Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [145]
The car pulls into the grounds of the Garden Hotel, what used to be the French Club. The brightly lit façade and the walled garden bring back memories of parties I attended here with my sister. It feels strange to walk up the steps and enter the lobby with its crystal chandeliers, sweeping staircase, and marble walls and floors. The art deco grandeur looks dilapidated and musty, but young men and women dressed in old hotel uniforms take our coats, usher us through the lobby, and guide us upstairs to one of the banquet rooms. Inside, the people are divided into three groups: those in the usual gray suits of Communist China’s elite, those in colorful Hong Kong–made cheongsams, and some—like Dun and me—who wear Western-style clothes of twenty years ago.
Dun and I accept glasses of French champagne. As Z.G. scans the room, looking to see who’s important, Dun and I tip our glasses in a silent toast. He smiles. I smile. It seems we have a way to celebrate our engagement after all.
We sit down to an elaborate banquet. It’s more food than I’ve seen since I came to China, and it’s fabulous: whole roast squab served with fresh lemon slices and little bowls of salt for dipping; sweet sticky rice stuffed into the holes of lotus root and braised to bring out the greatest sugariness; thin slices of tofu as fresh and light as custard topped by fresh scallops; whole crab sprinkled with chopped scallions, fresh coriander, and chilies; pork belly in honey; soft-boiled eggs topped with caviar and garnished with tiny slivers of pickled vegetable; deep-fried greens coated with sweet syrup, and a whole steamed fish. Our table host tells the Hong Kong guests there’s so much food in China that it’s not necessary to serve rice. “That would be redundant,” he says, and the guests laugh in merry agreement.
Dun and I eat every delicacy designed to impress “our Hong Kong friends,” and we savor every bite. I speak in my best British English to a gentleman who owns a textile factory in Kowloon. He’s hoping to open a factory on the mainland. I listen to Dun practice his English with a woman on his left. He’s deft and humorous. Every once in a while, I glance over at Z.G. He looks good. He hasn’t lost any weight, and I can see why, if he’s been coming to banquets like this.
When dinner ends, we go to an adjoining room with a small stage, where we’re treated to a short program of provincial dances and songs. Then a screen is lowered, the lights dimmed, and a projector begins to whir. I expect a newsreel on the Great Leap Forward. Instead, we get a Laurel and Hardy short followed by Top Hat, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I saw it at the Metropole with May a year before we left Shanghai. After the film, the people from our table come up and ask questions.
“Do all Americans drive cars?”
“Do they all own airplanes?”
“Do all people live in houses like that?”
None of them are from Hong Kong.
Joy
A GOOD MOTHER
I WAKE ON a Sunday morning in March to unnatural silence. The roosters and chickens in Green Dragon have all been eaten. The oxen, water buffalo, and village dogs have also been eaten. I don’t hear the scratching of mice or rats in the rafters and walls, because they’ve been eaten too. There are no birds in the trees, children playing between houses, or people going about their daily chores.
Tao’s brothers and sisters still sleep around us. They need the rest. Last night, they ran out to steal pubescent wheat heads, rub them between their fingers to separate the grain from the husks, and then eat the still-green kernels. It’s completely against the rules, and if you’re caught by the night patrols, punishment is swift and harsh. People have been tied to the scholar’s tree in the square to have their ears, noses, or scalps sliced off or the hair on their faces, heads, or private parts burned. Others have had their eldest sons killed to cut the roots of a family or been deprived of all food until the only thing they can eat is the cotton stuffing in their padded jackets, so they die full but naked.
I was