The Wangs vs. the World

by Jade Chang

  It had been years since Charles had ridden any kind of public transportation. Growing up in Taiwan, he had hung off the sides of buses with his friends, but the train system in China was a different matter altogether. A mass of Beijing residents poured out of the station, engulfing him, though when he turned in the other direction, there seemed to be just as many rushing in. The two opposing tides lapped up against each other, unceasing, merging without incident.

  When had the children of China gotten so tall? They towered over him, these little treasures, six feet high and rising. Except for the tiny ones, so skinny that their skin stretched translucent over their toothpick bones; and the broad ones, with their farmboy shoulders and wide, flat faces. Charles felt comforted in this swirl of humanity, in this sea of black hair. If the billion people of China ever chose to march en masse, they would be overwhelming in their similarity and horrific in their differences. There would be so many variations on the theme of human that all typologies would be completely bulldozed. This was why he had never worried himself about how America viewed his children, never bothered himself over unflattering stereotypes and prejudices. What did it matter how a country full of white people saw them when the whole world was theirs?

  Out the window, the horror of the postindustrial landscape was obscured by its own waste, a thick brown mist that hung heavy in the sky. The train windows were filmed over with it. Charles peered at the grimy windowsill. Putrid neon gum had hardened in one corner and a fluff of gray down, the vestige of some long-ago disease-ridden bird, mixed with curls of dust. Charles lifted his sleeve from the armrest and moved away from the window. Would it all be like this? Would the longitude and latitude on his deed point towards rows of tenements and factories where children worked for slave wages? A settled town of cheap shops and pasteboard houses that would collapse like they had just months ago in Sichuan after that unimaginable earthquake?

  Disappointment crowded in. What would Barbra say if he had come all this way for nothing, for a place that didn’t even exist anymore? Charles closed his eyes and sank into his seat, wishing that he had something to place between his head and the dingy white cover that was meant to protect the top of the train seat from the passengers’ greasy scalps.

  Before he even realized that he was asleep, the train screeched to a stop. What is that strange skill that allows us to doze through an unknown route and wake up at the correct station? He rushed to pick up his jacket and bag, glad to leave the train behind.

  At the station, Charles waited for nearly an hour before a suspiciously new taxi finally deigned to pull up. It bumped him over a series of rural roads, the driver speaking at first in some sort of dialect that Charles could barely understand before he switched to a flawless Mandarin. On the outskirts of town, they saw a benighted huddle of mud-and-straw huts, shocking in their crudity. Next to them, children rolled an oil drum in a field, but they paused and looked up as the taxi passed. One small girl on the end waved, and Charles waved back, wishing that he could take her with him and put some new, clean clothes on her. A little girl should have a pretty dress. As they got closer to town, the road smoothed out and the houses began to look less haphazard. Charles looked down at the map. The mountains rose in the distance, just as they did on the map, and the road began to curve in a recognizable way towards a body of water in the distance. This was it. Charles felt sick. He couldn’t wait to see it and he didn’t want to look at it at all.

  Desire, as always, outweighed fear.

  An open ditch ran along the side of the road. Charles directed the driver to park next to it. “This is my family’s old estate,” he explained, proud. “I’m going to have a look at it. Wait here, please, until I return.”

  Tapping a cigarette out of a packet marked with a warning label and a photo of a shriveled fetus, the driver spit into the ditch. “How do I know you’ll come back?”

  “I’ll leave my bag here with you.”

  The driver flicked his plastic green lighter and leaned into the flame. “What do I want with your old clothes? I don’t even know if you can afford to pay me for waiting.”

  Charles was offended. His ability to pay for something like a taxi ride had never been called into question. “I can pay. There’s no reason to doubt me.”

  Their eyes met in the rearview mirror, and Charles saw himself the way the other man saw him. Not as the prosperous businessman he so recently was, or as the scion of a landed family that he always would be, but as a foreigner wearing the same clothes he’d worn yesterday and the day before. He wanted to flash what remained of the bills, which he’d changed into yuan at the airport—that, at least, had made them multiply in a satisfying way—but Charles was now keenly aware of being in a deserted stretch of country where the driver might have compatriots without such law-abiding jobs. He left his money pouch strapped securely to his chest and instead opened his wallet to show the smaller stash of money that he’d placed there for incidentals.

  The driver nodded, satisfied. “Leave your bag, and give me half now,” he said.

  The land in China. The landinChina. ThelandinChina.

  Charles got out of the cab, hopped over the ditch, and walked straight into the field. He had drawn a painstaking outline of the land on Xeroxed pages of a topographical map and now he held them up, trying to get his bearings. In Los Angeles, real estate had never interested Charles. He had made sure to own his factories and his home—useless ambitions, in the end—but he had never been like some of his friends who snapped up sixteenplex apartments in Koreatown and minimalls in Studio City as quickly as they became available. As a result, he’d neglected to develop a talent for estimating acres or square footage at a glance, but if he had translated the old surveyor measurements on the land correctly, his family’s holdings stretched out all the way to the mountains up ahead, acres and acres of it. More than hundreds, for sure. Thousands? Tens of thousands? The thought of it dizzied him. To the left and right, at the far edges of his vision, the horizon shimmered and the land seemed infinite. It was like owning all of Bel-Air and most of Westwood, too.

