Did she want to deal with her present or look for her past? Lili wasn’t sure.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sunday
April 16, 1989
Beijing, China
Foreign Minister Lin scrutinized the young man standing before him. He had reviewed the dossier prepared by Peng Han. He knew Chi-Wen Zhou, thirty-three, son of an intellectual, had been sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution for reeducation and now worked for the government. During the past year he’d been posted at the Xi’an Institute. His superiors all described him as “quiet and respectful.”
Six months ago Lin had agreed to let Han install Chi-Wen as lab aide to Dr. Cheng. He was to get the old man to reveal his secret. Han insisted Chi-Wen was making progress, but time was running out.
That was why Lin decided to meet the young man himself — to confront him, to look deep into his eyes, to study every corner of his features like a feng shui man divining the true nature of his soul. Chi-Wen would be pivotal to their scheme. Such a handsome Chinese face. Thick black hair, serious dark eyes. And his name: Chi-Wen. Chi meant unique; wen, gentle, learned. A true son of China.
The old man extended a hand. “Please, sit down.”
Tea was brought and Lin waited while Chi-Wen took a few sips before continuing. “I trust your father’s sister is well?” His owl-like eyes fastened on Chi-Wen. Fan Zhou was Chi-Wen’s only living relative.
“She is very happy in her new apartment.”
The foreign minister nodded. “And you, Chi-Wen. You are happy working for Dr. Cheng?”
“He is an excellent teacher.”
“I understand you have passed the qualifying exams for medical school.”
“I would like to be a doctor.”
“I see.” The foreign minister leaned forward, speaking in a low, confidential tone. “You know this can be accomplished.” Of course he knew. The government controlled every citizen’s education, housing, employment, and residency.
The old man waited until he saw Chi-Wen suck in a breath of air. “On the other hand, places are hard to get. So many qualified.”
The sigh was audible.
Good. Now I have him. Mao always said “kill the chickens to teach the monkey.” It was easy with Chi-Wen’s group — the so-called lost generation. They understood the lesson. Only a word here or there was needed. It was the younger ones he had to worry about. But that was another story.
He handed Chi-Wen a picture of Lili Quan. “This is the granddaughter of Ni-Fu Cheng. She will help us accomplish what you could not.”
Outside, on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square, in front of the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, a class of elementary boys and girls listened to their teacher explain the triumph of Communism in China.
Not far away, several students from Beijing University were marching back and forth carrying homemade big-character posters or dazibao. Some expressed grief over the death of Hu Yaobang: “Those who ought to live have died; those who ought to die —” Others professed guilt at not supporting the Chinese leader in 1987: “When we were deprived of your post, why didn’t we stand up?” Still other placards quoted Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the Chinese Constitution: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people,” “ Give me liberty or give me death!” “Freedom of speech, press and association, and the right to demonstrate.”
“Ironic,” Lee Tong observed, lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of his last one.
“What do you mean?” David Kim asked.
“Where do you think these students learned this?”
“How should I know?”
“On TV. They see your student demonstrations in South Korea.”
“What do they want?”
Tong shrugged, reading one of the slogans. “Who knows? Right now they’re asking for ‘sincere dialogue with the government,’ whatever that means.”
David laughed. “It sounds like the harmless rambling of student intellectuals.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Tong said, unwilling to reveal his worst fears. The placards denouncing children of Party members who considered themselves above the law disturbed him. In China one could never be sure when the wind would change. If the students did get Deng’s ear, would Tong’s hou-tai protect him?
Hong Kong
At the Hunghom Railway Station, large groups of Chinese travelers sat on rows of hard benches, waiting patiently for the train to Guangchou — most with cardboard suitcases, some with live chickens, a few with electronic souvenirs from Hong Kong.
“Are you our guide?” The question came from an older American woman wearing a bright pink cotton warm-up suit that stretched across a generous rump and ample bosom.
“Excuse me?”
“Lili!” Dottie Diehl pushed through the crowd. “You decided to take my advice and see China.”
“Are you joining our tour?” the fat lady asked.
“No, I’m traveling on my own. I only have a week or two.”
“Well, at least ride with us to Guangchou,” Dottie insisted, turning to her companion. “Charlotte Miller, this is Dr. Quan. We met on the plane from L.A. She’s a doctor who’s going to work in China. Lili, Charlotte is a retired history teacher from Ohio.”
“Asian history, my dear.” Charlotte corrected Dottie before she turned to inspect Lili. “You’re a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“You must be very bright. I should ask you about my back.”
A smiling bespectacled Chinese woman with a plastic CITS badge on her blouse, interrupted.
“Tour number five?” The woman spoke English with a lilting Shanghai accent.
“China Off the Beaten Path.” Dottie raised her tour brochure.
“Yes, that’s it,” the guide said. “I am Miss Pu.”
They traded introductions.
“So old! So fat!” Miss Pu remarked to Charlotte. “You must be very prosperous and have very good fortune.”
“Actually the opposite, but it’s nice to know my years and pounds are valued in your country.”
