Pearl of China

by Anchee Min

  However, Rouge was confident. She wrote letters to important people and made personal visits to the governor’s office, the police bureau, and the passport agency. She didn’t hesitate to play the role of the Communist Party boss that she was.

  “Willow Yee’s trip to America will build a bridge between China and America,” Rouge insisted. “Chin-kiang strives to be a model town when carrying out Deng Xiaoping’s new foreign policy. Willow Yee is a loyal citizen whose only motive is to serve her country. As the party leader, I suggest that we make use of her before she expires.”

  I went to Carie’s grave and collected a bag of dirt before my departure for America. I packed the bag next to my medicines in my suitcase. Although I suffered only age-related stiffness, the doctors were worried. They didn’t trust that I was fit to travel long distances.

  I knew I would make the trip easily. I had been living my life to see Pearl one last time. Rouge was concerned that the American consulate wouldn’t grant me a visa due to my age. She was right. The consul requested proof of health insurance. We didn’t understand what “insurance” meant and had never heard of it. The consul suggested that we purchase a temporary policy for traveling in America. When Rouge received the estimated cost, she was stunned. “The cost of a three-month insurance policy is more than a Chinese person earns in ten years!”

  Like Papa, Rouge felt no guilt about taking risks. She redoubled her efforts and pulled strings. She located Dick’s former prisonmate, General Chu, who not only was the new head of the national congress but also knew the American consul general himself. My visa was instantly granted. While Rouge confirmed the last details of my trip, I walked the hills, with the help of my grandchildren, where Pearl and I had once played. My legs were shaky, but I was happy.

  I didn’t have to imagine Pearl’s American home, because Rouge showed me the photos sent by the Sino-American Friendship Association. It was beautiful. The place was a complex of houses against green rolling hills and blue sky. I couldn’t wait to see the interior. I imagined the rooms filled with tasteful furniture and decorated with Western art. Pearl would have a library, for she had always been a lover of books. I also imagined that she would have a garden. She had inherited Carie’s passion for nature. The garden would be filled with plants whose names I wouldn’t know, but it would be beautiful.

  Where would she lie? I wondered. Growing up in Chin-kiang, she was familiar with the concept of feng shui. But would she apply the concept to her own resting place? After all, she had lived in America as long as she had in China. I wondered what her grave would look like. What would she surround herself with? Would she have a tombstone? Would there be carvings on the stone?

  I intended to conduct a little ceremony after I arrived. I would light incense handmade by her friends in Chin-kiang. I would then spread the soil collected from her mother’s grave on her grave. I wanted to see the spirits of Carie and Pearl reunited. It would make me happy if I could accomplish only that.

  CHAPTER 35

  In Washington, D.C., the Chinese consul, a handsome young man dressed in a Western suit, was upset with me. He had a television crew waiting to document my journey, but I insisted on going alone.

  It took a few days for the consul to accept my terms. He bought me a train ticket to Philadelphia. He told me that he had also made a reservation for me at a local inn. I was excited and nervous. I could barely sit still after I got on the train. The landscape passing my window fascinated me. Springtime in America seemed to carry a more masculine yang element than southern China’s feminine yin. America’s mountains and trees were in contrast to Chin-kiang’s rolling bamboo-covered hills and swaying willows. If I were to describe the landscape using a Chinese brush, I would paint America with big strokes and splashes of ink, and I would paint China with hair-thin lines in elaborate detail.

  I kept thinking of the time Pearl told me about her first trip to America. She was shocked that not everyone had black hair. She was fascinated at the different-colored people. She had never considered that she was not Chinese until that moment.

  I wondered what it had been like for her to return to America and to be with her own people. Except for her face and the color of her hair, she was a complete foreigner. Beneath her skin, she was Chinese. I wondered how she had changed from the Pearl I had known and what she had looked like after she had grown old.

