“I hope no one will sit on it,” she said, giggling in a voice that somehow reminded An Chu of faraway, golden bells. “Then we have to sit here again.”

  I like this girl, An Chu thought.

  An Chu was restless for the entire week. When Sunday finally came, he rushed to her bench—two hours early—and he ended up worrying, inventing reasons she wouldn’t show up. When she finally arrived—on time—she found him looking both pleased and worried, bright and bleary-eyed, as if he doubted she was real. For several weeks, An Chu repeated this sweetly anxious routine.

  An Chu was in love.

  Soon, crazy ideas got into his head. Their meetings in the park were not enough for him anymore. He wanted to see her in her home. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to marry her!

  One Sunday afternoon, he sat on her bench and waited for her, as usual. He waited and waited, but she didn’t show up. When the sun started to redden, he got worried. Is she sick? She had never, ever, been late before. He kept rolling and unrolling the new textbook she had given him, and his mind raced with explanations. Still, she did not come. After a long while, he reluctantly got up and was about to walk away when a boy on a bike appeared.

  “Are you Comrade An Chu Sun?” he asked.

  An Chu grew alarmed. “How do you know my name?”

  “Here is a letter for you.” The boy handed him an envelope and rode off.

  He tore open the letter. It read:

  Dear Comrade An Chu Sun,

  I can’t see you anymore. I told my parents that we were in love. My father flew into a rage. He said he didn’t want his daughter to marry a day laborer and live in a shantytown for the rest of her life.

  My mother cried and begged me to obey my father and threatened to kill herself. I am the only daughter they have. I can’t disobey them and ruin their lives. I am so very, very sorry. Please forgive me and forget me.

  Yue Hua

  An Chu held the letter, read it again and again, and then stared at it in disbelief. What was wrong in being with a day laborer? After all, this was now Communist China where everyone was equal and workers were respected. What was wrong with living in a shantytown? Lots of families lived there. He never thought being in love would cause any trouble.

  “There must be some kind of misunderstanding,” he said aloud, sounding braver than he felt. “I will talk to her parents and clear it up.” His hopes of marrying Yue Hua came flooding back to him. He rushed to her apartment building and shouted her name under her window again and again. Suddenly, he was hit by something and was cold and soaking wet. He looked up. A gray-haired head poked out next to a wooden bucket. “Beggar! Bad luck!” the head shouted and spat on him. “Go back to the slum where you belong.” The only warmth he got from her family was the old man’s saliva on his face.

  An Chu couldn’t remember how he got home that night. He only knew it was very late. He spent hours sitting on his bench—the bench where they began their friendship and his first love. Now, his love was as dead and cold as the fallen petals under her beloved tree.

  An Chu never told his family about his first love and how he lost her. He only hoped that his sisters would save enough for their dowries so someday they wouldn’t face the same situation he was in now. They could leave this shantytown when they got married and move to their husbands’ houses. He had always thought they were selfish not to hand over their paychecks to Mother, but he was not sure about that anymore. Actually, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  An Chu didn’t go to work the next day, or the day after. He told Pei to take over and spent his whole precious Sunday sleeping. Soon after, he left the city, vowing to get as far away as he could.

  Before he left, he circled the block where Yue Hua lived ten times. He hoped that he would catch one last glimpse of her, but he never did. When he dragged his tired feet back home, Ya Zhen was at the kitchen table waiting for him. She wanted to say goodbye to her boy and have one last good look at him. She would leave for work very early the next morning and when she came back, her son would already be gone for who knew how long. He might never come back. She felt his pain as she looked at his pink, moist eyes, which kept avoiding hers. She didn’t have the heart to ask him why he was so unhappy or why he had to leave his family so suddenly, right away, and why he wanted to go to such a faraway place. Whatever it was, it hit her son hard, real hard. She had never seen him so disheartened. He was always a cheerful boy, whether dressed in silk or clad in rags. The shantytown was a hundred times better than the charcoal store they had escaped from, even though she knew it was never enough for her boy, born with all the fortune teller’s promises of good luck.

