Dim Sum for Mao

Part 1

The Great Wall

Chapter 1

Mao and Jade

Jade first sees a gauzy Mao in a smokey train coach on the long milk run from Canton to Beijing. The locomotive belches a thick plume of smoke. Most blows away, but some flies through the open windows and across the cabin. She has no idea who he is, not even much later when they take tea in Beijing and she’s learned his name.

Across the aisle, she’s drawn to the old man’s owl eyes framed by round tortoise shell glasses. And, there is something oddly wooden about him, as if his parts are an assemblage.

The locomotive brakes and steel grinds on steel, scattering sparks like a new year dragon. As it slowly plows through the curve, the engine pulls eight or ten cars back around through the acrid cloud and pulls into a crumbling depot amidst a conurbation of mud, boards, and disinterested animals. It’s 1935 and Sun Yat-sen has been dead for a decade, but his recipe for social democracy in China is beginning to simmer. Disciples Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong dance a tenuous pas de deux, or at least, tug rope between Chiang’s Kuomintang and Mao’s Red Army.

The train whistle and the engine scream discordantly. Steam rushes out around the iron hulk like a gossamer petticoat. Porters open doors and drop heavy wood and brass foot stools onto the dried mud platform, punctuating the train’s mechanical symphony with hollow percussion. But, there is no one to step off or fresh passenger to climb aboard. Passengers lean out windows, scouring the empty platform for vendors. The sparse hamlet looks as hungry and indolent as the flies.

Mao looks out the window up and down the sun baked platform caressing his mop of thick gray hair like a pet. Vain, Jade thinks, and more than a little odd.

The stationmaster raises a rheumy eye to the murky window, and looks out on the chaos of the iron intruder, more than a few hours behind schedule. He casts an unenthusiastic eye at the groaning engine and loudly blows his nose on a signal flag. Nearby, two men of indeterminate age, in that immortal Chinese way, recline against a hand car set incongruously on highly polished floorboards. Otherwise the place seems oblivious of the clamorous arrival. The porters study the platform up and down from the doors of the first and last cars. Finally, they cross the platform to the stationmaster.

The three bow stiffly. After ten or fifteen minutes of train talk, the station master retreats into the station house, davening as he backs up. Not a minute later, he reemerges with his hands up in the air. Half a dozen men in oily browns gripping sidearms fan out along the platform. Someone fires a single shot into the air and men on horseback materialize all around. They ring the train, horses snorting and frothing. The riders, rifles slung on their backs ready for something. A few dismount and board the train at either end. Others begin searching the spotlessly decrepit building. There is certainly an award for depot sweeping. Soldiers quiz the world-weary train spotters, but aren’t satisfied with what they hear. The station workers reluctantly come alive—shuffling papers and rubber stamping everything in sight. They make a show of checking their pocket watches against a smudgy black board, and wrinkle their brows officiously.

Boots drum heavily through train corridors. Mao glances at the car door. Jade too looks up expectantly. Mao reaches into his satchel and pulls out a paper sack from which he casually takes a rice ball. He sticks his head out the open window wondering about the delay. Mounted soldiers, Kuomintang, nationalists, now encircle the station house and entire depot.

Presently the car door opens. Two uniformed man boys set about checking papers and interrogating passengers. They circulate a picture of a young man, with thick hair and large sad eyes. No one offers more than a cursory glance at the likeness, shaking their heads and handling the picture like a hot potato.

The young troops work their way down the aisle. They stop in front of the old man with the thick silver hair. They wave the image under his nose and ask if he’s ever seen the man in the picture. Peering over his glasses, he takes the image and examines it closely. He holds it up to a better light and squints, studying it from all angles. The soldiers, inquisitive but antsy, look on. Mao makes a show of great scrutiny, frowning and screwing up his face. He holds the picture at arm’s length, and slowly draws it in toward his eyes. He repeats this a couple times, rubbing his chin pensively, alternately nodding and shaking his head. Jade watches the performance over a Mona Lisa smile. One of the men prods the old man impatiently. Grandfather, do yourself a favor; the man in this picture is a scoundrel and a cut-throat. It’s YOU we’re trying to PROTECT.

