“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.