Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  People made the soup at home, usually eating it in the winter. They say the dumpling is the shape that it is because it is made to resemble an ear, in honor of Dr. Zhongjing’s treatment of people’s frostbitten ears. The name of the soup, qu han jiao er tang, was shortened to jiao er tang, and the dumplings were eventually called jiaozi.

  “Jiaozi!” I said. “I know that word! Dumplings! But we usually have them fried.”

  “Well, these are jiaozi, too.” Clifford laughed and pointed at my bowl. “And they exist all because of frostbitten ears.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked Clifford. I was impressed he was so smart.

  “School, of course,” he said as he began eating again.

  “Did you go to cooking school?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “No.” He grinned between bites. “It was a Chinese culture appreciation course. But I really paid attention during the parts about the food.”

  Chapter 20

  WHEN WE CAME BACK FROM DINNER, LIAN WAS HOME from work, and there was more hugging and talking. More adults showed up—some were relatives and some were old friends. They all sat at the round table in Big Uncle’s apartment, talking and talking in Taiwanese while Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I sat there bored and unimportant. At home, Mom was always so picky about when we went to sleep, but here she didn’t say anything, even when the sky became as black as burnt incense. When I went to bed, everyone was still laughing around the table. I sighed. Mom had stopped noticing me, too.

  And when I woke up the next morning, Aunt Ami, Mom, Dad, Big Uncle, Lian, and Clifford were still laughing and talking around the table. I knew they must have gone to sleep and woken up, because they were all wearing different clothes, but it felt as if nothing had changed.

  “What are we doing today?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Mom said, and handed me a bowl of rice porridge before turning back to the kitchen. “Dad thought we might go to the cemetery to see his parents’ graves, but we’re not sure yet.”

  I hoped Dad changed his mind. Going to a cemetery definitely did not seem like fun. Dad’s parents died a long time ago; I never knew them. The only thing I did know of them was that two big black-and-white photos of them hung on the wall in the back corner of our living room. I tried not to look at them much, because they were serious, unsmiling portraits with grim eyes that seemed to look at me disapprovingly. Once, a long time ago, Lissy took down the photo of Dad’s father, held it over her face, and chased me with it. She got in a lot of trouble.

  “Aunt Ami doesn’t want us to go to the cemetery,” Clifford said.

  “Why not?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Because it’s Ghost Month,” Clifford said, “and she thinks the only ones that would be at a cemetery now are hungry ghosts. Aunt Ami is very superstitious, you know. She won’t even hang her laundry out to dry in the evenings.”

  “Why not?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Because ghosts might move into them!” Clifford said. We all laughed.

  Our parents must have listened to Aunt Ami, because we didn’t go to the cemetery. Instead, we went to the market. Going to the market was even harder than going to the noodle restaurant. We had to cross a couple of streets, and each time I felt like a car almost hit us. The streets seemed to get narrower and narrower and fuller, with more and more people. I had to step over planks of wood on the ground that covered holes in the road, garbage, and sleeping dogs. When I looked up, all I saw were layers of bright signs with Chinese words I couldn’t read.

  I wasn’t sure when the street stopped being a street and turned into a market, but somewhere in the noisy, sticky crowd it had. Big umbrellas shaded the crates of fruit on display, and faded red paper lanterns lined the sky. Mom, Dad, Lian, Aunt Ami, and Big Uncle began to stop at different stalls and buy things.

  “Clifford,” Lian said, pointing at a display of some rosy, bell-shaped fruits, “your favorite!”

  “Oh boy!” Clifford said, grinning. “Wax apples!”

  Clifford began to fill a bag. “He can eat a whole bag in one day,” Lian told us. “He is the super wax-apple eater.”

  “You can’t blame me! They’re so good,” he said, handing me, Lissy, and Ki-Ki one each. “And you can’t get them in the States. Try it.”

  I took a bite, and the juice dripped down my chin. The fruit was crispy and sweet and so juicy! It was kind of like an apple, but not exactly. It was lighter and fresher—like an apple crossed with a bubble. I could see why Clifford loved them.

