The China Coin

by Allan Baillie

  Leah stared at the girl with the drum and for a final moment the girl with the drum stared at her.

  She looks like me, Leah thought in surprise. The same size as me, the same smile as me. She can only be two years older than me.

  I could be her.

  12 Search

  On the train Leah told Joan what she had seen and heard the day before: how the students had tramped in their thousands beneath her feet, how a woman with a camera kept telling her about things that were happening in Tiananmen Square as if it was just round the corner, how the students started a hunger strike and party boss Zhao Ziyang came out of the Politburo and pleaded with the students to go home. They wouldn’t, and today Russia’s Gorbachev would visit Beijing – and that would embarrass Boss Deng no end …

  Leah was taking a furtive delight in rolling the strange names off her tongue.

  Joan heard all this with a frown. ‘At least they have planes running straight from Chengdu to Hong Kong. We can leave.’

  But the students were forgotten when the train stopped with a clang and a hiss in Chengdu. For the next couple of days they rushed about the ancient and exotic city like tourists on a package tour. They found a quiet hotel near a bus terminal and the muddy Nanhe River. They tried very, very hot Sichuanese cooking which left them both in tears – and laughing. They walked from modern buildings to the preserved home of ancient poet Du Fu, and temples. They wandered along streets lined with trees, found markets winding down shady lanes, discovered women from Tibet selling craftwork …

  Leah felt things were changing. Joan was enjoying herself and beginning to relax. She wore a garish mandarin hat for an entire morning just for the hell of it, and allowed Leah to lead her through a dark alley with no more than a mutter about ‘killer’s corner’.

  It was funny, Leah thought, how things changed every time they moved. In Guangzhou Joan was a stranger, on the first train she was an ally, in Shanghai an enemy, in Wuhan a little girl with a nightmare, in Chongquin a mother. And in Chengdu, somehow, they had become sisters again. For a short time they both forgot about the coin … until Leah saw an old medallion in a footpath stall and pulled the coin from her purse to compare them.

  Joan saw the coin in her hand. ‘Oh, yes. Holiday’s over, let’s find this little beast.’

  The sallow woman looked down her nose at Joan and shook her head. ‘There is no village of that name anywhere near Chengdu.’

  ‘But you haven’t even looked.’

  ‘I do not need to look. Gui Tu Cun, Turtle Land Village. That is a name from the days of the emperors. Decadent. If such a village still exists, it has a new name, a far finer name.’

  ‘Oh. But you must have a record of the new name.’

  ‘We have records of everything. Of every village in Sichuan …’

  ‘Then you must be able to tell me what Turtle Land is called now, and where it is.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The name was probably changed in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was born. It is a long time ago.’

  ‘Can’t you look back?’

  ‘No. I have no time.’

  Joan’s fingers went white on the counter. ‘Can I look?’

  ‘No foreigner is allowed in our file room. Good day.’

  Leah pulled Joan away from the counter quickly before she lost her temper.

  They returned to the neighbourhood of their hotel and brooded at an open café table at the edge of the city canal. They sucked bottles of yoghurt through thick straws but Joan was not drinking the yoghurt, she was attacking it.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Leah said.

  ‘I’d like to go back and strangle that woman.’ Joan was demolishing a castle of yoghurt in her squat bottle. ‘She was not only not helping us – she was obstructing us.’

  ‘Perhaps she thought you were a spy.’

  Joan snorted. ‘Well, I don’t know what to do. Go back to the China Travel Service and get pointed in another direction. We can’t just go out in the country and hope to blunder across the village.’

  ‘Might as well, though …’

  They looked bleakly at the empty bottles.

  The café owner came over with worry shadowing his face. ‘There is something wrong? Bad yoghurt?’ He stumbled over his English.

  ‘No, no, this is lovely.’ Joan flicked a smile at the man.

  ‘We were just thinking of ways of finding a village, that’s all.’

  ‘Your village?’

  ‘We think so. Our ancestral village.’

  ‘Ah.’ He shook Joan’s hand vigorously and hauled up a vacant chair. ‘Welcome back. What is the name of your village?’

