Across a Green Ocean (19 page)

Although it was bright outside, the restaurant was dimly lit, as if it were in a perpetual state of dusk, or maybe just some bulbs were missing from the fixtures overhead. The little light there was glinted off gold decorations on the walls, multiarmed dancing gods, and pagan masks. They made Ling feel a bit uncomfortable, having just come from a Christian church, but Pastor Liu didn’t seem to care, so she figured it was all right.

Pastor Liu took a penlight from his pocket and trained it on the menu. “That’s better,” he said.

This gesture struck Ling as immensely practical but also something only an old person would do. In any case, better light wouldn’t have helped her decipher any of the strange items on the menu, and she asked Pastor Liu to order for her. The dishes that arrived were not as strange as she’d feared, nor as spicy.

“Have you ever been to India, Ling?” Pastor Liu asked.

Ling almost choked on her food. She shook her head, then remembered that Pastor Liu had recently traveled to India on a mission. “What is it like there?” she asked.

“Very poor, more poor than places in China, even.”

Ling nodded, not wanting to reveal that she had never even been to mainland China.

“But the people I’ve seen there appear to be happy, despite their simple lives. Or, rather, I don’t think they’re any less capable of happiness than many of the members of our congregation.”

Ling thought about Mr. Tsai, who was rumored to be in serious debt; Mrs. Chao, who supposedly was cheating on her husband; her friend Beatrice, who complained about everything.

“Even the animals seem to be happier than they are here,” Pastor Liu continued. “The cows walk wherever they want, the dogs don’t have collars or leashes. They may not live as long, but I’d argue that they lead freer lives.”

Looking across the table at Pastor Liu, Ling couldn’t help but remember the last time the two of them had sat together in a restaurant, in Chinatown twenty-five years earlier. Ling wondered if he saw much change in herself. There was no question that there was physical change. Her body and the lines of her face had softened, her hair more coarse and thin, although she had given into vanity and dyed it black. But as for internal change, how young and naïve she had been then, thinking that she could leave her family. Also, she had never considered the possibility that she and her husband might not grow old together. Perhaps it was better that her younger self had not anticipated that prospect.

When it came time to leave, Pastor Liu took the check over Ling’s protests. “You can pay next time,” he said, and she subsided at the startling, yet not entirely unwelcome, thought that there might be a next time.

Over the next few months, this became Ling and Pastor Liu’s routine after church, to take one of their cars to the Indian restaurant, where Ling became bold enough to try things with names like
saag paneer
and
malai kofta,
and return to the church parking lot, after which they would go their separate ways. Ling came to find that Sunday afternoons, which she used to dread above all others, with its quiet after the bustle of church, could pass quite quickly. She didn’t doubt that she and Pastor Liu were the topic of conversation among the church ladies, but she didn’t care. She was a widow; Pastor Liu was a widower. It was her right to call on her pastor if she needed help with the grieving process.

But when she and Pastor Liu met up, they did not talk about Han, although they did discuss her children. Ling described Emily as a lawyer who worked with immigrants and Michael as an artist, albeit on the computer.

“They both sound quite accomplished,” Pastor Liu said.

“Not so accomplished. Emily is married but has no children. Michael has no girlfriend.”

“But they have steady jobs.”

“I don’t think they are happy. When I call them, they say they are fine, fine, and act as if they can’t wait to get off the phone. I wish that my children could be closer to each other. But I feel they live as far away from each other as I do from my sisters in Taiwan.”

“I’m sure they talk without your knowing about it.”

“I hope they do. I hope they are at least able to talk about their father.”

Pastor Liu was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Ling, I understand what you must have gone through this past year. What happens when you lose a spouse.”

As she watched him say these words, Ling thought about how much he had loved his wife, must still love her if he had never remarried more than twenty years after her death. “But,” Ling said, “you have to move on.” This was actually a line she had heard on one of those talk shows she watched in the afternoon. Who knew that so much could be learned from the ruins of other people’s lives?

“Maybe,” Pastor Liu said, “there is a way we can help each other move on.”

His eyes held hers for an instant before she looked down. She knew that she was not ready yet for what he intended to ask her, for what their relationship was turning into, perhaps not this Sunday or the next.

So, the following Sunday, when Pastor Liu followed her into the parking lot, she turned around.

“I don’t think we should be doing this,” she said.

“Ling, all we’re doing is having lunch.”

“Still.” She struggled to find the words. “I don’t think it’s correct. It is too soon.”

