I’ve been in Guangzhou two weeks, and every morning I wake up with a knot in my stomach. Even seven floors up I can hear the inelegant thrum of the city and knowing I have to venture into it—be a part of it—is a challenge. I get dressed, eat breakfast standing up, and leave my apartment. The hallway reeks of garlic and cigarette smoke. I squeeze into the too-small elevator with other people who live in the building. When we reach the ground floor, I’m pushed from behind as my neighbors hurry to be first through the lobby and out the door. Once they’re gone, I linger for a moment. I take a breath to fortify myself. You can do this! I step outside and am immediately swept into a current of thousands of people heading to work and school.
Not even in my dreams could I have imagined such a big city. It’s loud and crowded, with more than double the population of Kunming. Instead of eddies of bicycles like I used to see in Teacher Zhang’s posters, the road is solidly packed with cars, at a standstill, their horns blaring. I pass restaurant windows filled with big aquariums in which sea creatures I don’t recognize wait to be scooped out by the chef for a family’s lunch or dinner. (Why would anyone eat those things?) Stores sell all manner of goods—more than anyone could ever want or need. To get rich is glorious! But the success of the campaign has also brought a dark side: beggars. China isn’t supposed to have them and the government is supposed to keep peasants in the countryside, but with so many people and not enough watchers . . .
It’s a short walk to my subway stop near the Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens. Once I reach the platform for Line 1, I let the tide of humanity draw me with it into the car that will take me seven stops to the exit for the Fangcun Tea Market in the Liwan District. We are so jammed together that the other passengers and I sway as one entity through every acceleration, bump, and turn. Things are quieter once I’m back on the street, but not by much, because hundreds—maybe thousands—of people work in the market. It’s still hard for me to grasp its vastness. It covers several blocks and does big business. This year it’s on target to sell 67 billion yuan worth of tea, with Pu’er making up a third. Each block contains a cluster of four-story buildings. On each floor, in each of those buildings, on each of those blocks, are dozens upon dozens of shops. Some are just four by four meters. Others take up half a floor. Still others are little more than a couple of stools surrounded by bags of tea overseen by a single family in the open hallway, and banded together with similar smaller dealers. The long hallways are dimly lit by fluorescent tubes. Shipping containers—crates, cardboard boxes, and stuffed burlap bags—create obstacles outside nearly every purveyor’s door. But not every shop sells tea. Some offer cups, pots, glass pitchers, picks to break apart tea cakes, tables and trays for tea pouring, in every price range imaginable.
When I unlock the door to my Midnight Blossom Teashop, I’m greeted by the intoxicating aroma of Pu’er, the only type of tea I sell. Knowing the rest of my workday will follow my rhythms allows me to relax. My first customer is from Beijing. We exchange business cards, each of us making internal calculations as happens in every transaction across China these days. His belt buckle has been let out a couple of notches, which tells me that whatever his business is he must be doing well but not so well that he feels comfortable buying a new belt. Is he a collector or an amateur trying to get in on the action? I learn he’s serious when he says he’s looking to buy a jian, which holds twelve stacks of seven bing to a total of eighty-four cakes of Pu’er to give as gifts to people in the government to help him build guanxi—connections. It quickly becomes evident, however, that he doesn’t know a thing about tea. I could take advantage of him—sell him an inferior tea or overcharge him—but in just two weeks I’ve already started to gain a reputation for being fair and honest, something that can’t be said for some of my competitors. Besides, if he’s an entrepreneur on his way up, this could be the first of many purchases.
I brew tea; we taste it. I make a different infusion; we taste that, and so on, for a couple of hours. I teach him a popular saying that has recently sprung up: You’ll regret tomorrow what you don’t store today. The idea encourages him to exceed my expectations. He buys a kilo of loose tea for his personal use. An hour later, we get down to real business: he orders twenty kilos of Spring Well Village Pu’er to put on the menus at his eight cafés. As I copy down his shipping information, he asks where I’m from.
“I was born in Yunnan,” I reply.