Miss Pu looked around. “Is everyone present?”
Dottie pointed to a dozen blue-haired seniors guarding their luggage in the far corner of the large waiting area. The hello my name is tags worn on their chests made the group look like elderly campers.
As Lili followed Dottie and Charlotte to where the seniors sat, Charlotte kept up a barrage of questions. “Are you married, Dr. Quan?”
“Not yet. I guess I’ve been too busy working.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Take advice from an old fool. Don’t put it off too long or you may end up alone.”
The train whistle blew leaving Charlotte with the last word. All order abruptly collapsed, everyone pushing and shoving to board. As the group moved from the platform to their assigned car, Miss Pu whispered to Lili.
“I don’t speak Chinese,” Lili stated matter-of-factly.
The guide studied Lili for a moment, as if not sure what to make of this overseas Chinese who didn’t speak her own language. “Such personal questions. Don’t they make you feel uncomfortable?”
“In America people like to know about one another.”
“It’s not considered rude?”
Lili smiled. “Not at all. They’re just being friendly.”
“Americans make friends easily, don’t they?”
“Yes”
The tour guide was silent for a moment. “In China, old friends are safe.”
Lili recalled the fortune-teller’s warning: You must be wary of new friendships.
Beijing, China
Chi-Wen closed his eyes as the military aircraft began its takeoff from Beijing Airport and recalled his meeting with the foreign minister. Lin was like all Chinese government bureaucrats: the counterfeit smile and the soft words, each sentence a line of dialogue in a play of make believe, meant only to manipulate and deceive.
A sense of dispossession overwhelmed him. He’d survived t
he Cultural Revolution. Correction. He had endured. Men just like Lin had taken away his childhood with all its hopes and expectations until only ren was left — to endure. And he had endured, retreating into himself, hiding all his sorrows, enduring the pain, the irrationality, the seeming endlessness of the nightmare. Until he felt nothing.
Until six months ago.
Until they sent him to Dr. Cheng — to infiltrate his lab, to gain his trust, to learn his secret. Chi-Wen had gone willingly. After all, they had given his father’s sister a decent place to live, canceling out the disgrace of his rightist family. For her it meant a reprieve from a life of utter isolation — almost worse than her time in prison. No longer did she have to tolerate the snubs of friends and neighbors, the talk in whispers meant to be heard: She is Fan Zhou, sister of one of the Stinking Ninth. A damn intellectual herself. Don’t speak to her.
How could he allow her to suffer again? To cooperate was Chi-Wen’s duty. Duty is what makes this country great. In the name of duty he had agreed to betray a man he’d never met before.
But that was then. In the past six months he had come to know Ni-Fu Cheng — perhaps in some ways better than he had ever known his own father. He had learned from him. Not just about science and literature, but about life itself. And he had begun to feel again. Just enough to wonder whether the professor was correct when he said: “sometimes questions are important.”
You have been selected for a very special assignment.
He studied the picture of Lili Quan.
She is Dr. Cheng’s granddaughter. She is now the key to his secret.
She was very beautiful.
We hope you will make her want to stay in China.
He and Dr. Cheng and Lili Quan — all pawns in the old men’s game. Everything will continue — your aunt’s apartment, your job, your future as a doctor. As long as you cooperate. The degree of your assistance in this matter will be a test of your sincerity.
Did he dare to question? Or would he simply continue to endure? He wasn’t sure even as the plane headed into the clouds on its way to Guangchou.
The express hugged the Tolo Harbour coast, chugging its way toward the Chinese border.
The ceiling fan pushed a hot, humid breeze through the compartment. Despite the heat, a female attendant appeared with a tray of large mugs and bags of tea leaves. Out of politeness Lili did not refuse when a few minutes later the woman returned with an aluminum teakettle to pour steaming water into her cup. After all, when in Rome. And Lili knew that cha, green tea with no cream or sugar, was as integral to life in China as coffee was in the States.
As the tour group shared their life stories and agonized over whether watches and rings needed to be declared or how many yuan equaled a Hong Kong dollar, Miss Pu would interrupt to point out key sights while Dottie made frantic notes in her lined copybook.
From her window seat, Lili observed the names of passing stations — Mangkok, Kowloon Tong, Shatin, Ma Lui Shiu, Taipo Kau, Taipo Market, Fanling, Sheung Shui. Miss Pu explained that these were the new territories: twenty-seven miles of curving hills bordering on the water’s edge, slapped up concrete neighborhoods with red paper-plastered doorways to ward off evil, and capitalist enterprises, still owned by Hong Kong, nervously awaiting 1997, when the People’s Republic would reclaim it as her own.
“We’re in China!” someone yelled excitedly as the train crossed the border. A cheer arose from the group.
Lili didn’t know what she had expected, but she saw no barbed wire, no barricades. As she peered through the window, she noticed that the narrow dusty road that paralleled the train track was dense with every kind of traffic except for private cars. Buses, vans, tractors, horse- and even donkey-drawn carts heaped with furniture, vegetables, and live animals, vied for position with bicycles. Only the bike riders were able to squeeze around passing traffic. Lili perceived all this as a slow-moving army purposefully traveling in straight lines, all seemingly directed by hidden agendas.
