by Vivian Yang
Not prepared to address two issues at the same time, my wife fumbled with "Thank you. Eh, we are actually… “
I took over and said, "No. Not Japanese. We're Chinese." I was constantly annoyed that so few Americans knew of the difference between the two countries and cultures, and the enormous pain and suffering the Japanese had inflicted on us Chinese during WWII.
Irene tilted her head and parroted, "Irene not Japanese. Irene Chinese."
These days, you wouldn't pay a million dollars to get her say she's Chinese. I squelch the thought and consider my last conversation with Lotus. I called her earlier from the airport to get my messages.
"Any news from downtown?"
"No, Boss. Did you end up going last night?"
"Yeah."
"How was it?"
"It was okay."
"Any good contacts?"
What a snake, I thought. "What the heck are you trying to find out?"
"Nothing," she said in a wronged tone.
I was more than a little exasperated. "Listen, Lotus. What do they want from me?"
That little creature can sometimes be smart. "Don't forget you're on the phone, Boss," she reminded me. "Honestly, I don't know. I wish you a safe and fruitful trip. Call me." She hung up. Lotus Lei-Tin Siew actually hung up on me. Unbelievable.
Was it because she felt her entire clan was behind her now that it had confronted me? What the heck, Gordon Lou, how futile of you to worry over a chick like her. The important question is how I can best leverage this new relationship.
Five minutes till take-off. Another stewardess, prettier than Ito, comes to collect my sake cup. For a split second, I think she resembles Irene, with her thin lips and long black hair. Laughing to myself, I think: Can't really blame the Westerners. The Chinese and the Japanese do look so much alike sometimes. But appearance is only yellow skin deep, and few Americans understand that.
I think about the price I've paid for leaving China, the dues I’ve paid in America to get where I am. In the process, I've lost my only child to a popular culture that's ignorant of my heritage. Some day, I’ll settle my score. “Ten years is not late for a gentleman to plot his revenge,” says a Chinese adage. Very Confucian, very Taoist, and a gentleman I am. May Buddha speed me!
Today, after thirty years, I go to China not to mourn the House of Lou’s lost paradise to the Communists, but to lay the foundation of a better life to come for me in America. I am returning to Shanghai as a bona fide American businessman poised to invest in the local economy and grow bigger. After years of painstakingly diverting profits to Hong Kong, the Mainland now presents an unprecedented opportunity as an alternative. With China’s newfound economic freedom but almost total lack of business and trade laws, opportunities and loopholes abound. These Evening Pearls of mine will shine brighter than ever.
I will also check out on Tao, for old time’s sake. I’ve got nothing left to worry about now that Marlene is gone.
I recline my seat and close my eyes. Already airborne and I didn't even notice the take-off. The eastbound movie Rocky, II is not to my taste. As far as films go, I’m still a sucker for Casablanca. Not having Sly Stallone or Bruce Lee in my blood, I might just as well catch some sleep before we land in Narita. Maybe I can still dream about China the way I remember it, but the moment I get on the Chinese airline for the two-hour flight to Shanghai, I'm sure China will be a shocking reality.
3 Sha-Fei Hong: Great Red Fortune
I have never stayed in a hotel. Hotels like the Shanghai Plaza are for visiting foreigners. Even a cadre like Stepfather can only stay in a government reception hostel when he goes on official business.
The thought of the Plaza excites me. Scares me. I consider calling the hotel first to ask whether Gordon Lou has arrived. When I get to our community public telephone center, the staff aunts say that their only copy of the directory has been stolen. This leaves me unable to contact the hotel. The only alternative is to go to the Plaza in person.
I decide that photographs of Father will serve as the best introduction to Gordon Lou. Since all of the photos capturing a younger-looking Father are gone, I select two photos taken after the Cultural Revolution. One is of my parents and me taken together at the front gate of the No. 5 People's Hospital shortly after Father was diagnosed with cancer. Father's face was long and hollow like the sole of a used shoe. The frame of his glasses seemed loose. Father and I were not smiling, but Mother was, revealing her dimples, which I inherited. The other was of Father standing alone on campus, in front of a giant pedestalled statue of Chairman Mao, looking pensive. Father's one hand was holding his wrist as if confined by a pair of self-imposed handcuffs. He wore no hat, his hair left messy by the wind. Mao was waving above his head. The tree behind the statue had few leaves. It was winter.
