Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  But past the sign, I saw a post office. No, not exactly a post office, but a mailing area. There was a big sign that said MAILBOX AIRMAIL with round mailboxes underneath playfully labeled. One box said FAMILY on a colored striped background, another said FRIEND in blue and white, and the last one said LOVER on a big red heart. Behind the mailboxes was a counter where people could write their messages on postcards. I watched as the American couple from the elevator dropped their postcards into the box that said FAMILY.

  “They’re the highest mailboxes in the world!” Lissy said. I didn’t know if she read that or thought of it herself, but I was excited.

  “Let’s mail something!” I said, and immediately thought of Melody. It gave me a little shock that I hadn’t thought about her in such a long time. It wasn’t that I had forgotten about her, exactly, but at home I had been used to her being with me, so I missed her a lot. Here, I wasn’t expecting her to be with me, so I didn’t feel lonesome. But she was still the person I wanted to send a postcard to the most.

  Lissy and I both rushed over to Mom to get her to buy us postage stamps and postcards. Of course, then Ki-Ki wanted to buy them, too, even though she had no one to send postcards to.

  “We can buy this ten-pack of postcards,” Mom said, “and you can share.”

  I didn’t like that, because the postcards in the ten-pack were all of the Taipei 101 building at nighttime and with fireworks. And we were in the building during the day. I didn’t want Melody to think I had seen the building when there were fireworks. It would have been kind of like lying. And I would’ve rather picked the special wood postcards that were on display—cards that were made of paper-thin wood with pictures that looked like they had been burned onto it. But when I showed them to Mom, she just looked at the price and wrinkled her nose. “The ten-pack is a much better deal,” she said, and I knew that was what we were getting.

  We split up the cards (Mom took one for herself so that they would be divided evenly among the three of us) and went to the counter near the mailboxes. I put my postcard to Melody in the FRIENDS mailbox. I chose the card with the sunset behind the building. That was the most like what I actually saw here in Taiwan. I felt I should send postcards to my friends Becky and Charlotte, too, but I couldn’t remember their addresses. I could picture their houses and the streets they lived on, but I had never had to mail anything to them before, so their addresses were just a big blank. Oh well. Mom said the postcards wouldn’t get there for two weeks anyway. Maybe I’d just mail them from home and pretend I sent them from Taiwan, though I guess the stamp would give that away.

  I looked at the other mailboxes—there was also a mailbox for FAMILY, but Lissy and Ki-Ki and Grandma and Grandpa were here in Taiwan, and I’d never sent anything to any other family before, so it’d seem weird to do it now. The last box had a big red heart on it that said LOVER. I definitely didn’t have a card to put in that box, either. The only boy I liked in school was Sam Mercer, and I wasn’t going to send him a postcard from Taiwan. Then he would know I liked him!

  At the counter, there were also stamps and red ink pads. When I stamped one onto my postcard, it showed a little picture of the building and said TAIPEI 101 at the bottom.

  “I’m done,” Lissy said. “I’m going to put mine in the mailbox.”

  “What did you write?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Hey!” Lissy said, hiding her card. “That’s private!”

  “It’s a postcard!” I said. “It can’t be that private. Did you write secrets or something?”

  “No,” Lissy said. “Just the normal things, like ‘I’m in Taiwan, having a great time, blah, blah, blah.’ ”

  “Are you having a great time?” I said. “You don’t seem like it.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t like class, but the rest is okay. Most of the time, the food is good, it’s nice to see Grandma and everyone, and it’s kind of interesting to see all the different Taiwan stuff.”

  That was true. “But I don’t like how everyone here in Taiwan acts like we’re dumb because we don’t speak Chinese,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lissy agreed. “That’s no fun. Now that I’m here, I wish I knew Chinese. Maybe I can learn it later and come back. That would make it better.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I wouldn’t mind knowing Chinese, but learning it seemed kind of hard. And it was also hard to think about coming back for another trip. This one wasn’t even finished yet.

  “But it is annoying now,” Lissy continued. “Everyone gives us that stupid, shocked look like we just swallowed a cow or something when they find out we don’t know Chinese. Then they ignore us.”

