Rewriting Stella
Page 13
kept topic live, uncomfortably. “No, fine,”
Ai finally said, “air normal good,” phrase tone
as if to sprout what someone else had sown.
89.
“We’ve walked a longer way, I think,” Abu
said after half an hour had passed. They turned
an umpteenth corner, gasped. There, Xanadu
rose up before them: four-tiered tower wormed
its way into the sky ’cross river’s flow.
The corners of its shingled roofs curved up,
its arches carved as if whole studio
connived to etch the wood with verve. “My pup
would love to walk here,” Stella said, in awe,
as eyes took in surrounding bamboo groves.
“The Jinjiang River,” Ai explained. Flies gnawed
at limbs exposed. It didn’t matter. Trove
of urban nature stood nearby! Stel knew
this park would civilize days in Chengdu.
90.
They savored for some minutes sculpted view,
and learned the park’s name ‘Wangjiang’ meant ‘view toward
the river’, noting Ai’s dad’s name too used
the character for ‘river’, jiāng. Reward
for long day warred was dinner. Family
eponymously styled meal, shared each dish.
Its aromatic spice uncannily
oozed through all rooms. “We celebrate with fish,”
said Long, the father, mentioning that luck
was likelier to come to those who feast
on fish on Lunar New Year. He’d instruct
the kids on how their chopsticks could carve beast
that lay on platter, flesh finely preserved
through death that severed soul before ’twas served.
91.
“I’ve only had one fish before,” said Stel,
who liked the taste but hassled with the bones,
“and that was recently.” Her undersell
of pleasure with the food was pure homegrown
proclivity to mildness. Serving plates
lived in the table’s center, one with rice,
one vegetable, enough to satiate
the mouths that dined. “Tomorrow will be Twice-
cooked Pork,” the mother shared. The dad waxed on
about the local lore on eating meats.
The kids felt their brains overtaxed. Upon
conclusion of the meal they moved toward sheets,
to fix the snowglobe’s drifting images
as memories under REM’s night diligence.
92.
On way to school next day, they chatted more.
Ai shared how schedule of the day would shift,
from eight to ten they’d brave Chinese, the core
class underlying scholarship year gift.
“I like with other country people friends,”
said Ai, “school good with this. It have like you,
Nigeria, and Guinea.” Dividends,
Stel later learned, were oil well IOUs,
“And Congo, Zim, and Mozambique.” There, ore
and timber were raison d’être for loans.
“Their kids have been here longer?” “Yes.” Offshored
extracted natural treasures formed the bones
of Chinese economic beast: a frame
for them, while crossbones left export states maimed.
93.
The second day of gleaming school would hurt,
its shimmer overshadowed by a stone.
For ‘stone’ was how their teacher’s name converts
to English from the ‘Shi’ with rising tone.
From moment that they sat in class, no word
of English would be said. They’d need to learn
in Chinese. From her body, they inferred
some minor guidance. That class overturned
their every notion of what classrooms were:
to sit there, grilled by tutor on a book
was more intense than back home, where deferred
engagement’s silence was quite widely brooked.
They’d need to think as fast as when outdoors
when faced with crises journeying outpours.
94.
“I don’t know if I want to study like
you did for months for your exams,” said Stel
at lunch when they took rice and rest. “A tyke
knows so much more than we do.” “We’re compelled,”
Abu replied, “to catch up. Now we’re last.”
“Of course we’re last. We just arrived,” she sighed,
recalling how she’d donned cloak of outcast
when Grandmum died, then switched it and shanghaied
Abu’s rewarded trip. “I’m here because
it isn’t home, but not because I want
to be top student. Accolades and buzz
are up to you.” Then silence set détente.
Ai came and sat, arriving late. One peek
at face showed she’d need to their glee upkeep.
95.
The second night was different from the first.
Once finishing their dinner, all retired
to study in their bedrooms, none coerced
by parents. Textbooks in which they’d be mired
were long and hefty, mostly in Chinese,
its square-block prints intimidating on
the page. Their dictionary lacked the ease
of those of alphabetic tongues: now gone
were simple days of finding stuff in books.
Instead they had to look at tone and sound,
then find the section where the shapes and looks
identically matched character they’d found.
Stel first had problems finding the right ‘ji’
from hundred-something possibilities.
96.
The third day came at even faster pace,
with expectations ratcheting by day.
Assignments nearly needed hyperspace
to lengthen doing time. To disobey
a deadline was to cause yet greater strife.
The fourth day passed, then fifth, then weekend loomed.
