City of Tranquil Light

by Bo Caldwell

  We were ravenous, and Katherine immediately began slicing into one of the sausages, which we ate sitting on the floor, our loot spread out around us. I put on my father’s cap and knew I should feel satisfied and content, but in the quiet amid the packaging mess, I couldn’t ignore my conscience. I knew it had been an honor for Chung Hao to invite us to his home on this of all days, and therefore an affront to be refused.

  I stopped ogling everything and eating, and I looked at Katherine. “I think I’ve offended Chung Hao.”

  Katherine’s face was flushed and her hair mussed. The quilt was spread across her lap and she was happily pulling on her new gloves. She looked at me quizzically, her mouth full of sausage. “What?”

  I took off the cap and looked at her uneasily. “Chung Hao invited us to go with them to his brothers’ for the New Year’s Eve feast. But I said no, and I believe he was hurt.”

  Katherine froze. “Oh, Will.” She shook her head. “Of course he was hurt. Why did you refuse?”

  “My pride. We had nothing to bring, and I didn’t want to go empty-handed.”

  Katherine looked around at our gifts, then took off her new gloves and began gathering a few sausages and cans of fruit. “Well, we do now. Perhaps we can make things right.”

  I watched, chagrined. “It’s your fault, you know.”

  She stared at me with a Where-do-I-start? look on her face.

  “For marrying such an oaf.”

  She laughed. “At least he’s a repentant oaf,” she said. “There’s something to be said for that.”

  We packed some of the fruit and sausage into a large basket and set off quickly through the darkening streets, where people were making their way to their family homes for the celebration. We reached Chung Hao’s home nearly an hour later. As we stood at the gate I smelled garlic and meat cooking in oil and heard laughing and talking from inside and I faltered, questioning the wisdom of our plan. But Katherine looked at me so sternly that I felt like a scolded child, and I decided the punishment fit the crime; I had acted childishly indeed. I knocked and called Chung Hao’s name.

  When he opened the gate, I said, “My friend, I trust you will pardon us for interrupting your celebration. But I see I was most ungracious in declining your invitation. I have been told that the New Year is a time to right wrongs and forget grudges, and it is my hope that you will forgive my rudeness.”

  Chung Hao hesitated. “I feared I had insulted you. That perhaps it was not fitting to ask you to come here as guests.”

  I shook my head. “I was foolish and ungrateful. Please forgive me.” Then I held out my father’s cap, which I had brought with me on impulse. “I believe this would suit you well.”

  Chung Hao carefully took the cap from me and looked at it in wonder. Then he laughed, a deep joyful sound, and put the cap on. I felt a pang of regret; I loved that cap. But he smiled broadly and the sting eased. “I would welcome a man with a gift like this any day of the year, no matter how foolish.” He laughed again and held open the gate and escorted us inside.

  Several months later we had a celebration of a different sort: on a windy afternoon in May we held our first baptism service and welcomed five new members into our church—Chung Hao, Mo Yun, and three of Katherine’s first patients. The fact that our converts were so few did not discourage us, at least not for long. As the wind blew dust circles around our feet, we led these new believers to our courtyard for what they called the “ordinance of washing.” Chung Hao had helped me haul the large tub we used for bathing into the courtyard and fill it with fresh water, for the practice of the Mennonite church was baptism by full immersion. One by one our new believers came forward. I helped them into the tub one at a time and held their hands as they knelt and ducked their heads underwater. When they stood from the immersion and opened their eyes and professed their faith in Christ as their Lord, they looked at me with an earnestness and joy that filled my heart.

  The last to be baptized was an elderly woman whom Katherine had cured of lameness. I led her to the tub and began to sprinkle her head with water, rather than helping her into the tub, for she was well past sixty and very frail, and I worried about the consequences of immersing her.

  But she stopped me and pointed at the others, who were soaked and happy. “Why am I not like them?” she asked.

  I explained that because of her age, she might not stand the shock and that instead I would pour a small amount of water on her head.

