The Hundred Secret Senses

  She snaps on the light and proceeds to demonstrate, hands on hips, twisting at the waist like a sixties PE teacher. I wonder how long she’s stood by my bed, waiting for me to waken so she can present her latest bit of unsolicited advice. Her bed is already made.

  I look at my watch and say in a grumpy voice, “Kwan, it’s only five in the morning.”

  “This is China. Everyone else is up. Only you’re asleep.”

  “Not anymore.”

  We’ve been in China less than eight hours, and already she’s taking control of my life. We’re on her terrain, we have to go by her rules, speak her language. She’s in Chinese heaven.

  Snatching my blankets, she laughs. “Libby-ah, hurry and get up. I want to go see my village and surprise everyone. I want to watch Big Ma’s mouth fall open and hear her words of surprise: ‘Hey, I thought I chased you away. Why are you back?’ ”

  Kwan pushes open the window. We’re staying at the Guilin Sheraton, which faces the Li River. Outside it’s still dark. I can hear the trnnng! trnnng! of what sounds like a noisy pachinko parlor. I go to the window and look down. Peddlers on tricycle carts are ringing their bells, greeting one another as they haul their baskets of grain, melons, and turnips to market. The boulevard is bristling with the shadows of bicycles and cars, workers and schoolchildren—the whole world chirping and honking, shouting and laughing, as though it were the middle of the day. On the handlebar of a bicycle dangle the gigantic heads of four pigs, roped through the nostrils, their white snouts curled in death grins.

  “Look.” Kwan points down the street to a set of stalls lit by low-watt bulbs. “We can buy breakfast there, cheap and good. Better than paying nine dollars each for hotel food—and for what? Doughnut, orange juice, bacon, who wants it?”

  I recall the admonition in our guidebooks to steer clear of food sold by street vendors. “Nine dollars, that’s not much,” I reason.

  “Wah! You can’t think this way anymore. Now you’re in China. Nine dollars is lots of money here, one week’s salary.”

  “Yeah, but cheap food might come with food poisoning.”

  Kwan gestures to the street. “You look. All those people there, do they have food poisoning? If you want to take pictures of Chinese food, you have to taste real Chinese food. The flavors soak into your tongue, go into your stomach. The stomach is where your true feelings are. And if you take photos, these true feelings from your stomach can come out, so that everyone can taste the food just by looking at your pictures.”

  Kwan is right. Who am I to begrudge carrying home a few parasites? I slip some warm clothes on and go into the hallway to knock on Simon’s door. He answers immediately, fully dressed. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admits.

  In five minutes, the three of us are on the sidewalk. We pass dozens of food stalls, some equipped with portable propane burners, others with makeshift cooking grills. In front of the stalls, customers squat in semicircles, dining on noodles and dumplings. My body is jittery with exhaustion and excitement. Kwan chooses a vendor who is slapping what look like floury pancakes onto the sides of a blazing-hot oil drum. “Give me three,” she says in Chinese. The vendor pries the cooked pancakes off with his blackened bare fingers, and Simon and I yelp as we toss the hot pancakes up and down like circus jugglers.

  “How much?” Kwan opens her change purse.

  “Six yuan,” the pancake vendor tells her.

  I calculate the cost is a little more than a dollar, dirt cheap. By Kwan’s estimation, this is tantamount to extortion. “Wah!” She points to another customer. “You charged him only fifty fen a pancake.”

  “Of course! He’s a local worker. You three are tourists.”

  “What are you saying! I’m also local.”

  “You?” The vendor snorts and gives her a cynical once-over. “From where, then?”

  “Changmian.”

  His eyebrows rise in suspicion. “Really, now! Who do you know in Changmian?”

  Kwan rattles off some names.

  The vendor slaps his thigh. “Wu Ze-min? You know Wu Ze-min?”

  “Of course. As children, we lived across the lane from each other. How is he? I haven’t seen him in over thirty years.”

  “His daughter married my son.”

  “Nonsense!”

