by Lin Zhe
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – GRANDMA, I’M BACK
1.
THE TRAIN ENTERS the tunnel and the noonday sun outside the window is suddenly gone. It is dark and quiet. Like the soundless pause during a symphony concert. Like the blank connecting frames on a movie screen.
Ahead is my Old Town, that endlessly drizzling Old Town with its dripping eaves and soaking alleys…
It’s not raining today in Old Town. The curtains are raised and the sunlight is as fierce as boisterous drums and gongs. Up on the stage flashes a silhouette of a modern city. The glass window-walls of the densely packed tall buildings are goldenly resplendent. A forest of construction cranes stand about the edges of a city vastly and mightily expanding ever outward.
Sounds crackle alive on the train’s public-address system and amid soft music the female announcer languidly says, “Old Town, Old Town guest houses and hotels, Old Town’s middle and outer ring roads.” It sounds like an arrival in Hong Kong.
Indulging in Old Town’s past is like wallowing in a compelling dreamworld from which I am reluctant to emerge. Something called Old Town’s Modern City is rushing at us headlong, like the pitiless dawn that demolishes illusions of romance and sentimentality, and hurls me into this time and this place. And here and now I am no longer the sentimental and susceptible little girl at West Gate. I’ve got to exert all eighteen martial arts in the perilous wide world to seize a place in the sun.
I now think about Chrysanthemum. I haven’t heard from this cluck for more than twenty hours. Has she secured some useful man? Hastily I pull out my cell phone. Was it me who shut it off? This isn’t my style at all.
Chrysanthemum is shouting in alarm on the phone. In her anxiousness she has forgotten to cover up her Shanxi accent: “Damn you! I’ve called a thousand times. You’ve just got to fly back this evening! I can’t close with that top executive—I heard that some other company has moved quicker than us. I still need you to come down from the mountains and peddle your old-schoolmate face!”
I glance sidelong at my companion. He’s been organizing our bags and is painstakingly wiping his camera lens.
I want to say yes, certainly I’ll rush right back, but another voice comes out instead: “That’s impossible, absolutely impossible!”
“You’ve got to know that the fate of the rest of our lives hangs on tonight’s meeting!”
“That’s also impossible.”
Chrysanthemum lowers her voice to a crestfallen level. “It’s all over. You’ve ditched me and left me to fight this war all by myself.”
I steel myself and once again shut off the cell phone.
We follow the flow of the crowd leaving the platform and stroll along the street. Where am I? Why is it called Old Town? I am perfectly aware that the Old Town of my memories no longer exists. But I’m still feeling stunned and in a daze.
A taxi stops. The driver sticks out his head. “Sir, Miss, where are you going?”
He speaks Mandarin with the Old Town accent. That familiar hometown sound brings me indescribable joy and I use my now very rusty Old Town dialect to answer him. “West Gate. We want to go to West Gate!”
The taxi driver is looking at me curiously. It’s like he’s in a daze too. This travel-worn northern lady actually knows Old Town speech? He gets out and helps us put our luggage in the trunk. “Oh, I know you want to go to the West Gate Hotel. The feng shui of that four-star hotel right next to Little West Lake is good. The place’s doing great business!”
I don’t know when a hotel had been built at West Lake. Every time I come back to West Gate it’s changed. Every time I see West Gate it all seems like when I saw Chrysanthemum for the first time after her face-lift. What she spent on completely remaking her face and everything on it would have bought a house. She sat across from me, as always twirling the spoon in her coffee. As always, she put on that Hong Kong or Taiwan accent. I couldn’t say a single word in reply because I didn’t know whom I was talking to. This woman had the gestures and voices I was familiar with, but her face and its features and expressions were strange to me. I didn’t dare look directly at her. I was so dumbfounded I felt mentally deranged.
The Old Town story isn’t over yet. How does the Old Town story go on?
2.
THAT NIGHT, IT rains in Old Town. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. I push open a window and smell the familiar faint odors of the wet earth. The fragrance of flowers wafts over from Little West Lake, our Old Town’s unique White Jade orchids. Wave after wave of the bewitching scent seeps into my innermost parts. Calm settles into this rattled and jangled heart of mine.
