“Aaah, Gweilo,” she says slowly. And then, again, as if by saying it aloud she can make herself believe it: “Gweilo.” White ghost.
That is when it occurs to me: this old woman is almost blind. She is only now discovering that I am not Chinese. For weeks she has been sitting alone in her abandoned city, tending her tea shop, waiting for another human to appear. Early in the morning she wakes, heats water to bathe in the little basin in the courtyard. She hoists the awning on her tea stall, sets the kettle on the fire, spoons loose leaves into a mug, and waits for her first customer, as she has been doing for many years. But no customer comes; everyone has moved to the new settlement high in the hills across the river.
In the past, I imagine, she had many customers. The men would come every morning. They would read the paper and tell bawdy jokes to one another before heading to work. The young women would come by to rest their feet on their way to the butcher, or before going down to the river to sell rice and figs to passing junks. Sometimes children would congregate at her tea stall after school and beg for toffee peanuts and sesame snaps. The schoolchildren had neat haircuts and carried books in brightly colored satchels.
Several years ago the government people came through and held mandatory meetings to tell the villagers about the new dam. They talked about how the dam would bring power and prosperity, how it would save many lives. They promised the villagers beautiful new apartments with gleaming white tile façades, in a new city high above the old one. “Why do we need new apartments?” the old woman remembers saying. “I was born in this house. Many generations of my family have lived in this house.” She could not imagine life without her courtyard, without the familiar voices of children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
“Your house is too old,” one of the young men said gently. “You have to go down the street to use the toilet. You have to heat your bathwater on the stove. Your new apartment will be a better place to enjoy your old age.”
“My house is old but it is sturdy,” she said. “I will stay here.”
The government man laughed at her. “This village will be underwater! Are you a fish? Do you propose to live at the bottom of the river?” Even she got a good laugh at this. She imagined herself sitting underwater at her tea stall, little sea creatures flitting past, nipping at the tea leaves. She imagined swimming side by side with the baiji. When the meeting was over she went back to her tea stall. She stayed open later than usual, because that night the village was bubbling with energy. People sat at the tables outside her stall and talked late into the night. But the old woman was not concerned. “Nonsense,” a friend assured her. “A city underwater? No such thing will ever happen! Our village has been here for two thousand years.”
Soon, young men from upriver came with big buckets of red paint and drew numbers on rocks high above the village. It was a lovely shade of red but the numbers meant nothing to her. In this village things were always coming and going. The Red Guard had come many years before, when she was a young woman, and on the few temples that they did not burn to the ground, they made big red signs proclaiming angry slogans.
The new red marks are different, though. Her eyesight is too poor to read them—she can only see a vague splash of bright red on buildings and hillsides—but her son explained that the red marks indicate the level to which the water will rise after the dam is built.
Some nights she dreams of the bright red numbers, she sees the river rising, first soaking the streets, then covering the floor of her tea stall. In these dreams she is always standing at her stall, and she looks down and sees that her feet are immersed in water, then her calves, her knees. The loose cotton of her pants billows as the water fills them, and then her blouse pillows out. Tea leaves rise on the water and float away. She is concerned at first for her porcelain teapot, but it is heavy and does not float away. She feels the water creeping up her chest, her neck. It is very cold. The children coming home from school are small, and the water has already risen over their heads. They walk slowly, instead of running, their little round knees pushing against the weight of the water. “Grandma Sweetcakes!” they say, holding out their hands, but their words come out garbled. Bubbles rush from their mouths. Their skin is bluish and tight. The girls’ long braids float above their heads. And still the water rises. It fills her mouth, her nostrils. It is cool and coarse against her eyeballs. She had always imagined the river as a smooth presence, like silk, but no, it has a texture to it, a roughness. The river is not like other water. It is Jiang, The River.
I try to imagine what it must be like for her to be sitting here with me. For months, perhaps, she has not sold a cup of tea. And then one day, in the midst of all this loneliness, she hears footsteps. She can tell from the lightness of the steps that it is not a man, and from the quickness of the steps that it is a young woman, not an old one. Elated, she bids the traveler to rest. The traveler is very quiet, so the old woman assumes she must be tired. The old woman talks and talks, saying everything she has been saving up in her mind since the last time she saw her son. She does not have many more years, and she has plenty she wants to say.
