Of course, as the oldest living member of my father’s family he was a person of consequence. I remember my father instructing me how I should address him, because I didn’t know the correct term for a paternal grandfather’s elder brother. On my mother’s side, of course it would have been completely different. And even little children have to be exact about such relationships. “If he was my father’s younger brother, you’d call him shu gong,” my father told me. “But he’s an older brother, so you call him bo gong.” Once I’d learned how to address him right, my mother said, “After you’ve spent some time with him, you could try calling him Granddad in an affectionate way, as if he were your grandfather. Maybe that will please him and make him like you.”
It made me happy to imagine being loved by such a venerable member of the family. That night, however, I heard my mother say to my father: “If the old man’s got any money, he really ought to leave it to us now that he sees we have a healthy son to carry things on. I mean, he has no children of his own. Who else would he leave it to?”
Whatever the motives behind our visit, I was excited to be going to Beijing. It was the autumn season, which was very dry that year, and I remember that the leaves falling from the trees beside the road were all brown and crisp, as though they’d been baked.
We walked the whole way. Every so often my father would pick me up and put me on his shoulders, but I must have walked about half the distance myself. At noon we stopped and ate the food my mother had given us for the journey. We arrived in Beijing in the evening.
The old man had owned a place that sold noodles. My father knew where it was, but it was already getting dark and the lamps were being lit when we reached it. Grandfather’s brother wasn’t there. The people who were running the noodle place then told us the old man had retired, but that he still lived in the next street. So off we went.
We found his house quite easily, though it didn’t look big at all. In fact it was tiny. After my father knocked softly on the door, there was a long pause before somebody opened it cautiously.
People shrink when they get old, and Grandfather’s brother was tiny. He seemed hardly bigger than me. But he looked quite sprightly all the same. He held up a lamp in his hand to inspect us, and I remember thinking he looked like an inquisitive bird. I knew at once that this was Grandfather’s brother because he had a little face just like my father’s. I had supposed he would be wrinkled, like the old men in the village, but his skin was rather smooth. He might have been a monk.
“Nephew,” he said to my father. “You look a little older than when I last saw you. Who is the boy?”
“My son,” Father replied.
“Bo gong,” I murmured, and bowed very low.
The old man looked at me. I could see in the lamplight that his eyes were still quite clear and sharp. “He’s quite good-looking,” he remarked. Then he led us into his house. It was just a single room, really, with a tiny kitchen behind. In the main room there was a broad kang to sit on, which extended through the dividing wall to the kitchen fire, which heated it. There was also a small wooden table, one wooden bench, and a chest in which I suppose he kept his clothes and other possessions.
He asked my father if he had a place to stay, and Father shook his head.
“Well then,” he said, “you can sleep here.” He didn’t seem to mind. “There is room for me and the boy on the kang, and if you sleep on the floor beside the kang, you’ll be quite warm.” He looked at my father appraisingly. “I hope you’ve eaten,” he said, “because I haven’t any food.”
“We brought you a present,” said my father, and handed it to him.
My mother had gone to great trouble over that present. Eight little mung bean cakes she’d made herself—she was a good cook and could make a meal out of almost anything. Each cake was beautifully wrapped in red paper. And all neatly set in a little bamboo box.
Grandfather’s Elder Brother put the box on the table and inspected it in the lamplight.
“This looks very beautiful. Did your wife make it? How lucky you are to have such a good wife. What does the box contain, may I ask?”
“Cakes,” said my father.
“Well then,” he said, “normally one doesn’t open a present in front of the giver, but as it’s cakes, let’s open it now.” He turned to me. “Would you like a cake?” As I had not eaten since the middle of the day, I was very hungry, so I thanked him and said that I would. “We’ll all have some, then,” said Grandfather’s Elder Brother.
While my father and I each ate a cake, the old man made a pot of tea and put three cups on the table. Nobody said very much, because we were so tired.
“If you need it,” Grandfather’s Elder Brother said to my father, “there’s a latrine just along the street.” My father went out, but I didn’t want to go, too. Seeing this, the old man said to me: “If you have to go in the night, there’s a chamber pot over there, under that cloth. You can use that. It’s quite clean.”
I saw it in the corner. Even by lamplight I could see the dusty cloth. So I thanked him and lay down on the warm kang, and before my father even got back, I had fallen asleep.
* * *
—
In the morning I went to that latrine along the street with my father. I had never been in a place like that before. In our village, the richer peasants with courtyard houses had their own latrine, usually in the southern corner of the courtyard, which could be emptied from the lane outside. Some of the farms had little covered sheds, and the waste fell down into an open pit from which it could be carted for manure or fed to the pigs. But we didn’t have a latrine. We went to the communal place, where there were holes in the ground and you did what you did in the open air. You tried not to go when it was raining. But I still prefer those open-air latrines because the wind carries a lot of the smell away.
