Pau Pau instructed her to hand over the shopping bag of stuff they had brought as gifts: See’s candies, cartons of Marlboros, and clothing specifically labeled Made in the U.S.A. Pau Pau and the cousin talked in a serious kind of medium-level yelling, while Lindsey stood and looked at the ground. She had hoped for fragrant tea, perhaps offered on a sandalwood tray, but instead she sat on a ripped, dirty yellow couch as Pau Pau and the cousin retreated to another room, leaving her alone for what seemed like a long while.
Sitting there, she imagined hidden cockroaches watching her. In her head, she told God she wasn’t psychologically equipped to deal with floating phantoms of any kind, and to further distract herself, she tried to think of happy things like marshmallow Peeps at Eastertime or her first pet guinea pig, Eddie Van Owyang.
She applied Purell on her hands and counted the Handi Wipes in her bag. She was relieved when Pau Pau came back into the room and gestured for her to get up and follow her out the door. Lindsey hauled herself up, which was no easy maneuver with her fourteen layers of clothing, and she barely said good-bye to the cousin, who nodded and casually stuffed a big wad of hundred-dollar bills into his pants pocket.
Out on the sidewalk, Pau Pau said, “Sheesh, all they want is money!”
Lindsey ran to keep up. She had anticipated a magical reunion with flowing tears, emotional embraces, and symbolic something or other, just like in a Steven Spielberg movie. But, instead, they were sitting on a grimy bus and Pau Pau was pissed off. Lindsey removed a moist towelette from her purse and disinfected her hands for the fifth time that morning.
Chipping Off the Urban Decay
Located in the west suburbs of Beijing, the Summer Palace used to be the imperial garden of the Qing Dynasty. Lindsey hadn’t planned on liking it much—it was another long and nauseating bus ride.
Out the bus window, she watched the tall, craggy cliffs that resembled Godzilla’s shoulders, as if he were sleeping on the hillside. Fog and mist clung like skeins of white cotton candy to dark, rain-saturated bushes. She stared at the huge boulders jutting sharply like hatchets into the air from the valleys below, and she took in the serene beauty of the jade-colored rice paddies built in steps on the mountainside.
Once they arrived at the Summer Palace, Lindsey realized that here were the pagodas, gazebos, and gardens that she had recognized from all the export porcelains, chinoiserie cabinets, and toile de Jouy upholstery she had seen in decor magazines. But it wasn’t just a showcase diorama at Walt Disney World, it was China. Real China, as her boss might say.
The palace and gardens occupied about seven hundred acres, most of which was water. Despite the throngs of other tourists, she could visualize the paths without the swarms of people. She took off her sunglasses and noticed that the light here seemed different.
With Pau Pau just ahead, Lindsey took in the glassy, still water, which perfectly reflected the many-tiered, ornately painted pagodas. Floating on white stone islands, red lacquered pavilions rose above black waters with lily pads that seemed to float atop like soft, lime-colored snowflakes.
Everywhere the colors were different from California. Milky transparent greens and periwinkle-saturated light contrasted against the metallic bronze beasts with horns and scales, sharp claws, and ferocious faces, guarding the palace gates.
She stepped into a mythical garden. Native foliage rose up in spires from the waters and hung from above like cascades of dry, green feathers. The tranquil sky blended effortlessly into the ancient waters. Bright grasses in the distance looked strangely new against the liquid dream lakes that were completely still. The water seemed determined not to ripple as long as any human gazed at it.
The rustling, round leaves and the swaying spears hanging down were so densely comingled that Lindsey could not tell where one type of tree ended and another began. She saw radiant branches but could not tell where they attached, like extended limbs reaching out in a bustling crowd. It was lightly raining now, and through these mysterious Chinese trees the wind seemed to move differently. It carried a foreign but familiar fragrance.
The scent was one of moisture on stone. It was a taste in the mouth, like dirt and bone, fresh air and rare flowers that bloomed only once before dying; the flavor was like mud and bark mixed with fennel, eucalyptus mixed with paint made from milk. The aromas gave Lindsey a feeling from childhood, but also a feeling of growing older. She thought of glossy gardenia petals crushed between two blackened bricks, and she was suddenly aware of her skeleton.
