Chapter Text
1987
This is how they meet:
In September, somewhere in the nebulous urban sprawl between San Francisco and Berkeley (he’s not sure where one ended and the other began), on a bus that reeked of gasoline and sun-hot leather and sweating bodies -- Piandao is standing in the crammed aisle, his head tucked down and his bag between his feet. He’s hoping he’s on the right bus. He thinks it is. Though the springs of its suspension rattle ominously at every turn, the bus is at least moving in the right direction: westwards, vaguely. Above people’s heads he catches glimpses of the scenery outside: drooping trees, enormous American roads, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and -- though half-obscured by the illegible hieroglyphics of scratches and graffiti on the bus window -- he sees the glittering bay, and gets excited despite himself. In September of 1987 he’s still caught in that first flush of love. Not with a person, but with a place. California! He’s really here!
More people get on; the crowd grows denser. Jostled by the shuffle of people, he’s trying to extricate his face from another passenger’s armpit when behind him, he hears a commotion starting. He looks over his shoulder, mildly interested. A tall, white man with a moustache is arguing with another man: much younger, Asian, wearing a rumpled track jacket, a pair of headphones looped around his neck.
The moustached man is aggrieved. “Fuck off.”
“You fuck off,” says the headphones-wearer.
“You were leaning on me, you fucking Jap!”
“Uh, I’m not leaning on anyone, asshole.”
The moustached man’s face turns crimson. “Put your hands away.”
“They’re right here! What should I do? Put them on a shelf?”
“Don’t touch me!”
“Who the fuck wants to touch you?”
-- and so forth and so forth. The bus starts and stops. People get off and new people get on. The flow of passengers brings Piandao closer to the arguing pair. He averts his eyes and focuses instead on the windows, the water outside.
The argument seems over; the two men settle into a simmering detente, but then -- the bus driver slams on the brakes. The bus lurches. Piandao, trying to shrug off his own jacket in the stifling heat, is caught off guard. He loses his balance and falls against the mustached man, who pushes him away before Piandao has the chance to right himself. The man’s nostrils flare. “Hey, watch it.”
Piandao is baffled by the amount of aggression. He opens his mouth to apologize but the headphones-wearer cuts in first:
“You see what I mean? The bus is full of people, alright? Accidents happen -- you chill out and mind your own fucking business.”
“You and your boyfriend mind your own business.”
The headphones-wearer splutters. “Excuse me?”
“Fag.” The moustached man turns to Piandao. “Hey, what’s wrong with you? You even speak English?”
Yes , he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He’s frozen.
“Get this,” the man says. His fists clench. “Your friend over there tried to grope me. I don’t like that, understand? Don’t fucking touch me.”
He becomes aware of a tense silence spreading through their section of the bus. The closest passengers to them shuffle back as if to avoid, for hygienic reasons, the site of growing contamination. People are averting their eyes, putting their newspaper back up, turning away to look out the scratched windows. A few don’t take any notice. One dark-skinned woman sitting closeby, her head swaddled with an enormous pink scarf with flowers, tuts quietly and turns around again. She leans back in her seat and begins to re-wrap her scarf. The rattling hum of the bus engine fills the empty space. Piandao is still frozen.
The headphones-wearer laughs mockingly. “Okay, seriously -- the fuck’s your problem?”
In his frozen state, a lot of little details jump out all at once at Piandao: the stench of the moustached man’s aftershave; the black woman’s hair, which has the texture of braided fishing nets, so strange; and the headphone-wearer’s expression. His mouth is still curled upwards in mocking laughter, but there’s something else, a hardness in his eyes that alarms Piandao more than anything else on the bus. He doesn’t need to be fluent in English or any other language to read the silent language of aggression between two men with something to prove. Violence prickles the nape of his neck. He’s always had a good instinct for it.
He picks up his bag. He pushes his way to the front. He’s not sure what’s happening, only that a hot nervousness is seeping through his chest like grease. Light-headed, he asks the bus driver to stop. The doors bolt open and he is out. The bus lets out a puff of air -- an exhale -- then drives away.
