by Lisa See
I get off in my old neighborhood. It all looks familiar yet completely different. Vendors and little shops cram together, selling goods and services: bicycle tire repair, haircuts, and tooth pulling; oranges, eggs, and peanuts; Front Gate men’s underwear, Red Flag sanitary napkins, and White Elephant batteries. I turn onto my old street. The houses on my block all still stand. I remember how each spring our neighbors painted them in rich earth tones: dark purple, dark green, or dark red—colors that wouldn’t show the dust or the moss that grows so quickly in Shanghai’s humid climate. But the houses don’t look like they’ve been painted in years. Most of the paint has peeled away entirely, revealing dirty gray plaster.
The summer evening customs haven’t changed much since I was last here, however. Children play in the street. Women sit on steps stringing peas, shucking corn, or sorting rice. Men lounge on chairs or perch on upturned crates, smoking cigarettes and playing chess. Eyes begin to follow me. I’m afraid to look back. Do they recognize me?
My family home comes into view. The magnolia tree is huge now, making the house seem smaller than I remember. When I get closer, I see that the carved wooden screen that prevented evil spirits from entering the house still hangs above the door, but the jasmine and dwarf pines that our gardener once nursed are gone. My mother’s rose vines cling to the fence, still alive but dried out and uncared for. Mostly what’s “growing” is laundry draped on bushes and strung on lines. A lot of people must live here, but then a lot of people lived here when May and I left too. A man sitting on the front steps rises as I approach. I should have prepared an introduction, but it seems one isn’t necessary.
“Pearl? You’re Pearl, right? Pearl Chin?” He’s tall, thin, about my age, with a distinguished demeanor but wearing shabby clothes.
“That was my maiden name,” I answer, uncertain. Who is he?
He reaches out, takes my bag, and opens the front door. “Welcome home,” he says. “We’ve been waiting for you a long time.”
My shoes sound loud on the parquet floor. The salon is just as we left it. I can see down the hall and up the stairs, which also look the same. Meanwhile, the man who let me in is calling out names, and people are emerging from rooms, coming down the stairs, wiping their hands as they run from the kitchen. Just as on the bus, I’m surrounded on all sides. They stare at me expectantly. I stare at them, not knowing what to do or say.
“Don’t you know who we are?” a middle-aged woman asks.
When I shake my head, they begin to introduce themselves. They’re the people my parents let rooms to after my father lost our family’s money: the two dancing girls who moved into the attic (only they don’t look like dancing girls any longer in their worker outfits of dull blue baggy trousers and white blouses), the cobbler who lived under the stairs (as wiry and wizened as I remember), the woman who took up residence in the back of the house with her policeman husband and two daughters (except she’s a widow now and the daughters have married out), and the student who lived in the second-floor pavilion (the courtly man who answered the door is now a professor). I vaguely remember that he used to go by the Western name of Donald. Now he introduces himself as Dun-ao.
“How can you all still be here?” I ask in wonder. “What about the Green Gang? They were going to take the house.”
“They did,” the professor answers. “But Pockmarked Huang”—even hearing the name all these years later sends a ripple of fear down my spine—“went into exile in Hong Kong. The king of the underworld died there six years ago.” The professor snorts derisively. “By then the government had confiscated all his property anyway.”
“We’re allowed to stay here because we’ve always been here,” the widow says.
My eyes well up. May and I thought we were alone in the world, but here are people who knew us, and they survived. It’s a miracle, really.
They suddenly part to let someone through. I have a momentary hope it will be my father. I honestly don’t know how I’ll feel if it is. Baba’s gambling debts ruined our lives, and he was such a coward. But it’s not Baba. It’s Cook. As hard as I fight them, tears roll down my face. He was an old man when I was a girl. He’s probably in his eighties now. He looks frail, and the others treat him with reverence. That’s how it should be. The old have always been honored in China.
“May I stay here?” I ask.
“Do you have a residency permit?” The widow turns to Cook and says submissively, “None of us want to get in trouble, Director Cook.”
“No one will get in trouble,” Cook says. “This was her family home, and we’ve kept her room.” He turns and addresses me directly. “You may stay, but you must follow the rules of the house and the street, or I will report you to the higher-ups.”
It’s then I realize that the boarders don’t respect Cook for his age. They’re afraid of him. We kept him on after my father lost everything because he had nowhere else to go. Now, in the New Society, he’s respected and feared because he’s part of the red class. Director Cook. They don’t call him Director Wang, Lu, or Eng, because he never had a name. We called him Cook because that was his title. Now he’s running my family home.
The professor gently takes my elbow and leads me up the stairs.
“You must not think that because you’ve returned home things will be the same,” Cook calls after me. “Those days are over, Little Miss.”
But maybe not as much as he thinks or else he wouldn’t call me by that old endearment and he wouldn’t still be answering to Cook. He would have adopted a new name—like Always Red or Red Forever—to go with the New Society.
“You will clean your nightstool and make your own meals,” he continues. “You will wash your clothes and do chores. You will …”
I’ve had a lot of surprises today, but none is greater than when Dun-ao opens the door to my room. It’s just as May and I left it—two twin beds with white linen canopies embroidered in a wisteria pattern and our favorite beautiful-girl posters on the walls.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How can everything be the same?”
