The Valley of Amazement

by Amy Tan

  And then it was time. Flora came to me and said in an oddly stiff voice, “I know we’ll see each other soon. And we’ll write often.”

  I thought she had warmed to me and was stricken to realize it wasn’t true. She couldn’t leave now. I needed more time with her. I was panicking, shaking.

  She took my hands. “It’s not as hard this time, is it? I’m leaving, but I’ll be back.” She threw her arms around my neck, hugged me close, and whispered, “What did I call you when I was little and they were taking me away? Was it Mama? It was, wasn’t it? I found you, Mama. I’ll never lose you again. My mama came back from a memory, and Little Flora came back, too.”

  I whispered back that I loved her. And then that was all I could say.

  “No more heartbreak,” she said. She kissed my cheek and pulled away. “There’s that face on your chin.” She poked my chin and rubbed it until I laughed. “We don’t need to be scared anymore,” she said. She kissed my cheek again. “I love you, Mama.”

  She and Mother walked toward the gangplank. She turned back three times to wave, and we waved as well. I watched them ascend, and at the top of the gangplank, she and Mother waved again. We waved furiously until Flora put her arm down. She stood still and looked at me. And then she and Mother went inside and were gone.

  I remembered the day when I was supposed to leave Shanghai for San Francisco. My mother should have waited for me. She did not. She should have returned. She did not. The American life that should have been mine sailed away without me, and that day I no longer knew who I was.

  On sleepless nights, when I could not bear my life, I thought of that ship and imagined I was aboard. I had been saved! I was its only passenger, standing at the back of the ship, watching Shanghai recede—an American girl in my sailor dress, a virgin courtesan in a high-necked silk jacket, an American widow with streaming tears, a Chinese wife with a black eye. A hundred of me over the years were crowded on the deck, looking back at Shanghai. But the ship never left, and I would have to disembark, and begin my life again each morning.

  Once again, I imagined myself as that girl in the sailor dress. I was on the ship, standing at the back of the boat. I was going to America, where I would be raised by a mother who took me to San Francisco. I would grow up in a beautiful house and sleep in a bedroom with sunny yellow walls and a window next to an oak tree, and another that looked out upon the sea. From that window, I would be able to see all the way across to a city at the end of the sea, to a dock by the Huangpu River, where I was standing with Magic Gourd, Edward, Loyalty, Mother, and Little Flora, waving to the girl in the sailor dress as the ship receded, waving until it disappeared.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are many friends and family who sustained me during the eight years it took to write this book. I will try to repay all of you with sustenance in kind over the years.

  For help in keeping this story and me alive: My husband, Lou DeMattei, was so supportive of my need for solitary confinement that he brought breakfast, lunch, and dinner to my desk, where I was shackled to a deadline. My agent Sandy Dijkstra saved me yet again from my own blunders and worries, and thus enabled me to write with peace of mind. Molly Giles, always my first reader, saw the false starts and patiently pushed me forward with astute advice. If only I had followed all of it from the beginning.

  For background on courtesan culture and photography in Shanghai, I am deeply grateful to three people for freely sharing through our countless e-mails their research of courtesan culture and photography in Shanghai during the turn of the century: Gail Hershatter (The Gender of Memory), Catherine Yeh (Shanghai Love), and Joan Judge (The Precious Raft of History). I offer apologies for any distortion of their work through my imagination.

  For research for the various settings of the story, I thank Nancy Berliner, then-curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum, who arranged for Lou and me to stay in a four-hundred-year-old mansion in the village of Huangcun. My sister Jindo (Tina Eng) got us to the village by navigating the best route via trains and cars from Shanghai. Because I had to speak only Chinese to her for four days, my language skills improved enormously, to the point where I could understand much of the family gossip necessary for any story. Fellow traveler Lisa See braved the cold, despite predictions of balmy weather, and she reveled with me over the historic details and unfolding human dramas. She also generously insisted that I use the name of the village pond in my book, even though Moon Pond would have been a perfect name for a village in her novel. Cecilia Ding, with the Yin Yu Tang Service Project, provided extensive knowledge of the history of Huang Cun, the old house, the streets of Old Tunxi in Huang-shan, and Yellow Mountain.