Well, I can tell you this… the old man croaks, with irritation of his own. …This man… he holds up the photograph …is very smart, of that you can be sure…look at his eyes. The eyes tell you everything. One of the soldiers snatches the picture back. Mao says nothing for a while, then finishes his thought, A poet… that’s it… this young fellow is a romantic…

Let’s get out of here. One of the man boys urges his companion.

just one more thing… Silver hair holds them up.

What is it?

Oh… it’s nothing really, nothing. Forget I said anything…just go about your business. Your desperado is getting away while we natter on mindlessly. So, best of luck to you… and, uh, care for a rice ball? He holds one up cocking his head expectantly.

Never mind that, you old fool. The soldier’s thin skin is breached.

The old man senses that there is nothing to be gained by continuing to toy with these boys, but can’t help himself, I would also observe that this fellow is undoubtedly a lady’s man. He hands the picture back to the officer. Yes indeed just look at the hair style.

The soldier shakes his head. That’s it? Why is he listening to this crazy old man? Well, where exactly have you seen him? Is he HERE on board the train? The other passengers want to dissolve into the benches. The soldiers stand over the hunched figure in his rumpled, crease-free clothes, hands trembling slightly, but staring steadfastly through rheumy eyeballs magnified in outsized lenses.

Jade thinks it’s time to intervene before the old man suffers who knows what. She crosses the car toward the men.

Uncle, I’m sorry I took so long. There are no vendors on the train… There will be plenty in Nanjing. We will have three hours there… we can enjoy a proper tea.

Mao can’t resist toying with the soldier boys, Actually, I’ve never seen this man in my life. I just thought you might benefit from the insight of an old man…character insight that is. But, if you are asking me to be specific, I have to honestly say that I don’t know the man from a snow ape.

In the aisle seat, next to Mao, is a nonplussed young man who barely gives the photograph a passing glance. One of the soldiers puts the muzzle of his pistol against the old man’s temple. Do I have to pull the trigger for passengers on this train to believe the Governor General means business. There is a ghastly moment. The boy soldier moves the pistol a few inches and squeezes the trigger. The round explodes with a roar in the confines of the heavily populated passenger car, but fires harmlessly out the open window. The old man flinches and there is a collective gasp from the passengers. An infant cries sharply somewhere. Mao sneezes. The two soldiers laugh and press down the crowded aisle, resuming the search for a cut throat fugitive. Horrified, Jade looks on wide eyed. The young man gets up and moves across the car. Jade takes his space next to Mao who nods and offers her a rice ball. She smiles and shakes her head.

The search moves on, lasting for what feels like hours, but is only minutes, until finally, the men step off the train leaving behind a wake of gruff admonitions.

As abruptly as they appeared, the man boys along with the mounted troops melt into the afternoon. Within minutes the vendors emerge like chipmunks and begin hawking bao, rice balls, chestnuts, and black tea, until eventually the locomotive cranks up, and the pistons start swaying to their own rhythmic cadence and exhausting steam. When the locomotive gets up to speed, it groans and gradually moves, now further behind schedule though it matters to no one.

Neither the Military Governor of Hunan, nor his sadistic soldier boys will ever know that a Kuomintang soldier fired a live round within an inch of the most dangerous brain, and future ruler of three billion Chinese.

The young man on the aisle, who has given up his seat for Jade, is Lao Kuan, who met Mao in the Summer of 1932 at the second Kuomintang Congress. The twenty-eight year old Mao is made acting head of the military section and Lao Kuan is appointed to the political wing. The Kuomintang sees big value in the UK educated Lao and the old money and family pedigree don’t hurt. Lao has worked to turn Marx’s model from industry to agriculture, from the city to the farm. The two men grow a friendship of convenience. And, now, mostly out of an urgency to lay low for a while, partly out of curiosity, and entirely out of character, Mao has agreed to spend some time anonymously in Beijing, in the shadows of the Forbidden City

Lao Kuan is perhaps five years Mao’s junior, commissioned as an army officer eight years earlier at Wampoa, the military academy. He’s an over-achiever, older than his years, smart, analytical, aloof, and in the trance of the burgeoning Marxist world view, though not yet fully at the expense of an enlightened upbringing. He slicks his lacquer black hair straight back. A tightly trimmed mustache complements sharp, angular features. But his eyes are another story, sad and covered with bushy chevron eyebrows. His mother always told him that his long fingers were those of an artist. Indeed, he dabbles at sumi-e and piano. He has traveled widely throughout Europe and America speaking fluent English and French. He considers himself somewhat of an internationalist, a modern man.

