Song of the Silk Road

by Mingmei Yip

  I didn’t respond.

  “He’ll be ecstatic to see you.”

  Hearing that, a chill crept into my bones.

  Back at the hotel that evening, the first thing I did was tear open the envelope. It was a stack of letters from Wang Jin to Madison, all filled with love and admiration for her.

  My dearest Mindi,

  There is not one day that passes when I don’t think of you.

  l always blame myself and sometimes even my country that we can’t give you a good future here so I hope you can find a better one in Hong Kong. I also feel terribly sorry that, as a university graduate, you have to work in a factory to weave hair for a pittance.

  So I’m relieved to learn that your sister is with a rich man and that she’s been taking good care of you.

  I don’t sleep well. I have so many goals to achieve and so much love for you that my heart always seems to be on the verge of bursting.

  Please write to me often. Your letters are the only elixir in my life.

  Love,

  Jin

  Wang Jin must have been strongly attracted by Madison’s bravery. A young woman who went in a tiny boat rocking on the Pearl River’s angry waves to Hong Kong, then made a living by working in a factory. So Madison really was brave, and maybe I had received some of that trait from her.

  Then I opened the other envelope and found a stack of pictures.

  The first one showed a very young and pretty Mindy Madison and an almond-eyed, high-nosed, and scholarly looking man.

  I stared at the man. There was something familiar as his eyes stared back at me. Yet, of course, I had never seen him before. And then it hit me. I was almost a replica! Closer to him than the imitation Gold Buddha was to the original.

  As he smiled at the camera, the corners of his lips, instead of lifting, drooped a little. I felt dizzy, realizing on a deep level that Wang Jin was really my father, for I had the same kind of smile.

  A teardrop fell onto Wang Jin’s cheek, rendering him very sad, as if longing for Madison. Or for the daughter he’d never known existed. Though I was sure that Madison loved Wang Jin, too, judging by the intensity of his eyes, his passion exceeded hers.

  I decided I must visit Wang Jin’s, or my father’s, grave.

  32

  Paying Respect at the Grave

  The next day, the car arranged by Lo took us many miles outside the city of Beijing to a cemetery scattered with only a few graves.

  Upon arrival, Lo turned to me. “Miss Lin, I’ll stay in the car so you have a private meeting with your father.” He pointed to the site in the distance. “It’s the seventh from the right; you’ll see his name on it.” Then he reached to the front seat and, to my surprise, handed me a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums in a vase. “Here, take this and offer it to him.”

  My cheeks felt hot. I had never thought of bringing anything to offer. I was embarrassed because paying respect to your ancestors is a big thing for Chinese. In Hong Kong, xiaozi xiansun, filial sons and virtuous grandsons, will bring all kinds of offerings imaginable, or unimaginable: yin money, gold and silver ingots, gold Rolexes, mansions, cars (Mercedes, BMW, Porsche), Louis Vuitton and Hermès handbags…. But Chinese are practical and thrifty, too, so all of these offerings are paper imitations. When burned, the essences of these objects will ascend to heaven for the dead to enjoy.

  For these filial rituals, the only real thing offered is food. Roast pig is a must. Others can include the deceased’s favorite dim sum, desserts, snacks, wine, tea, cigarettes. However, after the living have demonstrated their filial devotion and performed their obligatory kowtows, they are the ones who actually gulp down the food. No one will ever find out if the hungry ghosts actually got their shares. So giving respect to one’s ancestors is also an excuse to have yet another big, sumptuous meal.

  I took the vase of flowers from Lo, stepped out from the car, and let my hesitant feet drag me toward the destined grave, welcomed by two not very cheerful lines posted on the gateway:

  Today my body returns to the ancient earth.