  As I crunched, I almost walked into a big aluminum pot on the ground. Good thing I didn’t! The silver pot was full of water and long black ropes. No, not ropes—eels! There was another pot next to it full of dark fish wavering in the water like captured shadows. Another pot had turtles, their small eyes looking at us like black stones, and next to all the pots was a mesh bag full of croaking frogs.

  But I couldn’t look at everything, because the person in charge of the stand said something in Chinese to me in an irritated tone. She seemed upset with me, probably because I almost stepped into her eels. I shook my head at her, and she said something louder. The skin of her round face was so tan that it was almost the same color as her eyes, which were flashing at me. I felt a little scared. A burning rushed through me. How did I say I couldn’t speak Chinese, again? I couldn’t remember. What were those words Mom had taught us on the train?

  “Meiguoren! Meiguoren!” I said. That was the only word I could remember. American. She had the same look in her eyes as that mean bus driver in New Hartford from so long ago. “Where are you from?” he had asked me. My answer didn’t satisfy her, either. She said something else to me, louder and louder, and all I could do was stare at her red-printed flowers on her apron, too frightened to look at her face. I knew she was angry, but I didn’t know why. My cheeks burned red as if her words were slapping my face. “Meiguoren! Meiguoren!” I said again, stupidly—like a parrot. I didn’t know what else to say. I felt like crying.

  “What’s up?” Clifford said, grabbing my arm. The woman yelled something at him. “Duibuqi, duibuqi,” he said as he waved her away, and nudged me toward the road. “Sorry, sorry.” I saw her shake her head in disapproval and disgust as Clifford dragged me away.

  “She was mad at me!” I said to Clifford.

  “She wasn’t mad, exactly,” he said. “She just didn’t understand why you couldn’t speak Chinese.”

  A heavy feeling fell upon me, like a crushing boulder. “Twinkie!” those girls at the Taiwanese-American convention had called me. “You lost your culture! Twinkie!” But I stuck my chin out.

  “We don’t speak Chinese in New Hartford,” I said sullenly.

  “I know,” Clifford said. “Your parents wanted you guys to fit in there, so that’s why they never taught you. But that woman didn’t know that.”

  “I told her I was American,” I insisted. “I said ‘Meiguoren, Meiguoren’ over and over.”

  “She probably didn’t know what you meant,” Clifford said. “Here, people like us are called Huaren—‘overseas Chinese.’ ”

  “She knew what I meant,” I said stubbornly. “They just don’t like people to be Americans.”

  “That’s not true,” Clifford said. “You know the Chinese word for American, but do you know what it really means? The word ren means ‘people,’ guo means ‘country,’ and the word mei means ‘beautiful.’ So Meiguoren means ‘people of a beautiful country.’ It’s actually a compliment.”

  But even so, I still felt as if I were a twisted knot. I was angry at all of them—the bus driver, the convention girls, the market lady. I wanted to yell “I’m American!” but they wouldn’t have believed me. Inside, I felt hard and stubborn, like a fist clutching a stolen pearl. I didn’t want to learn Chinese, I didn’t want to paint bamboo, and I didn’t want to be here in Taiwan. Here, people either despised me or acted like I wasn’t there, looking through me like a ghost.

  Clifford walked with me, pointing out other things and making jokes, so I t
ried to brush away my hurt feelings. But it was hard. Every time the convention girls’ mocking laughter, the market lady’s angry voice, or even Audrey Chiang’s condescending stare began to fade away, they seemed to come right back to haunt me.

  Chapter 21

  THE NEXT DAY, DAD DECIDED THAT SINCE WE WEREN’T going to go to the cemetery, we should go to Lugang. Aunt Ami and Big Uncle and his friends said it would be a fun place to visit. “It’s one of the oldest towns in Taiwan,” Dad said. “Also, there’s lots of good food there.”