His nose prickles enviously. Then he asks the question I hear nearly every day. “Why would you move to Guangzhou? Every person who lives here longs for the tranquillity of your province. Remote and untouched. With clean air and wild forests.”
“I miss it,” I admit, “but I’m helping my family by selling the natural gifts of our mountain.” Actually, I’m selling treasures from the Six Great Tea Mountains plus another twenty tea mountains, including Nannuo. Ci-teh has found some wonderful teas from Laobanzhang. What she sends isn’t the highest quality, but the liquor is good and the name value unsurpassed. I think of my Laobanzhang Pu’er as a small but surprising vintage from an area that produces some breathtaking products.
After my customer departs, the afternoon stretches out before me. I fetch bottles of springwater, wash and dry serving utensils, and package tea in single servings to sell or give as samples. I lock up at 5:00. I jump back on Line 1, and it’s as awful as it was this morning. My attitude about it is better, though, because at the end of the ride I will reward myself. I get off at the stop for Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens. I buy a bottle of water from a woman who sells commemorative key chains, pinwheels, and other items from a cart. I wave and say hello in my pathetic Cantonese to three retired men—wearing their old People’s Liberation Army uniforms—who bring their caged finches to the park, smoke cigarettes, and share stories. I stroll along the walkways to one of the benches that ring the memorial. I sit, breathe, listen. There’s no escaping the rabid roar of the city, but the rustling of the breeze through the trees sweeps away the stresses of the day.
I found this spot a week ago, and already I’ve learned the patterns of others like myself, who seek comfort in the park’s embrace. On the bench to my left sits a woman around sixty. She wears the costume of her age: a short-sleeved white blouse and gray trousers. Past hardship has set lines in her face. I’m most struck by her eyes, which are surprisingly wide for a Chinese. Her purse serves as a paperweight to keep what I assume are copies of her son’s biography and photos of him from blowing away. She has none of the desperation or pushiness of the mothers in Kunming’s parks who used to hound me, looking for daughters-in-law for their sons. Rather, during the past week, she’s placidly watched young women meander by, never once approaching or speaking to one of them.
A month later, I arrive at the park, ready to let the hustle of the long day fall from my shoulders, when the woman on the bench next to mine motions for me to join her.
“I’m Mrs. Chang,” she announces in English. “I’ve noticed you don’t know much Cantonese and my Mandarin is abysmal. English will work for me, if it will work for you.” She pats the seat next to her. “Please sit down.”
I obey because I don’t know how to avoid her invitation politely, but I take care not to glance at the pile of papers between us. If she’s been watching me as I’ve been watching her, she has to know I’m not interested in matchmaking.
“I’m a widow,” she tells me straight off.
Her revelation causes me to be equally blunt. “So am I.”
“Such a shame when you’re so young.” She blinks a few times. “I was young when I lost my husband too.”
All these weeks from my spot on my bench, she’s seemed nice enough, but if she thinks I’m going to talk about San-pa . . .
“Years ago,” she continues, “I was a high school English teacher and my husband taught philosophy at South China Normal University. Have you heard of it?”
“No, but I grew up far from here.”
“I can tell.”
Tu. My cheeks burn.
“I’ve spent time in the countryside myself,” she goes on, ignoring my discomfort. “During the Cultural Revolution, my husband and I were labeled black intellectuals and sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants. I was six months pregnant. Have you ever been pregnant? Do you have a child to care for?”
“Yes. And no.”
She searches my eyes to make sure I’m telling the truth. “No secrets between us. I like that.” After a pause, she says, “My husband and I—two bourgeois revisionists—learned to grow sweet potatoes and millet.”
She’s talking, and I’m thinking, So much confiding, and we don’t even know each other!
“Five years after our son was born, my husband caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia.” Her throat hitches. Then, “After his death, I forced myself to survive.” Much like I had to do . . . “I needed to raise and protect my son. I petitioned the authorities to let us come home to Guangzhou, claiming unreasonable hardship. But I wasn’t invited back until after President Nixon’s visit to China. I was told the country would once again be joining the international community. China would need English teachers. My son and I have been here ever since.”