As Pau Pau shuffled nearby, she observed the scenery silently. In the distance, layer upon layer of faintly lavender mountains became paler and paler until they dissolved into the high azure-gray sky. Temples of painted wood and stone were half-hidden within dark scrubby hills, decorated ornately with carved beams of dragon tails and faces wrapping around geometric balconies. The onyx bricks with white mortar looked charred and dusty compared with the shiny, smooth glaze of the curved rooftiles that jutted out like stacked firecrackers.
The Jade Belt Bridge rose out of the water as a pristine, gleaming white structure notched with die-cut precision. A majestic marble boat with a two-story balcony floated, resembling a Viking or Mayan vessel. The people inside, even in their plain peasant clothes, appeared too modern under the exquisite roof, which looked like tarnished, woven silver.
Pau Pau offered her granddaughter an Oreo cookie from her bag, and Lindsey took it. They gazed together at the turquoise and red boats on Kunming Lake.
“After we leave Shanghai, we try to go to village, because otherwise nothing to eat,” Pau Pau said, continuing the story of her exodus with Gung Gung. “Many days we stay on Pearl River, no wind to carry. We have no shoes, Gung Gung and me, and Lillian so sick, almost dying. There were nine boats, and I saw with my own eye, all other boat get robbed one by one. I was so scare! But my boat is number nine and we very lucky. My boat has one woman, birth baby boy, right there, get born on boat and whoosh! Wind comes and blow our boat away. That boy was good luck lifesaver!”
Lindsey nodded and let Pau Pau continue.
“We arrive safe in Toisan, but you know you cannot eat too fast at first?”
Following Pau Pau’s choppy, non-sequitur style of storytelling was a challenge, but Lindsey listened carefully.
“I have no milk for baby. We need medicine, but have no money. We very lucky Gung Gung have gold watchband. Sold it and buy medicine. Your mommy so weak! Not even moving. When we get medicine, I don’t know what kind, she start to wiggle. Then I able feed her. We wash clothes, eat rice, just little bit meat, teeny-weeny bit. But then, ai-ya, I find out Gung Gung have other family in village!”
Lindsey’s eyes got wider as Pau Pau continued her story, while they strolled down to the Cloud Dispelling Gate and the Pavilion of the Fragrance of Buddha.
“I say, ‘How can?’ but see, he agree to marry other girl only for false document. Old man in village come and say to Gung Gung, ‘Not look good you come here with Shanghai city girl and new baby.’ But Gung Gung say, ‘I only marry your daughter so your grandson can go to U.S. with fake paper.’ But still they don’t like me, so I move with your ma to outskirt of village.”
Lindsey hadn’t known her grandfather had been married before. She felt a displaced kind of anger and wasn’t sure how to react, hearing these details all for the first time. She had only known Gung Gung and Pau Pau as her grandparents, and this story from the past was hard to superimpose onto the limited memories and images she had of them.
“Gung Gung went to Chungking to look for work, leave me outside village. He went to American embassy to ask for help as refugee, and he explain he went George Washington University, had degree in foreign service. At embassy, U.S. government decide to hire him. You know why? Because he know perfect English, and speak five Chinese dialect. He send me money to go Chungking and meet him, but I cannot leave village yet. I have so many illness! I get malaria. You know, from mosquito? Then I have one kind, what you call? Like snake. Body get hard
and you cannot move. Gung Gung’s friend’s wife, she come to help me. She said to cure this kind of illness, then I must burn your hand, burn your middle, you see, like burn snake’s head, middle, and tail. So I let her. She take stick on fire and burn me three times.”
Lindsey had no idea what Pau Pau was talking about. She had never heard of any disease like that but knew better than to be contradictory.
After a while she asked, “So then what happened?”
“Finally I take boat to Chungking with your mommy. Boat has big holes, and I can see water underneath floor. I tie strip of cloth on Lillian so she not fall in. You can fall in and die! And I cannot swim, gee whiz!” She shook her head in exasperation. “I almost die so many times!”
