Shanghai Girl (16 page)

On June 24, 1985, I receive my B.A. degree in Political Science. All the savings I have will go to the plane ticket. One-way to New York on CAAC-Air China. The day before I leave, I park my bicycle in the back corridor of the two-story gray brick building on campus and carefully lock it. Mr. Chen and Aunt Cheng work in this Main Administrative Building. As part of the package to let me go abroad, Chen hinted to Aunt Cheng that his youngest, late-teenager daughter could utilize my bicycle after I leave. I am supposed to discreetly leave my bicycle locked near the Main Administrative Building so that he can “discover” the bicycle by accident on his way out. I’ve already given Aunt Cheng a set of keys to the bicycle to pass on to Mr. Chen.

I will leave Shanghai on June 30, the day before the 64th birthday of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in this city, so that I can be in New York before America's birthday on the Fourth of July.

I did not have much to pack. Father's photos and photos of my parents and me together, all taken after the Red Guard’s confiscation of our house. My Diploma fresh off the press. One suitcase. One duffel bag on wheels. Two decades of memories in such small parcels.

One last look at the university campus where Father used to teach. The narrow asphalt road winding around the campus on which Lu Long and I pass together on his bicycle. The red brick building housing the classrooms where I used to sit. Pose for one last photo by the tree that withstands the annual Tai Feng, or hurricane gust, the tree that continues to grow by the side of Mao's statue. Father had a picture taken here, once.

One last look at the apartment I shared with my parents, the apartment in which I have lived alone for three long years. With occasional visitors, expected or otherwise, this was my space. My world. My heaven and earth. And now I am saying goodbye. I can almost feel, through the thin wall, the Chengs’ readiness to storm in here. Mr. Chen of the University will be delighted that he has reclaimed the apartment for the Chengs’, and for his employee-serving self. In a moment of heightened excitement, Aunt Cheng confesses to me that Comrade Old Chen has future plans of coming here to spend “noon-time rest periods” with her. “My own ‘dead old head’ would turn blue if he knew,” Aunt Cheng says gleefully. “But his factory is far from our school.”

I drop one last letter in the mailbox. To Mother, wife of Stepfather. “I'm leaving now. The way you left me. Tell Stepfather I'll remember he once supported me. Tell him I've more than repaid him. He knows. Lastly, I hope your baby will be a boy. That will make your life easier.

You will always be my mother. Things I can't forget, I'll forgive.”

Heat. Humidity. Shanghai near July. Hong Qiao International Airport.

Aunt Cheng is the only person to see me off. “I can’t take your apartment and all your furniture for nothing,” she says. “Besides, with me seeing you off, you can’t say you will forget me in America, right?” "I'll remember you in America, either way, “I assure her. She takes me to the airport in a university-owned "yellow croaker wagon," a three-wheeled open cart commonly used to ship yellow croaker fish to and from the market. Aunt Cheng herself has pedaled me and my luggage to the airport.

Now we are approaching the terminal. She pulls the duffel. I drag the suitcase. Forty precious U.S. dollars are tucked inside my bra.

The CAAC-Air China terminal. A room permeated with the odor of cigarettes. And sweat. I'm overwhelmed by the crowds standing seven or eight deep. High ceiling fans chase the flies. Round and round, flies on a carousel. Hot air recycled.

Aunt Cheng is denied entrance beyond the point passports and visas are inspected. Tears roll down her wrinkled face. "Bye for now, Sha-fei, my good child. Don't forget me in America!" She just squeezes my free hand hard with both of hers. She does not hug me as my Uncle Gordon has done. It’s not our custom.

I wave and wave. Until the palm leaf fan in her hand drowns into the steamy ocean of people.

Goodbye, Shanghai!

But as General Douglas MacArthur vowed when he bid farewell to the Philippines during the WWII, “I shall be back!” And so shall I to Shanghai, hopefully, a triumphant heroine.