  ‘Gui Tu.’

  ‘Turtle Land. That is the old name. You don’t have the new one?’

  ‘No. That’s our trouble.’

  ‘Turtle Land. Turtle Land … Maybe your village is in the direction of Guan Xian. Many records were lost in the Decade of Chaos but old people remember. There is a story about a turtle-god giving water to farmers in the dry lands. And the story comes from a very old irrigation project at Guan Xian.’

  Leah balanced on the balls of her feet and tried to see a snowy peak beyond the brown hills on the horizon. Nothing, but she was seeing the end of the great Red Plain and westward those hills would stack like cards into the Himalayas. She was almost seeing Tibet.

  The old man they had met thought about Gui Tu for a while, as he turned from the distant barrier of the hills. ‘That is an old, old name. We don’t think of those days any more. Maybe you ask further south along the Min River.’

  Joan and Leah moved west to the old and new works of the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project at Guan Xian.

  Two thousand three hundred years ago, when the Great Wall of China was just beginning to be built, the governor of the kingdom of Sui, Li Ping, dug channels to stop the Min river from thundering over villages and fields every time the snow melted. And a canal was cut through a mountain to turn a barren plain into rich farmland. Li Ping and his son were called kings after their deaths and the ruler of that part of China, Emperor Chong, became a Turtle God.

  But there was no sign of Turtle Land village.

  They turned wearily from Guan Xian and followed the Min River back toward Chengdu.

  ‘Turtle Land? No, we were Golden Land, after the wheat, I think. No, never heard of it.’

  ‘There was a Turtle village just north of the river junction. I don’t think it was Turtle Land, though.’

  ‘No, we were Turtle Egg. It is a pity.’

  ‘No, cannot help. Maybe it does not exist now. After 1949 villages became communes and some little villages were destroyed.’

  The old woman stopped shelling her peas and squinted at the lowering sun. ‘Just you wait … my memory hurts …’

  Leah scratched her leg with her other foot and Joan sagged a little more.

  The old woman finally shrugged in defeat. ‘I am sorry, I don’t know. It is so long ago. Before the Decade of Chaos, before Chairman Mao visited us, before the famine, before the making of communes. All those years …’

  ‘That’s all right. Thank you for trying.’ Joan turned toward the quietly steaming taxi.

  ‘There is Red Star village, just down the road. It had a fish, or turtle name, but I cannot remember.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Joan smiled weakly as she walked away. ‘Come on Leah, I’ve had it. We’re going home.’

  13 Red Star

  Leah trailed after Joan, weary from the weight of many disappointments. She could not even muster the strength to try for one last try. She had felt the fire of Dad’s enthusiasm at home, in Good Field, even in the shadows of Shanghai and in the long days on the river, but here there was nothing but shaking heads, wrong roads and cold villages. She had done her best, but now there was nothing left. It was time to go home.

  Joan stopped in the centre of the track. The bonnet of the taxi was up, steam was drifting lazily from deep in the engine well, the
feet of the driver were sticking out from beneath the car.

  ‘Oh no,’ she sighed and tapped the man’s shoe with her foot. ‘Trouble?’

  The driver skewed his head clear. He looked greasy and unhappy. ‘Water hose …’ He exploded his fingers apart.

  ‘When will you fix it?’

  ‘Half hour – hour.’ He shrugged, and slid back under the taxi.

  ‘We are going home. Definitely,’ Joan turned angrily from the taxi.

  Leah nodded. She had never felt so much in agreement with Joan as now. ‘But what do we do now?’

  ‘Wait. What else is there to do?’

  ‘We could walk over to this Red Star village.’ The final flicker. Leah was surprised by the words as she said them.

  ‘What’s the point …?’ Then Joan may have thought of her father’s final wish, or she may simply have noticed the curious crowd gathering around her. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said.

  The gravel track wound back to the highway and the highway lay across the plain, a featureless black slash running to the horizon. There were several other tracks leading from the highway to houses, to fields, to villages out of sight, to the coiling path of the Min River. Joan stopped on the highway, undecided.

