Dreams of Joy: A Novel (7 page)

When I stare at him blankly, he answers his own question. “We can’t. We need ingredients for all kinds of afflictions—mumps, fever, problems below the belt … And remember, in forty years Hong Kong will go back to the People’s Republic of China. Don’t think those Communists aren’t trying to get their fingers in the pie already. Through Hong Kong, the Peking regime can absorb foreign exchange, buy materials that are hard to get elsewhere, and export certain materials to other countries. Not that getting people and things in or out is completely painless—”

“One of my greatest fears is that my daughter went to China and was immediately taken out and shot. Are you saying that didn’t happen?” I ask, because nothing he’s telling me matches up with anything I’ve read or been told about what’s happening in the PRC.

“Propaganda,” he says, emphasizing each syllable. “Again, you don’t understand how many Chinese are going back to China every day. Since Liberation, over sixty thousand Overseas Chinese have gone back to Fukien alone. Another ninety thousand have returned to the motherland from Indonesia. You think the government would kill all those people?” he scoffs. “But if you’re so worried, maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“But I need to find my daughter.” (And I don’t care what he says. I’ve read the papers. I’ve seen the news. It’s
Red
China, for heaven’s sake.)

He looks me up and down, appraising me for the widow I am. Then he says, “As you say, she’s a daughter. Maybe she’s not worth it. If she were a son, that would be different.” Hong Kong may be a British colony, but Chinese ways and traditions are old and deep. I’m so angry I want to hit him. “Forget this stupid girl,” he adds. “You can have other children. You’re still young enough.”

“Yes, yes,” I agree, because what’s the point in arguing about a daughter’s value or putting this man in his place for offending a widow’s vows? “Still, I’m going to China and I need help.”

“Ah! Square one! What kind of help do you need?”

“Just two things. I need to receive letters and money from my sister, and I need to be able to write back to her.”

“Have you done this before—written to China?”

“My father-in-law used this association to send money back to his home village,” I answer.

“Tell me your family name again.”

“My maiden name was Chin. My married name is Louie.”

The man steps away, looks through some files, and comes back with an index card. “Money was sent from your family in Los Angeles to Wah Hong Village until just this month.” His attitude seems to change with this knowledge. “Shall I send money to you in Wah Hong?”

“I’m not going there.”

“That’s all right. We can still get mail to you as long as you’re somewhere in Kwangtung province. Our connections are just over the border, as they’ve been for over a hundred years.”

“But I’m going to Shanghai.” Joy said she wanted to meet her father. That’s where she has to be.

“Shanghai.” He grimaces. “I can’t send anything directly to Shanghai. We don’t have connections there.”

“If you send mail to our relatives in Wah Hong, could they send it on to me?”

He nods, but I need to verify what’s possible.

“How does it work?”

“You have someone send us money—”

“My sister will send letters and money, maybe even packages. We’ll have to consider the cost—”

“And the time. You can send an airmail letter from the United States to Hong Kong quickly and easily, but the cost to send a package by air is prohibitive.”

“I realize that. I’ll tell my sister to send packages by boat.”

“In any case, I’ll put whatever she sends in a new envelope—or package—and address it to your cousin”—he glances at the card in his hand—“Louie Yun. I’ll give it to one of my men, who’ll then take it with him on the train to Canton. From there, he’ll go to Wah Hong and deliver the letter to Louie Yun, who’ll put the letter in a whole new envelope and mail it on to you in Shanghai. Obviously, you’ll need to contact this cousin to tell him what he’ll need to do—”

I want to go straight to Shanghai, but I say, “I’ll take care of it.” After a pause, I ask, “Does it have to be so complicated?”

“If you want to receive just mail, then it’s pretty easy, although it might be read, censored, and maybe even confiscated entirely. If you want to receive money—”

“I don’t want anyone in the village to get in trouble,” I interrupt. “A while ago, we received a letter from one of the cousins in Wah Hong, saying they didn’t need our money any longer. ‘There are no wants in the new China,’ he wrote. He was later killed trying to escape—”

The man behind the desk snorts. “China is unpredictable, and the situation there changes from week to week. Right now, the Communists
want
people to send money. They
need
the money. They want foreign investment. Believe me, they’ll happily take your money.”

“I don’t want them to take my money, and I don’t want to invest,” I say. “I just want to make sure the letters that are sent reach the intended parties—on both ends.”

He throws his hands in the air impatiently. “Think, Mrs. Louie! If you want them to take some or all of your money, then just have your sister send her envelope directly to you and see what arrives. Or you can have her hide money in a package and use us to get it to you. We—and other family and district associations—have been doing this a long time. We know what we’re doing.”

