A Girl Named Faithful Plum

by Richard Bernstein

  Why, oh why, had she made this journey? she thought. How was she going to get to the auditions if Policeman Li didn’t find her, and how was he going to find her in this big city? Chen Aiyi told Zhongmei not to worry, but what explanation could there be for his not turning up at the train station, other than that he didn’t want her anymore? The information about the train that Zhongmei’s family had sent ahead had been entirely accurate, and the train had arrived on time. And anyway, Li Zhongshan was a policeman. He was just the kind of person who ought to be able to find somebody arriving at the Beijing train station, and if he hadn’t found Zhongmei, it must be because he didn’t want to find her. That was very mean, Zhongmei thought, very unkind. Policeman Li and his wife must have known that Zhongmei had nowhere else to go, and yet he hadn’t shown up. Maybe that was the way people behaved in Beijing. Nobody in Baoquanling would ever act like that, she felt.

  The first day in Beijing, Huping had taken her for a walk around the neighborhood, which was one of Beijing’s oldest. The family’s lane was called Da Shi Qiao Hutung, which means “Big Stone Bridge Lane,” and it led to a street called Old Drum Tower Street, which was crowded with small shops selling ready-made clothing, bolts of cotton and woolen cloth, enameled basins, Golden Bridge toothpaste and Bee and Flower soap, along with framed pictures of Chairman Mao, the People’s Daily newspaper, Red Flag magazine, and coal-dust bricks for cooking. A particularly fascinating shop displayed shelf after shelf of clear glass jars of medicinal roots, curled-up snakes, and the gall bladders and hearts of rabbits, civet cats, and other animals. On a counter were bowls of powdery substances, including (or so the sign proclaimed) tiger bone and rhinoceros horn, and dried mountain herbs and grasses that, steeped in a tea, were believed effective against rheumatism, arthritis, heart disease, cancer, fatigue, anemia, and nightmares.

  Old Drum Tower Street rang to the sound of a million bicycle bells and the occasional clang of a streetcar bell, because old green electrical streetcars still ran there, connecting the Dongcheng District with the center of Beijing. Despite her worries, Zhongmei loved walking down narrow Big Stone Bridge Lane to Old Drum Tower Street and gazing at the passing throngs, more people every hour than you’d see in Baoquanling in a month. After a day, Huping went away to visit his grandparents, whom he hadn’t seen since he’d been sent down to the countryside years before, and that left Zhongmei alone during the day, since both Aiyi and Shu-shu had to work. So every day she took a walk around the neighborhood, thinking about her situation.

  Old Drum Tower Street led to a massive structure called, not surprisingly, the Drum Tower. It was a six-hundred-year-old building that had formed part of the massive wall that surrounded the entire city when the emperors of China’s past lived there, and Zhongmei thought it was the most magnificent thing she had ever seen. It was enormously tall and wide, but it didn’t seem heavy. In fact, it seemed to soar. A set of stone steps led up to a tall red-painted foundation, above which were three sets of curved roofs, one atop each of the tower’s floors, with each floor marked by an ornate latticed railing, and the whole thing surmounted by a roof that curved upward into the sky.

  Lots of people visited the Drum Tower, and Zhongmei could see them standing and looking out at Beijing from behind one or another of the upper railings. She read the information placard at the Drum Tower gate, which informed her that in ancient times the drum had sounded every hour to keep people informed of the time. But the entry ticket cost ten fen, and Zhongmei didn’t feel right about spending the money.

  No, she would have to save every penny of the small sum her parents had given her for the journey. Walking was free and enjoyable, but there could be no paid-for small pleasures, not even a ride on the electric streetcar, which would take her to some of Beijing’s other great monuments. That would have to wait. Zhongmei simply walked around, circling the Drum Tower several times, looking up at it, enjoying its delicate power. She cut a small and lonely figure, her head bent as she contemplated her situation, so far from home and so seemingly hopeless. She was furious at Policeman Li for not having come for her at the train station. She was angry at her father for having chosen so unreliable a person to care for her, somebody who manifestly didn’t want to care for her. She missed her friends, her brothers and sisters, especially Zhongqin, who had always been at Zhongmei’s side and now was so far away. Zhongmei squatted in front of the Drum Tower gate and traced lines in the dust with a twig. People came and went, people she didn’t know, people who paid no attention to her. In Baoquanling, she knew everybody and everybody paid attention to her.

