by Ruth Reichl
“Die,” said Doug simply. “Just die.”
We slowed down as we neared my parents’ apartment, reluctant to face my mother. She was not taking Dad’s illness very well. At her best with a doctor to harass or a bureaucracy to fight, she was temperamentally unsuited to the long, slow pace of recovery. She pounced on us when we opened the door, as if she had been lying in wait, listening for the sound of the elevator. “What will I do if he dies?” she raged. “I’ll just be another sad old lady without a man. How can he do this to me?”
“We just stopped in to see if you want to come to Chinatown with us,” I said. “I promised Dad I’d find someone to tell me about that village I’ll be visiting in China.”
“You and your trip!” she spat. “How can you even think of going to China at a time like this?”
“Mom,” I said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.”
* * *
“At least you made the effort,” Doug said when my mother locked herself in her bedroom. “Miriam,” he shouted through the door, “we’re leaving now. Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
There was no reply.
“Do you want us to bring you back something to eat?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” she said weakly. “I’ll find some old crust of bread to eat while you’re off enjoying yourselves.”
I started to reply, but Doug put his hand on my arm. “Don’t get hooked,” he said. As we walked out the door I thought for a moment how much I had learned from my father. My marriage had always been a refuge.
It was still late afternoon as we walked south, through the arch of Washington Square Park and past the art galleries of SoHo. “How are you going to find people to ask about Taishan?” Doug asked.
“Easy,” I said. “Most of the Chinese people who emigrated to America in the 1800s were from Taishan. There was a huge flood, followed by famine, and people came to this country to work on the railroads.”
“Oh, right,” said Doug. “You’ll walk into the first restaurant you come to and shout, ‘Anyone here have relatives in Taishan?’ ”
“I haven’t quite worked out how to do it,” I said sheepishly. “But if I can get some real details about the place it will make Dad so happy. It’s the only thing that seems to cheer him up. Maybe we could just go into a few little shops and see what happens? You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
“Sure,” said Doug gamely. He grimaced, and I was reminded of how much he loved my father. “If you really think it will make him happy.”
We walked down Mulberry Street; the neighborhood was changing as, one by one, the Italian stores became Chinese. “Look,” said Doug when we passed Mr. Bergamini’s butcher shop. The door was closed, and taped to the dusty window was a hand-lettered sign that said, WE HAVE MOVED TO LONG ISLAND. COME VISIT US!
“Too bad!” I said. “He’ll be miserable out in the suburbs. Who’s going to listen to his political spiel out there?” I thought I heard his voice as I passed the shop. “The bastards,” he was saying. “The manufacturers pay them off. They’re poisoning the air because they’re too cheap to spend the money to do things right.”
I glanced at the window and saw a gesticulating shadow. Going back, I got up close, pressed my nose against the glass, and looked in: The shop was cleared out, empty, but there was Mr. Bergamini, still in fine form, still talking about the perfidy of the politicians to some hapless visitor.
“Where ya been?” he asked casually, as if it had not been seven years since I’d last stopped in for breast of veal. He touched my shoulder and clasped Doug’s hand in a firm shake. “Nice to see ya.”
“It’s nice to see you too,” I said. The shop looked forlorn, its gleaming refrigerator cases filled with nothing. The smell of bleach and floor polish hung in the air. “But I’m sorry to see that you’re moving.”
“Oh,” he said, shrugging, “things change. The neighborhood’s not what it used to be. The dairy guys still do good business. The pastry shops too. But it’s mostly tourists now. You can’t sell no meat to tourists, and the Chinese buy from their own. I feel like the last guinea on Mulberry Street. I should have moved years ago.” He smiled painfully. “I’ll be okay. I’m going to work with my brother-in-law out on the Island. He’s got a fancy place out there. He calls it a meat boutique, says it sounds better than ‘butcher.’ It won’t be my own, but what can you do?”
With an obvious effort he turned and asked politely, “And you? What are you doing these days?”
I told him about my father, and he said all the right things. And then I told him about the trip to China. “You have to meet Mr. Chan!” he said. “Come on, I’ll take you!”
