Little Emperors (9 page)

In order to teach myself how to read, I buy a book called
Fun with Chinese Characters
and three packages of children's flash cards. I also buy an ink stone and some brushes. I want to make a hobby out of learning to write Chinese.

Although I've barely cracked their code, I am beginning to see Chinese characters as more than bewildering signs in some vast and complicated symbol system. Each one is almost like a tiny, self-contained poem. They turn out to be a lot softer than their sharp edges suggest, and they're not nearly as intimidating as they seem to be when writ large and red on city walls. For example, a movie or a film in Chinese is not merely a movie or a film, it is
dianying
— electric shadow. Imagine that.
An electric shadow
. Isn't that exactly what films are? Isn't that perfect?

Some of the simplest characters also provide insight into the Chinese psyche, or at least illustrate the traditional male dominance in the culture. For example, the symbol for
good, hao
, is made from the signs for
woman
and
child
squeezed together. The symbol for
peace
or
contentment, an
, shows the character for
woman
safely installed under the symbol for
roof
. Does this imply that letting women out of the house will result in the opposite of peace — total anarchy? And that a man can only be content if there is a woman at home, waiting for him under his
roof? Some of these characters are even, to my mind, shocking. The symbol for
wife, qi
, is the symbol for
broom
placed on top of
woman
! The symbol representing
Mrs
. or
Madam
is
tai tai
, which is the character for “too much, excessive,”
tai
, times two! The character for
slave
even has the symbol for
woman
in it! I read these and I want to throw my new book across the room.

But then something else catches my eye. I see that the symbol for
bright, ming
, is composed of the symbols for
sun
and
moon
, the brightest bodies in Earth's sky. From this comes the word for
tomorrow
or the
future
, and possibly the key to China's five thousand years of continuous history, to the resilience of the Chinese people in the face of war and famine, poverty, revolution, and natural disaster. The word for
tomorrow
is
mingtian
, a combination of the characters for
bright
and
day
. Tomorrow —
the bright day
. How eternally optimistic!

I go to meet Miranda tonight. As I walk to the bus stop, I realize that since we first met three months ago, these last two weeks have been the longest I've gone without seeing her. I miss her.

She steps off the 522 dressed in tailored white walking shorts, a white jacket with four long tails, and perfect shoes. It dawns on me that I've rarely seen her wear the same thing twice.

We go to a karaoke bar in a hotel farther down Huanshi Lu. There are few people in the bar when we get there, and I am the only foreigner in the place. Christmas tree–shaped cigarette ads hang as decorations from the ceiling, a disco ball rotates above the dance-floor-turned-karaoke-stage, its tiny mirrors blinking. We choose a table, order Cokes, munch on peanuts, and peruse the song menu. Miranda looks across the table with a big grin.

“I told my parents,” she says.

“About your wedding?”

“Yes.”

“Wow! How did you tell them? Did you sit them down or take them out to dinner or . . .”

“No, no. Just one night when we watch TV. I mentioned during commercial.”

“What did they say?”

“Well, they didn't say anything to me for ten minutes. Then they didn't say anything to me for two days!”

“Oh-oh . . .”

“Finally, they tell me they can't stop me doing what I want. They're not so worried he's American. More worried that he's older and might be hard for us to understand the other.”

“I see . . .”

“My dad said, ‘If the marriage breaks, don't come looking to me!' ” She laughs. “That is a very Chinese father thing to say in this matter.”

“Did you tell them your plans for going to Tibet?”

“Yes, but they forbid me to go. Say it's too dangerous. So I'll go to Hunan Province instead.” She glances down at the song menu, still grinning. “Which song will you sing?”

“Uh . . .” I study the menu. The English songs are limited to a single page of titles, mostly from the 1970s, most of which I don't know or can sing only the chorus for. I tell Miranda I don't recognize many of the songs, but then point to a Barry Manilow tune that seems familiar. She quickly jots the number down and hands it to the passing waitress, who delivers it to the DJ booth.

