Song of the Silk Road

by Mingmei Yip

  “You’re sure?” I looked at him straight.

  He nodded and uttered an emphatic “Yes.”

  My heart softened a little by his sincerely pleading eyes, not to mention that this kid was in fact nice-looking and appealing. “OK, but my treat.”

  “Oh, no, please, I’ll treat.” His tone was firm.

  A stubborn American kid.

  “All right,” I said, then we started to walk toward the exit, this time feeling the eyes, not only of the two guards but also the thousand warriors, drilling holes into my back.

  Afraid of seeming to take advantage, I suggested a small restaurant right next to my hotel. Only three or four tables were occupied. Bare bulbs dangled from the ceiling, from which hung yellow strips speckled with tiny blobs of black. I realized to my distress that the black spots were not some avant-garde form of calligraphy but dead flies. Would that disgust the American? I cast him a sideways glance and, to my surprise, a smile hovered on his face. Heads turned to scrutinize us as we walked to a table in the back corner. I sat down, ignoring a hostile stare from a gap-toothed man and an envious one from a garishly dressed young woman. Pasted on the wall were pink paper place mats covered with calligraphy.

  I pointed them out to the young man. “Those are the menus.”

  He said, “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I major in Chinese studies at Columbia.” He pointed to the different slips and recited in slightly accented Chinese, “Stir-fried bitter melon, roast duck over rice, minced beef with tofu. I’ve had those before. Delicious.”

  I looked at him incredulously. “Wow, that’s very impressive.”

  Right then the plump, fortyish waitress came to take our orders. Alex Luce asked in Chinese for the minced beef with tofu, and I, soy sauce chicken.

  After her generous bottom waddled away, I asked, “Alex, you mind if I ask you a blunt question?”

  “Of course not.” He poured tea first into my cup and then into his, showing good etiquette.

  “All right, then. Why did you invite me to dinner?” Before he could respond, I went on, “If you’re lonely and want some company, I’m not the right person for you. Anyway, how old are you and where’re your parents?”

  He laughed. “Oh, Lily, I’m twenty-one, not a child. Besides, my parents give me lots of freedom. They were divorced when I was six. I’m used to doing things by myself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He stared at me with expressive eyes. “Hmm… Lily, may I also ask why you travel alone?”

  “I’m afraid that’s my own business.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

  Feeling guilty, I patted his hand. “It’s OK. Sorry if I sounded rude.”

  The waitress brought the kid his minced beef and set it down on the table with a loud thud. Then she cast me an “old Chinese horny with young American honey” look and dragged her wide posterior away.

  Seeing Alex didn’t dig right into his plate, I asked, “Why don’t you start?”

  “Your dish hasn’t come yet.”

  So he was waiting for me. His good manners showed he must come from a good family.

  “Go ahead, please, otherwise it’ll get cold.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  A real stubborn kid.

  Then the waitress brought my food. After she left, I noticed Alex even waited for me to dig into my food before he started. I was quite impressed. After all, he was so young and this was a cheap restaurant in China, not a gourmet one in Manhattan. The way he ate with such relish also pleased me. I liked people who loved and treasured their food, whether ordinary or gourmet. We ate and chatted while clicking chopsticks, smacking lips, sipping tea. He looked happy. My mind was occupied with too many things to feel anything.

  Just as I was thinking how to get rid of him soon, he said, “Lily.”

  “Yes?” I was sucking a succulent chicken bone.

  “What is your itinerary?”

  “Today the warriors, tomorrow the Huaqing Pool, then Dunhuang, Urumqi, the Mountains of Heaven, Taklamakan Desert, Turpan, something like that.”

  “Wow, that’s where I’ll be going, too!” He looked excited, then asked shyly, “Maybe we can travel together?”

  I almost swallowed my chicken bone whole. To calm myself, I gulped down a big mouthful of tea.

  “Awww….” I choked myself on the scalding liquid.

  “Are you OK?” His eyes and voice were filled with concern.

  I nodded.

