Forbidden City (3 page)

I kept going farther and farther back into history. That’s what got me into the Chinese stuff. And now, here I am, rocketing towards China, miles up in the thin air.

When the voice announcing our descent crackled over the PA, Dad woke up and tried to stretch.

“What’s up?” he mumbled.

“Buckle up, Dad, we’re landing in Beijing!”

The plane floated and circled for a while and I looked out the window at a curious sight. If you fly over Toronto at night, you see millions of bright white lights, like another sky full of stars, but when
I looked down at a city that was almost three times as populated, I saw only bits of weak yellowish light here and there. You’d never have guessed that a huge city was below you.

The plane bumped down hard and taxied along a rough runway towards the terminal. We hauled ourselves out of our seats and I lifted the aluminum Betacam case from the overhead storage bin.

We wandered, bleary eyed and exhausted, to the baggage room. Dad was wide awake by the time we got our bags and went through the passport and customs check. We were slowed down a bit because of the Betacam and the other electronic equipment we had with us — the camcorder, a small tape recorder you could dictate into, a portable
CD
player, a portable shortwave
AM
/
FM
, and a Walkman. Dad had to list them all on a piece of official-looking paper. The customs guys wore brown uniforms and looked as bored and sleepy as I felt. As we left the passport check we passed by glass doors leading outside. Lots of people — mostly men — stood on the other side of the glass holding up signs with names on them.

“There’s supposed to be someone here to meet us,” Dad said as we inched along with the crowd.

“There, Dad, look.” I pointed to a tall thin Chinese man in a grey sports jacket. He held up a piece of cardboard with
JACKSON
printed on it. Dad and I struggled through the crowd and out the door into a cool, dry evening and walked over to our sign man.

“I’m Jackson,” Dad said, holding out his hand, “Ted Jackson.”

The man gripped my dad’s hand and pumped it as if he was trying to get an engine started.

“How do you do? Welcome you to Beijing, Mr. Jackson. I am Xu Bing-long.”

Mr. Xu gave us a big friendly smile that was jammed with crooked teeth. He was only a couple of inches shorter than me and had a long face, not like the Chinese Canadians in Toronto. Most of them are fairly short, with round faces and broad flat noses. Mr. Xu had quite a honker on him, a sharp, hooked nose that looked almost Arabic. His voice was high, like a little kid’s, but there was a bit of grey in his brush cut, so he was probably older than Dad.

“This is my son, Mr. Xu. Alexander.”

Mr. Xu did his pumping routine on me. He held on to my hand and said, “Welcome you to China, Ah-rek Shan Dah” — Mr. Xu had a lot of trouble getting his tongue around my name — “hope your stay is a happy one.” He talked English with an accent, and he said words that ended in “r” a bit like a Britisher. Like,
cah
, for car. And
Ah-rek Shan Dah
.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, wishing he’d let go of my hand.

“We have a car,” he said, and finally released me.

We got our stuff packed into the trunk of a Nissan and climbed in, Dad and I in the back and Mr. Xu in front with the driver. We pulled out of the airport parking area onto the straightest road I’ve
ever seen in my life. It stretched away ahead of us until the yellow lamps that lined it on either side disappeared in the distance.

Dad and Mr. Xu made small talk about the flight while I settled back in the seat. I looked at my watch. It was past one in the morning, China time, and that meant we had been travelling almost twenty-four hours. I hadn’t slept more than an hour or two of that.

Dad was talking excitedly. Now that he was back on earth and not threatened with another take-off he was his old self, asking questions and barely letting Mr. Xu get an answer out before hitting him with another one.

I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Xu was assigned by the government to the
CBC
news team, which was made up of two people, Dad and Eddie Nowlan, and his job was to help arrange interviews, visits to factories and other places the reporters wanted to visit, interpret for them, get tickets for them if they wanted to travel, etc., etc. I wondered why Eddie Nowlan couldn’t do that for himself, but I was too tired to butt in with questions the way I usually would.

After a while we entered the city and drove along wide, nearly deserted avenues. Then the Nissan made a sharp turn into a parking lot in front of a big building. The car swept through the crowded lot, turned onto a ramp that curved up to the front door, and came to a stop.

“Beijing Hotel,” announced Mr. Xu in his high voice.

I was stiff and sore and half asleep. After he had loaded himself up with our bags, Mr. Xu led me through the big glass doors, across a wide lobby, and into an elevator. Mr. Xu said something in Chinese to a sleepy woman in a hotel uniform who yawned and pushed a button which was crazy, because it was a self-serve elevator.

The elevator stopped, and we stepped into a long, dimly lit corridor.

“This way,” said Mr. Xu, and we followed him down the hall. He stopped and knocked at a door.

It was opened by a heavy middle-aged white man. A thick-stemmed pipe jutted out from under his walrus moustache. He looked different than he did on TV, where I’d seen him a million times giving news and analyses from all over the world, and lately from China. Eddie Nowlan was one of the
CBC
’s top news correspondents. On TV he was always Edward, but now he looked more like an Eddie in wrinkled shirt, baggy pants, and slippers.

