Chapter Forty-Nine

The cicadas of dusk beginning their trill, Phoebe, Ling, and I follow a farmer named Yang along a pathway through tipping fields of sprouting corn and squash. At length we cross a plank footbridge over an irrigation ditch and enter a walled farmstead shaded by three immense ginkgoes. Inside, a few smallish pigs wander among chickens.

Washing his hands in a bucket, Yang calls out and a woman appears in a doorway. She is much like Yang, small and sturdy with a burnt-orange complexion and a thicket of graying hair. After a gape at me, she vanishes. Kitchen sounds commence.

Drying his hands on a worn towel, Yang smiles broadly, revealing two missing molars.

“He say,” translates Phoebe, “we drink some beers before have the dinner.”

I’ll force myself.

Yang seats us at a wooden table in the courtyard. His wife appears with three brown longnecks. The bottles, capped with graying corks, are warm to the touch. Homebrew. Sharp on the tongue. I quickly drain mine, and a replacement appears. Ling abandons the table to range among the animals.

“He is tell me,” Phoebe says of Farmer Yang, “he see you think you some kind of strange animal from the mountain. His eyes not so good, so look again, see you are Westerner. This make him feel very happy.”

Yang smiles in seeming earnest.

“Can he help us get to Beijing?” I ask.

“Is not polite we talk about this now,” replies Phoebe, her smile fixed. “Not so easy understand this man. In Jiangxi Province have the Kan dialect. So different.”

I glance at Farmer Yang. Surely he must be curious. Phoebe has only told him that our car is broken and we need to get to Beijing. That we’re in a spot of trouble, I think, speaks pretty well for itself. Thus far I’m surprised at the old man’s readiness to invite total strangers into his home. Then again, his interest may turn out to be the TV dinner and the bicycle with the bell.

You may have heard the tale of the tigress who one day looked up to discover a very large creature standing nearby. The tigress had never seen such an animal. You and I would call it a donkey. The tigress circled ever closer, sniffing and watching, alert to any movement. The donkey only munched at the foliage. The tigress finally decided that the creature was a fool. She ate the donkey.

I do have an idea why that story comes to mind just now.

Night gathers. The cicada song thickens. Dinner smells erupt from the kitchen. Ling, comfortable among the chickens and piglets, squats with a stick to draw in the dirt. Beer number three arrives, and I study the relaxed face of Farmer Yang, eyes sparkling as he holds court amid his boughs and crumbling walls. I note that the wooden table where we drink is large enough to accommodate a large family. The Chinese ideal is—or was, before Mao—four generations beneath one roof. Even now, the one-child policy is relaxed in the hinterlands where child labor is a necessity. I wonder why the Yangs’ table is not surrounded by family. Halfway through beer number four, I ask. After Phoebe’s timid translation, Yang replies at length.

“He say their son go work Harbin factory,” reports Phoebe. “Their daughter go Shenzhen with husband, look for job, just live in some boat and hide in the trees. So many Jiangxi farmer go Shenzhen like this. Police find his daughter, make her have the—how you say? Not have the children?”

“She was sterilized?”

Phoebe nods. “They do this.”

I gaze across the table at Yang, his face impassive.

The government uses the term floating population for the two hundred million out-of-pocket Chinese seeking something better. They aren’t valued. In the US the homeless are a nuisance, in China a threat. Two hundred million people can bring a government down.

Farmer Yang says something to Phoebe.

“Yang say he always member of Communist Party, but now tell them, ‘I am too old.’ Really he is not want.”

Mrs. Yang appears with course number one.

In very short order, I have demolished my serving of noodles and pork. A peppery chicken dish replaces it. I obliterate that, as well. Next is a fish-head soup, which I slurp down as noisily as possible. The Yangs seem quite pleased at my display. Finally we are served sliced and salted plums from the Yangs’ own orchard. I leave nothing but the chopsticks. In fact, one of them seems to be missing a small section. By the time I fall back in my chair, quite sated, the night is deep and an oil lantern is sputtering on the table. A chorus of crickets has overtaken the cicadas. Mrs. Yang, who has yet to take a seat at the table, let alone utter a word, now stands in the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a cloth and smiling. Her husband, drunk now, slams an empty bottle against the table and leans toward me.

“Yang say,” Phoebe translates, blanching slightly, “he very hate the Party, very hate Mao Zedong. Mao only care about Mao, tell all the people some lies, kill everybody with some bad lies.”

Yang, his eyes intense, seems to have waited quite some time to unload these sentiments. He speaks rapidly, and Phoebe struggles to keep up.

“Yang want tell you,” says Phoebe, “when he is young, go to army, go Korea help fight Americans. He is believe the Party then, think Americans so bad, want kill some Americans. He there for one year, so cold, just miss his family, not see any Americans. This make him very unhappy. He go somewhere alone, take his gun. After three or four days, he see some American soldier beside a river read a book. He kill this man. Nobody know he do this. Nobody is still know it. Only tell you.”

Yang’s face is flushed, but the two eyes remain soft and moist in the lantern light.

“Yang say he cannot sleep after do this,” Phoebe goes on, “cannot eat the food, only feel so bad, so ask Guan Yin make this go away, but nothing work, so he say to Guan Yin, ‘Give me chance help some American.’ He think this cannot happen, wait fifty years, look up and see you on the hill, look like some strange animal. He cannot believe. Still cannot believe.”

The farmer sits back in his chair with a sigh. His eyes close, and he massages them with the backs of his hands. Now he speaks to Phoebe.

“Yang say in the morning he take us to his brother. His brother have a truck, take us Anhui Province, see their uncle. The uncle help us go Beijing.”

Phoebe’s shoulders sag slightly in exhaustion.

Yang pops open a fresh bottle of homebrew and announces a toast.

“Yang say,” reports Phoebe, “no more kill some stranger because somebody is tell you those people so bad.”

Three bottles clink together in the glowing darkness. As I tip my head back, I take in the measureless and moonless sky. Or does it include me? Beloved friends, promise me, wrote Li Bai’s brush on a night something like this one, that we will forever dance, beyond all passion, and meet again far above the Milky Way.