“I’m glad you were able to return. My teacher where I grew up never went home. He couldn’t get permission.”
“That happened to a lot of people. My son and I were lucky.”
The next night and the night after that, I sit with Mrs. Chang. We share stories of the countryside. She doesn’t miss a single thing about it. She’s never been to Yunnan, and although she’s heard of its beauty, she has no interest in visiting.
“When I think of the countryside,” she says, “I remember only suffering.”
Two months later, my day-to-day routine has barely changed. The noise and crowds are still difficult for me, but I’m adapting. I ride the subway to the tea market, work, ride the subway to the park, and walk straight to Mrs. Chang’s bench. We meet every evening, except Sundays, talk for a half hour or so, and watch the passing girls to evaluate who might make a good daughter-in-law for her. Oh, the laughter! This one’s too skinny; that one’s too fat. This one wears too much rouge; that one’s too pale. This one looks spoiled; that one looks like a factory girl sniffing for a man to buy her gold and jade. Not everything is about matchmaking, though. The more she’s confided in me, the freer I’ve felt to unburden myself of my past, which, until now, I’ve never been able to do. Mrs. Chang knows everything about me. Everything. Never has she criticized me or made me feel ashamed, but once she said, “You did the best possible given your circumstances. Sometimes all we can do is count ourselves lucky to be alive.”
Tonight, as usual, we’re making our assessments of the girls who pass by—too studious, too vapid, too clumsy, too sure of herself—when Mrs. Chang suddenly blurts, “Are you ready to meet my son?”
I stiffen, insulted that she thinks so little of our friendship. “I haven’t been talking to you so I might find a husband.”
“Of course you haven’t,” she responds calmly. “But the two of you might make a felicitous pair.”
“I don’t want to get married again—”
“Because of what happened to you—”
“It’s not that. The way I live now . . . I have the freedom to do as I please.”
“To me, that’s just another way of saying you’ve seen hardship. I too have survived hardship, as has my son. Don’t you think we’ve all earned a little contentment?”
I like Mrs. Chang, but she’s wrong if she thinks I want to meet her son. Let alone marry him! Still, in her own clever way she’s been working on me since the first moment she saw me enter the park. She picks up the pile of papers that’s sat untouched between us all these weeks and scoots closer to me.
“Let me show you some photographs,” she says. “Here’s Jin when he graduated from primary school. We hadn’t been in Guangzhou very long. See how thin he was?”
I’ve enjoyed Mrs. Chang’s companionship and I don’t want it to end, so I look at every photo with absolute courtesy but zero interest.
In June of the Western calendar—two weeks after being presented with Mrs. Chang’s scheme and three and a half months after arriving in Guangzhou—the heat and humidity of this subtropical city has permeated the Midnight Blossom Teashop, as it has every shop in the Fangcun Tea Market. The unbearable climate doesn’t keep people away, though. By 10:00, every chair and stool around my table is occupied by an international assortment of buyers—from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The late afternoon sees the departure of these buyers and the arrival of my regulars.
Mr. Lin—in his sixties, lean, and successful in our new economy—was the first to bring his laptop to my shop so he could monitor his stocks while speculating on tea futures. The next day, Mr. Chow brought his laptop. He looks like he’s in his sixties too, but not a single strand of gray threads his unruly black mop. He’s an entrepreneur—what else?—and he owns a string of five shoe stores around the city. He’s remained a humble man and is easily awed. Mr. Kwan is the youngest by a few years and the only one who’s had to take mandatory retirement. As a former schoolteacher, he can’t afford a laptop, but the other men share what they find, and all activity is focused on Pu’er.
