China Ghosts

by Jeff Gammage

  Across the street from the Chung May Food Market stands part of Chinatown’s newest challenge, and to local activists it represents a trend more ominous than any land grab.

  The tall brick building at 1010 Race Street started out as a rocking chair factory, but today it’s the TenTen condominiums. To the north, on Vine Street, the Grandview condominium project casts its lengthy shadow, and to the east the old Metropolitan Hospital has also been converted to expensive housing, penthouse apartments selling for $855,000. More condos are planned for other buildings.

  The Center City housing boom is sweeping east, into places never before considered as sites for luxury housing. Chinatown activists fear the new developments will raise housing prices, rents, and taxes so high that the neighborhood’s traditional working-class families will no longer be able to afford to live here. Chinatown, they worry, could be reduced from a living, breathing neighborhood to a touristy collection of restaurants.

  We turn down Tenth Street, away from the new condos, past the Imperial Inn Restaurant, past the stands of plums and melons outside the King Market, past the fire station that’s home to Engine Company 20 and Ladder 23, the House of Dragons. We turn right on Cherry Street—which appears to end at a brick wall. Actually the barricade is the east wall of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, another huge public development.

  Jin Yu knows the way from here.

  Halfway down the block, under a yellow awning, is a doorway marked by an elaborate painting of a Chinese dragon, its claws at the ready. Every Saturday morning Jin Yu goes through that door and up three flights of stairs, to the plank-floor studio of Cheung’s Hung Gar Kung Fu Academy. Her teacher, always formally addressed as Sifu, is big and strong and stern and loves Jin Yu to death.

  Today our destination is not the kung fu school but the building directly across the street. A few months ago, it was a plain brick storefront with a jutting picture window. Today it’s as elaborate a building as can be found in Chinatown, its doorway protected by four fierce gold dragons that twist around tall red columns. Delicate portraits of Buddha and Kuan Yin frame the entrance, and overhead is a curved roof made of glazed ceramic tile, each block painted the color of sunset, a shade typically reserved for nobility.

  The black-and-gold sign over the door is written in English though hardly anyone inside speaks a word. It says: FO SHOU TEMPLE.

  The four of us step inside. Among strangers. Strangers and friends. There’s a woman here who seems to be one of the organizers. She speaks decent English. I don’t know her name, nor she mine. We recognize each other only by sight. As the renovations to the temple progressed, I would wander across the street to watch the workers while Jin Yu practiced her lion dancing. This woman and I would chat about Buddhism and China, and how one connects to the other.

  She wanted me to bring my children to visit. On a Sunday, when the monks would be here.

  A LITTLE more than four years ago, upon boarding a flight that would carry us across the sea and into the arms of our first child, Christine and I were assigned to sit in row 59, an aisle number that matched the year of our births. At our first stop in Beijing, we were initially booked into the Taiwan Hotel, which happens to be located on Jinyu Road. In Changsha, our efforts to seek medical treatment for Jin Yu caused our paperwork to be filed a day behind that of everyone else in our group. That meant Jin Yu officially became our daughter on August 13—the anniversary of my father’s death. When the three of us moved on to Guangzhou, to the ornate White Swan Hotel, we were assigned to room 1101—the number of the first house that Christine and I shared in Philadelphia.

  Call those alignments whatever they may be—meaningless, coincidental minutiae, or signs that prove the existence of a greater, helping power. For me those matching dates and numbers were omens that offered assurance and continuity in a time of upheaval. That sense of connection followed me home. It’s not that I’m superstitious or religious. My last visit to anything resembling a church was two years ago, in Guangzhou, when Christine and I held Zhao Gu as the monks bestowed their blessing.

  Now, Christine and I have brought our girls here, to this small temple in Chinatown, to renew that baptism, that consecration. Today, two weeks after Jin Yu’s sixth birthday, feels like the right time to be here, to offer our prayers. Mine is not a prayer of want but a prayer of gratitude.

  Inside the temple, we are enveloped by a warm wave of scent and sound.

