The Crystal Ribbon

by Celeste Lim

  FOR ARTHUR AND CALVIN, WHO BELIEVED IN ME EVEN BEFORE I DID. AND TO MUMMY, FOR ALL THE DATOU CAI YOU MADE ME EAT. I STILL PREFER YOUR YONG TOFU.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  1: AN UNUSUAL BIRTHDAY

  2: THE HULI JING SHRINE

  3: A TRIP TO XIAWAN

  4: FOR FIVE SILVER PIECES

  5: A WEDDING WITHOUT GOODBYES

  6: THE GUO FAMILY

  7: THE GHOST FESTIVAL

  8: SAVING SPIDERS

  9: WEI’S LETTER

  10: THE PRICE OF TWO PAGES

  11: YUNLI’S PRANK

  12: LUNAR NEW YEAR

  13: THE ZANZHI

  14: LOOMING CHANGES

  15: THE LADY WITH YELLOW EYES

  16: THE DAUGHTERS OF YUEGONG LOU

  17: THE GODDESS OF THE MOON

  18: MR. YAO’S REQUEST

  19: A WAY OUT

  20: THE GIANT SNOWFLAKE

  21: THE DIVINE TRILLER OF WHATEVER

  22: KAIZHEN, THE GOLDEN YOUTH

  23: DAOLIN VILLAGE

  24: THE SHENXIAN TREE

  25: THE RENMIAN TREE

  26: THE SIBLING OATH

  27: BABA’S TEARS

  28: HOME OF THE SPIRIT

  29: THE RIBBON OF YUAN

  WEAVING THE CRYSTAL RIBBON

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  If someone had told me two years ago that I would be married the year I turned eleven, I would’ve laughed at them and said, “But boys are filthy and stupid, like oxen! I shan’t get married. Besides, my baba loves me more than any husband in the world could.”

  But that was before.

  It was early spring, and for my eleventh birthday, Grandmama had agreed to slaughter a chicken—something more than our regular rice gruel, mantou buns, legumes, and bland corn broth. Just for me!

  But when everyone sat down, the topic of marriage came to join us at our table. Aunt Mei was telling Baba about this maiden in the village who recently got engaged to a nice family, but Baba only nodded and gazed intently into his bowl as though trying to count the grains of rice in it.

  I dared to interrupt. “What will happen to Lingling after she gets married, Baba?” I’d long ago learned that if I directed my questions or comments at Baba, I would be less likely to get reprimanded for interrupting a grown-up conversation. Baba never minded my questions, and would even laugh if my comments were witty.

  But this time, Baba did not even look at me. Instead, he started chewing on the ends of his wooden chopsticks.

  My heart plummeted faster than a rock down a ravine. I stopped eating. “Baba, what happens after someone gets married?”

  Baba looked around at the other grown-ups, but when both Grandmama and Aunt Mei said nothing, he sighed and scratched at the stubble on his neck. “Well, Jing…when a girl gets married, she leaves her family and goes to live with another.”

  Immediately, Wei’s hand clasped mine underneath the table. My little brother didn’t like the idea any more than I did. Leave my family to live with someone else? I imagined waking up one day with a completely different family—voices I didn’t know, faces I didn’t recognize, people I didn’t care about. I’d hate them. I’d be miserable.

  I gave Baba what he usually called my I-know-better look. “Then I don’t ever want to get married. I want to stay here forever.”

  “Don’t be silly, child!” Aunt Mei cried, flourishing the sharp end of her chopsticks just inches from my nose. A single grain of rice spewed out of her mouth and landed on the plum-sauce-roasted chicken. “What a disgrace to the Li family you’ll be if you don’t get married,” she continued. “When the time comes, you will wed.”

  To my surprise, even Grandmama nodded as she picked up a piece of pickled carrot. “We will have to start looking for a suitable family soon.”

  Aunt Mei probably needed a suitable family more than I did. But I knew better than to answer back, for it was seen as great disrespect for children to do so.

