Dumpling Days

by Grace Lin

  The pink birds were on bamboo. When you painted bamboo, that meant you were wishing something, I remembered. What were the birds wishing? I had never figured that out. If the birds were me, Lissy, and Ki-Ki, then maybe we were wishing Grandma a happy birthday. Grandma had said she loved my painting. I decided I’d give it to her.

  But it wasn’t finished yet. I rubbed my chop in the red paste again, over and over again, double the number of times I did before. I wanted this chop mark to be perfect. I took a deep breath and carefully centered my hand where I wanted the mark to be. Clunk! I stamped.

  I was almost afraid to lift the chop to see the mark. What if I had ruined the whole painting? But I carefully lifted it. Perfect!

  I sat back and looked at the whole painting. The three birds, the “forever” mark, and my name. The tiger on my chop grinned at me. The painting was perfect. It was the perfect gift for Grandma. Now Grandma’s birthday party could come!

  Chapter 38

  WHEN WE WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, IT SEEMED like the day was already at full speed. I had said that Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I had nothing to do for Grandma’s party, but even we were rushing and running around. It was like we were trying to catch Grandma’s party in a chase.

  “If you have a gift for Grandma, put it in this bag,” Aunt Bea said. She and Auntie Jin were leaving before us to get the restaurant ready. “We’ll bring it for the gift table.”

  I put my rolled-up painting in the bag, and Mom pushed me to get ready. We had to get all dressed up in our fancy Chinese dresses. I remembered that when we packed them, I had thought we would be wearing them all the time, since they were our only Chinese clothes. But this was the first time we were wearing them all summer. Part of all the busyness and hurrying around had been to get our clothes to fit. Mom had made us try them on in the morning, and they had all been too tight. In mine, I had felt like a bulging caterpillar trapped in a cocoon, and Lissy’s dress wouldn’t even zip up. Mom was going to run out and buy us new ones, but Grandma had shook her head. Instead, Grandma turned all he dresses inside out and took out stitches and resewed them. Now my silk dress wasn’t tight anywhere, except for at the collar. But it had always been tight there; that was just the way Chinese dresses were.

  I was really disappointed that we didn’t get new dresses. I had never liked my dress, anyway. I was still wearing the frog-green one that Lissy outgrew. As I buttoned the smooth silk collar, I saw there were small Chinese symbols embroidered on it. I had never paid attention to them before, but now I saw one was a character I had seen before. Which one was it?

  “What does this mean again?” I asked Mom, pointing at the symbol. “Is it ‘forever’?”

  “No,” Mom said, “This one is ‘happiness,’ remember? They usually put the word for ‘happiness’ on clothes for kids and ‘long life’ on clothes for adults.”

  Happiness. Like Lissy’s painting. “Long life” must have been the symbol that was on Grandma’s dress, then. Grandma wore a dress the rich color of the fine, polished, red-stained woodcarving and a green jade bracelet and button-shaped earrings. Mom pinned the large purple orchid near Grandma’s collar. I wondered if it was still cold from being in the refrigerator.

  At the restaurant, there were already people waiting. Grandma’s party was in a private room in the back, and when she and Grandpa entered, a great cheer went up. But I didn’t really hear it, because I was looking at everything. No wonder Aunt Bea and Auntie Jin had left early. They had had a lot to do. At every dinner table, there was a vase of flowers, and on each of the chairs was a box holding a decorated rice bowl. The bowls were deep pink with a design of curlicue flowers surrounding the Chinese long-life symbol (which I now knew). Mom said they were party favors for the guests.

  On the side, there was a gift table that was covered with presents. I didn’t see my painting there, but maybe it was underneath. There were so many gifts! Some of them weren’t wrapped, and we could see that they were gold Chinese symbols mounted on red velvet or silk and framed. I saw a long-life symbol in the pile. All the gifts looked expensive. I wondered if the symbols were made of real gold.

  A table with a bright red silk cloth was right by the door with some black markers.

  “Here, sign your name,” Uncle Shin told us.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a guest book,” he told us, “but Chinese style.”

