Dreams of Joy

by Lisa See

  “Much better!” Hop-li exclaims.

  “But I can’t see,” Z.G. complains.

  “But you look a lot more like my brother,” Hop-li says.

  “In our commune, only men drive trucks,” my father explains. “Your two cousins go everywhere together. The younger cousin—”

  “Comes with me on every run, and the border guards are used to him. They think he’s jittery because his eyesight is so terrible. Now his nervousness can be a disguise for you.”

  The cousin gives Z.G. an identity card. When I see it, I understand why the cousin was so particular in getting Z.G. ready. It’s not a particularly good physical match, but then I remember Sam’s papers to get into America. He didn’t look much like the boy in that photo either. The American inspectors didn’t catch the discrepancy until many years later, when the photo was used as part of the proof of Sam’s illegal paper-son status.

  “What about us?” I ask.

  “You’ll ride in the back of the truck. We’ll hide you when we get close to the border.”

  “Will it work?”

  My father blinks. “Maybe. I hope so.”

  We cross the field to the trucks. Both have open beds with wood slats on the sides. The bed of one is filled with pigs wrapped in straw matting and separate baskets of piglets. The other is piled with barrels, jars, and bulging burlap sacks. We climb into the back of the second truck. My father and Hop-li drive. I worry about Ta-ming’s stomach, but he seems all right, staring out through the slats as the countryside rolls by. Soon, we turn onto a paved road. The sun stays to our left as we head south. I wish Dun were with us, and I pray that he’s all right. Fear and sorrow have me in a merciless grip. I take Joy’s hand and we hang on to each other.

  The closer we get to the border, the more traffic there is—wheelbarrows; pushcarts; donkey-, mule-, and water buffalo–pulled wagons; bicycles piled high with merchandise; trucks of every size; and people with baskets of produce strapped to their backs, slung over their shoulders on poles, or balanced on their heads. Our two trucks turn off the main road, head down an alley, and stop.

  My father comes to the back, and we all jump down to the ground. The men pull one of the barrels off the back of the truck. My dad pries open the top. It’s filled with dried sea horses. He scoops out the top layer to reveal a hidden compartment, and then he leans down to Ta-ming. “You need to get in the barrel and you need to stay very quiet.”

  Ta-ming looks up at me and begins to shake. He doesn’t have his violin for comfort as he did when he had to hide in the trunk of Z.G.’s car. But that’s not our only problem. Samantha is to be put in a basket with some piglets and driven across the border in the pig truck.

  Joy shakes her head. “I’m not putting my baby in a basket with a bunch of baby pigs.”

  “You’ll have to if you want her to get across,” my father says, as obdurate as my daughter.

  “Then we’ll stay,” Joy snaps back.

  I put a hand on her arm. “As mothers, we sometimes have to do things that are really hard, really against our natures,” I tell her.

  “I won’t put my baby in there,” Joy repeats.

  “The guards at the checkpoint don’t like to inspect live animals, because they’re smelly and dirty. And, if the baby starts to cry, they’ll be less likely to hear her if she’s with the pigs,” my father says, trying to be helpful, but these are about the worst things he could have said.

  Once before I heard Joy and Z.G. talk in a way I didn’t understand. I turn to him now, needing his help.

  “Joy, do you remember a few days ago when we were in the studio and we talked about the differences between love for a country, the love you feel for a lover, and all-encompassing love?” he asks.

  Joy nods, but she’s so damn stubborn I don’t think she’s really listening to him.

  “But what about the love you feel for yourself and for your child?” he asks. “Don’t you owe it to her to see her to a happy future?”

  We watch Joy’s face as she considers this. She’s just where I was yesterday in the taxi. I didn’t want to leave Dun, but I had to.

  “Can I at least be in the truck with her?” she asks at last.

  “You’re willing to get in a basket?” The cousin looks at her like she’s crazy.

  “We don’t have much time,” Joy responds briskly. “We must get out.”

  Joy puts her sleeping baby in a basket with the piglets. Little snouts poke through the open sides.