The mere thought of being useful to someone seemed to cheer him up; he practically skipped along the sidewalk, dodging old ladies sitting on upended crates as they peeled vegetables, and fishmongers weighing wriggling creatures on rusty scales. The air smelled like ginger, like garlic, like fermented tofu, and I wondered if Taishan would smell the same.
“Who is Mr. Chan?” I asked as Doug and I scurried behind him. “You’ll see,” he said, slowing down before a trio of dingy shops. On the right was a wooden door that said private social club in small letters. The left had a window filled with dusty pizza equipment. Between them was a small place with fluff and fold laundry written across the door in black letters. A bell tinkled when we went in. The tired smell of dust rose up from the uneven wooden floor. Mr. Bergamini called, “Chan!” and energetically began poking at the bags of laundry piled on the counter, pushing them aside. When he had cleared enough space, a small, wrinkled face emerged from behind the white mountain, blinking in the sudden rush of light.
“Yes?” he said, as if he could not quite focus. And then, “Oh, it’s you, Bergamini.”
“I have a friend I want you to meet,” said Mr. Bergamini. “She is going to China, and she needs your advice.”
“Where you going?” asked Mr. Chan. When I told him he nodded solemnly and intoned, “Toy San.”
“No,” I said, “Taishan.”
“Toy San,” he repeated indignantly. “That is what we call our village.”
“You are from Taishan?” I asked. “I mean,” I corrected myself hastily, “Toy San.”
“We will have lunch,” announced Mr. Chan. Locking the store behind him, he led us down Mulberry and across Canal to a small storefront. The kitchen was in the window, a single wok and a steaming cauldron of boiling water. The cook looked ancient, but he moved nimbly between wok and cauldron, wreathed in clouds of vapor. Above his head slabs of bright red barbecued pork dangled between shiny brown ducks and chickens impaled on hooks. Trays nearby were heaped with cut vegetables, noodles in different shapes, and odd tangles of meat. We sat down at a grimy, plastic-covered table. At tables all around us men held bowls beneath their chins as they quickly shoveled food, with chopsticks, into their open mouths. Inhaling the funky aroma of chicken feet, pork fat, and ginger, I was suddenly very hungry.
Mr. Chan got up and said something to the cook in rapid Cantonese and the old man smiled at me with a kindly air. “Good,” he grunted, scooping some broth into a bowl and handing it to Mr. Chan. Mr. Chan brought it to the table and set it in front of me.
I stared down into the clear soup. In its depths were noodles and dumplings and little twists of white and gray that I tried hard not to identify. But the steam coming off it was intoxicatingly fragrant, and I picked up the bowl between my two hands and sipped at it. It was wonderful stuff, and I took another sip, and another.
Mr. Chan showed me how to pull the dumplings out of the soup with my spoon and then pick them up with my chopsticks. He ate one himself and sighed. “It is almost like being at home,” he said, his eyes nearly closed.
“Home,” he repeated. “Home. Why are you going to Toy San?” And then his tone changed and he said, almost angrily, “It is no place for tourists. There is no hotel.”
“Oh no,” I said, “you’re wrong. I will be
staying at the Stone Mountain Flower Inn. It’s new.”
“No,” he said, “you will certainly not be staying there.” He waved to the waiter, who put down a plate of sliced suckling pig, the skin crisp and crackling over the milky soft flesh of the animal. He picked up a piece, delicately, with his chopsticks and sucked at the meat.
“I am too,” I said. “I’ll show you my itinerary.”
“Show me anything you want,” he said. “But you won’t be staying there.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” he sighed, speaking slowly as if to a very small and obstinate child, “it has not been built. You will find yourself in the Toy San Overseas Travelers’ Hotel. And you won’t like it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“No air-conditioning. No hot water. No elevator.”
“No problem,” I said, convinced that he was wrong. I had seen pictures of the Stone Mountain Flower Inn. Metropolitan Home had asked me to write about Taishan as the great new tourist destination for Americans. The hotel was one of the focal points; local food was the other.
