Little Emperors (25 page)

I am trying to force-feed myself one more grape when the bride and groom and their attendants enter our room. Kitty has changed again, and is now wearing a slim-fitting purple velvet gown with long slits up the sides. The groom is red-eyed and red-faced, his green suit dishevelled and his green tie loosened, after toasting each table of guests with a glass of beer. Connie leans over and whispers that at some weddings the groom has an official drinker who
ganbei
s on behalf of the groom, thus sacrificing himself for the sake of his friend's wedding night. There is no such attendant at this wedding, and I think for certain the groom is going to tip over when he finally raises his glass at our table.

As soon as the bride and slurring groom exit our room, everyone gets up and, without a moment's hesitation or lingering, leaves. Outside, a line of red firecrackers dangles from the eaves of the hotel, popping loudly in successive blasts as tiny explosions climb up the string. After some confusion as to who is going where (our minivan seems to have
gone AWOL), we say goodbye to Kitty and her inebriated new husband and board a bumpy, exhaust fume–filled minibus back to Guangzhou.

Everyone on the bus is tired, so only one quarrel erupts on the way home — over which of the groom's friends will pay for the toll highway. Each of them pushes bills in the toll booth worker's face, shouting at the others to put their money away. Connie falls asleep on my shoulder. I rest my cheek against her black hair.

Double sleepiness.

Looking out my bedroom window on another smoggy Guangzhou morning, I realize that this is the only country where I have actually seen the sun. Really
seen
it — as in been able to stare directly at it and examine it for a while. The sun rarely shines here. It just suspends itself in the white sky, lowly humming, as if someone hit its dimmer switch. This morning it's a tangerine orb through the haze. Walking home from work last night, it occurred to me that the sun and moon are an equal shade of amber here. It's frightening what severe atmospheric pollution can do. Imagine — gases so dense they filter out the light and flash of the sun.

Speaking of the sun, I'm off on holidays to the Land of the Rising Sun next week. The travel agent in Hong Kong phoned Monday to confirm my place on a flight to Japan. I can't wait to see my friends, my Japanese family, the little Japanese town where I once lived.

On Tuesday, as we leave Number 2 School, Connie and I are trying to figure out what to do about the Grade One class at Number 1 School, one of the most naughty, out-of-control classes we have. We have tried everything with them — noses in corners, temporary banishment from the classroom, notes home, calls home. Nothing seems to work. As I puzzle over what we could try next, Connie says, “Maybe when you go to Japan, you can learn some new discipline techniques from that military country.”

My mind stops in its tracks. I know Connie is joking, or think she is, but I am momentarily shocked by her comment. Historically speaking, Chinese bitterness toward Japan is justified and unsurprising — the Japanese occupation of China prior to and during the Second World War was brutal. The atrocities the Japanese army committed in the Rape of Nanjing happened in many more places than just Nanjing. And not only in China, but across eastern Asia. Still, I am surprised to hear Connie voice such sentiments, to hear such remarks from someone who is usually so even-handed in her criticism.

I am also shocked because the Japan of my personal experience is the gentle, slightly eccentric modern Japan. The land of quiet tea ceremonies and giggling high-school girls, of smiling cartoon frogs and silent, high-speed trains. The land of beer in vending machines. The Japan I know is the most steadfastly anti-nuclear country on the planet, the only nation in the world without a true army, a country whose very constitution renounces war. When I think of Japan, many words come to mind.
Military
isn't one of them.

On Wednesday, I announce to the kids that I will be on holidays for a month — two weeks' vacation and two weeks for Chinese New Year. Perhaps the teaching centre doesn't want the kids to know I am heading into enemy territory. It sent out notices saying that I am going to Canada for the holidays. I tell the students the truth: I am going to Japan. Whole classes gasp. When Ben hears the news, his eyes bug out, then narrow to tiny lines as he angrily mutters,
“Yat boon?”
— Japan? — under his breath. On her way out after class, Yvonne scribbles “Japan is a bad country” in Chinese on the whiteboard.

“I don't get it, Connie,” I say, brushing away Yvonne's graffiti. “How can such young kids feel such hate for a place they barely know about?”