Whereas when I went to that public latrine in Beijing, which was in a closed shed, the smell was so bad that I almost fainted.
After that, we washed and went with Grandfather’s Elder Brother to the noodle shop he used to own. And we ate noodles for breakfast.
“I still come here and work an hour or two,” the old man explained. “Then they give me free noodles. So as long as I can manage that, I shall never starve.” Father didn’t look too happy when he said that, but I noticed how friendly the people at the noodle place were towards him, and that made me feel the old man was honored.
Then he took us to a small Taoist temple close by, and he lit three incense sticks in there. One of the priests, dressed all in dark blue, came by and greeted him, and the old man explained who we were, and the priest smiled and told my father that his uncle had progressed far along the spiritual path. The next day, when we were on our way home, my father said his uncle must have given money to the temple to be so well thought of. I remember being sad when he said that. And in fact, even now that I’m an old man myself, I still believe that priest was being sincere. You never know in life. Sometimes people can mean what they say.
But the highlight of that visit—the little event that opened my eyes to the world—had nothing to do with my family at all.
Late in the morning we’d gone for a walk. Grandfather’s Elder Brother said he was going to show me the great Tiananmen Gate. He and my father were walking side by side, with me just behind, and the old man was telling my father stories about the family in the past when suddenly we heard the noise of drums and gongs coming down the street towards us.
“Someone important must be coming,” said my father, and we moved quickly to the side of the street to let this great person pass.
“Are we going to see the emperor?” I asked. Grandfather’s Elder Brother laughed when I said that.
“He hardly ever comes out of the palace, but if he should, you certainly won’t see him—unless you want your head cut off. He’ll be inside a carriage, and we’re not allowed to
look at him. So you keep your eyes on the ground.”
“I heard,” said my father, “that in some barbarian countries, the people are allowed to look at their kings.”
“Which just shows how inferior their kings must be,” the old man replied instantly. And I remember feeling proud to think that the emperor of my country was so like a god that we couldn’t look at him.
It wasn’t the emperor anyway. It was some court official, important enough to be preceded by a retinue of people, some of whom were wearing conical hats and dressed in rich embroidered silks. Show me an embroidered silk nowadays, of course, and I can probably tell you straight off who made it and if they’ve dropped a single stitch. But that was the first day in my life I’d ever seen such gorgeous things. I realized they must be heavy and wondered if that was why these men walked in such a slow and stately way.
But most important of all, the moment I saw those silk gowns, I knew my destiny. How does a migrating bird know which way to fly? You tell me. It just does. By instinct, I suppose. Well, it was the same for me, that day in Beijing. The first time I’d seen the finer things of life, and I knew that’s where I belonged. Simple as that.
“Who are those men?” I asked.
“We call them ‘palace persons,’ ” my great-uncle said.
“That’s what I want to be,” I said. This made him laugh, and my father shook his head. But I didn’t know why until, a few minutes later, we sat down in a teahouse.
“Did you notice those men you saw had very soft skins?” Grandfather’s Elder Brother asked me. But I really hadn’t. “They have soft voices as well,” he said. “That’s because they are eunuchs. Do you know what a eunuch is?” I had to shake my head. “A eunuch is a male who has had his balls and penis cut off so that he can’t have any children. It’s called castration. Eunuchs are employed in the palace because there’s no chance of them interfering with any of the royal wives and concubines.”
“I thought,” said my father, “that sometimes they just cut their balls off and left the penis so they can pee.”
“It used to be so,” said Grandfather’s Elder Brother. “But then they discovered that some of the eunuchs could still get it up, even though they had no balls. So you can just imagine the goings-on there were between them and all those women with nothing to do in the palace.”
“Oh,” said my father. “Well, I never.” And he laughed.
“So now everything gets chopped,” the old man continued. “Usually when they’re still young boys. It’s not so dangerous then.”
“So they pee like a woman?” asked my father.
“More or less. They don’t have so much control, usually. They have to wash a lot.” The old man turned to me. “It’s true that some of them make a fortune in the palace. Though many die poor. But you want to have a wife and children, don’t you?”
“Yes, he does,” said my father.
“I do,” I said.
“Then you’ll have to find another way to get rich,” said Grandfather’s Elder Brother, “though I’ve no idea what that might be.”
So that was the task I set myself, from that very day. How to get rich and have a family, too.
* * *
—
When we returned to the little house, the old man wanted to rest, and we were quite tired, too. I suppose I may have slept an hour or two, but when I awoke, I found the old man looking at me thoughtfully. My father also opened his eyes, but when Grandfather’s Elder Brother spoke, he addressed himself to me rather than my father.
“You are quite wrong if you think that riches will make you happy,” he said. “In fact, the reverse is the case. The more possessions you have, the more there is to worry about. They are nothing but a burden on your shoulders. The wise man concerns himself only with what he needs. Nothing more. Then your life will be simple and you will be free. That is how I have learned to live.” He smiled and made a gesture with his arm. “Look around this room. What is the most important thing you see?”
