by Xinran
Five was not convinced. Her own foolishness was a constant source of unhappiness to her, and she couldn’t understand how someone could consider stupidity a good thing. Perhaps Three’s boss wanted to keep her employee stupid so she was easier to order about. Five didn’t say this to Three, but she silently thanked her good fortune that she herself had ended up with a job in a place so grand and impressive that its name had a dragon in it, not a fool.
By the time the sisters had polished off a big bowl of noodles each and a large platter of spare ribs, there were lots of customers waiting for a seat, so they hurriedly said their goodbyes. Six was eager to show Five where she worked, so they decided to take two buses back to the Book Taster’s Teahouse, which was in the north-west of the city.
Five was a little perplexed that her sister seemed so delighted to have a job in a teahouse. She remembered how, when labourers had come to work on the road near her village, a teastall had been set up so that they could rest on the ground drinking huge bowls of tea. How could her sister get so excited about something like that? But as soon as she saw the elegant black-and-gold sign under the eaves of the Book Taster’s Teahouse, she understood that this wasn’t any old teastall. In fact, when she got inside, it seemed like fairyland. There were beautiful lamps everywhere, as if from an emperor’s palace, and three-footed incense burners on the mahogany tables. It was as if the place was full of gods and spirits!
A man with glasses got up from a table where he was sitting with a group of people, and came to greet the three girls. Before Five had a chance to take in what he was saying, he had ushered Six behind a curtain and told her to make tea for her sisters while he attended to his friends.
‘That must be Six’s boss,’ said Three. ‘She told me that, although he’s not much to look at, he’s very talented. He’s so clever at calligraphy that he painted the sign outside himself, and Six says he got their family car in exchange for some calligraphy that he did.’
‘What does the sign outside say?’ asked Five, wondering how the teahouse’s name would measure up to her Dragon.
‘It says “The Book Taster’s Teahouse: In Memory of Lu and Lu”,’ said Three.
Five was unimpressed. ‘That doesn’t sound very important.’
‘I think Lu and Lu were important wise men,’ said Three, ‘because this teahouse is full of learning. It must be a good place for Six to continue her education. She told me that sometimes even foreigners come here.’
‘Bignoses? What kind? Uncle Two told me he’s seen some strange black and white ones in Zhuhai. Some even had red hair! Are the ones Six has seen like that too?’
‘Ask her yourself in a minute. Six, what’s this notebook?’
Three had walked over to the desk by the door and was looking at a beautifully bound book on the table.
Six put down her tea tray and came over. ‘It’s a place where customers can write down ideas and jokes, or contribute a piece of calligraphy. Come on, I’ll read you a joke. Here’s one I haven’t seen before. Someone must have written it today. It’s called “God Makes People”.
‘The first time God made people, he modelled a batch of them out of clay and put them in the kiln to fire. But God was very tired and he nodded off. When he took the clay people out of the kiln they were all burned black. So God modelled more clay people and fired them again. This time he didn’t sleep but sat waiting in front of the kiln. After a while he got impatient, so he put out the fire and took out the clay people to see how they were getting on. But it was too early, the clay wasn’t properly fired yet, so they were all white. Finally, God decided to make yet more clay people. This time he was careful to watch the sun until the time was exactly right. When he opened the stove and brought out the clay people, he was happy: they were perfect – not black or white, not overcooked or undercooked, but yellow, just like us!’
Six burst out laughing but neither Five nor Three could see what was so funny.
‘How come this God has to do his own work?’ asked Five. ‘And why can’t he put right his mistake without having to start again? Mum says the Bodhisattva Guanyin can change whatever she wants; she doesn’t get things wrong the way we do. If this God heard our prayers, what good would he be able to do?’
‘He wouldn’t hear our prayers,’ teased Six, ‘because this God doesn’t understand Chinese.’
‘Shhh!’ said Five in alarm, reaching out to put her hand over Six’s mouth. ‘You mustn’t ever badmouth the gods, or they’ll get revenge on you!’
