Read The Distant Land of My Father Online
Authors: Bo Caldwell
The Distant Land of My Father (53 page)
Heather is a different story. She is and always has been the adventurer and entrepreneur. As a child she was the lemonade-seller, the scrounger of quarters from underneath the cushions of the living-room sofa, the inventor and doer of endless household chores in the name of earning another dime, which she would spend as fast as she could, as though buying things was a competition. At twenty-four, she is just a year older than my father was when he returned to China in 1930. Sometimes the expression on her face has an intensity that is so like him that I am startled, and I have to stare for a moment to bring her back into focus.
The tickets were Heather’s idea. She was the one who did the research and planning, and it will be the two of us really going. The other two have assured us that they will be with us in spirit. We leave in the morning, and I have said my good-byes, which felt important, even though we will be gone for only two weeks. Last night I visited my grandmother. She will be ninety-six next month, and she is the most beautiful person I have ever known. Although her body is weak and she requires live-in care, her mind is sharp, and she, more than anyone, understands what it means for me to return to Shanghai. When I kissed her cheek, she held my face in her hands and looked me in the eye. “Look for the best part of them,” she whispered. “Don’t dwell on the rest of it. They loved you dearly.” I nodded. “I know,” I said. For a strange thing has happened as I’ve aged: I have felt my parents’ love more strongly every year, even with them gone.
So now it is Heather and me. She arranged for our visas, and page seven of my passport shows my tourist visa from the Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China. We will fly to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific Air. From there we will board the passenger ship
Jinjiang
to Shanghai, a journey that will take fifty-eight hours–three days and two nights. She wanted me to approach Shanghai in a familiar way, from the water, not the air. We will disembark at the International Passenger Terminal to the east of what is now the Shanghai Mansions, but what used to be the Broadway Mansions, where my father and I looked down on the city so many years ago. After two weeks, we will leave for Los Angeles from the Shanghai International Terminal, a good decision, I think. It would be difficult to leave by sea a third time, too slow and too painful.
I have read the guidebooks. I know the city will be much changed from the city of my childhood. The books say that the run-down buildings give the city a feeling of decay and neglect. The city is crowded, and its roads and houses and factories are decades old. I read that tipping is forbidden in China, and I smile as I remember my father’s painstaking efforts at cumshaw wherever he went. As a result of Pinyin, the system of romanization introduced by the People’s Republic in 1958, even the names are changed. The Whangpoo is the Huangpu, Nanking Road is Nanjing Lu, and Hungjao is Hongqiao, though its villas and estates are still the favored homes of foreigners and diplomats.
A few things are still there. The Old City remains, where Chu Shih bought the ingredients he used to heal us–ginseng, pilose antler, tiger bone wine. The Cathay, where my mother loved the tea dances, is still a hotel, though it is now called the Peace Hotel, and the Park Hotel remains also, on that corner across from the Race Course–the People’s Square now, and the seat of city government–where my father was kidnapped.
And there is the Bund. It is there, the books say, that you will find hints at Shanghai’s past. Though today it is called Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, and although the busier wharfs are no longer there, the buildings are much the same, and if you start at Waibaidu Bridge–the Garden Bridge–you can walk along the waterfront past European-style buildings and imagine what the city used to be like. A paragraph describes the former occupants of the Bund, and I can hear my father’s voice as I read the list:
the British Consulate, the Russian Consulate, the NYK Line, the Banque de l’Indochine, the Glenn Line, Jardine Matheson, the Cathay Hotel, the Palace Hotel, all the way down the Bund to the Shanghai Club
.
In the old guidebook that my father left me, I find listed the Chinese names that Chu Shih used for the seasons, and I see that early April, when we are traveling, would be called
ch’ingming
, pure brightness. I find the phrase fitting. To be able to return to one’s past, to visit a place where much was lost but also gained, is a gift, a gift of pure brightness. And I am ready.
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