Yes. Yes. He understood.
Shanghai, China
The crowd surrounding the Shanghai People’s Government building kept Lili and Chi-Wen more than two blocks from the entrance.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Chi-Wen replied, wishing he’d never agreed to bring Lili here. Strange forces of change filled the air. He had felt the early breezes a few days ago on the campus in Guangchou. And when the wind blew in China, he knew only too well that the tall trees were the first to be crushed. “Let’s get out of here.”
Lili was already threading her way to the side gate when a guard blocked her path. “Zou kaio bu xu kao jin!”
“What’s he saying?”
“The offices are closed today. All workers have been sent home. He says we can return tomorrow.”
“But why are they closed?”
“It’s the government’s way of ignoring the demonstration. What it doesn’t see, it doesn’t deal with.”
At least one hundred students marched with homemade daizibao.
“What do their posters say?”
“The student movement is for democracy, freedom, human rights, rule of law, and modernization.”
“How about that one?” Lili asked, pointing to a poster picturing several young men.
“They are sons of high officials like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang. The students accuse them of corruption and guandao.”
One of the demonstrators lowered his poster and mounted a makeshift platform. Through a hand-held megaphone he announced the boycott of classes had been successful in cities across China.
“They’re asking the people for support,” Chi-Wen explained.
On the faces of the crowd Lili saw the kind of excitement and expectation she imagined typified anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the sixties.
“The students made good on their promise.”
“So it seems.” For Chi-Wen, their fervor brought back memories of a China gone mad during the Cultural Revolution. Frightened, he grabbed her arm. “Let’s go.”
“We might as well stay and listen.”
“Lili, this isn’t America. It could get dangerous.”
“It seems benign. Besides,” she countered, “not all demonstrations in the U.S. are peaceful.”
Chi-Wen looked at this strange young woman who rushed into life with a vengeance, without doubt and fear. Her direct, single-minded manner was unnerving. How could he make her understand this was China? That life here was different?
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Please. Just follow me.”
His urgent tone preempted argument. He led her inside a nearby gallery to one of the many scroll paintings on the wall. He paused, watching her puzzled expression. “Tell me what you see.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very serious.”
Lili examined the painting. It was a Chinese landscape like so many she’d seen and not particularly good, she thought. “Well —”
“Be specific.”
“Okay, but I’m not much of an art critic.”
“That’s not the point of this exercise.”
“At the top right-hand corner is a mountain and at the bottom left-hand corner some land and a moored boat. In between, there’s a lake.” She hesitated, then added: “Oh, and the sunlight just begins to penetrate the morning mist on the lake. “
“Look again.”
Lili spent several more minutes studying the canvas, unable to fathom what she’d missed. “What?”
“The lake, the land, the sunlight, the mist, and everything else that occupies two-thirds of the canvas is simply not there.”
“What are you talking about? I see it all clearly.”
“No, the silk is blank. The artist painted it by ignoring it. Were it not for this emptiness on the silk, the picture would have no meaning. The blank space gives shape to the objects.”
Observing her confusion, Chi-Wen said “Look, I’m trying to explain why I can’t get involved in the student movement.”
“I really don’t understand.”
“I told you I was a Taoist. That I followed ‘the way.’ ”
“So?”
“Taoists believe all striving is futile, even perilous. We achieve contentment not by chasing it. Our eyes perceive without effort. In fact, we must shut them to keep from doing so. Our ears hear, our lungs breathe, our body grows, all without conscious intervention by our minds.”
“Are you saying we make no choices, that our lives just happen?” Lili demanded.
He examined her with curiosity before responding. “In the West you think you have freedom to make choices. That is an illusion. Your choices are limited to tiny decisions: will you eat rice or noodles, will you sleep late or get up early? The big decisions such as where you are born, how you live, what opportunities you have, these are fated.”
“So I can choose to eat when hungry, sleep when sleepy, but I must allow myself to be swept along with the currents of history. Is that it?”
His gaze was long and steady. “Lili, the superior man does not struggle against nature. He knows when not to act. His inertia forms a silken backdrop for the futile strivings of others. In other words, the Taoist is the blank part of the canvas. He accepts his lot.”
“But that would mean accepting the unacceptable,” Lili protested, “to lie down like a dog, to give in without a fight. What about injustice? Don’t you need to challenge evil when you find it?”
Chi-Wen shook his head. “You challenge everything.”
“And you challenge nothing.”
“I told you. Chinese adapt.”
“Certainly not all,” Lili retorted. “What about the students in Guangchou and here in Shanghai? They’re Chinese and they’re challenging the evil they see.”
How could he make her appreciate the agonizing journey that had ended with his loss of innocence? “A newborn calf has no fear of tigers,” he began. “After it has been chased by a tiger, if not devoured it will become smart. Those who lived through the Cultural Revolution learned our lesson. These young students are naïve. They will learn soon enough. The old Maoists will never give up control. They will win. They always do. Then they will purge.”
“I guess I don’t understand China.”
“You think you can come here, spend a few days, and suddenly understand one billion strangers.”