Under the makeup, Mao’s oval face is framed in waves of coal black hair. And, though he gives the impression of a stocky man, he is, in fact a hard body, sinewy and athletic. He is soft spoken but passionate about his beliefs, often stridently so. Those closest to him, know him to posses a disposition that can shift swiftly from warm to icy. Most significantly, the outwardly reserved young Marxist closets vast ambition.

The two are drawn, like so many, to the iridescent event horizon around Sun Yat-sen (the teacher of nationalist China), but they have little else in common. Mostly it is the powerful gravity around the second conference of the Kuomintang that captures and draws them. And, later, after the sessions, they lingered in Canton, got to know each other and to develop a bit of a friendship. If Lao Kuan is a star in the making, Mao is a supernova in twentieth century China, exploding with ambition, and purpose.

And their idealistic visions of a new China differ. Lao Kuan thinks change will come in the form of constitutional monarchy, and that there will be room in such a state for the likes of them both. More drastically, Mao sees the monarchy being replaced by a socialist experiment, an adaptation of the Bolshevik model, retrofitted for China’s agrarian society. However severely their outlooks differ, they find the dialogue worthwhile. And, Mao is certain that, in the end, Lao Kuan will come around to his way of thinking. Lao thinks not.

Mao views the world through crimson lenses. His heart and mind are with the blood of the proletarian. He is ready to cast aside millennia of Chinese civilization and to replace Confusion ideals with a barely tested Western model. With messianic zeal, he will spend a lifetime struggling to adapt the massive tectonic shift he will set in motion.

* * *

As a guest on the patrician Kuan estate, the brash Mao is out of his element. Between loath and awe, he pragmatically splits the difference. His behavior is personable but reserved. He neither preaches nor kow tows. And Lao Kuan makes every effort to put his guest at ease, trying to explain away the embarrassing opulence as fortuitous inheritance, and the remnants of a sated and fading society. But, it does little to alleviate the feelings of inadequacy that Mao endures to the point of physical symptoms. To help mitigate the distress, Lao Kuan assures his guest that he is merely suffering from a local seasonal malaise. They will bring in a doctor, a real healer.

But, Mao has an aversion to doctors. In his experience they cause more distress than they relieve. Lao Kuan repeats alternatives, but Mao keeps making excuse, insisting that his symptoms are ameliorating, until finally Lao Kuan is able to convince his guest at least to talk it over with a family friend, a woman he describes as a sort of healer. He describes an independent Chinese woman, perhaps the prototypical emancipated Chinese woman Mao envisions down on the people’s farm.

Mao finally gives in. He decides it’s easiest to placate Lao Kuan, after all, who knows? Lao Kuan has made no mention of his own betrothal to Lu Lan, sister of the healer.

Mao anticipates bespectacled school marmish mystical nonsense, but at least it will be better than enduring the unpleasant poking and prodding, or sinister acupuncture needles, of some quack. At least he might be able to finesse the old bird; after all he already knows what his problem is. Besides, what isn’t a ruse right now?

* * *

He has been reading in the garden, sedated by the afternoon sun, and a heavy bouquet of jasmine. He sets his book aside and turns his face toward the warm sun, closes his eyes, inhales deeply of the garden’s sweet perfume and sighs. He luxuriates in the moment until a shadow crosses like a passing cloud. He blinks, and slowly opens his eyes. An apparition in a black cheongsam takes focus. Jade is like a silk painting with huge almond eyes, skim milk skin, Betty Boop red mouth and features like Chinese calligraphy, crowned with a Gibson girl bun held in place with chopsticks Curly raven wisps hang against her cheeks. She arches a soft smile. Ah, you must have discovered the fountain of youth…and, oh my, it’s right here in Beijing. she laughs softly. And, your vision’s been miraculously restored.

Mao stands up, smoothing his black hair self consciously. He flicks an imaginary speck off his sleeve. YOU… this is an enormous surprise. I was expecting…

… someone else…with a stethoscope maybe?

