by Robbi McCoy
It would probably hurt Lauren to know that another woman still owned a piece of her heart, so Faith was careful to never say such a thing. The closest she had come was one day early in their relationship when, answering Lauren’s questions, she had described her love for Janie as “different.” Lauren had wanted to know how it was different. Was it better? Worse? Less intense? Faith had decided it was wiser not to try to explain that and had stuck to “just different,” an explanation that clearly hadn’t satisfied Lauren. What she wanted to hear, Faith concluded, was that any previous love Faith had felt was of no consequence in comparison to what she had with Lauren. Faith didn’t see any point in making such comparisons. It didn’t make any sense to her. Every relationship was its own reality.
Lauren was idealistic and, in some ways, innocent. Not unlike Faith had been when she met Janie. She had been only twenty-one and had thrown herself into that love affair without reservation. She had nearly drowned trying to keep them both afloat. It had been a constant struggle. Though she had eventually escaped and survived, she had lost something there, had left something behind. She assumed most people did leave something behind when they left their first real love, some slice of joyful innocence that was unrecoverable.
Lauren had never had that experience. She was so young when they met that she had very little baggage. Faith knew she was Lauren’s first real love. Lauren had never had to leave that shattered piece of innocence behind. Faith hoped she never would have to. Lauren would be one of the lucky ones, Faith thought. Her heart would never be broken.
As soon as Lauren was tucked up against her again, Faith fell asleep.
Chapter Eight
The evening’s entertainment was a production featuring traditional Chinese folklore and folk dance. The costumes were brilliant and beautiful. The music was exotic. The dance was slow, a cross between ballet and a martial art. A narrator, wearing a turquoise robe decorated with gold piping and gold dragons, told the story like a Greek chorus as the actors went through their steps without speaking.
Lauren sat between Faith and Cassie, clasping Faith’s hand discreetly between them.
“This is the story of how the four great rivers of China came to be,” said the demure narrator, her hands pressed together in front of her. Then she bowed her head slightly and moved to the side of the stage.
The lights went down as four people walked out dressed in drab peasant clothes. They knelt and appeared to be praying. The narrator, who was now in shadow, spoke again. “The people of the world suffered a great drought. Their crops died. They had nothing to eat. They prayed for rain.”
Four dragons leapt onto the stage, a pair of actor’s legs visible under each of the costumes. Each dragon was a different color—red, yellow, white and black. They danced, undulating and dipping between one another like huge paper streamers. Lauren turned to catch Faith’s glance and they smiled at one another. Faith squeezed her hand.
The narrator, heard but not seen, seemed to be a disembodied voice. “The four dragons who lived in the Eastern Sea, the Long, Black, Yellow and Pearl dragons, were flying in the sky, playing with one another like children, when they heard the people’s lament. They stopped their game to listen.”
The dragons immediately stood still, huge heads cocked at a listening angle.
“The dragons felt sorry for the people who had no rice to eat, so they decided to ask the Jade Emperor to send rain. They flew up to the Heavenly Palace to make their request. They found the Jade Emperor relaxing, being entertained by singing fairies.”
Lauren turned to catch Cassie’s eye as the peasants withdrew and a large, regally outfitted man on a huge throne was pushed onto the stage. Four nymph-like girls attended him, costumed in filmy robes. The dragons approached the Jade Emperor.
“The Jade Emperor agreed to send rain,” said the narrator. “He promised to send it the next day, so the dragons, satisfied with their accomplishment, left and returned to their game. But the promise was false. The Jade Emperor was annoyed with the dragons for interrupting his leisure. He agreed to their request to get them to leave. After ten more days and no rain, the people of earth were near death and the dragons realized the Jade Emperor had lied to them.”
The emperor’s throne was pushed off stage and the peasants returned to their imploring positions. The four dragons danced around them.
“The dragons decided to take matters into their own hands and save the people. They scooped up great mouthfuls of the East Sea and sprayed the water into the sky so it would rain down on the people’s crops. They did this many times, creating a downpour which saved the people.”
As the dragons ran across the stage, the peasants leapt up and down in celebration, now holding bowls full of rice.
“The dragons knew that what they were doing was risky. When the Jade Emperor found out about it, he was enraged that they had defied him.”
The throne returned and the peasants withdrew.
“The Jade Emperor ordered the four dragons to be seized. He then called upon the Mountain God to move four mountains to imprison the dragons forever, one dragon under each.”
Everyone left the stage except the dragons, who each went to a corner of the stage to lie down.
“Even though they were imprisoned, the dragons were determined to help the people so they would never starve again. They turned themselves into rivers and crossed through the mountains and valleys, flowing to the sea, providing water to the people forever.”
The narrator returned to the center of the stage. “That is how China’s four great rivers came to be—the Black River, the Yellow River, the Pearl River and the Long River, which you know as the Yangtze.” She pointed to each dragon in turn as she named the rivers. “The four rivers continue to flow across the land to this day, giving life to the people.”
The lights came up and the actors came out for bows.
“What a charming story,” Cassie said, clapping.