  She smiled and shook her head. “Mu shih, if I should die during the act of receiving baptism, would I not be most blessed of all?”

  That fall was the start of a time of great change for China. On October 10, troops in Wuchang in the south forced their commander to rebel against the Manchu regime, which had ruled over China since 1644. Soon afterward the rebels declared a new republic, with the southern cities of Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankow under their control. The government regained control of Hankow by the end of October, but those few weeks were enough for the rebellion to gain strength. By the end of the year, China’s southern and central provinces had declared themselves free of Manchu rule and the leaders of the movement established the Republic of China in Nanking, naming as its temporary president Sun Yat-sen, a western-educated doctor and the leader of the revolution.

  On a cool day in late November of 1911, as Katherine and I were walking home through the city, we saw a group of people gathered at the yamen on Cheng Chieh, and as we made our way closer we found ourselves gazing at something we could never have imagined. In the center was a large dark heap of something, and when we drew closer we saw that it was a pile of queues, the long braids worn by Chinese males. Men all over the city were cutting them off, an act that had been forbidden by the Manchu empire since the seventeenth century, when the queue became a symbol of Manchu domination of the Chinese and required by law. The new republic had abolished the law. Two months later, in February of 1912, the last Manchu emperor, a six-year-old boy named Pu Yi, would give up the throne of China and a more-than-two-thousand-year-old dynasty would come to an end.

  My own life changed as well. In December I received a letter from my mother, and as I had not heard from her since we had received the crate of gifts, I opened the letter quickly, eager for news from home. Because the postal service in China was so unpredictable and usually so slow—a letter could take as little as three months to reach us or as long as two years—I looked first at the date, which was six months earlier. Then I slipped the letter into my pocket to save it for later.

  After dinner, while Katherine was talking with Chung Hao and Mo Yun, I went into our bedroom and lit the lamp. I sat down on our bed and carefully unfolded the letter.

  June 7, 1911

  My dear son,

  It has been some months since we sent the crate of supplies to you, and I hope it arrived safely. You have made many sacrifices for your work, and we hope that our gifts have brought you and Katherine much joy.

  I write to you now with great sadness, and the fact that you must hear this news so far away from all of us compounds my grief. Last evening, shortly after dinner, your father passed on. It was his heart, and we had no warning. He came inside from checking the animals and stood at the kitchen window, looking out at the fields. Because he seemed winded I asked if he was all right. He smiled at me and he looked very peaceful, and he said he could not be better. I left the kitchen for a moment, and when I returned he was on the floor, as sudden as lightning. I knew he was gone.

  I have taught you since you were a small boy to trust God in everything, and I am praying that you will trust Him now, with your father’s death. It is a difficult request, I know, for I am struggling to do the same. I cannot conceive of our lives without him. I do not always feel God’s Presence, but I know He is with us, and I cling to that fact. It will have to suffice for now.

  The letter continued, but I read no further. I sat for a while in silence, picturing my father the last time I had seen him, five years earlier as the train p
ulled out of the station when I was leaving for China. I could see him waving to me, his arm around my mother, and I could hear him calling goodbye to me, his voice growing hoarse until it was lost in the distance and the sound of the train.

  I heard laughter from the next room. I read the letter again, and again after that. I do not know how much time passed before Katherine came into the room to see what was keeping me. She had only to look at my face to know that bad news had arrived. I handed the letter to her, and when Chung Hao appeared in the doorway and Katherine told him my news, he wept for my loss.

  For several months my father’s death felt like a blow that might level me. But one night when I went outside after dinner and stood looking up at the stars, something changed. I was breathing in the scent of wheat from the fields beyond the city wall, a smell that usually made me miss home and long for the time when Katherine and I would return to Oklahoma after our time in China to help run my family’s farm, a future I’d always seen as a given.

  Until that night. Despite my grief I found a gift in my father’s passing: it severed my ties to my old life and freed me for my new one. From that time on I ceased thinking of my time in China as an interlude, and I no longer dreamed of returning home.

