The bus shows up just where she said it would. I push aboard, and the mass of passengers squeeze me against a window. I watch the city pass, thinking of the girl, counting the months it’s been since I’ve had even a kiss. A real kiss. Before my eyes fly rows of computer stores, restaurants, bookshops, laundries, apothecaries—all a bit shabbier than those in Guangzhou and Beijing, a bit dustier, a bit emptier, a bit dirtier. Everything, that is, except for the gleaming red huíguī banners everywhere that “Celebrate the Glorious Victorious…”
The monstrous city walls rise before us, in good repair, as if expecting a Mongol invasion. We cruise through a tall stone arch, and on the other side lies an identical city. I alight soon at the Victory. The word lingers on my lips. Victory. I pay for a dingy, threadbare chamber, drop my backpack, and close the door to the world. Victory! Joy charges through my veins. I’m here, alone, in the middle of China. I did it. My eyes close as I clench my fists and celebrate.
Some time later—minutes or hours—I awake without remembering falling asleep. I’m on a bed. It’s night. I see a face, a man, staring at me from the other bed. I bolt upright. “Who are you?” I ask.
He just smiles.
I ask again, in Mandarin. He lunges forward, reaching for a filthy rucksack on the floor. His long hair swings behind his ears as he pulls out a bottle, pries it open, and pours brown liquid into a small glass. He comes closer, holding the shot glass out to me so close that I can smell the pungent liquor. I shake my head. He grins, gives a full-chested cackle, and throws it down himself. Refocusing his eyes on me, he pours another shot. I refuse again, but manage, “Gānbēi.” He nods in appreciation. The writing on the bottle looks Korean—there are more circles than in Chinese script. I realize the room was cheap because I only paid for one bed.
Ravenous, I hurry out for food. Raindrops glisten on neon signs and on the leaves of the trees that line the narrow street. There’s a row of open-front diners, and a woman stir-fries green peppers, garlic, rice, and red bits of pork in a huge black wok over an open fire. The aroma is heady, almost titillating, and I follow my nose past her and sit at one of her six round tables. A different young woman brings me a hot glass of tea and giggles awkwardly, kniting her brow, looking at me the way a patient teacher does a student. I stammer about a chicken dish with exotic ingredients. Other diners simply stare. I finally give up and point at the wok, and she laughs and offers an English word: “OK.”
I flip open my red dictionary. Cashews, bones, discount, directions. I write and pronounce the characters, over and over. The fried rice arrives, its garlicky steaminess rising into my face and cleansing my pores like an herbal exorcism. I hold my chopsticks strongly in my left hand. And just like my journey, the delicious greasy concoction slides “into the belly.”
Contented, walking home slowly, I get the feeling the city is just as anxious as Guangzhou, albeit less ready, to advance, to bring Westernization, to rush industrialization, to “realize the Four Modernizations.” The Four Modernizations was a propaganda phrase during the Revolution that referred to four enormous nation-transforming projects in science, industry, agriculture, and the military. More recently, in 1978, political dissident Wei Jingsheng suggested a fifth modernization was necessary: democracy. He received fifteen years in prison for his insight.
The wild-eyed Korean pours hot water from our room’s red thermos into his tea mug. He mixes liquor and tea as I slip under my bed’s musty blanket. I open Narcissus & Goldmund, and in the cloister Narcissus’s pronouncements prove correct: Goldmund’s inner battle between his heart and mind reaches a torturous climax when he hikes deep into the woods and comes upon a beautiful woman. They make love for hours, and the teenage Goldmund awakens to a world of senses. He leaves the cloister that very night to join her in a moon-drenched meadow, and days later, when she leaves him, he strikes off into the wondrous countryside alone.
Chapter 22
A Bottle that Pours
Any Beverage You Imagine
學如逆水行舟 不進則退
Learning is like rowing upstream:
Not to advance is to drop back.
—Chinese proverb
“Chocolate milk!” Adam holds up an imaginary bottle of the exotic dairy product. He pours from the bottle into an imaginary glass, smiles, turns in profile, and chugs it down.