“Hello, Lao Xu,” he boomed. “And you must be Ted. Welcome to the middle of the Middle Kingdom.”

They shook hands as Dad said, “Glad to meet you, Eddie. I’ve been looking forward to working with you.”

Eddie looked curiously at me, eyebrows raised. “And who’s this?”

Oh god, I thought, realizing that Eddie hadn’t
been expecting me. Dad had probably forgotten — or neglected — to mention that I was coming.

“My son, Alex,” Dad said. “I, ah, brought him along for the experience. I thought he’d get a lot out of it.”

Eddie didn’t look too pleased as he held out his hand, which felt cold as it gripped mine. “Hi,” I managed. “Glad to meet you.” I would have been, too, if I hadn’t felt so stupid and humiliated turning up unannounced. This guy was a big name all over Canada. I had never met a celebrity before. Leave it to Dad to screw it up for me.

“Well,” Eddie growled, “we’ll try and find a spot for you.”

The suite of rooms consisted of a small vestibule with four doorways. One led to a bathroom, one to a brightly lit office, and the other two opened on to good-sized bedrooms. Eddie Nowlan led us into the office. A picture window filled the far wall and reflected the office lights back to us like a dark mirror. On the sill was a row of flower pots of different shapes and sizes with all kinds of green plants in them. In front of the window two big desks faced each other. One had a word processor and a couple of telephones. On the other was an ancient typewriter, a fax machine, a tape recorder, and piles of tapes. Both desks were stacked high with wire in- and out-baskets, paper, and newspapers.

“Take a load off,” Eddie ordered, waving towards a couch.

Dad put the Betacam on the floor. He and I sat down on the couch while Mr. Xu helped Eddie stow the suitcases somewhere. I thought I could hear Eddie grumbling to him from the other room. Eddie came back and got some bottles out of a small fridge. He snapped them open, plunked them down on the coffee table, and collected some glasses from one of the desks.

“Have to rinse these out. Be back in a minute,” he said.

“Well,” Dad said, looking around with sparkling eyes, “I guess this is the newsroom.”

“Dad, didn’t you tell him I was coming?”

“I guess it slipped my mind. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. You look like you could sleep for a week,” he added, changing the subject like he always does when I’m mad at him.

Mr. Xu came in and took one of the armchairs. He crossed his legs at the ankles and settled back.

“Do you live here in the hotel, Mr. Xu?” Dad asked him.

“Oh, no. I live about twenty minutes of bicycle from here. Please call me Lao Xu,” he added. “Lao means ‘old.’ Xu is my surname. In China we put the surname first. My given name, Bing-long, means ‘Bright Dragon’.”

“And I hope you’ll call me Ted.”

“Would you like I give you a Chinese name?” Lao Xu said, looking at me.

“Yeah! That would be great.”

“Okay, I call you Shan Da. Sounds like your name, Ah-rek Shan Dah, which is hard for Chinese to say.”

“What does it mean?”

Lao Xu got up from his chair and went to one of the desks. He wrote two characters on a piece of paper and handed it to me. The paper showed:

“Shan Da means Tall Mountain in Chinese. Good name for you, as you are a tall boy.”

I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. “Thanks,” I said. Then, “Dad, can we go and see the Great Wall tomorrow? And the Forbidden City?”

Dad laughed. “We’ll see, we’ll see. Give me a break, will you?”

Eddie came back with the clean glasses and poured beer into three of them. He dumped some orange pop into the other and handed it to me.

He raised his glass. “Welcome to China, Jacksons, and here’s to successful news gathering.” I tried a sip of the pop. It was tasty, but very sweet.

Dad took a long swallow from his glass, then another. “Ah,” he said. “That tastes good. I was thirsty.”

“Yep, Beijing beer is excellent,” Eddie said, wiping foam from his moustache. “And I ought to know, right Lao Xu?”

Lao Xu had hardly touched his beer. He laughed politely at Eddie’s joke.

After a few more minutes of small talk Dad took a look at me and said, “Alex, you’d better hit the sack.”

“I’m okay, Dad,” I said, not convincing anyone. Including myself.

“Come on. Off you go. Beijing will still be here when you get up tomorrow. Or is it already tomorrow? China is twelve hours ahead of us, right? And we crossed the international date line.”

“Right.”

Eddie led me into a large bedroom with two single beds in it. He said good night and left the room. Almost before he had shut the door I had taken off my clothes, dropped them on the floor at my feet, and crawled into the bed nearest the window. I fell asleep right away.

When I woke up, the bedroom was dim, but I could see light around the edges of the curtains. In the other bed Dad was sprawled in a tangle of twisted blankets, snoring away, one foot hanging over the edge of the bed.

I lay there, groggy and dazed, until my excitement
came back with a rush, the way you feel right after a thunderclap. I was actually in China!

I pulled on my wrinkled cords and went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. Back in the bedroom, I pulled on a T-shirt, slipped into my deck shoes, then rummaged around in my suitcase until I found my China guidebook. I left the apartment, heading for the elevators.