by Susan Conley
“That’s a pretty cool face,” Tony says, and smiles. We’re surrounded by Chinese “antiques,” the detritus of a city embracing free market enterprise. There are rows of 1940s Mao wristwatches, and red and black feng shui meters. There are brightly embroidered Tibetan booties and slim Communist-era metal cigarette cases. You can buy tea-colored calligraphy scrolls and vintage Cultural Revolution posters of the Long March. You can bargain over wooden moon cake molds and the earliest Chinese radios and glass mirrors with etchings of the imperial family. You can bargain over anything.
Perfectly natural that Tony and I chose to come to this crazy place full of Beijing’s castoffs. Because we are in need of some kind of help here. A statue of an animal god or a torn Tibetan prayer flag (we don’t particularly care which) to take back to our apartment and help keep watch over the cancer with us. That’s what we’re doing now—every day without having to say it: keeping watch, making sure it doesn’t come back, making certain it doesn’t destroy the time we have together. We are knocking on wood. We are eating our fruits and vegetables.
It’s a long, mostly invisible vigil—one that I hope lasts until we’re old and gray and have forgotten the cancer. But that’s why I motion impulsively to a man in a black polyester sports coat who looks like he might own this big Buddha head. I ask him in Chinese to bring it down for us from the high table for a better look. The black sports coat says in English that this Buddha is old. Very old. Four thousand Chinese RMB old, to be exact.
And also heavy. Getting him off the table is not easy, but the black sports coat and a friend are able to slowly move the Buddha to a small, metal cart with wheels. Then I kneel in the dirt and rub the top of the Buddha’s head with my hand. “Very old,” the black sports coat says again. “Very beautiful.”
It’s important to remember that most things at this market are “very old” at first, and almost double the price they should be. The market’s name is Panjiayuan, but locals call it the Ghost Market. Long before free markets were legal in China, vendors would bike here to Panjiayuan and set up in the dark to sell. Then they’d disappear like ghosts when police came around to shut them down.
The black sports coat keeps motioning for Tony and me to sit on two small collapsible stools he’s brought out for us, but we stay standing. To sit on the stools would mean we are ready to concede that we want the Buddha. It would mean we are prepared to negotiate a price. But we’re not. Because negotiating in China is a hard-learned skill. An art, really. One that Tony and I sorely lack. He and I both know four thousand RMB is too high a starting point for the games to begin. But we have no idea how low a price to counter with.
Soon there are ten people standing in a circle around Tony and me while we stare at the Buddha. It’s often this way at the market—I show an interest in something, and the Chinese gather round tightly to see how much the foreigner will pay. “I am not prepared for a crowd,” Tony whispers to me, then tries to take a step back. “And we’re not sitting down,” he says. “I repeat. Do not sit down. Nor are we buying a fake Buddha head for seven hundred U.S. dollars.”
“I’m with you.” I nudge my way back through the small gathering. “I’ll admit I know next to nothing about prices of Buddha heads.”
“Big Buddha heads,” Tony says and takes my hand. “Too big. Because this Buddha is large. Very large. We don’t need this Buddha. What we need is a starter Buddha. A Buddha we can afford.”
“Okay,” I say and turn down the aisle toward a cluster of Tibetan teenagers selling wooden altar boxes. Their stalls are right next to those of several Han Chinese women selling identical metal Christmas tree ornaments. Nearby, the Uighurs have cornered the market on fake fur: tiger and leopard and bear. I hope the pelts are fake. They have to be fake; almost everything else in this market is. “Okay,” I repeat. “A starter Buddha.” Then I take one more look at the Buddha on the metal cart. Our Buddha—the one with the obelisk eyes.
I must gaze too longingly, because that’s when Tony takes me by the elbow and says, “Number one purchasing rule in China: do not stare at the object you’re hoping to buy. Do not show emotional interest of any kind.” Then he leads me down an aisle of darkly woven Mongolian carpets and calls over his shoulder to the black sports coat that we’re going to look at other Buddhas. Cheaper Buddhas. Tony says in Chinese, “We might be back.”