  The smell is of incense, and freshly cut flowers, of oranges and pears and apples, set in bowls on the altar before three large golden statues of Buddha. The aroma is sweet but not cloying, not like a perfume, strong and artificial, but a bouquet produced by nature.

  Twenty-five voices move together as one, the rhythmic hum of the chant rising and falling but never stopping. Christine can pick out some of the words. Earth. Moon. Sky. The song will go on for another hour, like a church hymn of endless verses.

  Two nuns stand near the altar. One noticed us come in. She walks down the aisle to where we stand at the back. Her head is shaved, making it hard to tell her age. Maybe thirty, maybe fifty. Her robe is a rich chocolate brown. It matches her eyes. She welcomes us in broken English, then takes Jin Yu by the hand and leads her forward. Zhao Gu automatically follows.

  At the altar, the nun hands each of my girls a lighted stick of incense—not a choice I would have made. But the girls hold the incense carefully and respectfully. Then the nun kneels down, showing them how to bow before Buddha.

  Zhao Gu is a little confused. Why should she lie down here, in this strange place, when it’s not even naptime? Jin Yu takes to it immediately. A dramatic role, with all eyes on her—what could be better?

  Watching the three of them, nun and daughters, gathered under Buddha’s munificent gaze, I think: Thank you. Thank you, Buddha. Thank you, God, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, Yahweh, Vishnu. Whoever you are, whatever name you prefer, if you are out there, listening, then thank you. Thank you for leading Jin Yu and then Zhao Gu to us, and we to them. Thank you for the woman beside me. And for the people here, willing to welcome us into their place of worship. I ask your blessings not for me but for them and others: for the people in China who gave birth to my children, for the workers in the government who matched us one to the other.

  The chant is soothing, a song unbroken. One woman has her faced clenched in prayer. Another stifles a yawn. A third is lost in the moment, her eyes dreamily unfocused. One young woman is half slumped on a kneeling pad, her hand against her forehead. She doesn’t look well.

  Jin Yu and Zhao Gu come back down the aisle, practically skipping. Jin Yu climbs into her mother’s lap, Zhao Gu into mine. For the next hour they sit still, content to listen to the continuous purr of the chant. It moves like a musical ocean, one wave after another.

  It is nearly noon when the service breaks. Jin Yu commences to making introductions all around, sharing her words and phrases of Chinese with the women who gather around her. We’re invited to share the day’s meal, to fill a plate with rice and dumplings. But we can’t stay. The nun helps our girls make a final bow to Buddha, then walks us to the door. From a shelf she selects a porcelain-bead mala. She draws Jin Yu close, speaking words I can’t hear. Jin Yu nods her head. The nun kisses the mala, then slips it onto Jin Yu’s wrist.

  My daughter has a question: “Can I have one for my sister?”

  “Yes, yes,” the woman laughs. She chooses a second mala for Zhao Gu.

  Jin Yu is thrilled with her new treasure, not sure of its meaning but mesmerized by its beauty.

  The nun opens the door, telling us to be sure to come back. We are always welcome here, she says. Our girls are always welcome here.

  EPILOGUE

  I CAN’T remember the first time Jin Yu smiled at me.

  Those early days together were all fear and crisis.

  And of course, I have no idea when it was that she took her first steps, spoke her first words, learned to eat with a spoon. These things, the m
ilestones of parents’ lives, she did with other people in another land, long before we met.

  The first words she ever heard were in Chinese—in the time before she was born, still floating in the womb, a voice come down to her through a hundred generations. I wonder what those words were, how they helped to shape her. I wonder if even now, in some way, she misses the timbre of her birth mother’s voice, misses its tones and inflections.

  I know a part of Jin Yu misses China. Even if she doesn’t know exactly what part that is, or what it is that she misses. Maybe it’s the smells, or the sounds, or the color of the sky, things she would have sensed and seen even before she had the language to name them. For a long time after she came to us, Jin Yu would tell us dreamy, half-remembered stories, shards of recollections of people or places in Xiangtan. She related these things matter-of-factly, granting them no greater significance, at least on the surface, than that of a cartoon she’d seen earlier in the afternoon.