I put on my best clothes. If a gentleman from America is going to hold the door for me in a hotel, I'd better dress appropriately. Besides, I'm seeing Gordon Lou on behalf of Father. Tao Hong's daughter should look good even though Tao Hong's last pictures may not.
My proudest winter outfit: A maroon sweatshirt with a glued-on "Nike" logo. Stonewashed jeans. White canvas sneakers. All black market acquisitions with my hard-saved money. Lastly, I slide into my puffy, navy down jacket, put on my white gauze mask against the wind, and mount my bicycle, Bund bound.
The Bund is a mile-long waterfront promenade along the strip of land dominated by the city's neo-classical skyline, an hour-long bicycle ride from campus. By 1:00 p.m., I'm standing across the street from the Plaza, leaning against my bicycle, breathing a visible current into the air. Built by the British in the 1930's, the hotel is an imposing granite edifice with a pair of pyramidal bronze-aqua roofs. Awesome.
At the gate, a security guard in a gray uniform overcoat yells at me, "Hey, you! Don't block the entrance!"
"Sorry, Comrade Guard. But I'm here looking for somebody -- somebody from America." I say, bracing myself.
"Show me your proof!"
I produce the aerogram.
"Go ask the front desk."
Inside is a different world. Heated. Clean. Spacious. Neo-classical architecture with Chinese decor newly added to attract Western tourists. The lobby's centerpiece is a gilded wooden relief featuring a soaring dragon and a twirling phoenix above a Ming garden. The image brings to mind the Chinese idiom Long Fei Feng Wu -- "The dragon flies, the phoenix dances."
My friend Lu Long got his name from this concept, since he, like me, was born in 1964, the Year of the Dragon. His parents wanted him to be like a soaring dragon of success in life. When we first knew each other, Lu Long pointed out something that was very interesting: “Our Chinese zodiac are both dragon, and my name has ‘dragon,’ and yours has ‘fly.’ This can’t be just an ordinary coincidence. We’re meant to be together.”
At this moment, looking at the relief and thinking about Lu Long’s interpretation of our names, I cannot help but think that perhaps my meeting with Gordon Lou is a good omen for my future.
In a front corner of the lobby, by an indoor tree, I fold my down jacket into a bundle and squeeze it into a duffel bag. After straightening my sweatshirt and checking my "University of Shanghai" student badge, I walk toward the front desk where a clerk is filing her nails. Bright orange with patches peeled off. I wait. She casts an upward glance at me and resumes her task. "Yes?" she asks, looking at her hands.
"Oh, yes, miss, I'm looking for a Mr. Gor-, Gordon Lou, from the U.S.A."
"Who are you?"
"I'm Sha-fei Hong. If he has already checked in, please tell him I'm the daughter of his old friend from Columbia University, Tao Hong's daughter...”
She rolls the whites of her eyes like ping-pong balls. "I will look."
She dials. "Sha-fei Hong's here to see you, Mr. Lou. Oh? She says she's your friend."
The clerk points her nail file at my face like a fencer. "He doesn't know who you are. And he's busy."
Before she can hang up, I scream, "Let me talk to him my
self." In one breath, I bombard into the phone in Mandarin Chinese: "Mr. Lou? I'm Sha-fei Hong, daughter of your old friend Tao Hong. You sent him an aerogram recently, but he passed on five years ago. That's why I've come to see you instead. I have the aerogram and Father’s photographs to prove who I am."
There is a pause on his end. Then, he murmurs in a deep voice in fluent but Shanghai-accented Mandarin, "Tao is gone? I was afraid of that. You're his daughter? Yes, of course I'd like to see you. Just give me a few minutes. Why don't you come up in ten minutes, okay?"
On one of the many sofas in the lobby, I sit, wondering whether I have offended Gordon Lou by showing up unannounced? What else should I discuss in addition to Father's fate? Should I ask whether he’s heard of Marlene Koo? Should I tell him of my own plight as well?