  Aunt Mei was Baba’s older sister, and had been married to Uncle Tai, a blacksmith in our village. Having no in-laws, she eventually came back to live with us after Uncle Tai died at war nine years ago. No one ever mentioned that Aunt Mei should remarry, but back when she was still alive, Mama had told me that men rarely considered widowed or divorced women as wives because they were thought to bring bad luck. One time I asked, “Why then do we keep Aunt Mei with us if she’s bad luck?” and Mama had hitched on such a stern look that I never dared ask again.

  After breakfast, Wei and I kneeled in front of the small wooden altar on the ground beside our front door. On it were three tablets carved out of bamboo: two of them belonged to deities—Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and the Great Golden Huli Jing, the guardian fox jing of our village. The last one was Mama’s mortuary tablet, and on it were the words, written in red: Here be the place of early departed daughter-in-law of Li—Wu Caihua.

  I brought my hands together, holding a lit incense stick, and bowed thrice. I closed my eyes.

  Mama, I don’t want to go to another family. Please watch over me; don’t let me leave you.

  Finally, I stuck my incense into the incense holder, moved back, and touched my forehead to the ground in a kowtow.

  Then Pan began to wail from his reed cradle, and from the fitful way he cried, I could tell he was uncomfortable from wetting himself. I hurried with a clean rag into the room Wei and I shared. At about twenty moons, Pan was still a wrinkly little thing. His nose turned slightly upward like a pig’s snout, especially whenever he cried, which was why I called him Zhuzhu.

  Ever since Mama left us after giving birth to Pan, I had been put in charge of caring for him. Wei and I had believed the reason we lost Mama was because of Pan. The midwife said that Mama had bled too much. But Grandmama did not take the responsibility away from me even though I hated it so much. I had sulked and cried and sulked. I hated the idea of Pan replacing Mama in our family, and Grandmama would often scold me for being neglectful in my babysitting. On my cruelest day, I even left Pan in the daisy field on purpose, thinking that wolves could have him.

  But no one ever found out my horrid deed, because as I left, my heart started to feel as though someone was using a soy grinder on it.

  Pan was only a baby. He never meant to cause Mama’s death. He hadn’t asked to be born. Mama had birthed him out of love, and here I was, trying to harm the son for whom she had given her life. Would I really dishonor my mother like that?

  I had gone back for Pan. And from then on, I made a promise that I would love him as much as Mama would have if she were alive. I would be the mama Pan would never have, and in that way, I kept Mama alive in my heart.

  “Zhuzhu, it’s time for breakfast,” I crooned as I nudged a spoon of rice gruel mixed with goat’s milk to his mouth. Then Baba poked his head into the room. “Jing, come down to the farm later. It’s time to dry out the tea leaves.”

  Wei let out a squeal and my heart missed a couple of beats. Was Baba finally allowing us to help with tea drying? But there was something else.

  “Baba, are we going up to the Huli Jing shrine today?”

  It was the first week of spring on the lunar calendar, which was when every family in the village prepared offerings from our harvests and produce to pay homage to the tutelary spirit of Huanan village—a powerful five-tailed fox jing known as the Great Golden Huli Jing.

  Sure enough, Baba nodded. “Yes, after noon. Aunt Mei is helping Grandmama prepare our offerings, so I’ll need your help on the farm. Don’t be too long.”

  There was a knowing grin on Baba’s face as he left, and I couldn’t wait for tea-drying time. After Zhuzhu f
inished his food, I placed him in his wooden playpen, where Grandmama could watch him from the kitchen, and I dashed out the front door with Wei behind me.

  Our village was small, with only two streets—a wider one that led to the village square, where there was a cluster of hawker stalls, and a smaller dirt path that went an entire circle around the village, leading to the wooden huts of twenty-nine families. I always thought this made a shape like a copper coin—a circle with a square in the center. Wei and I weaved in and out among the stalls on the bustling street. I barely dodged Peng’s flower cart, heaped with early violet columbines.

  Huanan village was settled halfway up the east side of a hill. Behind our house was higher ground, and a stream running from farther up the hill provided the irrigation our farmlands needed. Beyond the bamboo fences that surrounded our village were patches of carefully plowed land. Each family had their own plot, and in ours, Baba grew simple crops such as jujubes, prunes, tea leaves, and various legumes.