“What the fuck was that?” says a voice behind him.
Piandao turns around. It’s the young man with the headphones. He followed Piandao off the bus.
“Can you believe it?” he says to Piandao, and scrubs his hands through his wild thatch of dark hair.
Piandao ignores him and starts down the street. Undeterred, the headphones-wearer jogs to catch up. They pass restaurants, convenience stores, storefronts plastered over with peeling paper flyers behind rusting iron bars, squat buildings made of dark red and orange brick. Cars are parked everywhere. When Piandao first arrived he’d half-expected everyone in California to be driving a convertible, like they did in movies, but he sees more Mitsubishis and cheap Japanese models here than he expected. Odd how the only thing more startling than the exotic was the familiar.
Two blocks later, his bizarre new companion is still following him. “Hey,” he says. “Do you actually not speak English?”
“I speak English,” Piandao says without looking back.
“What’s your name?”
Piandao keeps walking.
“Alright, fine, don’t tell me. You know where you’re going?”
Piandao stops. He doesn’t. He has no idea where he is. Somewhere over the bridge, that’s all.
“Let me guess: international student? trying to get back to Cal?”
Piandao says nothing, but something must give him away, because the other young man snorts. Away from the tension of the crowded bus, his eyes were less frightening. “You’re heading in the wrong direction,” he says.
“Where are we?” Piandao asks softly.
Headphones Guy fishes out a pack of cigarettes. His lighter flares; he blows out a puff of smoke. “Emeryville,” he says. And then in a funny voice, like he’s mimicking something: “ Come with me if you want to live .”
“Will there be another bus?”
“Philosophically speaking, there’s always another bus coming. It’s just a matter of, like, is it the right bus for you? Is it the bus you want to get on?” Headphones Guy takes another drag of his cigarette. He scuffs his foot on the ground -- he’s wearing a pair of oversized sneakers so worn out the soles are coming loose -- then looks up again. “But yeah, there’s another AC Transit stop two blocks over. It won’t count as a transfer though, so it’ll take another ticket. That okay with you? We can always try to sneak on. We’ve already paid our way, morally speaking.”
Piandao doesn’t like the “we” in that sentence. “I can buy another ticket.”
“Suits you. By the way, you want a smoke?”
“No.”
“Go on, I don’t mind.” This is followed by an earnest look. The alarming hardness about the eyes has vanished. He looks like a normal young man. And he is young, a bit younger than Piandao first thought. When he smiles, his mouth opens to show a flash of pink tongue; his eyes curve like half-moons. It’s a smile that’s hard to say no to. Piandao takes the cigarette, then accepts the offered light.
“I’m JJ,” says the young man. “I mean, my actual name’s Jeong-Hyun, but most people call me Jeong Jeong. It’s JJ for short.”
“Jeong-Hyun,” Piandao repeats slowly. “You’re--” he struggles to remember how to say it in English. “ Chao xian ?”
Jeong Jeong blinks a few times, and then his face clears. “Oh! Choson . Yeah. I guess that’s right. Korea.”
“Korea,” Piandao repeats, then: “My name is Peter.”
“Cool.”
“Thank you,” Piandao says, “for the--” He gestures with his lit cigarette.
Another beaming smile, only somewhat at odds with the dishevelled hair, the old sneakers, the sour smell of old alcohol and sweat that rose out of Jeong Jeong’s clothes when he moved.
At the bus stop they stand around and smoke until the bus comes. They get on and pay for new tickets -- Jeong Jeong does it grudgingly, with an air of disgust— and sit down, side-by-side. The seats on this bus are dirtier, but it’s mercifully emptier than the first one. An empty soda can rattles up and down along the aisles and gives a staccato backing track to their conversation. When a pothole sends it rolling over Jeong Jeong’s foot, he stomps it dead-on without looking down and kicks the flattened can away -- the whole time talking without missing a beat.
Jeong Jeong loves to talk. Over the course of a short bus ride, Piandao learns the following things:
- He’s studying at Berkeley too, an undergraduate degree in political science (“Pretty fucking incredible I got in though, you know, especially after they canned automatic admission.”)