“We knew your parents weren’t coming back. Director Cook sleeps in their room now. But we all suspected that you and your sister would return one day, and here you are. But no May …”
I suppose he expects me to say something about my sister, but I can’t. I look away from his kind face and see into the bathroom. The tile, the tub, the mirror … all exactly the same.
“Many houses in the city have rooms that look just like this,” Dun-ao says. “The Chinese government isn’t always good, but Chinese culture is always here, and it respects family. We all wait for those who left to return. Everyone comes back to Shanghai.”
I suppose he’s right. Z.G.’s landlady kept his things and he returned to claim them. This idea is even what the man at the family association told me was happening in the “ghost” villages just over the border from Hong Kong. But for my house and room to remain untouched all these years? I wish May could see it.
“You look like you need some rest,” he says. “I’m sure you have luggage somewhere. When you’re ready, I’ll go with you to get it. And don’t worry too much about Cook. He’s a petty tyrant, but we have many of those now. You’ll see that in his heart he’s still just Cook, the man who loved you as a little girl.” He smiles. “I know, because he’s told me this many times.”
After the professor leaves, I sit on the edge of the bed. Dust billows up around me. I smooth the bedcover and rake up dust with my hand. This room probably hasn’t been cleaned since May and I left. I get up and go to the closet. I remember the day my father-in-law ransacked this room, grabbing clothes for May and me to wear to work in China City. He left behind our Western-style dresses, and they’re all still here, as are the shoes, furs, and hats.
My eyes fall on a ermine-lined black brocade coat. It’s mine. Mama had matching coats made for May and me, but I was the one who really wanted it. I thought mine was elegant, but May said hers was too somber and
made her look old. (Which, of course, was a not too veiled criticism of me.) May lost hers the winter before everything changed. I can still hear Baba scolding May for being forgetful and yelling at me for not being a better jie jie, who should have reminded her little sister to remember her coat. May was eighteen! Why should I be responsible for telling her to get her coat at a party or from a hatcheck girl at a club? Baba then told me to give May my coat. My sister, even though she didn’t like the coat, would have taken it too, except I was taller and she didn’t like that it hung down to her ankles.
I shut the closet door and turn away. I go to our dresser. Inside the drawers I find undergarments, cashmere sweaters, silk stockings, and bathing suits. I pull out a nightgown: flesh-colored silk trimmed with handmade lace. It can’t possibly still fit, but it does. I stare at myself in the mirror. Reflected around me are images of my sister and me. I’ve changed so much inside. I’m no longer the girl who was in those posters, but I’m slim as I was back then, and it seems I’ll be able to wear my old clothes, although I can’t imagine where I’ll ever wear them in Communist China.
I’m exhausted, but I sit down and write two letters: one to Louie Yun in Wah Hong, giving him my address, and the other for him to send to May, saying that I’ve arrived, that I haven’t found Joy, and that I’m in our old home. I also explain how she’ll send mail to me. Then I stand and go to the bed, where I fold back the coverlet, trying to keep the dust within its folds. I stretch out on the cool sheets and glance at the other bed—May’s bed—before turning away. I’ve come here in search of my daughter, but I’ve also run away from my sister. And yet May is here, staring at me benignly from the walls. I look into her eyes and say, I’m home. I’m in our room. Can you believe it? We never thought we’d see this place again. And, May, oh, May, it’s just the same.
I GO BACK to the Artists’ Association several times. Even after I give the woman in the lobby a bribe, she insists she doesn’t know where Z.G. is. All she can tell me, finally, is that he was struggled against by the membership and that he left town. I’m tempted to ask again about Joy, but I already know she’s with Z.G. and I’m afraid of bringing unwanted attention on her. I slip the woman more money, and she arranges for me to meet the Artists’ Association’s director—a pudgy man with hair graying at his temples. I pay his bribe, and he tells me that Z.G. went to the countryside to “observe and learn from real life”—whatever that means.
“But where in the countryside?”
“I wasn’t given those details,” he responds.
“Do you know when he’ll return?” I ask.
“That’s not for me to decide,” the director answers. “The case is no longer in my hands. It is being handled by people in Peking.”
I leave the Artists’ Association feeling both worried and let down. What did Z.G. do to be in such obvious trouble, and why did he have to drag my daughter into it? I’ve done everything I can think of. Now all I can do is wait, because they’ll return one day. They have to return. As everyone keeps telling me, everyone returns to Shanghai. I did.
I clean and wash everything in my room. No one helps me. Why would they? Our former boarders are now assigned to live here, paying the equivalent of $1.20 a month for rent, and they don’t want to be perceived as helping someone from the bourgeois class. And Cook? I’ve met Z.G.’s servants and have seen other servants at the market or doing errands for their masters, but Cook has established a place in my family home as a member of the new elite and honored masses—to be respected, not caring for his former Little Miss. Besides, he’s too old anyway. He can’t beat the dust out of the carpets, polish the floors, clean the windows, or wash and iron my bedding. I do all that myself, and now May’s and my room looks almost as it did the day we left. It’s eerie and comforting at the same time.