We see many other Buddhas over the course of the next hour. Some are made of hard stone and stand with their legs under them. Some are wooden and kneel in prayer. Several raise their right arm to offer blessings. All of these Buddhas are painted and sanded and burnished to look like antiques, but when I press the teenage vendors, they tell me the statues were bought at a factory in Pingyao and are selling for about three hundred RMB each. In other words, they are starter Buddhas.
The Buddha head I love (because I do love it now) is still sitting on its metal cart in Aisle Five when we walk past again. The black sports coat comes running from a small card game over in Aisle Six when he sees us. He yells out in broken English: “Think of a price you offer, then make deal. You won’t regret. This Buddha, very old Buddha.” Then he slips his business card into Tony’s hand. We are on our way to the front gates of the market. We seem to have resolve. We appear to be leaving the flea market without buying any kind of religious iconography.
“I’m glad you didn’t like the starter Buddhas,” Tony says and takes my hand again. “Because I didn’t either.”
“They just looked fake.” I smile and look down at my shoes. What I’m really doing now is longing for our big Buddha head—the one we seem to be walking away from because it’s too expensive.
“And who ever heard of paying forty-five hundred RMB for something that was probably made to look old in a Beijing factory yesterday.”
I squeeze Tony’s hand but don’t say anything. It’s hard to leave. We’d gotten close enough for me to think we might make a deal, even though leaving without the Buddha is probably a good thing. We would have paid too much, and nobody ever likes to pay too much, especially for things you know are fake. And it’s probably not a good idea to link my recovery from cancer to the purchase of an extra-large, super-heavy wooden Buddha head in downtown Beijing.
Though I have to admit, I’d started thinking my cancer might be, well, easier to decipher if we had the Buddha’s help. Because that’s what I need here in China: a little assistance. My cancer, like so many, struck without warning—quickly, in the middle of the proverbial night—and it would be great if someone could give me a hand. If someone could help translate what in God’s name just happened to us, and tell me where, by the way, my left breast has gone.
Tony and I walk through the crowds of deal makers and arrive at the high iron gates of the market. There’s an ATM, just to the left. It’s been installed, I am sure, for people just like Tony and me—people who don’t have enough cash in their pockets to secure overpriced Buddha heads, and who are very close to doing the right thing: walking away empty-handed. It is the ATM that calls me back to the Buddha.
“Let’s phone the guy and just make an offer,” I say to Tony. He stops walking and smiles his biggest smile at me. It’s a grin that lets me know he’s willing. Because Tony is almost always willing—it’s a trait born, he’s told me many times, of his very unconditional love for me. But it’s also a knowing grin. A grin that makes it clear we’re going to get taken to the cleaners on the Buddha. A grin that says he’ll play the fool, but only for me. “Can’t we call him?” I look back over my shoulder and then raise my eyebrows. “You call him,” I smile again. It’s a pleading smile. “And I’ll get cash.”
“Go,” he says and gently pushes me toward the ATM. “Go.” Then he gets out his cell phone and digs in his jean pocket for the business card.
“The hard part,” he says when I’m back from the booth with a huge wad of RMB notes, “is deciding what to counter with.” And it’s true. We have a problem. The black sports coat started the bidding too high. We have to figu
re out a way to bring the price way down without sabotaging the deal. The bargaining is probably going to be hard and fast and cutthroat.
“Don’t insult him,” I whisper while Tony dials the phone. “Don’t go too low and blow the whole thing up.” I am now officially having an emotional relationship with the Buddha head. I’ve convinced myself that getting it is going to change things for me. It’s going to slow things down, for starters—because life has been moving way too fast since that morning last April when I found the lumps in my breast. Life has been racing and now I’m trying to catch up.
The Buddha head is going to remind me of things—which things, I’m not exactly sure. But good, important things. Buddhist things. Things I’ve forgotten, because the cancer wiped out a lot of my short-term memory drive. Things I promise I’ll learn more about if we can just take the Buddha home. So I am now what is also known as a sucker. Tony puts his finger to his lips to shush me. Then I hear him say, “Ni hao.” There’s a pause, and I suck my breath in through my teeth. This is the moment of reckoning. Tony will now offer his counter price.