  Ta-ming has gone completely white. I can’t think of anything to say or do that will make him feel better. Then I remember my mother. I take the pouch with the three sesame seeds, three beans, and three coins from around my neck and put it around Ta-ming’s.

  “This will protect you,” I say. “You’ll only be in there for a short time. I’ll talk to you the whole way, but you must remain very quiet.”

  This child has been through so much, yet he obediently climbs into the barrel and hugs his legs. The false top is put on, the sea horses layered on top, and the barrel sealed.

  Joy crawls inside a larger pig basket and is loaded into the middle of the truck. The basket with Samantha and the piglets is placed next to her, and then other pig baskets are pushed up against their sides and piled on top. I climb up on the truck with Ta-ming’s barrel. I step into a burlap sack, hundreds of small snakes dried into neat coils are thrown on top of me, and then the bag is tied shut. I hear three doors slam and the engines start. The truck with Joy, Samantha, and Z.G. leaves first, and then the truck I’m in lurches forward.

  I’m in total darkness, covered with dried snakes, petrified. I talk to Taming, hoping he can hear me. I can’t see anything and can only intuit what’s happening from what I feel and hear. The truck begins to stop, wait, roll forward a few feet, and then stop again. I hear water. That must be the Sham Chun River, the border between mainland China and Hong Kong’s New Territories, which means we’re already on the Lo Wu Bridge. My father was right. This is a relatively easy crossing; the line moves fairly quickly.

  I hear a man, presumably a guard, say, “Please produce your travel documents for inspection.” I’m scared, but I smile. The truck with Joy and the baby was ahead of us. Whatever happens now, my daughter and granddaughter are out. Z.G. too.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while, Comrade Chin,” the guard says to my father.

  “We’ve been busy in the commune,” my father replies.

  “What are you bringing across the border today?”

  My chest constricts, my stomach pushes up against my lungs, my heart beats so hard I can hear it.

  “The usual. We’re on our way to the wholesale medicine market.”

  “Ah, yes. All right then. I’ll see you on your way back later today.”

  The truck’s gears grind and we roll across the bridge. The truck makes a few turns to the left and then a right. Finally, we stop. The truck door opens. In a minute, my bag is untied. I stand and brush the dried snakes from my body. I pop open the top of Ta-ming’s barrel and pull him out. He’s ghost white and trembling. I hug him. “We made it,” I tell him.

  I help Ta-ming off the truck. My legs are wobbly from fear and from being scrunched in the burlap sack. Up ahead, the cousin and Z.G. are still moving the pig baskets. I hurry to them to help. In minutes, Joy and the baby—a little scratched up but still sound asleep—are on the roadway with us. We’re so emotionally and physically exhausted that we don’t cheer or hug each other. Still, I feel relief as three years of worry and stress begin to melt from my body. We’re all in a bit of a daze, and it will take a long time for everything to sink in, but we’re out. We might—and here’s a thought that would have been unthinkable even a few hours ago—get to May’s hotel in time for lunch.

  “Here,” my father says. He presses a satchel into my hand. “This is for you and May. These are photographs and some things I wrote about your mother, what happened … everything.”

  “I wish we had more time,” I say.
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  “I wish we did too,” my father says. “Maybe one day we can all be together. Maybe one day you can bring May here and we can meet. Do you think the two of you might like that?”

  I nod. I don’t have words for what I feel.

  Then, to the cousin, he says, “We need to hurry. The earlier we get to market, the better prices we’ll get.” He gives me a last look before climbing back in his truck. “Continue on that road to the left. Pretty soon you’ll see a bus stop. The bus will take you into Kowloon. Once there, you can take the ferry to the Hong Kong side of the bay.”

  WHEN WE REACH downtown Hong Kong, the busyness of the international port, the women dressed in vibrant hues, the white buildings against the emerald green slopes, and even the openness of the sky make everything seem brighter, lighter, freer. We walk up the hill and then along Hollywood Road past little antiques stands, where even now old beautiful-girl posters of May and me flap in the breeze, waiting for tourists to buy them and take them home. The proprietor at the hotel doesn’t recognize me, but she gives us May’s room number anyway. We walk up several flights of stairs, down a dingy corridor, and knock on the door. No one answers.