- He’s smoking his last pack of Luck Strikes (“I’m planning on quitting soon -- any day now.”)
- He’s convinced that he remembers the moment he was born (“Like, I have this clear memory of being in a hut with no doors and then a curved laser beam comes from down below, almost like a white line of light -- that’s what happens when the doctor cuts your mother’s stomach open, right?”)
- Maybe he should switch majors...Asian-American studies, maybe? Or a minor?
- He’s the youngest of three children
- He’s from Los Angeles
- He’s allergic to seafood
“Anyways--” Jeong Jeong says, interrupting himself to take his first breath in ten minutes, “--what were you doing in San Francisco?”
Piandao starts; he had been held spellbound by the high velocity torrent of information. “Bookstore,” he says to Jeong Jeong.
“Oh yeah? Anything interesting?”
Piandao opens his bag and pulls out his purchase, a cheaply bound paperback. He went to three separate bookstores in Chinatown to find it. Jeong Jeong touches the characters on the orange and black cover: 中国围棋年鉴 (1986) .
“What’s it say?”
“It’s a sort of record. The annual review of Go tournaments. It’s the record of all the domestic and the international championships. And the players’ rankings. And the game records.” Piandao stops, unsure how much he should explain, but Jeong Jeong is already thumbing through the pages.
“Oh! Baduk ! I know it.”
“Do you play?”
“Yeah, I used to play all the time with my uncle. Do you? You any good?”
“No,” Piandao says. “I don’t play serious enough. I’m just an amateur. Fifth rank.”
Jeong Jeong wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know what that means. What’s the highest you can get?”
“In Taiwan it’s seven for amateurs.”
“So I’m probably better than you.”
The matter-of-fact way Jeong Jeong said this, without any boasting or joking, takes Piandao aback. “Are you ranked?” he asks.
“No.”
Piandao flips to the back of the book, to the game records of overseas matches played in Japan and South Korea. “Do you follow the professional games at all? Have you heard of Cho Hun-hyun? He’s considered the best player in Korea. I like to study his games when I find them. ”
“I don’t follow tournaments. I just like to play.”
“You should,” Piandao says. Eagerness overtakes his reserve. “Korea players are the most aggressive players in the game. I’ve always admired players like Cho Hun-hyun and Seo Bong-soo; they have amazing style. No one can develop corners like they do. Korea is the best. They don’t care about strategy, not like in Japan. They’re flexible. They’re not rich. The players have to play to earn money, so they play to win.”
Jeong Jeong laughs, not the mocking laugh from earlier, but a genuine one. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”
“It’s a good game. It shows you how magnificent the human mind is. It’s very deep. Like the universe.”
“Like the universe.”
“Yes.”
“The fucking universe?”
“Yes,” Piandao says. “The fucking universe.”
Jeong Jeong laughs again. It’s infectious; Piandao smiles as well.
The bus from Emeryville into Berkeley only takes half an hour, but a lot of things can change in half an hour. For instance: people. Friendship. Or, take another example: cities. Getting off the bus, Piandao marvels at how different the streets look. The buildings are cleaner; the crowd moves at different rhythms. San Francisco was full of people loitering in strange places wearing strange clothes; people of indecipherable genders and ethnicities mingled together like fistfuls of jumbled candy. In Berkeley, the people look more cohesive. The girls all have clean blouses and ponytails, or else t-shirts and big, feathered hair. The boys all wear t-shirts, blocky sunglasses, sandals or leather loafers. Everyone walks around very fast as if they’re in a great hurry.
Jeong Jeong bumps his shoulder. He pulls out a pen from the depths of his jacket and takes the Go book from Piandao. He scribbles something on the flyleaf and hands the book back.
“This is my number and my dorm address. Call me if you want a game someday. You’ll learn something.”
“Okay,” Piandao says, startled.
