superstitious, not anymore. And now a baby’s been born, last spring, a girl, but I don’t mind.”
“Hard to believe Wu Ze-min’s a grandfather. How is he?”
“Lost his wife, this was maybe twenty years ago, when they were sent to the cowsheds for counterrevolutionary thinking. They smashed his hands, but not his mind. Later he married another woman, Yang Ling-fang.”
“That’s not possible! She was the little sister of an old schoolmate of mine. I can’t believe it! I still see her in my mind as a tender young girl.”
“Not so tender anymore. She’s got
jiaoban
skin, tough as leather, been through plenty of hardships, let me tell you.”
Kwan and the vendor continue to gossip while Simon and I eat our pancakes, which are steaming in the morning chill. They taste like a cross between focaccia and a green-onion omelet. At the end of our meal, Kwan and the vendor act like old friends, she promising to send greetings to family and comrades, he advising her on how to hire a driver at a good price.
“All right, older brother,” Kwan says, “how much do I owe you?”
“Six yuan.”
“Wah! Still six yuan? Too much, too much. I’ll give you two, no more than that.”
“Make it three, then.”
Kwan grunts, settles up, and we leave. When we’re half a block away, I whisper to Simon, “That man said Changmian is cursed.”
Kwan overhears me. “Tst! That’s just a story, a thousand years old. Only stupid people still think Changmian is a bad-luck place to live.”
I translate for Simon, then ask, “What kind of bad luck?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I am about to insist she tell me, when Simon points to my first photo opportunity—an open-air market overflowing with wicker baskets of thick-skinned pomelos, dried beans, cassia tea, chilies. I pull out my Nikon and am soon busy shooting, while Simon jots down notes.
“Plumes of acrid breakfast smoke mingled with the morning mist,” he says aloud. “Hey, Olivia, can you do a shot from this direction? Get the turtles, the turtles would be great.”
I inhale deeply and imagine that I’m filling my lungs with the very air that inspired my ancestors, whoever they might have been. Because we arrived late the night before, we haven’t yet seen the Guilin landscape, its fabled karst peaks, its magical limestone caves, and all the other sites listed in our guidebook as the reasons this is known in China as “the most beautiful place on earth.” I have discounted much of the hype and am prepared to focus my lens on the more prosaic and monochromatic aspects of communist life.
No matter which way we go, the streets are chock-full of brightly dressed locals and bloated Westerners in jogging suits, as many people as one might see in San Francisco after a 49ers Super Bowl victory. And all around us is the hubbub of a free-market economy. There they are, in abundance: the barterers of knickknacks; the hawkers of lucky lottery tickets, stock market coupons, T-shirts, watches, and purses with bootlegged designer logos. And there are the requisite souvenirs for tourists—Mao buttons, the Eighteen Lohan carved on a walnut, plastic Buddhas in both Tibetan-thin and roly-poly models. It’s as though China has traded its culture and traditions for the worst attributes of capitalism: rip-offs, disposable goods, and the mass-market frenzy to buy what everyone in the world has and doesn’t need.
Simon sidles up to me. “It’s fascinating and depressing at the same time.” And then he adds, “But I’m really glad to be here.” I wonder if he’s also referring to being with me.
Looking up toward cloud level, we can still see the amazing peaks, which resemble prehistoric shark’s teeth, the clichéd subject of every Chinese calendar and scroll painting. But tucked in the gums of these ancient stone formations is the blight of high-rises, their stucco exteriors grimy with industrial pollution, their signboards splashed with garish red and gilt characters. Between these are lower buildings from an earlier era, all of them painted a proletarian toothpaste-green. And here and there is the rubble of prewar houses and impromptu garbage dumps. The whole scene gives Guilin the look and stench of a pretty face marred by tawdry lipstick, gapped teeth, and an advanced case of periodontal disease.
“Boy, oh boy,” whispers Simon. “If Guilin is China’s most beautiful city, I can’t wait to see what the cursed village of Changmian looks like.”
We catch up with Kwan. “Everything is entirely different, no longer the same.” Her voice seems tinged with nostalgia. She must be sad to see how horribly Guilin has changed over the past thirty years. But then Kwan says in a proud and marveling voice: “So much progress, everything is so much better.”