Meanwhile, Three was leafing through other pages in the notebook. ‘Why is this person writing in Pinyin?,’ she asked.
‘That isn’t Pinyin, it’s English. Listen, I’ll translate the joke for you. It says … um … “A Chinese person who’d just started learning English bumped into an English person on the street, and apologised in English:I am sorry. The British person replied I am sorry too. The Chinese person, thinking that he ought to be as polite as the British person, said:I am sorry three. The English person was puzzled: What are you sorry for? The Chinese person, determined not to appear rude, said:I am sorry five.’
Six laughed until tears came to her eyes.
Once again, Three and Five did not get it at all, but Five was astounded that her sister could read and understand something foreign.
‘Where did you learn foreign language?’ she asked in admiration.
‘You should call it “English”, not “foreign language”,’ said Six. ‘English is one just kind of foreign language, while other countries speak different languages. We had English lessons in school but I didn’t learn very much. My boss’s family can all speak English fluently, though, and perhaps I’ll learn more here because lots of foreigners visit the teahouse.’
Five suddenly remembered what Three had told her. ‘Have you really seen bignoses, Six?’ she asked in awe. ‘What do they look like? Are they scary?’
‘It’s not very polite to call them “bignoses”,’ said Six, ‘and they’re not scary at all! My boss’s future daughter-inlaw is from England. She has yellow hair and blue eyes, and she’s really nice. The only problem is – she can’t speak Chinese that well.’
‘Blue eyes?’ said Five in amazement. ‘How old is she, not to be able to talk properly?’
‘It’s not that she can’t talk properly, it’s that her pronunciation of Chinese isn’t very good. Think about when strangers come to our village and people try to speak Mandarin to them. Her Chinese sounds like that: full of mistakes. Still, she speaks the best Chinese out of all the foreigners I’ve met.’
‘You mean you’ve seen other foreigners as well?’ asked Five, longing to know more. ‘Was it like in the joke just now? Black ones and white ones?’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Six. ‘The black people aren’t always completely black – more yellowy-black or coppery-black – and the white people can be pinkish white or greyish white. Most of Ruth’s friends are foreigners. They talk in a strange way and wear these funny rough-looking cotton clothes, not like proper people’s clothes, but they’re all very nice. They come from places like Italy, France, New Zealand, America, oh yes, and Iceland. The man from Iceland says that in winter it’s dark as night all the time, and in the summer the sun never goes down.
‘So how do they work in winter, or sleep in summer?’ asked Five.
‘I asked him that. He said: “In summer we use curtains to shut out the light to sleep, in winter we use street lamps for light.” I’ll introduce you to some foreigners if you want, Five. They’re very easy to talk to. It’s a shame there aren’t any here today, they usually come in two or three times a week …’
‘What do they come here for?’ asked Three, enthralled by the idea of foreigners with multicoloured eyes.
‘Some come to read and chat, some to drink tea, others to write …’
‘They can write?’ asked Five, not quite believing her.
‘Some of them can. They’re learning to speak and write Chinese and they often com
e in with Chinese friends to practise their language. Look,’ said Six, turning to a page in the notebook, ‘this is their writing. It’s worse than mine, isn’t it? Can you see the errors in this character, Three? The two moon radicals are written as suns … Thick Glasses can’t have seen this: he always corrects the foreigners’ mistakes.’
Three stared at the foreigners’ characters with fascination, but Five, who had never learned even the rudiments of reading and writing, quickly lost interest. She turned instead to the bookshelves next to them.
‘Six, how come this book’s wearing so many clothes? It’s even got a belt round its tummy!’
Six was about to explain how the book wasn’t wearing clothes but a ‘jacket’ and a ‘bellyband’ when Meng walked into the teahouse carrying two heavy bags of food. Her daily visit to the supermarket was a trial for poor Meng, but she had no choice. She couldn’t drive (and, anyway, she was frightened their old Xiali would fall to pieces beneath her if she did), and the door-to-door delivery firm she contacted was too expensive: they would only deliver a fixed quantity each day and, since the teahouse had only just opened, she didn’t need so much. Still, she consoled herself that her walks to and from the shop would be a good chance for her to work off some of the plumpness she had got from all those years of sitting in a chair reading.