  A truck barrelled up the highway, and slowed as it approached them. Leah could see a forest of heads and a few poles with white and red cotton rolled round their ends, like broad bandages. A man slapped the cabin roof and the truck accelerated, leaving Leah blinking in the dust.

  But the truck had left a single passenger beside the road, a young man with floppy hair and spectacles bandaged together. He was carrying a red flag, slapping it from one hand to the other while he played a silent rhythm with his lips and shuffled in the dust. He saw Leah and Joan and let his beat wind down, and grinned at them.

  ‘You are looking for something?’ he said in putonghua.

  ‘Red Star village?’ Leah tried.

  He squinted at both Leah and Joan, trying to work out something. ‘Yes,’ he said in English. ‘I live there. It is down there.’ He pointed at the track behind him. ‘I will show you.’

  Joan hesitated, but Leah crossed the highway to the youth’s side, forcing her to follow.

  ‘You have someone to visit?’ The youth ambled between small fields of sighing wheat.

  ‘Perhaps, we don’t know yet.’

  ‘Is this Turtle Land village?’ Joan said roughly.

  The youth cocked his head. ‘No, it is Red Star village.’

  ‘Mum means in the olden days.’

  ‘Mum? Oh, you are family. You are looking for family. I understand. My uncle, he is a teacher and knows about these things. He will be there now. Where are you from?’

  They introduced each other as they walked, the youth shortening his name to ‘Ke’ to make things easier for fumble-tongued Leah. Some of the fields had been cut to stubble and a few women were walking ahead of them with a haystack on their shoulders and a sickle in their hands. They were approaching a broad copse of tall bamboo, a green eruption in a sea of rippling gold.

  ‘You are a student, Ke?’ Leah said, nodding at the rolled flag.

  Ke grinned, flicked it open and flourished it. ‘Not at the moment. We are on strike.’

  ‘You are a protest marcher?’ Joan frowned.

  ‘In Chengdu. Hundreds of us, stopping the traffic.’

  ‘That must be fun,’ said Joan. ‘Better than study.’

  Ke looked sideways at Joan and his smile faded, then flashed back. ‘Ah, yes, it’s a great party!’

  ‘Where’s the village?’ Joan sounded irritated.

  ‘There, in the bamboo. The bamboo protects us from the sun and the wind.’

  Leah could just see the low dark shape of houses through the bamboo. No double storeys, no Hong Kong houses, but that bamboo could have come from Good Field village.

  Ke flapped his flag about. He was smiling at Joan but the flag was slashing the air, as if in anger.

  ‘I heard of a thousand students on hunger strike in Beijing …’ Leah said, to offset Joan’s bite.

  The flag slowed. ‘In Tiananmen. But now it is three thousand. Sometimes it is not much of a party.’

  They walked through the screen of bamboo and saw the village. Low wood and brick houses with small windows, no glass, old thatched roofs. A small brown dog barking at the intruders, a man thrashing wheat stalks with a wooden weight on the end of a long pole. A woman pumping water from a well.

  ‘I knew it,’ Joan said.

  ‘It’s great!’

  ‘It’s an old, old village.’

  ‘It hasn’t changed.’

  ‘This is good?’

  Ke frowned at Joan and led her toward a loud clanging sound. Five men behind a wall were making an axle spring for an almost finished trailer. Across from the mini-factory a group of men were sitting round tables, sipping rice spirit from small glasses and watching a black-and-white television. Ke moved toward a big man leaning his chair against a wall to catch the last streak of sun.

  ‘Uncle,’ said Ke quickly, ‘these people are looking for their family. Can we help?’

  The big man slowly opened an eye and he carried on conversation even more slowly as Ke pulled up some chairs. Leah could not believe that he was a teacher.

  ‘So before you look for your family you must find the village?’ said Uncle Tong.

  ‘Yes please, Mr Tong,’ Leah said.

  ‘And you know it only by its imperial name.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you want to know this village’s old name.’

  Joan was fiddling.

  ‘This village is now called Red Star.’

  Leah looked at Joan. Will he never get round to it?

