Never.
We’re on the terrace of the teahouse in the Chinese scholar’s garden at the Huntington Library. It’s early February, and we’re here to celebrate the forthcoming Year of the Monkey and to help raise funds for the final phase of the Chinese garden. Heaters warm the terrace, Chinese lanterns hanging in trees along the lakeside cast a ruby glow, champagne and appetizers are passed. Anyone who’s anyone in the Chinese American community in Los Angeles is here: East West Bank’s Dominic Ng and his wife; Panda Express’s Peggy and Andrew Cherng; and the toy mogul Woo brothers. Some speak in Mandarin, but most use English so as not to be rude to the old-money Pasadena couples who’ve been supporting the Huntington for decades.
“Is Xian-rong enjoying his new home?” I inquire, trying to be polite. Jin’s company sold Mr. Huang and his son houses—mansions, really—in San Marino and Pasadena, respectively.
He shrugs. “It’s good to have him close by. The economy is slowing in China. We can make more money with my cranes here. You’ll be seeing us much more now.”
I smile, but he’s known me so long that he has to realize it’s not sincere.
“I’ll be going to the tea mountains in the spring for tea picking,” he goes on, unfazed. “May I visit?”
“You’re always welcome in Spring Well Village,” I answer. “I’ll never forget how you and Xian-rong helped me when the bubble burst.”
“This year, will you take me to your hidden—”
“I’m not too old to be still learning new English words. Incorrigible. Do you know that one?”
He drops all pretense of casual conversation. “Have you heard that the Pu’er Tea College now has a study base with a GPS system that can locate every tea tree over a thousand years old on Yunnan’s twenty-six tea mountains?”
A knot instantly forms in my stomach. I swallow to push it down.
“They want to protect China’s most precious gifts,” he continues. “Once recorded, they can watch to make sure no one cuts down a tree to pick its leaves easily or carve graffiti in its bark. From high in the sky, they can see through mists, fog, and clouds to the outlines of mountains, boulders, and hollows.”
Attempting to keep my expression as bland as possible, I let my eyes float over the crowd. Where is Jin? I need him.
“The Pu’er Tea College is not the only institution or person to have GPS.” Mr. Huang intrudes on my silence. “Did you know I have access to it? Do you know what that means? For twenty-one years I’ve been searching—”
“No!” Unable to stop myself, I turn away. Moving through the mingling couples, I escape onto one of the little paths that wends around the lake.
“Li-yan, wait!” he calls, switching to my Akha name.
I try to compose myself.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” he says when he reaches me.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You’ve never trusted me, but you need to start now.”
“Why? So you can wheedle and pry your way into my life?”
“That’s entirely unfair,” he responds, heated and defensive. “Somehow you blame me for things that happened to you when you were young, but I don’t know what they were or what I did that was so terrible. Couldn’t you think of it another way? Maybe my visits to Nannuo Mountain helped pave the way for your success—”
“You taught us about Pu’er, but you’ve had nothing to do with what I’ve made of my life.”
“Really? Then how do you think you got into the tea college? You know that Tea Master Sun and I are acquainted, but did you know the two of us have been friends for a long time? Why else would he accept you into two programs, when not a single other person from a hill tribe was admitted to either?”
“Then I thank you for changing my life,” I say.
I start to leave, but he gently takes hold of my arm. “Have you ever wondered who your secret partner was in the Midnight Blossom Teashop?”
“Green Jade . . .” A hand goes to my mouth in surprise. “Was that you?”
“One of my companies, yes. I was your partner.” He pauses to let the unbelievable news sink in. “And I came here tonight to warn you about the study base’s plans.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you do any of those things?”
“I needed to repay your family.” His voice fades and he gazes across the lake. The red reflections from the lanterns ripple across the surface. I wait. Finally, he goes on. “Your mother saved my son’s life.”
“What are you talking about?” My question comes out sharper than I intended, but I can’t help feeling he’s trying to put something over on me.
“You’ve never asked about my wife,” he says.
This is so. How odd.
He pulls out his wallet and shows me a photo of a pretty young woman holding a baby in her arms.
“I loved her very much,” he says. “She got breast cancer right after Xian-rong was born. She didn’t live to see his first birthday.”
“I’m sorry.”
“To lose a wife is terrible, and I’ll always miss her. But nothing prepared me for the anguish I felt when Xian-rong was diagnosed with bone cancer. He was three.”
I’m speechless, trying to reconcile this information with my memories of our first encounter. The sound of the old PLA jeep grinding its way through the forest, the initial unsettling sight of Mr. Huang in his strange clothes, and the little bald boy in what I now know was a Bart Simpson T-shirt, skipping up the path from the spirit gate to the main part of the village as if he knew exactly where he was going. Everything about those moments was alien and frightening. How was I to know Xian-rong was sick?
“He’d had chemo and radiation therapies,” Mr. Huang says, addressing my doubt. “We’d tried alternative treatments. I won’t go into every detail, but some friends in Hong Kong told me about the medicinal qualities of Pu’er. I had to find the purest and most potent. Once I got to the tea mountains, I asked everywhere for the name of the best village doctor—”
“But you came to us because you were a connoisseur—”
“I wasn’t a connoisseur, but I had a dying son and had to become one very quickly.”
“You said you were a collector,” I insist. “You came to make Pu’er. We made it. You took it away . . .”
“I made Pu’er, and I took it away, true. I sold most of it, which is not what a collector would do.”
Were we so gullible that we believed everything he said back then? Of course, we were. Even so, I must look like I need more convincing.