  Museums have always been important in my writing for both inspiration and research. The Shanghai Exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco opened my eyes to the role of courtesans in introducing Western culture to Shanghai. Maxwell Hearn, curator of the Asian department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, provided information on the aesthetic and romantic mind of the scholar as well as on the green-eyed poet who wrote about ghosts that he purportedly saw. Tony Bannon, then-director of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, opened up the archives of photographs of women in China at the turn of the century, and he also showed a rare and restored film of a city girl forced into prostitution. Dodge Thompson, chief of exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., gave me a special tour of paintings by Hudson River School artists, including those by Albert Bierstadt. Inspiration for the painting The Valley of Amazement came from a hurried visit to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, after which I recalled a haunting painting with that title, whose artist, alas, I failed to note, but who was likely Carl Blechen, a painter of fantastical landscapes, whose work is prominently displayed in the Alte Nationalgalerie. If anyone finds the painting, please let me know. I suffer from a sense of failure in not having rediscovered it yet.

  For Shanghai research: Steven Roulac introduced me to his mother, Elizabeth, who recounted her days in Shanghai in the 1930s as a foreigner in the International District. Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, gave me insights on several historic periods in China, including the rise of the new Republic and the antiforeigner movement. The late Bill Wu introduced me to the aesthetic world of the scholar—the accoutrements, house, garden, and wall plaques of poetry, all found in his scholar house outside of Suzhou. Duncan Clark found street maps of old Shanghai, enabling us to pinpoint the modern-day location of the old courtesan district. Shelley Lim spent countless hours taking me around Shanghai to old family homes, haunted houses, and the places that provided the best foot massages at midnight. Producer Monica Lam, videographer David Peterson, and my sister Jindo helped me make my first visit to the family mansion on Qongming Island, where my mother grew up and where my grandmother killed herself. Joan Chen laughingly gave me Shanghainese translations for funny expressions, often of the lewd variety, for which she in turn had to ask her friends for assistance.

  Many helped me visit places that also influenced the settings in the story: Joanna Lee, Ken Smith, Kit Wai Lee, and the National Geographic Society made it possible to stay in the remote village of Dimen in the mountains of Guizhou Province on three occasions. Kit (“Uncle”) spent hours and days and weeks with me, giving me information on customs and village history, and also introduced me to many of the residents, many of whom had lost their homes in a great fire that had destroyed a fifth of the village. Emily Scott Pottruck traveled with me as friend, assistant, organizer, and deflector of trouble. Mike Hawley arranged for us to come to Bhutan and travel to the far reaches of that country, which also served as the setting for certain scenes, including that of the Five Sons of Heaven Mountain.

  Among many who assisted with details of the novel: Marc Shuman gave me information on the immortality mushroom ganoderma lucidum, which wound up helping me with my health. Michael Tilson Thomas showed me music composed
for the left hand, which inspired me to create a character who is a left-handed pianist. Joshua Robison provided lessons on the Lindy Hop and music of the 1920s. Dr. Tom Brady and Dr. Asa DeMatteo gave me insight on the psychiatric profile of children kidnapped at ages fourteen and three. Mark Moffett informed me of what might be learned from the evolution of wasps found in amber. Walter Kirn pushed me to write a long short story for Byliner, and that character inched her way into the novel in a major way.

  For keeping me from spinning out of control, I thank my assistant Ellen Moore, who kept away many distractions and served as my conscience over deadlines. Libby Edelson of Ecco showed tremendous tact and patience when I was late in sending files or had sent the wrong ones. Copyeditor Shelly Perron worked under tremendous deadlines, and not only kept me from embarrassing myself a thousand times but told me what more she would want to know as a reader. I am so grateful for the help of the many people at Sandy Dijkstra’s office and also at Ecco, who have embraced this book—and me as one of their own. You have no idea how much your enthusiasm fills me with guilt that I did not finish this sooner.

  I feel so fortunate that this mess of a book fell into the welcoming hands of Daniel Halpern, my editor and publisher at Ecco. He never showed fear after seeing those early pages, only enthusiasm and absolute confidence, which gave me confidence. He provided gentle prodding to finish and never exasperation, although the latter was often warranted. His comments, critical analysis, understanding of the story, its whole and its details, were true to my intentions and what I had secretly hoped the book would be. The faults of the book, however, remain mine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AMY TAN is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Saving Fish from Drowning, and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, which was adapted into a PBS Kids production. Tan was also a coproducer and coscreenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.

  www.amytan.net

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  ALSO BY AMY TAN

  Novels

  The Joy Luck Club (1987)

  The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991)

  The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)

  The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2000)

  Saving Fish from Drowning (2005)

  Memoir

  The Opposite of Fate (2003)

  Children’s Books

  The Moon Lady (1992)

  Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (2001)

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Allison Saltzman

  Cover photograph © by Alex Mares-Manton/Asia Images/SuperStock

  COPYRIGHT

  THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Tan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-210731-2

  EPub Edition November 2013 ISBN 9780062107336

  13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollins.com