“You swear that my relatives will actually receive my sister’s letters and that they won’t get in trouble.”

“If they’re caught, yes, they’ll get in trouble!” Which is equally true for May sending mail directly to or receiving it from Red China. “So let’s make sure no one is caught.”

I don’t feel confident about any of this, but what can I do? It may not be perfect, but I now have a way to get mail into China: from May to the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association, and then to Father Louie’s family in Wah Hong and on to me in Shanghai. The same process will work in reverse for me to send mail to my sister. I wish May and I had a go-between who was blood close, but that’s not possible. May and I are related to everyone in our home village of Yin Bo, but I left there when I was three and May was only a baby. My mother is dead. We never learned what happened to my father. I’m sure he’s dead—murdered by the Green Gang, massacred in one of the Shanghai bombings, or killed by Japanese soldiers after he deserted us. The people of Yin Bo might not remember me, May, or our parents. And even if they did, could they be trusted?

“May I offer some advice?” the man from the family association asks. “I told you lots of people are returning to China, and it’s true. Getting in is easy, but getting out is hard. You shouldn’t go there unless you have an exit plan.”

“I’m willing to remain in China as long as I can find—”

He holds up a hand to keep me from continuing. “Your daughter, I know.” He scratches his neck and asks, “So do you have an exit plan?”

“I haven’t thought beyond finding my daughter,” I admit. “I can’t let her be there by herself.”

He shakes his head at my doggedness. “If there’s a way out of China, it’s through Canton. If you and your daughter can get to Canton, then you’ll be just two of hundreds who leave every day.”

“Hundreds? You said that tens of thousands of people are returning to China.”

“That’s my point. It’s not easy getting out, but people manage to do it. Some days it feels like half of what I do here is send money back to home villages to take care of houses for people who’ve left. There are whole villages—deserted—just over the border. We call them ghost villages. Some people leave their houses just as they were that morning—furniture, clothes, cupboards full of preserved food—so that everything will be exactly the same when they return—”

“When can I depart?” I ask, cutting him off.

“When will you be ready?”

After finalizing the arrangements—including making a plan for someone to pick me up at the Canton train station and take me to Wah Hong—he offers one last piece of advice. “The People’s Republic of China is almost eight years old. It’s changing all the time. It’s not going to be what you remember or what you think it should be, and it certainly isn’t going to be what you’ve heard in America.”

When I get back to my hotel, I ask the woman at the front desk for a form to write a telegram. Then I find a chair in the lobby and write to May:
ARRIVED HONG KONG. TOMORROW I GO TO WAH HONG. WILL SEND MAIL DETAILS WHEN I GET TO SHANGHAI
.

THE NEXT DAY
, I put on the peasant clothes my sister bought for me twenty years ago to wear out of China. I go to the railway station, buy a one-way ticket on the Kowloon–Canton Railway, and board the train. It starts to move, and in minutes we’ve left the city and are crossing the New Territories, which are still part of the colony.

I wonder how Joy got across. What if she went to China and China didn’t want her? They would have known immediately she wasn’t from Shanghai. We always thought her Chinese was good compared with that of the other kids in Chinatown, but her accent … And I don’t know who or what to believe—the man at the family association or everything I’ve heard about Red China in Los Angeles. Is Joy dead already? What if people decided she was a spy? What if she was killed the moment she set foot in China? This is my greatest fear, the thing that turns my heart black with despair. What point will be served if I follow her? Just another death—my own. Other questions torture me too: If I find Joy, what physical and emotional shape will she be in? Will she even want to see me? Will we be able to repair our relationship, which, after all, was based on a lie? Will she come home with me, assuming we can find a way out of the country?

The twenty miles to the border—a bridge above the Sham Chun River—comes sooner than I expected. The flag of the People’s Republic of China flaps in the breeze. Guards come through the train. They check the identity cards of those who are returning home from doing business or visiting relatives in Hong Kong. It’s a large number, which confirms what the man at the family association told me. This is, it occurs to me, much like the border between California and Mexico, where many people cross back and forth each day to do business.

When I tell the guard I’m an Overseas Chinese who’s returning home, I’m taken off the train, along with a few others. Memories of entering America flood my mind: my sister and I being separated from the other passengers and being sent to the Angel Island Immigration Station, where we were interrogated for months. Is that what’s going to happen now?

I’m escorted into a room. The door is shut and locked behind me. I wait until an inspector enters. He’s a lot shorter than I am, but he’s wiry and tough.

“Are you stateless?” he asks.