  Our family in Lanzhou, with our second daughter, Zhao Gu

  In our first months together, Jin Yu’s expression did not switch from frown to smile. Of course there were hours and even days when she giggled and laughed, periods when she happily, pluckily threw herself into the moment. But generally her outlook changed only little by little, the corners of her mouth creeping up, until her frown turned to neutrality, her neutrality to approval, her approval finally advancing into excitement.

  Initially she was traumatized, a child forced through another jarring change in a life that had already seen too many.

  Someday I will answer for that.

  I came home from China expecting that Jin Yu’s memories of the orphanage would wane, that its influence on her life would decrease as time went on. Now I’m not so sure. In a hundred ways on a hundred days I see the needs it created for my daughter—and the emotions it stirs in me.

  Sometimes, when Jin Yu leaps into my arms and wraps her legs around my waist, I can feel her hip joint pop. So far the doctors have not been impressed. And it doesn’t seem to cause her discomfort, though at times it ever-so-slightly throws off her gait when she runs. I suppose the catch in her hip could have been there from birth. But it also could have developed when she was living in Xiangtan, the result of a lack of exercise.

  The scar on the side of her head remains a constant, enigmatic reminder of her missing past. Jin Yu never tries to hide the scar. She pulls her hair back or up in whatever style she fancies, scar be damned. She still occasionally raises the topic of how the wound got there, and of course we have little better answer to offer her than we did on the day she came to us.

  Jin Yu periodically raises the topic of her life in the orphanage, usually to tell us that the nannies there took care of her. She says she misses them, and wonders if they miss her too. Christine and I tell Jin Yu we are sure they miss her very much. We try to keep in touch with the staff in Xiangtan, and with the people who tended to Zhao Gu at the orphanage in Wuwei. We write every year on the girls’ birthdays, enclosing pictures, recapping the highlights of their lives during the past twelve months, trying to put into words all that our daughters mean to us.

  Sometimes we get a letter back, sometimes not. It’s impossible to know if our mail even reaches its destination.

  The psychic impact of Jin Yu’s two years without parents is hard to discern. For a long time, when Christine and I left the girls’ room at night, Jin Yu would call for us to lock the door, saying, “I need the lock to stay safe!” It made me wonder: does she truly understand what it means to be safe? Did anyone in her former life take care to ensure not just that she was safe, but that she felt safe? When Jin Yu called out at bedtime, was she simply repeating a phrase she’d heard on television or telling us what she needed most?

  At the same time, I know this: Jin Yu may have had tragic beginnings, but she is not a tragic figure. She is a girl who delights in the possibilities of each new day and in the potential of each new encounter—with a flower, a butterfly, or a friend about to be made.

  At the park we stop to chat with a grandmother, who leans down to put her face even with that of my daughter.

  “And what’s your name, darlin’?” the woman asks.

  “Um, Snow White,” Jin Yu replies.

  She’s not being a smart-aleck. She just likes to be called that.

  Her humor is so funny because it’s so sincere. One time Jin Yu was being difficult—I can no longer remember the details. But I was lecturing her about how this behavior was going to stop, how her conduct was going to change, going on and on in my parental admonitions, finally concluding, “What do you think?”

  Jin Yu answered, solemnly: “I think there’s something wrong with you.”

  I couldn’t help but crack up. Heck, she’s probably right.

  Yet she’ll turn serious at the most unexpected moments. On a recent Sunday, Christine and I were late getting the girls to bed. It had been a hectic day. Both Jin Yu and Zhao Gu were wound up, each trying to claim the same storybook. My back was aching, the house was a mess, and I was due at work especially early the next morning. I was turning out the light in their room, glad to close this portion of the day, when Jin Yu spoke up.

  “Dad,” she said, “I’m really glad you’re my father.”

  What more could I ever need to hear?