“Okay,” Jeong Jeong echoes. He chews his lips. “Hey -- I wasn’t...I didn’t touch that guy. On the bus. And I’ve seen him around before, actually, around Upper Market. Classic self-hating queer projecting his own insecurity onto others shit. Fuck ‘em. Fuck that guy and that Castro-clone moustache. Don’t take that shit seriously.”
Piandao nods. He understands most of the words on an individual level, but strung into a sentence like this he can’t even begin to fathom what it all means together. Jeong Jeong misinterprets his confusion.
“Honest! I’m telling the truth!”
“Okay.”
“Good.” Jeong Jeong says. He taps Piandao’s shoulder with his fist, some sort of parting gesture, then turns to go.
Piandao opens the book: beside his name and address, Jeong Jeong wrote -- his pen pressing so hard the ink bled through the cheap paper to the page underneath -- I’M SERIOUS ASSHOLE LETS PLAY!. His letters are large and scrawling: it looks like the invitation of a child to another child. But Piandao, in his fresh beginning, feels like a child. Isn’t he? He’s learning new words, learning how to speak again. How to walk. How to adjust his body to the world. Already he’s changing: his accent in English improving, his tastes adjusting to new foods. In his mouth he can still taste the cigarette that Jeong Jeong offered -- sweet and fantastic. He lifts his head up.
Jeong Jeong is still walking away down the street. In a minute the flow of sunlit people swallows up his stocky shadow, and just like that, he’s gone. Except --
I’M SERIOUS ASSHOLE LETS PLAY!
**
In 1987, Piandao was twenty-five. Looking back later in life, twenty-five will seem impossibly young to him. So young -- he was barely more than a child. Without photographic evidence he will find it hard to believe there ever was a time when he was so gangly, so fresh. He had a perpetual look of wide-eyed astonishment that almost passed for handsomeness. But he was like that. He spent the beginning of his twenties feeling ill at ease with everything around him. And why wouldn’t he? He was practically an orphan (father: disappearance ; grandmother: hip infection ; mother: depression, high building -- the less said about that the better. No one wants to talk about it. He doesn’t like to even think about it).
So. By the time he arrived at Berkeley, he was convinced he was very old. Certainly he felt like he’d already wasted the better part of his youth: four years in his first undergraduate degree -- hydraulic engineering, such a complete waste of his time. He was advised to pick it so he could work on the future Three Gorges project that was sure to materialize any day now; by end of his first month he discovered he hated dams and he hated hydraulics. But his application to change faculties was rejected, so that was that. He toughed it out, the same way that, after graduation, he toughed out his two years of compulsory military service -- an even bigger waste of his time. Bootcamp, training, assignment: two years of coastal patrol, scrubbing decks and arguing with fishermen, sleeping in a crowded dormitory with twenty other men. Hours of standing under the sun. The training base had no real toilets for the trainees, just a ditch with a low wall. No doors. They took turns flushing the ditch with buckets of water they carried in from the pump.
In some ways, Piandao’s childhood was very hard (see: father; grandmother, mother ). But as a child he’s always had his own room. His father had lost all the family’s money in the sixties, but still. They once had money. And even through university, he’d never thought of himself as particularly spoiled or even that rich. But -- well. Perhaps he was. After the first few months he was promoted to an administrative position doing paperwork; his sergeant was impressed with the fact Piandao had gone to Taipei Tech, and that he could speak with a pretty Beijing Mandarin accent. After that, the other men gave him a mocking nickname: the Master. Whenever something went wrong, someone was guaranteed to jeer, Why don’t we ask the Master? He knows everything! Everyone agreed he was a stuck-up asshole, which, to be fair -- he was.
The teasing wasn’t too bad. And the only time he ever reacted was when someone made some comment about his parents. Another young man learned, somehow, that his mother was dead and made some comment about it; Piandao couldn’t remember exactly what. He only remembered the other boy’s face one early morning, when Piandao shoved him into the toilet ditch while his pants were still around his ankles: surprise and shock, mixed with a bit of fear.
