Iron and Silk (21 page)

“We don’t have much time. Just a few months. I don’t have time for English anymore—there’s only wushu now. What is the one thing you want to learn before you leave? Choose it, and I’ll give it to you.”

I didn’t have to think long. I had once seen him using, all by himself in the training hall with the lights turned off, a huge sword that he held with both hands. He only let me see it once, and laughed whenever I asked if I could learn it. “I want to learn the long sword.” He frowned, then said very slowly, “Very few people use that sword. I’ve never taught it
to anyone. And I only perform it for certain people.” I didn’t say anything, nor did I avoid his gaze. After an interminable silence, he pushed his finger hard against my chest and waited until he knew he had grasped my full attention. “If I teach it to you, and you wield it poorly, you will make me very, very sad.”

B
ill was a reader. Wherever he was he usually had some kind of relevant literature with him. On a trip to Southwest China he bought and read
Rare Fungi of the Yunnan Region;
when we rode a boat down the Yangtse River he skimmed through
Maritime Trade on the Yangtse During the Ming Dynasty;
next to his manual typewriter in Changsha sat a copy of
The History of Moveable Type
—all in Chinese, no less. When he and I traveled to Hangzhou, he brought along
Myths, Stories, Facts and Anecdotes About Hangzhou
. Whenever we came upon a historical site, Bill managed to find reference to it in that book. For example, we found a huge stone with a poetic couplet carved on it. The couplet went something like this:

“And the truly spellbinding thing about this couplet,” Bill read aloud from the book, “is that it can be read backwards.” In a bamboo garden we stumbled on a sign that indicated that the bamboo in that particular grove was important. After only a few minutes of searching under “Facts,” Bill found out why: “This variety of bamboo was long considered extinct. In the middle of this century, however, a team of Chinese scientists discovered specimens of it in a remote area of Zhejiang Province. This discovery shook the world.”

Having enriched ourselves with this sort of information all day, we found that by evening we both felt terribly sleepy.
Back in our room in the Hangzhou Hotel, Bill stayed awake reading
Strange Rock Formations of the Lake Tai Region.
I didn’t have a book with me, so I decided to wander around the hotel.

On the ground floor a string of flashing Christmas lights over a doorway caught my eye. I walked over and saw, under the lights, a sign saying “Coffee Shop.” The thought of coffee excited me so much I jogged through the entrance, startling the young
fuwuyuan
—service person—sitting at a desk just inside the door, reading a comic book. I smiled at her. “You have coffee here?” She tossed her head back and replied, “It says Coffee Shop, doesn’t it?” I wasn’t going to let her spoil my mood, so I walked quietly past her into the cafe. “Stop!” she barked. I turned around; without looking up from her comic book she said, “Five dollars. Entrance fee.” “Five dollars to get in?” She pointed to a paper sign on the desk that announced:
DANCING PARTY AT 9:00. ENTRANCE FEE: FIVE YUAN FOREIGN CURRENCY
.

“Oh, but I’m not here for the party—I just want a cup of coffee, then I’ll leave right away.” “Doesn’t matter. Five dollars.” “But it’s only 7:15—the party hasn’t started yet.… ” She didn’t answer this time, just stuck her palm out and tapped her foot impatiently. I felt my face getting hot but managed to keep my voice calm. “Well, if that’s the rule, I won’t break it. Can I buy a cup of coffee to go?” “Nope. The cups can’t leave the restaurant.” I didn’t say anything, hoping that curiosity would get the better of her and force her to look at me, but the magazine held her attention. There was nothing to be done. I walked out of the shop burning with frustration. On the way back to my room, though, I suddenly had an idea—why not get my metal travel mug out of my duffel bag and ask her simply to fill it. That way I could have my coffee in bed and enjoy it all the more. When I got to the
room, I saw that one of the other four men sharing the room with Bill and me had returned. From his accent I could tell he was African; he looked about twenty-eight or nine and was in the middle of telling a story to Bill. “I tell you,” he said, his head leaning back for emphasis, palms raised toward us, “it is very, very difficult. You cannot imagine, I think.” Bill interrupted him to introduce me and explain that the African was a medical student in Beijing. “I am from Sudan,” the man said. “In my country, if you want to study medicine abroad, your name is put on a list, and when your name comes up, they assign you to a country. No one wants to go to China, but if you turn down the offer, you forfeit your turn, and may have to wait years for another chance. So I accepted. And I discover, oh, it is true what they say. To be African and live in China, oh, it is terrible.” He was a master storyteller, flaring his nostrils, pausing, and sighing with controlled despair. “Why is that?” Bill asked. “The Chinese look down on black people! They think we are animals, not people! I have lived in China now six years, all of my classes in Chinese, with Chinese teachers and Chinese classmates. In six years, oh, have I ever been invited to a Chinese man’s home? Have I ever been invited to have tea? To a movie? Have any of the Africans? I tell you, if an African must live in China, he has a clear choice: he keeps his mind, or he loses his mind. To keep his mind, he must not think. He thinks, and oh, my friend, he dies. His mind dies.”