Then one evening, a week after I arrived in Shanghai, someone bangs on my bedroom door. It’s a policeman. My insides constrict with fear.
“Are you the returned Overseas Chinese who was born Chin Zhen Long?”
“Yes,” I answer tentatively.
“You must accompany me right now.”
I’m paraded downstairs and through the hall to the front door past the other boarders, who gawk, point, and whisper among themselves. Did one of them report me? Did Cook turn me in?
I’m taken to a house that’s been converted to a police station not far from here. I’m ordered to sit on a wooden bench and wait. Several people pass by on their way to register births, deaths, arrivals, and departures. They stare at me with curiosity and suspicion. Once again, I’m thrust back in time to Angel Island, where May and I had to wait in a fenced area for our interrogations. I’m scared to death. I take a deep breath. I have to appear calm. I remind myself I’ve done nothing wrong.
Finally, I’m shown into an office. A young uniformed officer sits behind a utilitarian desk. The room has no windows. A fan circulates hot air.
“I am Superintendent Third Class Wu Baoyu,” he says. “I’m in charge of your case.”
“My case?”
“You’ve been making a pest of yourself at the Artists’ Association. Why are you asking about Li Zhi-ge?”
I don’t want to say anything about my daughter, because again I don’t know where that will lead or what the implications might be.
“I knew him years ago,” I answer. “I wanted to reestablish our acquaintance.”
“You should be careful about whom you associate with. This Li Zhi-ge has been struggled against. You are newly arrived, and I will let this go one time, but I must warn you that bribes are no longer permitted.”
My insides constrict even more, and my hands start to sweat.
“Now, let us begin,” he goes on. “Where were you born?”
For the next hour, he goes through a list of questions on a clipboard. What relatives do I have still living in my home village, what kind of work do they do, who are my friends in China, and how often do I meet them? Suddenly, an announcement blares from a loudspeaker. Superintendent Wu stands, tells me to wait where I am, and leaves the room. A few minutes later, I hear loud chanting. I peek out the door to where a group of uniformed men and women, holding Mao’s Little Red Book, shout slogans together. I close the door and go back to my seat. A half hour later, Superintendent Wu returns. His questions shift from those about my family and my life to my return.
“Why haven’t you reported to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission?”
“I hadn’t heard of it until now, so I didn’t know I needed to report.”
“Now you know and now you will go. It is there that you will learn to have a patriotic spirit. It is there that your remittances from abroad will be processed.”
“I don’t expect to receive remittances,” I say, lying. I don’t want my money going through a government agency. What if they don’t give it all to me like the man in the family association said? “I prefer to work.”
“To work, you need a danwei—a work unit,” he says. “To get a job, you need a hukou—a residency permit. To get a residency permit, you need to register with the local government. Why haven’t you registered?”
All this frightens me. It’s been only a week, and I’ve been caught and singled out. Now that the authorities know about me, it’s going to be much harder to get around. That is, if they don’t throw me in a cell right now.
“Can you help me with those things?” I ask, trying to mask my fear.
“You will be given a residency permit to stay in your old home, but I must stress this is not your home. It belongs to the people now. Understood?”
“I understand.”
“You’re also going to need coupons,” he continues. “The government has taken over the distribution of all essentials. The government buys directly from farmers and manufacturers, so that city dwellers across the nation must use coupons to buy basic necessities—oil, meat, matches, soap, needles, coal, and cloth—from government-run shops. Rice coupons are, not surprisingly, the most importan
t. As soon as you get a job, come back here and I will help you get your coupons.”
“Thank you.”
He holds up a hand. “I’m not done. Rice coupons are local. If you travel, you’ll have to apply for special national coupons. If you don’t have these coupons, you’ll have to eat your meal without rice. As a returned Overseas Chinese you may travel but you may not leave the city without my permission. You have returned to China. You must do what we tell you to do. Understood?” he asks again.
“Yes, I understand.” I feel as though walls are being built up around me.
“You are fortunate,” the policeman goes on with false amiability. “Peasants are treated harshly upon their return to China. They’re sent back to their home villages in their native provinces, where they’re assigned to agricultural work in a collective, even if they brought enough money from America to retire comfortably. But it could be worse. Some unlucky returnees are sent to the far west to reclaim and cultivate wasteland.”
The room is hot and stuffy, but I’m cold with terror. I can’t be sent to a farm somewhere.
“I’m not a peasant,” I say. “I don’t know how to do that work.”
“The others don’t either, but they learn.” He looks at his checklist. “Are you ready to confess your links to the Nationalists on Taiwan?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Why were you so friendly with American imperialists?”
“My father sold me into an arranged marriage,” I say. It’s the truth, but it hardly conveys what really happened.
“Luckily, those feudal days are over. Still, you’ll have to go through many struggle sessions in an effort to cast off your bourgeois individualism. Now, let’s see.” He glances at his list again. “Are you a returning scientist?” He gives me the once-over and decides I’m not. “If you were, I’d have to make you sign a confession admitting that the Chinese moon is larger than the American moon.” He sets his clipboard on the table. “The fact is, you’re in a different category. You’re wealthy.”