Oracle Bones (39 page)

Old Mr. Zhao and Huang Zhe have moved to the east side of town, near the sprawling business complexes of the Kerry Center and the China World Center. The elderly couple lives in a new building called the Golden Trade. The windows are green-glassed—the light at the end of the dock.

The couple receives me in their living room. Some decorations are familiar: a black-and-white photograph of the patriarch, a long scroll of calligraphy. Jesus and the Pharisees. One new object catches my eye: a framed photograph of the courtyard, also in black and white.

We chat for a while, and the old man tells me that Chen Mengjia had been a member of the Crescent Moon Society, a group of popular poets in the early twentieth century. I ask about Chen’s writing style.

“It was romantic,” Old Mr. Zhao says flatly.

“In what way? What sort of topics was he writing about?”

He dismisses the question with a wave of his hand. “You know, I don’t really understand that stuff.”

“Well, what was Chen himself like?”

“He passed away so many years ago that it’s hard to remember,” Old Mr. Zhao says. “But I do remember that he was an incredibly hard worker. He and my sister were both like that. They read books constantly, and they wrote all day long. They were literary people. Sometimes it seemed like they had no other activities.”

I mention the book about bronzes in America, and the old man nods.

“Chen returned to Beijing from America in 1948—one year earlier than my sister. While he was in America, he traveled all over the country and took photographs of Chinese relics that people had in their homes. If he heard that somebody had a bronze, he’d ask if he could see it. That’s how he researched that book. The collectors were all big shots, famous people. To buy bronzes like that, you have to have money.”

I ask about the book’s title—
American Imperialists
—and the old man says that Chen hadn’t chosen those words. “His interests weren’t political. He just wanted to study the bronzes. He often talked about how beautiful they were—many times, he said that it was remarkable that even three thousand years ago, people were creating something so gorgeous. He felt the same way about Ming dynasty furniture. He was a serious collector; he had more than twenty pieces of furniture from that period. After he and my sister returned to China, their salaries were about the same. They used her income for the household expenses, and they used his income to buy antique furniture.”

The old man mentions that the couple’s furniture is now part of a permanent exhibition in the Shanghai Museum. When I ask about Chen’s political problems, Old Mr. Zhao says that in the 1950s, Mao Zedong initiated a campaign to change the Chinese writing system. During that period, Mao commanded that a number of characters be simplified, and he hoped to replace them entirely with an alphabet. Chen Mengjia wrote articles criticizing the proposal.

“He thought that Chinese writing shouldn’t change,” Old Mr. Zhao explains. “He was named a Rightist after that. There was a lot of criticism at that time, and then of course it got worse during the Cultural Revolution.”

I ask why the man killed himself.

“He was a scholar, an intellectual,” Old Mr. Zhao says. “He was a proud
man, and he couldn’t bear the insult. You know, he tried to kill himself three times. My sister saved him twice. The third time, she was asleep—she was exhausted and she didn’t find him until he was dead.”

Huang Zhe has been listening silently, and now she shakes her head. “You can’t understand what that pressure was like,” she says. “They’d make you kneel in front of everybody and recognize your faults. They’d accuse you of nonsense, of wanting to kill somebody, of thinking something bad—anything. All of us went through it. But none of us had it as bad as Chen did, because he was a famous man who had been named a Rightist.”

“That’s why I don’t like to talk about the past,” her husband says. “
Mei banfa
. There’s nothing to do about that now.”

Their story contradicts Old Yang’s. The archaeologist hadn’t mentioned a campaign to change Chinese characters, and he had told me that Lucy wasn’t with her husband when he killed himself. Old Yang described two suicide attempts, not three. And he had mentioned the accusation of a love affair.

“I talked with somebody at the Institute of Archaeology who knew Chen Mengjia,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “He told me that during the Cultural Revolution, some people criticized Chen because they believed that he had some relationship with another woman. I know that many things were exaggerated at that time. Do you remember any criticism about this?”