Stel felt like soldier marching to the fife,
repeat exhausting motions self subsumed.
Her solace sought in countryside, she put
keen BLING on leash and went to Wangjiang Park.
She’d left at dawn, to not be underfoot
at home and force an escort. There, hallmark
of Chinese public spaces first she viewed:
a hundred elder folks in dancing mood.
97.
The light was soft, no colors yet unveiled.
Its ambiguity made silhouettes
of hundred figures, rearmost ranks dovetailed
into the fog, as if wood statuettes.
A tonic fresh, damp, cool, mild zephyr blew
as if from where their limbs impacted air,
colliding in slow motion jiu-jitsu
in time whose silent signature was shared.
Their movements mimicked those of fluid koi,
whose golden scales brought beauty to the slow
deliberation muscles each employed
to sync in elegant adagio.
Calm humors governed how they stretched and spun
as if a hive mind moved each form as one.
98.
Demonstrably in synchronicity
with tempo of environment and trees,
the figures’ acts cured all toxicity
pollution’s urban reek had brought in breeze.
To watch rehearsed, premeditated moves
conducted amid silence ushered awe:
the ardent daily practice of those who’ve
selected dedication showed grandmas
could still produce a dance worth audience.
A
sound that Stella knew instinctively
arose above what often smoggy, dense,
and pressing air did squelch: distinctively
contrasting, tweet and call and song and chirp
of birds did city audio usurp.
99.
It helped, as well, to perk up BLING, who’d been
somewhat at odds with Ai’s dog Huhu, ‘fox’,
huge Chow whose fluff popped inches off its skin,
of disposition wholly orthodox.
Hu picked up BLING sometimes at home like log,
would fetch then drop him in the toy pile throng.
At least familiar sound of birdcalls jogged
BLING’s memory back to places he belonged.
He heard them well, too, Stella thought. His ears
kept getting bigger, like old men she knew
at home whose lobes had grown throughout the years
and stretched as Masai jewelry taxed tissue.
They watched atop a round tomb, stone endowed
with script homage to poetess Xue Tao.
100.
The name struck Stel as more familiar than
majority of Chinese words she’d heard.
She couldn’t place it. Pictures of sampans
(which non-historians often misword
as ‘junks’, inaccurate because they fly
but single sail that’s striated, have oars
at aft, while junks sail three to catch the sky
as elevated sterns cut waves, perforce)
adorned the nearby decorations, scrolls
that told of times when Taoism was born,
when message moved by riverboat’s pushed poles,
when Journey West, Red Chambers’ Dreams tales warned
of what were acts of virtue and of vice,
through folklore’s pedagogical advice.
101.
She came upon a scrap of paper left
by student of some sort, with characters
that copied poem on wall, handwriting deft,
then translated to English. There, picked were
four stanzas, short in word but long in view.
Befuddled for a sec while reading it,
Stel marveled how line’s sturdy curlicue
through top-to-bottom blocked squares could transmit
a complex scene beyond what pencil’d tipped.
Dew-rinsed (it read) their pure notes carry far.
Windblown: as dry… (the paper there was ripped)
and fasting leaves are blown. Her own memoir
of dryness in savanna coursed through mind,
and with these mental images entwined.
102.
Chirr after chirr, as if unison.
But each (the poem continued) perches on
its one branch, all alone. This croon is one
that moves when million cries converge at dawn
from insects ’round the world, just here as there.
“Cicada” was its title. Stella’d not
yet come across in China tokens shared
between this culture and her life. Poem’s plot
exalting nature favorably compared
to week’s experience. She checked the date
and disbelieved translation. Sign declared
that Xue Tao lived right there in Sichuan state
twelve hundred years ago. Foundation for
ennobling nature dwelled in culture’s core.
103.
The figures still in tai chi’s trance, full sun
now muscled through the morn’s obscuring clouds.
With Stel’s associative mind overdone,
she walked back home through routine civic crowds.
Back at the flat she found Abu and Ai
at breakfast with sweet milk and honey soup.
Abu explained today he’d fortify
his Chinese studies so as to recoup
the time he lost to sleep this week. “Can you
tell me some more,” Stel asked of Ai, “about
this Xue Tao person?” Oddball impromptu
request piqued Ai’s mom’s interest, who walked out
to get their dishes, then said, “I’ve her book
for you, some day.” Stel knew not she’d get hooked.
CHAPTER 8
104.
Hit pause on Chengdu narrative one sec,
return to rural story of town Fan
in Sichuan’s river valleys. There, redneck
provincial farmers lived, no better than
some hundred years ago—so urban lie
would lead naïve believe. Its cause was wealth.