Walking out of the hotel, I stroll about in the rain around the West Gate crossing. I use my feet to chart the panorama of the past. Here was the rice shop. The window in the upper story of the rice shop was like a picture frame. The mother longing for the return of her sons was inlaid in that frame and grew old day by day. Here was the front yard of the church. Mrs. Chen weeded and watered flowers inside the fence. She would cut a few lush red roses for me to take home to Grandma…
In the main hall of the Lin home a young lady sat at an antique Eight Immortals table. Her chin was propped up in both hands and her eyes stared blankly at the soaked streets, the dripping eaves, the sodden branches. She thought of the world beyond southern Old Town. That was the world she yearned for. Why would she live in Old Town, she wondered. Why would she live in this house? These were things she thought about endlessly, without ever getting the answer. She ached to leave Old Town, an ache like a kind of homesickness. She often felt a kind of sadness worse than anything she had ever known as she sat in this West Gate home in Old Town. Like a traveler in exile. She didn’t know where she would ever feel at home.
A handsome young man walked in out of the rain. His name was Chaofan. He walked over to that young lady staring blankly, her chin propped up in her hands. The young lady’s face suddenly radiated happiness. She didn’t know yet just how long a life goes on, how many changes a life can experience, but she was dead-set on swearing to the mountains and the sea that she would give her own life to this young fellow. Who pointed to the top of the sky well and said, “I love you. If I break faith let me be struck dead by lightning from heaven.”
The vows of youth are spells that a lifetime can never break. They split up. They live at opposite ends of the earth. They hold bitter grudges against each other. But in the coiled roots and twisted branches of their lives they stick to each other and possess each other. They never again can love another man or another woman.
For many years I have never told anyone. I have loved and I have been happy. That is a song buried deep in my heart that I have no way of singing. I cannot speak of it, for were I to do so, the tone and colors of the original would be lost.
At this moment, the mud that I am stepping on is our old house. Where the advertising lamp-box stands is where my grandfather planted the oleander tree. My grandmother would stand under that tree waiting for me to come home from school.
Grandma, I’m back.
Eyes closed, block by block I build in my mind the home of my childhood. After crossing the sky well you come to the parlor. Right in the middle of the parlor stands the Eight Immortals table. I lightly touch the tough grain of its surface. I slowly sit down and prop up my chin under my hands, my heart filled with warmth and gratitude. For my own life in Old Town. For my life in this home. For that handsome young man who grew up with me in our years of innocent childhood.
If I could return to the time of my youth, I would still be dead-set on marrying the young man from the Chen family. But I would ask him to vow to the heavens that he would never leave Old Town, that he would lead me by the hand in Old Town’s endless drizzle and we would slowly grow old together…
Acknowledgments
I OWE A great debt to Lars Ellström for introducing Lin Zhe and her wonderful novel to me, and, of course, to Ms. Lin for accepting me, an unknown quantity, as her translator. In the course of this project, many peo
ple generously clarified certain linguistic and contextual expressions—I can only hope I have rendered these correctly. First and foremost, the author herself: her explanations were succinct, good-natured, and patient. It has always been a joy to communicate with Ms. Lin. Others include, but are certainly not limited to, Guan Yi of Beijing, Tom Ying-kuang Lin and Jiang Feifei of Seattle, and the many members of FANYI, a University of Hawai’i online list service of international Chinese translators.
A special thank you, as well, to Liza Danger Austin for the fine graphics, and for the several friends who read and provided valuable comments on the translation while it was in progress..
And finally, with this translation, as imperfect as it may be, I wish to pay tribute to all the people who taught me Chinese, beginning at Nanyang University, Singapore in 1970, and especially in Beijing in the early 1980s, where under the tutelage of the Guo brothers, I really did learn to speak the real Beijing Chinese.