The three men all have their own special cups. Mr. Lin, the wealthiest of the three, opens a bamboo box and lifts from the silken cushions a cup made of blanc de chine—perfect for appreciating the clarity of liquor in the bowl. Mr. Chow and his newer money also bought a cup in white porcelain, only his has calligraphy in blue on the exterior. It’s a sad couplet, fit for the widower he is: It was hard to meet you and harder to bid farewell. The east wind blew weak and all the flowers fell. Mr. Kwan’s teacup is a cheap copy of a Ming dynasty “chicken cup,” showing a hen tending her chicks.
My tea men gossip as though they’ve known each other from childhood. They discuss the final bids at tea auctions, international tea prices, the effect of the weather on terrace and wild tea in Yunnan, Fujian, and other tea-growing regions around the world. Today they debate the health benefits of Pu’er. Mr. Lin, the most highly respected and educated of my tea men, delves deep into the past to press his beliefs.
“Lu Yü, the great tea master, wrote that tea can alleviate the stoppage of the bowels, relieve melancholy, and remove aching of the brain, stinging of the eyes, and swelling of the joints. He said that tea is like the sweetest dew of heaven, so naturally it can only do us good.”
“Tea helps us to think quicker, sleep less, move lighter, and see clearer,” Mr. Chow agrees.
Mr. Kwan, who always tries to best his betters, adds, “Our traditional Chinese medicine doctors tell us that tea—Pu’er in particular—has more than one hundred proven purposes: to boost the immune system, balance the body’s hot and cold temperatures, lower blood pressure and blood sugar, and help melt away hangovers as well as tumors.”
“It didn’t help my wife,” Mr. Chow reminds them.
“How do you know?” Mr. Kwan asks, not unkindly. “Perhaps the tea prolonged her life.”
“Myself?” Mr. Lin cuts him off. “I no longer go to the herbalist or acupuncturist. I believe in Western medicine—”
“You can afford it,” Mr. Kwan remarks defensively. “But let me point out that American scientists are now studying catechins and polyphenols. You must have read about them. They’re the compounds in tea that provides the antioxidative, antiinflammatory, antimicrobial, anticancer—”
Mr. Chow sinks into his stool. It’s clear that memories of his wife are still distressing.
“Anti-this, anti-that, anti-everything,” I jump in, trying to lighten the mood. “Yesterday I saw a ‘medicinal’ Pu’er in the drugstore guaranteeing weight loss—”
“Of course!” Mr. Kwan enthuses. “Because it cuts through grease. The world knows that. My cholesterol is much lower. My lipids too—”
“But what do these claims matter in the end?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we just enjoy it? Where I come from, we always drank raw tea. You tell me you prefer the stomach-warming and mouth-smoothness attributes of a Pu’er that’s been naturally aged for five years or more. Let us discuss the merits of each.”
I pour one of the Pu’ers Ci-teh sent from Laobanzhang. In the time I’ve been here, the wholesale price for this tea has jumped five, then ten times. As a result, I’ve been able to pay back Green Jade’s initial investment, so I now own 50 percent of a thriving business. My success has rippled out. My father and brothers are enjoying what to them are instant fortunes. I can proudly say I helped make that happen. As for Pu’er’s supposed health benefits, it’s hard to know what to make of them. A-ma made potions from the mother and sister trees, but maybe the people she gave them to would have healed anyway. Maybe her elixirs gave comfort like the nima’s trance or the ruma’s chanting. We believed we’d get better. No one was overweight in my village, but that’s because we were poor and didn’t have enough to eat. For me, I’m content to see my tea men sipping their tea appreciatively—and quietly.