She could not read his face now. “Maybe it is too soon,” he acknowledged. “But when it is the right time—”

“I will call you, Frank,” Ling said, without realizing that she had called him by his given name.

She went to her car and left the parking lot as fast as she could, causing more people to stare than during any of the times she and Pastor Liu had left the church grounds together.

This was the real reason why she hadn’t gone to church in the morning. Worse, if Emily had gone with her, Pastor Liu would have come over to say something to her, and then Ling was sure that she’d blush, or say something inappropriate, that would reveal what she and Pastor Liu had been doing these past few weeks. Not that there was anything wrong with having lunch, as he had said, but Ling was afraid of what it might lead to. She had so carefully constructed her life this past year around the idea of herself as being alone, now that she had finally eased herself into it, she didn’t think she knew how to be otherwise.

As she walked from the driveway into the house, Ling heard the telephone ring. She wondered if it was Beatrice again, calling about something else she had heard at church that morning, or maybe it was Pastor Liu. That second thought made her breath catch a little. She automatically put her hand to her hair, just before she picked up the receiver, and paused to laugh at herself. To still care about how she looked, as if she could be seen through the phone. Surely, that had to be a sign of something.

A
t eight o’clock the next morning, when Michael comes down to the hotel lobby, he sees a young man leaning against the front desk, talking to the clerk. Behind him is an older man who rises when he sees Michael, and then Michael is finally face-to-face with his father’s childhood friend.

Michael knows Liao Weishu must be around his father’s age, but he appears much older—a slight, stooped man with leathery skin and thinning hair. When he smiles, he is missing some of his bottom teeth. But his eyes shine, and his handshake is strong.

“You look like your father,” Liao says, appraising Michael openly.

All his life Michael has been told that Emily looks like their father while he looks like their mother, but he just nods and smiles.

“This is my son, Liao Bin.” Liao Weishu indicates the young man. Michael can see a resemblance between them, in the set of the mouth, the shape of the eyes.

“You can call me Ben,” the son says. His English is just as proficient as Liao’s, although it sounds more colloquial without his father’s British accent.

Ben looks to be around Michael’s age, with a head of close-cropped hair and a round face. Unlike most of the other young men Michael has seen so far in this city, he is informally dressed in a tracksuit that probably cost more than the cheap rayon suits he’s seen other men wear. Around his neck is a plastic lanyard that holds some kind of laminated credential.

Ben gestures toward the clerk. “I told him that you are an old family friend and they should take good care of you.”

“How do you know him?”

Ben lifts the plastic lanyard from his chest. “I’m a certified tour guide.”

“He knows everyone in the hotel business,” Liao says proudly.

For a moment the three of them stand there looking at one another, smiling, not sure of what to say next. Michael feels that he should be bursting with questions, but instead he thinks that these two people are almost as much strangers to him as if he had encountered them on the street. He feels disoriented somehow, as if they had been conversing in Chinese instead of in English.

Then Liao says, “We should get started. We have a lot to see today.”

They exit the hotel to where a car is parked at the curb, and Michael realizes that he has no idea where the Liaos are taking him. Ben gets into the driver’s seat, and Liao motions for Michael to take the passenger’s, but he refuses, deferring to the older man. To Michael’s relief, they seem to be heading out of the city. He recognizes the train station where he arrived a few mornings before and is amazed by how familiar this place already seems to him.

“Where are we going?” he ventures to ask.

“First,” Liao says, “we will take you to Kumbum Monastery. In Chinese it is called Ta’er Si. It is one of the oldest and most important Buddhist monasteries in China. Then we will go see Qinghai Lake.”

“Everyone who comes here has to see the lake,” Ben adds. “It’s the number-one tourist destination in the province, after the monastery.”

“Do you get a lot of foreign tourists here?” Michael asks.

“Sometimes Americans or British, but mostly Japanese and Koreans,” Ben answers. “There are also a lot of Chinese from the big cities in the east. They want to see what Tibet is like, but even though the train now goes to Lhasa, it’s too far and the elevation is too high. It’s not comfortable. So they come here instead. It’s like, how do you call it, Little Tibet.”

“Are there a lot of Tibetans here?”

“Yes, and Uighur people—they are Muslim; so are the Hui people. You will recognize the Hui women by the white caps they wear.”

Michael thinks of the hotel clerk’s cryptic comment when he checked in. “Does everyone get along? The minorities, I mean?”