Hmmm … Good question. I don’t have a passport. All I have is my Certificate of Identity issued by the United States. I show it to the inspector, who doesn’t know what to make of it.

“Are you an American citizen?” he asks.

If this really is like Angel Island, then I have to follow what May and I did back then—muddle the story to thwart the bureaucracy.

“They wouldn’t let me become a citizen,” I answer. “I wasn’t good enough for them. They treat the Chinese very badly.”

“What is the purpose of your return to the People’s Republic of China?”

“To help build the nation,” I answer dutifully.

“Are you a scientist, a doctor, or an engineer? Can you help us build an atomic bomb, cure a disease, or design a dam? Do you have airplanes, a factory, or property to donate to the government?” When I shake my head, he asks, “Well, then, what are we supposed to do with you? How do you think you will help us?”

I hold up my hands. “I will help with these.”

“Are you ready to give up the filthy, stinky American ideals you’ve cherished in your heart?”

“Yes, absolutely!” I answer.

“Are you a returning student? We have a special reception station in Canton for returning students, who are expected to make a clean breast of their reasons for coming back to China, their ideas about fame and profit, and any anti-Communist thoughts they might harbor.”

“Forgive me, but do I look like a student?”

“You look like someone who is hiding something. You don’t fool me by wearing the clothes of the people.” The scrape of his chair against the concrete floor as he stands feels ominous. “Stay here.” He leaves the room, once again locking the door.

I’m confused and scared. The man at the family association said this would be easy, but that’s not what I’m feeling. Could Joy have gone through this? Did she declare herself stateless and give up her passport? I hope not.

The door opens, and a woman enters. “Remove your clothes.”

This really is too much like Angel Island. I didn’t like being examined then and I don’t want it to happen now. Ever since the rape, I’ve been afraid to be touched by anyone, not by those I love and who love me, not even by my own daughter.

“I have other people to search. Hurry up!” she orders.

I strip down to my underwear.

“A brassiere is a sign of Western decadence,” she says derisively. “Give it here.”

I do as I’m told and then cross my arms over my breasts.

“You may dress.”

The inspector returns, and I’m questioned for another hour. My bags are searched and some items, including my other bra, are confiscated. I reboard the train. And then, in moments, we cross the border into mainland China. I don’t have a chance to see it, however, because a guard enters the car and orders all shades closed.

“Any time we pass a bridge, an industrial site, or a military installation, you will lower your shades,” he announces. “You will not get off the train until you reach the destination on your ticket.”

Pearl

FOREVER BEAUTIFUL

I LEAVE THE
Canton train station expecting to find the car to take me to Wah Hong Village, but it isn’t here. I find no private cars, let alone taxis, in the parking lot either. All I see are bicycles and pedestrians dressed in nearly identical clothes. Everyone looks poor. Canton used to be a thriving city, so the changes are a shock. When some of the other passengers—the returning Overseas Chinese students—are hustled past me on their way to their special reception center, I turn and walk quickly in the opposite direction. I’m not a student, but I don’t want to be caught up in anything official even by accident. I cross the parking lot to get to the sidewalk. The street is filled with bicycles, but again no taxis. I see very few cars or trucks. A couple of buses rumble past, but I don’t know where they go. I ask a passerby how to get to Wah Hong. He’s never heard of it. And neither have the next several people I ask. I stand there, gnawing on a cuticle, not knowing what to do. If the man at the family association messed this up, then how can I count on him to handle my mail?

I’m not off to a good start.

I go back to the train station’s entrance and sit on my suitcase. I try to remain calm, but I don’t feel that way at all. Panicked is more like it. I tell myself to wait a half hour, and if no one comes for me then I’ll try to find a hotel. Finally, a beat-up Ford—a remnant of better days—pulls to a stop in front of me. The driver—a kid, really—rolls down the window and asks, “Are you Pearl Louie?”

Soon enough, we’ve left Canton behind and we’re on a raised dirt road taking us through flooded rice fields for what I’m told will be about a forty-five-minute drive to Wah Hong. Canton seemed like it had stepped back in time under communism, but now I feel like I’m jumping back a century or more. We pass small villages made up of a few peasant shacks clustered together. I shiver. I was raped and my mother killed in a shack like these. All these years I’ve longed for the gay and colorful streets of Shanghai, but I never once missed the Chinese countryside, yet here I am. Bad memories make me put on mental blinders. I’m here, but I’ll do my best not to see it.