In a breath, I am onstage, microphone in hand, stuttering and squawking my way through “I Write the Songs.”

When I return to the table, Miranda gives me a pained smile and says, “That . . . was . . . good . . .” Then she gets up and sings two beautiful Chinese songs. She has an amazing stage presence, and seems to be singing the words from her heart rather than off a teleprompter. As she finishes, the bar's small crowd applauds wildly. She gives a gracious bow of her head and returns to our table.

It is my turn again. I sing and tap my foot through Roy Orbison's “Oh, Pretty Woman,” and the small crowd goes wild once more. I return to the table in triumph. Miranda congratulates me, saying, “That was good! You got the feeling of it that time!”

Then she chooses two songs for us to sing together, “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters and “500 Miles” by Peter, Paul, and Mary. I tell her that I don't know the words to them. “What?” she says. “But these songs are famous! They play all time on radio! In store!”

In a moment, I'm following Miranda onto the stage, no time to further protest that I only vaguely remember these songs from my childhood. Soon I'm holding a mike and tripping after Miranda through American songs she knows perfectly, my voice squeaking off-tune next to hers.

Later, outside the hotel, Miranda gives me a laminated photo of herself taken when she had long hair. In the photo, she is wearing a
canary-yellow suit and leaning against a sports car of a similar colour. I hand her a Canada pin. We say goodbye, and I jump into a taxi. I look through the back window and wave to her as the cab pulls away. She stands on the street and waves back, bathed in red tail lights, glowing in the midnight smog of Guangzhou.

And that is the last time I ever see her.

Kerry and I go to the newly opened shopping mall in Tianhe. It is east of our apartment building along Huanshi Lu and directly across from the stadium. We stroll to its entrance across a black granite square, between two rows of dancing water fountains, and enter the mall through —
shtsht shtsht
— automatic sliding glass doors. The mall is called Teem Plaza. It is an appropriate name. The place is
teeming
with people.

Blasts from the air conditioning cool the sweat on our foreheads as we look up in amazement. The sight is jaw-dropping. Awe-inspiring. Culture-shocking. Towering before us are five sweeping, airy, bright floors of shopping heaven.

Now I understand why communism has failed in most of the world. It has nothing to do with superior or inferior ideologies. Communism doesn't work because it's dreary. It's sooty. It's grey. It's boring and depressing. It makes no effort to be attractive. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a vain and colourful creature, a strutting peacock, a flashing billboard, a glass-and-granite shopping mall. It's sleek. It's stylish. It's sexy. And sex sells.

We venture forward in hushed wonder. With the top four floors still under construction or vacant, the mall is largely empty. The main floor, however, is crammed with shops selling watches, suits, shoes, sunglasses, TVs, lingerie, massage chairs, and huge crystal rocks.

When we realize we aren't dreaming, that we are, indeed, still in the People's Republic of China, we run giddily down the escalators to Jusco, a Japanese department store in the basement. We lose ourselves in a labyrinth of clothing racks, eventually getting our bearings in front of the supermarket. Here, milk and Coke and spaghetti and tinfoil and oranges and fish and tomatoes and electronic rice cookers are all available under one bright, cool, clean roof — all neatly packaged and ready to be put into aerodynamic Japanese shopping carts. There isn't an eviscerated pig in sight!

We buy groceries to the familiar
beep-beep-beep
of a laser checkout, collect our computer-printed receipts, and skip all the way home.

The mall has overwhelmed us. We, who grew up in the shopping malls and superstores of Canada, are stunned by this new arrival, this spaceship that has landed in the middle of Tianhe. We have been in China for only three months.

Can you imagine a lifetime?

A friend from England calls early this morning, wondering if I am still alive. He heard on the BBC that there has been serious flooding in southern China and that 450 people have lost their lives. This is the first I have heard of this. As far as I can tell, there is no flooding here in Guangzhou, unless you count the sewers that backed up on Shui Yin Lu in last week's rainstorm, causing cars to float their way to the corner. It has been so hot and humid this week that the only thing that might kill me would be heat exhaustion or a brain meltdown — or the ever-present danger of being mowed over in traffic. But floods? No. No danger of that, at least not up here on the sixteenth floor.

