Forbidden City (4 page)

I went up to the roof, got off the elevator, and ran down a hallway and pushed open the door. It was chilly out, and clear. The air smelled dry, dusty, and a little smoky. I looked over the wall to the noise and bustle of Chang An Avenue seven floors below. Wow, what a sight. I have never seen a street like it. There are ten lanes, three each way for cars and buses, and two each way for the rivers of bicycles that flowed past. The riders weaved in and out, acting just like car drivers in a jam in Toronto — impatient, ringing their bells, pushing each other on as soon as the light changed. A few had passengers — they sat on the rat-trap carrier behind the driver, legs dangling inches from the pavement.

I took a walk along the roof to the west until I got to the corner. Below me, on the other side of a narrow side street, was more than six hundred years of history — the Forbidden City, where the emperors had lived from 1368 until the early 1900s when the monarchy was overthrown. It’s a city in its own right, sitting quietly in the middle of modern, busy Beijing, surrounded by a high wall and a moat.
Inside the thick walls are courtyards and wide, low buildings with gracefully sweeping roofs covered with orange tiles. There are even pine trees and gardens, alleys and parks.

The wall of the Forbidden City’s southern border faces Chang An Avenue across a moat that’s spanned by three marble bridges. In the centre of the wall is the Tian An Men, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, looking out on Tian An Men Square.

I made a promise to myself to visit the Forbidden City as soon as I could, and then I went back down to our rooms to see if Dad was awake. He wasn’t. I wrote this stuff and now that I’m finished I’m tired again. So I’m going back to bed.

Tonight Eddie gave us a Chinese banquet here at the hotel to welcome us to Beijing. On the expense account, he said. Dad had on his usual scruffy outfit and Eddie looked very unglamorous in a brown tweed jacket and grey pants. Lao Xu was there, too. He’s a great guy. As soon as he came to the hotel tonight I asked him to teach me everything about China, especially customs. And history.

He laughed and said, “Okay, Shan Da, I’ll try my best.”

We went to a private banquet room on the fourth floor. It was a little room, with a huge round table covered with a white cloth. I was expecting the kind of Chinese food we got in Toronto — sweet-and-sour breaded chicken balls, barbecued pork, sweet and sour spare ribs, chow mein — stuff like that. Not here.

As soon as we sat down Eddie and Dad started talking business. Eddie may have been a celebrity but he was making a crummy first impression on me. He bossed my dad around too much, giving him instructions every five seconds, as if Dad was his assistant or something, rather than a colleague. As far as I was concerned, without my dad, Eddie was just a voice. I tried to shut out his booming voice and talk to Lao Xu.

I asked him what was on the dishes in the centre of the table. He pointed to them one at a time. “These are called cold dishes — sausage, chicken breasts, sliced cucumber in sweet sauce, diced cucumber in hot sauce, raw chopped Chinese cabbage with dark vinegar, and dried fish.”

Great, I thought. What a thrill. Maybe the chicken will be okay.

“And what are those black things?”

“Preserved eggs. Try one.”

I tried to use my chopsticks, but after a few minutes of trying to pick up the jelly-like strips of
preserved egg, I gave up and used the fork. I should have stuck to the chopsticks. The egg felt like glue in my mouth.

The waiters and waitresses started bringing in the hot courses. Each time a dish arrived the top would be removed with a flourish and the waiter would announce the name of it — in Chinese. We got deep-fried chicken, and chicken balls in oyster sauce. Two or three kinds of fish served on big oval platters — fish with the heads and tails still on and the eyes staring at you, daring you to eat. Slices of duck with crisp, fatty skin. Shrimps with hot red sauce that made my eyes water. Shredded pork with green pepper and black mushrooms. Beef bits with ginger and onions.

I tried it all and liked most of it. While we ate, Lao Xu and I talked — or he did, mostly. Turns out he’s a history buff, too. He told me a few legends. Some of them were so funny I could hardly eat for laughing.

All through the meal the waiters and waitresses would keep our glasses filled. I got orange pop but the three grownups had beer, sweet red wine that Dad said tasted like syrup you’d pour on ice cream, and, in tiny glasses, wine called Mao Tai that they used for toasting everything they could think of. After the first crack at the Mao Tai stuff Dad switched to beer.

When we started eating I noticed that Lao Xu took the bones out of his mouth with his chopsticks
and dropped them beside his plate. It looked pretty rude until I thought about it. There was no room on the tiny plate and, unless you liked the idea of tossing the bones onto the floor, nowhere else to put them. It wasn’t long before we all had a little pile of bones in front of us, like some kind of weird sacrifice.

The only dish that really threw me was some black strips of something or other about two inches long, in a sauce. I popped one in my mouth and tried to chew it but it was like rubber without much taste.

“It’s sea cucumber,” Lao Xu said. “A delicacy.”

He went on to explain that the sea cucumber isn’t a plant. It’s a creature that swims — “Like this,” — and he moved his hand in the same motion a worm or snake would make. Then I realized he meant sea
slug
.

I only had the one piece.

Just when I thought my stomach would blow up from the pressure, one of the waitresses brought in a huge platter of
jiao-zi
— fat steaming dumplings stuffed with ground pork, cabbage, ginger, garlic, and spices. They were great.

Then soup. Then ice cream. Then fruit.