Strangers? The intensity of his response surprised her. “No, of course not, but —”
“But, nothing. You are naïve, Lili Quan.”
How did such a beautiful, brainy woman like you get so naïve?
Dylan’s words. Were they both a little right? Dylan and Chi-Wen? Was she just a naïve young woman? A brassy American stranger? “Tell me, have you ever read Hemingway?”
“What?”
“Ernest Hemingway. He was a famous American author.”
“No.”
Lili opened her purse and removed the copy of The Old Man and the Sea that she’d bought in Guangchou. “If I’m naïve, so was Hemingway. Will you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Read this.” Should she tell him what she had told Dylan? That Hemingway believed that man always loses in the end. That what really counts is how he conducts himself while he’s being destroyed. No, she would let Chi-Wen discover the meaning for himself.
Chi-Wen accepted the book. He checked his watch. It was almost five p.m. “We have a long bus ride and the hotel won’t hold dinner.”
All the way back, they didn’t speak. The altercation with Chi-Wen had broken the spell of the past few days. When they stood in the hotel lobby, she turned to him. “I’d just as soon skip dinner if you don’t mind.”
“You’re not feeling well?”
“I’m fine. I’d just like to go up to my room.”
Beijing, China
“Damn it!” He pounded his fist on the desktop.
General Tong entered the foreign minister’s
office. “I see you’ve read the reports. Should I say I told you so?”
Lin acknowledged the remark by hawking a mouthful of phlegm into the nearby spittoon. “I’d rather you concentrate on helping me plan a counterattack to this student movement.”
“Then you’re giving up on Han’s approach?”
“We still need to give the newspaper campaign time, but we should consider additional strategies.”
“Such as?”
“Such as taking advantage of Deng’s growing paranoia.” He lit a cigarette and dragged deeply. “Like Mao, old Deng is becoming more and more terrified of betrayal. We simply manipulate those fears to remove obstacles from our path to power.”
The military man smiled. “Yes, it has possibilities. Shall I arrange a meeting with Deng?”
“I’m way ahead of you. It’s set for Tuesday.”
“And the girl?”
“She’s had enough sightseeing. It’s time she earned her keep.”
Shanghai, China
Too hot to sleep.
Lying across the bed in the sultry night air, hearing the overhead fan whir like a great tireless insect, Lili let her mind slalom through her confusion.
China was a country so vast it was impossible to characterize in a word or phrase: spectacularly beautiful in places like Suzhou, primitive in much of its countryside, crowded beyond capacity in cities like Shanghai.
Its people were as diverse as the landscape in which they lived: old-timers who saw today in relative terms — “better than before Mao,” a lost generation who had suffered through the Cultural Revolution and wanted to be left alone, and a third group young enough to be idealistic.
And what about Chi-Wen? Part of that lost generation, he had found solace in Taoism. Lili had hoped to know him better, to probe beneath his thin veneer of toughness. In these last few days she thought she had. Lili sighed, recalling his arms tight around her waist as they cycled through the countryside, his muscular physique as he played tai chi, his earnest face as they talked together in the garden
I don’t know what to think or feel.
She sympathized with all that Chi-Wen had lost, but she rejected his passive approach to life. Ironically, her mother would have approved. How many times had Su-Wei told Lili to “flow with the Tao” and not make waves? Like a good Chinese daughter.
Oh, Mother, I never really was a good Chinese daughter!
The heat lay like a heavy quilt over the city. She rose from the bed and opened the window, hoping to catch a breeze. There was an eeriness to the night as she watched the few vans and buses driving with only parking lights on or no lights at all. Chi-Wen said it was to save batteries. Creeping out of a shroud of darkness they seemed like strange, ghostlike creatures. Such a strange land.
What am I doing here?
Until this afternoon, she thought she’d been right to visit China, that she was learning about her roots, her people.
Ch’uing tou-chi — the past, child, is a window to oneself.
But she’d really found nothing of her past — not her grandfather’s house, not his grave, not even the site of his ashes.
Did she really think she could spend a few days and suddenly understand a billion strangers? Chi-Wen had called her a stranger. Maybe he was right. She was an American with a Chinese face in the middle of China. Still, a stranger.
Pent up sadness and frustration surged within her and for the second time in so many weeks, she could no longer hold back tears. She wept as much for herself as for her grandfather — never to have met him, not to be able to ask her mother about him so that she might at least have memories. Everyone was gone. No family left to console her melancholy, to celebrate her happiness.
She was a stranger in a strange land and she wept alone.
The moment Chi-Wen returned to his room, he opened the novel, but couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts were of Lili. Why had he scolded her, called her naïve? He shook his head. Because she was. Obstinate too. But he didn’t have to be so hard on her. Calling her a stranger was cruel. Especially after they’d become so close. He sensed her pulling away. Her silence on the bus had been unbearable.
Frustrated, he threw the book on the bed. Perhaps it was just as well. It was all wrong, all a mistake anyway. He had played a foolish game thinking there could be anything more than a pleasant few days together.