  The last thing I wanted on this trip was to have company, let alone a kid whom I might even have to take care of. At twenty-nine, I had no wish to mother anybody.

  But his declaration surprised me. “Please, let me… travel with you so I can watch out for things.”

  I tried very hard not to laugh. The waitress, now standing in the corner, cast me another hateful look as if saying, “Now young American horny wants to get cozy with old Chinese honey.”

  “Lily, you will be safer with me. I’ve been studying the grasshopper-style kung fu for many years.”

  The thought of this young American pitting himself against Chinese hooligans practiced in martial arts amused me. I put down my chopsticks. “Alex, thank you, but sorry, I’d rather be alone.”

  “But I am concerned about you.”

  “About what?!” This time I almost spilled my tea.

  “About you traveling by yourself along the Silk Road.” He nodded discreetly toward a group of men busy stuffing themselves at a nearby table. “See those men over there? I bet they’d cheat, rob, and even murder. And they’re everywhere.”

  “Look, Alex, I appreciate your concern and your earlier help. But I hardly know you, and I will be quite OK on my own, thanks. So I think our first dinner together should be our last.”

  Having said that, I raised a hand to signal the waitress for the bill.

  Back at the hotel, I kept thinking about the strange kid. Who was he, and what did he want? Then I thought of my aunt. What did she want?

  Under the hotel room’s dim light, I took out the tiny piece of clay I had chipped from the terracotta warrior and studied it. Why would this grain of clay be of any importance to anyone? Even if it really was a fake? Knowing I wouldn’t get an answer until I finished my journey, I wrapped it up in a tissue, put it in an envelope, and labeled it Xian with today’s date. Still jet-lagged I wanted to settle into bed, but I focused my energy on writing down today’s happenings in my journal, including the meeting with Alex Luce. After that, I flipped through my aunt’s instructions and planned my excursion for tomorrow—to visit the Beilin Museum to see the famous Beilin, Stele Forest, a field full of stone slabs on which were inscribed famous Chinese words of wisdom.

  Mindy Madison, my aunt, had visited this Stele Forest and was particularly interested in the Classic of Filial Piety, an ancient text much admired throughout Chinese history. The Chinese say yinshui siyuan: “When drinking water, always remember where it comes from.” As children, we are supposed to be grateful for our parents, who gave us shelter, food, love, education—our very lives.

  Why would my aunt want me to study this particular stele?

  The next morning, still feeling uneasy from the previous day’s events—the warrior “accident” and the Alex Luce incident—I decided first to unwind by visiting the famous imperial bath, the Huaqing Pool. I threw on a T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes, gulped down a bowl of congee in the hotel coffee shop, then asked a bellman to call me a taxi.

  Outside the hotel, despite the pollution, the sky was clear and blue, with a few wisps of decorative clouds playing hide-and-seek. During the long ride out from the city, there was not much to see except bicycles, pedicabs, handcarts, and the ubiquitous exhaust-spewing trucks. A few poplars stood forlornly by the road as we passed several old brick-and-tile houses and a rusting crane beside the skeleton of a half-constructed low building.

  Finally the taxi pulled to a stop. I’d arrived at the footh
ills of Mount Li, where the famous Huaqing Hot Springs was located. Now feeling gritty and sweaty, I desperately craved a bath—private or public.

  I paid a few renminbi and entered the reconstructed palacelike complex. I soon relaxed as I strolled by ponds with lotuses floating over carp swaying their tails lazily among weeds. As I took out my camera, a statue in the middle of a lake caught my attention. A plaque informed me that this was Yang Guifei in the Nine-Dragon Lake. This most famous of imperial concubines had bathed in the Huaqing Pool with Emperor Tang Xuanzong on many moonlit evenings a thousand years ago. Although the statue was crudely rendered, the story behind it was moving.

  Among all the three thousand exquisite, flirtatious concubines in the inner palace, Emperor Xuanzong loved only one—Concubine Yang. Her beauty was reputed to be so stunning that it shamed the moon and mortified the flowers. In the following centuries, Yang was the muse of numerous poets and painters.