That was military service. The only respite he had came in the evenings, after he was assigned when the fishing boats came in and the seabirds circled low over the day’s catches. The sea became a soft wash of ink, the birds looked like sleek black shapes tessellated against the sky. He liked to watch them until the stars came out. Around that time he gained a new appreciation for natural things in great quantities: waves, birds, stars. Around then, he began to believe there was a secret order to the world.
He began to wonder: how do the planets move? how things come to exist as they exist?
He came back from service sun-browned and ten pounds lighter (military food was inedible). Aunts sighed and tutted. So dark! Like a charcoal-skinned person! Back home everything felt like it was the wrong size, in the wrong place. His old clothes were too big. His hair was too short. Taiwan was too small compared to the rest of the world. Everything was claustrophobic, unstable. He was sick, sick, sick of his aunts. He was sick of people altogether. He was sick of Taiwan’s storms and earthquakes. He couldn’t stand all the memories of the dead circling around the old house. He wanted out.
He decided he was going to study astrophysics in America.
While his classmates got busy making money and chasing girlfriends, he applied to university again. To switch to astrophysics he accepted that he would have to do another undergraduate degree, and he took the American exams and the TOEFL. His old professors were surprised when he explained his plan. They said to him: “But what for? It’s very unusual for a student to start over like this. Don’t set your hopes too high. There are good schools closer to home where you’ll have a better chance; their physics departments would accept you directly as a graduate student. Stay here. Or try Japan, maybe. Or Hong Kong.” What they meant was, You are an idiot for even trying.
Piandao thanked them for their advice and shook their hands. But deep down he thought, very simply, fuck you . Deep down, he had a determination that sharpened towards a steel edge.
So. So, of course he liked Jeong Jeong. Why wouldn’t he? There was no reason why he spent so much of his time at Cal with a crazy Korean, except that he did. They were similar that way -- both weird. Both a bit of an asshole.
If Jeong Jeong ever thought the same thing, he’s never said. But Piandao believes this. The two of them, at their core, are built out of the same stuff. They have the same flame burning inside them: a fierce yearning for escape. The world can be cruel and small-minded. It traps those who are not careful. There’s always a ditch. So some people go through life like fish flopping in a net, caught without even realising they’re caught. But others, luckier, can take flight in the loose evening air. Like birds they instinctively want to be free. They want to wheel, scream, and fly out again and again towards the open sea.
**
In the fall, the two of them settle into a peculiar rhythm.
Every now and then – maybe once a week, sometimes more, often less – Jeong Jeong shows up at Piandao’s door with any announcement. If Piandao’s coursework isn’t too heavy and his schedule is free, they play one or two games before he kicks Jeong Jeong out so he can go back to studying.
According to Jeong Jeong, he skips most of his classes except for one or two that he actually finds interesting. He’s thinking of declaring a major in ethnic studies. One of his professors, a Japanese-American, is writing a book about and he’s looking for junior research assistants: Jeong Jeong’s hoping to make the cut, so Takaki’s is the only lecture he consistently attends, or so he claims. Piandao can almost believe it. His life progresses by the drumbeat of lectures, problem sets, lab hours, and meanwhile he has never seen Jeong Jeong so much as crack open a textbook. The only books Jeong Jeong ever carries around are random political pamphlets and old paperbacks held together by duct tape, though once he shows Piandao his dog-eared copy of Capital .
“Are you a Communist?” Piandao asks, fascinated and a little alarmed.
“I don’t know, I’m still making up my mind.”
“My mother’s family left China because of the Communists.”
Jeong Jeong perks with interest. “Oh. What was it like for them?”
Piandao shrugs instead of answering. It’s a habit he’s picked up from Jeong Jeong himself. Jeong Jeong probes him for a while, then gives up and starts talking about something else instead. The Asian American Political Alliance, which some of his classmates are thinking of reviving from the sixties, and then something called the Third World Liberation Front. For the longest time Piandao assumed from the name it was one of the musical groups that Jeong Jeong listened to -- like New Order, or The Human League -- until Jeong Jeong corrected him.
They have a lot of conversations like this. From Jeong Jeong, a steady streaming monologue. From Piandao’s side, half-stilted silences, full of dead ends that go nowhere. It’s not a language thing; he just doesn’t see the point of talking while he plays Go.