“I hear the food in Toy San is very good,” I said brightly.
Mr. Chan laughed in a manner that I considered slightly ominous. “You like Chinese food?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” I said. “This is delicious.”
“No,” he said contemptuously, “real Chinese food. Frog. Jellyfish. Pigeon. Dog. In Toy San we eat everything.”
He was not going to frighten me! I thought of Bruce’s kidneys and jellyfish as I answered, “I eat those things all the time.” And then, wanting to be entirely truthful, I offered a correction. “Not dog,” I admitted. “But I practically live on jellyfish.”
“You must be rich,” he said, but he was smiling. He turned to Mr. Bergamini. “Okay,” he said. “I will introduce this young lady to a friend in Toy San. This is very convenient; I have been wanting to send a letter to Chen. Privately, if you understand me.”
“Privately?” I asked.
“Everyone is watched,” he said mysteriously.
“Who is this Chen?” I asked a little dubiously; I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of this.
“A chef,” said Mr. Chan. “Before the revolution he worked for one of the most powerful families in China, and afterward he was allowed to continue cooking.” A cloud passed over his face. “But that was before the Gang of Four and the so-called Cultural Revolution. They hated smart people. So they sent him back to our village to dig.”
“Dig?” I said.
“Dig,” he repeated. “He built the lake in the middle of Toy San. You will see it. He was already an old man, and they made him dig. Will you take a letter to him?”
* * *
“Oh, this sounds very good,” said my father gleefully. “You are going to have an adventure!” He sounded healthier than he had in weeks.
“I’m glad I’m not going,” Doug said. “I’m not sure I could deal with eating dog.”
“It would be an improvement on this,” replied my father, pointing to his dinner tray. “A big improvement. Why, I’d love to have some tasty dog right now. Maybe Chef Chen will give you some good recipes.” He grinned wickedly as he poked a spoon into the glutinous tapioca. “And I certainly hope that your new friend is right about the hotel. It will be so much more interesting to stay in a place for real people than in one of those silly luxury hotels.”
* * *
Two weeks later I stood in front of the Stone Flower Mountain Inn. Mr. Chan was right: I was staring at a hole in the ground.
Dear Dad,
You will be very pleased to learn that everything is just as Mr. Chan remembered. The hotel is like something from an old movie, a ramshackle building in the middle of a town that looks like a good wind would blow it over. It is tropical here, hot, sticky and humid. Air-conditioning? Of course not; we don’t even have hot water.
But cold showers are really all you need in this climate. The important thing is to run the water for a long time before you get in; if you’re lucky this will chase away a few of the small creatures who reside in the shower. Many insects seem to consider my room their home. When I come in at night I hear the bugs scuttling toward the corners, and when I plug the lamp in to turn it on (there’s no switch) I see them disappearing into the shadows. Fortunately, I have a mosquito net over my bed. There’s no TV or radio, of course, but the early-morning tai chi classes on the island in the middle of the lake are very entertaining. I guess that’s the lake Mr. Chen built, but I haven’t met him yet. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever will; contact with local people is definitely discouraged.
I can’t wait to tell you all about this. More soon.
The journey from Hong Kong to Taishan took hours. After the ferry to the mainland, we spent ten terrifying hours on a bus that flew down dirt roads, honking constantly as it scattered chickens, children, and bicycles before it. The driver made no concessions to the slow or the lame, and dawdlers were out of luck.
Water was the only thing that stopped our driver. At each river he stomped on the brakes and skidded to a dusty halt. This didn’t do much to keep the front wheels dry, but the rear ones were spared. Then, gratefully shaking our stiff limbs, the little group of journalists with which I was traveling climbed down to wait for the ferry.
There were no bridges, just flat rafts that took anything that wanted to get to the other side: people, cars, animals. The ferries were free. We crossed three brown, muddy rivers, or maybe it was the same river we crossed three times. No antennas, electrical wires, or telephone poles could be seen anywhere on the flat horizon, and we never saw a car. The quiet was profound. Occasionally a boat would float past. Women squatted over cooking pots in the bow, and they would stand up and stare at us in amazement. “And these are the people who have the Russians scared shitless!” marveled one of my fellow travelers.