The next Sunday, my only day off, I walk to Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens to Mrs. Chang’s bench. The old woman has gnawed at me nonstop—“Meet my son . . . Just once . . . We’ll have dim sum together . . . If you don’t like him, you and I will still be friends”—until I’m little more than a chewed down corncob. Now here we are, waiting for her precious Jin to arrive. From photographs, I know what to look for: a man of medium height, average build (I wouldn’t be able to stand one of those heavy Cantonese businessmen), and a full head of hair. From Mrs. Chang’s stories, I know he’s thirty-eight and an entrepreneur, like just about everyone else in China these days. He exports America’s trash—old cardboard and other types of used paper—to China to be recycled into new boxes to ship consumer goods back to the United States, which seems like a utilitarian, if not terribly interesting, thing to do. As a result, he travels often. Mrs. Chang has promised that she’s told him nothing of my “adversities”: “I would never speak of your past nor would I reveal his,” she said. “These things are for the two of you to come to yourselves. But why worry about that now? Let’s first see if you like each other.” So for all I know, he may be just as guarded and mistrustful as I am. Maybe he’s coming here with the sole purpose of getting his mother to leave him alone about me! I can practically hear Mrs. Chang: “Meet Li-yan . . . Just once . . . We’ll have dim sum together . . . If you don’t like her, nothing is lost . . .”
Jin waves as he comes into view, and I have the benefit of watching him stride purposefully toward us. He wears his clothes comfortably—suede loafers, navy blue slacks, and a Polo shirt—the real thing, not a knockoff. A few strands of gray at his temples catch the light. His wide and intelligent eyes prove him to be his mother’s son. Beyond that, something deep within them instantly puts me at ease. He’s arrived with gifts, which he juggles in his arms so we can shake hands. He’s a businessman, but his palms reveal the calluses of hard work. He isn’t shy, but he isn’t too forward either. He’s brought his mother what I’ve already learned is a traditional Cantonese gift: a tin of imported Danish cookies.
“And for you, Li-yan, some tea. You’re a young tea master, my mother tells me, so I hope you’ll accept my modest gift.”
The label says it’s a naturally aged Pu’er from Laobanzhang made from the leaves of a single four-hundred-year-old tree. The tea itself is set in an exquisite red lacquer box whose price may equal my monthly income, which tells me that either he’s trying to show off or he’s honestly interested in me because of his mother.
“Shall we try it at lunch?” I ask.
Before he can answer, Mrs. Chang says, “You absolutely should. I’ve arranged a table for you at the Southern Garden Restaurant. You two go along now.”
Jin and I protest. She was supposed to join us, but she’s like a snake that’s swallowed a mouse. As she sets off toward the subway stop, he says with humor edging his voice, “Together we’ve just lost our first battle with my mother.”
He owns a car, which might impress some women. Sun and Moon! Who am I fooling? A Mercedes? I’m very impressed. Mrs. Chang told me her son was doing well with his recycling business, but this is very well. But the last thing I’m interested in is money. I like the way he drives, though. Casual, with his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. He doesn’t honk like a maniac or swerve in and out between cars to gain an extra few meters either.
The restaurant is large—and jam-packed. We’re led through a labyrinth of courtyards, banquet halls, waterfall grottoes, and gardens. We cross over a zigzag bridge and enter a small room built to resemble an ancient pavilion. We’re seated at a table that overlooks a weeping willow whose tendrils drift languidly above the surface of a pond filled with lotus in bloom. The waiter brings hot water for me to brew the tea. When I open the lacquer box, however, I’m assaulted by an odor of dirt and mildew.
“What’s wrong?” Jin asks.
“I don’t know how to say this . . .”
“You won’t hurt my feelings,” he coaxes.
“I’m afraid someone sold you a fake.”
His expression falls. I wouldn’t be surprised if this news ended our lunch before it began, but then he smiles. “Taken again! I thought those days were behind me.”
“There are a lot of fakes,” I console him. “Even connoisseurs buy fakes sometimes.”
“From now on, you’ll always choose our tea, and I’ll take care of other things—like ordering our meals.”
I spot a good-quality Pu’er on the menu, and he orders an intriguing assortment of dumplings. I expect him to talk only about himself, but he keeps the conversation going by asking me questions. Do I like Guangzhou? Do I know how to drive? Would I like him to teach me how to drive? Have I gone to Hong Kong? I end up enjoying myself much more than I thought I would. After our meal, we meander back through the courtyards, stopping to watch the water tumble over the rocks at the main waterfall. When the valet brings around the car, Jin holds my elbow as he directs me into the front seat.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asks once he’s behind the wheel. “Maybe visit the Orchid Garden? Or we could go to Shamian Island, sit outside, and have American coffee. Oh . . . Do you drink coffee?”