  Let him go, a voice within her said. He will be better off in a new place where his luck may soar. This slum is too poor and hopeless. An Chu deserves better. Maybe he will find a good woman to take care of him. He doesn’t need to stay with his mother anymore.

  They spent a long time together in silence.

  “Your mind is made up?” Ya Zhen finally asked.

  He nodded stiffly, staring at the dirt floor.

  Ya Zhen held on to her hope for one more precious moment and then surrendered it, letting it go—the last of her many lost possessions to slip away, one at a time, forever.

  “Don’t forget to write to me,” she said. “You know I can’t read … just a blind woman in front of words, but I can ask your sisters to read me your letters. I want to know everything. Promise that you’ll visit when you make enough money.”

  He shifted his eyes slowly upward to look at his mother. All the wrinkles on her face stared back at him as she smiled. He always knew she loved him the most out of all her children. He was her oldest and her biggest helper. A hard life offered them few opportunities to sit down like this and talk things out, but they always understood and supported each other, especially at difficult times.

  “I promise,” he said quickly as he picked up her right hand and held it tight in his. “I promise I’ll write to you and visit you.”

  Early the next morning, An Chu heard his parents get up and leave for work. He stayed in the dark and listened, trying to store every footstep and sound in his head. But he didn’t get up. His train didn’t leave until the afternoon. Today, he had the luxury of lying quietly in bed and staying there until everyone left. No goodbyes, tears, or hugs from anyone. He wanted to leave by himself, like a man.

  When he finally got out of bed it was already noon. He easily gathered the few possessions he had and packed them up. As he searched for his missing sock, he spotted his wrinkled, ill-fated schoolbook lying face down underneath his bed. He scooped it up protectively and smoothed it with his hands. A mix of sweet and bitter feelings came back to him. Should I take it with me? An Chu shook his head and put it down on the bed. It was time to go. At the threshold, he turned around, took a deep breath, surveyed the dark room filled with beds and the traces of his life for the past fourteen years and closed the door.

  An Chu walked fast and soon left the shantytown behind him. Striding down the street, he heard footsteps running after him. “Older brother! Older brother!”

  An Chu stopped to let Pei catch up.

  “I almost missed you!” Pei said, panting. “I want to see you off to the station. After all, you are my older brother.”

  An Chu knew it was not possible to send him back home so the two of them walked toward the station side by side in silence. It was a very long and painful trip for Pei. He wished that he could stop An Chu and this crazy nonsense. Everyone in China called Shanghai “Heaven,” with more food and jobs than anywhere else on earth. Where could An Chu find a better place? Of course, Pei could make more money now that he ran An Chu’s business. He always dreamed that one day he would work the way his “older brother” did. Now, he would get his wish, but he wasn’t happy. He was worried about An Chu. He could not understand him. There were tons of girls in the shantytown. Couldn’t he marry one of his own kind? Why did he have to have a schoolteacher as a girlfriend? Was it worth abandoning his life and friends for some strange place where he knew no one and no one knew him?

  The station was crowded with dusty, tired-looking trains, equally weary passengers, and hundreds of red flags fluttering in the breeze. Distracted by the crowd, the flapping, and his own thoughts, Pei went wherever people pushed him, and the two of them got separated. When he finally realized that An Chu was gone, he knew he would never find him again, not in that sea of people and flags.

  “Older Brother, I wish you good luck,” Pei whispered into the crowd. He peeled a red banner off his face, left the station, and headed for home.

  An Chu stepped onto a train bound for the remote city of Zhang Ye with a thin, rolled-up cotton quilt. Inside the quilt were his only spare shirt, some socks, pants, underwear made from homespun cloth, and a hand towel. The parcel was small enough to fit under his arm. Inside the right pocket of his patched cotton coat, he had a couple of yuan, just enough to buy himself a few bowls of noodles and cigarettes from the noisy vendors plying their business at train stops.

