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“If you want to receive just mail, then it’s pretty easy, although it might be read, censored, and maybe even confiscated entirely. If you want to receive money—”
“I don’t want anyone in the village to get in trouble,” I interrupt. “A while ago, we received a letter from one of the cousins in Wah Hong, saying they didn’t need our money any longer. ‘There are no wants in the new China,’ he wrote. He was later killed trying to escape—”
The man behind the desk snorts. “China is unpredictable, and the situation t
here changes from week to week. Right now, the Communists want people to send money. They need the money. They want foreign investment. Believe me, they’ll happily take your money.”
“I don’t want them to take my money, and I don’t want to invest,” I say. “I just want to make sure the letters that are sent reach the intended parties—on both ends.”
He throws his hands in the air impatiently. “Think, Mrs. Louie! If you want them to take some or all of your money, then just have your sister send her envelope directly to you and see what arrives. Or you can have her hide money in a package and use us to get it to you. We—and other family and district associations—have been doing this a long time. We know what we’re doing.”
“You swear that my relatives will actually receive my sister’s letters and that they won’t get in trouble.”
“If they’re caught, yes, they’ll get in trouble!” Which is equally true for May sending mail directly to or receiving it from Red China. “So let’s make sure no one is caught.”
I don’t feel confident about any of this, but what can I do? It may not be perfect, but I now have a way to get mail into China: from May to the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association, and then to Father Louie’s family in Wah Hong and on to me in Shanghai. The same process will work in reverse for me to send mail to my sister. I wish May and I had a go-between who was blood close, but that’s not possible. May and I are related to everyone in our home village of Yin Bo, but I left there when I was three and May was only a baby. My mother is dead. We never learned what happened to my father. I’m sure he’s dead—murdered by the Green Gang, massacred in one of the Shanghai bombings, or killed by Japanese soldiers after he deserted us. The people of Yin Bo might not remember me, May, or our parents. And even if they did, could they be trusted?
“May I offer some advice?” the man from the family association asks. “I told you lots of people are returning to China, and it’s true. Getting in is easy, but getting out is hard. You shouldn’t go there unless you have an exit plan.”
“I’m willing to remain in China as long as I can find—”
He holds up a hand to keep me from continuing. “Your daughter, I know.” He scratches his neck and asks, “So do you have an exit plan?”
“I haven’t thought beyond finding my daughter,” I admit. “I can’t let her be there by herself.”
He shakes his head at my doggedness. “If there’s a way out of China, it’s through Canton. If you and your daughter can get to Canton, then you’ll be just two of hundreds who leave every day.”
“Hundreds? You said that tens of thousands of people are returning to China.”
“That’s my point. It’s not easy getting out, but people manage to do it. Some days it feels like half of what I do here is send money back to home villages to take care of houses for people who’ve left. There are whole villages—deserted—just over the border. We call them ghost villages. Some people leave their houses just as they were that morning—furniture, clothes, cupboards full of preserved food—so that everything will be exactly the same when they return—”
“When can I depart?” I ask, cutting him off.
“When will you be ready?”
After finalizing the arrangements—including making a plan for someone to pick me up at the Canton train station and take me to Wah Hong—he offers one last piece of advice. “The People’s Republic of China is almost eight years old. It’s changing all the time. It’s not going to be what you remember or what you think it should be, and it certainly isn’t going to be what you’ve heard in America.”
When I get back to my hotel, I ask the woman at the front desk for a form to write a telegram. Then I find a chair in the lobby and write to May: ARRIVED HONG KONG. TOMORROW I GO TO WAH HONG. WILL SEND MAIL DETAILS WHEN I GET TO SHANGHAI.
THE NEXT DAY, I put on the peasant clothes my sister bought for me twenty years ago to wear out of China. I go to the railway station, buy a one-way ticket on the Kowloon–Canton Railway, and board the train. It starts to move, and in minutes we’ve left the city and are crossing the New Territories, which are still part of the colony.
I wonder how Joy got across. What if she went to China and China didn’t want her? They would have known immediately she wasn’t from Shanghai. We always thought her Chinese was good compared with that of the other kids in Chinatown, but her accent … And I don’t know who or what to believe—the man at the family association or everything I’ve heard about Red China in Los Angeles. Is Joy dead already? What if people decided she was a spy? What if she was killed the moment she set foot in China? This is my greatest fear, the thing that turns my heart black with despair. What point will be served if I follow her? Just another death—my own. Other questions torture me too: If I find Joy, what physical and emotional shape will she be in? Will she even want to see me? Will we be able to repair our relationship, which, after all, was based on a lie? Will she come home with me, assuming we can find a way out of the country?
The twenty miles to the border—a bridge above the Sham Chun River—comes sooner than I expected. The flag of the People’s Republic of China flaps in the breeze. Guards come through the train. They check the identity cards of those who are returning home from doing business or visiting relatives in Hong Kong. It’s a large number, which confirms what the man at the family association told me. This is, it occurs to me, much like the border between California and Mexico, where many people cross back and forth each day to do business.
When I tell the guard I’m an Overseas Chinese who’s returning home, I’m taken off the train, along with a few others. Memories of entering America flood my mind: my sister and I being separated from the other passengers and being sent to the Angel Island Immigration Station, where we were interrogated for months. Is that what’s going to happen now?
I’m escorted into a room. The door is shut and locked behind me. I wait until an inspector enters. He’s a lot shorter than I am, but he’s wiry and tough.
“Are you stateless?” he asks.
Hmmm … Good question. I don’t have a passport. All I have is my Certificate of Identity issued by the United States. I show it to the inspector, who doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Are you an American citizen?” he asks.
If this really is like Angel Island, then I have to follow what May and I did back then—muddle the story to thwart the bureaucracy.
“They wouldn’t let me become a citizen,” I answer. “I wasn’t good enough for them. They treat the Chinese very badly.”