When we get to Wah Hong, I ask the first person I come across if he knows Louie Yun. This is another of those tiny villages with at most three hundred inhabitants, all of them with the clan name Louie and all of them related to my father-in-law. I’m taken to Louie Yun’s home. Are they surprised to see me! Tea is poured. Snacks are brought out. Other relatives crowd in to meet me. But as much as I try not to
see
or
feel
that I’m in a shack, I am, and all kinds of recollections come rushing back.

When I first arrived in Los Angeles at the end of the Depression, my in-laws and all the people I met were poorer than anyone I’d known in Shanghai. We may have been cramped together in Chinatown—the seven of us in a three-bedroom apartment—but that was positively spacious compared with this two-room shack with what seems like ten or more Louie relatives living here. I hear terrible tales of what happened during so-called Liberation to those in the Louie family who benefited from the money we sent. They were called running dogs of imperialism, beaten, or made to kneel in glass in the public square. Some suffered even worse fates. The stories are just what I imagined, and they fill me with dread. But others praise Chairman Mao, thanking him for the gift of food and land.

The accepted practice would be for me to host a banquet, but I don’t want to be here that long. I pull Louie Yun aside, give him some cash, and promise more if he’ll handle letters for me. I explain the process, ending with “I’m not going to lie. It could be dangerous for you and the rest of the family.”

I don’t know if it’s gratitude for Father Louie’s gifts over the years, desire to stave off poverty, or indifference to the political danger, but he asks, “How much will you pay for this service?”

“How much do you want?”

We negotiate until we reach a fair price—balancing the hazards against the value of American dollars—which May will send to him each month. Then it’s back to Canton. I’m driven to the docks, where I find a ship to take me to Shanghai, which will be faster than taking a train and cheaper than flying. I tell myself I’ve bought Louie Yun’s loyalty, but I have no way of knowing.

FOUR MORNINGS LATER
, I’m on the deck watching Shanghai come into view. A week ago, I stepped off a plane in Hong Kong and was enveloped by odors I hadn’t smelled in that particular combination in years. Now, as I wait to disembark, I breathe in the scents of home—the oil- and sewage-infused water, rice being cooked on a passing sampan, rotting fish moldering on the dock, vegetables grown upriver wilting in the heat and humidity. But what I see ahead of me looks like a badly rendered drawing of Shanghai. The buildings along the Bund—the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the Shanghai Club, the Cathay Hotel, and the Custom House—look gray, neglected, and shabby. It doesn’t help that nets hang like trampolines from the façades. I don’t expect to see coolies. Isn’t this supposed to be the New China? But here they are on the wharf: barely dressed, scurrying back and forth, heavy loads on their backs.

This initial impression doesn’t dampen my mood. I’m home! I can’t wait to get off the boat and onto the streets. For a moment, I wish May were here with me. How many times have we sat together, talking about this or that café or shop, always wanting things to be as they were in our beautiful-girl days?

I, along with the other passengers, am herded into a processing shed. I hand my Certificate of Identity to an inspector, who looks it and then me over. I wear a cotton skirt and a pink blouse, because I can’t imagine entering Shanghai looking like a country bumpkin. Still, I definitely look different from everyone else. This seems to single me out for extra attention. One inspector searches my luggage, while another questions me about my reasons for returning to China, if I’m committed to giving up my capitalist ways, and if I’m here to serve the people. This is short compared with the border stop. Maybe they hear my Wu dialect and recognize me as the Shanghainese I am. Once their interrogation is finished—and I’ve lied repeatedly—one of the men pulls out a camera.

“We like to take photos of returning patriots,” he says, motioning to the framed pictures on the wall.

I hurry to the wall and search the photos, hoping to find my daughter. There she is! My daughter’s alive and she’s here! In the photograph, she stands in the middle of a group of men wearing green uniforms and green hats with red stars. A lovely smile lights her face. I ask the men about her. They remember her. How could they not? It’s not as though pretty young girls from America pass through their building every day.

“Where did she go?” I ask.

“Her father is a cultural worker,” an inspector offers helpfully. “We sent her to the Artists’ Association to find him.”

I smile for the camera. It isn’t hard. I’m happy. Joy found Z.G., which means I ought to be able to find the two of them very quickly. This is going to be much less complicated than I thought.

I pay a nominal fee to leave my bags in the shed and then hurry across the Bund and rush along the boulevards, paying no attention to the sights around me. In the Artists’ Association lobby, I approach a woman sitting behind a desk.

“Can you tell me how to find Li Zhi-ge?”

“He’s not here!” she snaps.

Bureaucrats are the same all over the world.

“Can you tell me where he lives?” I ask.

She eyes my suspiciously. “What do you want with him? You should not try to see Li Zhi-ge. This man has a black mark against him.”

That’s alarming. It seems like the inspector would have mentioned this.