The landscape itself was open and almost treeless. Neatly ordered green fields sprawled outside occasional villages with houses made of mud; dirt alleys ran between. The train passed flooded rice paddies where Hakka women in black pajama suits and wide-brimmed, silk-fringed straw hats stooped over in fixed and silent postures like cranes with their beaks down, fishing in shallow water. Two boys operated a chain-driven water pump that, according to Miss Pu, had been in continuous use in China since the first century A.D.
Ever the teacher, Charlotte chimed in: “You know, the Chinese are responsible for many modern inventions — the iron plow, the umbrella, the spinning wheel, sliding calipers, movable type, the printing press, paper money, and the seismograph. They even made the first kite two thousand years before it was seen in Europe. Amazing, isn’t it?” she said, pointing out the window, “for a people so advanced at one time, how primitive all this seems?”
Lili had to agree. It seemed light-years from Hong Kong — as though she’d slid through a time warp. In less than an hour she had traveled from one of the most international cities to a place withdrawn from the rest of the world. Ancestors of these peasant women had been farming this same earth for thousands of years. And apparently in the same back-breaking way.
She stared at a man riding his water buffalo home and thought, I am going home. The words of Dr. Seng and Ching-yi, the fortune-teller.
And her mother’s: Someday you will return to China for me.
She was returning to China — a place she’d never been, a people she’d never known. Yet her eyes were misty. Odd. It was almost as if this scene evoked some long-forgotten memory.
Xi’an, China
Ni-Fu hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness — a kind of fugue state brought on by his prolonged fast.
His daughter, Su-Wei, was standing on the deck of the ship, crying. Just as he remembered. She was so beautiful. Like her mother.
Don’t leave me, father.
Don’t cry, child.
I’ll never see you again.
Of course you will.
Who will take care of you?
I’ll be all right. As long as I can find the secret.
Father —
“Su Wei!” he called. But no sound came. He strained to call to her, but there was no response.
And then she was gone.
From the darkness, Death called his name — whispering seductively, like a long-lost lover, arms outstretched: Come to me, come to me.
Yes. He was ready. He wanted to go. I am coming.
At that moment he saw her: Qing-Nan. Only once in the past forty years had he seen her and then, as now, she appeared to him in a dream — a shadow, larger than life. It is not your time, husband, she whispered. You must not give in to death.
But I have the power to save China.
By dying?
He closed his eyes, ashamed. Yes.
No! You can save China only by living.
I am nothing. Less than a speck in the vastness of time and space, hardly known, quickly forgotten.
You have the power to save China.
I am too old.
Death reached out to him again, but Qing-Nan pushed her aside. Husband, I helped you once, didn’t I?
Yes, you made me understand the secret.
Qing-Nan nodded. Then listen to me now.
I am listening.
You must not let the secret die with you.
Who shall be its keeper? Chi-Wen?
You will know very soon.
The image was less clear now. Please tell me.
Very soon —
Slowly, the vision evaporated. Only the memory remained. Ni-Fu opened his eyes. “Chi-Wen?”
“He is not here, professor.”
Ni-Fu recognized Dr. Seng standing over him. “I have brought you some soup,” Seng said, putting the tray down beside his bed.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You may feel differently when you hear what I have to tell you.”
Guangchou, China
The same chaos that had erupted in Hong Kong was replayed the moment the train stopped at Guangchou station. Arriving travelers laden with bundles, babies, and birds almost trampled one another getting out of the ramshackle train terminal as those who had come to greet family or friends clamored to get in.
“After we pass through customs,” Miss Pu explained, “you will be officially in China. You may not take any ordinary Chinese money or Ren Men Bei into the country, but you can convert U.S. traveler’s checks or cash.” Turning to Lili, “Overseas Chinese are processed there.” She pointed to the far side of the station.
“I guess I’m on my own then.”
“We’ll be in Xi’an in three weeks,” Dottie said, checking her itinerary. “At the Golden Flower Hotel.”
“Maybe I could stop by the Xi’an Institute for an acupuncture treatment,” Charlotte suggested.
Dottie winked at Lili. “I’ll fill you in on my exploits.” She giggled. “And maybe you’ll find a husband.”
“Out of a billion people, there’s bound to be one man here for you, “ Charlotte called.
Lili laughed as she left. Poor Miss Pu had her hands full with these boisterous American seniors.
She wound her way through the tumult and sweaty confusion until she found the customs area marked Overseas Chinese and took her place behind a well-dressed man who introduced himself as a computer executive from Singapore. He explained that as huaqiao, overseas Chinese had special status. “They put on company behavior for us,” he said, adding, “at least for a little while.”
“How do you mean?”
“They won’t spit near you in the streets, and on the overnight train they won’t strip down to their underwear.”
Lili laughed.
“That all changes once they relax and see that you look and sound like them.”
Rabbit in the Moon Page 12