A Free Life Page 46

“No wonder zer vegetation wasn’t lush. So no everglades and gators, huh?”

  “No.” Kent Philips chuckled, rather shy. “I wanted to make the landscape sparse but infused with light.”

  “Zat’s clear. These pieces don’t blaze but shimmer. Zat’s what I like most about zem. Zey’re full of a quiet dignity.”

  “Thanks! Do you paint?” Obviously he regarded Nan as a fellow artist.

  “I write,” Nan said reluctantly.

  “What kind of work do you write?”

  “Poetry.”

  “Wow, I can’t imagine doing that, although I like poetry too. You must give me the titles of your books so I can get a copy at the bookstore in my town.”

  “I haven’t pahblished a book yet.” Nan was slightly embarrassed.

  “I know poetry is hard, but don’t give up. When you reach a certain point, good things will happen, as long as you persevere.”

  “I’ll remember zat.”

  A young waiter came over holding a tray of green olives stuffed with pimento, which they both passed up. Kent gave Nan his card and invited him to come visit if he was ever in Florida. Nan was pleased and felt a kind of warmth rising in him, though he knew it was unlikely he’d see this man again. It was odd that he felt so uncomfortable to be with Bao despite having known him for years, whereas with Kent Philips, a stranger, he was at ease, not having to weigh his words or resort to social rhetoric.

  Before leaving the show, Nan looked around for Bao to say goodbye. In the section of handcrafted works, he saw his friend conversing with a delicate black woman dressed in red silk and holding a flute of champagne. She was the artist who had made the gorgeous, menacing masks hanging on the wall behind her. As Nan approached them, he overheard Bao praise the lady’s work, “Beautiful hand-job, very special.”

  “Handiwork!” she corrected.

  “Yes, I mean everything done by hand.”

  Nan edged away while fighting down the laugh rising in his throat. He slipped into an anteroom and went out of the gallery. A chilly wind swept up a few dead leaves, which were rattling and scuttling before a Dumpster on which perched half a dozen crows. The moon looked bloody, like a giant rotten orange. Nan sank into thought on his drive back, and wondered if Bao would be displeased by his French leave. For the rest of the evening in the kitchen he couldn’t stop imagining a kind of dark poetry that possessed a luminosity similar to that in Kent Philips’s paintings.

  20

  THESE DAYS Nan and Pingping were priming Taotao for the SATs. The boy was just an eighth grader, but he had been selected to join in a talent survey, whose participants were to take the regular SATs in November. Nan gave his son a clothbound Oxford American Dictionary and asked him to highlight all the word entries he didn’t know and then review them later on. Once Taotao finished the whole book, Nan would pay him a hundred dollars. The boy was reluctant, but his father convinced him that this would increase his verbal score considerably. More important, he would learn many new words. Even if he couldn’t finish reading the dictionary before sitting for the SATs, he could continue to work on it afterward and earn the promised money. Taotao was eager to use the cash for a sound card for his computer, so he agreed to do the work. As for math, Pingping took care of that. In fact, she hardly needed to do anything, already having taught him a great deal.

  “I know I’m going to blow it,” Taotao complained to his parents. “I’m going to make a fool of myself. Nobody in my grade will take the SATs this year. This is silly and outrageous. And if I come out all right, people will think of me as a whiz kid. I don’t want to be a whiz kid who’s just a parrot. I want to be like everybody else.”

  “It’s an honor to be a part of zer talent search,” Nan said.

  “I have no talent and don’t want the honor. Let them experiment with other rare birds, not me. I won’t take the tests.”

  “You just scared,” Pingping put in. “If you don’t do it, I won’t teach you anymore. You can decide yourself.”

  “Mom, you’re so cruel!”