  Tomorrow exactly the same thing will happen to yours.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… I counted. “Voilà, here I am, Father,” I said to this dead man, someone who’d given me flesh and blood but whom I’d never met. On the gravestone was a black-rimmed photograph of a young man who stared back intensely with bespectacled eyes and a stern, edge-drooping smile. I imagined this black-and-white, one-dimensional man reaching out from his photo to touch me—a daughter he’d never known existed. My eyes moved down to read the inscription.

  Wang Jin, 1940–1980

  A life, lived with passion, cut short by an untimely death

  I put the vase on the grave, half closed my eyes, and channeled my energy. Ten minutes later I felt hit by an emotion both raw and totally unexpected. Then I found myself muttering to the buried stranger despite myself.

  “Father, here’s your daughter, Lily Lin, who comes to pay her respects. Although we never met, I believe we must be linked in spirit. A link that stretches between us, no matter what happens, and no matter where we are. Please, now that we’ve finally met, stay with me and guide me.

  “I’m very sorry that we could not meet when you were in the flesh. But this was the will of heaven. Now I must move on and finish my tasks on this Red Dust before I see you someday in heaven. Thank you, whoever and wherever you are.”

  I surprised myself speaking so intimately to someone I’d never met. With unsteady hands, I took out a handkerchief to wipe the dust from the grave, then pulled off the weeds surrounding it as tears flooded down my cheeks. Then, just as I was turning to leave, it started to rain. Big drops of water pelted down like beans, hitting me hard, almost hurting me. Mist formed a curtain, blurring the grave and the flowers; raindrops ran down Wang Jin’s picture as if he were crying with me. Just then, seemingly pushed by some invisible force, the vase was knocked over, crashed onto the ground, and shattered into myriad shards.

  I cast one last look at the face that I imagined was struggling hard to talk to me but couldn’t utter a word. Soaking wet and legs trembling, I dashed back toward the waiting car.

  Inside the vehicle, I was wiping my face with a tissue when Lo asked, “How’s your father?”

  “Why do you talk about Wang Jin as if he still lives in the yang world?”

  “Because that’s the way your mother likes to talk about him.”

  “Is he really dead? Did he fake it and is actually hiding somewhere?”

  “No, trust me, he’s as dead as the last Chinese emperor. Your mother has been waiting so long and so desperately to have a big family reunion that she tries to think of him as being alive.”

  “Did they love each other that much?”

  “Your mother is a very passionate woman. Her power to love and hate is like a giant’s breath.”

  “Mr. Lo, how do you know so much about her?”

  Lo didn’t respond but stared out of the window at the sobbing sky.

  At Lo’s urging, I visited Mindy Madison almost every day. She was anxiously hoping to hear that her verdict had been annulled and her cancer in remission. Lo was working hard on both, preparing documents for the court and concocting for her the tea using the snow lotuses I’d brought back from the Mountains of Heaven, according to Lop Nor’s recipe.

  During each of our conversations, Madison revealed something more about her life, her love for Wang Jin and her relationship with Mayfong, my Hong Kong mother implausibly turned into my aunt.

  One day she showed me a picture of herself and my young mother holding a baby.

  “See?” She pointed at the chubby face. “That’s you. Such a good baby. You rarely cried, always smiled, and slept through the night without fuss.”

  Then she sighed heavily. “Hai, Lily, someday when you have children of your own, you’ll understand a mother’s love. And the pain when she’s not able to see and hold her dear one.”

  She was right. I tried but
couldn’t feel any love for any of my yet-to-be-born or never-to-have children.

  Madison’s searching eyes bored deeply into mine. “My daughter, do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Hmm… yes and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I have, or maybe had, two serious boyfriends. One has no future with me, while the other too much.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because one is already married with a child and the other is much younger than I. Chris always says he’ll divorce his wife and marry me, but so far it’s just talk. Alex wants to marry me, but he’s eight years my junior, still a student, and has difficult parents who don’t approve of me.”

  I went on to tell my on-and-off relationship with Chris, my traveling with Alex on the Silk Road, and some of my ex-boyfriends.

  After I finished, Madison said, “Alex is the one. Go find him.”