About the Author
Lin Zhe (pen name of Zhang Yonghong) was born in 1956 of Han Chinese parents then serving in the People’s Liberation Army in Kashi (Kashgar), a small frontier city in what is now Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. After graduating from the Chinese Language and Literature Department of Fudan University in 1980, she worked as a reporter and editor for Women of China Magazine in Beijing. She has written fourteen novels that focus on women’s issues relating to marriage and personal and family life, as well as three TV drama series.
About the Translator
George Anderson Fowler lived and traveled widely in the Asia Pacific region for over thirty years, first as a US Marine, then as a student of Chinese and Malay, a writer, and finally for twenty-three years as a commercial banker. He co-authored Pertamina: Indonesian National Oil and Java, A Garden Continuum while living in Indonesia in the early 1970s. George received a BA from St. Michael’s College, the University of Toronto, in 1975, and an MAIS (China Studies) from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in 2002. He has most recently translated Marah Rusli’s classic Indonesian Malay novel, Sitti Nurbaya, whose publication by Lontar in Jakarta is forthcoming.
George and his wife, Scholastica Auyong, currently live near Seattle, where he is a full-time freelance translator of Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog.
1 Lei Feng (1940–1962), an ordinary PLA soldier killed in a freak construction accident and transformed by a team of party writers (as it was revealed in the late 1980s) into an icon of model Chinese citizenship. The “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng Campaign,” based on the entries in his putative diary, commenced in 1963 and became the focus of intense indoctrination of Chinese youth, who were urged to copy Lei Feng’s selflessness and utter devotion to Chairman Mao’s teachings.
2 Guo Ziyi (697–781 CE). Born in Huzhou, Shaanxi Province, Guo was instrumental in crushing the great An-Shi Rebellion and other western frontier conflicts during the Tang dynasty. He is revered in China as one of its greatest generals.
3 “Ah Dou” (Liu Chan) was the weak and incompetent son of the heroic Liu Bei, king of Shu-Han in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, China’s beloved epic of the sixty-year civil war and chaotic political struggle following the collapse of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD.
4 The Manchu-derived high-collar, slit-sheath dress, widely known outside China by the Cantonese term cheongsam.
5 A whimsical reference to the infamous banquet at Hongmen (206 BCE) in present-day Shaanxi Province where a Macbeth-like treachery was planned.
6 Two major Guomindang (“Nationalist Party”) -led campaigns (1926–1928) initially in coalition with the Communist Party of China and other leftists that started in southern China and moved north against the regional warlords, and had the overall purpose of unifying the country politically under the Guomindang. In June 1928, the Nationalist Revolutionary Army captured Beijing, then still the capital of China.
7 Technically, the name of the city during this period should be “Beiping.” In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang government in Nanjing (“Southern Capital”) renamed Beijing (“Northern Capital”) “Beiping” (“Northern Peace”) and it officially remained as such until 1949, when it was renamed “Beijing” by the new government of the People’s Republic of China.
8 Tales of Marvels (chuanqi), was a prose genre that became formalized during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). As a distinct literary genre, such Tales evolved from traditional anecdotes, chansons de geste, not to mention amour, and usually contained strong elements of the supernatural.
9 Another name for Japan’s assault on Shanghai in August, 1937.
10 The Guomindang government withdrew from Nanjing in December 1938. The Japanese army then entered that city and commenced a period of atrocities against the defenseless citizens that the world now knows as the Nanjing Massacre. It was also during that same month that the government announced its move to Chongqing, a city in Sichuan Province situated on upper reaches of the Yangzi River.
11 The sickly, doomed female protagonist in Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth century literary classic, The Story of the Stone (also widely known as Dream of the Red Chamber).
12 Born in Henan Province in 1859, Yuan Shikai was by turns a top military commander in the last days of the Qing dynasty, a brutal power broker with the new republican government, its provisional president, and would-be founder of a new dynasty. He died, repudiated by all, in 1916. China’s fragmentation into warring fiefdoms ensued, ending to some degree with the capture of Beijing by the Guomindang Revolutionary Army in 1928.