By the time we finished, I could hardly get out of my chair. Eddie was wobbling from too many toasts, Dad burped every few seconds. There was tons of uneaten food on the table. I said to Lao Xu we should take it with us, like we did at home.

“No,” he answered, “that’s the Chinese way. The host must always offer much more food than the guest can eat. If there isn’t more than enough food
he will lose face. So, Shan Da, whenever you go to a Chinese home, when you are finished eating and can eat no more, always leave some food on your plate and some beverage in your glass. Don’t empty your plate like you do in the West. Here, your host will always put something more on your plate to show his generosity.”

All that food made us sleepy. Lao Xu went home, Eddie fell into bed, Dad crashed on the couch with one of my novels, and I started writing in my journal. But I’m going to bed, too. It’s about ten o’clock, and dark out. Ten in the morning in Toronto. My friends will be finishing up first class — French. I wonder if my body will ever adjust to Beijing time.

All the history I took in school seems like a pile of dust next to what I saw today. I mean, I walked on the Great Wall of China! I was in an emperor’s tomb — over five hundred years buried in the ground! The emperor, not me.

Lao Xu is amazing. The guy seems to know everything about China. He rattles off information like a computer, complete with quotations from Chinese
classical literature and Chairman Mao Ze-dong, the man who ran China until he died in 1976. And Lao Xu makes it all interesting. When I told him I was a military history nut he told me that his father had been a soldier who fought in the Red Army when he was seventeen and died fighting the war against the Japanese. Lao Xu’s father had participated in the Long March, one of the greatest feats in military history, where a hundred thousand Communists had retreated twelve thousand, five hundred klicks from Fujian Province in southern China to the west as far as Tibet, then far north to Yanan, fighting Nationalist soldiers and local war-lords almost the whole way. By the time Mao Ze-dong led them into Yanan — more than a year after the retreat had begun — there were only about ten thousand of them left.

“Many of the men who run China now, the men high up in the Communist Party, are men who were on the Long March,” Lao Xu told me. “They are getting pretty old now, some in their eighties. But they refuse to retire.”

Lao Xu practically worships the
PLA
, the People’s Liberation Army, which is what the Red Army has been called since Liberation in 1949. He calls them “a true people’s army” and says that whenever there is a flood or other natural disaster the
PLA
will be there, helping the people. They don’t wear a lot of fancy ribbons and braids and stuff on their uniforms. The only way you can tell an officer is to
count the number of pockets on his coat. Officers have four, enlisted men two.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was late afternoon, so Lao Xu said goodbye to me in the parking lot and went to get his bike in the bicycle parking area. There were hundreds of bikes there, and how he found his among all those Flying Pigeons and Phoenixes, almost all of them black, I don’t know.

I wished in a way that his dad was still alive so I could talk to him about the Long March. What an adventure!

Dad and Eddie were sitting in the office talking when I got in.

“How’s the Foreign Devil tourist?” Eddie asked around the stem of his pipe. He was watering his flowers carefully, caressing the leaves as he worked his way along the windowsill.

“Tired,” I answered as I tossed my pack onto the couch and opened the little fridge, hoping to find a bottle of orange pop there. I was beginning to like the stuff.

“Have a good day?” Dad asked. “Get some good shots?”

I swear my dad sees the entire world through a lens. I plopped down on the couch, heaved a big sigh, and took a long drink. The sweet icy pop numbed my throat as it went down.

“Yeah, I think so, Dad. The wall was great. Fantastic. Unbelievable.”

Dad laughed. “So, what are you saying? Did you like it or not? How about the Ping Tombs?”

“
Ming
, Dad. The tomb was okay, if you like cold dark tunnels and stairs and crowds and piles of dishes and stuff. You should have come with us.”

His blue eyes darted a look at Eddie. “Oh, well, I was too busy. Lots to do.”

“Did Lao Xu go home?” Eddie asked, lowering himself into a chair. “I wanted him to do something for me before he left.”

“He’s gone, Eddie. Dad, does he ever know his history! He makes Mr. Bronowski look like an amateur.”

“Really?” Dad said. “What’s his background, Eddie?”

“Lao Xu? He’s a Master of Arts. Went to Beijing University, I think. Wrote a few books, too.”

“Then what’s he doing working for you?” I cut in, realizing after I asked that my question probably wasn’t too polite.

“Because in China you don’t choose where you’re going to work, Alex. When Lao Xu graduated he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry. A few years ago, when China opened up to foreigners, they put him to work with correspondents because he speaks excellent English and pretty good French.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.” I thought of my school again. “He should be teaching history.”

Eddie nodded. “I agree. I’m sure he does, too. But things don’t work that way here.”

“Why doesn’t he quit this job and apply for something he wants?”

“Because you can’t do that here, Alex. Chinese don’t have the right to choose where they work. Even if he arranged a job teaching at a high school or university, his present work unit would only have to say no and that would be it.”

I took another swig of the pop, emptying the bottle. “Okay, why can’t he just tell them to go to — why doesn’t he just leave.”

“Do you know about
hu kou?”
Eddie asked as he sat down.

I shook my head.

Dad said, “Never heard of it.”

Eddie sat back in his armchair and relit his pipe. “
Hu kou
is a sort of census and residence card mixed together. Every family has a green residence book. Kids are in the father’s book. To get your ration coupons — a lot of food here is rationed, like rice, cooking oil, meat, milk, and more — you have to show your
hu kou
. No green book, no coupons.”