That was all that Pau Pau said for the remainder of their time at the Summer Palace. They hiked around some more and eventually met the rest of the group back at the bus at the designated time. Pau Pau smoked a cigarette, and then they took their seats and settled in for the long ride back to their hotel.
They arrived in Guangzhou the next day around midafternoon. After navigating their way through the bustling airport, they took a shuttle to their hotel and ate a decent meal at a small nearby restaurant. Lindsey was relieved when the waiter brought over a plate of recognizable chicken with some kind of sour melon that she just picked around. As they ate, Pau Pau explained that they would rest that night, and the next morning they were going to take a bus to Toisan village. It was only about a hundred miles away, but the roads were reportedly so bad that it would take about four hours to get there.
They chewed in silence for a while. Lindsey hadn’t figured that traveling was going to be so difficult. No one had told her there would be no Snickers bars in China. Every meal here was unlike the Chinese food at home. She hated squash, which was practically the only vegetable available, and the meat always had a too-hard or too-soft texture, like it had been cooked in wax or came from an animal she wouldn’t want to imagine. And she was so tired, all the time. Thank God Pau Pau was here to wake her up and prepare her Ovaltine and cookie breakfasts.
Nonetheless, she was making adjustments. If anyone had told her a week before that she would be going completely without makeup after a few days in China, she would have balked. She loved her Lancôme lipstick, her Princess Marcella Borghese blush, and, of course, her Great Lash mascara. But now she wore nothing on her face except sunscreen. And her hair was flat. She didn’t really care anymore, she just pulled it back in a ponytail because it was easier.
The next morning, not wanting to look too flashy in Toisan, Lindsey planned to wear a plain white long-sleeved shirt and jeans. She wanted to be respectful after hearing Pau Pau’s stories. As she organized her toiletries, she wondered what was taking Pau Pau so long in the lobby.
She had just finished massaging moisturizer into her cuticles when Pau Pau came in. She sat down on one of the twin beds, looking troubled.
“Are you okay?” Lindsey asked, figuring that her grandmother was fatigued.
“I call on telephone to your ma. She say Yee Sook pass away.”
“Who?”
“Uncle Bill! He pass away.” Pau Pau got up and paced the carpet. “Change of plans. We go Toisan today, but leave tomorrow.”
Lindsey spent the first part of the bus ride chipping off her Urban Decay nail enamel. Metallic dark purple nail polish just didn’t seem appropriate for a visit to an impoverished village. Pau Pau sifted through a giant Macy’s bag stuffed with gifts, full of the same kind of things they had brought to the cousin in Beijing.
Outside, the bus passed brown dirt fields and a muddy river. Along the route every now and then they could see a peasant crouched down by the water, washing laundry. Skinny men with cigarettes dangling from their mouths tended to the long wooden boats that were huddled in small groups along the riverbanks. Some inhabitants rode carts pulled by decrepit horses, others tinkered with the saggy chains and dented fenders of their bicycles.
At a rest stop, dark-skinned country people sold clothing they had made, along with purses sewn of burlap and colored strips of cotton cloth. The bathroom consisted of four concrete walls. There were no doors on the stalls, no tissue, and no toilets, just holes in the ground. Lindsey held her breath and went in. She pinched her nose to avoid the stench but also tried to keep her mouth shut because of the numerous flies. Straddling the pit, she was glad she wasn’t wearing the satin platforms she had had the good sense to leave in San Francisco. She finished peeing and wanted to sprint out as fast as she could, but she had to be careful because the dirt floor was wet and muddy with urine.
Back on the bus, Pau Pau pointed out the window to a sunburned woman carrying a big woven basket of hay. “See, I tell you not to go out in sun. Look like your ancestor work in fields.” Lindsey nodded, having been told a hundred times of the importance of a refined, fair complexion.
When they arrived in Toisan, children ran up to the bus and hurled dirt clods. They laughed and ran away when the visitors gazed out the windows at them. While the bus parked, a few passengers waved as adult villagers stood and watched with curiosity.
In the village, the thick gray walls of dank, crumbling buildings were stained with moisture that penetrated cracks between the worn bricks. The paved pathways were interrupted periodically by a leafless tree with branches resembling shriveled, black hairs. Birds were nesting somewhere, but Lindsey could not see them. She heard periodic chirping that suggested that life was business as usual for the winged creatures: find a twig, eat a bug, fly over there.
