Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization

by Jan Alexander

  One day in March, in Year Two of the New China, Tang Fei told the three of them he’d met a manufacturer who wanted to build a smart car facility using the nanochip technology in Sunshine Village.

  “We’re not a manufacturing town,” Ming protested. “Sunshine Village is about serenity and enlightenment.”

  “What about opportunities for the rest of us? We’re not all poets or philosophers, you know.” Tang Fei glared at her.

  William’s eyes, though, glowed like sunshine warming the room. “Successful companies thrive on ideas from all quarters,” he said. “Bring these manufacturers here for a meeting. We’ll have to do a feasibility study and so will they.”

  Tang Fei left satisfied.

  “I don’t believe in smart cars,” William told Ming and Zoe when the door was safely closed. “People shouldn’t be able to go further than they can drive themselves; but don’t worry, these manufacturers will come to Sunshine Village and they’ll see that it’s just too small.”

  A few days later, the CEO of the smart car company called and informed William that they had decided to move operations to Guangzhou, where there was already a large base of labor and suppliers.

  Tang Fei was livid. “You didn’t even try to persuade him!”

  “Too much industry would destroy tourism. People are coming here to enjoy all the pleasantries that New China can offer in a small village environment,” William said, sounding almost meditative.

  “You don’t want competition, you mean?” Tang Fei thundered as he stormed out of the office.

  “I’ve decided it’s okay to fire him,” Zoe said.

  “You don’t fire people for disagreeing with you,” William told her with confident equanimity.

  “I want to believe that,” said Ming.

  

  From the old world of New York and academia, Professor Engelhorn e-mailed Zoe several times a month. His messages grew progressively less curious about how she was coming with her dissertation, and more inquisitive about this miraculous New China and what it was like to be there. He was planning to take a sabbatical the following spring so that he could come to China and write a book about what was going on. It always took Zoe a while to answer his messages. She knew it was a matter of guilt. The reference books that were supposed to be the backbone of her dissertation sat neglected in her apartment. Yes, Zoe now had an apartment of her own—because as it turned out, it seemed important to have her own space. The books got a dusting every week when the household maintenance expert, previously known as a maid, came. The countdown hovered; just a little over a year left. Zoe had completed an outline and the first chapter. It was a great misfortune that old Mr. Pang had died while the triumvirate had been plotting things in Beijing; one of her best oral histories gone.

  What she really wanted to do was write to Professor Engelhorn and say “Don’t chase false theories. I have all the secrets!” She told Ming, and they laughed together until they both almost cried, knowing they were going to have to bottle in this smug triumph for the rest of their lives.

  Otherwise, Zoe’s days and nights were filled with bunker duty, and her job as co-director of Sunshine Finance, and, in spite of the New China and its limitless opportunities, people to save. Jing Yin, especially. Her father, Kwan Bai Li, had presented a thoughtful business plan to Sunshine Finance, and now he owned the gourmet market on the hill. An awning with the name “Kwan Market” in gold characters sheltered a dozen market stalls. The Kwan family operated one stall, selling steamed rice flour buns stuffed with bean paste and egg custard, and turned a profit on renting the remaining spaces.

  When international visitors started discovering his market, Kwan Bai Li discarded his Chinese name and renamed himself Bradley Kwan. A gaunt man, he had a face that was elongated like tea stalks drying in the sun. His eyes could penetrate when he looked at you, as if you alone could understand the pain he’d been through.

  “You could be on television,” Zoe had remarked to him once, though it was his daughter she really wanted to groom. Jing Yin had turned fifteen and was developing a homespun kind of beauty. The problem was that her father was still keeping her out of school, insisting she work in the market stall because her mother, Yu Li, was ashamed to go out and let people see her cloudy eye.

  “You must put aside all this useless philosophy you are learning at school and help the family in the real world,” Zoe heard Bradley tell Jing Yin on more than one occasion.

  “Mama comes from a noble family,” Jing Yin confided to Zoe. The little cousin, who had died in a pile of his own diarrhea before Zoe came back, was the last of the noble stock, she said. “Mama’s family never wanted her to marry my father. They said he was a ‘wild wolf,’ so I must be a half wolf.”