  He peered out at the mountain. Was the family house still extant? It was hard to tell. Clusters of crumbling buildings dotted the mountainside and from a distance it was impossible to tell whether they were newer or older. The outline of the mountain ridge, though, felt familiar to Charles. I know this place, he thought. It was a comforting thought.

  I know this place. This place is mine.

  The soft curve of these mountains, interrupted by a tall jagged peak, was a part of his blood and his birthright. His father may not have managed to pass on the land itself, but this knowing was nearly as powerful an inheritance.

  Only the land bordering the road appeared to be tilled. Charles kept walking until he reached a verdant open field dotted with tiny white flowers and climbed up a small rise. From there, he could see another rise in front of him, taller and a good bit farther away. Although each minute was costing him as much as that cheating cabbie wanted to charge, now that Charles was here, he had to see every inch that might have once belonged to the Wang family.

  He plunged ahead.

  The ground under him was damp, patches of mud hidden by the long grasses. One shoe got mired down, staying stubbornly behind when he pulled his foot up, so he took them both off, and his socks as well, and rolled up his pant legs. He marched forward, not minding that the mud was oozing over his feet. When he reached the next patch of dry grass, he wiped them off, liking the feeling of nature on his bare skin. Out of breath, sweat pooling under his armpits, he labored upward, scrunching his toes to get purchase on the slope.

  By the time he got to the top, he was light-headed. He leaned over to take a full breath, and when he straightened, everything went white for a moment. Eyes closed, Charles let the blood drain downwards from his head and took several deep breaths. He opened his eyes. Everything was still a pulsing white. Was this it? The big stroke that he feared? He blinked. Shook his head. Bit down on his tongue to
make sure that he could still feel things. And then he realized that it was the land itself.

  Everything glowed. The fields were incandescent. The last of the morning dew caught the rising sun and sparkled, a tiny drop on the tip of each blade of grass, each drop a world in miniature. A slow breeze kicked up, rustling the leaves on the trees with their dark, elegant trunks that stood nearby. Pure beauty had never really moved Charles. He liked drama, he liked mischief, he liked luxury that bred desire.

  But this, this was beauty.

  Beauty.

  Charles sank to his knees, then put his hands on the earth, not caring if the insolent driver saw him. He wanted to kiss the ground, to eat it.

  Wiggling his fingers deeper into the dirt, he remembered a discussion he’d had with Nash once, soon after his friend had taken on a senior seminar populated mostly by second-generation Chinese immigrants. Nash had explained his students’ complicated relationship to the country their parents had left behind, finally convincing Charles that not everyone saw the world as simply and clearly as he did. For Nash’s students, there were many Chinas. There was the China that was against the world, the China that was the Communist government. The China that existed briefly in Taiwan. There was the China that covered things up and the China that was gradually making things free. And as many Chinas as there were, there were that many Charleses as well. Every immigrant is the person he might have been and the person he is, and his homeland is at once the place it would have been to him from the inside and the place it must be to him from the outside.

  All of that was academic bullshit.

  This, this was the only China.

  This incandescent land that glowed all around him.

  The mud caked on his soles and the flies that buzzed against his bare toes.

  The mountains that rose like they did in ink-brush paintings by the old masters, rows of smoky gray ranges getting darker as they retreated. Charles plunged his fingers into the soil and wiggled them back and forth until he’d made a hole. He took out his father’s bone, porous and gray, and dropped it in, covering it back up with the displaced earth. This, this must be what he’d meant to do with it all along.

  Charles plucked a piece of grass and put it in his mouth, chewing cautiously. It was peppery and green-tasting, and that was China, too. He licked a little mud off the edge of his thumb. It didn’t have much of a taste, just a rich, dirty essence. He could have made a meal of those things, could have lived on nothing else for the rest of his life.

  This was the New World. He’d gotten it wrong. His father had gotten it wrong. Never mind the Communists, the Japanese, the murderous urchins of the Little Red Guard. This was China, and the Wangs, the great and glorious Wangs, never should have left.

  Still half dreaming, Charles made his way to the far end of the stand of trees and unzipped his pants. He pulled out his penis and aimed a stream of urine against one of the tree trunks, then tilted towards another, reveling in the feeling of release. He would piss over every inch of this land, feeling more awake with every second that he continued to splatter the silvery bark. As he turned left, ready to water another tree, he saw a sign at the far edge of the clearing. Who dared lay claim to his land? Cutting the urine abruptly and shaking the end of his penis, Charles tucked himself back in and zipped up his pants.

  The sign, when he reached it, was taller than it looked. He craned upwards, but still had to step back a few feet to read it.

  APARTMENT CITY

  NEXT SPRING: 3,000 LIVING UNITS

  四十三

  New Orleans, LA

  ANDREW SAT in the meager shade outside of the Greyhound station, eating a slice of pepperoni pizza. In the end, he’d let Saina buy him a ticket from New Orleans to Helios, but he’d insisted on taking a bus instead of an easy plane ride. The route wound through Alabama and Georgia before heading up through the Carolinas and stopping at the Port Authority in New York City, where he’d transfer. Maybe I should just stay there, thought Andrew. Maybe if I stay, I’ll end up on Saturday Night Live. He took another bite of pizza and chewed, happy.