  The first place we saw when we got there was a famous temple, though it seemed more like a fair than a temple. There was a welcome gate, like the one in Chinatown, but this was much more elaborate and colorful. It was gold and green with detailed carvings of flowers and dragons.

  “This gate is very old,” Dad said.

  “Older than Grandma?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Older than Grandma’s grandma,” Dad said. “It’s one of the oldest things in Taiwan.”

  Across two of the columns, underneath painted carvings and gold Chinese writing, there was a long screen flashing words in Chinese in electric lights.

  “Is that as old as Grandma’s grandma, too?” I asked, pointing.

  “Well, no,” Dad said. “But it’s as old as Grandma’s granddaughter. It’s a gate that crosses all generations!”

  Through the gate to the temple, there was a rainbow plastic awning, lines of golden lanterns, and calling vendors with smoking food stalls on either side.

  In the courtyard of the temple, there were tables of food on rough wooden tables. I think the food must have been for ghosts, because no one touched it. There were wax apples and other fruits, but there were also packaged foods, like boxes of tea. There were even packages of Oreo cookies! That was a little unexpec-ted. But I guess there was no reason why ghosts wouldn’t like junk food.

  There was also a large stage set up with two people acting out some sort of play. They wore bright costumes of pink and blue and yellow and strange makeup. Their faces were thickly painted white with brilliant pink cheeks and black eyebrows. Not very natural-looking! In fact, it was the opposite of natural. They looked like aliens. If Mom hadn’t told the makeup woman at Lissy’s photo shoot to give her a “natural look,” I wondered, would Lissy have ended up looking like that? Lissy would have looked awful! But I would’ve laughed.

  No one was laughing at these people; instead, there was a big audience watching. The only empty chairs were the ones in the front row, and there were lots of people standing in the back. I wondered why they didn’t sit down in the empty seats.

  “See that?” Dad pointed. “That’s a Chinese opera they are doing.”

  “Why are they doing opera at a temple?” Lissy asked.

  “It’s to entertain the ghosts, to show them a good time while they are visiting. And that row?” Dad said, pointing at the empty chairs I had just been wondering about. “No one sits there because those are reserved for the ghosts!”

  Everything was a mix of old and new. The temple building was ancient and elegant with intricate carvings and watching lions. It made me feel like I should be quiet and respectful. But the plastic canopy, the brashly colored stage and acting, the loud peddlers, and the junk food made me want to run and yell. Not that I could yell, because there was so much smoke! Everyone seemed to be burning something—incense, ghost money, paper clothes. I watched people buying paper objects from a booth. There were paper dresses and suits wrapped in shirt boxes as if they were from a department store. In other boxes, there were fake teeth, gold watches, perfume, and even computers. I saw packets of ghost money, too, and next to those was a pile of fake American money.

  “Those are U.S. bills!” I said, pointing. “Why do they have fake American money?”

  “To burn, of course.” Dad laughed. “Nowadays, U.S. money is worth more than most other countries’ money. People always say American dollars are better, so they think they must be better for the ghosts, too.”

  We laughed. Through the smoke, I saw Clifford disappearing into the temple and followed him.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” he said. “The last time was when I was still in high school. I want to see if my green onions are still there.”

  “What?” I asked as we entered a small room. Clifford went straight to a shrine that had a fancy red and gold case. In the case was a statue of a bearded man with a gold robe and a round belly. There was a stone table in front of it covered with papers, garlic, radishes, celery, and green onions!

  “Is he a gardening god or something?” I asked.

  “No,” Clifford said, and laughed. “He’s the God of Literature.”

  “You gave him onions?” I asked. “Why does he need onions?”

  CLIFFORD OFFERS GREEN ONIONS

  Like I said, the last time I was here was before I went to college. I visited the summer before I was going to be a senior in high school, the summer before I was going to take the SATs.

  It’s way too early for you to worry about it, but the SAT is a really important test. If you get a bad score, it can keep you out of the college you want to go to. The better your score, the better school you can get into. I was really nervous about it.