  I knock again and call, “May, it’s me, Pearl.”

  Almost as one, our little group steps back as the door opens. But it’s not my sister. It’s Dun.

  Ta-ming is the first to react, running forward, squealing “Baba!”—the first time he has said this—and being lifted into Dun’s arms. And then we’re all crowding forward, pushing Dun back into the room, hugging him, patting him, still not believing he’s here. I think I can have no emotion left in me, yet my feelings are so very big, their borders can’t be seen. I put my arms around him and hold tight, never wanting to let go of him again. My eyes brim with tears of joy.

  “How?” I’m finally able to ask.

  “I had all the papers I needed. I proved who I was. I said I was to go to Hong Kong for family reunification. You want to know what they told me at the border? I was one less person to feed.”

  “What about Tao?” Joy asks.

  Dun smiles wickedly. “He was angry, but there was nothing he could do.” He turns to Z.G. “It’s a good thing you got out.” Then, to Ta-ming, who is eye to eye with Dun in his arms, he says, “I brought you something. Look.” And there on the table next to the telephone is Ta-ming’s violin. “I brought everything with me, not that we need it now. But I have something you might like, Joy.” He goes to a corner and picks up a cardboard tube. “It’s your painting. They said there was no room for your bourgeois thoughts in China.”

  Joy takes the tube from his hands and shakes her head in … disbelief? Wonder? Gratitude?

  “Where is May?” I ask.

  “She’s at the American Embassy. We’ll all need papers, won’t we? She thought she’d get started on that. She’s pretty amazing, that sister of yours.”

  We go back outside to wait for May. Maybe we should have taken showers, because we all look ragged, filthy, like the poorest refugees. She won’t be looking for us dressed as we are, but none of us want to risk missing the reunion. We sit on the hotel steps, chatting, happy. Z.G. can’t see very far, but I can tell he’s anxious.

  I’m the first to spot May. She’s walking up the hill, her head down, watching where she steps in her improbably high stilettos. She wears a dress with a full skirt, cinched at the waist with a skinny belt, and a short jacket with three-quarter-length sleeves in matching fabric. A funny round hat sits on top of her head. Her pink-gloved hands carry gaily painted shopping bags.

  I stand. The others look up at me and then down the street. They let me go forward first. May glances up and sees me. My sister. I thought I’d never see her again. We hurry toward each other and embrace. There’s so much I want to say, but somehow all I can do is extend my arm toward Joy and the baby as they approach. Is this a reunion with a favorite aunt or a favorite mother? As Joy shows Sam to my sister, I know I don’t have to worry about that kind of thing anymore. My daughter will return to Los Angeles knowing she has two mothers who love her.

  And then there is Z.G. Joy meets my eyes. Silent communication exists between sisters, but it’s even stronger between mothers and daughters. Joy pulls away and I touch May’s elbow.

  “We’ve brought someone else,” I say.

  My sister follows my gaze. She sees Dun—a man in an ill-fitting Western-style suit, with his hands balanced protectively on the shoulders of a thin but sweet-faced little boy implausibly holding a violin case. Next to them stands a tall but slim man in grubby clothes, with pants too short, looking a bit like a mole blinded by the light. May’s knees start to buckle, but I hold tight to her elbow to steady her. I walk her the short distance up the hill, hand her to Z.G., and step back. Oh, this is going to be interesting.

  When I left for China three years ago, I thought of something my sister once said to me: everything always returns to the beginning. I was returning home to my roots, to the place where I’d been so ruined as a woman, but where I once again discovered the person I was meant to be—a Dragon of great strength and forgiveness. I found my daughter and through sheer force of will—through the fierceness of the Dragon that my mother always warned me about—brought her out of China. I found Joy—and joy with Dun and Ta-ming. Now I’ll return to what I believe is my true home: America. Miracles are everywhere, and as I watch my sister—forever beautiful, forever my little sister—staring into the eyes of the one man she ever loved, I know that indeed things do return to the beginning. The world opens again, and I see a life of happiness without fear. I gaze at my family—complicated though it may be—and know that fate smiles on us.

