I read it somewhere, she said. I remembered it because my own father was trained near there he got his PhD in Minnesota before the Anti-Japanese War. Physicist. After Liberation, he returned here to aid his country.
Really? I said. Where is he now?
Dead, she said simply. They put a high dunce cap on his head and paraded him through the streets of Shanghai during the early part of the Cultural Revolution. They called him an American spy, a counterrevolutionary, a capitalist roader. His hat said, Cows ghost and snakes spirit do you know this saying?
Im not sure, I said. My great-uncle used to tell me stories he learned here when he visited, about plants and rocks and snakes who could turn themselves into people and do remarkable things and then turn back to their original shapes.
Different story, she said. Cows ghost and snakes spirit are demons who can assume human forms for the making of mischief. Mao said intellectuals resembled these that they pretend to support the Party, like humans, but they revert to demons when criticized. They were called cows for short; they were locked up in places called cowsheds. My father was put in a cowshed at his institute. He died of fright, or shame, or anger who knows? He had a bad heart.
Im sorry, I said; I didnt know what else to say. Id hardly stopped to consider what her life had been like during those years, any more than Id considered what she might want from me.
She smiled quietly. It is in the past, she said. I only remember my father said people from cold places have cold hearts. Your uncle visited with us?
My great-uncle, I said. He visited many times before Liberation it must have been around the same time your father was in the States.
Such coincidence, she said, and then she waved her hand at the buildings behind us. Do you like the temple?
Its lovely, I said. She showed me the sacred altar and the enormous vault and the main halls painted, swirling ceiling, and then we stood on the Triple Echo Stones and clapped our hands together, listening for the sound to return another thing, I knew, that Uncle Owen had done. We were interrupted by a group of Japanese tourists, led by a woman with a bullhorn and an umbrella crowned with a yellow streamer. Video cameras sprouted like snouts from the faces of the men. Dr Yu and I moved away and examined an ancient tree and a garden of roses, all the time talking easily. I forgot about her family, waiting at home, and I remembered only when Dr Yu looked at her watch and said, apologetically, Its almost seven now perhaps we should go?
Of course.
Well take the local bus to my home. Its very crowded, but not very far. You have ridden on one?
Not yet, I said. The bus was one of the things wed been forbidden.
You hang on then, she said. Press when I say.
The bus that pulled up to the corner was full, overfull, bulging; it was absolutely impossible that anyone else should squeeze on. PRESS! Dr Yu said as we reached the door, and then she shoved me into the tangled crowd. Her hands pushed my shoulders; her knees nudged mine; somehow we were on the bus and rattling down the street. People drew away from me, staring frankly at my eyes and breasts. I coughed loudly and they watched and coughed back. My chest was killing me. A baby three feet away turned and saw my face and burst into frightened cries, and Dr Yu apologized to his mother. We rode toward the setting sun, and at a street corner indistinguishable from the others Dr Yu wedged herself behind me and popped me through the open door. I tripped on the step.
Well walk now, she said. Home is only three blocks away.
In the dusk the streets were lined with people. Old women crouched over charcoal braziers or bubbling woks, cooking their families meals. Clumps of children darted by, falling silent at the sight of me. A man in a blue jacket pedaled past, pulling a load of kindling on a cart, and a woman who hardly came up to my waist tottered by on miniature, once-bound feet. Above me I heard birdsong, and when I looked up a man tending bamboo cages on a balcony spat at my feet and then grinned, exposing three teeth. An outdoor market covered much of the sidewalk.
Dr Yu inspected everything as we made our way between the stalls, naming what she touched for me. Zhusun, bamboo shoots; qiezi, eggplant; doufu, beancurd. The steamed buns were baozi and the duck, ya. I drew the words in happily but knew Id lose most of them. Dr Yu explored four of the chickens, her hands pressing the breasts and thighs and checking the beaks and combs before she chose the fattest one. She paid with a handful of bills a third the size of my solemn Foreign Exchange Currency tiny green notes printed with ships, even smaller mustard ones depicting trucks loaded with grain, misty mint ones bearing giant bridges. Renmibi, she explained the money Lou had forbidden us to have. Peoples Money. She stuffed the newspaper-wrapped chicken under her arm.
We are here, she said, pointing at a cluster of six pale green, ten-story, cement-block buildings. She showed me the clusters coal-burning heating plant and its mountain of coal, as well as the primary school and the series of low bicycle sheds packed with identical bikes. But because she explained none of it, doing me the honor of acting as though I could understand what I saw, my head filled with questions as we climbed the unlit stairwell to her sixth-floor flat.