“They are happy here,” Ben replies. “They get preferential treatment in the schools and can have more than one child. There aren’t any difficulties like there is between the black people and the white people in America.”

Michael opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and closes his mouth.

Liao corrects his son. “I have heard before of some difficulties in the far northwest, in Xinjiang Province, where the Uighur people live. But it was not that serious.”

“Not like the problems you have with religion in your America,” Ben adds.

Michael doesn’t bother to clarify that, either.

Ben puts a cassette tape into the player on the dashboard, and some kind of Chinese pop music blares forth, stalling further conversation. Michael looks out the window to where the outskirts of the city give way to fields covered in delicate yellow flowers. The sky turns into a clear blue that has previously only peeked through the smog. However, the mountains look no closer; in fact, they appear to be getting farther away. The illusion makes it seem like they will be traveling forever.

Then the smooth landscape is broken by what appears to be a complex of concrete buildings with towers that rise above the barbed-wire fence at certain intervals. Michael thinks it’s funny how, no matter what country you’re in, an institution that looks like this is easily identifiable as only one thing. Still, he asks, “What is that?” and Ben turns the volume down.

“It is a labor camp,” Liao says matter-of-factly.

“You were in a labor camp once?” Michael says, thinking of the letter and not of the propriety of his question. But once he says it, it remains hanging there like a dark cloud.

Fortunately, Liao does not appear to be offended. “Yes,” he replies. “But it was not this camp. The one I was in was farther south, closer to the monastery. It was shut down because it was too small, and they built this new one in the 1980s. It was after I had been released, so I never got to see it. I am guessing that because it was more modern, it was more comfortable.” Liao laughs a little.

Of course, Michael wants to ask Liao why he was in the camp, and for so long—did he say something political, did he kill someone—but he can’t bring himself to ask. Instead, he just looks at the scenery passing by, thinking the fields have a tinge of desolation despite their bright blooms. He wonders if that is why Liao looks so aged, beyond what he imagines are the general harsh conditions of living in this part of the country.

They are traveling through a valley now, and then, in front of them, rises the monastery. It almost looks like something out of an amusement park; a group of buildings with high slanting walls and colorfully painted eaves. The roof of one appears to be made out of pure gold. Michael can’t help thinking that the curve of the roofs, curled up like the ends of a mustache, look unmistakably Chinese.

The car pulls into a square surrounded by souvenir shops. A bus is parked there, and a group of Chinese people in matching baseball caps stand around a guide who is holding aloft a flag. They appear to belong to the tourist category Ben mentioned before, those from the eastern cities. Michael wonders if they feel this place is as exotic as he does, despite not having traveled out of the country.

When Michael, Liao, and Ben get out of their car, a group of rosy-cheeked children run up to them. Michael can’t help but keep a hand on the wallet in his pocket, in case one of them decides to steal it. They seem to be repeating a word that sounds like English.

“What do they want?” Michael asks.

“Pens,” Ben says. “A lot of foreign tourists give them pens instead of money.” He shoos the children away with a few sharp words in Chinese. “You don’t have to worry about them,” he adds, noticing Michael’s apprehension.

When Michael explains that he was pickpocketed the day before, Liao sighs. “There is a lot more crime in this city now. People come in from the countryside to look for work, and when they cannot find it, they steal.”

“Can’t the government do something about it?”

Liao lifts his hands. “
Mei banfa.
There is no solution.”

In the monastery, they are able to wander around freely. Ben shows his credentials to anyone who comes up to them, and they are waved through halls hung with
thangkas
depicting the Buddha and what must be other holy figures. Michael never really paid attention in the one class he took in college on Eastern religions. He does recall the Free Tibet group; how once, a member—a white boy with ratty blond dreads—accosted him as he was walking across the lawn and demanded to know what he thought about China’s human rights violations there, as if he had an opinion simply because of his appearance.

Ben, like a good tour guide, explains the history of the place, how the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism was founded there, something about a legendary tree on the grounds that sprouted from someone’s blood, but Michael only half listens. He watches as the monks, with their gracefully draped maroon robes, walk on by. The older, graying ones wear spectacles; Michael thinks he sees the Dalai Lama everywhere. The younger ones, with their shaven heads, appear boyish and innocent. Some seem to be on their way to classes, with books tucked under their arms. Others are doing ordinary household chores, like sweeping the floor with twig brooms, dusting shrines upon which offerings of money and fruit have been laid. They are not chanting or meditating or doing anything monkish like that. They are behaving, Michael thinks, like ordinary human beings. He watches the monks as they carry on with their lives.