  Until a couple of days earlier, An Chu had never heard of Zhang Ye, a western frontier city thousands of miles away. But someone told him the government was urging ambitious young people to go there and that was good enough for An Chu. It gave him a perfect escape route, and all he wanted was to get as far away as possible.

  An Chu watched his familiar city gradually slip away and turn into farm fields, gentle hills, tall mountains, forests, dry grassland, and, finally, desert. At one point, he saw a tiger resting on a rock formation, looking as comfortable and satisfied as the Heavenly Emperor on his throne. An Chu admired and envied the tiger. He was running away from his own domain to an unknown place, but he felt a sense of relief.

  An Chu didn’t care why the other passengers were on that train, or that he had joined thousands of enthusiastic young people recruited from the big coastal cities to help carry out the Communist Party’s newest grand plan—to build a prosperous new Chinese western frontier along the ancient Silk Road.

  It was 1957 and China and Russia were working hard to create a brotherly relationship. Opening businesses in towns along the border was intended to promote trade between the two countries. The Chinese government also wanted to move some of its young population from the overcrowded east coast and resettle them as pioneers in an ambitious plan to create vital new industrial and commercial centers.

  Numbed by the loss of his first love, An Chu was the least enthusiastic person on the train. He didn’t join any card games or talk with anyone. He just sat on his seat and chain-smoked for the entire trip. He was running away, and smoking kept him calm. No one knows what else he did during the five days and five nights it took the ancient steam locomotive to reach the middle of nowhere. He kept everything to himself. But my mother remembered him standing on the train platform, helping sleep-deprived, disoriented young women get off the train at their destination, along with the bulky, twine-wrapped remains of their city lives.

  “This way, please. I’ll help you down,” he said as he hopped back on again and again, lent a hand to a weary someone, grabbed a bunch of bags, and then climbed down. The women generally gave him no more than a slight nod or a mumbled word of thanks before going off with their belongings. One, however—a rather small and delicate girl with a serious expression more suited to a spinster than a young woman—thanked him warmly, not only for herself but for the others whom she observed him helping. This serious little girl-woman, who looked less like an adventurous pioneer than a Communist Party secretary, then surprised him by extending her hand and bowing formally in the old Imperial manner, which amused and charmed An Chu.

  “Such a well-brought-up young lady with such fine manners,” he said, suppressing a smile. “You must have gotten on the train in Shanghai?”

  “Yes, Brother, you are right” (it was the custom of the time for men and women to address each other as “brother” and “sister”). “I come from the Gu family on South Star Street in the Zhabei District of Shanghai.”

  “I am pleased to have met you, little sister. My name is An Chu, if you should ever need help again. I am also from Shanghai, but from a family and district where everyone’s fortunes are self-made,” An Chu replied with dancing eyes.

  Yan felt An Chu was playing with her somehow, but she didn’t know exactly why or how. Instead of turning shy, she did something unexpected.

  “My given name is Yan,” she said, not knowing why she offered it to him so easily.

  “Yan? Hmm. So, you are a ‘Swallow,’ eh?” An Chu said thoughtfully. “And why have you flown so far away, little bird? Well, whatever your reason, just remember, if you ever need help, or a place to rest, ‘An Chu’ means Peaceful Shelter. If the little sister bird ever needs a nest in stormy times, I will do my best to help. But enough joking now. Perhaps we will meet again. Goodbye, Miss Gu … and good luck.”

  They parted, each slightly red-faced and feeling unexpectedly happy. That five-day train ride may have taken them to the very middle of nowhere, but it also brought their lives together.

