Ming Li shuddered, remembering an old couple who had swum across the shark infested water to freedom – a desperate act by two desperate people. They had tied themselves together so as not to lose each other, but had been attacked by a shark, and when the old woman reached land exhausted and distressed, she was still firmly tied at the waist to the legless corpse of her husband. Ming Li constantly wished MeiMei would try to escape, but what if something similar happened to her? To Huang Ho?
The small brass bell on the door of the shop announced customers. Ming Li smiled and nodded at the two women – obviously tourists – but did not offer help. Experience had taught her she was likely to sell more if she first let them browse.
Her mind wandered back to the refugee who’d told her there were no animals left in China.
‘Not one. Not even a rat,’ he’d whispered whilst furtively looking over his shoulder. ‘There isn’t even a bird left in the sky. They ate the crops, you understand.’ He’d sighed then, a deep tremulous sigh, glancing at her before lowering his gaze. ‘There are some …’ he’d whispered so quietly she barely made out his words, ‘there are some who say that in some parts of China, there are no babies left either.’
It wasn’t the first time Ming Li had heard this. Rumours of cannibalism were rampant when a people starved, and infants were so easy to kill. But she could never think about this horror beyond a fleeting acknowledgement that it may happen; to think more deeply about it, to imagine the actual act, would have driven her crazy. What if this had happened to Huang Ho when he was still little? No, MeiMei would have fought tooth and nail to protect her son. Better to think instead about the insanity that had brought about the lack of birds.
Under the Campaign Against the Four Evils – flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows – not only sparrows but all the birds of China had been frightened into the sky, on one specific day at a specific time, by a cacophony of noise-making instruments – the hammering of washbasins, woks and saucepans, the blowing of trumpets and whistles, the explosion of firecrackers – on and on and on and on across the whole country, so that they flew panic-stricken round and round until at last they fell to the ground, dead from exhaustion. And for the next few days everyone had feasted on fried sparrow or crow, unaware that with no pesticide available, they had just killed their only source of insect control for their crops. Ming Li tried to imagine a country without a single bird, forests without their chirps and rivers without the flapping of ducks’ wings …
The two customers moved towards the counter and examined the shelves behind it.
‘This is nice,’ the younger of the women said, pointing to a tall blue and white porcelain vase.
The elder woman barely glanced at it. ‘Tourist ware,’ she declared. ‘You can always tell. Well, I can, anyway.’ She moved to a display table in the middle of the floor. ‘Come look over here, dear. These are better.’
Ming Li lowered her gaze so the women would not read her thoughts; she had trouble keeping a straight face. The vase the elder woman had so casually dismissed was in fact about two hundred years old, from the Qing dynasty. Nearly a metre tall and meant to be read like a comic strip from top to bottom, it depicted scenes of the West Chamber tale, a famous love story hundreds of years old.
‘Here, now this is really Chinese. What do you think of this?’ The woman handed her companion a much smaller oval vase decorated with a dragon.
It was a common piece, mass-produced in one of the many factories of Hong Kong, but Ming Li was not surprised that the woman preferred it. She’d come to learn there were two types of Western buyers, and so stocked her shop to please both.
Some, she’d found, had the knowledge – or simply the inherent good taste – to be able to differentiate between true beauty and show. These Westerners understood instinctively the skill and steady hand needed to cut intricate lattice patterns in clay dried leather-hard, or the massive wastage that occurred in order to produce just one small, simple, but absolutely perfect quanbei, or urging cup. And if their lack of knowledge of the Chinese language sometimes resulted in them not being able to interpret the hidden meanings, or the play on words, of the decorations on some ware that would be obvious to a Chinese person, still they recognized the powerful link between the past and the present.
But the second type of Westerner – Westerners like the elder of the two women now in her shop – didn’t seem to understand such things. They would overlook a fine, perfectly glazed bowl because it was too plain, not understanding that its very plainness was its beauty, and be attracted instead to thicker, mass-produced items such as bowls imprinted with dragons or insipid Chinese maidens.
Another woman entered the shop and glanced at the Westerners, then made her way to the back of the room where she pretended to look at the items displayed there. From her manner and appearance Ming Li guessed she was not here to buy, but to sell some family heirloom that would hopefully feed her family for a few more days. She knew the woman would not approach her until the Westerners had left. It was time to move them on. She approached them, smiling.
‘Now let me handle this,’ the elder said, straightening, ready for battle. ‘You have to barter with these people, you know.’ She turned to Ming Li. ‘How much?’
Ming Li automatically tripled the true value of the dragon vase. ‘Six hundred dollars.’
The younger woman gasped.
‘It’s all right dear – she means Hong Kong dollars. Leave this to me.’ She turned back to Ming Li. ‘Too much too much! Four hundred,’ she said in a loud voice, and she put up four fingers, automatically assuming that Ming Li could not speak English.
Why, Ming Li wondered, do these people automatically think that a) you couldn’t possibly speak English, b) you must therefore be deaf and c) being deaf enabled you to understand bad English? She kept her expression pleasant and shook her head. ‘Six hundred.’
