The First Excellence: Fa-Ling's Map (3 page)

The child sat still on the bench, her lip quivering and tears forming in her eyes. Min-xi knew leaving was not going to get any easier.

“
Remember, don’t move from this spot. When you are found, you must say your mother died making the baby, and your father left you both here.”

“
Don’t go.”

“
Good-bye, Ling. Take care of your sister. I am counting on you.” Min-xi kissed her daughter quickly on the forehead and held her face for a moment. “You have been a good daughter.” Then she patted the sleeping infant on the head and turned away before her courage failed her.

The girl sat motionless on the bench with the baby balanced clumsily on her lap. Her eyes were wide with fright. She knew it was her fault. For as long as she could remember, she had been aware of the shame that burned her face, and now it had come to this. Why did she have to be a girl?

The moon smiled down with cheerful disregard for her suffering. From that moment she would never again be able to look upon its light without resurrecting the dull ache of being outcast.

Min-xi mounted the bicycle. Her tears fell with the sensation of her daughter’s eyes on her back. As soon as she was out of the girl’s sight, she ditched the bike in a jungle thicket and doubled back toward the cliff edge, scanning the darkness for the metal railing that protected tourists from plummeting to their deaths.

Min-xi stood for a long moment, her hands gripping the rail. Even now her courage might flee. Even now, she might hurry back to the girls.

She turned her face toward the moon, praying for strength.

It was surprisingly easy to climb over the rail. She hardly felt the residual pain of childbirth between her legs.

Once she was on the other side, only one small step remained.…

Summer, 2007.…

Fa-líng stared at the passenger window. Her journal lay open on the tray in front of her. An inky line revealed where her thoughts had trailed off into the realm of the unexpressed.

She shook her head, trying to clear the fog behind her eyes.

“
Almost there,” she wrote.
She removed a small folded map from the pocket of her jacket. She studied it one more time, running her finger down the winding line of the Li River before tucking it into the cover of her book.

She stood and looked around, trying to place as many of her group as possible. Near the front of the section were Eloise and Joseph Golluck. They were the oldest couple, in their late forties.

Not far from the Gollucks were Caroline and Harold Kitchener.
He was a surgeon, but Fa-ling wasn’t sure what his speciality was. With the steady demands of their two little girls, the Kitchener adults seemed incapable of making normal conversation.

Directly behind Fa-ling were the Brahns, Yvanna and Chris. Fa-ling knew of them through their connection to the Conservatory of Music. The Brahns were among Canada’s inconspicuous wealthy, and patrons of the arts. They seemed to be nice people, down to earth, and were obviously determined to keep their family history to themselves.

At the rear of the section near the washrooms were the Harlans, Ting-lo and Adrian. Ting-lo was a beautiful woman, thirty-something, about six inches shy of being a high-fashion model. Her husband was not ugly, but he was no aesthetic match for his wife. Still, they seemed to be happy, and who was qualified to judge these things?

The Kaders were to Fa-ling’s left, directly across the aisle. Paula and Guy were a pair of Bay Street traders. Paula had left the floor a couple of years earlier hoping to start a family.

They were Mr. and Mrs. Average, ultra conservative and organised. Guy was nervously attentive to his wife, behaving more like the father of an unpredictable child than a husband. During the stop in Vancouver, Fa-ling had seen Paula swallowing pills. Since they’d boarded the flight to Shanghai, Paula had not opened her eyes.

The clang of the coffee cart brought Fa-ling to attention. Soon they would be landing in Shanghai.

“
Coffee?” the flight attendant asked in Cantonese.

Fa-líng nodded. “And a warm cloth, please,” she said.

“
Here you go.”
The woman reached into a basket for a cloth. “Cream?”

“
No, thanks.” Fa-líng had recently learned to drink her coffee black. It wasn’t always possible to get fresh milk in Mainland China.

The attendant pushed the cart towards the front of the section. As it passed, the man in the seat ahead of Fa-líng stood to make his way to the washroom at the rear. He looked to be around her age ― early twenties – with the serious expression of a student, but full of the innocent cockiness that came from having been raised in the West.

Fa-
ling was not above a little harmless flirting. She smiled at him.

“
You speak Chinese,” he said.

“
Yes. Don’t you?”

“
It’s not a requirement where I come from.”

Before she could ask him where that was, he was forced to move on by an elderly lady who was waiting to make her way down the aisle.

Fa-líng closed her eyes and pressed her face into the warm cloth. A memory of Michael sprang into her mind, but she ignored it. It would be fun to meet someone interesting on this trip. At twenty-two she was travelling on her own for the first time. The sense of freedom was almost overwhelming.

“
What about you?”
His voice startled her from behind. She had not heard him returning from the washroom. “Where did you learn to speak Chinese?”

“
I was born in Guangxi,” she said. “I spoke Cantonese till I was nine. Then I just kept it up.”

“
Your parents must be happy.” He pointed at the empty seat beside her and raised his brow in a question.

“
Ecstatic,” she said, moving her backpack so he could join her. Many of her friends were Chinese Canadian and had been forced by their parents to learn to speak and read either Mandarin or, more often, Cantonese. Most grew resentful of the hours of dreary study, hating the form of the characters and the ugly sound of the badly spoken words.

Fa-líng had never needed to be pushed. To her, speaking Cantonese had come easily. In the beginning she held onto her mother tongue as an expression of her refusal to learn English. Later, as her grasp of English improved, so did her mastery of Cantonese.