‘Six, are these your sisters? It’s easy to guess: you all seem to come from the same mould. I’m glad you’ve made yourselves some tea. Have some of these “Pretty Girls’ Fingers” to go with it. They’re delicious little biscuits with crushed hawthorn berries inside. Don’t stand on ceremony, eat.’
‘We’ve eaten, we had lunch in Three’s restaurant,’ said Six, anxious about abusing her employer’s hospitality.
‘Three’s restaurant? Good, good! But these are tea snacks, to be eaten at three or four in the afternoon while you’re having a long, leisurely chat. I need to get Shu Tian to make a phone call: a company’s booked a tea party for tomorrow evening and we need some extra helpers. Excuse me.’
Five stared at Meng’s departing figure. ‘She wears very elegant clothes for her age, doesn’t she? I never would have thought a dress in a dull autumn-leaf-colour like that could look so good.’
‘You’re right, it does look good,’ said Three sadly. ‘She can’t be that much younger than our mother but Mum looks all old and shrivelled, and this woman seems even younger than our eldest sister.’
The three sisters sat in the teahouse until 4.30 and then spent the rest of the afternoon window-shopping. Although Three had visited a few big shops with Wang Tong and her husband, and Five had been out with Engineer Wu, it was the first time any of them had wandered the shopping streets without a city person as a guide. They felt exhilarated by the sense of freedom and confident because they knew there were people in the city who would take care of them. Five was particularly delighted by their expedition as it gave her the opportunity to look, finally, at the thin figures standing behind glass. At first she was disappointed to find out they weren’t real, but her disappointment gave way to fascination as she saw what beautiful clothes they were wearing.
After two hours of staring into shop windows with their sister, Three and Six began to find it tedious.
‘Why do you like these fake people so much?’ asked Six.
‘I don’t know …’ said Five, her nose pressed against the glass. ‘I think it’s because they remind me of Mum.’
Three thought this was very peculiar. ‘They look nothing like our mum. And, anyway, they’re not real.’
‘I keep thinking how beautiful Mum would look if she was wearing clothes like this,’ said Five passionately.
‘But Mum could never wear those kind of clothes,’ said Six, pushing her nose against the glass too. ‘They’re only for thin people.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Five. ‘I’ve seen city women who are Mum’s size wearing similar clothes and they look just the same as these fake thin people …’
‘But you don’t know what Mum’s size is,’ objected Three.
‘What do you mean?’ cried Five. ‘Aren’t her measurements written in your heart?’
The sisters were silent as they made their way back to the Dragon Water-Culture Centre to drop Five off, each thinking about their mother. It was half past eight and, around them, the lights of Nanjing were beginning to glitter in the evening sky.
Three looked at her sisters, remembering how amazed she had been when she had first seen the city lit up at night. In the countryside, night was pitch black and there was nothing to do but sleep. Three had never imagined such light, not even in her dreams. Her vision of Paradise was of a place where fairy maidens held up large oil lamps for their Heavenly Queen. But the glow of these lamps was dull in comparison with the neon-lit streets of Nanjing.
The entrance to the Dragon Water-Culture Centre was lit so spectacularly they could see it from way down the street. Five was thrilled. All day she had been fighting a growing sense of inferiority as she admired Three’s art and Six’s learning. After all, what did she do but serve near-naked customers in pools of water? She had comforted herself with the thought that she worked in a place with such a grand name that it must be more important than the restaurant and teahouse. Here was confirmation. The gorgeously illuminated dragon was by far the most amazing thing she had ever seen in her life, and shone like a beacon in the night.
