“I’m not that hungry,” I said to her. “A couple of small dishes will do. And a cup of beer.”

  “Yes, it’s quite late. No point eating too much,” she said with an engaging smile. “To start with, I would like to recommend chicken soaked in Shaoxing rice wine, and cold tofu freshly mixed with green onion and sesame oil. And a bottle of Qingdao beer. You want it iced or not?”

  “Not iced, thank you.”

  What she recommended weren’t the more expensive items listed on the menu. The choices sounded like those made in a small family. I nodded my approval.

  “And how about the across-the-bridge noodles afterward?” she said, her cheeks dimpling as she continued to smile. “We will serve the chicken first to accompany your beer, and then use the remaining portion of the chicken dish as the topping for the noodles.”

  “That’s intriguing. Thank you, it’s very considerate of you,” I said.

  It reminded me of a folk story I had heard about the origin of “across-the-bridge noodles.” The tale was about a capable, virtuous wife who managed to serve the noodles hot, fresh across the bridge, to her hard-studying husband in the pavilion. Its success consisted in a secret method of serving the steaming soup with a layer of sizzling oil, and the boiled noodles in two separate bamboo containers, plus including a tiny dish containing a pinch of chopped green onion and white pepper. Upon reaching the pavilion, she would mix the soup with the noodles, scattering the green onions on top. That way, the noodles would not get soggy. It was said that her husband came out of the civil service examination with flying colors, attributing his success to her wonderful cooking.

  Whether it was a true story or not, it was the kind of service that showed consideration for the customer—the kind I had not enjoyed in any of the state-run restaurants. This hostess’s service would surely bring in “returning customers.” After all, Small Family was her own restaurant, her own property, where she worked for herself, rather than for somebody else.

  As she headed back to the kitchen to cook my order, I took out my notebook, going over the points I’d scribbled down earlier during the discussion at the Peace Hotel.

  It was not going to be an easy job for me to take over the series, I contemplated soberly in the quiet restaurant.

  Some of the topics for the series would be controversial, or politically sensitive. As its editor-in-chief, I could not but bear the brunt of that. So far, the authorities had been fairly tolerant, though not pleased with my speeches at times. The political weather in China could turn so dramatically overnight. I had to constantly walk a tightrope. But then I thought about the possible inclusion of a book about Bund Park in the series. It would be a truly meaningful one, including all the changes and reform that had happened in China in the last few years. I took out of my briefcase an English book on Shanghai’s history.

  The dishes appeared from a tray she was holding in her slender, sinewy fingers, transferring them onto the white-clothed table. She remained standing next to the table once she’d served them, as if waiting for my approval, her hands crossing each other in front of her dainty apron.

  I raised my chopsticks. The chicken was tender, with an unmistakable suggestion of the special rice wine fragrance. The cold tofu flavored with chopped green onion and sesame oil was delicious too. Both of them proved to meet the multiple requirements of color, smell, and taste for a self-proclaimed gourmet like me. And the beer, fresh and cold, soothed me, with bubbles on top. It was an almost perfect meal for an early spring evening.

  She then went back to her reading behind the counter.

  Sipping at the beer, I found my mind wandering away, unexpectedly, to a short story by Yu Dafu. It was titled “The Evening Intoxicated with the Spring Breeze.” Was it because of the attractive woman reading behind the white-painted counter? I tried hard to ridicule myself out of the sentimental mood.

  I then pulled my thoughts back to the decision I had to make between the two offers. Each of them appealed to me in its own way. But with the bubbling beer cup in my hand, another thought burst into my mind. After ten years mostly wasted because of the Cultural Revolution, I had not even received a comprehensive, proper education in high school—in fact, I hadn’t even attended middle school in the strict sense of the word—so my education was far from complete. Because of that, I would not be able to go far in my career—not as far as I would have liked to. And the prestigious scholarship would enable me to learn more in an American university. I took out a pamphlet with details about the fellowship introduction, as well as a small notebook.

  I took another sip of beer, and then I caught sight of the woman moving back to my table, holding a bowl of noodles in a wooden pallet tray. Then she tossed the remaining chicken on top of the noodles as in that ancient legend. And on the pallet tray, I also saw a small bowl of green grapes.

  “It’s on the house,” she said.

  “Such an excellent meal,” I responded sincerely. “Your business must be good during the day.”

  “Not bad, thank merciful Buddha. We have some house specials here. For instance, the spicy fish head pot. It is cooked with live fish shipped directly from the Thousand Island Lake. A number of customers come back just to eat this special pot. But it’s a large pot, it’s late, and you already have your noodles.”

  She cast a curious look at the English pamphlet on the table, hanging her head low, startled, like a shy water lily in a cool breeze—

  And something like recognition came to me—hesitant initially, like the dew drops in a morning haze. A memory of the way the girl on the green bench had reacted when she first became aware of my attention toward her in Bund Park …

  The gesture struck me as so familiar. It was her—the girl studying English at Bund Park in the morning, who had since turned into something like an inexhaustible source of inspiration. For me, the subsequent changes came—albeit indirectly—through that first link in the long, long chain of causality.