8 Edward Cook: The Long March White Powder

My encounter with Irene’s old man in Shanghai was a sheer coincidence. There was a time when I at once feared and longed to meet the man. Irene and I were doing all sorts of fun things that we knew he wouldn’t approve. But she didn’t seem to care. Irene told me that her father had settled down in America inadvertently. Funny, my mind’s eyes can now see her so clearly. It’s perhaps not accidental that Sha-fei Hong reminds me so much of Irene Lou.

“
Dad was a rich young master sent to this country ‘to get gilded,’ as they say in China about a Western education,” Irene would gesticulate with a sterling baby spoon in her hand. “He wasn’t supposed to stay here long. Our family had money and servants in Shanghai back then.”

“
And the chauffeur drove a pitch black Model T.,” I’d interject, getting sick of the old story.

“
Shut up!” she’d smile devilishly. I remember gazing at her, ready to charge. She’d sweep me aside ask for a refill. I wagged my finger “No, no. Save some for your young master here.”

So she threw the spoon across the room, her long hair wrapped around her pretty face. “I really hate you!” she cried, and resumed babbling, “And of course in 1949 the Communists came so he didn’t want to return. The gild he had hoped for had become a coat of verdigris called a Chinaman in a white men’s land.”

“
Worse. A Chinaman whose only daughter is sleeping with a white devil.” I couldn’t resist, laughing and reaching out to her. “And they live on a meager supply of white flour and occasional Uncle Bang’s Minute Rice.”

I had the impression that her dad really hated me, or anything white, for that matter. Irene made no attempt to introduce me to him. Sometimes, I felt this was best. Other times though, I wanted to meet this mysterious figure from the Middle Kingdom.

The white powder used to give me a constant stomachache. It was as though thousands of Chinese Red Army foot soldiers were rehearsing on a Broadway stage for a scene involving multiple somersaults. They were all wearing blue-gray uniforms with matching puttees on their legs. Mao Zedong was in the lead, looking just like the photograph Edgar Snow had taken of him during the Long March: octagonal, red-starred army cap, blue-gray uniform, slanting eyes, condescending air, Cindy Crawford-like mole with fine black hairs sticking out. As the first American journalist ever to cover the Chinese Communists face-to-face, Snow must have had a lot of fun getting Mao to pose for him in 1936, shortly after the Long March.

Come to think of it, Mao clearly would disapprove of my bedding a Chinese woman, just as Irene’s dad would. I guess deep down, no man, whatever his race, wants to have his women fucked by men of another kind.

“
I’m afraid your old man would like to make hamburger meat out of me if he could,” I ventured as I ran my hand down her thigh.

“
Wha-?” she spread herself wider, not looking up.

The soldiers had their somersault routine down to the T. “You know, like Mao loading his opponents through the mincing machine. … Your old man believes I’ve led you astray. He would eat me alive …”

She combed her hair away from her face and swept my hand aside. “He hates hamburgers,” she declared. “Greasy, indelicate, and typically American.”

“
Not to mention barbarous,” I added with a snicker, crawling over to retrieve the spoon and the razor blade both lying next to the empty cigarette box near a leg of my ping-pong table. I handed the spoon between my teeth to her like a poodle and fiddled with the razor. “I really don’t want him to disown you, you know?”

“
What difference does it make to you?”

I opened another small package - our last for now - and began chopping the white stuff like a Chinatown chef separating chunks of dampened MSG powder with the thicker end of a chopstick.

“
Don’t get me wrong, Ed. I love my dad. He’s got everything he has in this country the hard way and he’s given me the best. But I can’t live out a dream for him like a Chinese girl. I’m American, not Chinese.”

I offered her the piece of paper, the chopping board, spoon and all. “Then live out a dream for me, sweetheart.”

Cleaning out the piece of paper took us mere minutes. Irene licked it until the creases were broken. The Red Army foot soldiers in my stomach were urging me to devour Irene next. Boy, did I have the munchies. “Life is good, and people are interesting,” I mumbled, half hallucinating.

Right in front of me, she was turning Japanese, like the lyrics in that song – I grabbed the razor blade but it cut my hand. I saw blood dripping but felt no pain. I seized her pubic hairs as though they were goatees and began cutting them off. She started to scream. Again, I seemed to see blood, but felt no pain.