  Despite his protests, Taotao did sit for the SATs on the last Saturday in November. He wasn’t sure if he had done well. His parents told him not to worry since there’d still be three years before he took the real tests for college. Four weeks later the scores came: math 710 and verbal 580. His parents were very pleased. For years Nan had worried about how to pay his son’s college tuition; now it was clear that the boy would be able to get a scholarship from a decent school provided Taotao became an American citizen. Nan felt relieved and urged his son to continue to read the dictionary, of which Taotao had covered merely 350 pages, less than half the book. The SAT results got Taotao qualified for the summer programs for gifted kids at both Duke and Johns Hopkins, but he wouldn’t be able to attend either of them because his parents didn’t believe in them and couldn’t afford the tuition. There was a chance that he could get a scholarship for the programs, but he preferred to stay home in the summertime.

  21

  NAN had applied for U.S. citizenship three months earlier. The naturalization would take at least half a year to complete. Only after he became an American citizen could Taotao and Pingping begin their naturalization. Nan hadn’t applied for the citizenship with a light heart, but this was the only sensible thing to do. Besides the need for Taotao to become an American, Nan felt he had been disowned by China long ago. There wasn’t another place where he and his family could and wanted to live. His home and livelihood were here. The previous spring he had read an article by Yong Chu, the old poet teaching Chinese at a college in Rhode Island, whom Nan had seen six years earlier at the memorial meeting for those killed in the Tiananmen massacre. In his article, “Why I Don’t Want to Be an American Citizen,” Mr. Chu wrote candidly that he was unsure which side he would take if the United States went to war with China. The citizenship would require him to be willing to bear arms to defend the U.S. Constitution and fight any foreign enemy, at least participating in noncombatant service in wartime. Chu stated that his heart wouldn’t allow him to side against his motherland and that he wanted to live honestly, so he wouldn’t get naturalized. Now Nan wasn’t certain which side he’d take if a war broke out between China and the United States. This uncertainty tormented him, but he also knew that once he swore his allegiance at the oath ceremony, he’d have to abide by his word. To him, a promise should weigh more than a country.

  He thought of a pair of metaphors, comparing China to his mother and the United States to the woman he loved. He was sure that someone else had used this trite analogy before; nonetheless, it helped him sort out his emotions. As a grown man he couldn’t live with his mother forever and must choose to join the woman of his heart. Certainly he wouldn’t taunt or beat his mother if there was a fight between the old lady and his beloved. All he could do was help them understand each other even though they might never see eye to eye. It was with this intention that he went to a meeting held in the community center in Chinatown.

  Recently two young journalists in mainland China had published a book entitled China Can Say No, which vehemently condemned the United States as China’s archenemy. The book was poorly written and full of errors and distortions, but it had gone through many reprints. The authors went so far as to claim that China would “incinerate Hollywood” and “let the United States suffer the ax of war.” Clearly some top officials had endorsed the publication of this book, using hatred and fear to unify the populace. The book caused quite a stir in the Chinese diaspora as well, so the Chinese community in Atlanta had invited scholars, writers, students, and people of various walks to discuss it on a Saturday afternoon in early January.

  The conference room at the community center was packed, some people standing along the walls. Nan was sitting on a folding chair close to the front, having arrived ten minutes early. Two men and one woman were seated at the table facing the audience. Since many of the attendees didn’t know English, the discussion was to be conducted only in Chinese. After the moderator intro
duced the speakers, the older man, a historian wearing horn-rimmed glasses, harrumphed, then began to speak in a squeaky voice. He criticized the book, saying it merely echoed “the Boxers’ sentiment and cheap jingoism.” Also, its main points, mostly supported by wrong information and inaccurate statistics, were shaped to serve current politics in China and had nothing to do with real scholarship. While speaking, he grew more animated, his glasses flashing. He stressed that the United States had never robbed China like other foreign powers had, and that it was Japan and Russia that China should condemn and worry about. Anyone with some knowledge of modern history could see this plainly. In short, the book was superficial, unprofessional, irresponsible, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. He went on to recommend several titles that could inform people better about the relationship between China and the United States. As he spoke, grumbles were rising from the audience.

  Nan agreed with the speaker’s views, but he didn’t like the old man’s jarring voice and supercilious manner, especially his use of his thick index finger to point at the listeners as if they were his students.