But most of all, Michael watches Liao Weishu. Liao stands a little apart from Ben and Michael, letting the two younger men walk together. His impassive face behind its round glasses reminds Michael a little of a turtle. Liao does not add anything to what Ben says, doesn’t even indicate that he’s listening. He hasn’t asked Michael anything about his father or his family. It’s almost as if he isn’t interested. He nods occasionally to the monks as they pass him.

“Come,” Ben calls. “Here is something I think you’ll enjoy.”

The moment they step into the cool, dark hall, Michael is accosted with a pungent smell, as if milk has been left out in the sun for days. Then, when his eyes adjust to the dim light, he sees before him an intricately carved scene of temples, floating deities, trees and flowers, in all the colors of the rainbow.

“Yak butter,” Ben tells him. “The sculptures are made out of yak butter and then dyed. Do you like it?” He pauses expectantly.

“It’s amazing,” Michael says. “But it doesn’t smell so nice.”

“No,” Liao agrees, wrinkling his nose. “Let us get some fresh air.”

They have lunch at one of the outdoor restaurants in the square at the foot of the monastery. The main choice of meat appears to be mutton, which Liao orders in a dish of chewy but tasty noodles that are shaped like small squares. A man in the back is making them, tearing pieces from a length of dough and flicking them into a boiling pot of water with his thumb, as if he is dealing a deck of cards.

Ben also orders watery Chinese beer, and then, in what Michael secretly suspects is a diabolical move, Liao orders tea that comes with yak butter. The old man puts a hunk of the slimy yellow stuff in a bowl and pours the liquid over it, turning it into something the color of dishwater.

“Try it,” Ben suggests, and Michael thinks he’s in on the prank too. But when he does take a sip, he finds the tea to be salty and strangely satisfying.

“Do you visit the monastery often?” Michael asks Liao.

Liao shakes his head. “I first visited it about thirty years ago, after I was released from the labor camp. You see, a monk here was my good friend. Later, I used to take my wife and son here to visit him.”

Ben says, “I don’t remember him.”

“You were only a baby,” Liao tells him. “My friend is dead now, and I haven’t been back here since. This place looks very different compared to back then.”

“How so?” Michael asks.

“It was not in the renovated form you see today. Everything needed painting and repairs. You also did not have the buses or begging children. That all came with the tourists. But it is still a very holy place. You can feel it when you are here.”

Michael considers what he feels at the moment: the sunshine on his face, a soft breeze. Is that what Liao is talking about? Because otherwise, he feels nothing.

The look on his face must betray him, because Liao chuckles. “If your father had heard me say that, he would not believe me either.”

“What do you mean?”

“When we were growing up, your father was very practical. In school, he wanted to study science, the way things worked. I was more interested in the languages and arts. He used to tease me for being able to speak English, when it could not be of any possible use to me. I have to admit,” Liao continues, “for years your father was right. But things are different now. Look at my son.”

“Yes,” Ben interjects. “Now I depend on English for my job.”

“When did you start learning English?” Michael asks him.

“In small school. In your country, that’s what . . . ?”

“Elementary school?” Michael guesses.

Ben nods. “Of course, I also learned English from my father.” Liao Jr. and Liao Sr. grin at each other.

“Ah,” Liao finally says, waving his son’s praise away. “My English has much to be desired.”

Michael laughs at how archaic Liao’s words sound and stops when he realizes the elderly man is being serious.

“Even your laugh sounds like your father’s when he was young,” Liao remarks.

“What was my father like back then?” Michael tries.

Liao pauses. “He was a good man. He was always a good man. He was just led astray, as many of us were back then.”

Michael figures that if he doesn’t ask now, he never will. “Can you tell me more about my father’s childhood?”

After a long moment, Liao nods and sets down his tea bowl.

 

The part of Beijing that your father, Han, and I grew up in was called Houhai, meaning
the back sea,
near the Forbidden City. It was a series of
siheyuan
s, or four-walled compounds; lakes bordered by willows; and winding streets. They said it was where the ancient scholars lived, where they got the inspiration for their poetry. Even when things got bad, during the worst of the famines and the unrest, it was as if time stood still there. In other parts of the city, people had to take apart their furniture, even tear down the frames of their doors, to use as kindling in the winter to stay warm. But not us. We were untouched.