  “Then be fierce,” Zoe counseled.

  In the spring of Year Two of the New China, Zoe had a plan for the girl. She visited the Kwan family home, now freshly painted, with a new addition and terrazzo tiles on the former dirt floor. A new sofa with fat red cushions sat across from a flat-screen television that covered the opposite wall and stayed on even when no one was watching. Smoke wafted from a small brass incense burner, and even through the fragrance Zoe thought she could detect a spectral stink of diarrhea.

  “Do you know who Larissa Lee is?” Zoe asked Jing Yin. Subway stations and billboards all over the world featured the shapely movie star in her sequined tunics, leaping into hidden lairs and punching out villains just before they blew up the world. Recently, though, Larissa Lee had been seeking to show the world her serious side. Talk show audiences were familiar with her life story of growing up with a drug-addled mother in Harlem and seeing her father only once before he died in prison. Audiences were also familiar with the star’s dual campaigns to feed the hungry and discover enlightenment.

  “Larissa Lee is going to come here to make a documentary about New China. I want you to be in it,” Zoe said.

  Jing Yin hung her head. “My father wouldn’t like it.”

  “But would you like to do it?”

  The girl’s face lit up enough that the answer was clear. In the next couple of weeks Zoe worked on Bradley Kwan, flattering him with a made-up story that Larissa Lee was going to shoot footage of Kwan Market and Jing Yin would be the spokesmodel for his business. He wasn’t happy about it, but the day before the star arrived he said his daughter could go to the welcoming party.

  That evening, Zoe—dressed in an ivory sheath silk dress and a necklace of Sichuan opals she’d borrowed from the library—set out to collect Jing Yin at a quarter to five. Bradley and Yu Li said hello to her, then turned their attention to a reality TV show about a tattooed heavy metal singer from the US, dubbed in Mandarin.

  Jing Yin emerged in a cloud of strawberry perfume. She was wearing the latest fashion of the peasant teenagers, burlap pants and a sequined t-shirt that revealed the dewy little valley between her fifteen-year-old breasts.

  “I went to school today,” the girl told Zoe outside the house. “My homeroom teacher is helping me catch up with all the work I missed, but my father says schools are supposed to make some people feel smart and some people feel stupid.”

  Zoe resolved to talk to Bradley Kwan again, even though approaching him always felt like putting on a suit of mental armor and going into battle.

  The bartenders and caterers were setting up tables in the casino when Zoe and Jing Yin arrived. Ming came in with Tom a few minutes later. She cast her eyes upon Zoe’s necklace. “Fucking opals,” she muttered. “Those prickly little colors look like a thousand ways to die. Anyone want a drink?”

  “She’s such a tortured poet,” said Tom, chuckling as he watched Ming make her way over to the bar and return delicately balancing two vodka and tonics, a fruity punch, and a beer for Tom. “Have you ever noticed how much alcohol is available in New China? Not that I’m complaining.”

  “It is rather like an arts
y bar in Brooklyn,” said Ming. Her foot nudged Zoe’s and Zoe pressed back, as if to tamp down the wish to say more.

  A string quartet began to play, and the first guests filtered in. Just after seven, a man rushed in who, as far as any observer could tell, was William Kingsley Sun. He possessed an air of command. But his eyes, ardent pools of honey-brown, lacked the fiery gold of the original. Sun Two shook hands and air-kissed various people, then, almost as an afterthought, kissed Zoe.

  “Sooo…” he murmured after the quick kiss. He had an annoying habit of acting baffled around her.

  “Glad you could come,” Zoe said, the words hanging dry.

  “Now here’s a fresh pretty face.” Sun Two introduced himself to Jing Yin and did his best to keep his gaze leveled at her pleasing but unspectacular countenance, without a downward glance toward her cleavage. The girl giggled, flustered.

