Instead of stumbling out into the polluted Beijing air, Charles found himself deeper in the shopping center, crowded by people on all sides. A quick, blank blackness, just longer than a blink, fizzed dangerously behind his eyes and he could feel his blood sugar plummet. In the middle of the mall, there was another topiary, this one of baby pandas frolicking on a dragon—when had the Chinese become so obsessed with these tortured lumps of greenery? On the other side of it lay something that looked like a restaurant, its trendy white gloss of a fa?ade reflecting the dragon’s unnatural smile. Breathing heavily now, Charles walked, one unsteady foot in front of another, towards the restaurant and peered at the menu perched on a titanium stand. His stomach poked at him, displeased. The restaurant offered a mishmash of international cuisines, food to make foreigners feel at home and local Chinese feel like citizens of the world: spag bol, wasabi french fries, pizzettas topped with sweet corn and octopus.
As much as he’d left Taiwan because it was not China, would never be China, he’d come to China expecting to find the Taiwan of his youth. Home was home, and what he wanted from home was sausages. Charles remembered when he was a skinny boy, the shortest one in his gang of friends. He and Little Fats and Nutsy and Wen-Wen would tear out of school and hit the streets of Taipei running just for the pleasure of propelling their bodies forward, their schoolbags bouncing along behind them. They ran, and they ate. Sometimes it was a crinkled wax-paper packet of chili-pickled radishes, all of them snatching the bright yellow strips out of a single bag. Other times, they bought a quartet of little batter cakes filled with red bean paste, one for each of them.
The best, though, were the sausages, because these were won, not bought. Yes, you could buy them skewered on thin wooden sticks, but you could also gamble for them. There was never a question what Charles and his friends would do. Someone would dig out a fen and they would all crowd around, breathless, as Charles stood on his tiptoes to spin the wheel—and he was always the one who spun, no matter whose pockets funded the venture, because he was the lucky one. Even then, he was the lucky one. He always spun, and he always won, a brace of six thin, crackling sausages, each bite full of a fragrant funk that he’d never tasted anywhere else, all for a single spin. That’s what he wanted. The sausages, and the victory.
He turned to the closest person, and said urgently, “Yie shi.” It was a young man in thick black glasses, who furrowed his brow at Charles.
Desperate now, he repeated himself. “Qing wen je fu jing you mei you yie shi?”
The young man took a step back and waved his hands apologetically. “Oh, I don’t really speak Chinese, sorry. Um, bu shuo zhong wen. No speak.”
“Yie shi! Night market! Street food!” shouted Charles at the person who was not a Beijinger after all, but some sort of interloper, dressed like all of Andrew’s absurd friends in a pair of jeans far too tight for a man.
“Ah! Okay, you speak English! Tang Hua market is actually right nearby.” Whipping out his phone, he pulled up a map as Charles began to sway on his feet. “Here, look. Just out the east entrance and a few blocks down Taipingqiao Road.”
The map blurred behind the cracked screen as Charles struggled to remember the red-lined route. “Okay,” he nodded. “Okay. Thank you. Xie-xie.”
“Are you sure you’re okay, Uncle? Maybe you should sit down.”
He waved off the concern and headed away from this globalized bustle. Charles Wang didn’t need a man-child in girlish pants telling him what he should do!
Twenty minutes later he was seated on a plastic stool, a sagging string of naked lightbulbs dipped dangerously close to his head. In front of him, a split metal bowl with chicken stewed in medicinal herbs on one side and a fiery red fish stew on the other, along with a tin cup of tea. Craning his neck over the bowl so that none of the liquid would splash onto his shirt, he tipped hot spoonfuls of it down his throat.
Moths and mosquitoes fluttered around the bug zapper, too smart to get caught. Two women in flowered dresses sat on stools to his right, their wrists piled with gold bracelets. He’d never liked the platinum trend in America—what was the point of an expensive material that looked exactly like a cheap one? Much better the deep, unmistakable yellow of twenty-four-karat gold. The Chinese and the Indians had it figured out when it came to jewelry.
The Tang Hua night market was sandwiched between two high-rise office buildings, the sizzling from the grills and the hum of the generators competing with the constant chug of the air-conditioning units that lined one wall. Charles motioned to the proprietor, who turned towards him, wiping sweat from his buzz cut with his shirtsleeve as Charles addressed him in Mandarin.
“Boss, anyone around here bet on sausages?”
“Eh? Bet on sausages?”
“Bet! Bet on sausages! When I was a little punk, we used to do it on the streets. There was a stand with a wheel. A spin for a fen. Most of the punters lost, but you could win half a dozen for the price of one!”
“No, nothing like that around here. Bet on lotto, bet on Olympics, bet on who else is betting, but no betting on sausages.”
The man turned abruptly, not interested in conversation, and went back to mincing the chilies that were making Charles sweat. He slurped another fiery mouthful and chewed. It was amazing. Food could make a person feel like all was right in the world even if he was sitting in his abandoned country with the last of his dwindling fortune strapped to his chest and a sinking feeling that he would never solve the mystery of his family’s lost land.
Last chance, best chance.