The Year of the Fortune Cookie

by Andrea Cheng

  I take pictures and so do all the other families. The guide tells us that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure visible from outer space. I try to imagine looking down on earth from the moon and seeing the wall, but my head will not stop spinning.

  Finally we stop for lunch at a noodle restaurant, where all the customers and servers are Asian except for the Sylvesters and the other white couples in our group. I see our waitress stare at Mr. Sylvester’s big nose, but he doesn’t seem to notice. After lunch, I buy a few postcards at a kiosk. The guide wants us to continue our tour, but we are so tired that we ask if we can go back to the hotel.

  The Sylvesters lie down for a nap, but even though I’m exhausted, I can’t sleep. I take my green journal and go down to the lobby by myself. A teenager who is not much taller than me and dressed in a waitress uniform says something to me in Chinese, but I can’t understand. I ask her to repeat please, and the second time I think that she is asking if I am hungry.

  “Chi bao le,” I say, meaning that I’m full.

  She smiles. “You are adopted?” she asks in English.

  “No.”

  She looks confused. I realize that I’d better learn how to explain who I am in Chinese. “I was born in America. Now I came to China with my teacher to get a Chinese baby.” I realize I’ve never said this much in Chinese before. Then in English I say, “My mei mei was adopted.”

  The waitress says something about many families in America who adopt Chinese babies. I can’t tell from her face if she thinks that is a good thing or not. I want to ask her more, but she is cleaning the tables, plus I don’t know how to say very much in Chinese. She stops for a minute. “Teach your mei mei Chinese language,” she says. “This is very important.”

  I nod.

  “You, too. Then you and your mei mei can come back.” She picks up a paper menu. “You can read this.”

  I recognize some of the characters, like the ones for fruit and meat and noodles.

  “Very good,” she says. “I can be your teacher in China.” She hands me the menu. “For you. Write. I can check later.”

  I sit in one of the stuffed chairs that smell like cigarettes and copy the characters from the menu into my journal. Next to the ones I know, I write the definitions in English, but jet lag is making everything spin—the words on my paper, the lights, the desk, the gold carpet. A lady is sweeping the floor and another is dusting the desk. A man is washing the windows. All of them are Chinese like me. But I don’t know them and they don’t know me and I can’t understand them well. The smell of the cleaning supplies makes me feel nauseated. I wish I could go home and smell Kaylee’s baby shampoo and Mom’s anise beef and Grandma’s seaweed soup that I love.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Waitress

  The next morning, I open Fortune Cookie 2:

  In the corner are the Chinese characters for peng you, “friend.” How can I make a friend in China when I’m not going to school and there are no other kids in the hotel? Could the waitress be my new peng you?

  Our group spends most of the day in the Forbidden City. There’s an outer court and an inner court, hundreds of buildings, and a museum. I like the fancy tiles and sculptures, but my legs get really tired. Finally we sit down in a restaurant and have steamed dumplings, which are delicious. The server asks if we’d like forks or chopsticks, and Mr. Sylvester chooses chopsticks, but then he has no idea how to use them. I show him the way Mom taught us. You hold the bottom chopstick still and move the top one close to it to pick things up. But when Mr. Sylvester tries, the dumpling explodes on his lap. I try not to laugh. When I look at Ms. Sylvester, she is covering her mouth with a napkin.

  In the evening, I manage to tell the story to the waitress at our hotel, half in English and half in Chinese.

  “He needs special chopsticks for babies,” she says. “I can show you.” She goes to the back of the restaurant and comes back with plastic chopsticks that are tied together with a rubber band and have elephants on top. Thinking about Mr. Sylvester eating with elephant chopsticks makes me start laughing all over again. Maybe jet lag is making me giddy.

  Fortune Cookie 3 is purple.

  In the corner are the characters for Zhong guo, “China.” I think about that for a minute. Being in China isn’t that easy. First I had jet lag, and now my legs are tired from sightseeing. I also feel homesick, especially at night. But laughing with the waitress is fun. And somehow I really like walking around in China and feeling like I don’t stand out.

  The Summer Palace has a pretty lake and gardens with small stone bridges. The weather is cold, but the sun is shining and I take lots of pictures. I buy postcards for Mom and Mrs. Smith and Ms. Remick. When we get back to the hotel, Ms. Sylvester reminds the guide again that we would like to go to the Lucky Family Orphanage.

  “This is not easy to arrange,” she says. “I will try.”

  “Thank you. It is very important,” Ms. Sylvester says again.

  In the evening, the waitress sits down at a table next to me. I tell her that we want to visit my sister’s orphanage, but it seems like it might be impossible.

  “Why do you want to go there?” she asks. “An orphanage is sad—so many babies with no parents.”

  I try to explain in Chinese that I want to learn more about my sister, but she doesn’t understand. I try again in English, but that doesn’t work either.

  “I know,” she says finally. “You love your sister.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She takes a bag of candy out of her pocket. “For your family,” she says. “My little brother likes this kind.”