  Dear Da-jie,

  I realize now what I’m going to do. Huping’s family is very nice. I’m going to ask them if I can stay with them for the audition. They can show me how to take the bus to the Beijing Dance Academy, so I can go by myself. Probably I won’t get chosen. Then I’ll be able to visit the famous places in Beijing and come back to Baoquanling and never leave it again.

  Having composed this letter to Zhongqin in her head, Zhongmei got up and made her way back to the house, intending to write it down and send it off right away.

  But when she arrived at the entrance to Big Stone Bridge Lane, Chen Aiyi was waiting, excited about something.

  “Ah, there you are!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting for you. I have something to tell you, something amazing.”

  Zhongmei was so surprised, she was speechless.

  “Let’s walk home together and I’ll tell you as we go,” Chen Aiyi said, and she embarked on a confusing story, which Zhongmei didn’t understand at first.

  “I’ve known this for a couple of days, but I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure,” Chen Aiyi said.

  “Didn’t want to tell me what?” Zhongmei asked impatiently.

  “That I found Policeman Li!” Chen Aiyi said.

  “You found Policeman Li?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “Oh,” said Zhongmei.

  “I didn’t find Policeman Li, but I found his wife. She’s very nice, and I’m sure Policeman Li is nice too. They’ve been so worried since they couldn’t find you, but now they have, or, I should say, I’ve found them, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Policeman Li is coming for you today!”

  “He is?” Zhongmei was happy, but she was also nervous. She had built up such an unfavorable opinion of Policeman Li during the past couple of days that she wasn’t sure she really wanted to meet him anymore.

  “Yes,” Chen Aiyi was saying. “His wife works in the same factory as me. Isn’t that amazing? Such a big city, Beijing, millions of people, so many factories, and we work in the same one! I found out because after you arrived and I went to work, I told some of my co-workers that there was this girl from Heilongjiang and she’s come to Beijing for the dance auditions, and nobody had come to pick her up at the train station, so she was staying with me.”

  Chen Aiyi paused to catch her breath.

  “Well,” she resumed. “The day before yesterday, somebody I know told me that she heard there was another woman at the factory who was also talking about a girl from Heilongjiang. This other woman said that she was looking for her. Naturally, at first I thought there must be lots of girls from Heilongjiang, so I didn’t think much of it, but then yesterday my friend told me that the other woman’s husband was a policeman! She works in a different part of the factory from me. I went to see her during my rest break. The woman had a picture of the girl they were looking for. It was taken some time ago, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it was you!”

  Chen Aiyi stopped and smiled at Zhongmei. They were just outside the gate to their courtyard.

  “But what if they don’t want me?” Zhongmei asked.

  “What if who doesn’t want you?”

  “Policeman Li and his family,” Zhongmei exclaimed. “He didn’t meet me at the train station. Maybe they don’t want to take care of me.”

  “Of course they want you,” Chen Aiyi said. “Just go in and get ready. He’s
going to be here very soon.”

  Zhongmei, reassured but still not certain that finding Policeman Li would turn out to be a good thing, scampered into the house and quickly put her few things into her small cloth suitcase, rushing so much that she didn’t even bother to fold the city outfit Zhongqin and Zhongling had made for her but just stuffed it in. She grabbed the suitcase and ran out to the courtyard. She looked out into the lane in anticipation of the man in a policeman’s uniform who would soon materialize.

  She saw no walking policeman, only a large man on a motorcycle slowly navigating the potholes of Big Stone Bridge Lane. As he got closer, Zhongmei realized that he was wearing a policeman’s uniform, green with red shoulder tabs and a large visored hat that came down to his eyes.

  “Zhongmei?” the man said, speaking over the rumbling sound of the motorcycle engine.

  “Policeman Li?”

