The China Coin

by Allan Baillie

  ‘Ah, that coin, yes, yes. Now that I have time to look at it, I do think I have seen it. A coin chopped in two …’

  Jade and Leah stood outside the kitchen door and watched.

  ‘Have you, really?’

  ‘Not the other half, I am afraid. But father did have something like this. I do not know where it went. I suppose he gave it to my brother – your father – because my brother was the Number One son.’

  ‘Then the coin came from somewhere else?’

  ‘Well your father did say in his letter that the other part of the coin is in the ancestral village. He means his ancestral village, his father’s. He does not mean yours.’ Grandfather was looking at Jade with resignation.

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘Our father started the village when he came here from the valley, but he had not been born in the valley. It is a long time to remember what my father said to me when I was a boy, but I think the village he came from is a place called Gui Tu Cun.’

  Turtle Land Village. Putongua, not Cantonese.

  ‘Where is that? Across the valley?’

  ‘Further than that. Much further.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Between the city of Chengdu and the mountains of Tibet.’

  Joan sighed. ‘Oh, that’s it. I’m just too tired to chase villages across China.’

  Grandfather clapped his hands brightly. ‘Yes, it is too far. Why don’t we forget about the coin?’

  Joan turned to Leah and caught her daughter’s eye. They both began to speak.

  ‘But father wanted the coin taken back …’ said Joan.

  ‘But Dad wanted to see the other half of the coin …’ said Leah.

  And both mother and daughter stopped and grinned at each other, for the first time in months.

  7 The Train

  Leah staggered into the compartment as the train began to move, slid her bag before her and smiled at the woman by the window.

  The woman did not smile back.

  ‘Out of the way, wretched girl!’ Joan bumped past Leah and collapsed on the seat facing the woman. ‘Hello,’ she said apologetically.

  The woman, dressed in a dull grey suit with a red tie and a red badge, nodded and returned to her ragged grey book.

  ‘Well, we’re here,’ Joan said with a shrug and started to manhandle the bags into the space over the door.

  ‘Only just,’ said Leah and scrambled onto the upper bunk to help with the bags. They had waited two days in Guangzhou for the train tickets and then they had almost missed the train. But they were finally off to Chengdu, Joan’s way.

  The easiest, fastest way to Chengdu from Guangzhou was by air – an hour or so and you’re there. The second fastest way was by train, a couple of days and you’re there – tired and dirty, but you’re there. But this train went to Shanghai. Joan had kept on raving about going up the artery of China, so they were going to Shanghai to catch a boat up the Yangtze river to some place in the mountains called Chongqing and then catching a train to Chengdu. It would take ten days, or more. Tell Joan to go round the world in eighty days and she’d do it in eighty years.

  But it could be fun.

  Leah inspected her bunk as Joan moved to a small table below the window. There was a thermos of hot water in a cage beneath the table so Joan offered the grey woman a cup of tea. The woman glinted behind her glasses and said nothing. Joan gave up and began to read an English-language newspaper from Hong Kong.

  Probably a spy, thought Leah. She found a light, a fan and an old wall-mounted radio which crackled at her but couldn’t be turned off. That was it. She pulled Swallow’s peg doll from her shoulder bag, stroked it and immediately felt sad.

  ‘Will we ever see them again?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’ Just like Joan. Never remember yesterday. ‘Oh, the Ji family. Probably, sometime. You like them?’

  Leah climbed down. ‘Except Grandfather.’

  ‘He’s all right. You’ve got to see things through his eyes. He’s the family elder, tries to do what he can for his people. Give me a look …’ She plucked the doll from Leah’s hand. ‘My mother used to make those for me. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Swallow gave it to me when we were going.’ Leah was looking at Joan and seeing how she might have looked when she was Swallow’s age. Bit of a shock.

  ‘Thought you both were tearful that morning.’

  ‘Hah! You almost dragged Jade along the road with the taxi-truck.’

  ‘Well …’ Joan was silent for a few seconds, looking into Leah’s eyes. ‘We will keep in touch with them.’