He pretends to hand the bottle to the boy next to him, Arky, who mimes pouring from the bottle into another glass. “Jianlibao!” he grins. “I love Jianlibao!” He simulates quaffing gulp after gulp of the popular lemon soft drink.
I can barely believe how quiet and focused the two boys are today.
Arky hands the bottle to Iceboy, who stands at the center of the stage. Iceboy pours himself a tall beverage. “Champagne,” he announces, with a debonair glance, sipping at a tall slender glass. He holds his imaginary bottle up to the crowd. “This bottle, my friends, can pour any beverage you imagine. It’s amazing. It’s incredible. And it can be yours if you send me…” he thinks a moment. “Thirty million dollars!”
The whole class laughs in appreciation. They get it, completely. I step to the board and chalk 10.0.
The next group performs a commercial for a camera that captures smells. They improvise, learning from the students who took the stage before them, obviously absorbing new words and new ideas. It’s happening too fast for me to direct, too fast for me to fear—they’re learning! I just nod and take it all in.
The next week, I place my students “In an Amusement Park.” The first two groups offer dull performances, and after one boy mumbles—and even I am bored—I add something to the theme. “Looking for a Lost Friend at an Amusement Park.” It’s better, it engages the next group, and the hour is immediately more fun, more fertile. I glance happily at my beloved ceiling fans in the middle of a skit. I can make it all up as I go along. Sandoh runs out the door gleefully to make the point that he’s lost, and I watch the fear of chaos and of pitched battle rise in me—there it is—and it passes. Now. He runs back in, full of mock delight, embracing the others in his group and letting out a grateful sigh.
That afternoon, with only two weeks remaining in the school year, I receive a third letter from Keroppi.
After I read your letter, I knowed your purpose of teaching. And I thought over all of your lessons again. I think from the beginning to now, every lesson is useful. Some of my advices in the past were wrong! I felt very sorry and I beg your pardon. You not only give us knowledges but also make all of us happy. Really. We believe you. You’re a good teacher. I gave you so many childish ideas and you don’t mind. I think you have room in your heart to consider kindly even your enemies. I thank you and beg your pardon again. Why I didn’t come to talk to you? I’m not afraid. Just I’m good at writing. This may be the last letter I write to you. At last, I wish you happy every day, every hour, every minute, every second!
With a tickle of pride, I fold up the letter and place it in my wallet alongside my rénmínbì.
The following week brings the year near its close. I give exams. I sit on the breezy hallway outside my classroom and call my students out one by one. Jenny, the nervous-looking girl who was the first waitress in our tiny café all those months ago, is first again, and she sits opposite me. I speak very slowly. “What...is... spaghetti?”
Her eyes shift blankly.
“Remember…?” I ask. “Food?”
“Um, yeah.” She blinks again.
“Spaghetti?” I repeat. She shakes her head. I try “Airport?” Nothing. “We spent one class on skits about an airport?” Nothing. “Skit?” She giggles the giggle that signifies embarrassment. I sigh and mark down a C-.
I duck my head back into the classroom to call the next student. Sandoh crouches on one leg on his chair, clapping his hands, and Leon and David Beckham are goading him on in Cantonese. I remind myself that I don’t need to control everything, that it’s just a few of them, the “naughty” ones Keroppi wrote about. The grades I’m giving might cou
nt, or maybe my students know that they won’t. “These are your final exams!” I remind them anyway. “You should study now while you wait.”
I call Money next. She’s one of my best ninth graders. “What is spaghetti?” I ask.
“Spaghetti is a type of noodle,” she answers. She knows skit, directions, commercial, and a dozen other words. Money. I get to mark an A next to a name.
Sandoh is next. “It’s a food from France,” he says, about spaghetti. He knows roller coaster and kiss, but not dessert. Far smarter than he looks, he was probably bored all year. I mark down a B.