  “But he’s so much younger. Maybe he’ll get tired of me and take up with a girl his own age.”

  “My daughter, you’re brave enough to undertake this arduous trip but not to marry someone just because he’s younger?”

  Of course she was right, but I didn’t respond.

  She asked, “Maybe you love this Chris more?”

  “No. But I’m in debt since my parents died. Chris helps by buying me meals and paying for small things. I’m grateful for that. That’s why when I was offered this million-dollar trip, I jumped at it, thinking it’d be my big breakthrough before I turned thirty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  The long silence was awkward, so I changed the subject. “Tell me more about my mother and you.”

  “You mean your aunt and me.”

  I avoided her gaze and stared at her hands, wrinkled and twisted like a pair of week-old citrons.

  “In China, I wrote many letters to Mayfong asking about you, but her answer was always just a line or two stating that you were growing fast and doing fine.

  “Then one day out of the blue I got her letter announcing this horrible news—that you died from pneumonia. She warned me not to come back to Hong Kong for your funeral because the Hong Kong government had been vehemently tracking down illegal immigrants. After that, she never wrote again.”

  I remained silent, shocked yet perversely fascinated by her incredible account of my dear mother’s cruelty and betrayal, which, like her, I’d never known existed.

  “Then how did you suddenly know that I was alive to find me?”

  “Last year I just happened to read your fake father’s—I mean old man’s—obituary in a newspaper. I was shocked to see that among the long list of his many offspring, your name was there but not framed in black—meaning that you were alive after all. I immediately asked Lo to locate you.”

  It took me long moments to digest this real-life drama and the incomprehensible human heart. “It seems Lo does everything for you. You must pay him a lot.”

  “Only in the beginning. Now he does it for free.”

  “A lawyer, for free?”

  She didn’t answer me, but picked up the manila envelope, pulled out some more pictures, and handed them to me. “Look at these.”

  They all showed a young and pretty Mindy Madison posing with different men along different parts of the Silk Road.

  The first picture showed her in hat and boots bestride a camel, her expression defiant and her two pigtails dangling. The second one showed her washing her long, shiny black hair by a pond in a ruined town—the one where Alex and I had located her hair—her white teeth gleaming under the sun and her tanned face smiling a heart-opening smile. She looked so healthy and ripe that I think any man would want to take a bite of her—a shoulder, an arm, a neck, a cheek. The third picture, to my surprise, was her posing in front of the Turpan Museum with Floating Cloud, or Chen Dong, looking quite unmonklike with a full head of hair.

  I looked up and caught her gaze. “How many lovers did you have?”

  “You mean had or have?”

  “Have? What do you mean…”

  A faint smile glowed on her face. “Hmm… never mind.”

  “You mean you still have a boyfriend now?”

  “I can’t tell you now. Anyway, you’ll find out sooner or later.”

  Her smile deepened, her tanned, wrinkled face like an old etching. “I was pretty, adventurous, and defiant, so I just attracted men like butterflies to flowers. My daughter, that’s the trait of mine that you have, so men also flock to you like bees to honey. As you know, Mayfong was just the opposite. She didn’t even have the courage to leave the house, let alone journey to the Silk Road or the Taklamakan.”

  True, my mother’s whole life could be summed up by one big picture depicting her small frame fussing over windows, rooms, kitchens, toilets—hers as well as other people’s. I’d invited her many times to come to New York to see me, but her answer was always no, because the trip was too expensive and her work demanding and never-ending, blah, blah, blah…. I never understood what she feared would happen if the floors and toilets were left unscrubbed for just a few days. Would they overflow with excrement?

  Hai, now I started to truly believe that Mindy Madison, or Cai Mindi, was indeed my mother. I also started to understand why my mother Cai Mayfong had worked so hard as if she actually enjoyed being miserable. Knowing what I now did, I wondered, did she make herself suffer to atone for her inconsolable guilt at taking me away from her sister?