  “Yeah!” I said, nodding hard. I hadn’t realized how much Lissy felt like I did. I knew she didn’t like class, but knowing she felt invisible sometimes, too, was comforting.

  “Not speaking Chinese is probably the worst thing so far,” Lissy said. “That and class… and the toilets are gross, too. People don’t flush their toilet paper; they throw it out in the basket. It’s so disgusting.”

  “Yeah!” I said again. We laughed. I was surprised. Sometimes, when she forgot she was a teenager, Lissy was actually nice to talk to.

  “But the rest of it,” Lissy said, “is not bad, don’t you think?”

  Before I could answer, Ki-Ki announced, “I’m done!” She slapped her pen down with a decisive clack! and held her postcard in her hands triumphantly, as if it were a prize.

  “What did you write, Ki-Ki?” Lissy asked. Ki-Ki, unlike me and Lissy, had liked her class from the start and still did. She didn’t worry about whether her paper cuts were good, and she was making lots of friends. “Everyone wants to sit next to me,” she had said, “so I can teach them English words.”

  “Things,” she said vaguely but proudly. I couldn’t imagine it being that interesting. Ki-Ki marched over to the mailboxes. Slowly but deliberately, she took her postcard and pushed it through the slot of the box that said LOVER! Lissy and I stared open-mouthed.

  “Ki-Ki has a boyfriend!” Lissy said as Ki-Ki walked back toward us. “Ki-Ki, who’s your boyfriend?”

  “No one!” Ki-Ki said, scowling at our giggles. “I don’t have a boyfriend!”

  “Well, then who did you mail your postcard to?” I asked. “Who else would you mail a postcard to from the LOVER box?”

  “I mailed it to myself,” Ki-Ki said, sticking her chin up. “I didn’t have anyone to send a postcard to except myself. And I love myself, so I put my postcard in there.”

  Lissy and I burst out into loud laughter, and Ki-Ki joined in. So silly! And I realized that maybe Lissy was right. Even though I didn’t love being in Taiwan as much as Ki-Ki loved herself, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

  Chapter 25

  “THE FIRST FIVE FLOORS OF THIS BUILDING ARE A MALL,” Dad said, “and in the basement is the food court.”

  “Let’s go there!” I said. “I’m hungry!”

  Back in New Hartford, at the Sangertown Square Mall, there was a food court with about a dozen fast-food restaurants. It was kind of dark, with brown plastic tables and chairs and fake plants and flower arrangements that looked kind of dusty. I was expecting the food court here, especially since Dad said it was in the basement, to look the same.

  But it didn’t at all. The food court was shiny and white, the floor so clean that it sparkled. And there was so much food! There was a bakery with cakes of bread wrapped in plastic and frosted pink donuts that looked like baby rattles. There were restaurants with glass cases displaying plates of shiny plastic food and others that had huge mountains of fried rice and noodles on the counters. One restaurant had pale chickens hanging in its case, their heads still on. I had seen that in Chinatown but never in a mall!

  And the best thing was that a lot of places had Chinese and English. I could read almost everything! Premier Beef Noodle had noodles with clear soup and soy soup. Sergeant Chicken Rice had a chicken rice bowl and chicken liver (yuck!).

  That’s al
so when I noticed that there were all kinds of foods at the food court. There was a French pastry place and an Indian place. There was an Italian place called Benito and a Japanese restaurant called Karen. There were so many places, I didn’t know what to choose.

  Until Ki-Ki shouted, “Look! McDonald’s!”

  Lissy and I rushed over to where Ki-Ki was pointing. There really was a McDonald’s. There was the big, glowing yellow M, just like the McDonald’s we had at home. Suddenly, I missed New Hartford. I missed our white house with green shutters, the big green lawn and trees. I missed talking to Melody on the phone, my friends in my class, the orange brick library, and even my box-shaped school. Seeing McDonald’s here was like seeing something from home. It made me excited, like finding a lost shoe.

  “Let’s eat there!” I said.

  “Really?” Dad said. “You want McDonald’s?”

  “Yes!” Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I said in unison.