  ‘Yes. We’re family.’

  ‘Yes.’ Joan said this slowly and canted her head, as if Leah had said something peculiar. She broke the spell by slapping at her paper. ‘Grandfather’s students are at it again.’

  The grey woman lifted her head. The red badge was China’s flag in miniature.

  ‘He was steaming, wasn’t he, that last night?’ Leah relished the memory.

  ‘He was reading the government editorial about them. Now, he must be kicking the kitchen door down!’ Joan showed Leah the paper.

  ‘Scum,’ said the grey woman abruptly. ‘The students are counter-revolutionary thugs.’

  ‘That’s what the government said,’ Joan said carefully, ‘The People’s Daily.’

  ‘The government is right!’

  Leah thought, forget about spies. She’s a party official. But she couldn’t stop: ‘Excuse me, but it says here that 50,000 people in Beijing are protesting against the government for saying that.’

  ‘Leah …’ Joan frowned at Leah and smiled at the woman as she pulled the thermos from under the small table. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Students, not people. This is how you educate your daughter?’

  The thermos was withdrawn. ‘Most times.’

  The woman stared through Joan and returned to her book.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Leah mumbled.

  Joan shook her head. ‘You know we’re following the route of a great march.’ She was speaking to Leah, but watching the grey woman. ‘Chiang Kai-shek. Marched to Shanghai in 1926 to trample the communists.’

  The woman jerked her head up, eyes blazing behind the glasses, but she said nothing.

  Joan looked innocent but her lips were twitching. Leah realized that Joan had defended her by conjuring up the nation’s old devil-general and rubbing the grey woman’s nose in the memory.

  Leah was smiling secretively at Joan when a memory disturbed her. ‘Mum, why did the students frighten you? Not now, on TV.’

  Joan frowned. ‘Did it show?’

  ‘In the hotel, in the Ji house. Just a little bit.’

  ‘Not quite frighten. But I had a bad night in Penang as a little girl and it bothers me sometimes.’

  ‘Riots?’

  ‘You’ve been listening hard, haven’t you? It was the Anti-Chinese riots in Kuala Lumpur and Penang when I was eight. Our shop was burned down and we went to Singapore. I don’t like to think about it, but mobs, even mobs of students still worry me.’

  ‘I didn’t –’

  ‘It was the anger. They were in the streets with machetes and torches … It was the anger.’ She bobbed her head. ‘Nothing like that in Beijing. Just ignore me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But I hope the students go away before we finally get to Beijing.’

  Several hours later Leah was woken from an uncomfortable doze by a sharp cry of pain.

  The sun had set, outside was the gleam of rushing paddies, distant mountains and the wash of a dimming red sky. Inside the compartment shadows slid across moving figures, Joan looking up in fear, the grey woman standing over her, rocking with the hurtling train, stabbing at the window with a knuckle.

  ‘Jinggang!’ The grey woman hissed.

  ‘What?’ Joan was reaching for her ankle.

  ‘Jinggang Mountains!’ The grey woman kicked at Joan’s ankle again.

  Joan jerked her feet away. ‘Stop – ’

 
; ‘Why do you not tell your daughter this, eh? This is where the Long March started. In 1934.’

  ‘I didn’t – ’

  ‘You Overseas Chinese do not know anything, just how to make money and get fat. In 1934. Red Army marching with Mao Zedong for two years across China. Many, many die, but at the end your running dog, your Chiang is ready to be eaten! This you tell!’

  ‘Yes, yes. All right.’

  ‘All right!’ The grey woman tapped the tip of Joan’s nose then returned to her seat, her eyes shining.

  Joan sat in silence, her face pale.

  Leah looked out of the window at the shadow of distant mountains. In China she would have to stop dreaming up savages, gangsters and spies.

  In China the danger was real.

  8 Shanghai

  Joan booked in at a riverside hotel and immediately towed Leah out to explore the city, as if escaping from the image of the grey woman. Leah sympathized, but dreaded the crush of the twelve million people in Shanghai’s streets. This was going to be far worse than Guangzhou.