  However, as the emperor became more and more infatuated with Yang, he also cared less and less about state affairs, until the mighty general An Lushan started a rebellion.

  Pursued by An Lushan, Emperor Xuanzong fled southward with his palace guards, imperial soldiers, and a disguised Concubine Yang. Later, when the soldiers learned that Yang was among them, they refused to move forward, demanding she be put to death. They believed that Yang’s beauty and the emperor’s intemperate love caused the empire’s collapse. After a long and heated argument with his troops, the emperor realized, heartbreakingly, he had to acquiesce. And so, in the Buddha Hall under the moon—the same moon that had witnessed their sleepless nights of passion—the emperor ordered the only woman he loved to be hanged.

  How ironic that China’s most powerful man, instead of protecting the woman he loved the most, helplessly watched her death forced upon him by the soldiers he had trusted the most. After Yang died, could the emperor look himself in the mirror, or wash his hands without trembling? Later, when he had sex with other concubines and heard their screams of pleasure, would this remind him of the scream from Concubine Yang when she was being strangled?

  The legend was immortalized in the poet Bai Juyi’s Changhen Ge, (A Song of Everlasting Sorrow). I’d been required to memorize this while in high school in Hong Kong, but only now, ten years later, did I have any feeling for the story with its complex emotions.

  “Hai, how beautiful and tragic.” I sighed. I wished I had Yang’s beauty to charm even an emperor—but definitely not her horrible fate!

  Then I overheard a young Chinese man next to me muttering, “Pretty round and nice breasts.”

  I was tempted to tell him that they looked like implants to me but instead dropped my eyes and quickly left the doomed beauty.

  I continued to walk, soothed by lush greens surrounding me: weeping willows appreciating their own swaying images on the lake, towering cypresses extending canopies like protective arms, and a proliferation of smaller plants shooting out from the ground or resting gracefully in pots. Partly hidden in the greenery was a collage of impressions: the curve of a pavilion, a woman with bright red umbrella undulating on a winding bridge, a boulder inscribed with calligraphy.

  But now my goal was to find a quiet spot to bathe in the famous spring water. Four hot pools were set aside for tourists, but I was not interested in those. I wanted to enjoy a private bath all by myself. I hoped to spot the “geographic faults and cracks 1,750 to 2,500 meters deep, with 109 degrees Fahrenheit temperature water bubbling up” promised in the guidebook.

  Walking away from the palace complex and its noisy tourists, I imagined myself soaking in the healing water containing all the therapeutic minerals excellent for health, according to my reading. Perhaps after the bath, my skin would be as translucent, silk smooth, and supple as that of Beauty Yang.

  I crossed a long, willow-shaded bridge and continued to walk. Now the winding, seemingly never-ending path was heavily foliaged with not a soul in sight. I inhaled the fresh air and felt happy to be alone at last.

  Continuing to walk, I finally discovered a pool hidden from sight by heavy foliage and tall rocks. About the size of a Jacuzzi, with steaming water gurgling up from between cracks, the pool seemed a little paradise on earth. After looking around to be sure I was really alone, I dropped my backpack on the ground, kicked off my running shoes, peeled off my shirt and jeans, leaving my bikini underneath, then plunged in.

  I sighed; the water was hot, and therapeutic, and its fragrance intoxicating. Inspired by the romantic surroundings, I tried to recreate Concubine Yang’s seductive poses by raising my leg, lifting my arms, twisting my waist, arching my back, pretending I were taking a sensuous, imperial bath with the handsome, loving emperor! Then, in a soft voice, I began to recite A Song of Everlasting Sorrow.

  One hundred charms bloomed with her smile,

  Outshining every beauty in the six palaces.

  Granted the privilege of bathing in the

  Imperial pool,

  Helped up by the maids, looking vulnerable

  and virginal,

  At that moment, she became the Emperor’s

  favorite…

  While I was enjoying my own performance, I was startled by a male voice exclaiming in English, “Oh, I’m sorry!”