  Firstborn

  1915–1917

  October 9, 1915

  Six years ago today we arrived in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng. Some days it seems I’ve lived here for decades, while on others it’s as if we’ve just arrived. It’s the same with the work: one day I’m amazed at all that has been accomplished through us, and the next day all I can see is what hasn’t.

  Our church has fifty-six members now, and we meet three times a week—for worship on Sunday mornings, and for Bible study and prayer during the week. We ask our women members to take a vow that they will not bind their daughters’ feet. In nearby villages are a dozen outstations that Will has established with Chung Hao’s help; I visit them once a month as well, as sort of a traveling clinic. Will estimates that Mo Yun and I have treated thousands of people for one ailment or another, including thirteen attempted opium suicides. All but one of these survived, and while I know the one who died was too far gone when I was called, she haunts me still.

  Last month we received an unexpected donation from a couple in Kansas who had read of our work in the quarterly newsletter sent to Mennonite churches in the United States. It seemed like a small fortune, and in the letter that accompanied the check our new benefactors promised to send another gift before year’s end. As the tile roof of our storefront on Hsiao Chieh leaked so badly that rainy days were as miserable inside as out, we used the money to rent a Chinese ancestral home just inside East Gate on Ch’ien Chia Chieh, Thousand House Street, an odd name as ours is the only house here, but the people see the name as a good omen. The house is unusual for a Chinese home: the design of most Chinese buildings emphasizes breadth rather than height, and many of the homes are wide U-shaped structures that are really a series of rooms. But our new home has two stories and is therefore a real find. Downstairs there is a large room suitable for a meeting hall, and upstairs are bedrooms for us and Chung Hao and Mo Yun. But best of all (to me, anyway) is the medium-sized room downstairs behind the hall, which is now our clinic. No more courtyard!

  The night after we moved into our new home was Chung Chiu Chieh, the Moon Festival, which is a celebration of the autumn harvest and the end of summer, something I’m all for because of the relentless heat. (We are among the few foreigners who tolerate the high temperatures instead of migrating to the coast, partly because of finances but also because neither of us wants to be away from Kuang P’ing Ch’eng for so long.) The Moon Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, September 23rd this year. It’s believed that the moon is brightest and fullest on this night. The people see the moon’s round shape as representing the family circle, and they gather with their relations to stare up at the full moon together. This perhaps sounds silly, but it isn’t; it’s beautiful, and it is my favorite night of the year.

  The night was quiet and clear and the moonlight so bright that the evening was like an enchanted version of day. Red paper lanterns hung from the towers of the city wall and from houses and shops on every street, as if the city were dressed up for the celebration. Chung Hao and Mo Yun and Will and I hung our own red lanterns in our courtyard then sat together outside and admired the moon, which truly was a marvel: white and perfectly round, and so big it seemed to be right above us and shining only for Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, as if our city was the moon’s favorite place on earth. Chung Hao and Mo Yun recited poems about the moon and we shared moon cakes, sweet rich pastries filled with ground lotus seeds and the yolk from a salted duck egg in the middle. The cakes are beautiful; they have a thin crust and a shiny glaze, and the top of them is imprinted with the Chinese character for harmony. They are all the more special because we have them only on this one night of the year. It was a magical night, and the fact that Chung Hao and Mo Yun celebrated with us instead of with Chung Hao’s brothers touched us both deeply; we truly are a family.

  Those are the rewards; there are also disappointments. Although Will is known and greeted in many parts of the city, there are days when people stop only to curse or spit at him as he preaches, and his discouragement tears at my heart. We have had converts who are faithful and enthusiastic for a few weeks then drift back to their old lives when their curiosity has been satisfied and the novelty worn off. I have patients whose ailments are too serious for me to treat, and of the ones I can, there are often too few hours in the day for fearsome diseases I’ve never heard of, rashes I can’t diagnose, strains of malaria unmentioned in my textbooks. All we can do at these times is keep moving forward.