“I like coffee, but maybe another time.”
He must think I’m trying to get out of prolonging this day or seeing him again, because his expression collapses as quickly as it did when I told him he’d bought fake Pu’er.
“I mean that,” I say. “Another time. I’m free every Sunday—”
“Then next Sunday—”
“And I’m free every evening,” I add, which makes him smile.
He offers to drive me home, but I ask to be dropped off at the Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens. We shake hands. He drives off. Before going to my apartment, I sit on a bench and punch in Ci-teh’s cellphone number.
“I went on a date,” I tell her. “My first ever.”
She laughs in her distinctive way and asks to hear every detail.
Over the next months, Jin and I see each other twice a week after work and every Sunday. I don’t go to his apartment, and he doesn’t come to mine. He may have an expensive car, but I sense he’s modest in his aspirations, for he often wears the same clothes—clean, but the same nevertheless. (That, or he’s trying to show me that he doesn’t mind that my wardrobe is limited.) I teach him to drink tea properly, and he’s got a fine palate, easily distinguishing between raw and ripe Pu’ers by whether they taste grassy, floral, fruity, and sharp, or dark, of the forest floor, cavelike, and smooth. He takes me to restaurants all over the city, where I try clams, sea cucumber, and jellyfish. Every bite is strange, and a lot of things I don’t like . . . at all. “It’s true a crab looks like a spider,” he says. “If you don’t like it, then you never have to eat it again.” On those evenings when we don’t meet for dinner, a concert, or a movie, I go to the park and chat with Mrs. Chang. She’s a clever matchmaker, because the more I ask about him, the less she says, which means the only way to know more is to spend time with him.
Jin and I return again and again to Shamian Island to take in the crumbling beauty of the deserted English colonial mansions, Western banks, and consulate buildings. We always stop for tea or coffee at an outdoor café open for tourists who also like to visit these modern ruins. “Years ago, only foreigners could live here,” Jin explains one evening. From our table, we can see down the tree-lined cobblestone pathway, where a young mother chases after her one child. “Chinese could not step on the island without permission. At night, the iron gates on the bridges were locked and guarded. I wonder what it would take to restore one of these houses and bring back its garden.” The idea sounds wonderful but outlandish, so I just nod agreeably.
While Shamian Island is charming and peaceful—my favorite place in Guangzhou—we explore other parts of the city too. We take a boat excursion along the Pearl River to look at the high-rise apartment buildings that sprout from the banks, and he showers me with questions: “Do you like the water? Have you seen the ocean? Can you swim?” When I answer, I don’t know, no, and no, he comes back with “Ah, so many adventures lie ahead of us.” It seems like he’s made a decision about me, but so much remains unspoken.
On Sundays, he drives me into the countryside. We pass what are called villa parks, where rows of identical houses sit in neat lines. Between those enclaves are rice paddies and other fields, where farmers carry buckets of water hanging heavily from poles strung over their shoulders. We visit White Cloud Mountain. It’s more like a hill to me, but the views over the Pearl River delta are pretty. We go to the Seven Star Crags, which, Jin tells me, are like a miniature version of Guilin, with their mist-shrouded peaks and rivers. “One day I’ll take you to the real Guilin,” he says. “You’ll love it.”
Today, in what seems like the worst torpor and stickiness of the summer, we drive to Dinghushan, another popular mountain resort, to see the Tang and Ming dynasty temples. Although it feels like half of Guangzhou is also here, trying to escape the swelter of the city, we stroll along the trails, and Jin takes several photos of me.
“Would you rather live in a villa park surrounded by fields and drive to your shop every day or would you prefer to have an apartment in the city and visit nature on weekends?” he asks.
“As though I would ever get to live in a villa!” I manage to get out through my laughter. “Or own a car! Or have an entire weekend without work!”