Self-centered cities gradually untied
from rural lived reality and health.
Though living largely like they had in past,
the family Ye was hardly misinformed.
They talked about the radio, amassed
the facts on how their nation had reformed,
and shouldered on their shoulders burdens to
produce the Chinese city-dwellers’ food.
105.
Clan Ye was small, though hadn’t started so.
The years eroded what were once great tracts
dynastically their ancestors’ chateau-
equivalent that, filled with artifacts,
was jewel-like in the valley. Over time
with each successive generation, land
was split among the sons, a paradigm
that smaller populations could withstand.
Aft’ eighteenth century that system failed,
Qing emperor de-throned successive coups
for power. Meanwhile beneath the peasants ailed,
decades’ upheavals endlessly renewed.
We zoom in now to Shushu, uncle who
together with Aunt Ayi tried make do.
106.
“This season’s rapeseed harvest’s looking good,
I think we’ll make fair money from the oil,”
he said one night, “the crops have well withstood
the floods that suffocated others’ soil.”
Then Ayi nodded, serving him more rice.
The nod came slow, heart melancholy since
their son had left, by nearby town enticed.
She saw it not as act of dissidence,
but rather chase of opportunities
that salaried employment offered. His
departure had spurred clear disunity
among his parents, fueled the fire. “What is
important,” she replied, “is that we sell
the harvest quickly, no one can foretell
107.
what’s going to happen when those plans come true.”
He shook his head, “You’re listening too much
to village rumors’ groundless ballyhoo.
You have no proof that anyone will touch
our valley. Things have changed. This twenty-first
new century has finally brought some peace
to life. We’ve markets, no more empty purse
to wrestle with. The famines and caprice
of government last century are gone.”
He knew she spoke of gossip that town Fan
was marked alongside neighbors in plans drawn
for demolition. Party business. Man
saw little indication hearsay was
more true than speculative village buzz.
108.
But Ayi wasn’t feeling passive, “I
heard we’re the target from Lao Lin today.
Her son-in-law, you know, electrified
the hills in Anhui province. Underway
are plans for projects similar out west.
That no one knows the details simply means
it’s normal Party politics. Protests
would break out if we knew we’re smithereens.”
As revolutionary long ago,
then victim o
f vicissitudes of ill-
informed, dogmatic government, Shu’s foe
was instability. The Party filled
strife-quelling role now. He’d faith it would act
to move the country forward, not ransack.
109.
“Remember sixties’ scarcities?” he, mad,
said, “stockpile cabbage every winter ’fore
the frost, and eat it boiled? Every comrade
did, choiceless in the sacrifice, uproar
curbed by policing neighbors. Ample food
was grown by the cooperatives, and ‘sold’ –
or so the branding went to best delude –
to distant fat officials, who controlled
rich stockpiles. We starved, they ate. Then we’d have
to melt our iron down in garden smelt,
give tithe in low-grade, useless steel. What gaffe!
And yet since 1990 we’ve all felt
such massive progress. Things have changed. It’s not
our government today that hatches plots.”
110.
He picked a piece of Kung Pao chicken out
of their shared dish upon the tabletop
and as he chewed more creases coursed throughout
his face, traumatic memories of sharecrop-
ping days removing liveliness. “Although
we’ve witnessed since things that should be outlawed,
corruption, graft and such, the top’s outgrown
overt power grabs that launched mini jihads
to crush our country’s culture. We’ve moved past
false Revolution and the Great Leap’s wrongs.”
Pre-hardship days, his faith in state had passed
as pleasing to her, patriot ’mong throngs
of lookers-on whose kowtow words were cheap.
“I worry now,” she said, “you’re blind, asleep.”
111.
Zoom out from Fan and back in to Chengdu,
where Stel sought early bedtime. Morning thrill
had left a pleasant, woke-mind residue
of harmony with nature ‘midst the mill
of city life. The scene had dreams precooked,
prepared for exploration when brainwaves
slowed down to better study overlooked
phenomena unconscious deigns to save.
Unbridled newness in her universe
exhausted, overpowered vague intrigue
of weekend exploration. Soon sleep’s nurse
would put the healing salve on week’s fatigue,
abet left cortisol’s anxiety,
flush open mind to life’s variety.
112.
Or so she wished. In next room minds burned bright,
both focused on the smashing of some rules
prescribed in books into brains’ bits and bytes
as mandated in homework from the school.
Abu zoomed in on Chinese dinner fare,