Ever since Stepfather did the unthinkable to me, I've been dying to tell somebody about it. If Lu Long were still in Shanghai instead of New York, I would perhaps have told him, but then, again, I might also be too afraid of the possibility of losing him as my friend to really do so. However, telling a stranger from abroad is different. I can get it off my chest and nothing will go beyond that point. It seems to make sense.
As I sit looking at the lobby's centerpiece and caressing the soothing surface of the red raw silk upholstery, I realize that my ill fate can change. The redness surrounding me gives me hope. Red stands for good luck - Da Hong Yun, the "Great Red Fortune." I make a wish that my lot will change from now on.
Since age seven, indeed since our family was swept out of our house on the former Avenue Joffre, I have been considered a socially undesirable person. At various stages branded an “Upper Corner girl in exile,” a "bourgeois whelp," a “fatherless brat,” and the "daughter of a U.S. imperialist sympathizer." The names changed with China's political climate. Mother was rarely there for me, too frustrated herself from marrying a man with seeming status only to find herself the wife of an incarcerated man. Not until after she married Stepfather did my college schoolmates stop humiliating me in public. Stepfather's influence is real. Painfully real to me.
I want a way out. I want to survive and thrive, as Father told me to on his deathbed. I want to take flight. I want to let Father rest in peace. These are the thoughts that hover in my head as I walk toward the elevator bank.
I have previously ridden in an elevator only a few times, in the Shanghai No. 1 and No. 2 Department Stores respectively. They are always crammed and smell of garlicky cigarette breaths. This elevator in the hotel looks newly refurbished. Against its interior chrome reflection, I suck in my stomach and double check my appearance. Each time the vintage elevator inches up a floor, my anticipation increases.
Aerogram in hand, I buzz. Gordon Lou opens the door. He looks brisk, spruce, and younger than I remember Father. His eyebrows are dark and bushy. A pair of golden wire-rim bifocals rests fittingly on him. No panda-faced Kissinger look-alike. His hair is black with few white hairs, perfectly barbered and slicked back. A starched sky blue shirt with a white button-down collar. Red and white polka dot silk tie. He holds out his arm and leads me in as if asking me to dance. For a split second, I feel exalted, like the girlfriend in the movie about the Romanian composer. "Come in, come on in," he says with a smile.
"My name is Sha-fei, Tao Hong’s daughter. It's so nice to meet you. May I call you Uncle Gordon?"
"Sure, sure, Uncle Gordon's fine," he says, motioning me to sit down.
Again hit by the heavy Shanghai accent in his Mandarin, I venture, “Are you originally also from Shanghai?”
He seems to have been reminded of something and replies loudly, “Oh yes!”
“Then we can speak our mother tongue to each other if you like, Uncle Gordon.”
“Certainly, certainly,” he says, in Shanghai dialect. I experience a surge of familiarity. How nice!
"Sorry I didn't let you know beforehand that I was coming. I had no way of getting the hotel's phone number."
"Oh, don't worry, don't worry. Seeing you is like seeing your father again. I last saw him 32 years ago. Yes, 1953. I can see traces of Tao in you, Sha-fei."
My eyes become watery. Gordon comes up and hugs me. "I'm so sorry, Sha-fei. But I'm glad to meet you. You will tell me all about Tao later, won't you?"
"I certainly will," I promise, still trying to adjust to being hugged. Mother hugged me once or twice when I was little. Nobody else ever did, not even Lu Long. Uncle Gordon is so American. No Chinese would hug each other as a way of expressing sorrow. We would just sob and wipe each other’s tears. To hug is to show love, maybe, but I wouldn't know.
"I'm sorry I didn't know you were coming. I have an important appointment at two. I should be back shortly after five. Why don't' you wait for me here? We can have dinner together and talk."
I take a glance at his room. It seems larger than my entire apartment. I hesitate.
"Look, I have to go now. Why don't you just wait here and make yourself at home. Watch TV. Use the facilities, if you wish. Just don't order 'special delivery' room service." He wags his index finger and says with a wink. "I'll pick you up later."