“I think maybe they get it from books, their education. Maybe their parents,” she explains as we walk toward our favourite won ton soup place. “I don't think they really feel hate for Japan, or understand such hate. They say those things, but don't really understand them.”

“I guess I just find it hard to understand because Canada has been so lucky,” I say. “We were in wars against both Germany and Japan, but our country was never directly attacked or invaded by the enemy. I think it's easy for us to forgive and hard for us to understand how others can't. Especially for things that happened a long time ago.” We pull open the restaurant doors and sit at our usual place by the window.

“I don't feel hate,” Connie continues. “I don't feel there is any reason to these days. There is no reason for these kids to hate, either. But I think for my parents, or even more, my grandparents, there is reason. They saw the war. The Japanese bombed Guangzhou —
Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!
— and knocked down many buildings.” She pauses to order two bowls of won ton soup. “My grandmother's building was crushed by bombs. She carried my father, just a tiny baby, on her back and managed to get out. She stood on the roof of her building, but it was on the ground. Many of her neighbours never got out.” Our soup comes and we crack apart our wooden chopsticks. “They can't forget that. They can't forgive.”

After lunch, the Grade Twos are visibly distressed when I tell them I am leaving for a month. Cailey, Alice, and other girls cry, “
No
, Miss Dionne! No get out!
No get out!
” and rush to clamour about me. Connie has to peel them off my legs one by one. They calm down when I explain that it is only a holiday and that I will be back. When I tell them I am going to Japan, they gasp in excitement. “Oh! The ghosts from the east!”

Little Alexander's eyes widen in wonder and he pops up, asking, “Miss Dionne, are you going to climb Mount Fuji?”

“Will you go to Disneyland?” asks Russ.

After class, Connie translates what the kids were saying. I am confused by the “ghosts from the east” comment. “You call Japanese people
ghosts
, too?” I ask.

“Yes. ‘The Ghosts from the East Sea.' ”

“But . . . Japanese people are Asian. I thought
ghosts
were only white-skinned Europeans?”

“No,” she says, shaking her ponytail and laughing. “To Chinese, everyone who is not Chinese is a ghost. To Chinese, Chinese are the only real people in the world!”

L'Africain is dark as Connie and I make our way to a table in an even darker corner near the stage. L'Africain has been the new reggae hot spot in Guangzhou ever since One Love closed its doors late last summer after someone was beaten to death on the sidewalk outside the club. Connie and I are at L'Africain tonight to watch a Guangzhou “battle of the bands.”

“JoAnn, this is my friend Linda,” Connie says, introducing me to a young woman standing next to the table. With her black jeans, black T-shirt, black jean jacket, and long black hair obscuring her eyes, she is most definitely Linda, the rock-and-roll chick.

“Hi, Linda! I'm glad to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about you.”

“I'm glad to meet you, too,” she answers in perfect English. “Connie talks about you all the time.”

“Good things, I hope!” I say, casting a suspicious smirk at Connie. Connie nods and rolls her eyes.

Linda motions toward a foreign man in his early thirties sitting at the table. “This is my English teacher, Jim.”

Ah! The infamous American teacher Jim! Connie has told me about him. He is the one who once explained to his university English class
that “sixty-nine” could be more than a number. Connie and I sit down, and Jim begins telling us his entire life story.

His steamroller conversation is cut off by a wail of electric guitars as the first band starts up. They go immediately into a perfect cover of Oasis's “Morning Glory,” sending vibrations through the floor, up table legs, and into glasses shaking and shimmying on tabletops. A black-clad crowd rushes to the front of the small stage, hopping up and down and flailing themselves at one another in a frantic mosh pit frenzy. Connie screams in delight, and we shake our heads to the pounding of the electric bass and bash on invisible drums. As the band moves into a Pearl Jam number, Linda jumps up, shouting, “Excuse me! I have to get ready!” and runs behind one of the speaker stacks, where the rest of her band members are strapping on their guitars.