  ‘But this village is old. Far older than the People’s Republic. But it was one of the first villages to become a commune. Chairman Mao visited here once. And one of the last to stop being a commune. Oy! Quan! Will you stop that blasted hammering! I’m sure it was quieter when it was a commune.’

  Get on with it!

  ‘But it is old. Two thousand years. That’s why it was called Turtle Land …’

  Just like that. Leah was staring at Joan, a little uncertain that she had heard the words. But Joan was nodding.

  ‘That what you wanted?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes, yes!’ Leah blurted it in English but Tong seemed to understand.

  Suddenly they were on top of the world. Suddenly the terrors, the long journeys, the noisy hotels, the dirty restaurants were worth it. Suddenly Joan had found her father’s ancestral village and she had found the home of the coin. Now for the story!

  ‘Yes, that’s the name we were after.’ Joan was so calm.

  ‘Now the family?’

  The men had turned from the television to the teacher and the foreigners.

  ‘Ji,’ Joan said.

  Tong frowned and glanced across at Ke.

  ‘Means Pearl,’ Leah tried.

  Tong sighed. ‘We do not know that name, Joan Waters.’

  They cannot take it back now, Leah thought desperately. Not now. ‘My mother’s real name is Ji Feng Hua,’ Leah said quickly.

  Tong opened his hands in defeat.

  ‘The coin, the coin …’ Leah groped in her purse and held out the half coin.

  Tong held it up to the last fading shaft of sunlight. Joan told the story of the broken coin quickly and waited. If she was feeling any tension she kept it from her face.

  Tong stroked his cheek as he turned the half-coin. ‘I am a teacher, but I am also a collector of coins. In my house I have a coin that is fifteen hundred years old. One finds coins here, in the earth, or when one digs a well. If someone finds a coin he brings it to me. If I can afford it I will buy it, if I cannot I can tell the finder how much it is worth.’

  Tong looked from Joan to Leah and back again. ‘But this coin – this strange piece of metal – I do not know this coin. And I do not know its story. I am sorry.’

  Joan took the coin back with a shrug.
‘Well, that is it …’

  ‘Perhaps some family in the village might remember it?’ Leah said feebly. This was not fair!

  Tong spread his hands and shouted over a suddenly rising roar. ‘There are very few secrets in Red Star. You could try –’

  Joan kicked back her chair and twisted to her feet in alarm. ‘The taxi! He’ll never find us! Excuse …’

  She weaved through the clustered men and darted round the corner of the café.

  The roar became a squeal, a shout, a cry, a solid thump, and a skidding crash. A cloud of dust curled past the corner.

  14 Accident

  Leah swept her chair aside and ran to the corner, past slow-moving men and toppled chairs. Through the dust she could see the wall of the trailer factory and the bamboo, stark against the darkening sky. Beyond the bamboo and the wheat and the winding track, there may have been the taxi, searching. But it did not matter now.

  Joan was sprawled in the dust with a motorcycle lying on her back. A plump man in a grey suit was sitting on the ground adjusting his spectacles. Joan was absolutely still.

  For a moment Leah stood rigid, choking, her fists banging against her legs. She started to run for the bike, clawing at the air and shouting.

  Her arm was caught, swinging her wide, away from her mother. Ke was pulling at her, stepping in front of her, saying ‘Wait’ with his lips. Something in his eyes. He let her arm go and patted the air between them as he backed toward the bike. She could hear her breath thundering in her throat.

  Ke moved slowly to the bike with Tong and two other men as the plump man began shouting angrily.

  ‘Quiet, Heng.’ Tong gripped the bike and waited for the others to place themselves. He nodded and they lifted the bike straight up, walked sideways and bounced the bike back on its wheels.

  ‘Mum …’ Leah ducked to Joan’s head.

  Joan seemed to be flattening, becoming part of the earth, but dust particles were dancing before her nose. She was breathing. Tong passed his hand before her face, feeling the breath, lifted her dress slightly, ran his fingers down her spine gently and moved her upper leg. He said some words Leah did not understand.