  The farm was always busiest during the day. When we arrived, villagers already dotted the entire plot like sesame seeds on rice, wide-brimmed straw hats pulled over their heads to keep out the sun. We found Baba in our harvest shed, checking on the condition of the tea leaves we had picked a few days ago. The young flushes had been loosely scattered on straw-woven trays, and Baba had a small pinch of them under his nose. The room was airy and filled with the slightly stale scent of wilted tea leaves. I walked up to another tray and rolled a little pinch of leaves gently between my fingers.

  Still slightly springy but dry around the edges…I could be wrong, but they should be ready for the wok.

  Sure enough, Baba gave a satisfied grunt. “These will make a fine batch of black tea indeed. It’s time to dry them out completely. Wei, go get our biggest wok.”

  Wei practically floated out of the shed, and I could see why. Black tea was popular and usually sold for a lot of money, especially in the colder seasons. Harvesting a good batch at this time of the year could easily mean a more comfortable winter.

  By the time Wei came back with a metal wok as big as a cart wheel, Baba had already moved a few trays outside, and we were making heat from a pile of embers inside a stack of bricks.

  “Baba, Grandmama says we need to head over to the shrine soon,” Wei reported as I helped him set up the wok. “We won’t have time to finish drying all of them.”

  Baba nodded, placing his bare hands on the wok to test the heat. After making sure the temperature was just right, he tossed in the first tray of leaves. “Well, we’ll get at least a few trays done so some of them can be given to the shrine as part of our offering.”

  No.

  Our family had hardly enough to feed ourselves as it was; couldn’t Baba see that offering the tutelary spirit such good crops that would otherwise earn us money was a horrible waste? This was unfair. This was ridiculous. Couldn’t the fox jing get food for itself? Why did it have to depend on our offerings? I couldn’t help telling Baba exactly what I thought.

  “Jing, you mustn’t speak disrespectfully of the Great Golden Huli Jing.”

  Even when berating me, Baba managed to sound gentle. With his bare hands, he began to deftly toss and stir the black curly flushes in the wok. “The pact between Huanan village and its spirit guardian goes back more than thirty years. Our village owes the Golden Huli Jing a great debt.”

  “I know, I know,” I cut Baba off and squatted to fan the embers underneath the wok with a straw fan. “If not for the Huli Jing, we wouldn’t be here at all…” I’d heard the story so many times I could tell it backward. Every child in the village grew up listening to the tale about how the Great Golden Huli Jing saved Huanan from a fatal bandit raid some thirty years ago.

  I wondered if Baba would berate me some more for interrupting, but he only nodded. “I understand why you do not feel the same way. But the grown-ups in Huanan view our guardian much in the same way as the people of Song view our Emperor Taizu, who ended the upheaval of the Ten Kingdoms and birthed our glorious Dynasty of Song. So, to Baba at least, that incident thirty years ago was truly something else…I was hardly older than you myself when it happened.”

  For Baba’s benefit, I tried to imagine what it would’ve felt like to have seen the epic battle with my own eyes. In my mind, I was atop the village watchtower like Baba had been, just behind the outer fences, shielding my face against the howling storm as a line of burning torches encircled the village. The trepidation was real, just like the relief must’ve been, when in the nick of time, a giant five-tailed fox jing had appeared and fought off the ring of fifty bandits before they could raid and burn the entire village. Such a narrow escape from death would not have been forgotten easily.

  Wei leaped off his perch on a wooden stool. “Baba, if I were you, I’d have jumped off that watchtower like this and given those bandits a few good whacks with my shovel!” he exclaimed as he kicked and punched the air in front of him. “I wouldn’t have needed any old huli jing to save me.”

  Baba only laughed as he tossed the tea leaves with his bare hands, not seeming to mind the heat from the wok at all. He was tough like that. People even called him The Man of the Iron Palm.

  Thin wisps of steam from the drying flushes rose above the wok, carrying a fresh, woody aroma. I took a deep whiff. Did I still feel that the huli jing didn’t deserve our expensive black tea? To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure I liked the idea much more than I had moments before, but at least now I understood that some promises, like the one our village chief made to the Great Golden Huli Jing about seasonal offerings, had to be kept. It was a question of honor.