“What did he do?”

“Who are you?” Her voice rises. “What do you want with him?”

“It’s personal business.”

“There’s nothing personal in China. Who are you?” she asks again. “Are you a troublemaker too?”

A troublemaker? What has Z.G. done? And please, God, tell me he hasn’t dragged my daughter into it.

“Have you seen a girl—”

“If you keep asking questions, I’m going to call the police,” she warns.

For a moment, I’d thought this was going to be easy, but nothing in life is easy, not one single thing. And I’m not myself. This is my hometown, but I feel clumsy and inadequate in the new Shanghai. Still, I have to try one more time.

“Have you seen a girl? She’s my daughter—”

The woman slaps her palm flat on her desk and glares at me. Then she picks up the phone and dials.

“Never mind,” I say, slowly backing away. “I’ll come back another time.”

I walk out the door, down the steps, and keep going for another two blocks before I stop. I sweat from the heat, humidity, and terror. I lean against a wall, fold my arms over my stomach, and take several deep breaths, trying to bring my fear under control. Despite the effortlessness of my disembarkation, I need to remember the problems I had at the border. I must be careful. I can’t end my search before it’s even begun.

I have another idea of where to go. I start to walk toward the French Concession. This used to be a lively area—with brothels, nightclubs, and Russian bakeries—but somehow it all looks grim and depressed. Many street names have changed too, but even after all these years I remember the way to Z.G.’s old apartment, where May and I used to model. His landlady is still there, and she’s as mean and cantankerous as she always was.

“You!” she exclaims when she sees me. “What do you want this time?”

This, after not having seen me for twenty years.

“I’m looking for Z.G.”

“You’re
still
looking for him? He doesn’t want you. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Only your sister, see?”

The words she speaks are like needles jabbing into my eyes. Why would she say this now, when she never said it back then?

“Just tell me where he is.”

“Not here. Even if he were, you’re too old now. Look in the mirror. You’ll see.”

All the while she’s staring at my clothes, my face, my hands, my haircut. She’s probably been taking in my smell too, since years of a Western diet of beef and milk come out in my sweat. She may be a cruel old woman, but she’s not stupid. It’s not hard for her to deduce I’m a foreigner.

“He returned to Shanghai after Liberation,” she recounts. “He paid the rent he owed me and gave me more money for the items I’d stored for him—his paints, brushes, clothes, and the rest of it. He paid my grandson to deliver everything to his new home. Then he paid me even more—”

She’s hinting pretty strongly. Maybe some of the old China ways still work.

“How much for his address?”

She probably thinks she’s proposing an astronomical sum, but it’s little more than one U.S. dollar.

Z.G. lives not far from here on a pretty pedestrian lane lined with graceful Western-style houses built in the twenties. I stop to put on lipstick and run a comb through my hair. Then I smooth my hands over my hips to make sure all my seams are straight and my skirt hangs perfectly. I can’t help it. I want to look beautiful.

“He’s not here,” the pretty servant girl who answers the door tells me.

“May I come in? I’m an old friend.”

The servant girl stares at me curiously, but she lets me in, which is surprising until I step inside. My breath catches, and I’m frozen in place by what I see. Old posters of my sister and me are on the walls. They’ve been hidden from public view and protected from the grimness of the streets. They are for Z.G.’s eyes only. None of this is what I expected—not the posters, wealth, sophistication, or the three servant girls, who line up before me nervously and stare down into their folded hands.

I motion to the posters on the walls. “You can see your”—what would be the right word in the New China?—“employer and I knew each other well many years ago. Please tell me where he is.”

The girls shift their feet, refusing either to meet my eyes or to respond to my request. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with servants. I do what I did with Z.G.’s former landlady. I open my purse and bring out my wallet.

“Where is he?” I ask.

“He was sent to the countryside,” the girl I assume to be in charge answers. She appears to be the oldest, although I doubt she’s more than twenty-five. The other two girls continue to fidget.

I don’t remember Z.G. having ties to the countryside. I’ve also read that being sent to the countryside is a common punishment in the New China.

“Is it because he lives like this? Or …” I look again at the young faces before me. Has there been a problem with him living with these three women? All kinds of improprieties used to happen in the past. I’m calculating how to broach that subject when the servant with a short bob volunteers new information.

“Guns always shoot the leading bird,” she says in a low voice. “Master Li is in trouble.”

“Things always change to the opposite,” the third servant pipes in.

“Dog today, cat tomorrow,” the girl with the bob adds. “They could have sent him to a labor camp.”

“Or killed him,” the third servant says, raising anxious eyes to mine.