I mean someone around tea time…and…well, honestly, not YOU.

On the other hand, I rather fancied it might be YOU because my sister rang me…to help a SPECIAL visitor from the south… special indeed. You know, I would have believed you as an old man were it not for the makeup on your collar…you know, on the train from Canton…a bad hairpiece, and…those huge spectacles. She laughs mischievously. I was sure the soldiers would notice, but they’re just boys after all. They had the picture and still make a connection; it helped that they were too full of themselves to look you in the eye.

Mao looks her over. I…I was expecting…well, someone… He hesitates.

Yes…someone what? You had a preconception?

A preconception… yes I suppose… an image of a type maybe.

Tell the truth now. You were expecting some old crone, some wizened old herbalist."

Mao is caught a bit off his guard. She lets him hang for a while then gradually eases him off the hook. Here, let’s sit down and chat a while. Mao realizes that he’s in a knot, so makes an effort to relax. Jade sits down at one end of the garden bench. Mao sits at the opposite end .

Jade chuckles, Here, here, what are you afraid of? Move a little closer and let me look at you. She pats the bench beside her. Mao inches a bit closer. Since when do physicians, or healers, for that matter, look like this? She speaks softly in a languorous, unhurried voice. They exchange small talk. Mao is vague about his background so, quickly abandoning uncomfortable chit chat, opts to dive right into the matter at hand—get it over with. Uh…I’m all right really, just a change in climate…and food. You know how it is. I’ll be fine.

She looks perplexed. Oh, is something the matter?

Well, I, just wasn’t… I mean I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor, really I don’t.

Well, I’m not a doctor, so you can relax. See no stethoscope. She shows off a quick glimpse of a necklace under her shawl. She is informal, almost forward, not Mao’s idea of a Beijing sophisticate. He tries to readjust. She is a smart woman, with surprising bonuses, personality and beauty. Maybe Lao Kuan was right…maybe Jade IS the new female prototype.

I have no bear paw powder or tiger testicles… no foul smelling potions…no amulets. Those things are wives’ and children’s tales anyway.

Well, of course they are. And, I’m not in the habit of visiting the doctor, but if I did, he might be English, or maybe even Japanese. Sun himself was disposed to choose American physicians.

Jade laughs, You would come running right back. An English doctor might cut the disease out…but a Japanese doctor might just cut your heart out. They’re still…well.…Japanese. She laughs sardonically.

Mao is at once embarrassed and charmed. He has never been around a woman at all like this one.

Let me see, Jade goes on, what are your symptoms?

Mao stammers,Symptoms…no symptoms really, I’m just sort of a fish out of water here.

Come now. I’m very good at keeping secrets. And, I just might be able to help.

No, I feel fine…honestly.

"He said you would be this way about it." She arches an eyebrow. Mao visualizes Lao Kuan for an instant.

For a while, neither speaks. They surrender to the warm fragrant garden, the serenity of their surroundings. And for Mao, Jade’s own seductive scent. They watch a pair of swans gliding across the glassy pond, barely stirring wakes. She lets the sun warm her, momentarily losing herself in the glow.

Mao studies her in profile. His eye is drawn to the dramatic jade and diamond necklace draped about the high collar of her cheongsam. Why didn’t I notice it sooner? He recognizes immediately that there is something special about it. He compliments her taste.

It’s an heirloom.

What can you tell me about it?

Let’s strike a bargain. I’ll tell you the story about the necklace, but first you tell me the story about YOU.

A kitchen maid comes out to the garden and waits deferentially by a stand of young dogwood. She waits to be recognized by the lady. Mao feels a twinge of empathy for the very young girl, but says nothing. The kitchen maid, on the other hand, rather enjoys the respite in the garden…better than rattling about the steaming kitchen where even the dogs are too wilted to beg scraps."

Tea is served Madame.

Jade thanks the young girl and gently dismisses her. And, as she slips away Jade gently offers Mao her hand. Tea would be nice.

Mao is out of his comfort zone and reminds her. He feels himself withdrawing like a tortoise into his shell."

We can talk over tea, Jade repeats."I really don’t observe tea time. I am a tea drinker, but I don’t