“Do you want to give up your opportunity to finish school and go to university?” A-ba asks San-pa, when what he really means is, Go away and never come back.
“Your parents will be proud of you,” A-ma says, but her entire body radiates a message as strong as the sun: You talk like a flying eagle, but your hands are like Chinese sour vegetables, meaning, he can talk big all he wants, but he’ll forever be a pancake stealer in her eyes.
“This will change the direction of your story,” First Brother states, although he could just as easily be saying, Once you leave here, you’ll forget about my sister. So be it.
My family walks San-pa to the village gate, which means that we don’t have a chance for private goodbyes. Still, San-pa says loud enough for everyone to hear, “I promise to come for you, Li-yan.”
He backs away, slowly, slowly, not for a second taking his eyes off me. I’m so blinded by tears that I don’t see what’s about to happen, and my family—curse them—doesn’t call out to warn San-pa until it’s too late. Instead of passing cleanly through the spirit gate, he backs right into it. It’s the worst omen possible and strictly taboo. Even San-pa is startled and alarmed, so much so that he turns and bounds into the forest.
“I hope his parents perform cleansing rituals for him,” A-ba comments.
“It doesn’t matter. The damage has already been done,” A-ma says, barely hiding her contempt. “Come. We must visit the ruma. We need to be cleansed.”
THE GREEDY EYES OF A TIGER
The day after San-pa leaves, I visit Ci-teh. We sit on the floor and talk, as though my coolness toward her when San-pa was here never happened. “We are as jungle vines,” she says, even though I’ve hurt her. “Our roots will forever be entwined in friendship.”
“Our friendship will go on as far as the stars,” I agree, and finally tell her everything about San-pa.
My friend doesn’t warn me about him or criticize him. Instead, she closes her eyes and sighs. “One day I’ll be as happy as you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could marry out to the same village, come to a head together, and help our children to be as close as we are?”
I squeeze her hand and silently make the same wish too.
* * *
A few days later, we’re catching up on our home chores before tea-picking season begins when frightening noises come thundering from the forest. They grow louder and nearer. Small children cry into their mothers’ tunics. Elders quake on their sleeping mats. Dogs crawl under houses, too afraid to bark. The sounds are mechanical but inconsistent—humming one moment, grinding the next. They abruptly end with a hideous cough. Everyone in our village must be inwardly thanking the ruma for building a spirit gate so powerful it barred whatever the horrible thing is from entering Spring Well.
No one ventures to the gate to investigate, but the birds begin to chirp again and the dogs come out from their hiding places. A few minutes later, we hear a male voice call . . . in Mandarin, “Hello, hello, hello!” No one answers. The voice rings out again. “Hello, hello, hello! Is anyone here? Come out. Let us meet.” Again, the voice speaks Mandarin, but it sounds off, more melodious, as though he’s singing. Still, the voice clearly belongs to a man, and not a spirit. Even I can tell that.
A-ba comes to the dividing wall. “Girl, what is he saying?” After I translate for him, he says, “You’d better come with me, since you’ve learned the man’s tongue.”
I meet A-ba outside, where the headman, ruma, and a few other men have already gathered. They all hold their crossbows. As we near the spirit gate, I see a man, a boy, and a car. A car! Green, with a tin red star attached to the front. It’s an old People’s Liberation Army mountain vehicle—something I’ve seen in school posters commemorating the War of Liberation. The car door opens, and another man, who’s been sitting behind the wheel, steps out. We stay on our side of the spirit gate. The visitors remain on their side of the gate. In the silence, a lot of surveying happens. The driver is dressed nearly identically to Teacher Zhang: blue pants and jacket, like every other nonminority man I’ve ever seen. But the other two are as odd as can be. The little boy is bald, for one thing, but his father quickly covers his head with a tiny cap with a big brim in front. The child’s pants—bright yellow!—are cut well above his knees. The tops of his shoes are made of cloth, but the bottoms look like bendable plastic. His shirt has short sleeves and hugs his body. No buttons or anything like that. Instead, a drawing of a yellow boy with hair that comes up in sharp spikes decorates the front. I try to pronounce the word that’s been printed in Western letters coming out of the boy’s mouth: Cow-a-bunga! It’s not a word I know.
I step forward.
“I’m guessing, young lady, that I must speak to your elders through you,” the man says. He strides straight through the gate—he must have been warned not to touch it—and extends his hand. “In Mandarin, my name is Huang Benyu. I’m from Hong Kong.” So he’s a native Cantonese speaker—which explains his accent and extra tones—but his Mandarin is much better than mine.
“Hong Kong,” I murmur. He could just as easily have said the moon.
“This is my son,” he states, motioning for the boy to join him. “While we’re on the mainland, we’ll also use his Mandarin name, Xian-rong. He is five years old and my only son. My only child.”
I translate this information for the men around me. I feel that we must all be staring at the strangers in the same way—our mouths agape, our eyes wide. Apart from Teacher Zhang, none of us has met someone from outside our province, let alone from another country. Hong Kong.
When no one says anything, he goes on: “I’ve come a long way to buy your tea. I’m a businessman. I make and supply cranes. China is in great need of those now.”
Why are we in need of birds? No idea, but we listen anyway.
“That is my vocation. My avocation is tea. I am a tea connoisseur.”
“Huang Xiansheng,” I say, using the Mandarin honorific for mister, “I don’t know how to translate all of this.”