Still, the smell of her perfume filled his nostrils even now — hours after they had been together. He remembered her standing on the little bridge in the garden, staring into the pool. She had not been looking at him, yet he could see the reflection of her lovely face in the still water, a clear mirror under the cloudless sky. He thought of Shakespeare’s words, so apt:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven . . .
O! that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.
A Chinese Juliet. She was as intelligent as she was beautiful. How he ached for her.
A sharp tap at the door drew his attention. “Yes?”
The desk clerk hurried in. “Comrade Zhou! A telephone call for you. Come!” The clerk led him anxiously down the stairs to the lobby phone.
“Wei? Wei! Hello, are you there?” Chi-Wen yelled into the mouthpiece, knowing the call might be automatically disconnected after twenty seconds of silence.
Nearby, the clerk hovered conspicuously. It wasn’t everyday the foreign minister called personally. Chi-Wen Zhou must be very important.
Through the shouting and the static Lin informed Chi-Wen he must bring Lili to Xi’an first thing in the morning. “A military plane will wait for you at Hongqiao Airport. Ten o’clock.” No explanations. The foreign minister broke the connection leaving no opportunity for reply.
Stunned, Chi-Wen remained holding the phone for several minutes before he finally replaced the receiver.
“Bad news, comrade?”
“Just a change in plans.” Chi-Wen forced a smile for the clerk. “Dr. Quan and I will be checking out tomorrow.”
“I see. Shall I inform her?” His tone was obsequious.
“No, I’ll do that. Wan an.”
“Good evening.”
A moment later, he was knocking at Lili’s door.
No answer.
He tried again. “Lili.”
Again, no response. Yet he thought he heard someone inside. “Lili, are you there?”
Sure of it now, he recognized the sound of crying.
Doors in China, contrary to the Western notion of privacy, serve only to keep out light and thus often remain unlocked. Chi-Wen slowly turned the handle and entered. On the bed, Lili lay sobbing. Instinctively, he moved to comfort her.
At the sound of his footsteps, Lili turned a tear-streaked face. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“About me. I may have Chinese genes, but I’m no less a foreigner than any waigoren. I don’t fit here.”
Chi-Wen bent over and wiped away a tear. “Of course you do. Didn’t I say you were becoming a true Chinese?”
“You also called me a stranger.”
“I didn’t mean it. Forgive me.”
His expression was so earnest. She studied his handsome face. “Tell me, why did you never marry?”
Surprised at the question, he hesitated. “I was engaged once.”
“What happened?”
“We met in the countryside where she was born. She had no education, but she was a good soul. I developed pneumonia one winter from the bitter cold and she nursed me back to health. It had been so long since someone cared about me. I asked her to marry me as soon as I was well.”
“She said no?”
“She said yes. It was her parents who wouldn’t allow her to marry someone from a rightist family.”
Lili certainly understood the pain of rejection. “I’m sorry.”
Chi-Wen shrugged. “It’s just as well. We weren’t right for each other.” A quiver in his voice betrayed the swelling of emotions threading through
iron resolve not to give in to them. “I know that now,” he whispered.
Their gaze met cautiously. Although they both sensed what might happen, they shared a long look of puzzlement in that glance, their eyes searching each other’s face, trying to answer unresolved questions:
Wasn’t it foolish? Chi-Wen wondered, loving this woman from another land? She questioned everything and feared nothing. Did he really mean it when he said she wasn’t a stranger, that she was becoming a true Chinese? He stared into the almond eyes raised up to meet his. How he wanted it to be so. He smiled as he studied her face. Why not?
What was she doing? Lili asked herself. What about her resolve to be wary? She was not someone who could be intimate in a casual relationship. She knew that. Since Brock Hampstead she’d been careful to control her emotions. Even with Dylan she’d stopped short. Then why take a risk now? Maybe because it was no risk. She was halfway around the world. Nothing could come of it. Should she withdraw before one of them got hurt again? Her head said yes, but her heart cried no! as Chi-Wen reached out, pulling her to him.
“Lili.”
His touch was electric. “Yes.”
So it was decided. They remained embraced for a time, savoring the realization that they no longer needed to question or analyze. No turning back. It was happening, inevitably happening. Nothing else mattered. They were alone. A man and a woman. No past, perhaps no future. American. Chinese. These things were unimportant. Against his body, hers was familiar, without nationality.
Slowly they undressed each other. Naked, Chi-Wen lowered Lili to the bed, gently exploring her soft curves. She was surprised by his tenderness as he wrapped his arms around her, declaring his feelings with little kisses, moving his slim hips against hers. Her own body moved in rhythmic response. It had been a long time since she experienced this urgency and she gave in to her growing passion, savoring the smoothness of his hairless chest, the power of his hard muscles.
Chi-Wen was a considerate lover, tempering his own desire until she sought and found him and pulled him into her. Together they rode the wave of their pleasure. When they reached the crest, they collapsed into each others’ arms, exhausted, sighing contentedly in the darkness.
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