  Acknowledgments

  In many ways this novel couldn’t have been written if not for Amy Tan and her wonderful husband, Lou DeMattei, who invited me to go with them to Huangcun Village in Anwei province, where we stayed in a seventeenth-century villa called Zhong Xian Di. They had been invited to the villa by Nancy Berliner, the curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, who brought Yin Yu Tang, another villa from Huangcun, brick by brick to the museum. Ms. Berliner answered numerous questions about life in Huangcun and the villa both today and during the Great Leap Forward by email and in person. Tina Eng, Amy’s sister, also came to Huangcun. Her stories about the Great Leap Forward, what it was like to live in the countryside, her loneliness for her mother, as well as her insightful explanation of hsin yan—heart eye—helped to inform Dreams of Joy. Cecilia Ding, who works for the Village China project, was a wonderful translator, font of information, and traveling companion. Although many of the tragedies that happened in the novel didn’t occur in Huangcun, I wish to thank the many people there who told us their stories, showed us how they live day to day, and gave us wonderful meals, many of which are present in these pages. I’ve changed much of Huangcun’s geography to create Green Dragon Village, but visitors will readily recognize the ancestral temple, the stone bridges, the villa, and the beauty of the landscape.

  In 1960, about 10 million dependents of Overseas Chinese and returned Overseas Chinese lived in China. During the three years of the famine, tens of thousands of Chinese attempted to leave the country. Many were caught and jailed, or died. Then, in 1962, the Chinese government allowed 250,000 to leave China and enter Hong Kong. Some estimates suggest that another 700,000 people had made their way to Guangzhou in hopes of escape. There are no reliable figures for how many succeeded. I want to thank Xinran, whom I met in England, for information on feminine hygiene in China, ghost villages, and how people escape China even to this day; Jeffrey Wasserstrom for information on Shanghai, and also for introducing me to people who had either lived through the Great Leap Forward or escaped China; Judy Fong Bates, who shared with me family stories of sending money and letters to China when it was closed. Others—in China and the United States—told me tales of their experiences during the Great Leap Forward, how they communicated with relatives when the PRC was closed, and all the ways that they
or their parents left China in those days. Although they prefer to remain nameless, I want them to know how grateful I am to them for sharing their stories with me.

  I am indebted to Pan Ling, Hanchao Lu, and Simon Winchester for their writings on Shanghai. Special shout-outs go to Spencer Dodington, an architect living in Shanghai who restores art deco buildings, and Eric Zhang, who knows much about Hongkew and off-the-beaten-track sights, for each taking me around the city. For the history of Chinese propaganda posters, I want to express my appreciation for the works of Melissa Chiu, Reed Darmon, Duo Duo, Stefan Landsberger, Ellen Johnston Liang, Anchee Min, Michael Wolf, and Zhen Shentian, but the most important source for me in terms of art was Maria Galikowski’s Art and Politics in China. I give thanks to Ye Xiaoqing for her scholarship on the Dianshizhai Pictorial and Shanghai urban life; Derek Bodde, Edward John Hardy, George Ernest Morrison, Reverend H. V. Noyes, and Richard Joseph Smith for their written observations on the reverence for lettered paper; Theodora Lau for her encyclopedic knowledge of the Chinese zodiac; Patricia Buckley Ebrey, whose collection Chinese Civilization and Society gave me insights into the correct handling of love, marriage, and family problems in the early years of the People’s Republic of China; Liz Rawlings, who invited me to tea with Consul General Bea Camp at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai; and Mike Hearn, curator in the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for his fabulous private tour (again with Amy Tan) of the collection. Careful readers will notice that Madame Garnett had one t in her name in Shanghai Girls and two t’s in her name in this novel. I want to thank Trish Stuebing, Eleanora Garnett’s daughter-in-law, who caught the mistake and has since written to me many wonderful stories of this Russian countess, dancer, dress designer, and all-round impressive woman.