  The old lady sitting opposite me had a petite figure. She was fair-skinned with blonde hair. Had Pearl looked like her when she was older? What did my friend have to change about her Chinese self to fit in to American society? It was possible for her to change her tone of voice, but what about her tastes and views that she had formed in China as a child, a teen, and an adult? Pearl once said that she felt enriched, like she owned more than one world. I liked that idea and envied her.

  The moment I checked in to the inn, I received a phone call from the Chinese consul. He wanted to make sure that everything was going well. He suggested that I rest and visit the Pearl Buck House the next morning. I thanked him and said that I couldn’t wait. He then suggested that I leave my luggage at the inn. Over the phone, the consul admitted that he was a fan of Pearl Buck, and that he believed that Pearl had honored the Chinese people. He felt terrible about Madame Mao using her influence to have Pearl’s request for a Chinese visa rejected. “Madame Mao was a mad dog,” he concluded.

  The consul told me that he had learned from American books and newspapers that Pearl had been wearing a brightly colored, embroidered Chinese robe prior to her death.

  “It was said that for weeks Pearl sat in a large chair facing east staring out her window,” he said. “I wonder if what she was looking at is still there. I am curious about the final image she was seeing.”

  What had she been thinking? I wanted to know too. Would it be thoughts of her childhood? Would I be in them? To survive, I had been escaping into my past for decades. I often recalled the popcorn man, the way Pearl pushed and pulled the bellows while I rotated the cannon. It was easy to close my eyes and see a vivid image of the popcorn man putting his dirt-colored cotton bag over the cannon while Pearl and I covered our ears. The big bang was always real and loud to my ears. I could even imagine the smell of the delicious popped corn and see Pearl’s smile as we stuffed handfuls into our mouths.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when I first stepped inside the Pearl Buck House. I stopped just inside the door and examined the space. The room was exactly as I had imagined it. Friendly Caucasian women greeted me. They seemed to be accustomed to receiving non-English-speaking visitors. They suggested that I join the last house tour of the day. I was led to what was called the “Chinese view.”

  I held my breath, afraid that it would vanish.

  I could no longer hear what the guide was saying. It sounded faraway. I was in shock. The view on the other side of the glass looked like Chin-kiang. I felt like I had stepped into one of my dreams.

  There was a gemlike pond cradled by rolling hills. White clouds drifted across the blue sky. Oriental maple trees stood by the pond like giant brown mushrooms. Mandarin ducks waddled about. Baby ducks followed their mothers and played in the water.

  Like Carie, who had created an American garden in the middle of Chin-kiang, Pearl had created a Chinese garden around her American home. I remembered Carie’s struggle in growing American roses and dogwood. She helped the plants adapt to the southern Chinese climate and had to fight fungus and diseases. Carie’s roses would produce buds but no flowers. She used soap water and vinegar to kill the bugs and she composted her own soil with wood chips. She held a garden show when her roses finally bloomed.

  To what lengths did Pearl go to surround herself with the memories of China? Traces of her effort were everywhere. The rocks laid and plants arranged were according to classic Chinese paintings. I imagined Pearl explaining Chinese aesthetics to her gardeners. I smiled thinking that she might have ended up confusing them.

  The tour moved to Pearl’s green
house, which was filled with camellia trees. Although it was a large greenhouse, the camellias were crowded. It looked more like a garden nursery. The tour guide said that Pearl Buck was determined to see camellias blossom in the middle of Pennsylvania’s winter. She insisted that it could be done because she had seen camellia trees blossom in the winters in China.

  Indeed, camellias thrived during the winter season in southern China. Their blooming branches could be seen on country hills and city streets. Chinese families loved camellias in their living rooms as ornaments. Camellias were among the most popular subjects for Chinese artists.

  “The gardener suggested replacing the dying camellias with American winter plants, but Pearl refused,” the tour guide continued. “Pearl insisted on her Chinese camellias. They inspired her to write.”

  I learned that Pearl had tried to grow Chinese tea trees, lotus, and water lilies, but they had all failed to survive. Who would understand that this was Pearl’s way of going back to her home in China?