Later, perhaps embarrassed for talking so much, she says to the girl, What is your name? Do I know you? Have you come to retrieve things you left behind? Tell me, is the water rising yet?
Something strange happens. The girl speaks to her in an unusual voice. The words are vaguely familiar, but they have no meaning. Her tones are wrong, her words too round, as if she is blowing them through a fishnet. The woman thinks about the words, strings the sounds together. Ah, the girl is saying that she cannot speak Chinese. But this is impossible! The old woman has never met anyone who cannot speak Chinese. For years she has seen the big ships passing on the river, headed upstream to Chongqing, or downstream to Wuhan and Shanghai. She knows that these boats carry the waiguoren. She has heard of them, with their skin so pale, like ghosts, as if they had been laid in the sun and bleached.
“Gweilo,” she says again, touching my face, my neck. She leans down and smells my hair. Perhaps she is at a loss as to what to do with this strange creature at her tea stall. Perhaps she has taken a liking to me. Perhaps she simply doesn’t know what to do. She goes to her chair and sits in silence, as if she is waiting, and because she has told me so much, I begin talking to her.
I tell her about Demopolis River, how it was warm and clear on hot summer days, how it was cool and brown after a rain. I tell her about the oak trees that lined its banks, dripping pecans into the slowly moving water, and about the kids who would float on inflatable rafts, and how, late on a Saturday afternoon, Amanda Ruth and I would ride inner tubes down the river, and all along its banks families would be cooking out: boiled lobster, fried catfish, shrimp kebabs. There would be picnic tables piled high with corn on the cob and potato salad, cucumbers and cantaloupes, tall clear pitchers of sweet iced tea sweating in the afternoon heat. Sometimes we’d float by at just the right moment to see Mr. Seymour split a watermelon over his knee, the black seeds would go flying, and he’d toss chunks of the watermelon out to us in the river. Sometimes we’d paddle up to the little beach behind the Stonehouse, an abandoned mansion that was named for Mr. and Mrs. Stone, who had been dead forever, and we’d walk up the tottering steps of their back porch and sit on the wooden swing, and we’d swing back and forth for hours, talking, holding hands, listening to the river, and when it was late we would take our inner tubes around to the road and roll them all the way back to Amanda Ruth’s, where her mother would be waiting with dinner.
I tell the old woman about Amanda Ruth’s passion for China, how she borrowed Chinese language tapes from the library and covered her closet walls with maps she’d traced from the atlas, how she saved all her birthday money and babysitting wages for the trip she planned to make. I tell her how I scattered Amanda Ruth’s ashes over the river.
“She’s home now,” I say. “Amanda Ruth finally made it home.” The old woman nods and smiles, as if she understands.
After some time I look at my watch and realize that I’ve been sitting here for nearly an hour. A strange peace has settled over me. I have traveled hundreds of miles up what is perhaps the most important river in the world. I have visited temples and pagodas, factories and antique shops. I have seen mountains of unimaginable height, their bases shrouded in mist so that they seem to be rooted in heaven rather than in earth. I have passed through the biggest construction project on earth. But it is here at this tiny tea stall in an abandoned city that I have found the secret heart of China. This woman has seen governments come and go. It is likely that she has borne children who have given her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Like the river, she is patient. The Yangtze may be tamed for a time, but here is the bare fact of the matter: it is still The River. Like this woman, it is patient. In the end, one cannot help but believe The River will win.
Walking alone through the empty streets, the sound of my shoes slapping the pavement. Down by the docks, a few lonely sampans knock about. A middle-aged man beckons, shouting a sweet adulteration of my name. In the note, Graham told me to look for the man who knew my name. He told me to go with him. Now, seeing the boatman with his weathered sampan, his shirtsleeves rolled over muscular tanned arms, I am struck by Graham’s generosity. In his last days, he was thinking of me.