  “I’m so glad to find you!” Policeman Li said. “I’m so sorry! We’ve been worried to death about you. I don’t understand how this could have happened, because I went to the train station on the day you arrived, and I looked all over, but I just didn’t find you. I even had the station master make an announcement over the public address system. They called your name and asked you to go to the number one ticket window. I waited there a long time but you never came.”

  Zhongmei remembered the incomprehensible public address announcements reverberating in the vastness of the Beijing train station.

  “I didn’t understand the announcements,” Zhongmei said. “I was just standing there, waiting for you.”

  “Well, why didn’t I see you there?”

  “How should I know?”

  “It’s a mystery,” Policeman Li said. He was a large man with a big belly and kindly eyes. Looking at him, Zhongmei began to like him. “Da-ma will be so happy,” he said. Da-ma means “big mother.” It’s a standard form of address in China for an older woman who is actually not your mother. Policeman Li was talking about his wife. “She’s been scolding me every day since I didn’t find you at the train station. ‘How could you not find her?’ she’s been saying. ‘How many eleven-year-old girls traveling by themselves could there have been?’ And she’s right. I looked everyplace. I just don’t understand how it was that I didn’t see you.”

  “I was worried you didn’t want me anymore,” Zhongmei said. This was the girl, after all, still haunted by all those threats, casually muttered over the years, to give her away to another family. If her own family wasn’t sure they wanted her, how could she be sure that Policeman Li’s family would?

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when you didn’t come for me at the train station, I figured you didn’t want me to come to your house,” Zhongmei explained.

  “What sheer nonsense!” Policeman Li said. “Da-ma has talked about nothing besides you for a week. I’m glad we’ll be able to talk about something else now.” He smiled and turned to Chen Aiyi, who was standing in the entryway watching and smiling.

  “If you don’t mind, comrade, I’m going to take her home now. My wife is waiting impatiently. Thank you for your help.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Chen Aiyi. “Zhongmei,” she said, “please come to see us before you go back to Baoquanling.”

  “I will,” Zhongmei said happily, feeling suddenly lighter than before, the weight of her worries lifted from her shoulders.

  “Have you ever ridden one of these before?” Policeman Li said, nodding at his police-issue motorcycle. “No? Well, climb on behind and hold on to me.”

  Policeman Li turned his motorcycle around and drove slowly out of the lane. Zhongmei turned and waved to Chen Aiyi, who was still standing at the courtyard gate. Policeman Li turned the motorcycle down Old Drum Tower Street and picked up speed. They passed bicycles, trucks, and streetcars. When they roared past the Drum Tower, Zhongmei suppressed the urge to wave at it, as at an old friend. She felt the wind in her face and her hair blowing behind her.

  “I’ll take you past Tiananmen!” Policeman Li shouted. “Have you been there yet?”

  “No,” shouted Zhongmei. She was still a little scared on the back of the motorcycle and wrapped her arms around Policeman Li, but he was so big that her arms didn’t reach all the way around. They were in the middle of the widest street Zhongmei had ever seen. Soon, looming into view was an expanse of asphalt so vast it seemed to fade almost to the horizon. At one end was a great red wall and a massive gate surmounted by the same kind of curved tile roofs she’d seen at the Drum Tower. Three arched marble bridges led over a moat and toward the massive, imposing gate that was the entrance to the Forbidden City, where China’s emperors had once lived. Behind, Zhongmei could see the green-tiled curved roofs of numerous palatial buildings. In front, just above the gate, was a picture of Chairman Mao.

  Tiananmen! In those days every child was told that the most exciting thing that could happen to any Chinese person was to visit Tiananmen, and now Zhongmei was there! How quickly things had changed. A few hours ago she was disconsolately scratching the earth with a twig; now she was flying on the back of a policeman’s motorcycle through Tiananmen Square!

  “Look over there,” Policeman Li said, pointing to a large rectangular building with a sort of orange frieze. A long line of people led up to it. Zhongmei knew what it was. She had seen pictures of the mausoleum where Chairman Mao’s body was preserved in a glass case.