Dr Yus husband was waiting for us inside the living room, hunched on a narrow couch and watching TV while his oldest son read. Both of them stood when Dr Yu brought me in. She said something quick in Mandarin and then she turned to me and said, I present my husband, Dr Zhang Meng. Also my oldest son, Zhang Zaofan. Zaofan in your language means Rebel. I smiled and she turned to her family. Meet Grace Hoffmeier, she said. Wife of famous lake ecologist Doctor Professor Walter Hoffmeier.
I nodded, although I didnt like being introduced as Walters wife. The elder Zhang bowed. So pleased, he said dryly. Your husbands work is well known to my wife. Before I could respond, he gestured at the battered wardrobe, the sagging couch, the scarred table holding up the small black-and-white TV. You will excuse our furnishings, he said. All things of worth were taken from us. My fathers books, his scrolls He shrugged. Its an old story, he said. Same old story you hear from everyone.
He wore his gray pants belted high over a small round stomach, which seemed to stem more from his horrible posture than from any excess weight. His worn white shirt had a frayed collar, and his shoes were laced so tightly that I wondered if they werent a size too big. His eyes were deep-set, sunk in a nest of wrinkles, and they kept sliding to my hair. When I coughed, they shifted to my chest.
Bronchitis, I explained.
At least, he said. At least. You should go to the doctor tomorrow if youre not better you know where Clinic for Foreign Visitors is?
I shook my head and coughed again.
You go, he said, scribbling the address on a scrap of paper. Call me if you have any trouble. I work in the hospital wing next door.
Youre a medical doctor? I asked, and then I remembered Dr Yu had told me this at the party and that in fact shed offered to have her husband fix my cough. Im sorry, I said, embarrassed. I knew that. Its just this fever, Ive been confused
Thoracic surgeon, Dr Zhang said shortly. This year, at least. He pursed his lips and, in a mincing voice said, Is new Central Committee policy now: Intellectuals are to be esteemed and treated as valuable. He sounded as if he were quoting someone he didnt much like.
I stammered something clumsy and then turned toward the younger Zhang, whod been waiting silently while his father spoke. Zaofan made me forget my cough and my discomfort with his father in that tiny, shabby room, he stood out like a rhododendron. He was as beautiful as Randy, my first husband; as beautiful as Walters student whod caused me all that trouble back home. He was as beautiful as any man Id ever seen, and when he smiled I forgot my bronchitis, my weight, and my foreign face and I felt beautiful too. Voluptuous, not fat; smooth and expansive and well-tended and creamy-skinned. I forgot how I was supposed to act. I was middle-aged, I reminded myself. Id been married for six years. The back of my neck began to sweat.
Zaofans hair was long, held back by dark glasses, and he was dressed in jeans and a tight blue T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan Chongqing Construction Company More, Better, Faster. A huge digital watch adorned his wrist. In Massachusetts, he would have looked hoody, but here I knew his appearance meant only that he was young, that he leaned toward Western ideas; that he was, or had been, a student. Id seen thousands of young men dressed like him on the streets and the campuses. None of them had had Zaofans startling eyes or elegant bones, but many had shared his aura of eagerness.
He held out his hand and said, Call me Rocky my American name. His voice was surprisingly deep.
I said hello and touched his hand, and when I did my palm sprouted sweat like a sponge. His hand was square, broad-palmed, strongly lined, with large, curved nails; despite the film of sweat between us he held me firmly.
Dr Zhang cleared his throat and frowned. Zaofan is waiting-for-employment, he said. Thats what we call it here, when students leave school and then wait and wait to be assigned to a job that never appears. He has made a small business selling jeans, radios, cigarettes on the street; he makes more money than we, his parents. All illegal. His friends, those liumang they are profiteers. Petty thieves.
What should I do? Rocky said. What else is there for me? He squeezed my hand before he let it go, and in an echo of his fathers mocking voice he said, Some must get rich first. Thats the new party line.
Thats the current wind, his father said bitterly. You should be less like tree, more like bamboo. The wind now is just like it was in the early sixties free markets, individual contracts, go-it-alone. But a new wind can come, as winds did then. Even a new Gang of Four you wait. Old Deng is so old his brain has turned to stone.
Rocky shrugged as if hed heard all this before, and Dr Yu smiled nervously. They might have been any family back home, the anxious parents of one of the boys Id hung out with when I was fat and dressed in black and was everybodys bad girl. Rocky shot me a small, conspiratorial smile, which I tried not to return but did. Liumang, he said to me. Means hoodlum. You like what my father calls me?