by Janie Chang
Minghua 123 set out again after sundown for their second night on the road. Meirong walked beside Lian. Since sleeping beside each other on the floor of the ancestral hall, she referred to Lian as her roommate.
“There was so much knowledge collected in the Jingtai Encyclopedia,” Meirong said, “all those volumes of poetry, epic histories, and scholarly essays. Why do you suppose the gods chose to save the volumes of legends and folklore instead of any other?”
“I thought it was the scholar-bureaucrat Yao and his descendants who saved the Library of Legends,” Lian said. She was starting to feel comfortable with Meirong, with the way her classmate changed topics suddenly, her mind busy as a dragonfly darting from one thought to another.
“What I think is this,” Meirong said, continuing as if she hadn’t heard. “Maybe it’s because legends are truer to our natures than serious literature. Maybe myths and legends reveal more about us than poetry or epic histories.”
“Very perceptive, Miss Yee,” Professor Kang said, as he walked up from behind. “Myths are the darkest and brightest incarnations of who we are. They slip into our dreams and underpin our reality. Perhaps that’s why the gods judged the Library of Legends worthy of special protection.”
Although the professor’s age and status entitled him to ride on a cart, he always walked a few miles each day, using the time to chat with students up and down the line.
“Or it could be even simpler,” he continued. “Maybe the gods are vain and want their stories remembered.”
He strode ahead, chuckling to himself.
PROFESSOR KANG MADE his way up the line, past donkey carts carrying books, supplies, and laboratory equipment, past students walking together in twos and threes. Sometimes he spoke to other travelers on the same road. Some refugees walked bent beneath the loads they carried, some were stunned with grief and loss. Some were as loud in anger against their own government as they were about the enemy.
“I’ve seen this a hundred times before,” a young female voice said. The professor turned to the glowing presence beside him. A glow he knew no one else could see.
“What have you seen before?” he asked.
“Forced migration,” she said.
“In a country the size of China,” the professor said, “there’s always a catastrophe going on somewhere. And in its wake, a populace fleeing danger, hoping to reach safety.”
Disasters were inevitable and China’s history was rife with plagues and famine, floods and earthquakes. And there had been so many wars. Wars between petty kings and rival generals, bandit armies and invading hordes. More recently, revolution. People fled their homes only as a desperate act of last resort.
“This war is different, something else altogether,” she said. “The sheer scale of destruction. This will change China because it will change its people. So many lives shattered.”
There was a long silence as they continued walking.
“You mean the refugees,” the professor said. “They’ll lose their homes and family history when they leave the land where they were born and raised, where their ancestors lie buried.”
“Right now, they mourn the homes and possessions they had to leave behind,” she said. “But soon, even though they can’t put it into words, they’ll understand they’ve also left behind the places that defined them. Where they were known because of their families and professions. Where they had a place in the world.”
“But once the war is over, they can return,” Professor Kang said. “It’s temporary.”
“But that’s just it,” she said. “Many won’t ever return. Others will go back to try and rebuild but their livelihoods will be gone. Shops and factories, livestock and farm equipment. How much of their past will they jettison to move ahead with their lives?”
“After the war, China will rebuild,” he said. “The government will take care of its citizens. Look at what they’re doing for our students.”
“Your students are fortunate in that respect,” she said. “As part of the university, their place in the world is still defined. They’ll still have a purpose once they reach Chengtu.”
“I just hope we can bring them safely to Chengtu,” the professor said, unable to suppress a deep sigh.
“Then about this next town, Chuanjiao,” she said, her voice serious. “We should only rest there one day. I know everyone is tired, but we need to get inland as quickly as possible.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” the professor said. “Thank you for the warning. It’s good to have heaven on our side.”
“I’m not heaven,” she said. “I’m only a Star. I can only help a little, just enough to keep our group safe.”
The professor smiled. “It’s good to have a Star on our side, Sparrow Chen.”