Three Uighur men to our right have just spread two gray animal pelts out on the sidewalk (Chinese fox or wolf?) and people are stepping carefully around them. “Fifteen hundred,” Tony says quickly then.
What happens next is that the sports coat agrees to Tony’s price far, far too quickly. He agrees without even one moment of hesitation—without one attempt at counter bargaining. So this is how we come to know that our Buddha head is a fake, and that we, as they say in our home country, have been played. If the Buddha head is worth anything close to fifteen hundred Chinese RMB, the sports coat would have bargained much longer and for much more. He would have bargained till the sun set. He would have been relentless.
But once you’ve verbally agreed to a price in China, it’s as good as written in blood. There’s no backing out—the only option is to pay up or perhaps (if Tony and I were feeling light of foot) try to make a run for it. But the black sports jacket jogs to the front gates almost before Tony has time to put his cell phone away. The man is panting, and the Buddha head trails right behind him on the metal cart. “What a good price you got,” the sports coat says when he gets to us. He’s all smiles and encouragement. “What an old Buddha head,” he repeats, with wonder in his voice.
I hand him the pile of money and say, “Zaijian.” The Buddha may be fake, but he’s our fake now, and I’m going to love him. We wheel him to the van, and Lao Wu looks at Tony and then back at me and laughs. Then Lao Wu says in English so he’s perfectly understood, “You know it’s fake? Fake?” Tony and I don’t exactly answer. We all three lift the Buddha up and gently place him in the back of the van—carefully, carefully, because he’s fragile and could break. Then we drive to pick up the boys at the friends’ apartment complex. Thorne comes out to the driveway from the tall revolving doors, and I walk him to the back of the van.
“We have a new member of our family,” I say. “Meet the Buddha.”
Thorne stares through the glass and then rolls his eyes and says, “But I don’t believe in any gods, Mom,” without missing a beat. “Remember, Mom. No gods.”
“But the Buddha was a man before he became enlightened,” I hear myself argue. “He’s different than a god. You’ll grow to like him. I know you will. He was once just a normal guy like you. A really good, normal guy.” It hits me then, standing outside the van in that hot parking lot, that buying this Buddha head is its own act of faith. It’s about choosing to walk on the side of the road where the sun shines. It’s about hope. But I don’t breathe a word of this to any of them.
I watch Aidan peek in the back window of the van. He grins at the Buddha, and the Buddha smiles back at him. Then Aidan asks, “How old?”
“One hundred years,” Tony answers and squeezes my hand. “He’s at least one hundred years old.”
Aidan pauses and does the math in his head. Then he says, “Guys, that’s cool. That makes him the oldest member of our family.”
Beijingren
Rose calls this morning on my cell phone to tell me she’s taken a full-time job at the Turkish embassy. Her role is to interview Chinese people who want visas to Istanbul. I haven’t seen her since our last lesson two weeks ago when I subjected her to the inquisition on her career plans. I’m afraid I scared her off. Drove her to take a mind-numbingly boring job at a large foreign embassy. But who knows? Maybe the job will be great. It means Rose will have a steady income and health insurance, so I’m glad for her because she sounds happy. “It is good,” she says. “I get to write up each report in English. It is very challenging. Many people want to go to Istanbul now. Many Chinese.”
When I hang up the phone, I no longer have a Chinese teacher. What this means is that I have time on my hands. And shouldn’t I be exercising? Isn’t that what the Mayo Clinic’s latest memorandum on cancer said: thirty-five minutes of cardio five times a week? What I do in the afternoon is seize the moment—all part of my new post-cancer China strategy. I walk over to the fitness club in Tower Four of Park Avenue and sign up with Tony’s personal trainer. His name is Marcus. I’ve never had a personal trainer before, so I’m just getting used to the sound of this sentence.