  I’m surprised that she has a brother, because I thought you were only allowed to have one child in China, but I don’t say anything. “Maybe you should give the candy to him,” I say.

  “I have more for my brother.” She takes out her phone and shows me a picture of a wiry boy with big ears. “We call him little monkey,” she says. “He is very funny.”

  “Wait,” I say. I run up to my room to get the photo album. I show the waitress pictures of Mom, Dad, Ken, and Kaylee. She spends a long time looking at each photo.

  “You have a nice family and a big house,” she says. “We live in one room. Maybe you can visit.”

  “I would like that,” I say.

  “I will tell my mother.” She smiles. “She is a very good cook.” She looks at the clock. “Now I have to go home.” She drops her phone into her purse, puts on her jacket, and heads out into the wind. When she gets to the end of the walk, she turns and waves to me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  So Many Fortunes

  Each morning, I open another paper fortune cookie. Fortune Cookie 4 is pink:

  Andee has written the Chinese characters for bao bao, “baby.” This time I think her fortune might be wrong. The guide has not reported any progress, and each time we ask, she just tells us to be patient.

  We spend the day at the Beijing Zoo. I love the giant pandas, especially the cubs. Two of them wrestle and roll around, then get tired and curl up for a nap. Watching them makes me miss Ken and Kaylee so much. I wonder what they are doing at home without me.

  I have to use the bathroom. The toilets in China are really weird, with two places for your feet and a hole in the ground, so you have to squat, which means you have to practically get undressed and freeze each time you pee. I wonder if Mom grew up with toilets like these.

  Fortune Cookie 5 is blue:

  She wrote the characters for “Chinese language,” Zhong guo hua. I’m not really sure if that’s true. Sometimes the sentences come to me without thinking, and other times I stumble over every word. At the Lama Temple, I ask a lady where the bathroom is and she has no trouble understanding me, but when I try to explain to the temple tour guide that I am from America, which is why I don’t speak Chinese very well, she stares at me with a blank face and says, “A Chinese face but no Chinese words.” Then she shakes her head. I wish I could explain to her that I’m trying really
hard to learn and I know a lot more than I used to, but her stern face makes me wish I could disappear into my puffy jacket.

  Fortune Cookie 6 is metallic gold.

  Andee drew a calendar and shaded in two weeks. It’s hard to believe that my stay in China really is half over. In some ways it seems as if I’ve been in China much longer than a week, but in other ways, it feels as if I just got here.

  The guide takes us to an art district that is called 798. On the outside it looks like an old factory, but inside are exhibits that are different from anything I’ve ever seen. There’s a giant red hand making a fist, and a car covered in silver. Mr. Sylvester says he is not interested in this kind of art, and he complains that it is too cold and drafty. Ms. Sylvester tells him to sit down in a café and she takes my arm. “Let’s explore, Anna,” she says. We look at all the stores selling T-shirts with really cool designs. Ms. Sylvester buys some that she says are for her nieces and nephews, but when we leave, she hands one to me. “A memory of our girls’ day out,” she says, smiling. It has a picture of the Beijing skyline on the front, and on the back it just has the numbers 798 and the Chinese characters for Beijing.

  Fortune Cookie 7 is white:

  Andee wrote the Chinese character xue for “snow.” I wonder if her mother showed her how to write all these Chinese characters. Outside the sky is white, with a few flurries blowing around. Maybe Andee looked up the ten-day weather forecast for Beijing. But then the sun comes out and the weather feels warmer than usual.

  We spend the day visiting the old part of Beijing. The hu tong houses are made out of little buildings all connected, with a courtyard in the middle. They were built like that for big families, the guide explains. The grandparents live in one part, and each of the children has another. I would love to live in one of these. Grandma could be on one side, and Mom and Dad and Ken and Kaylee and me in the middle. The third side could be for Mom’s family. Grandma Wai Po could have a quiet room facing the courtyard, and her brothers and sisters and their families could have the other rooms. Then I could play with my cousins every day. Suddenly I wish Mom were here and we really could go to Shanghai. I know I have some cousins there who are around my age, but I can’t remember if they are boys or girls, and I don’t even know their names.

  An old lady comes out of one of the houses to feed the fish in a big fishbowl near the door. She looks around and her eyes land on me. She motions for me to come close. I look inside and see two big goldfish swimming around. She shows me how to sprinkle the fish food on top of the water. Then she pats my head and goes back into the house. I wonder if she thinks I am a girl from Beijing.

  Fortune Cookie 8 just has a bunch of little icicles. Andee is right: it got colder again. After eight days of sightseeing, we are getting tired of the weather and the traffic that never stops and the pollution that stings our eyes. Nobody in our adoption group wants to go anywhere else, and the people are starting to get irritable. One couple tells the guide that they aren’t going on tomorrow’s tour, and she seems annoyed. “You must know China,” she says. “How can you receive a baby and not know where she comes from? Tomorrow we meet here and go to the art museum.”

  “What about the Lucky Family Orphanage?” Ms. Sylvester asks.

  “Please be patient,” the guide says.