  The memory of those dew-decked mornings in the park had sustained me through the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution, and then led me to the highest score in English in the college entrance examination, which had been restored after the Cultural Revolution in 1977.

  After four years in college, it was also because of my extraordinary command of English that I was admitted as an MA student of contemporary Western philosophy, and finally offered a position as a professor.

  My glance fell in confusion, as if anxious to avoid her eyes, tumbling down to her bare feet in the slippers, her red-painted toenails flashing like fallen petals in a dream.

  No one is a tree,

  standing entire of itself.

  The wind that breaks the petals

  also breaks me.

  But after the lapse of more than a decade, I did not think I could be one hundred percent sure that it was her—not just because of one casual gesture.

  “Excuse me,” I said, finally pulling myself together. “If I am not wrong, I think I may have met you before—years ago.”

  “Really?”

  “Did you happen to study English in Bund Park in the early seventies?”

  “Yes, I did, but it wasn’t any serious study—it was just for a couple of months.”

  “Do you remember a young man who also studied there? He sat on a green bench close to yours.”

  “A young man who also studied there—” She sounded dubious, looking me up and down.

  It was understandable that she did not remember me the way I remembered her, I assured myself.

  “There … I think I do,” she said with a subtle change of expression on her blushing face. “So you were the one also learning English from Mr. Rong?”

  “Yes, that’s me. You were my role model. That’s how I came to study English in the park in the first place,” I said emotionally, rising to face her. “Thanks to those days in Bund Park, I passed the first college entrance examination that took place after the Cultural Revolution in 1977. Now I’m teaching at Shanghai University.”

  “Oh, congratulations!”

  “I was, and I still am, so grateful to you. All these years, I have looked for you in colleges,” I said. It was true that I had made several attempts to find her in a number of colleges, believing that she must have been studying like me, but without success. “Little did I think I would meet you this evening! Oh, how’s everything with you?”

  “Not too bad. We started our business earlier than others, so we have quite a number of regular customers. Hopefully, we’re going to expand soon.”

  She sounded vague, speaking exclusively of her restaurant business.

  I was at a momentary loss for what else to say. A short spell of silence engulfed the room. She remained standing there, her black hair held back with a dark blue cotton scarf, her face slightly pale in the lamplight.

  We had begun on the same starting line, so to speak, but what now? She was a getihu—an “individual business licensee.” Hardly a positive term—in fact, downright derogatory—in China’s socialist discourse.

  In mainstream newspapers, it was still debated whether individual business owners like her played a significant role in China’s economic reforms. Perhaps as a sort of barely legitimate supplement to the central-government-planned economy, helpful only to a small number of jobless people.

  Was she going to spend her life like this—cooking and serving in the eatery, day in and day out, wiping all her dreams and wishes away with her apron?

  At that moment, I failed to connect her with the girl studying English on the green bench in Bund Park.

  I recalled something said by Yingchang, my tai chi companion in the park those days: “She’s really one for you.”

  I had never admitted it to myself. At that moment, however, I was no longer too sure about it. Otherwise, I would not have been so shocked by the change in her.

  In existentialism, one may be said to be no more than the sum total of his or her choices, but one is not always able to choose freely—at least not in China. Would it be fair for me to hold her responsible for the choices, and, consequently, for the changes?

  I did not have an immediate answer to the question.

  There must be a story behind her long journey, however, from Bund Park to the Small Family restaurant. Was she going to tell me anything about that journey?

  A Wittgensteinian paradigm was flashing through my mind again: What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

  But there was another question which, if left unanswered, would most likely haunt me for years.

  Could my appearance in the park, no matter how inadvertently, have caused her disappearance? In the lambent light of the restaurant, the question seemed to be growing more urgent for me. For I had pondered over her abrupt disappearance in the park and conjured up a variety of interpretations for myself.

  For one, she could have been bothered by my presence—possibly taken as an unwelcome advance from an unknown young man, even though I had never made any steps to approach her.

  Or, in another scenario, could she have left because our shared teacher, Mr. Rong, chose to spend more time with me than with her because of my rapid progress in my English studies?

  I pulled out a chair for her, and she sat down facing me. We were sitting even closer than we had in the park, yet with the cups and dishes between us.

  Instead of asking any questions, I began to tell her how she had been my inspiration, and how she’d sustained me through all these difficult years.

  She listened to my narrative without interrupting, except to rise to add water to my cup. She leaned slightly forward on the table, her slender fingers touching the greenish grapes, breaking one off in spite of herself.

  My narrative could have sounded ironic to her. After all, what about the person who had initially inspired me to go to the park in the first place?

