Barbra looked at her, level. “He thinks yes.”
“What? What are you guys talking about? What does Dad think?” Grace’s whole body was canted towards them, quivering. “I hate it that no one tells me anything! I’m sixteen now. I’m not a baby. Just tell me already!”
Sigh. “Okay, so Dad thinks that he can roll up to China and they’ll just give him back all of the land that his family had to turn over to the Communists.”
“Well, he’s right! I mean, it’s not theirs, it’s his. Why should they get to keep it?”
“They do not worry about fair,” said Barbra. “You don’t take over a country by fair.”
“But, Grace, you know there’s no way that it’ll happen, right? As much as Dad might want it to?”
“It could,” she insisted. “Why couldn’t it? He could make it happen.”
Saina turned to Barbra. “He didn’t . . . he didn’t have a message for us or anything?”
“No messages.”
Why had she spent so much time worrying about whether he would be comfortable here? Whether he’d approve? All he did was deposit Barbra and Grace on her doorstep like chattel and then take off without even saying goodbye. Saina slammed her mug down on the marble counter. “Fine. If he wants to call, he’ll call. Grace, let’s go get you enrolled in school.”
From: [email protected]
To: Wang, Saina; Wang, Andrew; Wang, Grace
September 19, 2008
Hi, darling children 1, 2, 3—
How are you? I landed in Beijing today. I am sorry there was not a time to say goodbye before I leave. Tomorrow I will travel to our old home, 老家. Do not be worried, be happy. Remember, if you go out in sunshine put on sunscreen, you do not want to be old and wrinkle like me. Ha!
—Daddy
四十二
Beijing, China
10,310 Miles
CHINA WAS his last chance, and Charles Wang was a man who used all of his chances.
What he didn’t expect, what surprised him from the moment he got off the thirteen-and-a-half-hour flight and stepped into the enormous glass-and-steel marvel of the new Beijing airport, was the realization that China could have, should have, been his first chance.
China was his old country, so despite all he’d seen of the world, part of him had still expected it to be old. A larger, more glorious version of the Taiwan he’d left as a young man. Despite everything he knew about the roaring tiger economy, all the photos he’d seen of this whiz-bang new airport—the sixth-largest building in the world!—which was probably run by a cadre of hyperintelligent robots, part of him still thought that he’d land at a provincial airport, long linoleum hallways half in shadow thanks to rows of blown-out fluorescent bulbs, groups of surly porters impressed by the fact that he’d come from America.
How could he have been so wrong? From the moment he deplaned, it was clear that China had leapt past him and the America he’d so na?vely thought was the Wang family’s future. Charles knew that the symbols at this airport were almost too easy to see—the red and gold of ancient China made modern, the skylights shaped like dragon scales—but they still worked on him, immediately recalibrating his impression of the China to come. The surprise continued in the cab, where a screen implanted in the seat in front of him blared advertisements for restaurants and beauty creams as the driver, so small that he sat on a pile of phone books, steered them through a glittering city to the nondescript tourist hotel he’d booked on Priceline, of all places. It was Saturday, and the only information that his lawyer had been able to retrieve about the man who presumed to take ownership of his birthright was his place of employment—a midsize travel agency—so for the moment, Charles would allow himself to play tourist in Beijing. Confronted with the drab cell of a room, twenty-five floors aboveground, Charles disregarded the fact that he had barely slept since New Orleans and dropped his satchel on the bed.
After waiting almost ten minutes for the elevator, which seemed only to go up, Charles found a glass-enclosed staircase that ran along the exterior of the hotel. He descended two dozen floors by foot until, nearly at ground level, he reached an elevated walkway connecting the building to one across the street. Eager to get out into the city, he pushed open the heavy glass door and walked into the smoggy heat of late afternoon.