  Pearl’s surviving camellias were mature trees now. There were eighteen of them in the greenhouse. They were cramped. They were only two feet apart when it should have been ten. The camellias had run out of space to grow. The view amused me, because I could tell that my friend had been truly desperate. Like a Chinese, she was so in love with camellias that she acquired every variety and color and filled the greenhouse with them. Judging by the size of their trunks, the trees were more than twenty years old. I imagined my friend watering them in the morning. I could see her running around trying to clear weeds, loosen the soil, and spread fertilizers. She loved to use her hands. Her fingernails would look like Chinese peasants’, filled with earth.

  The tour showed the visitors that Pearl Buck constantly remodeled her house. In order to create a Chinese-style kitchen, she tore down walls and rearranged studs and beams. She had a large wooden table made, with long benches on each side.

  “The kitchen used to be four bedrooms,” the guide said, pointing to where the walls used to be. “Pearl changed things around because she wanted a spacious kitchen.” When she was a child, the kitchen was Pearl’s playground. It was where she spent time listening to stories told by Wang Ah-ma and other servants. It was also where she played hide-and-seek with me.

  I was impressed by the door design. It was carved with Chinese characters that said Precious Gem, which was the Chinese translation of Pearl’s name. I didn’t see American arts and crafts. I also didn’t see pictures of Jesus Christ. Instead there was Chinese art and other objects throughout the house. Beautiful indigo carpets, Chinese glass bottles painted with cloud-patterned symbols of luck. Chinese brush-and-ink paintings and calligraphy hung on the walls. Under a single-stemmed lotus was a line from a classic Chinese poem: “Rise out of dirt she remains pure and noble.” The tour guide pointed at the roofed hallway that connected the main house to the cottage and said, “Pearl told her workmen that the Dowager Empress of China had a roofed walkway in the Summer Palace.”

  I wondered how Pearl felt when she received the set of Chinese nest boxes—a gift from President Nixon after he returned from China. Pearl must have been pleased and heartbroken at the same time. Did the gift give her hope? Did she still believe that she would one day return to the land of her dreams? Or did the gift make her think that there would never be another opportunity?

  My eyes caught the shelf where Pearl’s books lay. Among them was the Dickens novel Pearl had held under her arm when we first met. I would have pulled the book out and kissed its cover if there hadn’t been a do not touch sign.

  In the bedroom I saw Carie’s sewing box laid on the table. I was so impacted by the sight of it that my entire being was thrown back in time.

  “The soil is prepared and you don’t plant!” I could hear Absalom yelling at Carie. He wanted her to help convert people when they came to thank her for healing their children with Western medicine. Absalom couldn’t get anyone to listen to him because he was seen as a crazy man. He blamed Carie and Pearl for not making their best efforts. “Christians are not Christ!” he told them constantly. Sewing was Carie’s way to escape Absalom. She sewed quietly while Absalom exploded.

  Although Pearl defended her father in public, she told me that Absalom deserved his defeats. Pearl couldn’t bear her mother’s sadness, especially when she saw Carie’s tears soaking the cloth she was sewing. “Absalom’s flaw is too big for him to overcome,” she said. “Mother and I are afraid of helping him.”

  CHAPTER 36

  If it hadn’t been for the heavy bag I was carrying, I wouldn’t have believed that I was walking on American soil. It was early evening. The tour was over and the other visitors were gone. The air was brisk and the sky was turning dark. The trees and earth were blending into one gray color like shadows. It was clear that Pearl had bought this house and the land around it because the place had reminded her of Chin-kiang. For the rest of her life, this was the China she lived with.

  How many times had she walked the path where I stood?

  Darkness had almost settled in when I exited the house. I went on looking for Pearl’s grave, but it was getting hard to see. I moved like a ghost following the barely visible path. The side road led me back to the inn where I was staying.

  The innkeeper, a middle-aged lady, asked if I’d had a pleasant visit.

  “I missed seeing Pearl’s grave,” I told her.

  “You must have walked right by it,” she said. “It’s easy to miss.”