  My prison mother spoke, breaking my thought. “My only regret in life is that I don’t have much time with you. The other things don’t matter after all.”

  “Don’t you regret that you stole all the treasures?”

  “They were returned to where they belong. But you’ll be still be my daughter even after I die. I only wish I’d had you for longer, much longer.”

  These words hit me so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks.

  The strange woman who claimed to be, or was, my mother squeezed my hand. “Lily, I know you’ve suffered, but I’m sure you’ll be rewarded for your good deeds.”

  “What good deeds? I just did it for the money, which I won’t even get.”

  “No, you didn’t do it just for the money, but for the love of adventure. You aspire to be somebody, and you will be someday.”

  “How? Are you a clairvoyant now?”

  “I’m not, but the blind fortune-teller is. Isn’t that what he predicted, that you’ll be famous someday?”

  “Yes, he did say that.”

  “See?”

  “But, Ma….” I stopped in midsentence, realizing I’d just called this strange woman Ma!

  “Go on, my daughter, don’t be embarrassed to call your own mother that. It’s just natural.”

  What was wrong with me? This woman, whom I’d known less than a week, seemed to possess the power to scramble up my brain. Had she bewitched me somehow? But I again blurted out, “Ma, I…” Then I paused to inhale deeply before I went on, now feeling completely disoriented, “I am… sorry for… our time lost….”

  “Don’t regret the past. Plan for the future and act now. You’re a remarkable woman, and I am sure that you will be very successful someday, just as the fortune-teller saw on your life’s map. According to him, heaven has a scheme for every one of us. That means our life is already mapped out the moment we’re born. Master Soaring Crane is one of those very few who can read this hidden map. So listen to him, follow the signs, and don’t go against the flow.”

  “How?”

  “When a river flows into a rock, it will course around the rock to continue its journey. Water never fights but is powerful by being just soft and going along.”

  Although she talked about being soft, she didn’t look that way to me. “Does that mean you were also once soft and tender?”

  “Of course, when I was very young and very pretty. But when I lost both I had to force myself to be tough. However, money can also do the job of softening the heart of the warden, the guards, th
e government officials.”

  “But you said you don’t have money left!”

  “In fact it’s not my money but someone else’s. This person pays for everything.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who…” She stopped.

  I pressed her, but she remained silent.

  I was digesting our conversation as I leaned closer to this ghostly woman, trying to understand her eloquence, confidence, insight, suffering, toughness, strangeness, cunning…. Not knowing what more to say, I patted her wrinkled hand. “Ma, maybe we should call it a day. I’m sure you’re tired and need some rest now.”

  “I’m pleased by your concern. But don’t worry, my destiny will soon lead me to my eternal rest, so I don’t care to rest now.”

  Suddenly the reality that this strange woman, my mother—sitting right across from me—was dying hit me so hard that I felt an electric jolt inside. I desperately wanted to do something, anything, to get her out of this situation, however hopeless it seemed. Could I seduce the guard to let her out? Or the judge to revoke her verdict?

  As if reading my thoughts, my mother spoke, her voice pained yet strong. “Lily, I’m very happy that we have finally reunited and the treasures have been returned. My conscience, now free, will not detain me for more than my allotted time. So don’t you worry about me. Whether we like it or not, all of us will face the same end. This is the ultimate fairness embedded in our life’s maps.”

  To my surprise, she was the one who suffered, but I was the one who burst into tears. If I was not mistaken, this ghostly woman in front of me even looked happy—like a saint who sees all, knows all, understands all, and forgives all. How strange. Shouldn’t I be the one who knew all and forgave all?

  Then I thought of the couplet at the entrance of Wang Jin’s cemetery:

  Today my body returns to the ancient earth

  Tomorrow exactly the same thing will happen to yours

  I sighed heavily, then poured the rest of the snow lotus drink into my mother’s cup. “I’m sure this will cure your disease.”