I remember him standing in the pavilion near Poyang Lake, his arms wrapped around my waist. “The best travel is the kind that takes me so far away that I know I can’t get home in a day or two,” he said. Now, surveying the river, the small sampans captained by men whose language I do not understand, the mountains towering so high I cannot see their peaks, I know that getting home will be no easy task. I have plenty of currency, but no guidebook and no guide, no rules of order, no common language with which to find my way. And finally, I understand what Graham meant: to be away and adrift, distant and foreign and lost, alone, is to be somehow free.
I step into the sampan and point upriver. “Chongching,” the man says. I nod. He gestures toward a board that stretches across the center of the boat, a few inches from the floor. I sit. He dips his bamboo pole into the river, and we begin to move away from the bank. The sun shoots out from behind a dark column of clouds. The river is a wide green sheet, beckoning and docile. The mountains tower above us, sharp cliffs of emerald and gray. Something flickers, a flash of silver rolling along in front of the sampan. And then it is standing, treading water, its nose pointing toward the sky, its belly shining in the sunlight. Stunned, I turn to the man, wanting to know if he has seen what I have seen. “Baiji,” he whispers, awestruck. The dolphin dives underwater and disappears downstream.
For several minutes the man stands still, the pole resting at his side. He has not turned on the small motor, and instead allows the sampan to drift. He scans the river, waiting. To our right, the abandoned city. To our left, the buildings of the new city, their white tiles gleaming. Small waves slosh against the wooden sides of the boat.
I remember a summer afternoon in the blue room with Amanda Ruth, the two of us lying on towels on the stern of her father’s boat. The boat knocked about, rising and falling as Demopolis River moved beneath us. The water cast light on the ceiling; its reflections shifted and turned. Amanda Ruth was stretched out and sleeping, the dark tangle of her hair draped over the pastel patterns of her towel. Her arm was brown and bare from shoulder to fingertip, the small hairs bleached golden, a birthmark the size of a quarter just below the elbow. The smoothness of her arm, the faint sweet smell of her skin rising in the afternoon heat, a grain of sand caught on her eyelash, a bit of broken pine straw tangled in her hair. The boat lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered. She made a sound, so quiet I almost missed it—nothing more than a sigh, a letting go of air.
Fifteen minutes later, the man is still motionless, searching. He is on his knees, peering out over the edge of the boat, his eyes inches from the surface, as if he can see through the murky water. Meanwhile, we are drifting. The sampan rocks and turns. The man’s face strains with anticipation. He is waiting for the baiji to return, as if he believes this is a thing that could happen. It occurs to me that he is a man of great patience; perhaps we will wait like this for an hour, or more. I imagine my own eyes growing heavy, my body tired, as he kneels there at the bow of the boat, waiting.
I imagine us drifting through the night and into morning, into the next day, and the next, on and on through months and seasons until the river begins to rise. I imagine the surge of the river as the gigantic walls of the dam lock into place. The river rises, spills over the docks, crashes through the windows of little huts that line the bank. It rushes up the lonely streets, sweeping up pots and pans and bicycles and beds, teacups and linens and shovels and doors. The Yangtze washes through the lobby of the Hotel Tien, past the broken vending machines, the useless chandeliers. It bursts through the darkened elevator shaft, sets the small bed afloat, table, chairs, syringe, bottle, teapot. Graham.
The water comes suddenly, one strong swift current, like a storm. The town drinks the river in, sweet and wet, one long deep drowning drink.
From the hillsides then, one will see a lake spanning endless miles—a clear blue lake, and deep. Ships will glide along its surface, and it will look, to some, as if the river has always been calm, a shimmering mirror on the edge of a vast metropolis. It will look as if the life of the river is above. But there will be a memory, still, buried deep in the bones of this new city. The memory will be of another, older city, one that lies below the surface. A memory of houses and temples, of winding streets and fertile farms, of wagons and boats and people. The city will not be visible, but it will be there, underneath and barely sleeping. It will be there, like a memory of girls and husbands and lovers, a sweet unshakable knowledge. The city will not be gone, it will only be waiting.