  But it wasn’t. It was Sunday and crowds stay home on Sundays.

  They wandered across a metal bridge over a black waterway clogged with motionless barges, and idled about on the broad Huangpu riverfront. Under the trees children played with new toys, old men played chess and young couples held hands and watched the ships pass. Across the quiet street a long grey cliff of massive buildings hunched over the trees, a few blocks lifted from an old European city.

  ‘Millionaires’ row.’ Joan smiled. The grey woman was somebody else’s troubles.

  They walked freely up what was The Bund, a centre for bankers, manufacturers and adventurers from all over the world in the 1930s. Built for the Europeans, not for the Chinese.

  ‘But they’re all gone now.’

  ‘Good riddance.’ Leah remembered Dad reading angrily to her that Chinese kids had been used as slave labour, prisoners in the factories.

  ‘No argument there. You know that there’s a park round here that had signs forbidding entry to Chinese and dogs. What’s wrong?’

  A sliver of thought. You wouldn’t get in, but maybe I would … That is disgusting, girl. ‘Sorry, just dreaming. Where do we go now?’

  As they crossed the street Leah took Joan’s hand and Joan looked surprised.

  You can’t keep on being angry with your mother all your life, can you? Not after the train. It’s us against the world.

  They marched together into the city. Shops selling radios, an ice-cream bar, a man unloading boxed fans from the platform of his cargo cycle, a man wanting to change his money with Joan. Joan not interested. The streets had echoed to troops from France, Italy, Britain, America and Japan but now there were only Chinese on business – even on a Sunday.

  The buildings became lower and the streets narrower, often no more than lanes. They had walked from the old European part of Shanghai to the old Chinese sector and now the city was alive. Stalls clinking with souvenirs, barbecued pork in a corner, people flooding down the lanes.

  ‘Tourist traps,’ said Joan. ‘Grandfathers everywhere.’ But she was enjoying herself.

  They reached an old tea house in a fish pond and a black-walled garden guarded by roof dragons, the Yu Gardens. Joan bought tickets and they moved slowly along a worn path beside alcoves, galleries, trees and still water. Leah found a small tree, exploding with green foliage on a dead trunk. She could not understand it until she saw a thin ribbon of bark running across the dead trunk from the roots toward the branches.

  ‘You like it?’ A small man with tufts of white hair in his ears and a knobbly walking stick. ‘It is China. It lives, but it is a miracle.’

  Joan returned the man’s grin. ‘Isn’t it, though?’

  ‘See the students? They should come here, and learn. Stop corruption, they say. As if fat officials are something new! This garden, so beautiful, was built for a family of officials four hundred years ago. Nothing changes.’

  Leah took a photo of the little man and his tree then Joan towed her out into the crowded lanes.

  ‘He was depressing,’ Leah said.

  ‘It’s not our problem. We’re just tourists. Come on.’

  Leah shrugged and smiled as they moved down a lane. Spots of rain were spattering the length of the lane, damping the dust and bringing out the tangy aroma of dried herbs and smoked pork. There was the faint waft of sewage, but after the public toilet of Good Field who worries about that? Not depressing at all, Joan was right: they were just tourists, wandering eyes seeing it all.

  Leah unslung her camera and stepped into the centre of the lane.

  Someone was shouting.

  At her? She looked over her shoulder.

  The lane was suddenly filled with running, panting men. Sticks in their hands. Running at her.

  She shuffled, uncertain and frightened. She turned and saw Joan across the lane, mouth wide, shrieking at her.

  She was hit on the shoulder by one of the running men, hurting her, spinning her out of control. She could not see Joan any more, a stumble, and she was running too. This had no reason. It was a nightmare coiling out of the afternoon bustle, and nightmares cannot be handled. Only by running.

  The man who had hit her – no more than a youth – was running past her with his eyes wide and staring. His stick was a furled red flag. They ran round a corner and Leah saw the lane clear before them.