  Zoe knew the facsimiles well by then. Sun Three and Sun Four were obedient clones—lithe and simple creatures who could dig tunnels and build a bunker in a matter of days, so shy that they’d disappear at the sight of anyone not their master. But Sun Two, true to his word, was his own man. He had Jing Yin smiling and laughing. But both stopped talking and stared like stunned disciples when the guest of honor glided into the room.

  Larissa Lee had skin the color of cappuccino mousse and a little twist in her lips, just imperfect enough to have iconic potential. She was with an entourage of cinematographers, producers, stylists, and itinerant photographers who made it a habit to trail famous faces.

  Zoe knew something extra about Larissa; the first professional to recognize her potential had been Billie Austin, at the Harlem workshop. “I absolutely adore Billie! Do give her a big kiss for me,” the movie star gushed now.

  “Hellew, I’m William Sun,” Sun Two bowed in the movie star’s direction. “Ms. Lee, I am not only a great fan, but also your humble servant in our little center of enlightenment.”

  In a casino full of party guests, Sun Two possessed a finely tuned radar for the women most likely to see him as a sexy guru. While William often put him to work zapping blinking numbers in the bunker, Sun the facsimile would rack up “favors owed” which he expected to be repaid with time out on his own cognizance. “Because I know your secrets and I have a great fondness for gossip,” he’d say, with a candy-coated giggle that made his threat doubly sinister.

  Zoe watched Sun Two separate Larissa Lin from the crowd, the two of them smiling at each other—and she saw Jing Yin slump against the wall.

  “I’m going home,” the girl mumbled to Zoe, tears welling in her eyes.

  Zoe noticed the daggers of pity that Lulu Pang was shooting in her direction—along with the two figures who sat in the shadows of the courtyard. Sun Two was caressing the movie star’s supple shoulders, murmuring, “Exhale all the complications of the universe.”

  Enough. She tore out of her own party and made her way to William’s library, then down the stairs and the steep incline to the bunker.

  The original William Sun was in the midst of zapping number 98664. The program told him that 98664 was a CEO in Shanghai who used to pay himself a big bonus every time he cut staff, then brag at shareholder meetings about the lean-and-mean operation he was running. Now, like many executives across China, he was hiring Civilizers to sit in corporate meetings and offer insights.

  “I’d say human incompetence is the cause of ninety percent of the evil in the world,” William said, apropos of nothing Zoe could decipher. He kept his thumb on the mouse that was administering zaps. “He’s been like this for half an hour. There. I think he’s finally got it.” The number stopped blinking.

  “I think Jing Yin has a crush on your evil twin.”

  “In another two hundred years we’ll have conquered the world and all of this will be as insignificant….”

  “How’re you coming with his face?” Zoe demanded.

  William had promised Zoe that he’d work on a new project when he had time. Surely there was room for one more transformation, he’d agreed; it wouldn’t be easy, but maybe he could give Sun Two a new face that was not exactly William’s own, but that of a flighty cousin, perhaps, and they’d find a superficial role for him that would let him be his own man.

  That night she relented and let William remove her shoes.

  “The mysteries of the Orient start with the feet,” he pronounced, and they both guffawed at the cliché. He ran his fingers down the arch of her foot as if he were plucking delicate harp strings. They found their way to the bed, but afterwards Zoe lay awake thinking that Sun Two was an undeniable part of William Kingsley Sun.

  “Where’d you go?” Ming asked the next morning. “You’ve gotta get William to do something about his double. I think he spent the night with Larissa—who, by the way, wants to interview me about my screenwriting.”

  Ming was happy as long as the world was paying attention to her.

  That afternoon Zoe found Jing Yin working in the market, unpacking boxes of cabbage greens, her face pale and expressionless. Bradley was there too. “You know, we could give you some more financing since your market is doing so well,” Zoe told him. “You could hire additional staff and Jing Yin could return to school.”

  “We’re not a book-smart family,” Bradley snapped. “And we’re doing just fine.”

  “Well, I brought you a gift.” Zoe held out a book she’d found in one of the boutiques. It was a coffee table-sized picture book about the heavy metal rocker in the reality TV show the Kwans had been watching.