  When I told Aunt Ami about the SATs, she told me I should make a prayer to the God of Literature. “Students in Taiwan take many exams,” she told me. “And they all make offerings to him for help.”

  What did I have to lose? I was willing to take any help I could get. Aunt Ami helped me prepare. “What kind of test is it?” she asked. “If you need talent, we’ll get a radish. If your test is very detailed and long, you’ll need some celery. Or if it is an intelligence test, we’ll get green onions.”

  “What?” I said. “Why do I need those vegetables?”

  “They are offerings,” Aunt Ami said. “The word for clever in Chinese is ‘congming’ and the word for onion is ‘cong.’ See how they sound alike? So by giving the God of Literature an onion, you are asking for intelligence.”

  “So the word for radish sounds like talent?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Aunt Ami said. “And celery sounds like the word diligence—you know, hard-working. Oh, is it a math test? We could bring garlic, too—garlic sounds like the word for count.”

  I couldn’t decide which of them to bring. Really, I felt like I needed all of them. But the SATs are supposed to be some sort of intelligence test, so I decided on the green onions.

  When we got here, I watched other students make their offerings. They would place a paper on the table, then their vegetable of choice on top. Then, gravely, they would bow to the God of Literature with a smoking piece of incense. Some wrapped their celery with their papers and tied them, like little presents.

  “What are the papers?” I asked.

  “Those are their test permits,” Aunt Ami said, “so the God of Literature will know which student they’re for.”

  That made sense. There were probably thousands and thousands of students taking tests. But I didn’t have a test permit. What was I going to do?

  “Just write your name on a piece of paper,” Aunt Ami said.

  But that didn’t seem enough to me. There were probably a lot of Clifford Lins in the world. In fact, there was another Clifford Lin right in my school. How would the God of Literature know which one to help out? I thought hard. Well, how did the government know which Clifford I was? My Social Security number! That was it!

  So, on a piece of paper, I wrote my name and Social Security number. I rolled the paper around the onions and tied it with a red string. I placed it on the table and took a piece of incense. As I bowed, I thought, Mr. God of Literature, please help me out on my SATs. I really need a good score. I’m all the way in the United States, so you might have to travel a bit, but you should be able to find my test using my Social Security number. Thanks.

  And then I almost started to laugh. But I held it in until we left the temp
le. It seemed so silly, and I felt a bit foolish. I didn’t tell anyone what I had done. I was a little embarrassed.

  “Did it work?” I asked. Maybe I should ask the God of Literature to help me paint better than Audrey Chiang. I wondered if she knew about him. If she did, she probably brought a whole wheelbarrow of vegetables every day. “How did you do on your SATs?”

  “You know, I did pretty well,” Clifford said. “And I even got into the college I wanted to, too. So maybe it did work. That’s why I wanted to see the God of Literature again.”

  With that, Clifford took a piece of incense and bowed. “Thanks, God of Literature,” he said. “You’re a good guy!”

  And we both burst into laughter.

  Chapter 22

  AFTER THAT, I WANDERED THE TEMPLE. IT WAS BIG, WITH different rooms. One room was filled with brilliant gold statues; there was so much bright gold that it hurt my eyes. At home, I had read a story about King Midas, who was granted the wish of turning everything he touched into gold. I imagined that room to be like his home after he touched it.

  But most of the temple was filled with the heavy smell of incense and smoke. The ancient, elaborate carvings on the walls and ceiling were the same color as the dark smoke. People were bowing and crowding around a black statue of a round-faced woman, and I knew there was probably a lot to see, but the smoke made me cough at every turn.

  So when I saw Ki-Ki at the fountain in the back courtyard, I joined her. There were a lot of kids at the fountain, kneeling on the ledge and leaning against the railing. In the jade-green water, an ancient stone dragon seemed to be climbing out to yell to the sky. The water spurted white against its green moss-covered body and orange-and-white carp swam around it like dancing jewels. The whole thing looked like a painting.