When the ovation subsided and the actors dispersed, Faith said, “All of their plays are so beautiful, so colorful. I think it’s interesting, too, to compare the two traditions of the dragon, the East and West. Here, the dragon is a playful, friendly creature, dedicated to helping mankind. In the West, the dragon is a monster.”
“The personification of evil,” Cassie added. “The dragon is a stand-in, in fact, for the devil in so many stories.”
“That’s very interesting,” Lauren said, “how two such opposite views of the same mythological beast could evolve. Sounds like a subject for a master’s thesis.”
Cassie laughed. “Yes, and it’s probably been done already.”
“Hasn’t everything?” Lauren remarked.
As they stood, Cassie slipped an arm around Jennifer’s waist and smiled fondly at her.
“Do you want to go to the lounge for a while?” asked Lauren.
Jennifer gave Cassie a suggestive smile, at which Cassie turned to Lauren and said, “Not tonight, I think. We’ll see you in the morning.”
After Cassie and Jennifer had left the room, Faith said, “Looks like those two are happy with one another again.”
Lauren nodded, wondering at her odd, uneasy feeling as she imagined them going back to their cabin to make love.
Chapter Nine
“Follow the blue flag,” instructed Meilin, raising a sky blue pennant high above her head in front of the group of thirty. “Be careful. Big market. You stay close.”
The after-lunch tour, and one that Lauren was tremendously excited about, was a trip through the public market in Wanxian. This was where the locals shopped for their food. There were no provisions for or expectations of tourists here. Normally, the cruise patrons didn’t even see this, but a rain-induced flood had closed the trail to the waterfall they were supposed to have visited. The waterfall was reputed to be very tall, very beautiful, filling a misty gorge, but Lauren considered this change of plans a lucky break.
Meilin led them up the wide, concrete steps from the dock
to the city, rows of multi-storied white buildings under a dark gray sky, and the obedient group followed. Rain was still a possibility, so they carried umbrellas. All of them were by now used to following a flag in this way. All of the tours in China were led by guides with colored flags. It was a good idea, a system that worked. Lauren was unable to see Meilin up ahead. At five feet tall, she was obscured by the other tourists, but her flag bobbed up the stairs, clearly visible. Five hundred feet to the west, also moving en masse up the stairs, was another group from another ship, following an orange pennant.
“This is going to be so much fun,” Lauren said as they reached the city and plunged into a busy street. “To see how the people live day to day. So much of the time tourists are kept isolated from real life here.”
“Right,” said Faith. “Last trip Lauren and I snuck out of our hotel in Beijing early one morning and took an impromptu tour of a little residential neighborhood. The people there were very surprised to see us. They all stood still, stopped what they were doing, and stared.”
“And what did you see?” Cassie asked.
“Similar to what you’ve seen from the buses. The people were getting their breakfast, sitting in front of their houses with bowls of rice. One old woman was making something that looked like pancakes over a fire in a drum. It was peaceful. Old men sitting in open rooms playing board games. Small children sitting on the ground, some of them unclothed. Bicycles going by. It was hard for us to say if these people were poor or not. From our perspective, they looked very poor, but maybe they were average city dwellers.”
“I’m so glad we went for that walk,” Lauren said, remembering the day fondly.
Meilin led them down a narrow side street with bicycle traffic and almost no cars, then turned again into what looked like an alley lined with tiny shops. They passed some young men walking with poles across their shoulders, two heaping baskets of apples hanging from either end. One of the men turned to smile at them with a look of friendly amusement. A woman stood in a doorway of a shop holding a baby on her hip, watching them pass, her expression impassive. Jennifer waved at the baby. An old man pulling a two-wheeled cart loaded with bananas walked rapidly along with his load, his face shaded by a straw paddy hat. Three young men sat on the curb smoking cigarettes. One of them was reading a newspaper. All three of them wore black pants, work shirts and sandals.
Lauren felt conspicuously American.
They passed a cart loaded with flowers—daylilies, carnations—and the floral aroma wafted into their path.
“Is this the market?” Cassie asked.
“No,” Lauren said. “It’s inside a building. That’s what I heard from one of the guys on board when we were talking about raingear.”
“That’s good.” Jennifer sounded relieved.
Even though Lauren didn’t know what to expect herself, she was sure that whatever Jennifer was envisioning was going to end up being a huge misconception. She would not have been surprised if Jennifer was imagining a Chinese version of Safeway.
At last they filed under a bright green awning into a wide passageway to enter an open building choked with stalls, tables, people, a profusion of sights, sounds and smells, too much to immediately process. As Lauren became oriented, she thought the interior of the building resembled an underground parking garage, an open space with concrete pillars at regular intervals and banks of fluorescent tube lights hanging below a network of water pipes and electrical wires.
They had entered at one end. The building stretched out in the other direction with so much activity in between that they couldn’t see the other side. The group crowded together, following the blue flag through an aisle between wooden counters bursting with wares. Lauren was suddenly overcome by the smell of fish and noticed she was walking beside a table covered with open plastic tubs and bowls, all of them filled with water and shellfish. She took a closer look in the tubs, recognizing clams, oysters, mussels, shrimp and a writhing coil of foot-long eels.