  The second speaker was a younger man with large weary eyes, a political scientist at Georgia Tech. He believed the book was too emotional, but he could see two causes for the desperate emotions the authors manifested. First, the Chinese government had ruined its image with the Tiananmen tragedy, and people in the West had begun to view China as a totalitarian state; for this the Communist leaders had to be responsible. Second, the U.S. policy toward China had lacked consistency in recent years. That hurt the self-respect of the Chinese people. For example, in May 1995 the American government had allowed Denghui Li, the former president of Taiwan, to visit the United States and thus deviated from its one-China policy and accelerated the crisis over Taiwan Strait.

  “Shut up!” a spindly man yelled, and he stood up in the back. “You’re talking dog crap and trying to please the Nationalists from Taiwan who control this community. Why do you want to shoot down the authors of this book just because they’re young and emotional? We Chinese must have our pride and must stand up to Americans. I’ve been here for two years. How much bitterness have I swallowed? I was a doctor back in Tianjin City, but here I’m a custodian wiping windows and toilets. Who can relate to me? Who will speak for me? Who can know how a Chinese actually feels here? Why do you defend Americans instead of your own compatriots?” The man broke out sobbing and couldn’t speak anymore. He sat down and covered his face with both hands. Someone in the front howled with laughter.

  For a moment silence fell on the room. Then people began jabbering, either condemning the U.S. government or denouncing the authors of the book. Nan turned around to look at that vociferous man in the back, who was still weeping. The moon-faced moderator waved to quiet the audience down and then let the woman on the panel, a Taiwanese essayist, speak.

  The middle-aged writer moved the microphone closer and leaned forward a little. She said, “I want to cry. Such a vulgar, mindless book has become a best seller. This shows the deteriorating mental state the people on the mainland have sunk into. How could the authors use such obscene language to describe Taiwan? I didn’t understand the word ‘sichu,’ so I looked it up in a dictionary. How dare they say Taiwan is China’s ‘private parts’ that no foreign power can touch! The authors were crass and foolish if not demented. They don’t think of the Taiwanese as human beings. All they care about is the so-called Chinese nation, the great China. They made me want to puke! They went so far as to claim Taiwan was China’s testicles, grabbed by the United States now. How ignorant and shameless they are! In the postscript they even say New York’s highways are inferior to China’s highways, and that New York has no new architecture. You have all seen America and can form your own opinion. If you’re not blind, you can judge for yourselves.”

  She became too emotional to continue. Then a lynx-eyed man, perhaps a visiting scholar, seized the microphone in the audience and shouted: “Compatriots and friends, to the vacillation of the U.S. foreign policy toward Taiwan we must say no!”

  People applauded.

  He boomed again, “To the Japanese anti-China activities we must say no!”

  Again applause broke out.

  “To the U.S. Congress’s China-bashing we must say no!”

  More people clapped their hands.

  “To American imperialism and hegemony we must say no!”

  Applause thundered again.

  “To all those who are hostile to our Chinese nation we must say no!”

  Some of the audience stood up applauding. Then the man spoke calmly as if clarifying his points. He told the audience, “Even as we say no, we must be rational and base our ideas and judgments on accurate information and facts. Otherwise we might make disastrous mistakes. While we blame others for being prejudiced and for double-dealing, we ought to prevent ourselves from getting too hot-headed.” He was certain that the twenty-first century would belong to China, meaning that the country would grow into the number one world power, so the Chinese, he said, should be confident and mustn’t follow American ways.

  Nan was bewildered by this man’s performance, wondering which side he was actually on. The man spoke like a seasoned official, manipulating the emotions of the audience, some of whom kept nodding approval.