Determined now to fight for justice, I found my metal cup, excused myself from the room and strode firmly into the Coffee Shop. “I brought my own cup,” I said smartly. “I’d like a cup of coffee now, please.” To my surprise she snatched the cup and marched into the kitchen without a word. A full ten minutes passed, giving me more than enough time to realize that I was completely at her mercy. At last she stalked
out of the kitchen, slammed the mug of coffee on the desk, opened her magazine and demanded five dollars.

“Five dollars? But the menu here says that a cup of coffee costs one dollar!”

“Your mug is oversized,” she hissed.

“There are five cups of coffee in here?”

“Come on, hurry up! I’m busy!”

Just as I started to see double, a last strategem came to me. “I didn’t ask for five cups of coffee, miss. I asked for one.” I put a dollar on the desk. She picked up my mug, walked over to a window and poured nearly all the coffee out of it. She put the mug on the desk in front of me, opened her magazine and resumed reading.

As I walked back to my room, my anger subsided, and I actually smiled, thinking of the fun I would have telling the story to Bill and the African. When I got there, though, the African had already gone out for dinner. Bill was lying on the bed with a book closed on his chest and his glasses in one hand. “You know,” he said, “talking to the man from Sudan made me remember something.” I sat down on the floor against the wall, drank my coffee and asked him what he remembered.

“It was in Africa, when I was teaching with the Peace Corps. During a break I decided to travel. I had to ride on the back of a truck for ten hours to get to the border of some country—I don’t even remember now which country it was—and the truck followed a dirt road through a desert. In my whole life I had never felt so close to going mad. I thought I would die from the heat, the dust, the noise and the thirst. At last we reached the border. I fell off the truck, then stood in line for two hours at the visa office, a little shack in the middle of nowhere. Just as it was my turn, the official said, ‘Sorry, closed for the day.’ I walked out of the shack on the verge of
tears. The truck I had ridden was already gone. I saw another truck parked not far away, so I walked over and sat against it, just to get out of the sun. Something I have to tell you—in some parts of Africa, people who own trucks often write something on the hood. It’s usually something religious, like ‘Jesus Have Mercy,’ because a breakdown in the desert could easily be fatal. Anyway, this truck looked as if it would fall apart at any moment. As I sat against it, I looked up to see a few vultures circling, like they were waiting to see what I was going to do. My eyes wandered from the vultures to the hood of the truck next to my head. There, in white lettering, it said,
MY FRIEND, IT IS NOT BEAUTIFUL.
”

I
t was an important day for the 1983 English Medical Class—they were to perform their first co-ed skits. It had been distracting that these medical students had not yet gotten over their fear of speaking with members of the opposite sex. At last Jan and I had assigned groups composed of both girls and boys and told them they would present their skits on Monday morning. When that day arrived, of course no one volunteered to go first. I pointed to one of the students, Duncan, and told him to gather his partners for their skit. After making all sorts of protests he finally stood up and walked out of the classroom. Then Alison and Heidi got up and stood in front of the class.