It was her discovery of the musical tones of Mandarin, though, that caused her interest in languages to explode. The walls of her room were soon covered with hundreds of perfectly scripted characters, a flood of poetry that changed and grew as she worked her way through adolescence.

She tucked her backpack under the seat in front of her as her new friend made himself comfortable.

“
Randy Chan,” he said, holding out his hand.

“
Lí Fa-líng. Where are you from?” she asked.

“
My parents are in Boston. I’m studying journalism at Georgetown.”

“
In Washington?”

“
That’s right,” he said. “I’m scooping some extra credits this summer on a special assignment.”

“
A story that takes you to China?”

“
Yeah. Behind the silk veil.”

“
Ah, so,” she said, pressing her hands together and bobbing her head in a mock bow. “It must be a big story to justify a trip like this.”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Not at liberty to say?”

“
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” Randy laughed at his own joke. “Seriously, it’s pretty big. If I nail it in time for the fall issue of the Hoya Bugle, I won’t have to worry about landing a job at the end of the year.”

“
Sounds exciting.”

“
Are you a student?” he asked.

“
Perpetually.”

“
What’s your major?”

“
So far I’ve been into languages and music,” Fa-líng said. “I’m not sure where I’m going with either of those. I suffer from performance anxiety. That rules out teaching or running off to join a rock band.”

“
I would have guessed you were a science major.”

“
Nice stereotype,” she laughed.

“
Nah. Math whiz would have been a stereotype. Science major is merely a cliché.”

“
What can I say? My parents left the big decisions up to me. I’m not doing a very good job at finding my path. I’m hoping this trip will trigger some self-awareness.”

“
To know oneself, Grasshopper, one must know one’s beginnings.”

“
Something like that,” Fa-ling agreed.

“
What does it mean?” he asked.

“
What does what mean?”

“
Your name. I get ‘Fa’, ‘the law, the way’, but is it ‘Ling’ for ‘a bell’, ‘a beautiful sound’ or ‘a spirit’?”

“
All of the above,” she said. “Sometimes it leans more to the departing spirit.”

He peeked to make sure she was smiling, and then laughed out loud.

“
Aren’t you glad you asked?” she said.

“
I ask everything. It’s good practice for a journalist.”

“
I suppose I would have trouble keeping secrets from you.”

“
Most people do,” he said. “Occupational hazard.”

“
I’ll have to be more inscrutable.”

“
That won’t work with me. I was top of my class in inscrutability last year.”

“
Not too many Asians at Georgetown?” she asked.

“
More than at my high school in Boston. I was a definite novelty there.”

“
Good thing you aced the ‘inscrutability’ factor.”

“
Ah, so,” he nodded. “How about you? Where do you live?”

“
Toronto.”

“
The Great White North.”

“
Not so ‘white’ as all that,” she said. “It’s way cosmopolitan these days. Huge Asian community.”

“
Chinese?” he asked.

“
Yeah. And Koreans and Vietnamese.”

“
I guess you fit right in.”

“
I guess so,” she said. “My neighbourhood is mostly Cantonese. The old folks fill the schoolyards and parks every morning.”

“
T’Ai Chi?”

“
Yeah. The Chinese come out in flocks. ‘Visibility’ is not an issue in TO.”

“
I’m jealous,” he said. “What’s it like climbing out of the minority?”

“
It’s a real treat.” Fa-líng let her voice trail off. It was time to change the subject. ‘Race’ is only one of a million tags that can be slapped onto a child.

She and Randy talked for awhile, keeping up a light patter to pass the time. Finally an attendant requested all passengers to return to their seats. The flight was preparing to land.

“
Are you staying in Shanghai?” he asked.

“
No. From there I’m heading to Nanning. I’ll be in Guangxi Zhuang for a week, then on to Beijing.”

“
I’m flying to Beijing after I finish in Shanghai. Maybe I can look you up. Where are you staying?”

“
We’ll be at the Royal Star Hotel,” she said. “I’m with a group, so I’m just following the leader. I can give you my cell number. If you make it to Beijing while I’m there, give me a ring.” Fa-líng handed him a card with her number and e-mail address. “If I don’t see you,” she added, “drop me a line when you get back to D.C.”

“
Will
do. It’s been great to meet you, Fa-líng. Good luck finding yourself.”

“
Thanks. And good luck with your killer story.”

In Shanghai.…

Dahui printed the email.

‘
SH Intl’ must be Shanghai International Airport. The nuances of abbreviated English sometimes escaped Dahui. He double-checked the arrival gate before tucking the page into his shirt pocket.

“
Dahui, come on,” his sister called from the front hall. “It’s getting late.”

The sun was already strong though it was only seven-fifteen. Before long the morning would be steeped in a noxious blend of urban noise and humidity. He drank his coffee and hurried to join Shopei for their daily T’Ai Chi ritual.

Normally their mother would join them, but Father was laid up and Mother had not left the house in days. She took tea at Father’s bedside and barely ate her meals, devoting her energy toward her husband’s comfort.

Dahui did not hint at these problems in his correspondence to his cousin. Mother would not want him to complain. Besides, having Randy in the apartment would give them all something to focus on besides Father’s injuries and the subsequent waning family finances. Soon enough his cousin would see for himself…

His sister’s step had none of its usual bounce as she followed Dahui to the nearby park. They passed a group of seniors walking more slowly and swinging their arms in the rhythmic warm up exercises of Qi Gong. If Mother were with them, they would greet the elders out of respect, but today Shopei barely noticed them in her hurry.