  I turned and saw with astonishment—Alex Luce.

  “Alex!” I screamed, while ducking down to my neck in the warm water.

  Alex’s lean physique was silhouetted motionless in the shades of trees. He looked so startled that I imagined his chestnut hair shooting out in all directions in its youthful energy.

  Then, as if awakening from a trance, he mumbled, “Sorry,” then hurried out of my sight.

  Shaking off the water as best I could, I slipped on my clothes and shoes, slung my backpack over my shoulder, then walked away from my supposedly private “Jacuzzi.”

  Alex was standing a few feet away next to a rock, his eyes blinking under the hot sun. He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Hi, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Suddenly feeling the heat, I said, “Let’s move away from the sun.”

  “I’m going to the Stele Forest. Would you like to join me?”

  I nodded, unknowingly breaking my vow of solitude.

  4

  The Beilin Museum and Crying Guan Yin

  I had not expected that things would feel so different with Alex’s company. Now instead of trying to take advantage of the Beilin Museum to learn more about Chinese calligraphy as I’d intended, I found myself more engaged by a nice-looking twenty-one-year-old young man than by the museum’s exquisite collection of stone tablets.

  As Alex and I wandered through the museum, my heart was beating wildly, not of course for the two-thousand-year-old stone tablets inscribed with poems, sacred texts, imperial edicts, and Chinese Classics, but rather for the adjacent, bewitching ball of energy next to me.

  To show I was serious about the exhibits and because my aunt specified I was to read this particular stele, I drew Alex’s attention to the large stone that dominated the room—the Confucian Filial Piety Classic.

  Looking at the immense black granite slab standing on a thick base carved with mythical animals and exotic plants, I felt a wave of happiness.

  I always loved things big. Big bowls of rice and congee, big chunks of meat, wide slabs of fish with a huge head and eyes round like marbles. I always preferred having a big sofa to sit on, or a roomy high-backed chair where I could meditate with legs crossed. I liked to work at a wide table where next to my computer I could pile bricklike stacks of books, spread out my novel in progress, and arrange my assortment of stationery—pens and pencils in my lunch-box-sized case, boxlike pencil sharpeners, a big stapler to bind inch-thick documents, even erasers I’d certainly lose before finishing using.

  I also liked Chinese calligraphy done in grapefruit-sized characters, Beethoven’s heroic Fifth and grandiose Ninth Symphonies, Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where you have to swing your head in all the four aus
picious directions to take in the whole creation….

  Then Alex began to read the famous text aloud in Chinese, waking me from my reverie. His voice sounded studious, yet light-hearted. I half closed my eyes to let the soothing sound waves ripple against my eardrums like dragonflies skipping on water.

  Do not disgrace those who gave birth to you.

  Rise early and go to sleep late—to serve your parents.

  Be careful of your conduct and economical in your expenditure—in order to nourish those who gave you life….

  When he finished, lamenting that his recitation had to meet its inevitable end like everything else, I asked softly, “You’re enjoying this?”

  “Yes, very much. I would like to study this classic more.” He cast me a questioning glance. “And you?”

  “I’m not fond of Confucian moralizing.” I paused to search his glowing face, then, “Not that I’m unfilial to my parents even though they’re dead.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s OK, Alex. But what makes you so interested in the filial piety classic?”

  “Because I want my parents to be proud of me,” he said, blushing.

  That was not really an answer to my question.

  “You mean they’re not?”

  Again, he didn’t answer my question directly. “They’re divorced and both remarried, so we don’t see one another very often. But once in a while Mom, Dad, and I have a big reunion.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I believe they divorced because of me.”

  “How?”

  “It’s too complicated to tell you now. Let me take you to tea.”

  I looked directly into the young man’s grayish green eyes. “Alex, you’ll soon go broke if you pay for every stranger you run into.”

  A smile bloomed on his face, sweet and innocent like a child’s. “Don’t worry. Let’s have tea, please.”

  I insisted that, instead of going to a teahouse—fancy or simple—we should just look for a place nearby to sit down and talk.