  In the silence that followed, I heard a faint sound coming from the back of the restaurant. It sounded like some crabs struggling around in straw, in the sesame-covered wooden bottom of a large pail.

  “My husband occasionally snores,” she said in an embarrassed voice. “He and our son Qiangqiang sleep in the back, in the retrofitted attic.”

  It was pretty much as I had suspected. A family restaurant—with the family living behind the partition wall that separated the business area. Needless to say, it was none of my business.

  Then she began to tell me about what had happened to her over these years.

  Like me, she was a “waiting-for-recovery educated youth” during the Cultural Revolution. It was simply out of boredom that she went to the park, where she happened to see an old man reading a copy of Quotations of Chairman Mao in English. Curious, she asked him a couple of questions about the English language, and he offered to help. So she started studying English in the park.

  It was not easy, however, for a young girl to study in a public place in those days. One of her neighbors must have seen her holding an English book in the park. Speculations began surfacing in her neighborhood. Her worried parents had a serious talk with her. She had imagined that English would be useful one day. Only, “one day” appeared to be too remote a possibility, and she did not want to fight with her parents. She tried to continue her studies at home, but it proved to be impossible, what with all the distractions imaginable in one single small room. As the only daughter in her family, she had to go to the farmer’s market daily in the morning, and then cook for the whole family, plus she had to take over all the housework when her mother suddenly fell sick.

  After the Cultural Revolution ended with a whimper in 1976, she did not try to take the college entrance examination like me. She considered herself unqualified, having wasted all those years. She got a job in a neighborhood workshop instead, and married a co-worker there. In the early eighties, her husband suffered a severe work injury and was unable to work like before. She, too, quit her job to help him run the Small Family restaurant.

  And that was what had happened to her—all the way to the present moment.

  She spoke in a subdued voice. It was not just because of her family sleeping behind the thin partition wall, I guessed.

  Hers was not much of a story. At least, not a story of success. Not a story she would boast and brag about in today’s China, which had started to incline toward a materialistic society.

  I was also disappointed because of my total absence from the story.

  It was true that those earlier “speculations” of her neighbors about what she’d been doing in the park at the time could have involved me—given the fact I’d been sitting nearby, and holding a book too, like a park-mate of hers.

  In retrospect, life seemed to be so full of ironic incidents caused by misplaced Yin and Yang—my misplaced interest in tai chi, the misplaced imagination on the green bench, the misplaced speculation … One thing led to another, to still another, and the result could hardly be recognized.

  Would it have been better had we not met this evening like this?

  “Oh, it’s late,” I said abruptly.

  “Don’t worry. We stay open till twelve—”

  But it was already past twelve. The tofu, no longer fresh-looking, appeared watery, pathetic in the dish. Half of the chicken remained untouched. I did not want to try the cross-bridge noodles.

  “I’m afraid I have to leave. But it’s so nice to meet you again this evening,” I said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”

  That sounded so empty even to myself. And condescending too. What could I possibly do for the small restaurant?

  She walked me to the door. It was dark outside, with only one street lamp gleaming on. A violin melody came rippling over, intermittently, from a window above the curve of the winding deserted street.

  I said goodbye to her, and then handed her my business card. “Keep in touch.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have a business card. My name is Mei.”

  I turned to walk away. Looking over my shoulder after a dozen steps, I failed to catch another glimpse of her retreating into the light of Small Family.

  I stood still for a short while.

  I was about to resume walking with a whistle, melancholy in the night, when I heard steps approaching me in a hurry from behind.

  It was Mei who’d come catching up with me, holding a small notebook in her hand—the one I had accidentally left behind on the table.

  “It’s yours, Xiaohui. You were writing something on it.”

  “Thanks. It’s about a project I may not—” I did not finish the sentence, aware of the light glistening in her clear eyes.

  “I looked at your card,” she said earnestly, still grasping the notebook. “I remembered once seeing you on TV. You’re doing something meaningful for our country. Please carry on—not just for yourself, but for others not as lucky as you.”

  I was surprised at her words, which somehow touched a chord deep in me—still reverberating now, after all these years.

  “But I think I have now made up my mind,” I said deliberately, “after tonight’s reunion.”

  Yes, I thought I would choose to stay in China and take on the project of Marching Toward the Twenty-First Century. I was lucky—because of her. So I owed it to her. I had to work hard for the passionate ideals we had once shared when studying together by the same river in Bund Park.

  I decided I would send her a set of the books upon completion of the series. She would understand. There would be a meaning, perhaps, in the loss of the meaning.

  It was then I heard another siren coming from the river, shrieking, and then fading in the surrounding darkness.

  Chen noticed that there was also a poem at the bottom of the memoir. Possibly a mixture of the personal with the impersonal, from a writer’s perspective. It could have been added later on.

  In a Small Family Restaurant

  Beside a wine barrel

  a poster of Chinese virtues:

  a smiling smudge on her cheek,