There are a few other pleasant surprises, too, but I give only two more A’s in this class, fewer than I did for the oral reports. Most of them have learned little, but a few actually have taken something in, and for a moment this blows my mind—that I helped someone, that I got through somewhere, that I played a part in increasing human knowledge. Perhaps I could have done more. I could have learned earlier to trust my intuition, to follow my instincts, to make it all up as I go along. May I become—I pray to the ceiling fans—one of the students who has learned.
June 24
It’s my birthday, and everything is over, everyone is gone. I’m 23. Three days of steady rain have washed the city clean. Yes, it’s raining on my birthday, the day I bought my train ticket to embark on this unscheduled dream into the heart of China. Maybe rain bodes ill, maybe I’ll meet my maker on the road, maybe this birthday will be my last. Maybe Chinese superstitions are rubbing off on me.
For now, the end. I recall like it was yesterday strolling through this campus, thinking, “46 weeks to go.” Yes, they have gone, and now they end, rushing to a close as I knew they would—yes, the way childhood did and college did. I knew it, I expected it, yet still it’s amazing—nothing ever happens in the future or the past, only now. It’s a mystery I can’t solve.
And so I leave. To trek across this “Middle Kingdom.” I don’t know how many months it will be; I don’t have a ticket home; the only certainty I have is Beijing, the huíguī, and Colt, who left two months ago for Inner Mongolia. I don’t have a way to leave behind my fears of being abandoned, confused, killed. But I recognize them now. They are the same fears that paralyzed me when I arrived here last August. For this new journey nothing is set up in advance. No one is waiting for me. I’m blind, solitary, ignorant, free.
Chapter 23
The Sun Is Redder in the West
Taking a new step,
uttering a new word,
is what people fear most.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
I arise late, feeling dirty. The Korean is still sleeping, so I leave quietly, taking my pants, shorts, T-shirts, and socks—everything I’m not wearing—down the street to a laundry shop.
No washing machines await me inside. A large, round-shouldered man looks up as I enter. I start with the obvious. “Do you wash clothes?” He points to a counter, and I unload my items. A smaller man emerges, takes my pile to a hanging scale, and grins at me. His frayed, white work shirt is rolled up his thin arms and he asks the usual questions; to make it interesting I have him guess.
“Oh, are you American?”
“Right,” I reply, surprised. “How did you know?”
“I can usually tell Americans,” he says. “But actually, you’re not acting so American. You’re not telling me what to do.”
“What do Americans tell you to do?”
“America thinks it’s in charge of the world. Americans all think they’re so important,” he tosses a yellow ticket on the counter. “You think you’re always right.”
“American and Chinese people should learn from each other,” I reply carefully. “We can help each other.”
“When America talks about something, about a problem in the world,” he pushes my clothes into a garbage bag, “you expect to be the only voice, but more and more there is another voice in the world: the Chinese voice.”
This is now the third time I’ve heard about the Chinese voice. Perhaps there was a national news story about it. “Chinese people should always be able to say whatever they want.” I struggle with the grammar. “You know what I’m scared of?”
“Hm?”
“I’m scared that China feels that its recent past has been difficult, that it hasn’t looked like a strong country. Your culture has five thousand years of history, and so Chinese people are proud. Soon you might feel that China should—”
“War?”
I nod, surprised again. “War is often how a country shows its—”
“Are you afraid of war?” he interrupts. “I’m not afraid of war. I’m not afraid to die!”
“Well, I—”
“China is ready to stand up. We’re not afraid of America. Don’t tell us what to do!”
“Are you a peaceful man?”
“Peace?” He slams his fist down on the counter. “Has America given China peace? Has Japan? I’m not afraid to die!” he booms. “Are you?”
“Many, many people will die in a war,” I fire back, but I mispronounce the word die.
“There’s no fear in here!” he gestures to his chest.
I glance around for the other man, but he’s gone. I edge towards the door. “China and America should help each—”
“America better not forget!” He comes around the counter after me. He swings an arm at me—and pats my shoulder. “Don’t forget what I said,” he laughs. “Don’t forget.”