  “There wasn’t a sign, or did I miss that too?” Since arriving in the United States, I had learned that Americans were good with signs.

  “Well, it was the way Pearl Buck wanted it.” The lady took out her keys and led me to my room. “Would you like me to book you a cab for tomorrow morning? What time is your train or flight?”

  “I won’t leave until I see Pearl’s grave,” I said.

  The lady looked at me and I could see the questions in her eyes.

  “I have some business at the grave,” I tried to explain, hoping that my English would make sense to her.

  “What kind of business?” She sounded cautious, a little suspicious.

  I unzipped my backpack and took out the incense and the bag of dirt. I made a gesture of sprinkling dirt and put my palms together under my chin.

  She didn’t seem to understand but said, “Here, let me draw you a map.”

  I had been awake for a long time waiting for the dawn. At first light, I got up. I followed the inn lady’s map carefully. After turning off the main road, I went down a small dirt path.

  The sun outlined the mountains and trees and coated the leaves gold. The view was unfamiliar yet I felt I had been here before. I could hear the sound of my feet moving through the sandy dirt. After a while, I thought I heard the sound of running water. Was it my imagination, because Chin-kiang was known for its creeks? I didn’t expect myself to be missing home, not yet. But no, I wasn’t imagining the sound of water. Here it was, in front of me, under my feet, a running creek.

  I decided to inspect the creek and then continue my search for the grave.

  The sunlight played across the water’s surface. I followed a path along the creek as it curled into the hills. On the far side of the creek were giant pine trees.

  A view opened up. In front of me was a stand of bamboo—the same kind of golden bamboo we had in Chin-kiang.

  Then I saw it, my friend’s grave, hidden among the bamboo.

  My strength fled me. I dropped to my knees.

  There was no English. The grave had three Chinese characters carved in the stone. , meaning Pearl Sydenstricker.

  My eyes filled with tears of happiness, and this time I did not fight them. I understood Pearl’s intent. Her roots in China hadn’t died. China was the final thing on her mind. China was what she took with her to eternity. It was impossible for her to remove her love, for she, in her own words, “had known the fullness of such love, which was absolute in height and depth.” A Westerner wouldn’t underst
and the meaning of these Chinese characters, but Pearl didn’t care. No wonder the innkeeper had said that the grave was easy to miss.

  I felt as if Pearl were greeting me. I could hear her voice. “How was your journey?”

  The three Chinese characters were Pearl’s signature stamp, given to her by her Chinese tutor, Mr. Kung. Pearl once explained her name to me when we were young. The first letter was pronounced Sy, as in Sydenstricker. Out of many same-tone-sounding characters, Mr. Kung chose the one with a “mansion, which has a grand roof,” and a “baby” playing underneath.

  “My last name in Chinese means ‘a darling doll in the mansion.’”

  Pearl was proud as she explained. “Do you like it?”

  “I do,” I remembered replying, although I couldn’t read. I tried to hide this by examining the shape of the first character, . “Look,” I said.

  “This is not an ordinary mansion. It is the symbol of money.”

  “That’s not money,” my friend laughed. “That’s the people shape.”

  “Four of them under the roof!”

  “Four workers. My father said that we are all the Lord’s workers.”

  “The baby is big-bellied,” I cried.

  “She loves food!” Pearl laughed.

  The second Chinese character, , was the picture of an oyster, but when combined with the third character, , the meaning changed into Pearl.

  My friend had chosen her final resting place beside the creek on purpose. The grave faced east, demonstrating that she had followed the rule of feng shui. The surrounding garden was walled in by pines and cypresses. Besides the bamboo, there were maples, evergreen bushes, and flowers. Wild lilies were scattered alongside the creek. There was a seemingly dead old tree that looked as if it had fallen across the creek. Its trunk was about two feet in diameter and it was rotten and hollow inside. What amazed me was that the tree had a lush green canopy. In the center of the rotten trunk, a young branch was healthy and robust. Pearl must have liked this tree. It fit a line from a Chinese poem, “Spring shows its power in rotten wood and dying trees.”