  “Okay.” Dad shrugged. “Mai Dang Lao.”

  “Mai Dang Lao?” I asked. “Is that what they call McDonald’s here?”

  “Yes.” Dad nodded and laughed. “When there are Western words that there are no Chinese words for, they just put together Chinese words that sound like English.”

  “Really?” I said. “What else?”

  “Um…” Dad thought hard. “Like hamburger. We pronounce it ‘hanbao’!”

  “And chocolate,” Mom said, “is pronounced like ‘chokoli.’ ”

  We laughed. It was funny how it sounded the same but different. I wished all Chinese words were like that. It would’ve been a lot easier for me to learn Chinese that way.

  Well, not only was McDonald’s not called exactly the same thing in Taiwan, but it also didn’t look exactly the same, either. This McDonald’s was a lot cleaner and brighter, with white floors and walls and wood tables. It wasn’t anything like the plastic red and yellow tables we had in New Hartford.

  And the food was different, too. As we stood in line and looked at the glowing menus overhead, I was confused. Only some words were in English, like EXTRA VALUE MEAL, but the rest were in Chinese. There were photos of food, but some of them were pictures I had never seen in a McDonald’s before. On a banner, there was a photo of round fried balls next to a bowl of corn soup. Corn soup? At McDonald’s? Also, in some of the photos, there were fried chicken and weird-looking hamburgers with buns that looked like thick, sesame-sprinkled rice crackers.

  “What are those?” I asked, pointing.

  Mom looked at the photos. “Rice burgers,” she said. “Do you want one?”

  I shook my head. “I want chicken nuggets,” I said.

  Ki-Ki and I got the chicken nuggets, and Lissy got fried chicken. Mom ordered for us. We had gotten used to Mom and Dad doing all the ordering and talking, but I never really got used to the questioning looks the clerks gave us when Mom spoke to us in English.

  “It comes with a side order,” Mom said, “of french fries or corn. Which do you want?”

  “Corn?” I asked, and I noticed another customer’s order to our side. There was a small cup of corn kernels on his tray. Weird! “French fries!” I said. Lissy and Ki-Ki ordered the same. Mom and Dad got the rice burgers and a bowl of corn soup each.

  The rice burger came in a green cardboard container, kind of the same as how a large order of fries was packaged back home, except with a lid. It was strange to see the yellow M logo with Chinese writing. Dad lifted the lid of his container, took out his rice burger, and unwrapped it from the wax paper so we could see it. The bun wasn’t a rice cake or a rice cracker, like I had thought it’d be. It was rice tightly packed and toasted to make a bun shape. Instead of a meat patty and pickles, there was pork with slices of lettuce.

  “Want to try?” Dad said, offering it to us.

  I hesitated, but Lissy took a big bite. She chewed slowly. “Hmm,” she said.

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “It’s not bad,” she said slowly. “But it’s not a hamburger.”

  Well, I had to try it then. I took a bite, and the rice bun crumbled and began to fall apart. But it was moist and soft, and the pork was covered with a sweet sauce. It tasted like a Chinese pork dish Mom made at home, but it was shaped like a hamburger.

  “I think you are supposed to eat it with the paper wrapper around it,” Mom said, “so that the rice doesn’t make such a mess.”

  But I had had enough of bizarre McDonald’s food. I wanted the real stuff. I dipped my chicken nuggets in honey and chewed away. Ahh! Just like home.

  “What’s for dessert?” I asked when we finished.

  “Let’s look around,” Dad said as he threw out our tray. “You know, this is the first meal we’ve had that Pacy hasn’t eaten dumplings.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but it was the first time we had eaten that I hadn’t thought about dumplings. I frowned. I felt like I was losing some kind of bet.

  Dad stopped us in front of a display case of hundreds of pretty round balls dusted with sugar like little snowballs. Some were pale pink, others a soft gray-green, and there were even light yellow ones, the color of buttercups.

  “Are they chocolate?” Lissy asked. “Chocolate truffles?”

  “No,” Dad said. “Mochi. We’ll get some of these. You should try it.”