  The cloth was already marked with black signatures and Chinese symbols. I thought it ruined the cloth, which was smooth, shiny silk. It could’ve been made into a beautiful dress or shirt if it hadn’t been messed up by all the markers. But since it was already spoiled, I wrote my name in the corner. I wrote it in English and Chinese, just like my chop, though I wasn’t completely sure if I got all my Chinese name right.

  Aunt Bea came up to Uncle Shin and talked to him in Taiwanese.

  “Time for me to be the master!” he joked at us before he strode away to the middle of the room. “Master of the ceremony, I mean.”

  And after clinking his wineglass with a fork, Uncle Shin began to make a speech to everyone in the room. It was in Taiwanese, of course, so I didn’t know what he was saying. But Grandma and Grandpa looked happy and proud standing next to him. People laughed and clapped at different times until finally Uncle Shin said something very loudly. This made everyone clap even louder, and then people started to move. Mom pushed us toward the dinner tables. It was time to eat!

  Chapter 39

  FOOD WAS PLACED ON THE TABLE IN A RUSH. AS SOON as we sat down, the waiters almost threw down a big bowl of thick, silvery soup; a platter of shrimp with nuts that looked as if they were candy-coated; a golden roasted chicken already sliced into bite-size pieces; a dark brown duck with snowy steamed buns surrounding it; and shiny jade-green vegetables with black mushrooms. There were also little barbecued birds, one for each person at the table.

  “Are these baby chickens?” I asked.

  “Quail,” Uncle Shin said.

  By now, I was no longer shocked by anything we ate. Compared with all the other foods I had eaten, quails were pretty ordinary.

  “You notice how there are a lot of birds for dinner?” Uncle Flower said. “The quails, chicken, and duck? They are to symbolize the phoenix, which is the mythical bird that represents the empress. Having all these birds is a way to honor Grandma.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “I should know,” Uncle Flower said. “I listened to your Auntie Jin talk about the menu for months and months.”

  In the center of the table, on a big plate that matched the design of the rice bowl gifts, there was a mountain of yellow noodles stir-fried with meat and slices of green onions.

  “And you have to have this,” Uncle Flower said, putting a big scoop of noodles on my plate. He had to lift his arms high in the air to make sure the long noodles didn’t touch the tablecloth.

  “Why?” Ki-Ki asked.

  “Because they are long-life noodles,” Uncle Flower said. “It’s a tradition for birthdays.”

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “They say there was a man who lived to be eight hundred years old,” Uncle Flower said. “He had a very, very long face. Mianchang is the word for ‘long noodles,’ and it sounds like the word for ‘long face,’ too. So, by eating these noodles we hope we will live as long as the long-faced man.”

  “He really lived to be eight hundred years old?” I said.

  “Who knows?” Uncle Flower said. “But people have been eating noodles for even longer than that.”

  So far, Grandma’s birthday party was a lot like Clifford’s wedding, which we went to last year. Everything was in Chinese and Taiwanese, and there was a lot of food and a lot of people—mainly adults, too.

  Then suddenly, the lights began to flicker. BANG-ba-ba-ba-BANG! BANG! A deafening, rhythmic banging thundered through the room and made us all jump. I covered my ears with my hands. The sound seemed to push people away, and we could see a drummer standing at the front o
f the room hitting a large drum as tall as his waist. BANG-ba-ba-ba-BANG! BANG! It was so loud! I saw the muscles in the drummer’s arms with each strike.

  “What’s going on?” Ki-Ki said, clinging to Mom. But Mom didn’t have a chance to answer, because two huge Chinese lions came springing into the room!

  I had never seen the Chinese lion dance before in person. I had seen photos of it and parts of it on TV, but never right in front of me. I knew they were people in costume, but they really did look like strange, wild beasts. There were two bright yellow lions, the color of sunflowers, with patterns of sparkling sequins and wavy hair. Their giant, fur-trimmed eyes made up most of their oversize heads. Designs of shiny gold, red, and black were painted all over. Pom-poms like fuzzy cherries bounced over their noses and round horns grew out of the tops of their heads. But it was their large, grinning mouths full of painted teeth that made you feel like you couldn’t trust them.

  The lions jumped and darted back and forth, sometimes in unison, sometimes at each other. You couldn’t tell if they were playing or attacking or if their mouths were laughing or snarling. Every movement was to the loud BANG-ba-ba-ba-BANG! BANG! of the drum, until it seemed like they were just flashes of gold and red.