  And dream. Although he has no idea where we will find the funding, Will dreams of building; he envisions a whole building for a clinic, instead of a room, and a school for girls as well as boys. I too dream, but not of building. My dreams concern something else entirely—or rather someone else. I know that our lives are about to change.

  Our daughter was born on an unusually warm day in May of 1916. Katherine felt unwell when she awoke that morning, but because this had happened several times in recent weeks I was not alarmed; she usually improved after a period of bed rest. By mid-morning she said the pain was gone and I went to work in the garden, partly because the work needed to be done, but more because I wanted to be nearby but not underfoot.

  A few hours later I was seeding cabbage when I looked up to see Chung Hao walking toward me. There was an urgency in his gait that caught my attention instantly, and I stood motionless for a moment, just watching him. Each stride covered nearly three feet. When our eyes met, I knew he had news.

  “It is time, mu shih,” he said. “Kung Mei Li is calling for you.”

  For a moment I was at a loss; the day had come a week sooner than we had expected. We had made plans for Katherine’s sister, Naomi, to be with us when Katherine’s time came, but that useless concern fell immediately away. I dropped the hoe and ran to the house.

  Mo Yun could be of some help, but she had assisted Katherine in only two childbirths. Chung Hao said his brother’s wife gave much of her time to midwifery and he would bring her to us at once, if we so desired. “Yes,” I said. “Quickly.”

  When I went into the bedroom to wait with Katherine I was suddenly struck by the sparseness of our home and the lack of medical care available to us. But there was no time to worry; there was only time for Katherine. She smiled weakly and said, “There’s a package on the floor of the dispensary. Everything is sterilized. Get it, but don’t open it yet.”

  The calm in her voice calmed the nervousness in my heart. I went to look for the package, found it where she had said it would be, and took it to the bedroom. Then I sat down on the bed next to her and held her hand.

  Nearly two hours later Chung Hao arrived with his sister-in-law, and Katherine instructed her to wash thoroughly with very hot water. Not long after, Kath
erine suddenly cried out in pain. Mo Yun led me from the room and told me that all was well and there was no need to worry. After this I felt certain that everyone would be better off if I stayed out of the way, so I went back outside to pace and to suggest to God that He stay very near just then.

  I cannot say how much time passed before I was called inside. Though it seemed like at least a day, it could not have been more than a few hours before Mo Yun appeared at the back door of our home. “Mu shih,” she called, “your firstborn is a daughter!” I hurried inside, wishing I had roses or a gift for my dear Katherine, but when I entered our bedroom and saw her holding our child, my worries left me. I knelt at the bed, weak with gratitude and relief.

  July 1, 1916

  We have struck gold, we have found treasure, we are rich beyond anything I have ever imagined. Her name is Lily, and she is six weeks old.

  I cannot stay away from her. When she falls asleep and I place her carefully in the basket she sleeps in (the beautiful crib Will made seems far too vast for one so small), I have every intention of leaving the room to read or sew or be productive in some other way while she is asleep, but I rarely do. I don’t like being away from her, and I love to watch her sleep.

  She is quite a celebrity. Word of her traveled far and wide almost as soon as she entered this world, and the next day neighbors brought us noodles wrapped in red paper, a sign of prosperity, despite the fact that our firstborn was a girl, far inferior to a boy in their eyes. Now she’s the one people come to see; Will and I are yesterday’s news. When Lily was two weeks old, Feng Chen Mei and her entourage returned, asking to see “the silver baby” as they call her, because of her pale skin. The women have never before seen a foreign infant, and everything about her amazes them: her blond hair and wide blue eyes, the white gown and booties I sewed for her, her crib. Even diapers! They say she is pretty and well fed, and when I enter the room holding her wrapped in a clean white coverlet, they gasp and are speechless for a moment. Then their questions begin. What does she eat to grow so big and strong so quickly? What is her sweet scent? How does she stay so clean? Why is her skin so pale, like the moon?