“But what if you could live in the countryside, would you want that? A villa park is not far from the city . . .”
He’s so earnest, and this excursion reminds me how much I love the purity of clean air, birdsong, and the calming sounds of bubbling brooks and waterfalls. Driving back to the city, I feel refreshed and ready to start the new week, but I also feel homesick. How can I explain to him that while Dinghushan is lovely, the mountains are not as beautiful or as tall, isolated, or pristine as my childhood home?
He reads my mind, and remarks, “Maybe one day you’ll take me to where you grew up and I’ll get to meet your family.”
I don’t even know what to say. What if he came to Spring Well and experienced what I love—the mossy cushion of the forest floor, leaves fluttering in the breeze, and birds and monkeys chattering in the trees? Or would he see my village—and my family—as backward and crude? So much of my time with Jin, I realize, is spent with contradictory thoughts like these. His comments and questions make my heart feel both sweet and bitter and leave me confused, but not so confused that I ever say no to his invitations.
I’ve never told him about my marriage to San-pa or our trip across Myanmar and into Thailand, but the following Sunday when he announces, “You should have a passport in case you want to travel to another country someday,” I go along with the idea. Of course, it’s not easy to get a passport. He seems to know people who know people, though. He introduces me to one cadre and bureaucrat after another. “She’s a businesswoman,” he explains to them, following up with “Do you like Pu’er? Naturally! The health benefits alone! Please accept her gift . . .” And so on.
Once I get my passport (amazing!), he advises me to get a single-visit visa to the United States, because “You never know what can happen in this country.” He isn’t aware that I have a daughter in America, but I fill out the forms, go to the interview, and quietly begin to save money for a plane ticket. After I get the United States of America visa stamp on my passport, I take it out every night just to stare at it. If I went there, could I find her? Jin remains ignorant of the gift he’s given me—hope—but I’m indebted to him for it nevertheless.
I often remind myself of what Mrs. Chang said: those who suffer have earned contentment. Maybe I have earned it. Although Jin and I are getting to know each other, as Mrs. Chang asked, I worry what will happen if I share my life story. Maybe a time will come when we’ll want to tell each other everything, but maybe not. He seems to feel the same way, because our conversations look inward and forward but never backward. Every word exchanged reveals something—from the insignificant and even silly to the more profound admissions that get to the core of who we are. Who knows? Maybe we are less interested in infatuation or romantic love than in understanding, compatibility, and companionship unmarred by the past.
“I like yellow,” he answers when I ask his favorite color. “I don’t have many good memories of being in the countryside as a boy, but I did enjoy the spring when the rapeseed was in bloom.”
“I’ll always love indigo,” I tell him. “One might think I’d be tired of it. I wore that color every day until I went to Kunming, and every person I knew as a girl wore that same color. Instead, it reminds me of tradition and the comforts of home.”
He asks if I like dogs.
“I prefer cats, because they’re useful and mind their own business,” I explain. “Dogs are only good for omens and sacrificial eating.”
“Promise me you won’t eat my dog.”
“You have a dog? I love dogs!”
It’s not a concession. I’m not changing who I am to please him. I’d walk a dog and clean up its poop, like I see people do here in the city, because I like Jin and I want to spend time with him. (Turns out he was joking. A relief!) But every revelation is weighed. Could I bear that? Could I live with it?
By fall, my feelings for him have grown and changed. He hasn’t tried to kiss me. I understand we’re from different cultures and that it’s unusual for Han majority people to kiss or hug in public or for the most traditional couples even to show physical affection in private. Still, every time he uses the tip of his finger to slide a loose strand of hair behind my ear or takes my elbow to help me into his car, I feel the warmth that got me into so much trouble with San-pa. But I’m not a young girl anymore. I go to a Family Planning Office for birth control pills. If we ever decide to steal love, I’ll be ready. But when? I consider how much time we’ve spent together, and that’s when it hits me he’s holding something back far worse than his family’s tribulations in the countryside. Of course. So am I. Many things . . .