IT WAS ON their way to Chuanjiao that Minghua 123 encountered death for the first time.
They were only four hours out of Shingdian and it was still dark when they saw the military trucks stopped on a cratered stretch of road that had been bombed during the day. Medics were tending to wounded civilians. Lamplight threw long shadows behind soldiers and civilians. Men and women crouched at the side of the road, keening over unresponsive shapes. A crew of exhausted-looking workers helped soldiers pile long bundles onto a flatbed truck. With a pang, the professor realized the bundles were corpses.
At first, Minghua 123 tried helping the injured but the army doctor ordered them to keep moving as quickly as they could. They had to get beyond the reach of Japanese aircraft. To linger meant more risk.
“The students’ safety is your priority,” the doctor said to Professor Kang. “I shouldn’t even have stopped to treat these people. We’re already short on medical supplies. The more we do here, the less we have for our soldiers.”
“How far inland should we go before it’s safe?” Kang asked. “How far can Japanese planes fly?”
“The range of those planes isn’t the issue,” the army doctor said. “It’s the front lines you need to worry about. They shift all the time and if they shift farther west, the enemy will be able to fly deeper into the province. Consider yourselves always at risk. Until you get to Chengtu, anyway.”
“How can we find out where the battle lines have moved?” Professor Kang said.
The doctor snorted. “If you find out, you’re better off than we are. Communications are terrible, always late, and not even accurate. Just keep going west and south as fast as you can.”
There was very little chatter among the students after the sobering sight of the injured and dead. The first they’d seen. Their journey was no longer an adventure. A few of the male students trudged with rifles over their shoulders, old equipment the army had given them, along with some rudimentary training, in case they ran into bandits. But the guns were all for show, just a deterrent. They had fewer than two dozen bullets between them.
“WE CAN’T BE that far from Chuanjiao,” Meirong said. “The sun’s already coming up. We should’ve arrived an hour ago.”
“It’s because we stopped to try and help those wounded refugees,” Lian said. “And the wagons had to go very slowly through the fields since the road was bombed out.”
Minghua 123 had also stopped at a village to refill canteens, a short break that had turned into a long rest. Daylight showed them a flat road and fields of newly harvested wheat, the short bristly stalks of pale gold standing straight up from the brown earth. The travelers walked over a small bridge, its stone balustrades carved in cloud and dragon patterns, a relic of a time when the village had been more prosperous. The stream below the bridge was just a thin trickle.
The long hours of walking had sapped their strength. Most of the students complained about blisters. What bothered Lian most was the ache of her hip bones in their sockets. Meirong plodded beside her, humming a tune Lian didn’t recognize. Meirong’s snub nose and habit of tying her hair in pigtails made her look much younger than her classmates. She was outgoing to the point of being occasionally annoying, in contrast to L
ian, whose reputation was one of shyness, reserved to the point of being unapproachable. Or so Meirong informed her.
It wasn’t shyness that made Lian keep her distance, though. Her life had been one of wary evasion. She’d followed her mother’s lead, avoiding entanglements with people who might ask too many questions. Silence, discretion. A pretense of shyness, timidity. Her mother had schooled her in caution. She was more skilled at deflecting than befriending.
But that was before the easy camaraderie of Minghua 123, where keeping to oneself was impossible. With only twenty female students in the group, Lian was drawn into their circle. Her fellow students offered drinks from their canteens if they saw she’d taken her last sip and smilingly made room on a cart if there was an opportunity to ride, all without any hint of condescension or expectation of a favor to return.
Then there was Meirong’s frequent and unaffected laughter, her sly humor. “I hope good grades are contagious,” she’d remarked, “because if I walk beside a scholarship award winner for a thousand miles, surely mine will improve.”
The cart in front of them stopped, jolting Lian out of her thoughts. Beside her, Meirong tripped and swore under her breath. From behind came panicked cries, the braying of donkeys being led off the road, the rumble of wagons rolling into the fields. Above it all, they heard an airplane approaching from the east, its engines droning; then it appeared out of the glare of the rising sun.