ALISON
: “We are playing ping-pong.”

They pretended to play ping-pong. Suddenly Duncan walked into the classroom, approached them, hesitated, opened his mouth, and turned and faced the blackboard.

DUNCAN
: “Excuse me, girls. May I enjoy you?”

ME
: “Duncan, you mean ‘join you.’ ”

Duncan, embarrassed that he had made a mistake, turned purple.

ME
: “Keep going.”

The two girls put their imaginary paddles down angrily.

HEIDI
: “No! Go play with yourself!”

ME:
“You should say ‘play
by
yourself.’ You play with others, and play by yourself.”

HEIDI
: “By yourself.”

The skit completed, all three performers ran to their seats, where they were teased by their neighbors. Just as I was debating
whether I had the courage to hear the next skit, the classroom door opened and an unfamiliar woman led by Teacher Wu walked in, handed me an envelope, then walked out without a word. I opened the envelope and pulled out what appeared to be an invitation, elegantly printed in Chinese and decorated with several red seals. It was written in classical Chinese, too difficult for me to sight-read, so I put it in my pocket, braced myself and called on the next group.

When I got back to my room I took out the card and looked at it again. I realized that it was not printed but meticulously written out with a miniature brush. Whoever wrote it, I thought, must have spent hours on it.

It closed with an invitation to visit and was signed “Jin Wenzhi.”

I wrote back that day, thanking Professor Jin for his letter and asking when I might visit him. Three days later I received his answer, inviting me to come for tea that Saturday afternoon after xiuxi.

I brought with me, as he requested, a few samples of my latest calligraphy exercises, along with the models I had used.
The woman who had delivered the first letter opened the door. “I am Luo Binfu, Professor Jin’s wife,” she said. “Please come in. He’s just getting up from xiuxi, so he will be a few minutes. Why don’t you have some tea?” I had a cup of tea by myself in their small living room, noticing that huge, un-framed sheets of calligraphy hung loosely over the walls, some overlapping each other and all blowing slowly in the wind of an electric fan. A few minutes later his wife came back and asked me to come into the next room. There, propped up in a bed covered with calligraphy manuals, rice paper and brushes, sat Professor Jin. His face looked pale and swollen, with patches of red across his cheeks and throat. He extended a bloated, stiff hand for me to shake. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come out to greet you,” he said. His wife explained that he suffered from chronic bouts of fever, headache and swelling caused by heart and liver disease. “But you see,” Jin interrupted, pointing to the fresh examples of calligraphy on the bed, “it doesn’t stop me from writing.” He shuffled through some books in front of him, choosing an old volume worn from use and spattered with ink. “If you copy out the models of a particular master,” he said, “you will be influenced by his personality. This is the model I use—you see how strong, disciplined and clean his brushstrokes are? He was an austere figure in the Song dynasty. His writing method strengthens me.”

When he picked up my calligraphy samples, he responded to them in an unusual way. Typically, when I showed my calligraphy or performed wushu, people in China complimented me on the novelty of my achievement—“Imagine! A foreigner who writes Chinese characters! That’s really something!” Compliments like that wearied me after a while and often reminded me of a remark I once overheard after a
recital by the cellist Yo-yo Ma: “Isn’t it remarkable the way he plays Western music so naturally?” Professor Jin looked my work over, compared it with the models I was using, then took out a red pen and started making corrections. “Not bad at all,” he said. “The only major problems are here, where you don’t finish the brushstroke with a sense of authority. They start well—you see, right here—but then get sloppy at the end.” He pulled his inkstone and tray of brushes near him and showed me how to improve the strokes. Though he could barely move his fingers, all of them rigid with arthritis, he managed to wield the brush with extraordinary fluidity. He took frequent pauses to rest, wiping the sweat from his forehead and throat, and closing his eyes to recover from dizziness. After forty-five minutes his wife reminded him that he should take another short nap, so I collected my materials and thanked him. “It’s my pleasure,” he said, “and you are welcome to come here as often as you like.”