As I walk into the schoolyard this morning, I notice a mountain of little wooden desks and chairs stockpiled near the Ping-Pong tables. I mention in passing to Echo that it would be nice to have such a desk for my bedroom. Just as she tells me she will ask someone at the school, the principal strolls past the science room's open door. Echo steps out onto the balcony and intercepts him.

“Excuse me, sir,” she says, “but foreign teacher has no desk in her house.” Then she embellishes my story and adds, “She must do all of her work on the floor. Can she take one little desk from the school?”

“Oh! She has no desk? That is so poor. Of course she can take one.”

So poor?
I almost laugh out loud when Echo translates their conversation back to me.
So poor?
If the principal could see my air-conditioned, swimming-pooled existence, he probably wouldn't be quite so sympathetic to my desk-less plight. I tell them I will return the desk at the end of the summer when the kids return to school.

“He says no need,” Echo replies for him. “You can keep the desk for as long as you are in China.”

After school, Terry, Jim, and Ben from the Grade Five class help us choose a desk and chair. Plump Terry climbs on top of the wobbly pile and fishes chairs out for our consideration. I look up, repeatedly telling
him, “Careful! Be careful! Be careful up there!” like an obsessive mother hen. We finally decide on one of the taller desks and a chair just wide enough for my infamous big bum.

The three boys help me carry my new furniture out of the schoolyard and into a cab. Ben tells the driver where to take me and I am off, a burgundy-brown Chinese primary school desk in tow.

At home, I pinch cobwebs out of the desk and wipe grime off the chair, then position the ensemble in my room. I sit on my bed to admire it. Finally, I think, my room is starting to look Chinese. To complete the look, the desk needs a blue-and-white ceramic pencil holder. The perfect place to get such a pencil holder is at the ceramics store on Xian Li Dong Lu, the road just up behind our apartments. The added bonus of going to that store is the Yellow Tile Place next door to it.

The “Yellow Tile Place” is our nickname for a small restaurant with yellow bathroom tiles covering its walls. Tanks of live fish and eels sit at its entrance; slanting tables cram its interior. Up in one of its corners, a TV blares. The Place's exuberant staff keep our teapots sloppily filled, behead snakes in the middle of the concrete floor, and make the best
qiezibao
— eggplant stew — around.

“
Helloooo?
Are you home?” It is Kerry in the hallway.

“Hi, Kerry, come on in.” I open my bedroom door. “Look at this!”

“Oh,
cooool
!” She sits on the chair and her knees bang up against the bottom of the desk. She shifts the chair around and sits down again.

I collect the dusty paper towels off my floor and throw them into the garbage. “Hey, Kerry, do you want to go to the Yellow Tile Place for dinner tonight?”

“It's gone!” Kerry gasps. Her electric blue eyes sparkle with shock.

“What? What do you mean ‘gone'?”

“It's
gone
. It's been torn down. Totally bulldozed. My TA and I tried to go there for lunch today, but that whole block has disappeared!”

“No!”

After we make other dinner plans, Kerry leaves and I go alone to survey the damage on Xian Li Dong Lu. I have to see for myself that this little restaurant, which must have been on that street forever, is truly gone.

I am filled with shock and disbelief as I approach the street half running. Kerry was right. The entire block has been reduced to piles of worn bricks and splintered wood. The few stores that haven't been razed stand gutted, naked, waiting to be demolished. Frantic owners
are packing up what remains.

The ceramics store is one of these. A man and his mother are hurriedly rolling each ceramic piece in newspaper and placing them carefully in cardboard boxes. A tower of these boxes already stands in the middle of the store, reaching high up to the ceiling. A woman crouches outside on the sidewalk, selling odds and ends from the store. I buy a small pagoda-shaped blue-and-white flowerpot from her. It won't make a great pencil holder, but it will be a good souvenir from the street that disappeared.