“Run!” Meirong gasped. She slid down the embankment and sprinted away into the rows of wheat. There was no shelter to be had between the rows of short stalks, but at least if everyone scattered, they wouldn’t give the enemy a single easy target.
Lian raced after her, rucksack bouncing on her back, frozen feet slipping down the embankment. She fell facedown, hard-packed earth slamming the breath out of her.
“Here, let me help you up,” a man’s voice said. Still gasping for air, Lian looked up at Liu Shaoming’s smile. Behind him, Sparrow Chen scanned the sky, one hand shading her eyes as she squinted at the horizon.
Shao pulled Lian to her feet and practically lifted her into the field. He set her down beside an irrigation ditch. Dry stems of wheat prickled her backside and stabbed at her hands.
“We’ll be safe here,” Sparrow said. She had a quiet voice, but Lian heard it very clearly despite the approaching rumble. It was sweetly pitched and cut through the throb of engines. It was the voice of someone Lian felt she could trust.
“Into the ditch, please,” Shao said, as calmly as if they were entering a classroom.
Obediently she rolled into the trench. Farther along, Meirong was already crouched in the ditch beside some other students. They all sat with knees tucked, faces turned to the sky. Shao flashed Lian his bright smile again. She stifled a gulp and told herself her heart was racing because of the advancing Japanese airplane. Even though his uniform was covered in dust, it was evident that Shao’s jacket was beautifully tailored. Cuffs of fine, cream-colored wool cloth peeped out from the jacket’s sleeves. He radiated wealth and confidence. As if he were only sitting in the trench to keep her company. As if tragedy had never touched him and never would.
Everyone had fallen silent, as if they could hide behind silence. The reverberating drone had turned into a roar. Lian squeezed her eyes shut at the sharp, rapid reports that could’ve been strings of firecrackers going off. But these were not the cheerful percussive snaps heard throughout the streets during New Year festivities. These were menacing and purposeful.
Then it stopped. The sound of engines faded slowly, too slowly. And then the skies were quiet. Lian opened her eyes as voices called out, the shouts of families trying to find each other.
“Thank you for getting me off the road,” she said, turning to Shao and Sparrow.
But Shao was already out of the ditch, jogging across the field toward the road. Sparrow had also climbed up and put a hand down to help Lian. She was slightly shorter, slightly thinner than Lian. In that moment, Sparrow looked almost pretty, her eyes bright, cheeks flushed pink from excitement. Lian wondered if anyone ever looked past the servant to see the girl.
Did Shao ever look?
Sparrow scrambled up the embankment and onto the road. Meirong was already there, waving at Lian to join her. Sparrow bent down to help an old woman collect food that had fallen out of a basket. She picked up some cabbages and turned to put them in the old woman’s basket. Clouds drifted across the horizon, momentarily dimming the early morning light.
And for a moment, instead of Sparrow’s waifish features, Lian saw an exquisitely beautiful young woman. A woman whose figure gleamed with a faint and barely perceptible glow. Something prickled at the back of Lian’s memory, something from a dream. Then the layer of cloud shifted, and sunrise once again flooded the landscape. Lian blinked and all she saw was Sparrow, continuing up the road to join the rest of Minghua 123.
A perfectly ordinary servant girl. Who was running as if something terrible had happened.
EVERYONE FROM MINGHUA 123 seemed all right. The university’s wagons and carts were back on the road and donkeys were being harnessed to their traces. A few of the handbarrows had tipped over but were being pushed upright. Lian and Meirong heard snatches of relieved conversation and couldn’t see any casualties. They slowed to a walk.
Then, as they got closer to the last cart at the end of the Minghua caravan, Meirong tightened her grip on Lian’s hand. The road beyond the last cart was pockmarked with bullet holes. The small stone bridge had been strafed. Students stood in a circle, some staring down, others looking away. Gaps between their legs revealed a figure lying still on the ground. A dark-blue uniform tunic and trousers, black shoes. A smear of blood. Before Lian and Meirong could get much closer, someone stepped in front of them.