The day grows cooler, and clouds begin to gather. Meanwhile, the man kneels and watches, but the baiji does not return. Finally he stands up, turns to me, and speaks. Although I can’t understand his words, I sense that he’s looking for some indication that I am tired of waiting for the phantom dolphin, some sign of impatience that tells him I think it’s time to move on. He looks back and forth from me to the river, awaiting my response. “I’m in no hurry,” I say, leaning back and resting my head on a bundle of clothing. Water slaps against our tiny boat. The man leans over the side of the sampan, his face close to the water, and then, shyly at first, he begins to call. It is a high-pitched, whining sound, almost a squeal. He looks back at me, laughing, beckoning me to join him. The sound is not easy to imitate, but I try. The afternoon passes in this manner, two strangers attempting with inadequate voices to raise something from the depths.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Hedgebrook for giving me time and space to write; Mr. King Yiu for the apartments in Beijing and Hong Kong, and the room with a view in the Empire State Building; Elvis Paris for the translations; Doug Stewart, Jay Phelan, and Bill U’Ren for good advice; Wiggins for the monkey story; and Wade Williams and Tracy Singer for the intangibles. Thanks to Sonny Brewer and Frank Turner Hollon for their role in the original publication of this book with MacAdam/Cage. My gratitude to Caitlin Alexander and the team at Bantam for giving this book a second life, and to my wonderful agent, Valerie Borchardt, for taking care of business so I don’t have to.
I read a number of books to supplement my research for this novel. Particularly informative were Dai Qing’s The River Dragon Has Come!: The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China’s Yangtze River and Its People, Peter Hessler’s River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, and Jan Wong’s Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now.
And of course, thanks to Kevin, whose fingerprints are on every page.
THE STORY BEHIND
Dream of the Blue Room
Dream of the Blue Room began with a classified ad in The New York Times. The year was 1997, and I was living on New York’s Upper West Side. I had just quit my cubicle job at a major public relations firm. Desperat
e for a paycheck, I answered an ad for an English tutor, and a couple of days later I was being interviewed in a posh apartment in midtown by the president of a Chinese trading company who went by the name of Tony. We sealed the deal on the spot. As I understood it, my job would involve light administrative duties, along with accompanying Tony to restaurants, farmers’ markets, art galleries, design stores—anywhere that he could learn new vocabulary.
My first day on the job, I assembled a vacuum cleaner in Tony’s apartment. My task: to decode the instructions. Three hours after we began, we stood admiring the partially functioning vacuum cleaner. That’s when Tony hit me with the news: “I go to China next Monday. You go Wednesday.”
“China?” I said, trying to hide my shock. “How long?”
“Maybe two months. Maybe three months,” he said.
I’d been under the impression that I would be working in the company’s offices in the Empire State Building. Whatever Tony might have said about the impending trip to China during our interview had apparently been lost in translation.
That weekend I bought a travel guide, a phrase book, a refurbished laptop, and a comfortable pair of sandals. Two weeks after answering the ad, I was on a plane to Beijing, the computer stashed under the seat in front of me. If I was going to spend three months in China, I figured I might as well make a book out of it. I decided my book would be a memoir—something about a girl from Alabama who goes to China by way of New York and discovers—what? I hadn’t planned that far ahead.
When I arrived in Beijing, I was met by a black Mercedes with tinted windows. As the driver swerved wildly through crowded streets teeming with bicycles, Tony and I sat awkwardly and silently in the backseat, the fledgling familiarity we had established during our week together in New York having entirely evaporated. An hour later, the car pulled up to a towering apartment building across the street from a shopping mall. Tony accompanied me to the penthouse, where he showed me how to work the TV, the stereo, and the karaoke machine, and promised to return the next day. After he left, I went scavenging in the kitchen. The only thing in the refrigerator was a spoiled carton of soy milk. I didn’t have a single yuan to my name. I didn’t speak a word of Chinese. I was hungry and had already eaten all my granola bars on the plane.
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