  I’m tired of sightseeing too, but I’m starting to get used to walking though crowded streets full of people and vendors and bicycles. Sometimes I wish I could leave the group and go by myself so nobody would think I am American. I can feel my Chinese getting better. Yesterday I asked a lady for a bag of lemon candy and she understood me right away. Ms. Sylvester was impressed. “If only I could do that,” she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Visit

  Mr. Sylvester doesn’t like the coffee in the hotel, so he wants to go find a Starbucks. Ms. Sylvester wants to stay in the hotel room and write down the day’s events. “Someday I want to tell Jing about our trip,” she says.

  Mr. Sylvester paces in the small room. “This place is so . . .” he looks around the room. “So dingy.”

  “Roy, there is nothing wrong with this room, or with the coffee either.” Ms. Sylvester glares at him, then turns back to her notebook.

  He stands by the window, gazing out onto the city. I know he is thinking that Beijing is polluted. And he’s right. You can see a brown haze all the way to the horizon, and my eyes burn when I am outside for a long time. But I love the way old people gather in the parks to exercise and play mahjong and watch their grandchildren. I like the way kids my age and even younger go everywhere on buses without adults. And China is the country that Kaylee and the Sylvesters’ daughter will always be from, no matter how long they live in America.

  China is also the place where my mom was born. Maybe now that I’ve spent time here, she’ll tell me more about her life. And I’ll know what kinds of questions to ask. Did she grow up in a high-rise apartment? Did she have cousins close by? Did she walk to school or take a bus? When she tells me the answers, I’ll be able to imagine the crowded streets and a bus so full that people are hanging on to the door handles.

  Mr. Sylvester is still pacing. I go downstairs to find the waitress. As soon as she sees me, she smiles. “I wait for you,” she says in English. She gives me a bag with three coloring books. In Chinese, she explains that she knows I am too old for coloring, but they have lots of good vocabulary words, like cao mei, which is a kind of fruit. She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a small bowl full of red fuzzy fruit I’ve never seen before. It has a prickly texture, but the taste is a little like a strawberry, just more sour. At first it makes my mouth pucker, but then I like it.

  She asks me if I can teach her some English.

  “What’s your name?” I ask her in English.

  “My name is Fan,” she says. Her pronunciation in English is slow and clear.

  “My name is Anna.”

  I write down a list of fruit: strawberry, apple, orange, banana, and draw little pictures next to each one. She repeats the words very well. “Thank you,” she says. “Someday I can visit you?”

  “Yes,” I say, smiling. “You can visit my home.”

  “Today can you come to my home? I am finished with my work.”

  “I’ll go check,” I say.

  Ms. Sylvester comes down to talk to Fan. She says she lives not too far away, only fifteen minutes by bus. Fan puts her arm around me and says that she is almost sixteen years old, and she will take care of me like her xiao mei, little sister. For a minute I wish that she really were my big sister and that we could talk every day for the rest of my life.

  The bus is so full that Fan has to push me on. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a crowded space in my life, but she doesn’t seem to think there is anything unusual. More people get on at each stop until we are pressed together like sardines. It smells like wet wool and damp shoes. The bus gets on the highway.

  We have to fight our way through the people to get off, and I step down into a big mud puddle.

  “Sorry,” Fan says. “The street is in bad condition.” She takes my hand and pulls me along. A truck goes by and splashes us. Fan tries to brush off my jacket.

  It starts to rain. The sky is almost dark, and the air smells like gasoline and charcoal. We turn down an alley and wind our way behind some buildings. “This is my home,” she says finally, opening a door with her key.

  Inside the light is dim. Her brother is watching television and her mother is cooking on a hot plate. “This is my friend from America,” Fan says.

  Her mother looks up at me. She and Fan have similar smiles. Then she says something that I don’t understand to Fan, who gets a bowl. Her mother fills it with dumplings for me.

  “Xie xie,” I say. Thank you.

  “Does she speak Chinese?” her mom asks Fan, not realizing that I understand.

  “Yes. I am her teacher.” Fan turns to me and speaks in Chinese. “My mother makes the best dumplings. My aunt says her dumpli
ngs are better, but it’s not true.”

  I taste one and the flavor of ginger fills my mouth. “Very delicious,” I say. I eat the rest and Fan refills my bowl.

  Her mother smiles. “You are a hungry girl.”

  “Your dumplings are very good.” I turn to Fan, and in English I say, “I wish your mom could teach my mom how to make these dumplings.” Fan translates for her mom.

  “Bring your mom to China and I will teach her,” she says.

  Fan speaks to me slowly and clearly in simple Chinese. “This is our room. The rest of our family is still back home.”

  “Where is that?” I ask.

  “One day on the train,” she says. “In the countryside. Only we came to Beijing.”

  I want to ask Fan why they left the countryside to come to this tiny room in this enormous city, but I don’t know enough Chinese to ask all that. In the back of the room are three beds, one single and two bunks. A poster of roses is taped to the wall. Fan gets a small album and shows me pictures of her and her brother in a big park. “Beijing is nice in summer. Can you come back?”