A couple of blocks farther on, we come upon a part of town that screams with more photo opportunities: the bird market. Hanging from tree limbs are hundreds of decorative cages containing singing finches, and exotic birds with gorgeous plumage, punk crests, and fanlike tails. On the ground are cages of huge birds, perhaps eagles or hawks, magnificent, with menacing talons and beaks. There are also the ordinary fowl, chickens and ducks, destined for the stew pot. A picture of them, set against a background of beautiful and better-fated birds, might make a nice visual for the magazine article.
I’ve shot only half another roll at the bird market, when I see a man hissing at me. “Ssssss!” He sternly motions me to come over. What is he, the secret police? Is it illegal to take pictures here? If he threatens to take my camera away, how much should I offer as a bribe?
The man solemnly reaches underneath a table and brings out a cage. “You like,” he says in English. Facing me is a snowy-white owl with milk-chocolate highlights. It looks like a fat Siamese cat with wings. The owl blinks its golden eyes and I fall in love.
“Hey, Simon, Kwan, come here. Look at this.”
“One hundred dollar, U.S.,” the man says. “Very cheap.”
Simon shakes his head and says in a weird combination of pantomime and broken English: “Take bird on plane, not possible, customs official will say stop, not allowed, must pay big fine—”
“How much?” the man asks brusquely. “You say. I give you morning price, best price.”
“There’s no use bargaining,” Kwan tells the man in Chinese. “We’re tourists, we can’t bring birds back to the United States, no matter how cheap.”
“Aaah, who’s talking about bringing it back?” the man replies in rapid Chinese. “Buy it today, then take it to that restaurant across the street, over there. For a small price, they can cook it tonight for your dinner.”
“Omigod!” I turn to Simon. “He’s selling this owl as food!”
“That’s disgusting. Tell him he’s a fucking goon.”
“You tell him!”
“I can’t speak Chinese.”
The man must think I am urging my husband to buy me an owl for dinner. He zeroes in on me for a closing sales pitch. “You’re very lucky I even have
one.
The cat-eagle is rare, very rare,” he brags. “Took me three weeks to catch it.”
“I don’t believe this,” I tell Simon. “I’m going to be sick.”
Then I hear Kwan saying, “A cat-eagle is not that rare, just hard to catch. Besides, I hear the flavor is ordinary.”
“To be honest,” says the man, “it’s not as pungent as, say, a pangolin. But you eat a cat-eagle to give you strength and ambition, not to be fussy over taste. Also, it’s good for improving your eyesight. One of my customers was nearly blind. After he ate a cat-eagle, he could see his wife for the first time in nearly twenty years. The customer came back and cursed me: ‘Shit! She’s ugly enough to scare a monkey. Fuck your mother for letting me eat that cat-eagle!’ ”
Kwan laughs heartily. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard this about cat-eagles. It’s a good story.” She pulls out her change purse and holds up a hundred-yuan note.
“Kwan, what are you doing?” I cry. “We are
not
going to eat this owl!”
The man waves away the hundred yuan. “Only American money,” he says firmly. “One hundred
American
dollars.”
Kwan pulls out an American ten-dollar bill.
“Kwan!” I shout.
The man shakes his head, refusing the ten. Kwan shrugs, then starts to walk away. The man shouts to her to give him fifty, then. She comes back and holds out a ten and a five, and says, “That’s my last offer.”
“This is insane!” Simon mutters.
The man sighs, then relinquishes the cage with the sad-eyed owl, complaining the whole time: “What a shame, so little money for so much work. Look at my hands, three weeks of climbing and cutting down bushes to catch this bird.”
As we walk away, I grab Kwan’s free arm and say heatedly: “There’s no way I’m going to let you eat this owl. I don’t care if we are in China.”
“Shh! Shh! You’ll scare him!” Kwan pulls the cage out of my reach. She gives me a maddening smile, then walks over to a concrete wall overlooking the river and sets the cage on top. She meows to the owl. “Oh, little friend, you want to go to Changmian? You want to climb with me to the top of the mountain, let my little sister watch you fly away?” The owl twists his head and blinks.
I almost cry with joy and guilt. Why do I think such bad things about Kwan? I sheepishly tell Simon about my mistake and Kwan’s generosity. Kwan brushes off my attempt to apologize.
“I’m going back to the bird market,” says Simon, “to take some notes on the more exotic ones they’re selling for food. Want to come?”