It was dusk when the bus finally arrived in Taishan, but the center of town was filled with people who had gathered to see the first foreign visitors. The streets were narrow, and so claustrophobically packed that I almost fainted as I stumbled from the bus, clutching my suitcase. Something brushed my head, and I turned to find a group of children, hands outstretched, reaching for my hair. It had swollen in the tropical humidity until it stood around my head, a frizzy dark halo. One little boy locked eyes with mine; his hand darted forward, touched my head, and then snapped back as if it had been burned. It was his first encounter with curls.
My hair was a magnet for the entire town of Taishan. As I made my way toward the hotel a hundred hands reached out. I could feel them touch me, and then they stopped. Turning, I found a small man hissing and batting irritably at the hands. He shooed me into the hotel, sounding like an angry wet hen.
The man ushered us into the lobby and, still hissing, pushed the local people out of the doorway. Clucking now, he pulled the doors shut. Then he took a deep breath, gathered his dignity, and executed a bow. “I am Mr. Lee,” he said in very careful English. “I am your responsible person. You will go to your rooms now and then we will have a little talk.”
His officious manner made me feel like a rebellious teenager. Go to my room indeed! The rest of the group moved to the stairway, but I held back. “There is someone I must find,” I said to Mr. Lee.
“Go to your room,” he said. “We will talk later.”
“No,” I said, “I must find Mr. Chen. I have a message for him. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Chen?” he said, his voice rising with suspicion. “Chen? How do you know this man?”
“He is a friend of a friend in New York.”
“A Chinese friend?” asked Mr. Lee. He hopped from one foot to the other. He bit his nails. “A friend from Toy San?” And then, making an obvious effort to collect himself, he said, “Wouldn’t you like to put your affairs in order? Afterward we will talk.” Without another word he turned his back and walked away.
I picked up my suitcase and headed for the wide cement stairway. At eac
h landing an unsmiling old lady, hands folded in her lap, sat, silently watching. They followed me with their eyes as I went up. The old lady on the third floor looked me up and down, very coolly, grunted, and pointed to a room. The door was open. There was no key. I balanced my suitcase on the hard narrow bed, which was covered with a single sheet, and went to the window. It opened onto a small cement balcony but it was very hot, and even outside there was no breeze.
The bathroom was large, with rust-covered yellow tiles on the walls and floor; although it was clean it smelled slightly of urine. When I flushed the toilet the pipes squealed loudly with the sound of faintly hysterical pigs. I splashed cold water on my face, and they squealed louder.
I was startled to come out of the bathroom and find the old lady standing by the bed staring down at my suitcase as if she had X-ray vision. I had not heard her enter, but I got the message: I was keyless in China and she had her eye on me. She watched, silently, as I walked down the stairs.
Mr. Lee was standing at the bottom; the small group of journalists was gathered around him. “Troublemakers,” he began, “are everywhere. My job is to see that you come to no harm. To ensure your personal safety I must ask that you talk to no one.” He repeated this so many times that the man standing next to me, a freelance travel writer named Ed, began looking at me and rolling his eyes.
“After dinner,” continued Mr. Lee, “you will be given bicycles.” He paused, as if he were about to confer a great honor upon us. “And then, as a very special privilege, you will be free to go anywhere you like!”
“Wonderful!” whispered Ed, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“But I emphasize,” Mr. Lee continued, “that you must talk to no one. No one!”
“What if someone speaks to us?” asked Ed.
“Do not reply,” said Mr. Lee. “Troublemakers are everywhere. Speak to no one except authorized persons like myself.” He stared intently around at the group, trying to impress the importance of his message upon each of us.
“Tomorrow morning,” he finally continued, “we will visit the hospital. There you will witness the wonders of Chinese medicine. The following morning we will visit the weekly Toy San market. And one day next week you will spend an entire day and night at a farm commune so that you can experience the life of rural China.”