In my sneakers I stand one full head taller than Marcus. He cuts his hair so short on top it reminds me of fur. His big pectoral muscles make his whole chest appear fake. I keep wanting to touch it to see if it’s a real chest that protrudes over his impossibly small waist. Marcus wears a white Adidas trainer shirt and black nylon pants, and a jade dragon pendant around his neck. He starts me out on the treadmill. There’s something about the gym that feels pretend—like we’re on a bad Chinese television show. It’s a big, open room and hip-hop booms over the sound system. I see at least forty treadmills, thirty elliptical machines, and a large herd of stationary bikes.
The name of the gym is the Ozone Fitness Club. Who would name a health club after a depleting natural resource? But that’s the name, plastered on huge signs that hang over the gym. I walk on the treadmill at the Ozone Fitness Club and look down through the picture windows out to the row of cement shops. I work up a sweat while a grandfather walks his baby grandson on the sidewalk. Every now and then the old man stares up at the gym windows. His grandson wears the old-style training pants with a clean split down the backside for easy squatting. A grandmother cooks soup on an open gas burner she’s brought into the street. A man and a woman climb from their parked car and open the trunk. The man pulls out a large bag of rice and puts it on his shoulder. The woman lifts up a green watermelon. A rickshaw passes, stacked with apples and oranges and bananas. There is a young boy in the back sitting on the pile of fruit.
The differences between learning Chinese from Rose and training with Marcus are too many to list. But for one thing, Marcus and I talk to each other only in English. I can tell that Marcus likes to practice his vocabulary. The other big difference about sessions with Marcus is that I sweat a lot. He works me hard. I know Tony has spoken to him about my surgery. Marcus understands that my left arm is sore and that I can’t fully rotate my shoulder. I asked Tony not to tell Marcus about my cancer. But sometimes it feels like Marcus is staring at me funny, as if Tony told him more than he let on to me.
I’ve learned that if I don’t stretch my left arm, the scar tissue around the implant begins to harden. Marcus stands next to the chest press machine and counts each time I’m able to push the bars out. “Come on,” he says at the start, or at least I think that’s what he says. His English gets garbled and the words sound more like “Keemon.”
I’m able to do ten chest presses while Marcus tells me the Chinese government is very poor. I want to ask him if he realizes that China’s gross domestic product is growing faster than that of any other country in the world. Or that the entire globe is fretting about China’s trade surplus. I want to tell him that I don’t think low cash reserves is the problem of the Communist Party.
He tells me to get a sip of water before we beg
in the bicep pull. “I am from Beijing,” he says. “But I do not look like Beijing people.” His teeth are crooked. Several bottom teeth sit piled where they shouldn’t be, directly in front of other teeth.
“Why don’t you look like Beijing people?” I begin the first repetition. The bicep pull is easier than the chest press.
“Arch your back,” he says. “Always arch your back.” Then he laughs. “Beijing people are small and sweet. I look like I am from the north.”
I know enough to understand that where you’re from matters in China. Here are the broadest stereotypes that I’ve learned from Rose: people from the north of China like to eat noodles. People from the south like to eat rice. Sounds silly, but these are the generalities on which a nation goes forward. Rose always describes people to me by this delineation—whether they’re from the north or the south—as if it explains everything.
“Have stretching,” Marcus says now. He leads me to a black bench, where I sit down, and then he pulls on my arms in a way that hurts. I close my eyes. “Good,” he says afterward. “Back to the abs.” He has a serious face when he is not smiling. I sit down at the abs crunch. “Keemon,” Marcus says, and begins counting.
Yashow Market
Today Mao Ayi would like a photo of the boys. It’s the middle of October, and she finds me writing at my desk in the bedroom. “Lai, lai.” She motions for me to follow her to the wall in the living room. There are ten black-and-white photographs of the boys that my friend Winky took back in Maine—beautiful pictures that catch Aidan and Thorne jumping off trees and sitting on the steps of my mother’s vegetable garden. “Wo yao yi ge,” Mao Ayi says and points. “Keyi ma?” She wants one.