7
Six and the Teahouse Customers
As the weeks passed, the plane trees along the streets became fat with leaves and the hot Nanjing summer began to set in. Six had begun to get used to life at the Book Taster’s Teahouse. She smiled to herself when she thought about how anxious she had been when she first arrived. The first weeks had been the worst. Fortunately, there had been no opportunity for her to embarrass herself at an ostentatious opening party because the Shu family hadn’t held one. Instead there had been a small gathering of friends, who had all been very kind to Six and forgiven her mistakes. However, other things hadn’t been so easy to cope with. A few days after the informal opening, two visitors to the teahouse had given Six a terrible fright.
It was all because of the way in which the teahouse had announced its opening. Six had been surprised that Thick Glasses and Meng hadn’t celebrated their new venture in a more lavish way. At first she thought that city customs were different from the countryside where people would blow trumpets, set off fireworks and put up brightly coloured lucky pictures at any opportunity; she recalled how even old Lu Daye from the poorest family in the village had lit a few rockets when the roof beam went up on the ramshackle mud hut he had built as a home for his son and new daughter-in-law. But when she saw the family-style restaurant next door celebrate its opening with a big meal, and how the congratulatory gifts of tall baskets of flowers stood by the door for nearly two weeks, she realised that the Shu family’s low-key party had been a deliberate choice. She asked Thick Glasses about it, but he had simply shrugged: ‘Why spend money filling the stomachs of city functionaries when they are already walking wineskins? Our business comes from study and friendship, it’s different.’ But it seemed that Six wasn’t the only person who was surprised by the way in which the teahouse had opened.
In its second week, two elderly ladies came in and demanded to inspect the business licence, saying that they were from the Neighbourhood Committee. It was Six’s first day alone in the teahouse. Thick Glasses was with a friend who had offered to help fix his broken-down old car again, and Meng had things to get on with at home. Remembering what Meng had told her to do in such circumstances, Six led the two women to the framed certificates hanging above the writing desk. She then stood back and watched nervously as the two women with their short hair and sombre clothes scrutinised them for a long time.
‘Are all three in order?’ asked one of the women, who was dressed in clothes of a greyish blue. ‘I’ve forgotten my reading glasses, I can’t see properly.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the words and official s
tamps,’ said the other, who wore a grey waistcoat, ‘but what I don’t understand is why they’ve started trading without holding an opening?’
‘That’s right. We’d have been invited if there was an opening, but we only found out about this place yesterday.’
‘Girl, where’s your boss? We’ve got some questions for him.’
Six stepped forward, trying to control her nerves.
‘I’m sorry, he’s not here, but you could leave a message if you like,’ she replied courteously.
‘Not here? Well, has he got a mobile phone? If so, tell him to come back right now. Tell him the Neighbourhood Committee is inspecting him.’
The two women spoke in very serious voices.
Six called Thick Glasses’s mobile phone but his response wasn’t much help. ‘Can’t it wait a bit,’ he shouted, ‘my friend’s just got the bonnet off the car …’
Six took the phone from her ear momentarily and told the two women what her employer was saying. The one in blue immediately snatched it away from her.
‘Now then, Boss Shu, is your car more important than the law? How could you open a business without mentioning it to the Neighbourhood Committee? Get back here so we can sort this out right away, or else we’ll leave you a fine when we go! Well, we’re waiting. Do you want to talk to the little girl? Here!’ The phone was returned to Six’s hands.
‘Serve them two pots of tea and the best snacks we have,’ said Thick Glasses, ‘and keep them talking. I’ll be done in twenty minutes. I’m sure you can occupy them till then. Once those old people start gassing, they forget all about the time. Try your best!’
Six did as Thick Glasses told her, and set out tea and cakes on the table in front of the antique display cabinet – the best place to sit in the teahouse. Then she carefully selected two small, illustrated books from the shelves and handed them to the old ladies. Meng had been given these books by a friend, and had told Six that they contained art by the leaders of the nation. It wasn’t that the calligraphy and drawings were anything special, but the books were to be kept in the teahouse as a kind of protective charm against anyone who came bothering them.