‘Four fifty.’
Ming Li remained silent but shook her head again.
‘Cash always gets them,’ the woman told her companion, as if Ming Li was not standing beside her. She took a purse from her bag and withdrew some notes, which she put in Ming Li’s hands. ‘Here, and not a cent more. No more, you understand? Too much too much!’
Ming Li counted the notes – five hundred Hong Kong dollars – more than twice the real value of the vase. She gave the women a shallow, insulting bow – had the woman understood it – and took the vase from them to wrap.
‘See? You have to be firm with these people,’ the woman told her friend.
With the Westerners gone, Ming Li attended the Chinese woman at the back of the shop. From a worn, black silk scarf the woman unwrapped a small figurine. Ming Li recognized it straight away – Xueliang had collected these. Made of grey pottery, it represented a stage actor with a clapper in his hand. This figurine would be part of a larger collection representing a particular stage show, which would include other actors, as well as musicians and dancers. She knew that if she gave the woman a fair price there was a very strong likelihood the woman would return again and again, to sell one piece at the time.
She asked what price the woman was after, but the woman didn’t name a figure. Ming Li waited, content to be silent. The bell on the door announced another customer but Ming Li ignored it, aware of the importance of giving this woman her undivided attention at this crucial stage of the transaction. Eventually the woman named a price. It was fair and Ming Li decided not to counter it – if she eventually obtained the full set she could make a handsome profit. She nodded her agreement and turned to go to the cash register.
He was standing beside the counter, looking at the tall vase the Western woman had dismissed as ‘tourist ware’. She hadn’t seen him for so long – not since that day when he had dropped those small diamonds in the palm of her hand – not for eleven years. He had aged and his hair had greyed at the temples and he now wore a trim moustache, but she recognized him all the same. She stared at Edward, open-mouthed. Her knees turned t
o jelly. Edward, here in her shop. Edward, who had loved her so passionately for so long, then returned home and forgotten about her.
‘Can I have my money?’ the woman asked, looking from Ming Li to Edward and back again.
‘Yes, yes of course. I’m sorry …’
At the sound of her voice Edward spun towards her. He too stared, and Ming Li saw his face pale, his hands clench.
‘My money?’
‘Yes. Your money. Of course.’
Gaze lowered, Ming Li went to the counter. She could feel Edward watching her every move. She opened the cash register. How much had she agreed on? He had ignored her letter. She took out the correct amount of cash. He would have married again by now. He would have an Australian wife. Her knees felt as if they would give way. Her hands shook. Would Edward notice? The woman was still in the middle of the shop, watching, waiting for her money, and Ming Li knew she could not walk those few steps back to her.
As if reading her thoughts Edward took the money from Ming Li’s hands, gave it to the woman and, guiding her firmly with a hand on her elbow, hurried her out of the shop. He closed the door and turned the lock. In a few steps he was beside her.
‘My God LiLi! I thought I’d lost you forever.’
His voice was so intense she felt a shiver down her spine. He went to take her in his arms but she placed her hands on his chest and pushed gently, taking a step back, her gaze lowered, her face flushed.
‘LiLi? What’s wrong? I can’t believe I’ve found you! I thought you were in China. Why didn’t you let me know you were here? Why didn’t you write?’
‘I wrote.’
‘I never got anything.’ His gaze caressed her face, her hair, the soft curve of her neck. ‘But what does it matter now? I’ve found you again! That’s all that matters. I never stopped loving you – never stopped thinking about you. Worrying if you were all right—’
‘Then, maybe …’
‘Then and now, and every day in between. There hasn’t been a moment – an instant – when you haven’t been in my thoughts.’
He went to take her in him arms again, but again her hands went up in defence and she turned from him. It was as if she’d kicked him in guts.
‘LiLi? What’s wrong?’
‘Things are different now.’
Different? What was she saying? Was she trying to tell him she loved someone else? Had Xueliang somehow, miraculously, survived the Japanese occupation all those years ago? Or had she remarried? Was that what she was trying to tell him? She must have remarried. A woman like her would have many men happy to take Xueliang’s place. No! He couldn’t have found her only to lose her again. Only with her had he ever felt truly alive. This was meant to be. It was fate. Why else had he decided to stopover in Hong Kong on his way back home?
When he’d received news that his sister Rose had died, he’d been tempted not to attend the funeral. He’d never been close to his sister, who’d been so much older than him, and who’d moved to the UK after marrying an Englishman whilst Edward was still very young. After his return from Oxford so many years ago, they’d had little contact, apart from exchanging cards at Christmas. But in the end he’d decided it was his duty, and it would be nice to see his old haunts again. The decision for a stopover in Hong Kong on the way back had been something of an impulse – though he no longer felt fear when facing an Asian person, he hadn’t tested himself in an Asian country, and he knew himself well enough to realise that until doing so, he’d always wonder.