  The man laughs. “It’s true. Two years ago. My wife and mother opposed the match—just because the girl was from Changmian. But they have old countryside ideas, they still believe Changmian is cursed. Not me, I’m not superstitious, not anymore. And now a baby’s been born, last spring, a girl, but I don’t mind.”

  “Hard to believe Wu Ze-min’s a grandfather. How is he?”

  “Lost his wife, this was maybe twenty years ago, when they were sent to the cowsheds for counterrevolutionary thinking. They smashed his hands, but not his mind. Later he married another woman, Yang Ling-fang.”

  “That’s not possible! She was the little sister of an old schoolmate of mine. I can’t believe it! I still see her in my mind as a tender young girl.”

  “Not so tender anymore. She’s got jiaoban skin, tough as leather, been through plenty of hardships, let me tell you.”

  Kwan and the vendor continue to gossip while Simon and I eat our pancakes, which are steaming in the morning chill. They taste like a cross between focaccia and a green-onion omelet. At the end of our meal, Kwan and the vendor act like old friends, she promising to send greetings to family and comrades, he advising her on how to hire a driver at a good price.

  “All right, older brother,” Kwan says, “how much do I owe you?”

  “Six yuan.”

  “Wah! Still six yuan? Too much, too much. I’ll give you two, no more than that.”

  “Make it three, then.”

  Kwan grunts, settles up, and we leave. When we’re half a block away, I whisper to Simon, “That man said Changmian is cursed.”

  Kwan overhears me. “Tst! That’s just a story, a thousand years old. Only stupid people still think Changmian is a bad-luck place to live.”

  I translate for Simon, then ask, “What kind of bad luck?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I am about to insist she tell me, when Simon points to my first photo opportunity—an open-air market overflowing with wicker baskets of thick-skinned pomelos, dried beans, cassia tea, chilies. I pull out my Nikon and am soon busy shooting, while Simon jots down notes.

  “Plumes of acrid breakfast smoke mingled with the morning mist,” he says aloud. “Hey, Olivia, can you do a shot from this direction? Get the turtles, the turtles would be great.”

  I inhale deeply and imagine that I’m filling my lungs with the very air that inspired my ancestors, whoever they might have been. Because we arrived late the night before, we haven’t yet seen the Guilin landscape, its fabled karst peaks, its magical limestone caves, and all the other sites listed in our guidebook as the reasons this is known in China as “the most beautiful place on earth.” I have discounted much of the hype and am prepared to focus my lens on the more prosaic and monochromatic aspects of communist life.

  No matter which way we go, the streets are chock-full of brightly dressed locals and bloated Westerners in jogging suits, as many people as one might see in San Francisco after a 49ers Super Bowl victory. And all around us is the hubbub of a free-market economy. There they are, in abundance: the barterers of knickknacks; the hawkers of lucky lottery tickets, stock market coupons, T-shirts, watches, and purses with bootlegged designer logos. And there are the requisite souvenirs for tourists—Mao buttons, the Eighteen Lohan carved on a walnut, plastic Buddhas in both Tibetan-thin and roly-poly models. It’s as though China has traded its culture and traditions for the worst attributes of capitalism: rip-offs, disposable goods, and the mass-market frenzy to buy what everyone in the world has and doesn’t need.

  Simon sidles up to me. “It’s fascinating and depressing at the same time.” And then he adds, “But I’m really glad to be here.” I wonder if he’s also referring to being with m
e.

  Looking up toward cloud level, we can still see the amazing peaks, which resemble prehistoric shark’s teeth, the clichéd subject of every Chinese calendar and scroll painting. But tucked in the gums of these ancient stone formations is the blight of high-rises, their stucco exteriors grimy with industrial pollution, their signboards splashed with garish red and gilt characters. Between these are lower buildings from an earlier era, all of them painted a proletarian toothpaste-green. And here and there is the rubble of prewar houses and impromptu garbage dumps. The whole scene gives Guilin the look and stench of a pretty face marred by tawdry lipstick, gapped teeth, and an advanced case of periodontal disease.

  “Boy, oh boy,” whispers Simon. “If Guilin is China’s most beautiful city, I can’t wait to see what the cursed village of Changmian looks like.”