  Bradley swatted the book to the floor with one meaty fist. “You trying to make me look stupid, girl? I don’t read so well, but I ain’t stupid!”

  “Lots of people don’t read so well,” Zoe replied, shakily. “There are night classes in reading…”

  “I went to school ’til I was fourteen. I can read but they said I was stupid ’cause it took me a long time. Besides, who wants to sit around and talk about fil-os-o-phee?” Bradley howled with laughter—and he seemed to be laughing at Zoe.

  Chapter Twelve

  Larissa Lee’s documentary video, released in July of Year Two of the New China, included footage of Jing Yin stacking rice flour buns into a box for a customer in the market, her expression noncommittal.

  “Everyone in Sunshine Village seems to live on a higher plane than you and I,” Larissa’s voice intoned. The documentary showed cinematic sweeps of tai chi classes at sunrise, of children learning how to prepare gourmet cuisine while their mothers attended classes in yoga or literature, then gathered to talk over bottles of wine. Scenes included life in the orchards and the rice fields, where peasants now worked alongside piped-in strains of Puccini, Mozart, and Chinese classics like “The Flute and Drum at Sunset.”

  Zoe’s favorite scene was one of Ming standing atop the restored pagoda, gazing at the pastel peasant bungalows below. An echo of wind chimes bounced off the hills and the sky behind her was a luminous pink.

  “An old proverb says that Sunshine Village is just a mile below heaven,” Ming told the camera—never mind that it was her own proverb, and only a few months old.

  Tom liked it, too. “We are about to land in Sunshine Village. Just a mile below heaven,” he’d announce to his passengers as he began the plane’s descent. Some of the boutiques printed out business cards with the same tagline.

  More tourists came—from Asia, Australia, Scandinavia, Oregon, and British Columbia—with copies of Rainer Maria Rilke in their backpacks. They rented paddleboats and meditated in lotus positions along the cliff top, gazing at the River Tuo. An environmental cleanup company had long since dredged and filtered the river so that it sparkled as it had in Ming’s childhood.

  The whole town sparkled, but it was still Sunshine Village, the place Ming had hoped to leave behind forever. She set her newest stories all over the world; one in Vladivostok, another in Nairobi, and a third in Mississ
ippi. An astute reviewer had noted, however, that Ming Cheng “was always dropping in on a fantasy world that was somehow reminiscent of New York City.”

  But anywhere besides Sunshine Village would do. Even Beijing. She saw pictures, from her parents and from Tom, of a city where Civilizers were now acquiring the choicest real estate, around Beijing University and much of Beijing Central, through land grants that played into a bold new idea that only artists and thinkers could make a city exhilarating.

  Mama and Papa still lived in the Rising Phoenix industrial compound and worked hard, but they sent pictures of the spa and tennis courts they had installed for their staff, and the extension school they themselves were attending after work to take classes in literary criticism, climate science, and the great philosophers. Tom would tell her tales of his travels to the big cities and she’d feel herself emitting deep, wistful sighs. “Don’t you ever get a vacation?” he asked more than once.

  She couldn’t tell him that she and her co-conspirators were way too busy to roam as the summer descended. Summer of Year Two of the New China brought an aura of blue-white heat. Mere wisps of vapor streaked across the sky like brushstrokes, as if the clouds had emptied themselves of tears and were now wrung dry. It was a sweet and raucous summer for the tourists and enlightenment seekers. But Ming heard more fearful rumblings when she visited the peasants’ hamlet, where it was her duty to gather intelligence. The ground was too firm, they were saying. It was supposed to be pliant beneath the villager’s feet at this time of year, swollen as the grubs came to breed in rain-soaked soil and the moles scurried underground to dine on the grubs. Without rain, the water was running low in the fields in spite of the new irrigation technology, and the rice husks were pale and anemic. The peasants complained that they hardly needed their fashionable new rubber boots adorned with ancient poetry stanzas. The early fruits were small and mealy.

  “But the skies tell us the Monkey King is reunited with his true love,” said one farmer, guffawing.