“She's going to sing Alanis Morissette!” Connie yells into my ear. The first band finishes their set, and Linda's band takes their places onstage, stepping around pedals and amps amid screeches of feedback piercing through the speakers.

As the band settles in, Linda steps up to the microphone, rests her hands on top of it, and breathes, “This song is by a Canadian. I'm going to sing it for my new Canadian friend.” She glances in the direction of our table, and I feel red creeping up my cheekbones in the dark.

Her band launches into Alanis Morissette's “Ironic,” and Linda, with the Chinese gift for tones, sounds exactly,
exactly
, like Morissette. I lose all sense of place. I could be in a bar in New York, Vancouver, London or, indeed, anywhere in the world.

She finishes “Ironic,” and her guitarists, hunched over their strings, their long black hair falling over their faces, go directly into the heavy opening chords of the Cranberries' “Zombie.” Linda clutches the microphone close to her lips and begins singing. Although the song is about the trouble in Northern Ireland, I can't help but picture the trouble in Tiananmen Square in 1989 as Linda growls:

Another mother's breaking heart

is taking over.

When the violence causes silence

We must be mistaken . . .

The hair rises on my arms, and I wonder who she is singing this song for.

Linda's band finishes their set to crazed applause, hooting, and whistling, and a third band takes the stage. On a Nirvana number, a fuse blows and plunges the bar into sudden, silent darkness.

Waitresses light candles as techies run around the bar trying to find the fuse box. Teacher Jim continues his monologue, picking his story up exactly where he left it.
He is so very New York
, I think as I listen to him. In his sneakers, faded jeans, and Rangers sweatshirt, he looks as though he just walked out of Madison Square Garden. When he pauses to catch his breath, I ask, “How long have you been in Guangzhou?”

“Three yeahs!” he replies.

“That's a long time!” I shout over the Chinese Nirvana as they start up again.

“Yeah!” he yells. “But it grows on ya after a while . . . kinda like fungus!”

“Yes! Yes it does!” I shout back.

I have to leave early. Connie walks me to the corner to help me catch a cab, our ears ringing from sitting too close to the speakers. “Well, Connie, I guess I'll see you in a few weeks or so,” I say, making small talk as we stand on the curb, waiting.

“You are lucky to travel,” she sighs, staring off somewhere over my shoulder. “You are a free bird. We Chinese are like birds in a cage.”

Connie waves down an approaching taxi and tells the driver where to take me as I crawl into the back seat. She crouches next to my open window. “Have fun in Japan, and . . . please come back!”

No!
I put the phone down and reach across the cluttered
kotatsu
for the remote control, nearly tipping over my cup of green tea.
I knew this was going to happen
, I think.
I knew something like this would happen the minute I left China!

I click on the Japanese morning news to find that what my dad just told me all the way from Canada is true — Deng Xiaoping has died.

I watch the TV in disbelief, straining to catch the Japanese announcer's quiet words. I can't believe I've missed this.

Landing in Hong Kong two days later, I rush immediately north to the Chinese border and hop a Shenzhen bus back to Guangzhou. As the bus speeds down the freeway, I watch the factories pass in the distance. Their red flags are at half-mast, pointing stiffly north in the wind as if pointing me toward the action. The man who shaped modern-day China by telling the people, “To get rich is glorious,” the man who brokered the deal for the return of Hong Kong to China, the man who, by some accounts, ordered the troops to move in on Tiananmen Square in June 1989 is dead.

And I don't want to miss another day, another minute, of the state-sanctioned mourning show.

Back in Guangzhou, things aren't as dramatic as I hoped they would be. There are no black banners draped across boulevards. There is no hysterical crying in the streets. People go about their daily business among the storefront red flags, all at half-mast, that have sprung up since the news broke.

The media, however, are being properly dramatic. The
Guangzhou Daily
and other newspapers are running black mastheads for the official five-day mourning period. The only thing being played on taxi radios is sombre classical music or Chinese opera, interspersed with half-whispered commentaries, the only words of which I can catch are “Deng
Xiaoping.” Chinese TV has turned into one endless documentary on Deng's life and frequently shows peasants walking dirt roads carrying black-ribboned portraits of the late leader.