I looked at the bench, the table, the chest, and the chamber pot under the clean cloth.
“The chamber pot,” I said, thinking of the smell of that awful latrine.
“Nearly right,” he said, “but not quite. It is the kang on which you are sitting. Think how simple our traditional bed-stove is. Instead of wasting the heat from the kitchen fire by letting the smoke go up a chimney, we let it come out sideways through the duct in the middle of the kang, where it warms the bricks before it leaves through the vent at the other end. Even after the fire goes out, the bricks will stay warm all night. So we can sit on our kang by day and sleep on it at night. What could be more efficient? Even the imperial family sit on kangs in the palace.” He smiled serenely. “And yet down in the south, in places like Guangzhou, they don’t have kangs. Why’s that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Because it’s hot down there. They don’t need them. The circumstances are different. So the needs are different.”
“I have heard,” my father said, “that the Russian people have something similar in their land, which is cold.”
“They must have learned it from us,” the old man said.
“Perhaps we learned it from them,” I suggested, thinking how clever I was being.
But the old man shook his head. “That is most unlikely,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Because the Chinese are more intelligent,” he replied, as if it was obvious. I have always remembered that. He was right, of course.
And I must say that his wisdom made a great impression upon me. It was clear that he was truly at peace with himself. Children sense these things, even if they don’t fully understand them. “I see that you have everything you need and nothing else,” I said.
“Yet even so,” he told me, “we can always do better. At the start of every new year, I try to find one more thing I can do without. It isn’t always easy, but in the end, I always find something I don’t really need and get rid of it.”
“What will you get rid of this year, Granddad?” I asked. And I used the affectionate form of address this time, as my mother had told me to.
He looked at me for a moment. Whether he was pleased by my little show of affection, I don’t know, but I think he was. Then he smiled.
“Why, you have brought me the very thing,” he said. “The beautiful wrappings your mother used for the cakes you’ve given me. There are many people who would be delighted to have them and would make good use of them. So I shall keep them and enjoy them, and think kind thoughts of your dear mother until the new year, and then I shall give them away. It’s made my task much easier, because to tell the truth, I really didn’t know what I had left that I didn’t need at present.”
“Then we did a good thing by coming here,” I said happily.
“You did. And now I am going to give you a present in return,” he answered. And getting up from the kang, he went over to the chest, opened it, took out a little leather purse, and extracted a copper coin. It was just the ordinary little coin, with a square hole in it. Even then I knew that it took a string of a thousand of those to make a single silver tael. “Here,” he said. “This is for you. I want you to keep it, to remember your visit here, and say a prayer for me, from time to time.”
“I will,” I said. I was quite overjoyed.
“You know, Uncle,” my father said, “if you want to return to live in the village at any time, you can always come to live with us.” He didn’t sound all that happy, but I was very pleased, because I really liked the old man.
“Oh yes,” I cried. “That would be wonderful.”
Grandfather’s Elder Brother sat on the kang and smiled at us. He looked so serene.
“That is very kind of you,” he replied. “But you are there to tend the ancestors. That’s the important thing. I think I shall stay
in Beijing, and one of these days I’ll die quietly here without being a bother to anybody. The Taoist priests at the temple will know what to do when the time comes. One never knows,” he added cheerfully, “it might come tomorrow or not for years.”
“Will you have enough money to live?” my father asked.
“I manage. My needs are small,” he replied. “But if I think it’s time to go, for whatever reason, it’s quite easy to depart this life, you know.”
“Really,” I said. “How do you do that?”
“You just stop eating and drinking. It’s not even painful, really. You just get very weak and sleepy. You mustn’t drink. That’s the difficult bit, but quite essential. Then you die.”
“You’re telling my seven-year-old son how to kill himself?” my father burst out.
“He asked,” said the old man.
I didn’t mind. I just thought it was interesting.
My father went for a walk after that. Grandfather’s Elder Brother and I sat together in the house and ate two more of my mother’s cakes. He told me about how he and my grandfather lived in the village when they were boys. Apparently their father really had been a merchant with some money, but he’d lost it. “He was very unhappy about losing his money,” the old man told me. “That’s what taught me not to get too attached to things.”
“Why did you come to Beijing?” I asked.
“I was bored,” he said.
Early the next morning we left. My father parted from the old man politely, but when I made my low bow, the old man gave me such a lovely smile. And I showed him I had the copper coin he gave me clasped safely in my hand.
My father was quite disgusted that the copper coin was the only thing Grandfather’s Elder Brother had given me. “A single copper coin. You realize that’s almost worthless, don’t you?” he said.
But actually it was very clever of the old man to give me a copper coin. If he’d given me a silver coin, I’d surely have spent it, whereas I had no temptation to spend the copper coin. I still have it to this day. It’s probably why I can remember everything about that visit.
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