  Baba rose from his seat all of a sudden and gestured at me as he emptied the wok and tossed in a third tray of flushes. “Put on a pair of gloves. You’re old enough to try this. And maybe we can offer yours to the shrine.”

  Wei squealed and jumped up and down as though Baba had spoken to him. “Can I try, too? Please, Baba?”

  I couldn’t help grinning when Baba shook his head. “You’re only eight. Wait till you’re a little older. Let’s watch your jiejie and see how she does.”

  I leaned over to Wei when Baba wasn’t looking. “I’ll let you try once I get the hang of it.” I winked.

  Wei giggled and held out his right thumb. “Promise?”

  I pressed mine to his and we slapped our palms thrice. It was a little thing we came up with called the Sibling Oath.

  The thick fabric gloves felt prickly as I pulled them on, but before I could get to work, Aunt Mei appeared around the corner, and the eggplant look on her face as she approached us told me that I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

  “Tao, surely you’re not going to waste your time teaching her this?”

  A frown formed between Baba’s eyebrows. “I don’t see why not.”

  Aunt Mei folded her arms and gave a laugh that sounded like a mating baboon. “Why? Because in a year or so, Jing will go to another family, and then what use will your lesson be? It’s always more worthwhile to teach your sons; surely you know that?”

  From his face, I really couldn’t tell what Baba was thinking, but his next words put a big smile on my face.

  “Wei and Pan are too young. And besides, I think my daughter can do just as good as any boy.”

  A flight of steps made from horizontally placed logs led to the shrine farther up the mountain. Wei and I both knew there were eighty-nine of them, but we still liked to count with a beat as we skipped up each one. The grown-ups walked ahead of us, Zhuzhu sleeping soundly on Aunt Mei’s back.

  We wouldn’t be the only family visiting the shrine today, so I wasn’t surprised when we heard a singsong taunt.

  “Li Jing, Li Jing, Huli Jing!”

  It was Lu Shang—someone I wished I could grind into soy milk. I turned around with a hand on my hip so it would look like I didn’t care. Wei stuck out a tongue at him, but I kept my face straight and said, “I see your mother forgot to sew your mouth shut this morning.”

>   Wei burst into laughter and the smirk disappeared from Lu Shang’s face as he struggled to think of a comeback but, of course, couldn’t. Boys loved making fun of my name, but most of them did not have very quick wits.

  “You won’t sound so cocky when I beat you at the tree-climbing match later, Huli Jing,” Lu Shang said before shuffling off, tugging on the leash around the neck of a young goat.

  “Bet you won’t!” Wei stuck his tongue out after him. Now why do you suppose the Great Golden Huli Jing’s name had to sound so much like mine? Couldn’t Mama have thought of something else to call me? Li Jing and Huli Jing—with only one measly syllable of a difference, she was practically asking for kids to poke fun at her daughter.

  “Why can’t I have your name?” I grumbled at my brother and kicked a pebble in the general direction of the stream that flowed right by the shrine and down toward our village. Baba saw this and told Aunt Mei and Grandmama to go ahead of us. I crossed my arms and looked away. I wasn’t about to be convinced.

  Baba kneeled to my height and took my hand. “Jing, you should always be proud of your name. Your mother chose it with great care. A different word from the guardian’s.” Baba picked up a twig and told Wei to write two words on the ground:

  Then he tapped on the left character. “This is you, and it has a completely different meaning.”

  I kept my arms crossed. “I know, Baba, but it doesn’t stop monkeys like Lu Shang from calling me names.”

  Baba got up with a smile and hurried us on. “I won’t try to convince you any further, but I hope someday you will change your mind. Because regardless of whether you like it, it is still a part of you.”

  A brass gong hung near the entrance of the shrine, and worshippers rang it with a soft mallet before entering. Mama used to say that it was supposed to alert the deity residing within that someone had come to pray. My hands itched. Wei and I loved taking turns doing that, often more than once, and often until Yue Shenpo, our village shamaness, came out yelling at us. But today was different.

  Today I was eleven. And I had my own tea leaves to offer the guardian. I shouldn’t act childishly.