  We catch up with Kwan. “Everything is entirely different, no longer the same.” Her voice seems tinged with nostalgia. She must be sad to see how horribly Guilin has changed over the past thirty years. But then Kwan says in a proud and marveling voice: “So much progress, everything is so much better.”

  A couple of blocks farther on, we come upon a part of town that screams with more photo opportunities: the bird market. Hanging from tree limbs are hundreds of decorative cages containing singing finches, and exotic birds with gorgeous plumage, punk crests, and fanlike tails. On the ground are cages of huge birds, perhaps eagles or hawks, magnificent, with menacing talons and beaks. There are also the ordinary fowl, chickens and ducks, destined for the stew pot. A picture of them, set against a background of beautiful and better-fated birds, might make a nice visual for the magazine article.

  I’ve shot only half another roll at the bird market, when I see a man hissing at me. “Ssssss!” He sternly motions me to come over. What is he, the secret police? Is it illegal to take pictures here? If he threatens to take my camera away, how much should I offer as a bribe?

  The man solemnly reaches underneath a table and brings out a cage. “You like,” he says in English. Facing me is a snowy-white owl with milk-chocolate highlights. It looks like a fat Siamese cat with wings. The owl blinks its golden eyes and I fall in love.

  “Hey, Simon, Kwan, come here. Look at this.”

  “One hundred dollar, U.S.,” the man says. “Very cheap.”

  Simon shakes his head and says in a weird combination of pantomime and broken English: “Take bird on plane, not possible, customs official will say stop, not allowed, must pay big fine—”

  “How much?” the man asks brusquely. “You say. I give you morning price, best price.”

  “There’s no use bargaining,” Kwan tells the man in Chinese. “We’re tourists, we can’t bring birds back to the United States, no matter how cheap.”

  “Aaah, who’s talking about bringing it back?” the man replies in rapid Chinese. “Buy it today, then take it to that restaurant across the street, over there. For a small price, they can cook it tonight for your dinner.”

  “Omigod!” I turn to Simon. “He’s selling this owl as food!”

  “That’s disgusting. Tell him he’s a fucking goon.”

  “You tell him!”

  “I can’t speak Chinese.”

  The man must think I am urging my husband to buy me an owl for dinner. He zeroes in on me for a closing sales pitch. “You’re very lucky I even have one. The cat-eagle is rare, very rare,” he brags. “Took me three weeks to catch it.”

  “I don’t believe this,” I tell Simon. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Then I hear Kwan saying, “A cat-eagle is not that rare, just hard to catch. Besides, I hear the flavor is ordinary.”

  “To be honest,” says the man, “it’s not as pungent as, say, a pangolin. But you eat a cat-eagle to give you strength and ambition, not to be fussy over taste. Also, it’s good for improving your eyesight. One of my customers was nearly blind. After he ate a cat-eagle, he could see his wife for the first time in nearly twenty years. The customer came back and cursed me: ‘Shit! She’s ugly enough to scare a monkey. Fuck your mother for letting me eat that cat-eagle!’ ”

  Kwan laughs heartily. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard this about cat-eagles. It’s a good story.” She pulls out her change purse and holds up a hundred-yuan note.

  “Kwan, what are you doing?” I cry. “We are not going to eat this owl!”

  The man waves away the hundred yuan. “Only American money,” he says firmly. “One hundred American dollars.”

  Kwan pulls out an American ten-dollar bill.

  “Kwan!” I shout.

  The man shakes his head, refusing the ten. Kwan shrugs, then starts to walk away. The man shouts to her to give him fifty, then. She comes back and holds out a ten and a five, and says, “That’s my last offer.”

  “This is insane!” Simon mutters.

  The man sighs, then relinquishes the cage with the sad-eyed owl, complaining the whole time: “What a shame, so little money for so much work. Look at my hands, three weeks of climbing and cutting down bushes to catch this bird.”

  As we walk away, I grab Kwan’s free arm and say heatedly: “There’s no way I’m going to let you eat this owl. I don’t care if we are in China.”