Jennifer peered into the tubs and then jumped back. “They’re alive!” she shrieked.
Faith nudged Lauren and whispered. “It’s alive, Igor. It’s alive.”
Lauren giggled, then turned to Jennifer and said, “No question about freshness.”
A young woman sat behind the table, her black hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail, shucking oysters over a stained towel across her lap. She smiled at Lauren, who smiled back. She didn’t seem disturbed by this troupe of tourists gawking at her merchandise. Lauren turned away from the eels, as that was enough to make her queasy.
The tubs of water continued, containing endless varieties of thrashing fish, octopi, squid, scallops and multi-colored seaweed. Faith stood near a large tub of lobster, pointing at it with a salacious grin while Lauren snapped a picture, careful to include one of the ubiquitous hanging red paper lanterns. As they moved away from the seafood aisles and into the produce, the group of tourists seemed to calm down, as if the agitated fish had been infecting them with anxiety.
Rows and rows of colorful fruit were lined up along both sides of the walkway. Scales stood at each station to weigh the fruits and vegetables. Most of the vendors, Lauren noticed, were women. Some of them smiled at the tourists. Some of them frowned and some of them seemed indifferent. They passed by tomatoes, pears, onions, peppers and wide tables of leafy greens. There were trays of rice, potatoes, bamboo stalks, cucumbers, melons, ginkgo nuts, dried leaves, pods and roots, many of which Lauren didn’t recognize.
“This is incredible,” she said to Faith as they passed a table covered in mushrooms, most types unfamiliar to her.
Then they came to a booth containing mountains of citrus fruit. Lauren stopped and handed the camera to Faith. “Take a picture of me here with the Buddha hands…and don’t cut my head off this time.”
Jennifer and Cassie stopped too as Faith snapped the picture.
“Buddha hands?” Cassie asked.
Lauren pointed at the pale yellow fruit with fingerlike projections.
“Is it good?” Cassie asked.
“Not really. It’s good for using like lemon rind. Mostly rind. Not much to eat there. But I’ll tell you what is good. These little mandarin oranges here. We had some of these when we were here before. They’re wonderful. They’re called the honey citrus of Wenzhou. They’re seedless and very sweet.”
“Should I get a couple?” Cassie asked.
Lauren nodded. “I’ll get some too.”
“You’re not supposed to eat the local produce,” Jennifer cautioned. “Not raw.”
“This is safe,” Faith said. “You’ll peel it. The fruit’s protected inside.”
“I don’t think we should,” Jennifer persisted.
“I’d like to try them,” Cassie said, picking one up. Then she took another one and waved them toward the woman behind the table, a toothless gray-haired ancient.
“One dollar,” was the familiar response they heard so often all over China.
Cassie turned and smiled knowingly at Lauren, then reached into her pocket.
“She’s ripping you off,” Jennifer said, pointing to a sign with a number five on it. “They’re probably selling for five yuan a pound. Even at five yuan apiece, that’s only about a quarter for both.”
Cassie deftly removed a single dollar bill from her pocket stash and handed it to the old woman, who grinned and bowed slightly. Then she turned to Jennifer, who was frowning, and said, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind.”
Lauren bought four of the mandarins, giving the old woman two dollars.
The four of them moved off toward the blue flag. Their tablemates grabbed Lauren to identify several unfamiliar vegetables, but soon let her be when they realized even she was out of her comfort zone amid all of this exotic produce.
The next area they ventured into was the meat section. That’s when Jennifer really started freaking out. Slabs of beef and pork lay on tables. Cow livers and pig’s heads hung in the stalls from hooks and live chickens an
d ducks sat cramped in cages. Feathers and flies were everywhere. Tongues and kidneys and chicken feet lay out on tables with no covering. All of this was fascinating to Lauren. She openly gawked.
“This is disgusting!” Jennifer declared, obviously disturbed. “It’s so unsanitary. What are these people thinking?” Then she turned to Lauren and said, “Don’t you think somebody should do something about this? Food safety, isn’t that your job?”
Lauren, taken aback, said, “Uh, well, in a way, although I’m not an inspector. And even if I was, this isn’t our jurisdiction. They have their own regulations.”
“Jen,” said Cassie gently, “can’t you try to be a little more open-minded?”
She turned a contentious look toward Cassie. “Open minded? Are you kidding? Look at this! These are the people spreading swine flu and bird flu all over the world. After seeing this, I’m not surprised.”
“I think you’re overreacting. You should try to be more tolerant of cultural differences.”
“Cultural differences? This isn’t like a weird hairdo or something.” Jennifer stared, then scowled, rapidly losing her temper. “Am I embarrassing you in front of your new friends, Cass? Is that your problem? I’m sick and tired of you complaining about my behavior. I’m just being myself. If that’s not good enough for you, then fuck you!”
Lauren stiffened, then saw Pamela and Sharon swing around to stare. Cassie looked stricken.
“I’m going back to the ship,” Jennifer announced. She turned and walked rapidly back the way they’d come.