“You don’t need to see this,” Shao said, gripping Lian’s shoulder. Shorty Ho stood beside him, helping block their view.
“Who is it?” Meirong whispered. “Is he . . . ?”
“Mr. Shen is dead. The only one of us harmed,” Shorty said.
Lian had known the teaching assistant only slightly, a polite nodding acquaintance when they passed each other in the halls. She hardly felt Meirong’s hands clutched tightly around her arm, barely heard her friend speaking to Shao and Shorty. The victims they had seen on the road a few hours ago had been nameless and faceless. But now the dead had a name. Mr. Shen had been one of their own.
“Mr. Shen is the first of us killed by the Japanese.” Shao’s voice was rough with barely controlled hatred. Lian flinched even though she knew the hostility wasn’t directed at her.
“The Japanese plane strafed the bridge and kept going,” Shorty said. “Luckily for us it was targeting the bridge and turned back before reaching the end of our convoy. But Mr. Shen had fallen behind.”
The circle of students parted as Professor Kang arrived, bringing with him two of the university’s laborers. The two men wrapped Shen’s body in a tarp, then lifted the bundle onto a handcart. One of them took the cart’s handles and with a nod to the professor, pulled it up the road.
The professor said something to Sparrow, who had been standing to one side, not joining in, not moving. She nodded and walked away. Sparrow looked shaken, but then, so were they all.
“What will happen to the . . . to Mr. Shen?” Shao asked the professor.
“We’ll be at Chuanjiao Monastery very soon,” Professor Kang said. “I’ll ask the monks to look after the burial.”
“We’re moving again,” Shorty said. “The carts and wagons are rolling. Shao, let’s go.”
Sparrow returned carrying a small chalkboard with ropes looped through holes at the corners. Professor Kang knelt on the ground to write, his strokes quick and precise.
“Second-year literature students, please gather around,” Professor Kang said. His voice was soft, but they all hastened to obey. Kang cleared his throat, then recited what he had written.
Though rainfall bends the river-grass, a bird is singing,
While ghosts of the Six Dynasties pass like a dream
Around the Forbidden City, under weeping willows
Which loom for three miles along the misty moat.
“‘A Nanking Landscape’ by the Tang Dynasty poet Wei Zhuang,” he said. “Learn it by heart and consider its meaning. When you write your essays, remember the politics of his time.”
He put his arms through the ropes and shouldered the chalkboard. They continued their journey, the elderly professor walking in front of his students, the day’s lesson hanging down his back.
Chapter 7
Dispersed through the halls of Chuanjiao Monastery, Minghua 123 settled down to sleep. Professor Kang knew the students were distraught over the group’s first casualty, but at the moment he had another duty. He kept vigil on a bench outside the room where monks were wrapping Shen’s body. They would stay for a night at the monastery and hold a funeral for the graduate student.
He tried to read the book on his lap, Tales of the City Gods. While the Legends contained many tales of obscure deities, some long forgotten and no longer worshipped, City Gods did not fall into this sad category. Each city had its own much-venerated City God, the god who protected the city’s boundaries and all who lived within. City God temples were always busy, drifts of incense smoke rising to the murmur of prayers for the city’s prosperity, for the health and safety of its citizens. He turned the pages and found the story he was looking for, “The Nanking City God’s Wife.”
A doctor had an only child, a beautiful daughter. One night she dreamed she had been given in marriage to Nanking’s City God. In the morning the young woman told her family about the dream and they were frightened for her. When she died in her sleep that night, they knew the City God had claimed her as his wife. The good people of Nanking honored her with an altar in the rear hall of the City God’s temple.
He closed the book when the Star sat on the bench beside him. “We’ll leave right after the funeral service,” Professor Kang said. “Right now, the least I can do is show respect while the monks make preparations.”