Their games of Go are not very serious, but they are competitive. Jeong Jeong was half-right the day they met: Piandao is learning something, though he doubts Jeong Jeong would be ranked higher. Piandao has more formal training, but Jeong Jeong is more intuitive than he is, with better natural talent. This style confounds Piandao, who’s used to calculations. He likes patterns. Cause and effect. Maps that show you where you’re going. Meanwhile, Jeong Jeong...
“Have you ever heard of this aphorism?” he asks Jeong Jeong one day. “ Play inside first before any other move .”
Jeong Jeong pauses, his finger still stuck inside the bowl of Go stones. He likes to fiddle by stirring the bowl with his hand, a habit he maintains either because or despite of the fact it annoys Piandao.
“Uh,” he says. “Sort of. It’s the thing my dad and uncle always say. Why?”
“Do you play inside?”
Jeong Jeong thinks it over. “Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t believe in planning for the future.”
That sounds about right for him. Piandao likes to see the shape of things in his mind, but Jeong Jeong doesn’t think like that. His gameplay is as brilliant as it is erratic. He squanders as much talent as Piandao fights to earn, and in the long run the two of them are evenly matched. So they always play without giving handicaps, switching between the white and the black stones each game.
He writes a letter to one of his aunts back in Taipei: a fairly standard one just to let her know he’s alive and well in California. At the end -- after he remembers to ask after her lumbago and wish his cousin good luck on her university exams -- something seizes him, a sudden strike of passion, and he writes, I’m very glad I made it here. America is a wonderful place, the universities here aren’t as rigid as it is back home, things aren’t so ossified. I’m studying very hard, I don’t want to go back. After I graduate I plan on staying. I want to stay forever.
He belongs here, he thinks as he seals up the envelope. He just does. That evening Jeong Jeong stops by, and when Piandao tries to communicate this sense of clarity to him he looks impressed.
“I should write you up as a case study,” he says. “You know that something like 90% of international students who come to the U.S. stay here after graduation?”
“No.”
“What would you do? Get a job?”
“I want to get a doctorate,” Piandao says. “Do research and teach students.”
“Nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Very ambitious.” Jeong Jeong doesn’t sound like he’s giving a compliment.
“It’s what I think I’m good at,” Piandao says. “I think -- I think everyone should do the job that they’re good at. That’s the point of life. Doing something you’re not suited to is a waste of time. You have to be...natural. Do what’s natural to you.”
Jeong Jeong sighs. The desk in Piandao’s room isn’t big enough for a Go board, so they play sitting on the floor, the board balanced across Piandao’s tiny bedside table. He tosses the stone in the air again and almost knocks the board over trying to catch it. After a while he says, as if proclaiming something profound, “I’m unnatural.”
“What?”
“I mean, I don’t want to do anything. Fuck that striving shit; what’s the point? You live, you die, whatever comes in between isn’t up to you to decide. Who wants to get a job?”
Piandao frowns. “You have to want to do something.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Piandao has learned by now that, in English, those two descending sounds are used to signify a negative. It confused him for ages until he figured it out; some things textbooks don’t teach you.
“You just said something about writing a case study. And I think you liked writing. You’re intelligent. You’re good at it.”
He gets up and steals one of Jeong Jeong’s cigarettes from his jacket, hanging over Piandao’s chair. Jeong Jeong is always on the verge of quitting without ever doing it. He beckons. “Lighter?”
Jeong Jeong throws it at his head. “On the condition you cut that earnest bullshit out.”
“Asshole.” Piandao says, and blows the smoke at Jeong Jeong’s face. Before Jeong Jeong can protest he passes over the lit cigarette as a peace offering. They finish the cigarette like that, passing it back and forth.
“Man, stay in academia,” Jeong Jeong says suddenly. “If you can make it. It’s better for you. If you leave school and get a real job, you’ll never make what your white coworkers make. You don’t know how to play the game--”
“The game?”