As it turned out, he’d only felt an initial moment of apprehension when he’d first stepped out of the airport terminal. But he’d quickly overcome it, and so had been able to give in to his old habit of hunting curios. But maybe it hadn’t been an impulse after all. Fate. It had to be fate. Even walking along this particular street, entering this particular shop, was fate. It had to be. Proof they weren’t meant to be apart.
‘Ming Li, are you married?’
She shook her head. A knock on the shop window made them both jump. A face peered in.
‘Look, we need to talk. We can’t stay here. Can you close up this place? Will you get in trouble with your boss if you do?’
She looked back at him then, and smiled for the first time since he’d been here.
‘No, I won’t get in trouble.’
‘Good. Then lock up. Where shall we go? Your place? My hotel?’
‘No, not there.’
‘All right. Let me take you to dinner then.’
They lay rediscovering each other. For her sake he took his time, reading her with each caress, conscious of the years apart, the unshared history. This was why no other woman had ever managed to hold his attention. This woman in his bed, this body, this dream. She was thinner than he remembered, and her body had softened with age, but she was more beautiful than ever. He caressed the soft curve of her hip, her belly, cupped her breast in his hand and rubbed her nipple between his fingers. They had talked over dinner, hesitantly at first, filling in the missing years in an almost superficial way, neither delving too deeply in the other’s account, aware of the wounds, afraid that if they picked at the scars they would reveal a putrid exudate that would smother the fragile foundation they were trying to rebuild. After dinner they’d walked along Nathan Road, conscious of each other’s bodies but still too uncertain to touch, until they reached the hotel where he was staying, and he had placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her through the door, holding his breath, and he did not release that breath until the lift doors closed and he felt the lift moving upwards. He had waited too long to rush this now. He couldn’t risk losing her again. He kissed the soft satiny skin on her belly, breathing in her scent, and she pulled him towards her then, her hips rising to meet his, and when he entered her they held each other with their eyes, and the waves of emotions that flowed between them, slowly, rhythmically, conveyed what they had not had the courage to put into words. And when, their passion exhausted, they lay with her head resting on his chest, she looked up at him and was not surprised to see a tear run down the side of his face.
Even this early in the morning the air was hot, humid. But Edward didn’t care about the weather. He was content – at peace for the first time in years. Ming Li was at his side and she held on to his arm as if their being together was the most natural thing in the world.
The open-air market was busy and they jostled their way past buyers from restaurants, housewives with children clinging to their skirts, pedlars hawking their wares. Honking geese and clucking chickens in bamboo baskets rivalled the babble of dialects. In flat bamboo baskets, pyramids of the day’s offerings painted an abstraction of colours – tiny ears of corn known as jade sprouts, hot red chillies and wind-dried sausages. A huge flat basket of hens’ eggs nested a smaller basket of speckled quail eggs. Further along, the silvery scales of small fish contrasted with a mountain of giant crab claws. A small girl, with a large tray suspended from wire around her neck, offered them Cantonese pastries her mother had cooked before dawn.
As Ming Li shopped, testing the plumpness of a chicken with probing fingers, or weighing a vegetable in her hand, Edward was content to watch her and wonder at her resilience. Last night, after their lovemaking had unlocked their hesitancy, they’d spoken almost till dawn, filling in the missing years. She’d told him she still lived in a tiny apartment in one of the low-cost housing estates, and though it only had two rooms and she had to share a communal bathroom, she preferred it to the high-rise, barrack-like concrete buildings of the Shek Kip Mei area. She’d taken a chance, for the rent of her small apartment was higher, but she sublet one of her rooms to a family of five, and rented floor space in the second room where she slept to two sisters as well.
With some of this money, and profits from her shop, she had bought the lease on a tiny four-roomed house on Repulse Bay on Hong Kong Island, which she also rented out, and whose value, she’d proudly told him, had doubled in the short time she’d owned it. Clever woman, his LiLi. She
was becoming a woman of substance. She’d told him then, shamefaced, about losing the diamonds, and how she would sell the lease of the house on Repulse Bay to pay him back, but he’d refused. He was full of admiration for her willingness to live as she did so as to rebuild her life. The diamonds were irrelevant now.
‘Hungry?’ he asked when she’d paid for a bag of dried mushrooms.
She nodded and they made their way to a stall where the cook, embraced by clouds of fragrant vapours, steamed a variety of dumplings.
They ate watching a noodle maker, ghost white from a layer of flour, twirl a sheet of thin dough into the air, stretching it, doubling then redoubling it until it divided into ribbons, each thinner and thinner, multiplying in number until he had a curtain of noodles ready to boil or fry.
They left the market then, and their mood became sombre.
‘I wish I could stay longer,’ he said at last, thinking of his flight taking him back to Australia that evening.
‘I know. I wish you could, too.’
‘If the term didn’t start again next week … But I’ll be back. Soon. I’ll look into what sabbatical I can take – I should be due for some.’
‘Sabbatical?’
‘Time off from uni to do my own work – a few months. I could rent a place here. I’ll find a way.’
The Yellow Papers Page 22