“OK,” I stammer. “Thank you.” I stumble outside. “And don’t you forget this,” the bigger man finally reappears. “Bàoxiāo,” he says, but I don’t know what that means—America should respect China? He repeats himself, but I just nod as he grabs my arm and pushes a piece of paper into my palm. “Zhè shì gĕi nĭ ná qù bàoxiāo de.”
I hike off down the sidewalk, shaking my head. I better get out of here—preferably before the war. I glance at the piece of paper and look up bàoxiāo. The man didn’t want me to forget my receipt.
Most of China’s mosques were demolished during the militant frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, but the Great Mosque of Xi’an remains. Feeling its draw, I set out across the city. Great South Boulevard has eight busy lanes of asphalt, including two for bicycles, and I have to sidle and dodge through thick crowds. The sun scorches creation, and young women carry parasols. I turn down an alley, out of the sun, and enter another world. The pavement is replaced by uneven cobblestones and the din by silence. The scents of sesame oil and baking wheat rise to my nose as I pass a tiny café where three men with thin beards wear the white skullcaps of the Hui, China’s largest Muslim minority. They gnaw on lamb kebabs and tear off chunks of flatbread. One man in a tight collar scowls at me. Unsure what to do, I smile back at him, but he keeps scowling. I look away and continue on. The alley narrows, and I duck beneath wet green bed sheets that hang from clotheslines. Three teenage boys sitting on stools and leaning back against the mud-brick walls stare at me, and one who’s cleaning his teeth with a metal toothpick calls out to me. He asks me my age, where I’m from, whether I’m Christian. I answer, and get directions from there to the Great Mosque.
In another alley, two saleswomen stand behind a long table covered with carved stones. One asks me my sign. “Tiger,” I reply. She smiles and touts the benefits of an orange stone zhāng (name-stamp) with a tiger carved on one end. “You carve your name on the other end,” she explains, turning it over to show me. She asks me my name. She has a gorgeous smile, and there’s a sudden magnetism between us, a silent communication—relaxation, attraction. She asks why on earth I’m in this alley, and we laugh about the idea that I’ve come from farther away than her stones. I ask her about the Great Mosque, but her directions are different from the boys’, and I want to ask her to take me there, but I just wander off, alone, confused, down another alley, past dark wooden doors and smoky cafés and fly-infested butchers’ shops. I finally realize that I’m lost.
In a construction site, amid a cluster of filthy lean-to dormi
tories, workers are hammering away on the foundation of some new building. China has a great tradition of this kŭlì, which is usually translated as hard labor, but literally means “bitter force” and specifically denotes back-breaking work undertaken by thousands. Kŭlì built Great Walls, great emperors’ mausoleums, and the cities of great military empires. The English word coolie derives from this term. Pushing on through the clamor, laboring through the heat and dust, I grow frustrated. What am I doing here? I stop, look around in irritation, and as usual someone is staring at me. It’s a man who looks ethnically Han—the majority in China, but the minority around here. He smiles and says I just missed the turn. “You’re so close. You speak Chinese—that’s great!”
His directions are short and sweet, and soon I’m walking amid souvenir stands of goods that remind me of Qingping Market in Guangzhou: curved daggers, bits of turquoise, electric fans, porcelain bowls, cured hides. Two blond tourists step off a bus, snap photos, and speak what sounds like Dutch. The Great Mosque stands on the corner, and I sigh in relief as I pass through the ornate stone arches of its gate.
It’s a spacious green oasis with birds flitting about overhead and singing contented songs. A little girl in a blue dress prances around inside a wooden gazebo, and she lifts a toddler boy onto a railing to watch me. They both stare silently as I draw near. “Nĭmen hăo,” I smile, greeting them. They giggle, and the girl asks me the same questions adults always do: What country am I from? How old am I? Their father is in the Prayer Hall, she explains, which lies on the other side of more arches, gazebos, and stone walkways. The pudgy boy beams at me, and I photograph him. “Again!” he demands.
Double Happiness: One Man's Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China Page 17