  FOR ME Chinese adoption is a continent of contradiction, a place where elation is paired with regret and hope stands as companion to sorrow. Adopting a child from China puts you through a transformation, gathering you up from one place, spinning you around, then setting you down somewhere else, facing backward. It changes your life in ways you never could have foreseen.

  Joy? Certainly. Love? Absolutely.

  But the process also generates a virulent strain of remorse, for actions taken or not, and enough guilt to fill a courthouse.

  I have not set down my anger. Four years later, I carry it like a touchstone. In fact, instead of seeing my anger diminish, I have noticed the opposite, that it grows stronger and harder as time passes. The Chinese government left Jin Yu in a rundown orphanage for thirteen months after they received our adoption request. That I can’t understand. Or forgive. Jin Yu could have gotten sick. Or even died. Many children do. My daughter, my darling girl, could have died, right there in Xiangtan. I think about that a lot. About the faceless government pen-pusher who sent her there. About beating him bloody. But of course, it is not a man who sent my child to Xiangtan, not a person who kept her at the orphanage but a system, a set of laws and beliefs and mores. And conversely there is more to the story than anger, so much more to the tale than fury and blame and revenge.

  My debt to the People’s Republic, my gratitude, my appreciation, is endless and eternal. I could never repay what I owe or fully express my thanks. The people who run the government decided to let me have a daughter. And then to have a second. They allowed me to become a father. They trusted me. Here, in the land of my birth, edging into my forties, I would have been considered too old to adopt a child. In China, with a culture that venerates age, I wasn’t seen as tired and worn—I was mature and settled, ready for parenthood’s challenges.

  I went to China thankful that no birth mother or father could ever hope to come searching for Jin Yu or to contact me. I came back certain that my child and her birth parents should meet. Soon. Or that at the least they should be in touch. So sure was I of my judgment, I nearly tried to find Jin Yu’s birth parents on my own. Now, four years on, I believe it might benefit Jin Yu and her Chinese parents if they were to see one another—but not today. And not tomorrow. Some day, when Jin Yu is older, and then only if she so desires.

  Sometimes I get mad at her Chinese parents, furious at these phantoms who have moved into my house. I get angry at them for deserting Jin Yu, for putting her at such risk. Newborn babies are fragile things, and leaving one outside is a good way to kill it. I get angry with them for delivering Jin Yu into the hands of an under-funded welfare system that didn’t need another mouth to feed
. I get mad because I know in my heart that whatever penalty a government might impose on me—halve my salary, take my job, knock down my house, cut off an arm—I would never surrender Jin Yu. I get mad and I think: They had their chance. In fact they had the first chance, and they blew it.

  But that bitterness rises only once in a while. Mostly, overwhelmingly, I am grateful to these people, unnamed and unknown. They carried Jin Yu to term and then put her in a place where they knew she would be found. I judge them by the standards of the middle-class, middle-aged American man that I am. But I know nothing of their situation. The truth is they gave life to Jin Yu, the person who has come to define my existence, and they suffered for it.

  I know they suffer still. That on every August 2, Jin Yu’s birthday, and every August 5, the anniversary of the day they set her down in Guangxin Alley, they look to the heavens and wonder what has become of their girl.

  There is never a day I don’t think about them. Never a day I don’t consider the paradox of our situations, don’t ponder the cold truth that my life’s happiness springs from their life’s anguish. A Chinese acquaintance calls it “the burden of good fortune”—the price that must be paid for having benefited so greatly from the misfortune of another.

  Someday I would like to go and find Guangxin Alley, to see the place where Jin Yu’s birth parents chose to leave her. Right now that alley exists only in my head, forever changing shape and dimension. I want to see the actual location. I think if I could see Guangxin Alley, I would feel better. That to see Guangxin Alley, to walk its length, tread its footfalls, would evoke a healing sense of union. That for me, seeing Guangxin Alley would be similar to what others experience upon visiting the fields of great and decisive battles: here is the place where everything changed.