  Another man ran up beside her but he did not seem to notice her. He pushed his face forward into thick glasses, clutching a pole with a banner ballooning, trailing in the mud behind him. The corner of his mouth was damp with spittle. He looked sideways and blinked in surprise at her. They ran round a corner together, then he pushed her violently aside.

  She cannoned into a small store, glimpsed alarm on the face of the woman in the stall, and fell in an avalanche of carved wooden poets and myths.

  Four youths stormed past her, shouting angrily and waving short bamboo sticks, making the bamboo sigh with every stroke. But one of the youths glanced at her, and he was grinning. The chase disappeared into a cluttered street, leaving the lane quiet.

  The woman bustled out from her stall and clucked quietly over Leah and her fallen carvings. ‘Students …’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Leah began to lever herself clear.

  The woman looked again at Leah. ‘Ah, you are a visitor. Are you hurt? Let me help you.’ She hoisted Leah to her feet and brushed mud from her dress.

  Leah stopped her with a smile. ‘I’m all right.’ They picked up the carvings round their feet. ‘What was that about?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Students being chased – by soldiers, I think. No uniform, but they have that look, eh?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Ah, students want to change China. Some people are afraid they might. It is not your affair and that is why the student pushed you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Leah held up a carved lion with a scratch on its side.

  ‘Do you have money to buy?’

  Leah looked up in alarm. She had no money. Joan had everything.

  ‘That’s all right. Enjoy China.’

  Where was Joan?

  Leah said goodbye, and hurried back to the lane where she thought she had begun to run. Her throat was tightening.

  She could see the slow rain exploding on the canvas awnings of the shops, the clatter of the dangling wooden carvings, the people filling the space left by the sudden chase, the faces of strangers.

  But there was no sign of Joan, no flash of her blue scarf.

  Leah slid toward panic. ‘Mum! Joan!’ she shouted.

  People turned and looked at her.

  She’s gone. Gone with the running soldiers.

  She began to run again. To the corner, another corner, a street, another lane …

  Hey, come on. What are you doing? Take it easy. It’s only a game.

  Leah stopped, panting and hiding a whimper.

  Shut up. Joan’s looking for you now. Where was she goin
g?

  I don’t know, you silly little berk!

  Then go home. To the hotel.

  I haven’t got a map!

  You can talk, can’t you? After all that time in Good Field you should coast it in.

  I have no money.

  Orphan Annie. Look, you walked here. Walk back.

  Okay, okay. Shut up.

  Leah walked steadily out of the lanes and across a street she vaguely remembered crossing before. She wanted to ask whether she was going the right way, but did not want to appear helpless. Not yet. And perhaps, just perhaps, she could find her own way home.

  Then she caught herself listening for running feet.

  She looked around, down a long straight street, a few people idling on the footpath, window-watchers.

  Are they still being chased through Shanghai?

  Come on, you’ll never know …

  But the streets now shimmered with unseen shadows. In this quiet city Joan had disappeared without trace and somewhere out there frightened boys were racing with bamboo sticks sighing at their heels …

  And it has always been that way. Soldiers from Europe patrolled these streets; when Chiang marched here in 1927 he slaughtered thousands in one day – no wonder the grey woman went mad with Joan! – then the Japanese invaded and the Red Army … Shanghai is haunted. It must be.

  Leah reached a hub of streets and stopped, suddenly frightened.

  A great wall of matting and bamboo reared over her head, twenty storeys high, and curved toward her on both sides. It was the great grandfather’s grave in Good Field, a thousand times as big with none of the gentle welcome. A breeze got behind the matting and the twenty-storey wall rippled in anger. Not a wall, not a village grave, a huge malignant god of straw.

  Oh, come on. It’s a scaffold for a building. Get on with it!

  Leah walked across the intersection with her eyes locked ahead.

  But you didn’t see that on your way out, did you? You’re lost in Shanghai.

  She forced herself to slow down and paced the next block with her hands damp, looking for anything she might have seen before. She was about to ask the way from a man in dark glasses when she realized she could not remember the hotel’s name.

  But the next corner showed a street running toward the river.