  四十四

  Helios, NY

  HELIOS CENTRAL HIGH was a long, two-story structure built of brick-colored blocks at the end of a country road that crested around a hill before it slid straight into the student parking lot.

  “I don’t like this,” said Grace.

  “You haven’t even been inside yet!”

  “Look at the sign. I mean, seriously?”

  The sign was hard to miss. It was the tallest thing around for miles, a thick blue pole topped with a glowing billboard that wouldn’t have been out of place on Broadway. Framed by lightbulbs that shone even though the sun was at its highest point in the sky, a giant, grinning cartoon lion—his name, apparently, was Growler—leaned up against the first H of the school.

  Under the mascot, in perfectly placed letters:

  HELIOS VS. M’GTVILLE @ 6 P.M.

  NEW DRESS CODE TODAY

  “You’ll be fine,” said Saina. “You’re not exposing any unnecessary skin.”

  “I’m aesthetically offended by the whole thing. Football and rah-rah and, like, monster trucks.”

  Saina laughed. “It won’t be that bad. You’ll get to be the mysterious new girl. I bet the captain of the football team will think you’re cu-ute!”

  “Ugh. Muscles. Beefy necks. Gross.” Grace slumped down in her seat. “Come on, let’s just put it off for a day, okay? Just one day. Tomorrow I’ll be a happy camper, but not today.”

  “We’re just going to enroll. You don’t have to go to any classes today, school’s already been in session for hours.”

  “No . . . just no! Saina, please. Look, I’m a traumatized youth! I’ve just spent a week in an old car with my father and stepmother! My father got us in a car accident and then he deserted us! I have to sleep in a room with a weird ceiling!” Grace threw herself back against the car door, one arm sweeping dramatically across her forehead.

  Saina always enjoyed her sister so much more in the particular than in the abstract. Grace in person was funny and self-aware. Grace on the phone was unrelenting and concerned with the smallest of slights—in between visits, that became the only Grace that she remembered.

  Peeking out from under her arm, Grace tried again. “I know what we could do instead.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t posted on my blog in forever. And you have so much cute stuff. Let me style you! And then we can take pictures!”

  “Isn’t your blog just pictures of you?”

  “Yeah, but you can make a guest appearance!”

  “You just want an excuse to get into my closet.”

  “Okay, maybe . . .” Grace batted her eyes. “I bet there’s lots of stuff that you don’t want anymore. Things that you’ve outgrown. Things that would be perfect on someone just a leetle bit younger.”

  Saina laughed. “That line of argument really shouldn’t work, but okay, fine. No pictures of me, though. After that article, I don’t need to be on any fashion blog, not even yours. But I’ll take pictures of you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She gunned the engine and made an extravagant U-turn. “You’re free! But just until tomorrow.”

  It only took Grace one quick spin around the closet to pull out a vintage Ossie Clark dress, a pair of old motorcycle boots still caked with dirt, and a burgundy felt hat that she instantly made ten times as appealing by attaching a silver and turquoise petit point necklace around the brim. Saina was impressed with her sister. It was the kind of mishmash that a civilian could never have assembled and worn with any kind of ease, but somehow Gracie layered it on like a crazy bag lady and came out looking like a fantasy of the 1970s—more substantial than an Olsen twin, and more accessible.

  Draping her camera around Saina’s neck, Grace led them over the neighbor’s collapsed wood-post fence to the horse paddock where a sweet old chestnut mare drank from a hay-flecked trough even as it pissed out a po
werful stream of urine. Grace waited for the horse to finish and then led it to the west end of the enclosure, where she positioned the horse so that its nose nudged into the frame and placed herself where the setting sun could glint through the crook of her elbow as she reached for her hat, a motion she repeated effortlessly, each time making the gesture look fresh.

  “Do you want some more poses?” asked Saina.

  “No, that’s my thing. One perfect shot each time. No one needs to see me pretending to look delighted with the world in twenty different ways. Also, I already know the quote I’m going to pair it with.”

  “What?”

  “‘I am rooted, but I flow.’ It’s Virginia Woolf.”

  Was Gracie some kind of stylist savant? And why couldn’t that be as worthwhile, in the end, as dragging a brush over canvas or putting a pen to paper?

  They got her one perfect shot and then, still feeling indulgent, Saina let Grace dress her for dinner. As soon as they walked into Graham’s restaurant, the three of them—Saina, Grace, and Barbra, the Wangs without their center—spotted Leo, who was waiting for them at the bar. Saina felt self-conscious in the tiny skirt that her sister demanded she wear. Sensing her hesitation, Leo held up one smooth palm to give her a high five, but as they connected, a quick sting of skin on skin, he reached out and pinched her earlobe, deftly avoiding her gold ear cuff, then he wrapped his fingers around her palm and pulled her close, kissing her. Their lips were springy against each other, happy to meet.