I stand in the middle of the room like a mannequin, letting my eyes take in everything: The red, wall-to-wall carpeting. The shiny wood veneers giving a feeling of renovated newness. The place’s tidy and orderly look reminds me of the house of my childhood. But this is a hotel room very different from a three-story house. Two full-sized beds dominate the space. A small coffee table with a single pink flower in a cut glass vase stands between two chairs. The large screened television is equipped with a remote control. There is even a closet and a separate door to the bathroom. All this just for one person. And I'll have this place all to myself for several hours!
I walk to the windows and delight in the view of the Bund and the Huangpu River. The shimmering reflections from the wintry sunlight on the brown waters have created a sense of austere mystery. The velvet burgundy drapery emits a sense of warmth.
Feeling like a novice thief picking a lock with a hairpin, I open the closet. The scent of light cologne comes out of the hanging suits: pinstriped, checkered, plain. None cut in the Mao tunic-style I am used to seeing. The tie rack looks like a colorful Chinese kite. I close the door and exhale.
The adjacent door leads to the bathroom. I peep in. There is a white tile water-flushing toilet with a beige, wood seat and a matching cover. A small basket of dried flower petals sits on the water tank, sending forth a pleasant fragrance. Steam pipes next to it are heating the space. A tub with a thick towel draped over its side. A sink with an oval mirror above. Two chrome racks with white and fluffy towels on them. Towels of three different sizes. The octagonal, white floor tiles and the violet blue tiles lining the tub form an artistic contrast. As I tentatively turn on the taps on the pedestal washbasin, warm water gushes out. I suddenly picture Teacher Gao's freezing, carrot-like fingers.
I can't help but think about the facilities I currently use at home. Every morning before going to school, I empty and clean the wooden barrel chamber pot in our building's toilet for women. Female residents straddle a ditch separated by five boarded-up stalls. A rope-operated handle in the front stall takes care of the flushing of the entire ditch. Since there are no toilet seats over the ditch, going to the bathroom is a test of one's leg muscle stamina, tolerance of odors and sounds from nearby stalls, and dexterity in avoiding being splashed when the front stall occupant flushes the ditch without warning.
A sink with three faucets connected by a pipe is available across the ditch for washing hands and cleaning chamber pots. The faucets are frequently frozen during winter. When I was a child, my hand once stuck to the middle faucet. The frozen faucet tore off a layer of skin like a piece of wrapper stuck on a popsicle. Blood dripping, I ran crying back to our apartment, where Mother dressed my hand with a drop of our precious, rationed cooking oil and a piece of cloth.
At this moment, admiring the soft, pink bathroom tissue near the toilet seat, I carefully tear off sections of
the paper along the perforated lines and smell it. Then, holding my breath, I pick a rose petal from the dry flowers, sniff it, wrap it inside the tissue, and tuck it into the centerfold of my handkerchief. My souvenir from the Shanghai Plaza Hotel.
And the bathtub. It stands like a vase with the legs of classical style furniture. Gordon Lou's voice resounds in my ears: Use the facilities, if you wish. My heavens, do I wish! I can take a bath here! Without heat at home, it's always too cold to bathe in winter. I wish I had brought a change of clothes.
I let the warm water rise to fill the tub. The full-length mirror on the door begins to fog up as I peel off my clothes. Naked, in a trance, I stand watching myself in front of the mirror: dimples, almond eyes, double folded lids, long neck, long limbs, cascading black hair. Until now, this frontal view has never been exposed in its entirety, not even to myself. Somebody will love it, I think with a grin, caressing my own skin in relish.
As if pouring cooking oil into a hot wok to avoid splashing, I empty the bottle of "Foaming Bath Gel -- Musk" into the water with caution, marveling at the bubbles generated.
Slipping into the pearly water, I close my eyes and let my body float. It would be even nicer if my prince charming could scrub my back now. As I clean myself with a small towel, I experience a surge of pleasure I did not dare to explore before. For seconds, I am oblivious to my surroundings. Nothing but senses.
Then, I pull myself up, stand in the middle of the tub and let the water from the showerhead gush into my mouth. Water. Water. Water. A whole month's supply of water gushes into my mouth. A gargoyle during a rainstorm. Cathartically cleansed.
I have on the late afternoon "Learn To Speak English" TV program when I hear a knock on the door. With a quick reflex of the last time I saw Stepfather, I jump from the sofa like a spring and let out a cry in Chinese - “Shui ya?”-- Who is it?