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“What is the purpose of your return to the People’s Republic of China?”
“To help build the nation,” I answer dutifully.
“Are you a scientist, a doctor, or an engineer? Can you help us build an atomic bomb, cure a disease, or design a dam? Do you have airplanes, a factory, or property to donate to the government?” When I shake my head, he asks, “Well, then, what are we supposed to do with you? How do you think you will help us?”
I hold up my hands. “I will help with these.”
“Are you ready to give up the filthy, stinky American ideals you’ve cherished in your heart?”
“Yes, absolutely!” I answer.
“Are you a returning student? We have a special reception station in Canton for returning students, who are expected to make a clean breast of their reasons for coming back to China, their ideas about fame and profit, and any anti-Communist thoughts they might harbor.”
“Forgive me, but do I look like a student?”
“You look like someone who is hiding something. You don’t fool me by wearing the clothes of the people.” The scrape of his chair against the concrete floor as he stands feels ominous. “Stay here.” He leaves the room, once again locking the door.
I’m confused and scared. The man at the family association said this would be easy, but that’s not what I’m feeling. Could Joy have gone through this? Did she declare herself stateless and give up her passport? I hope not.
The
door opens, and a woman enters. “Remove your clothes.”
This really is too much like Angel Island. I didn’t like being examined then and I don’t want it to happen now. Ever since the rape, I’ve been afraid to be touched by anyone, not by those I love and who love me, not even by my own daughter.
“I have other people to search. Hurry up!” she orders.
I strip down to my underwear.
“A brassiere is a sign of Western decadence,” she says derisively. “Give it here.”
I do as I’m told and then cross my arms over my breasts.
“You may dress.”
The inspector returns, and I’m questioned for another hour. My bags are searched and some items, including my other bra, are confiscated. I reboard the train. And then, in moments, we cross the border into mainland China. I don’t have a chance to see it, however, because a guard enters the car and orders all shades closed.
“Any time we pass a bridge, an industrial site, or a military installation, you will lower your shades,” he announces. “You will not get off the train until you reach the destination on your ticket.”
Pearl
FOREVER BEAUTIFUL
I LEAVE THE Canton train station expecting to find the car to take me to Wah Hong Village, but it isn’t here. I find no private cars, let alone taxis, in the parking lot either. All I see are bicycles and pedestrians dressed in nearly identical clothes. Everyone looks poor. Canton used to be a thriving city, so the changes are a shock. When some of the other passengers—the returning Overseas Chinese students—are hustled past me on their way to their special reception center, I turn and walk quickly in the opposite direction. I’m not a student, but I don’t want to be caught up in anything official even by accident. I cross the parking lot to get to the sidewalk. The street is filled with bicycles, but again no taxis. I see very few cars or trucks. A couple of buses rumble past, but I don’t know where they go. I ask a passerby how to get to Wah Hong. He’s never heard of it. And neither have the next several people I ask. I stand there, gnawing on a cuticle, not knowing what to do. If the man at the family association messed this up, then how can I count on him to handle my mail?
I’m not off to a good start.
I go back to the train station’s entrance and sit on my suitcase. I try to remain calm, but I don’t feel that way at all. Panicked is more like it. I tell myself to wait a half hour, and if no one comes for me then I’ll try to find a hotel. Finally, a beat-up Ford—a remnant of better days—pulls to a stop in front of me. The driver—a kid, really—rolls down the window and asks, “Are you Pearl Louie?”
Soon enough, we’ve left Canton behind and we’re on a raised dirt road taking us through flooded rice fields for what I’m told will be about a forty-five-minute drive to Wah Hong. Canton seemed like it had stepped back in time under communism, but now I feel like I’m jumping back a century or more. We pass small villages made up of a few peasant shacks clustered together. I shiver. I was raped and my mother killed in a shack like these. All these years I’ve longed for the gay and colorful streets of Shanghai, but I never once missed the Chinese countryside, yet here I am. Bad memories make me put on mental blinders. I’m here, but I’ll do my best not to see it.
When we get to Wah Hong, I ask the first person I come across if he knows Louie Yun. This is another of those tiny villages with at most three hundred inhabitants, all of them with the clan name Louie and all of them related to my father-in-law. I’m taken to Louie Yun’s home. Are they surprised to see me! Tea is poured. Snacks are brought out. Other relatives crowd in to meet me. But as much as I try not to see or feel that I’m in a shack, I am, and all kinds of recollections come rushing back.
When I first arrived in Los Angeles at the end of the Depression, my in-laws and all the people I met were poorer than anyone I’d known in Shanghai. We may have been cramped together in Chinatown—the seven of us in a three-bedroom apartment—but that was positively spacious compared with this two-room shack with what seems like ten or more Louie relatives living here. I hear terrible tales of what happened during so-called Liberation to those in the Louie family who benefited from the money we sent. They were called running dogs of imperialism, beaten, or made to kneel in glass in the public square. Some suffered even worse fates. The stories are just what I imagined, and they fill me with dread. But others praise Chairman Mao, thanking him for the gift of food and land.
The accepted practice would be for me to host a banquet, but I don’t want to be here that long. I pull Louie Yun aside, give him some cash, and promise more if he’ll handle letters for me. I explain the process, ending with “I’m not going to lie. It could be dangerous for you and the rest of the family.”
I don’t know if it’s gratitude for Father Louie’s gifts over the years, desire to stave off poverty, or indifference to the political danger, but he asks, “How much will you pay for this service?”