The overcast sky held a high dome of clouds, as well as a low, eerie fog that compressed the bone-chilling air closer to the ground. Slabs of raw slate bordered a small sturdy bridge, which was partially obscured by the wispy fronds of a willow tree that hung listlessly above. The trees, water, dirt, and rocks seemed to purposely remain motionless to prevent the sensation of the frosty, frozen air rustling against their surfaces.
A shabby billboard displayed advertisements for drinks and cosmetics drawn with cartoonish, Communist stylings. Blocky, Russian-looking letters accompanied smiling Chinese androids who shook hands. Their faces seemed to say, “Comrade! Stop your bicycle and share a refreshing brown beverage! We look exactly alike, except my shorts are red and your scarf faces the other direction. Oh, how content we are!”
Clusters of concrete and brick structures were the standard. A dwelling made of mud with a thatched roof was interspersed here and there. Wooden beams stretched across a few of the pitched rooftops, and bamboo poles tied with twine held up drying laundry.
Despite the cold, children ran around giggling, as chickens and other fowl scratched about. Mothers held their babies, and no one seemed to do much of anything. Pau Pau asked a young woman for directions.
Lindsey followed Pau Pau around a few corners and past a makeshift playground with a slide made of stone. They passed a concrete slab where, unbeknownst to them, the modest dwelling where Gung Gung had been born once stood years ago. Also gone were the flimsy wooden structures that had housed Uncle Bill’s family decades ago. Now the area was used as a public space. Someone had laid out rounded forms of woven straw that would later be bent into large baskets.
They came to a doorway, and Pau Pau called inside. A teenage girl replied, running out and speaking so rapidly in Toisanese that even Pau Pau had trouble understanding. Another girl came out to join them, and soon everyone was chatting excitedly except Lindsey. Pau Pau gestured to her granddaughter, and the two teenagers hugged her and patted her arm with affection. Lindsey handed them the gifts from the bag one by one, and with each box of candy or piece of American clothing, they brought their hands to their cheeks with genuine surprise.
She liked both girls immediately for their unaffected ways. Pau Pau explained to Lindsey that they were the granddaughters of the woman who had taken care of her when she’d had malaria. Knowing who they were made Lindsey feel grateful.
Although their grandmother had passed away, they said that th
eir mother would be back soon. Pau Pau asked after any person she could think of who might remember Uncle Bill, but the girls did not seem to know any of the Chinese names.
As Pau Pau and the girls chatted, Lindsey looked around. The place was made of whitewashed bricks, and the kitchen was equipped with wooden bowls and some enamel and aluminum dishes. Heating up water for tea, one of the girls used fistfuls of straw to kindle a fire beneath the stovetop.
After a while, the girls’ parents rushed in, having heard that their visitors had arrived. They all talked fast, loudly, and jovially. Lindsey stood and smiled, happy that Pau Pau seemed happy.
Just then she saw something she did not expect. Her eyes drifted toward the wall behind the older girl, and something familiar caught her eye. She blinked several times to make sure she was seeing correctly. On the ledge next to a small bundle of joss sticks was a snapshot of Lindsey from the fourth grade. She was wearing her soccer uniform and was standing outside Winchell’s Donut House on Van Ness Avenue.
The older girl noticed her squinting over her shoulder. Plucking the picture from the ledge, she stepped back and gestured for Lindsey to follow. She chatted in Toisanese as she proceeded toward an adjacent wall.
Lindsey was dumbfounded. She stood there on the dirt floor and just stared. On the crumbling cement wall she saw a collage made of many Scotch-taped, grade-school photographs. And every single one was a photo of her.
She recognized her kindergarten snapshot with her hair sticking up in the back, her first-grade photo with the missing front tooth, and every school picture all the way through high school. There was a Polaroid of her dressed for Halloween as the Chicken of the Sea mermaid, and a snapshot of her and Kevin as kids in front of the old Hippo’s hamburger restaurant. She realized that Pau Pau must have been sending these pictures to Toisan during all these years.
The Dim Sum of All Things Page 23