Jeong Jeong flaps his hand. “The fucking game! Not... this . The real game, out there. Universities are fucking....bourgeois constructions, but at least they have, like, rules. But out there -- the rules are invisible. See? That’s why I’m never getting a real job; I’m not gonna make my white boss make money off me. Either I win the game or I’m not playing. You see what I mean? That’s life. That’s America.”
Piandao doesn’t, but he nods anyway. He makes his next move on the board. Jeong Jeong lights another cigarette. The subject drops between them, though he thinks about it for a long time afterwards: invisible games and his own future plans. The way that Jeong Jeong looked, sitting crossed-legged on Piandao’s dorm room rug, saying proudly, I’m unnatural.
**
Before winter break he loans Jeong Jeong two books on Go: the games record of the new Fujitsu Cup from the year before, and the first volume of The Games of Takagawa, one of the greatest players of the century. He figured it would be a shame for Jeong Jeong to waste his potential.
Jeong Jeong, in response, gives him a cassette album and a paperback, the spine of which is held together by green tape. They make vague arrangements to catch up in January.
Piandao’s first few Christmases in America are all very much alike. Maybe that’s why, looking back, only the memory of his first stands out. He listens to the album Jeong Jeong gave him while taking long walks around town. Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration he doesn’t like, but the Christmas decorations in North Berkeley he does. He likes the houses there in their pretty shades of brown, the colour of honey or bread crusts or dogs’ eyes. With their twinkling lights and red-bowed wreaths on they look like fairy-tale castles. When he’s tired of walking and tired of studying, he flipped through the book Jeong Jeong gave him. It keeps him company over solitary dinners and long evenings at Leuschner observatory, at least until the technicians kick him out so they can shut for Christmas Eve.
He hasn’t read an English book in a long time. Not properly, anyways, without thinking about vocabulary words or filling in a multiple choice question after every passage. In the story, a poor family from the Philippines comes to California to work on its farms. Bad things happen to them, sad things.
His mother, he thinks, would have liked it. Her favourite author had been Steinbeck.
He doesn’t like dwelling on the past, but the past is unavoidable: it’s written into him, so he can no more tear out memories than he could remove a kidney or lung. It’s been ten years, but when he sees an English word he doesn’t understand, instinct still tugs him to look up and ask her for help. In Chinese, he still speaks with her Beijing inflection; in English, when he reads, the voice inside his head is feminine -- it’s still her voice. I was the first to see him coming slowly through the tall grass in the dry bottom of the river .
On New Year’s Eve he finishes the last page sitting alone on his bed. From outside his window he can hear the noise of drunken party-goers revelling on the streets. At midnight, he hears shouts, kisses, people wishing each other Happy New Years, all of them breathless with joy and merriment. A glass bottle shatters on cement; someone starts singing; boom-boom-boom goes the fireworks exploding over the bay.
Piandao isn’t the sentimental type, but new years make him sad and happy for a reason he can’t understand. To him, they are celebratory and mournful all at once: to say hello to a new year, you have to wave goodbye to the last. The thought makes his chest go tight. Time! It always slips by so fast; it can’t be stopped! The past leaves and never returns.
By the early hours the noise dies down but he’s still awake. He’s not used to staying up this late. With interest he watches the first dawn of 1988 creep in; in the fuzzy gloom the faint, colourless light pulls the shadows long, and everything looks unfamiliar. I am in a foreign country , he thinks, which is something he obviously knows but doesn’t always feel, but he feels it now, deep in his chest -- how very far away he is from home. At 4am the exoticism of mundane things in his room disturbs him, makes him restless: in the corner his dresser is a hulking mass; his geriatric desk lamp, hunched over, its head downcast, could be a weeping woman or a feeding crane. At 4am the night birds are silent; the morning ones are still asleep. He is the only living thing left in the world. He switches on the light. It doesn’t make anything better. He drinks a glass of water and paces. His chest still hurts. His room is still full of ghosts.
For the lack of anything else to do, he opens Jeong Jeong’s book. He flips to the first page and starts reading, again, from the beginning. I was the first to see him coming slowly through the tall grass in the dry bottom of the river .