  I took one of the pale pink ones, the same color as the peonies Mom grew at home. The fine sugar dust sprinkled down my shirt as I bit into it. The mochi had a smooth skin, soft and chewy. A strawberry-flavored, creamy filling oozed into my mouth, with a smell even sweeter than the taste. The whole thing blended together and seemed to melt in my mouth. It was delicious.

  “Like it?” Dad asked us.

  We nodded and reached for more.

  “You know what mochi really is?” I asked.

  “What?” Dad said.

  “It’s a dessert dumpling!” I said.

  “Oh, is it?” Dad said, laughing. “Does this mean you have eaten dumplings every day since you’ve been in Taiwan?”

  “Almost!” I said, and grinned.

  Chapter 26

  “THIS IS OUR LAST WEEK OF CLASS,” THE TEACHER SAID to us the next morning. “So in the next few days, you must choose which painting you want to show in our exhibit.”

  Exhibit! I remembered he had said something about that on the first day of class, but I hadn’t remembered it until now. Audrey Chiang waved her hand in the air as if it were a flag.

  “Is there going to be a prize at the exhibit?” she asked. “For the best painting?”

  “Yes,” the teacher said, and smiled. “The teachers usually honor the painting they like best with a ribbon.”

  “Only one?” Audrey asked. “Only for the best?”

  “Well, one for each class. You know there are other classes here, right? For Chinese writing and other things,” he said, and then repeated himself as he often did. “So one in this class.”

  Audrey sat up straight, as if she had already won. She wasn’t really doing anything—yet I still wanted to slap her.

  “But before anyone can be awarded a ribbon, you must learn how to make a painting,” he said.

  That was confusing. Hadn’t we been making paintings all this time?

  “Up to now, I have been just teaching you elements,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Bamboo, flowers, birds—it is how you put them together that makes a painting. Most students spend years just painting bamboo, but this course is just to give you a taste of how to paint. So today, I will show you how to make a painting, and then you can try your own.”

  I still didn’t really understand all that he was saying, a little bit because of his accent and his stuttering. He motioned for all of us to stand around him like we did the first day. As he lay a piece of snow-white rice paper down on the table in front of him, using his carved paperweights to hold it down, I found myself standing next to Audrey Chiang. I tried not to look at her. The teacher fingered his bamboo paintbrushes lovingly, finally choosing one and swirling it in the wa
ter and ink. And then, just like he did the first day of class, he made just a few strokes, and a bamboo stalk grew on the paper. He added more leaves and crimson flowers.

  “For painting,” he said, “it is about composition and balance. You don’t want everything to be busy. You need an area of focus, but also the other areas to balance it.”

  His hands lingered over his brushes, as if deciding. Then his hand swooped down, quickly seizing one. His fingers reminded me of chopsticks picking the best pieces of meat from a dish. Then he seized another brush and circled it in the pink paint he had just used to paint plum blossoms, and he painted a bird flying on the bare side of the page.

  After struggling to paint a bamboo leaf right, I felt awed. Each stroke was strong and certain and his hands quick and controlled, blotting and brushing in a graceful dance. His eyes darkened in concentration, and every one of us watched, mesmerized. He took his name chop and pressed a red mark into the painting.

  “Everything in the painting must be balanced,” he said. “Even your mark has to be placed carefully; it’s part of the painting. The red color has to be balanced—it can’t be too close or too far from elements. Never put your mark on top of a bird or in the middle of your bamboo.”

  “What does the stamp say?” Eva, the girl with the long hair, asked.

  “Li Mengshan,” the teacher said. “My name!”

  I was glad I finally learned his name. It was kind of funny that it was only today, during this last week of class, that I learned what it was. But in a strange way, it was kind of fitting, too. Because after watching him paint, I felt like I was meeting him for the first time. I remembered on that first day, I just supposed he wasn’t a good artist, because he couldn’t speak well. He spoke English so hesitantly, bumbling and stumbling over words, I had thought that was the kind of person he was. And he wasn’t. I realized that was probably how people saw me here because I couldn’t speak Chinese. They thought because I couldn’t speak the language, I didn’t have anything important to say.