A pause; the woman shifts uncomfortably. Old Mr. Zhao breaks the silence: “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Do you remember hearing anything about it at all?”

“I never heard about that.” He speaks evenly, and his eyes show no reaction. I change the subject, and the tension passes; we talk about tennis. Old Mr. Zhao says that he still plays three times a week.

I KNOW THAT
there is more to the story, but I won’t learn anything else from Old Mr. Zhao. Despite all the times I’ve spoken with him, there is some part of his character that remains completely hidden. Many Chinese of his generation are like that, especially the ones who saw awful things. Their memories lie beneath a shell that has hardened with time.

Occasionally, though, there are glimpses of something deeper, and I remember another story that Old Mr. Zhao told me. Several months after the demolition of his home, on a winter afternoon, he found himself in the old neighborhood. On a whim, he stopped by the site of the courtyard. Along the street, the outside still looked the same: the gray-plastered wall and the red door. Old Mr. Zhao happened to be carrying his key, and he tried the lock.
It didn’t work, so he stooped over and peered through the mail slot. Broken bricks, crushed tiles. Dust, dust, dust. The old man took a long look, and then he walked away, never to return.

When he tells the story, that’s how it ends. The point is obvious: that chapter in his life is over. But there must have been some reason why Old Mr. Zhao still had that key.

12

Asylum

January 2001

WASHINGTON, D.C., LIKE BEIJING, IS A DELIBERATE CAPITAL. BOTH
cities are square: straight streets, right angles. They are arranged strictly according to the compass, and each occupies a site that represented, in the eyes of a visionary ruler, a blank slate. The Ming emperor Yongle selected his location on the northern plain; George Washington chose the bend of the Potomac River. And each city’s layout—the grid of monuments and broad streets—immediately tells a visitor that this is a seat of authority.

At the heart of each capital stands a political structure. In Beijing, the Forbidden City represents the center; in Washington, D.C., everything emanates from the domed building of the United States Capitol. From that point, the street names follow a strict logic, a testimony to American pragmatism: roads that run north and south are numbered; letters of the alphabet mark the east-west streets. Heading due north from the domed building, along North Capitol Street, one crosses the latter part of the alphabet—Q Street, R Street, S Street—before the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue. Rhode Island continues northeast (U, V, W) and then, after the first alphabet is exhausted, it begins anew with two-syllable names: Adams, Bryant, Channing. Douglas for D, Evarts for E, Franklin for F. On the corner of Franklin and Rhode Island is a dilapidated beige-brick apartment building. Inside that building, in an apartment on the third floor, five Uighurs found a temporary home in the fall of 2000.

For months, the apartment had served as a way station for recent arrivals from China. The rent was only four hundred dollars a month, and tenancy was passed from Uighur to Uighur. The apartment consisted of a small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a living room where a pair of mattresses had been laid out on the floor. One wall of the living room was decorated with framed verses from the Koran; across the room, on another wall, hung a multicolored map of the United States.

None of the current residents planned to stay in the apartment for long. One man had recently crossed illegally from Canada; another had already received political asylum and was applying for permanent-resident status; the others were preparing their own asylum applications. Each man found his own path through the city, acquiring jobs, lawyers, necessary documents. Along the way, they explored holes in the system. That was another link between Washington, D.C., and Beijing: beneath the grid of straight streets and impressive monuments, there was always an element of disorder.

Shortly after Polat moved into the apartment, he read the classified section of a Chinese-language newspaper and noticed an advertisement for “driver’s license consulting.” The service was based in the District’s Chinatown, and for $150, the consultants offered to provide the paperwork for a Virginia driver’s license. Among the immigrant community, Virginia was known for its loophole: applicants for driver’s licenses and state identity cards didn’t have to show proof of residence or even identity. The only requirement was a notarized affidavit testifying that the applicant lived in Virginia and had valid documents. It was possible for an out-of-state, illegal immigrant—in other words, somebody like Polat—to acquire a Virginia driver’s license without ever showing his passport to a government official. Non-English speakers were also allowed to bring their own interpreters to the examination.

