Enigma of China(79)

“It fucking tastes like Chairman Mao.”

“What?”

“Isn’t he still preserved in formalin in that crystal coffin?” The man stood up, raging in high dudgeon, dumping the remaining portion forcefully into the lidless garbage can. “What retribution!”

“Come on. Under Chairman Mao, you wouldn’t have had shrimp like this.”

“That’s true. Then there was no shrimp at all at the market.”

Lately, there had been a fashionable “rediscovery” of shikumen houses and longtang alleyways, which was probably nothing but a nostalgic myth conjured by some of the “already rich,” wistfully thinking that the traditional way of living was still viable.

With an increasing income and lifestyle gap between the rich and the poor, with blatant corruption and injustice everywhere, with hazardous chemicals in the everyday food, how could ordinary people sit outside contentedly in a scruffy, shabby lane, as if in some old photograph?

The people who lived here were anxious to move out of one of the city’s forgotten corners into new apartment buildings, but they remained helplessly stranded.

Near his mother’s residence, Chen saw a fruit stall. Next to it, a gray-haired man was sprawled out in a ramshackle chair, its original rattan replaced by plastic straw rope or whatever stray material was capable of keeping it in a recognizable shape. Spread out over his face was a newspaper with a partially legible headline: “Reading… Paradise of Intelligence,” and his stockinged feet dangled just above the cigarette-butt-strewn sidewalk. He seemed totally oblivious of everything going on around him, but he nodded at Chen mechanically, like a windup toy soldier.

Chen recognized him as a middle school classmate. He’d been laid off from his factory job years earlier, now managing to eke out a meager living with this fruit stall at the corner. He sat out here every day, barely moving, as if slowly turning into an unmistakable street marker. Chen stopped at his stall and bought two small bamboo baskets, one of apples and one of oranges, then went on to his mother’s.

With the baskets in his hand, he knocked on her door.

Thanks to the help of the neighborhood committee, she’d moved down from the attic room to a corner room on the first floor, which was about the same size. The neighborhood committee went out of their way to look out for her, not because she was a good, old resident of many years but because her son was now a “big shot” in the Party system. Since she was still unwilling to move in with him or to leave the old neighborhood, the influence his position carried was about all he could do for her.

After knocking on the door a couple of times, Chen pushed it open and stepped inside. He saw her dozing on a bamboo deck chair, a cup of green tea sitting on a tiny table beside her. She looked fairly relaxed but lonely in the sudden shaft of light streaming in through the door. She was hard of hearing and hadn’t heard his knock. Awakened by the sun in her eyes, she looked up, surprised at the sight of him in the room.

“Oh, I’m so glad you could come over today, son. But you didn’t have to buy me anything. I’m really doing fine,” she said, trying to get up, leaning heavily on a dragon-head-carved bamboo cane. “You didn’t call.”

“I had something to do at the City Government Building, so I decided to drop in on my way back.”

“What’s up?”

“Nothing particular, but your birthday is coming up next month. We must do something to celebrate, Mother. So I wanted to discuss it with you.”

“For an old woman like me, a birthday doesn’t call for celebration. But times have really changed. Several of your friends have called to talk to me about their plans to throw a birthday party.”

“You see, people all want to do something.”

“Peiqin came over yesterday and cooked several special dishes for me. It’s so nice of her; she doesn’t have to come, since I have the hourly maid coming in to help. Peiqin insisted, however, that I should have a special diet. She suggested that she cook for the occasion. White Cloud dropped in the other day, too, and declared that she would buy a large cake for the birthday party.”

“That was so kind of them,” he said, feeling even guiltier at her mention of both Peiqin and White Cloud. The old woman’s one regret in this world of red dust was that her son remained single. In her eyes, Peiqin had always been a model wife, and White Cloud had, at one time, been a possible candidate. He hadn’t seen White Cloud for quite a while, though he still thought of her occasionally. He was the one to blame for their estrangement, recalling a song she’d once sung for him in a dimly lit karaoke room.