13 A kind of brick-oven bed used in the cold North China climate.
14 Chiang Kai-shek (pronounced “Jiang Jieshi” in Mandarin).
15 Traditionally, the Chinese termed girls “one thousand gold pieces.” Boys, though, were referred to as “ten thousand gold pieces.”
16 Not the Nanjing (or “Nanking”) in Jiangsu Province, the former Guomindang capital of China up until 1949, but a small town in Fujian Province.
17 Here Grandma is making a pun on the near-homophonous “Nanjing” and the Chinese expression “Yi yan nan jin” (“It would be hard to relate this in one word,” or, as it is translated here, “it’s a long story”).
18 A jin (or “catty”) is the equivalent of 0.5 kg or 1.125 lbs. So Uncle Huang weighed almost 8.5 lbs at birth.
19 Obviously not her real “ancestor,” merely an affectionate term for a male descendent who would carry on the family line
20 This is an echo of Tang dynasty poet He Zhizhang’s most celebrated poem, “Homecoming” (Hui Xiang Ou Shu): “I left home young, I now return old My accent is unchanged, but my temple hair is sparse. The children do not know me. / They smile and say, ‘Visitor, where are you from?’” It is a beloved trope of popular nostalgia in China.
21 A very old city on the Yangzi River in southeastern Anhui Province.
22 That is, the former Nationalist capital in Jiangsu Province, at this time in the story the capital of the collaborationist government under Wang Jingwei.
23 Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398) was the founder of the Ming Dynasty in 1368.
24 From the poem “Waves Washing on Sand” by the “Exiled Emperor” and renowned poet of the Southern Tang, Li Yu (Li Houzhu, b. 936 d. 978).
25 A district of Shanghai ravaged by fighting in the War of Resistance against the Japanese. Previously spelled “Chapei.”
26 A mu is a measurement of land equivalent to about one-sixth of an acre.
27 A measurement of harvested and dried rice equivalent to about 50 kg.
28 Men Jiangnu’s husband had been press-ganged into the building of the Great Wall during the period of the Emperor of Qin (259 BCE–210 BCE). Having no word from him and fearing for his survival, she made warm clothes and set out to locate him. Upon finding him dead, she wept so bitterly that a portion of the wall collapsed. Impressed with this paragon of loyalty, the Qin Emperor offered marriage to her. Her grief unassuaged, she however threw herself from a precipice near the place
she had chosen for her husband’s burial.
29 Ah Q is the eponymous antihero of Lu Xun’s ferocious satire The True Story of Ah Q (published episodically between December 1921 and February 1922). One of the great losers of literature, Ah Q is a bullying coward who always tries to persuade everyone including himself that he has actually come out on top, morally at least, in all the calamities that befall him. All except the final catastrophic one. Saving face was Ah Q’s game.
30 The name of a popular opera in South China.
31 The province adjacent to and northwest of Anhui. Henan’s name, “South of the River,” refers to the major part of this province, which lies south of the Yellow River.
32 A defeat suffered by Guan Yü (160-219 CE), one of China’s great historical figures who was immortalized in Luo Guanzhong’s fourteenth century historical classic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
33 From Wu Cheng’en’s classic Ming dynasty collection of tales entitled Journey to the West. “Golden headache headband” refers to the magical golden band Bodhisattva Guanyin persuaded the uncontrollably mischievous monkey, Sun Wukong, to put around his head. What Sun Wukong didn’t know was that it could never be removed and was intended to tighten painfully whenever he got up to his sublime pranks.
34 In the urban areas, these would not have been real cowsheds. “Cowshed” was just a term for any basement or makeshift structure used for holding “counterrevolutionary elements” for coerced confession and self-criticism sessions.
35 It has always been the custom throughout Asia for sweethearts, married couples, etc. to address each other endearingly with such family relationship terms.
36 “The Three People’s Principles” (“San Min Zhu Yi”)—Nationalism, the People’s Government, and the People’s Welfare—were the focal points of a broad political philosophy developed by Sun Yat-sen and adopted as the state ideology by the Guomindang (“Nationalist”) party, which at this point in the story was at least nominally governing China.