  Yan had gotten on that train for a very different reason than An Chu. She hadn’t taken lavish amounts of supplies with her like some of the spoiled city kids had. She had only two pieces of modest but presentable luggage and dressed very much like a “schoolteacher” (a nickname that would stick with her for life). A pair of spectacles on the bridge of her nose and a plain but neat Western-style coat over a gray jacket and black pants showed both her middle-class openness to Western ideas, and her basic conservativeness when it came to colors. She took an instant liking to An Chu for his leadership and impressive physical strength. People’s eyes opened wide as they watched him balancing five pieces of luggage at a time on his broad back. His generosity in helping strangers made a remarkable impression on Yan.

  As she left her new friend and the train station, Yan looked around at the bleak, alien surroundings: the partially frozen dirt road, the gray sky, the clusters of mud huts with straw roofs, and barren fields. Donkeys slowly dragged carts filled with luggage and the stiff bodies of exhausted young ladies, while the rest of the crowd marched forward to meet their future.

  Yan walked with the hardier bunch, looking around for some hint of what had brought her here. Local children giggled and skipped along with them, not for the benefit of the new arrivals, as they soon discovered, but for the donkey droppings. As soon as the animals relieved themselves, the children rushed forward with lightning speed, scooped up the steaming dung with their hands, and put it in their baskets. When they finished, they grabbed each other’s baskets and looked inside eagerly to find out who got the most. They laughed crazily when they saw the newcomers turn their faces away in surprise and disgust, some holding their noses.

  Yan could only imagine what her father would say if he saw this place. For anyone coming from the big city, such filth and behavior were shocking, but for a worldly, cosmopolitan gentleman like her father, who had worked so hard to protect her and bring her up like a young lady, her decision to give up her safe, comfortable life for this would be incomprehensible … no, terrifying. The very thought of her father made her face flush and her heart beat heavy with guilt. He loved her so much, and she loved him more. Yet she abandoned him and her little brother for a dirt pile, donkey droppings, maybe even danger. Yan looked around, searching wildly for some reason she should be here. She began to regret her hasty actions but knew it was too late.

  Is this my punishment for getting my freedom? Yan asked herself.

  Yan trudged forward, pushed this way and that by the crowd. Not far away, An Chu, who had spotted her again on the road, noticed her blank stare and called her name several times, But Yan was in her own world and didn’t hear him. With the memories of her now-past life still five days fresh, all she could think of was her embroidered silk quilt, feathery pillow, and especially, her soft bed. How she wished that she could rest her tired body on it right now and drift away.

  “Yan! Yan!” For a moment, she thought her father was calling her. But when she looked at the dirt road ahead of her, she knew it was not possible.

  Chapter IV

  Yan’s Real Family

  My mother’s name was not always Yan. She wasn’t born a free-flying “swallow” among all the big-city, street-smart sparrows of Shanghai. As a little girl, she lived an innocent, happy life, listening to the songs of gulls as they soared over the ocean waves.

  Her village was a picturesque pile of sea shanties and large, elaborate homes with round Moon Gates, fronted by crooked docks, hand-painted fishing boats, and prosperous markets selling jellyfish, oysters, crabs, and fresh and smoked fish. Da Chi Tou did well by supplying fresh seafood to the hungry millions in the major nearby port city of Ningbo, and as a result of their good fortune, the people were able to keep up their local tradition of having large, sometimes extra-large families. In Da Chi Tou, even daughters had worth. Most women named their girls after exotic flowers or treasures from the sea. But for Yan’s mother, her oyster contained one “pearl” too many. And that pearl was Yan.

  Her father, Arh Chin, had a prestigious, well-paying job, working as a first mate on ocean-going freighters. He had seven children of whom Yan was the third. Her parents named her “Ai Zhu,” meaning “Loving Pearl,” a perfect name for a girl living by the sea (and the first of three names she would bear during her life). Yan had two brothers and four sisters. All her sisters’ names contained the word “pearl.”

  Arh Chin loved his family and friends, although because of the nature of his job, he, like many of the men in his village, was always away at sea. To make up for his absences, he would return home with all sorts of treats and surprises and spend as much time with his children as he could.