  “I don’t like it!” Ki-Ki said loudly. Her voice filled the gaps of sound in between the drumming.

  “Shhh!” I hissed at her, and Lissy nudged her, too. “Stop! That’s rude!”

  Ki-Ki didn’t care. She scrunched her eyes and covered her ears tightly. She didn’t scream, but I could tell that most of the guests had seen her by the amused smiles on their faces. My face burned with embarrassment. I heard someone ask Uncle Shin a question in Chinese.

  “Meiguo,” Uncle Shin replied.

  “Ah.” The person nodded. “Meiguo hua qiao.”

  American. Again. Now Ki-Ki had made us look like we were a bunch of babies and almost ruined the show. Somehow we were always doing something wrong.

  But the booming drum made any kind of talking impossible, and the bright colors of the leaping and swaying lions were hypnotizing. With a final BANG-ba-ba-ba-BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! the two lions fell to the floor at Grandma’s feet. As the silence soaked through the room, it was replaced by loud clapping and cheering. The lions stood up, shook off their bodies, and took off their heads. Underneath, grinning, were Uncle Flower, Shogun, Julian, and their father! This was what they had been practicing all the time! This was the secret! I was a little jealous.

  Everyone clapped even louder, and Grandma and Grandpa jumped to their feet to hug them. People started getting up and walking around. The waiters began to put new dishes on the table and serve tea. We followed Uncle Shin to the front of the room.

  “You were really good!” I said to Julian. She was younger than me, but she was just as tall. The small hairs that had escaped her braid were moist from her sweat. She was still a little out of breath, but she gave us a shy smile and her eyes lit up so that they looked like the inside of a poppy flower.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Everyone liked it!” I said. It was hard to think of what to say that she would understand. “Well, except Ki-Ki. I think she was scared.”

  “Ki-Ki, lion,” she said. “Not used.”

  “Yes,” I said. “She wasn’t used to the Chinese lions.”

  “Not used,” Julian said. “No like.”

  “Yeah, you don’t like things you aren’t used to,” I said, and then I stopped. That wasn’t really true. I hadn’t been used to sushi, but now I kind of liked it. And I hadn’t been used to wax apples or the subway or the markets or sugarcane juice, and those were some of my favorite things. I hadn’t been used to Taiwan, but now I liked it, too.

  Uncle Flower said something to Julian in Chinese, and the waiters began serving the peach buns and the turtle cakes. Julian and Shogun went to change out of their costumes, and Lissy and I went back to the table. Ki-Ki was already sitting there, completely happy now that the lions were gone. The peach buns looked prettier than I remembered them, pink and white and soft. The turtle cakes didn’t look as much like a turtle as I thought they would. Since the peach buns looked so realistic, I was expecting the turtle cakes to be green with a head and a tail. But the turtle cakes were flattish ovals and shiny red and sticky-looking, as if they were made of Jell-O. The molded turtle pattern on top of the cakes made them look like oversize plastic jewels from Ki-Ki’s Barbie doll.

  Mom cut one of the turtle cakes into pieces, and I saw it was filled with red-bean paste, just like the peach buns. But before I could take a bite, Uncle Shin was at the front of the room again making a speech, with Grandma and Grandpa standing behind him. He was speaking in Taiwanese, and he called Aunt Bea, Auntie Jin, Uncle Flower, Shogun, Julian, and their father to stand next to him. It was probably to praise them for doing such a good lion dance. Everyone was clapping, and I felt a little jealous again, as well as a little ashamed. All the uncles and aunts and cousins had done great things for this party, and we hadn’t done anything—except for Ki-Ki to be scared of the lions. We were from Meiguo, and I felt like we had made America look bad.

  But then I heard Uncle Shin say, “Lissy, Pacy, and Ki-Ki!”

  Mom walked forward, motioning us to follow. But before we moved, Auntie Jin shoved a bag at Lissy. “Give Grandma her gifts now,” she whispered. I had forgotten about my painting. There it was, rolled up in the bag with another cylinder and a small flat board. Those must be Lissy’s and Ki-Ki’s gifts. I wondered what they were.