  “Shh! Shh! You’ll scare him!” Kwan pulls the cage out of my reach. She gives me a maddening smile, then walks over to a concrete wall overlooking the river and sets the cage on top. She meows to the owl. “Oh, little friend, you want to go to Changmian? You want to climb with me to the top of the mountain, let my little sister watch you fly away?” The owl twists his head and blinks.

  I almost cry with joy and guilt. Why do I think such bad things about Kwan? I sheepishly tell Simon about my mistake and Kwan’s generosity. Kwan brushes off my attempt to apologize.

  “I’m going back to the bird market,” says Simon, “to take some notes on the more exotic ones they’re selling for food. Want to come?”

  I shake my head, content to admire the owl Kwan has saved.

  “I’ll be back in ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Simon strides off, and I notice how American his swagger looks, especially here on foreign soil. He walks in his own rhythm; he doesn’t conform to the crowd.

  “See that?” I hear Kwan say. “Over there.” She’s pointing to a cone-shaped peak off in the distance. “Just outside my village stands a sharp-headed mountain, taller than that one even. We call it Young Girl’s Wish, after a slave girl who ran away to the top of it, then flew off with a phoenix who was her lover. Later, she turned into a phoenix, and together, she and her lover went to live in an immortal white pine forest.”

  Kwan looks at me. “It’s a story, just superstition.”

  I’m amused that she thinks she has to explain.

  Kwan continues: “Yet all the girls in our village believed in that tale, not because they were stupid but because they wanted to hope for a better life. We thought that if we climbed to the top and made a wish, it might come true. So we raised little hatchlings and put them in cages we had woven ourselves. When the birds were ready to fly, we climbed to the top of Young Girl’s Wish and let them go. The birds would then fly to where the phoenixes lived and tell them our wishes.”

  Kwan sniffs. “Big Ma told me the peak was named Young Girl’s Wish because a crazy girl climbed to the top. But when she tried to fly, she fell all the way down and lodged herself so firmly into the earth she became a boulder. Big Ma said that’s why you can see so many boulders at the bottom of that peak—they’re all the stupid girls who followed her kind of crazy thinking, wishing for hopeless things.”

  I laugh. Kwan stares at me fiercely, as if I were Big Ma. “You can’t stop young girls from wishing. No! Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming—well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So now you guess what I wished for.”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “Come on, you guess.”

  “A handsome
husband.”

  “No.”

  “A car.”

  She shakes her head.

  “A jackpot.”

  Kwan laughs and slaps my arm. “You guessed wrong! Okay, I’ll tell you.” She looks toward the mountain peaks. “Before I left for America, I raised three birds, not just one, so I could make three wishes at the top of the peak. I told myself, If these three wishes come true, my life is complete, I can die happy. My first wish: to have a sister I could love with all my heart, only that, and I would ask for nothing more from her. My second wish: to return to China with my sister. My third wish”—Kwan’s voice now quavers—“for Big Ma to see this and say she was sorry she sent me away.”

  This is the first time Kwan’s ever shown me how deeply she can resent someone who’s treated her wrong. “I opened the cage,” she continues, “and let my three birds go free.” She flings out her hand in demonstration. “But one of them beat its wings uselessly, drifting in half-circles, before it fell like a stone all the way to the bottom. Now you see, two of my wishes have already happened: I have you, and together we are in China. Last night I realized my third wish would never come true. Big Ma will never tell me she is sorry.”

  She holds up the cage with the owl. “But now I have a beautiful cat-eagle that can carry with him my new wish. When he flies away, all my old sadnesses will go with him. Then both of us will be free.”

  Simon comes bounding back. “Olivia, you won’t believe the things people here consider food.”

  We head to the hotel, in search of a car that will take one local, two tourists, and a cat-eagle to Changmian village.

  14

  HELLO GOOD-B YE

  By nine, we’ve procured the services of a driver, an amiable young man who knows how to do the capitalist hustle. “Clean, cheap, fast,” he declares in Chinese. And then he makes an aside for Simon’s benefit.

  “What’d he say?” Simon asks.