  Then a skinny woman in a coffee-colored woolen sweater took the microphone. She was wearing at her waist a small thermos made of stainless steel. Despite her new hairdo, Nan recognized her—Mei Hong. “I have to take issue with you notables on the panel,” she said emphatically. “You say the authors are young, emotional, and ignorant. Do you know that being young is not necessarily being wrong? Napoleon started conquering Europe when he was a young man. You say they’re too emotional. What can be accomplished without deep, sincere emotion? A few years ago I went to visit the Yuan Ming Park outside Beijing that was burned by the Eight-Power Allied Forces last century. Seeing those felled stone pillars and charred beams, I couldn’t hold back my tears. My heart was aching and bleeding. How could I not be emotional? You say the authors are ignorant, but they plucked up courage to confront the American imperialists. Even if you have a great deal of knowledge and professional training, why haven’t you done anything to expose the conspiracy against China? Why do you talk like running dogs employed by the U.S. government? Shame on you!”

  A smattering of applause rippled across the audience. The three panelists looked astonished. The woman writer sighed, now shaking her head, now pinching the bridge of her nose.

  Mei Hong continued, “The other day my daughter told me that a Korean boy in her class broke into tears because some students called him ‘Chinese.’ That made me remember that once a homeless bum had yelled ‘Chinese’ at me simply because I didn’t respond to his panhandling. He didn’t know my ethnicity for sure, but why did he call me that? And why did the Korean boy feel so humiliated by the word ‘Chinese’? I did some research on this, and here, let me share my discovery with you.” She pulled out a square of paper from her pants pocket, unfolded it, and went on to explain, “In English the suffix ‘-ese’ suggests ‘inferior, insignificant, weak, weird, and diminutive.’ You all know what ‘China’ means. It means ‘hardened clay or dirt.’ So combining the two parts together, ‘Chinese’ means ‘tiny, petty, and odd stuff made of dirt or clay.’ After looking up the verbal roots in The Oxford English Dictionary, I finally understood that ‘Chinese’ was a racial slur, originally used by the British imperialists to put down our people and break our spirit. Not only us, but also other races, such as Japanese and Vietnamese, as if we were all peewee peoples, lightweights. By comparison, the suffix ‘-an’ designates people of ‘superior’ races, for example, Roman, American, and German. This discrepancy in naming different peoples means that racial prejudice is already coded in the English language. Germany produces sausages—why not call its people Sausagese? Italy is known for pizzas—why not call Italians Pizzese? England used to export woolen textiles—why not call the British Woolese?
America yields a lot of corn—why not call the people here Cornese? Or the Swiss, Cheesese?” Many people hooted with laughter while Mei Hong looked around, her face taut and her chest heaving, as if she were a stern teacher in front of a noisy class.

  As the audience quieted down some, she went on, “Obviously the English language is meant to discriminate against us and other colored races. Now I can see why so many people from our homeland call themselves ‘Asians,’ because they’ve intuitively sensed that words like ‘Chinese,’ ‘Vietnamese,’ and ‘Japanese’ were coined to diminish them. Therefore we, people from the ‘Central Kingdom,’ must refuse to be called Chinese, just like the blacks refuse to be called ‘niggers.’”

  Her tirade made her short of breath. She sat down, her cheeks red and puffy. The audience was puzzled, so most of them remained silent. A few were snickering.

  Nan rose and took the microphone. He said, “I don’t want to dispute the accuracy of Mei Hong’s linguistic research, since I haven’t touched the OED for ages. Let me just appeal to your common sense. We’re all human beings and should be reasonable. The great poet Czeslaw Milosz said, ‘Human reason is beautiful and invincible,’ so let us rely on nothing but our own intelligence. America didn’t force us to come here, did it? China is our native land, while America is the land of our children—that’s to say, a place of our future. If a war breaks out between China and the United States, how can any one of us here benefit from it?”

  “What’s your point? Out with it!” a female voice burst out from the back.

  “My point is that we must stop stoking animosity and must remember that the authors of this mean book don’t speak on our behalf. They’re just hate-mongers. We have different interests from them because we don’t live in China anymore. We mustn’t follow them in railing against the United States blindly.”

  Mei Hong cried sharply, “That’s outside the parameters of my subject.”