The Chinatown service arranged Polat’s affidavit, no questions asked, and they also sent a Chinese man to accompany him during the written exam. Whenever the Chinese man came to the correct answer of a multiple-choice question, he muttered, “
Da ge
,” which means “big brother.” Big brother, big brother, big brother. Polat passed with flying colors. After receiving his license, he bought a silver 1992 Honda Accord for thirty-one hundred dollars.

One evening that winter, Polat tried to call his mother in Xinjiang, but the apartment’s phone service was cut off. He decided to use the public telephone near the corner of Rhode Island and Franklin. It was almost midnight. The pay phone was right across the street from the Good Ole Reliable Liquor Store.

While he was punching the numbers, a man came up from behind and said something that Polat didn’t understand. He ignored the man and kept dialing
Xinjiang. Before Polat could finish, he felt something pressed against his back. He whirled around and saw that the object was a handgun.

Two men: one with the gun, one in a car. “Lay down,” said the gunman, and this time Polat understood. He dropped down; the gunman searched him. He found seventy dollars in a front pocket but somehow missed the three hundred that Polat had stashed in another pocket. The two muggers drove away on Rhode Island Avenue; Polat picked himself up and hurried back to the apartment. He had been outside for less than five minutes.

THAT WINTER, I
visited the United States for a month. I spent Christmas with my parents and sisters in Missouri, and I saw friends and editors in various cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. None of these places felt truly familiar. I had grown up in one American small town and attended college in another; since graduation I had lived overseas. There wasn’t a single big city in America that I could negotiate without a map.

To me, the capital seemed the most foreign. The layout felt intimidating because of all the broad streets and big memorials; there never seemed to be enough people to fill the District. In January, the monuments looked particularly deserted: empty paths, yellowed grass. The sky was the color of cold metal; the forecast called for snow. I took the metro to Rhode Island Avenue, surrounded by unfamiliar faces. The first person I recognized was a Uighur.

He had waited outside the station, on foot—his Honda was in the shop. We grinned and shook hands, just like the old days in Yabaolu. His face looked thinner; he had lost weight since coming to America. He still chain-smoked, but now he smoked Marlboro Lights instead of Hilton. Back in Beijing, he had preferred Marlboro but usually didn’t buy them, because of all the fakes.

We walked to his apartment, and he laughed when I took off my coat.

“Your shirt’s the same as mine,” he said.

I looked down and realized that we had dressed identically: olive-green Caterpillar-brand denim shirts.

“Did you buy that in Yabaolu?” he asked.

“Yes. In that new market in Chaoyangmenwai.”

“It’s
jiade
,” he said, laughing. “Same as mine. How much did you pay?”

That was a question that had no good answer in China; the moment anybody asked, you knew you had gotten ripped off.

“Maybe seventy yuan,” I said, hopelessly.

“I paid forty,” Polat said. “They probably charged you more because you’re a foreigner.”

His roommates were out, and Polat wanted to make a trip downtown. I
asked him to show me the neighborhood first, and he led me down Rhode Island Avenue. Along the street, flyers had been posted on the telephone poles, in preparation for that month’s presidential inauguration:

DAY OF OUTRAGE!
Black Unity Rally Against George W. Bush
Sat. Jan 20 11:00
A.M.
Please wear all black in unity.
Sponsored by the Black Alliance Against the Bush Agenda, the New
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
American Indian Movement and Other Peoples of Color

I copied one of the signs into my notebook, and Polat asked me what it meant. “Peoples of color” sounded awkward if translated literally, so I used the standard Chinese term for minorities:
shaoshu minzu
. Of course, that was just as odd in English: “small-number ethnic groups.” Perhaps somewhere in the world there was a language that handled this issue gracefully, but it wasn’t English or Chinese.

I asked Polat if the average American on the street seemed to lump him in with any particular group.