My tongue ran her bloody crack the way she finished that piece of paper, like a vampire, high. I heard her leading the battalion of narrow-eyed, gray-uniformed soldiers, shouting at the top of their lungs, “Long live the Long March! A long, long life to the White Powder!”

I echoed, perhaps a Freudian slip, “Long live the Long Macho White Power!”

Life was indeed good and white power invincible.

I had my share of misgivings right after I graduated from Gotham. My parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce. For a while, money wasn’t coming from either side. Not being able to find a job of my own didn’t help. Nor did Irene’s increasing hysteria. She even demanded that I marry her. That irked me. “Who’s talking about marriage, for Chris sakes?”

She repeated in a rare calmness, “I want to get hitched and settle down.”

“
And start producing a litter of cross-breeds, right? Who’s going to support all this? I don’t own a bank.”

Her eyes drifted and suddenly asked dreamily, “Are you sure we don’t have any coke left?”

“
I’m telling you for the hundredth time: I’m broke. I’ve no money left to buy you any more. And it’s all because of you sucking it up like a vacuum cleaner. And what perfect timing to talk about getting fucking hitched! You’re out of your mind!”

“
You fucking jerk!”

“
Glad you know. Listen, we were just two consenting adults having a good time. Don’t read into things. Besides, your father would kill me if I married you. He wants a Chinese man for you, doesn’t he?”

“
That’s in an ideal world. But we’re not in one and Dad’s a pragmatist. Right now, he just wants me to be married.”

“
Oh, does he? But surely not to a blood-sucking white devil.”

“
Look, if I’m married, he’ll shut up.”

“
About what?”

“
Face. Yes, face! Sooner or later, word will get around that I was hanging out with some guy and nothing’s happening.” She paused to look at me as if I was some alien from outer space. “These are Dad’s business associates. He can’t lose face in front of them. You have to understand the Chinese are that way.”

“
But I thought you were different. You’re not into this Confucius, culture thing.”

“
But what’s the big deal? He’ll pay for everything. Then he’ll leave us alone.”

“
Your old man can’t even get over me sleeping with you. How can he leave us alone? Besides, I’m not the marrying type.”

Irene eased herself onto a corner of my ping-pong table and shouted, “So that’s what it is! Do you know how lame an excuse this is? You just don’t think I’m good enough for you. I’m just your fucking little China doll, is that it?”

For a second I was stunned by what she’d said. She brought out something in me that I had never confronted before. Then I replied with a cold smile, “Perhaps you’re right. I’m just your Mr. Piggy White out in a playgroup with Princess China Doll. Tough luck!”

Her face turned red. “Asshole!” She hurled a pack of cigarette at my face. I charged towards her, pulled her by the hair and began slapping her across the cheeks. “Say you’re sorry, bitch!”

Imprints of my fingers appeared on her fair face. Irene made me let go of her, grabbed my “Mao and Nixon Ping-Pong Bats” and banged my groin with them. Then she broke down and howled, vowing to never see me again.

I later apologized for hitting her, promising more supply of the Long March. But our relationship was never the same. I began seriously thinking about going to the Far East to find myself and seek enlightenment.

There is a certain quality in a Chinese woman like Sha-fei Hong that someone like Irene Lou does not possess, something intangible and inscrutable. I suppose it’s the Chinese woman’s single-mindedness, her drive, and her determination to reach a goal.

Sha-fei Hong is no less impetuous than Irene, no less direct, a rare trait for a woman brought up in Communist China. On the other hand, if her father was educated in the U.S., then she must be from one of these good families in pre-Communist Shanghai. That alone says a lot about her.

Anyway, I was honestly surprised when she offered to teach me Mandarin Chinese in exchange for American currency. “You have to pay me in U.S. dollars," she said. I admire her guts.

I smile at the thought of her being my teacher. It’s really not a bad idea, if only it could work in China. I begin to fantasize about a tryst with Sha-fei Hong in Shanghai in the name of language lessons. Closing my eyes, I reach down toward my firmness, kneading under my Fruit of the Loom until I’m in automatic pilot …