  We all gave both Grandpa and Grandma hugs, and then Lissy stepped forward and took out the paper cylinder from the bag and gave it to Grandma. “Happy birthday,” Lissy said. Grandma unrolled it. It was a poster of Lissy! It was from her photo shoot! She was in that blue Chinese dress, holding an oiled umbrella, and smiling flirtatiously at the audience. The real Lissy turned bright pink, but everyone clapped and Grandpa said “So beautiful!” while Grandma hugged her.

  Lissy handed me the bag, and I took out my painting. Grandma didn’t even unroll it before she hugged me. Her face wrinkled into a hundred smiles. Someone said something to her in Chinese, urging Grandma to show everyone my painting. When she did, a flattering cry of “ohh!” went all across the room before another round of applause. I knew the painting was good. The pink birds and the bamboo all seemed to glow together.

  I gave the bag to Ki-Ki, who took out her flat board. It was covered with gold paint and sparkles. It was very shiny. Ki-Ki had written in big letters #1 GRANDMA. I laughed. Ki-Ki had made Grandma an award! She probably got the idea from winning her ribbon.

  After hugging Ki-Ki, Grandma held up the award for everyone to see. She lifted it over her head, like a prizewinning boxer, and laughter thundered through the room as people clapped at the same time.

  “I didn’t know that we’d be giving the gifts in front of everyone,” Lissy said. “I wouldn’t have given Grandma the poster if I knew that.”

  “Why?” I said. “Grandma liked it. The poster was a good idea.”

  “You think so?” Lissy said, looking relieved.

  I nodded. Giving Grandma the poster meant I wouldn’t have to see a huge version of a weird-looking Lissy hanging at home. To me, it was a great idea.

  “Gau! Gau!” a guest said to Mom, nodding toward us. Mom beamed. She looked just like Ki-Ki after she had won the blue ribbon.

  “What did he say?” I asked Mom. “What does gau mean?”

  “It means ‘talented,’ ” Mom said. “He said you all are very good.”

  I smiled. Inside, I felt cozy and warm as if I were a soup dumpling myself. In fact, I felt like I was going to burst with happiness, I felt so glad. We were good. Even though we were Americans and we didn’t speak Chinese, people in Taiwan still liked us.

  And, I realized, that was what the three birds on the bamboo had been wishing for. Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I had been wishing to like Taiwan and for Taiwan to like us. The wish had come true. Some parts of Taiwan, like Grandma and Grandpa, even loved
us.

  But I couldn’t think anymore, because Grandpa was motioning me, Lissy, Ki-Ki, and the cousins toward him and Grandma. Now what? As we came forward, Grandma reached into her purse and gave us each a bright red envelope, the color of the last roses of summer. “Hong bao,” Mom said. “Lucky money. It’s a gift.”

  We got gifts on Grandma’s birthday? That seemed backward, but no one else thought it was odd. Lissy, Ki-Ki, and I grinned at one another. We had never gotten birthday presents at someone else’s birthday party before, but we liked it. I knew we weren’t supposed to open gifts in front of people, but I couldn’t help sneaking a peek inside the envelope. Grandma had given us American money, and I counted three twenty-dollar bills! That was sixty dollars! Wow! She must have given us sixty dollars because she was sixty years old. We each rushed up to Grandma and Grandpa to thank them.

  “I hope we come to your birthday every year!” I said to Grandma.

  She gave me a big hug. “Me, too,” she said.

  Chapter 40

  AND THEN IT WAS THE LAST DAY. INSTEAD OF DOING anything fun, all we did was pack. It was very hectic packing all our things. I hadn’t thought we had bought that much new stuff, but not everything fit in our suitcases, and Mom ran out to get another bag. And we had filled the extra suitcase we had used to bring gifts from the U.S., too.

  There was a lot of new stuff. Every time we put something in, I kept thinking, It’s the last day. It’s the last day. We didn’t want to forget anything. Everyone’s projects from class, our name chops, our lucky money. Mom kept jamming in extra packs of seaweed and rice crackers. We all kept grabbing and packing food that we knew we couldn’t get in New Hartford. Lissy bought ten tins of sour plum candy, and Ki-Ki took bags of white melon candy. I didn’t bring candy, but I did ask Mom if we could go back to the bakery for more pineapple cakes. She said yes, and we rushed all the way there to get them.