Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [182]
And then there is Z.G. Joy meets my eyes. Silent communication exists between sisters, but it’s even stronger between mothers and daughters. Joy pulls away and I touch May’s elbow.
“We’ve brought someone else,” I say.
My sister follows my gaze. She sees Dun—a man in an ill-fitting Western-style suit, with his hands balanced protectively on the shoulders of a thin but sweet-faced little boy implausibly holding a violin case. Next to them stands a tall but slim man in grubby clothes, with pants too short, looking a bit like a mole blinded by the light. May’s knees start to buckle, but I hold tight to her elbow to steady her. I walk her the short distance up the hill, hand her to Z.G., and step back. Oh, this is going to be interesting.
When I left for China three years ago, I thought of something my sister once said to me: everything always returns to the beginning. I was returning home to my roots, to the place where I’d been so ruined as a woman, but where I once again discovered the person I was meant to be—a Dragon of great strength and forgiveness. I found my daughter and through sheer force of will—through the fierceness of the Dragon that my mother always warned me about—brought her out of China. I found Joy—and joy with Dun and Ta-ming. Now I’ll return to what I believe is my true home: America. Miracles are everywhere, and as I watch my sister—forever beautiful, forever my little sister—staring into the eyes of the one man she ever loved, I know that indeed things do return to the beginning. The world opens again, and I see a life of happiness without fear. I gaze at my family—complicated though it may be—and know that fate smiles on us.
Acknowledgments
In many ways this novel couldn’t have been written if not for Amy Tan and her wonderful husband, Lou DeMattei, who invited me to go with them to Huangcun Village in Anwei province, where we stayed in a seventeenth-century villa called Zhong Xian Di. They had been invited to the villa by Nancy Berliner, the curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, who brought Yin Yu Tang, another villa from Huangcun, brick by brick to the museum. Ms. Berliner answered numerous questions about life in Huangcun and the villa both today and during the Great Leap Forward by email and in person. Tina Eng, Amy’s sister, also came to Huangcun. Her stories about the Great Leap Forward, what it was like to live in the countryside, her loneliness for her mother, as well as her insightful explanation of hsin yan—heart eye—helped to inform Dreams of Joy. Cecilia Ding, who works for the Village China project, was a wonderful translator, font of information, and traveling companion. Although many of the tragedies that happened in the novel didn’t occur in Huangcun, I wish to thank the many people there who told us their stories, showed us how they live day to day, and gave us wonderful meals, many of which are present in these pages. I’ve changed much of Huangcun’s geography to create Green Dragon Village, but visitors will readily recognize the ancestral temple, the stone bridges, the villa, and the beauty of the landscape.
In 1960, about 10 million dependents of Overseas Chinese and returned Overseas Chinese lived in China. During the three years of the famine, tens of thousands of Chinese attempted to leave the country. Many were caught and jailed, or died. Then, in 1962, the Chinese government allowed 250,000 to leave China and enter Hong Kong. Some estimates suggest that another 700,000 people had made their way to Guangzhou in hopes of escape. There are no reliable figures for how many succeeded. I want to thank Xinran, whom I met in England, for information on feminine hygiene in China, ghost villages, and how people escape China even to this day; Jeffrey Wasserstrom for information on Shanghai, and also for introducing me to people who had either lived through the Great Leap Forward or escaped China; Judy Fong Bates, who shared with me family stories