  “And that over there is the Great Hall of the People,” Policeman Li said, pointing to another immense building that Zhongmei recognized, the place where China’s government held its important national meetings.

  Zhongmei was indescribably excited.

  Dear Da-jie,

  I saw Tiananmen Square today. It’s even bigger than I imagined it. I’m now living with Policeman Li’s family. He’s very nice. Da-ma is nice too. When I walked into the house, the first thing she did was rush up to me and throw her arms around me like I was her daughter. She told me a thousand times how angry she was at Policeman Li because he couldn’t find me at the train station. They have one son.

  Tomorrow he’s going to take me to the Forbidden City and he’ll take lots of pictures that I’ll show you when I get home, because he works in a photographic studio. The audition starts the day after tomorrow. Policeman Li is taking me on his motorcycle. I know now that I’m not going to get into the Beijing Dance Academy. But it’s OK. I saw Tiananmen. I’m happy.

  Zhongmei

  8

  Taking Measurements

  Zhongmei made a grand entrance on the first day of the auditions, arriving at the Beijing Dance Academy on the back of a motorcycle driven by a stout policeman in uniform. But soon Li Zhongshan had to go to the police station, and as the rumble of the motorcycle receded into the distance, she found herself very much alone.

  “That’s the Dance Academy,” Policeman Li had said, pointing at a black wrought-iron gate. Behind it was a set of three-story buildings around an asphalt courtyard. “Just go in there and tell them who you are. I’ll be back for you tonight at six o’clock.”

  Zhongmei stood at the entryway. A brass sign with black Chinese characters marked it as the Beijing Wu-dao Xue-yuan, the Beijing Dance Academy. She was wearing the costume her sisters had made for her, the yellow skirt, pink blouse with the embroidered ducks, and green shoes with the brown laces, and she was ready to show what a good dancer she could be. But where to go? Who should she tell that she was there? Crowds of people were gathered outside the gate; another crowd milled about in the courtyard within. There were lots of girls and boys Zhongmei’s age, and they all seemed to be accompanied by parents, brothers and sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers, all except Zhongmei. She had the feeling that all of them except her knew what to do. She tried to push her way past the gate into the courtyard to try to get to the entrance to the school, but there were too many people. The way was blocked. She stood there helplessly.

  “Form a line! Form a line!” a voice shouted after what seemed lik
e a long time. A man with a handheld loudspeaker stood on the steps of one of the buildings inside the courtyard, a cream stucco edifice lined with rectangular windows.

  “Boys on the left; girls on the right,” he said. “Form a line and wait your turn to register.”

  But there was no line. There was just a crush of people pressing vaguely toward the school entrance, plus the thousands of people outside on the street, pressing toward the gate. Zhongmei was among them.

  “You people outside the gate,” the man with the loudspeaker shouted. “Form a line next to the wall and down the block. Please be orderly. Please be considerate. Please wait your turn and everybody will be given a chance to register.”

  It took a long time. A bunched and ragged line did eventually form. It went down the small street that the gate opened onto and then turned the corner down a much larger street, across from which was the entrance to a park. Zhongmei found herself near the end of the line, way down the big street, a long distance from the gate. The time passed. Slowly she inched forward. Cars, trucks, buses, and a very large number of bicycles flowed by indifferently. There was a lot of honking mixed with the tinkling of bicycle bells. Whenever a bus or truck went by, vapors of exhaust would wash over the people in the line. It was a hot day, but at least the sidewalk was lined by a row of locust trees that gave the crowd of Dance Academy hopefuls some relief from the bright sun. At around noon, four hours after arriving on Policeman Li’s motorcycle, Zhongmei turned the corner. An hour later she reached the gate. She ate a steamed bun and an apple that Policeman Li’s wife had packed for her that morning. Two hours after that, she found herself on the pavement in front of the door to the school itself. Tables had been set up at the entrance outside, one for the boys and one for the girls, where a harried, perspiring woman in a plain white blouse handed her a piece of paper on which she filled in blanks asking for her name, her identity card number, and her home address.

  The woman looked over the form when Zhongmei handed it back to her and raised her eyebrows.