The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [106]
“Welcome, welcome,” said Zhu.
“Thank you very much,” Neal answered. “Xie xie ni.”
Zhu smiled at Neal’s attempted Chinese, took him lightly by the wrist, and repeated, “Welcome, welcome.”
Let the games begin, Neal thought as he looked around at his new surroundings. The building in front of him was a concrete and brick structure, three stories tall, with a broad set of concrete steps and a front landing. To the left, about a hundred feet away, was a single-story brick building that looked like a dining hall. To his left, surrounded by a cement patio with several wrought-iron, umbrella-shaded tables, was a swimming pool.
“Does Mr. Zhu speak English?” Neal asked Wu.
“Only ‘welcome, welcome.’”
“Why is he holding my wrist?”
“He likes you. It is a traditional greeting in this part of the country.”
“Who is he?”
“The Production Brigade leader.”
“He looks too young.”
“Everyone calls him ‘Old Zhu.’”
Old Zhu led Neal over to the patio, reached into a barrel, and came out with a bamboo fishing pole, which he handed to Neal. He pointed to the swimming pool, which Neal then saw wasn’t a swimming pool at all, but a fishpond. A closer look revealed that it was crammed with carp; the whole bottom of the pond looked like it was moving.
Zhu took a pole of his own, fixed a large breadcrumb on the hook, and cast it into the middle of the pond. A carp hit it right away. Zhu dragged in the fish, unhooked it, and handed it to a young man who was standing by for just that purpose. The boy ran to the dining hall with the fish. Zhu gestured for Neal to do the same, and by the time Neal had baited his hook, Wu and Peng already had their lines in the water and were waiting intently for the carp to strike. Neal thought of asking for a rifle, so that it would be exactly like shooting fish in a barrel, but didn’t want to hurt Zhu’s feelings. So he dropped his hook in and watched it land on a carp’s head. The fish tapped at the bait with no great enthusiasm, and Neal watched Wu, whooping with delight, haul in his catch. Peng caught one too, and broke his wooden demeanor with a triumphant yell as the boy came running back from the dining hall to collect the catch of the day.
Just my luck to get a racist carp, Neal thought.
“Fresh fish for lunch!” Wu called to him.
“Wonderful!” Neal answered, fervently hoping they weren’t going to hunt their own fresh pork for dinner.
They repaired to the dining hall, a utilitarian rectangle with a linoleum floor and wooden tables. The fish was prepared quickly, and they ate it with some greens Neal didn’t recognize, along with bowls of sticky white rice. Some bottles of beer made a quick appearance and departed just as quickly in the midafternoon heat. Peng, who had announced only the night before that he did not drink beer, drained one with little difficulty. After lunch, the group went to a second-floor meeting room in the headquarters building so that Zhu could answer Mr. Frazier’s questions about the Dwaizhou Production Brigade.
Neal didn’t ask the only question he was really interested in: What am I doing here at the Dwaizhou Production Brigade? Instead he launched a battery of interrogatives and nodded sagely as if he understood or even cared about the answers that Wu worked so hard to translate. What is the annual rice yield? How many people work on the brigade? How many families are there? How is it organized? What crops besides rice do you grow? How many hogs? How many chickens? How is silk produced?
Zhu seemed particularly proud of his new fish-farming project, explaining that the pool out front was just for the recreation of party cadres; the real ponds were harvested with nets, and were an enormous success. Neal said that he would like to see them, and was rewarded with a huge smile and a promise that they would do so that very afternoon.
Even Peng was pleased with Neal’s performance, nodding and even smiling at Neal’s questions, then nodding vigorously at Zhu’s answers and listening intently to Wu’s translation. He apparently thought the whole dog-and-pony show was so wonderful