eileen chang

    ot off the plane in taipei on my  kong, i did not expect to see anyone i kne they et somebody else to come in their stead, so i  man in neat lish.

    i had seen many photographs of the blonde mrs. nixon and never imagined i resembled her. besides, he should be able to tell a fellolasses. but ether, no matter horantly untrue, i remembered that she lasses. "no, i am sorry," i said, and he  the other passengers.

    it struck me as a little odd that mrs. nixon should come to formosa, even if everybody is visiting the orient just noreet her.

    "did you kno today?" i asked my friends mr. and mrs. chu, . then he said someing around the airport to meet american dignitaries. he's not quite sane."

    i laughed, then e  for the outside h i had never been there before, they oing along e one i left ten years ago under the communists but the one i kneht had vanished forever. the buzz of mandarin voices also made it different from hong kong. a feeling of chronological confusion came over me.

    "it feels like dreaming." and taking in all the familiar faces speaking the tones of homeland, i exclaimed, "but it's not possible!" mr. chu smiled ruefully as if i had said, "but you are ghosts."

    mrs. chu told me as ly city, but the minute you get out of toed me in a mountain inn. i got the general's suite, enerals stay h a series of deserted little courtyards, arden and lotus pond. in the silence there  drizzle on the banana palm and in the bathroom a tap of sulphur  out of a stone lion mouth and splashing over the rim of the cement tank. there  and a s. finally i had to get up near dae of the honor recess,  rooms the best vase and picture scroll are displayed. the maid htened  and could not find me.

    it enerals had feminine companionship  the night a audience  girls almost next door to that christian and confucian founder of the ne road. sirls like clouds, offering the best services."

    in the countryside formosa peels back, sho older strata. there ees. the mixed emotions of my homecoming of sorts gave  next to me in the bus, ently, "shandi, shandi!" i just caught a glimpse of a shandi, or mountain dray little  a baby on her back and loitering outside a shop along the highain the breathless little cry and a nudge. i saypsylike children in ragged t-shirts and skirts, carrying

    smaller children."they all come to toers talked japanese. they  number of their young people still spoke japanese. the bus stopped at  man got off. the conductor folloht, the t over and over on the aru yo! chigaru yo!" i could make out the one japanese  man kept shouting: "mistake! mistake!" the driver got off to help beat him. the passenger learned that this man  rides. i thought ho kong i had seen a streetcar conductor follo a free rider to the street and grad hold of his necktie, in place of the pigtail  reached for in a brae of  to remind people to buy tickets. but there hts like this.

    finally the driver and conductor let the man go. he got on his feet panting and dusting himself. they drove off. he stood at attention in his torn khaki shirt and saluted the bus as it passed. he did not look old enough to have been in the army in japanese days, but that reverence h, it also reminded me of the communist chinese lining up all the porters, s his broom, pole, and basket like arms as the train pulled out. e.

    from formosa i  kong,  torn doh apartment buildings.  up, . the refugees  only to live out their lives in hong kong. the younger generation speak cantonese in school and refuse to speak anything else at home, a good excuse not to talk to their parents that other teenagers may envy.

    the more or less etting increasingly americanized,  too expensive and  machines taking their place alone erators and hi-fi phonographs bought on the installment plan. christmas had become a great occasion for gifts and parties for non-christians too. boys and girls handed each other christmas cards in school. one girl o, crossing the country reat difficulty. ot  kong, ot me a job paying about hk$100 a month [less than th to keep alive and rent a bunk. i am the only one  kong. please tell me if i should go back the mainland."

    side by side  escapes like this, there is a lot of ees going back for visits. "ro parcels," my landlady told me once h. she never could leave off explaining er. she and her husband set both sets of parents and other dependents noodles, pop rice, preserved meats and herbs, sugar, soy, peanut oil, and soap each month and clothing in season. of one brand of british-made chicken cubes, her mother-in-laar they dissolved in  a friend accused of being a nationalist spy, is still able to  for pills for his ailing kidney and ss. her brother, in a labor camp for harboring a friend accused of being a nationalist spy, is still able to  for pills for his ailing kidney and ss. her younger sister is doctor assigned to o out on sick calls at night, round is uneven and she's afraid of snakes. you kno girls are," she said, just as she apologized for her daughters monopolizing the bathroom: "you kno girls are."

    i reat packing. the landlady had a relative going back--a s in for them. the landlady's husband hai?"

    "it erator."

    she got up at dao alone to help carry the luggage past the inspections at the lohu border. the next day she cried out ! i almost didn't come back."

    "but in ether too many things. the old lady's fault, too---she had so many things of her o, pots and pans, enough to furnish a house. the customs man  his temper. then he came upon some change in her purse, t piao she had ot to get rid of. you're not supposed to take communist money in, so all hell broke loose. ' about this, i just came to see her off, but all the time i s seoive as presents; er ht.

    "not full-length ones." the landlady gestured to everybody something. very capable old lady. she imports movies made in hong kong.  out ten years ago,  the last stretch across the lohu bridge h uardhouses and fences. a group of us stood  after the hong kong police on the other side of the barbed  time over it. it  kong policeman, a lean tall cantonese lasses, looked cool and arrogant as he paced around in his uniform and shorts, smartly belted and creased. beside us stood the communist sentry, a round-cheeked north country boy in rumpled baggy uniform. after an hour in the hot sun the young soldier muttered angrily, speaking for the first time, "these people! keep you out here in this heat. go stand in the shade." he jerked his head at the patch of shade a little distance back. but none of us htly, pressing close to the e has often been compared to the naiho bridge bet and the dead. like most clich¦s, it is true  really free. too bad that many of us have to go back over the bridge  outside.

    i have an aunt hai because she could not leave her nee, joined his father in hong kong but did not like it there. he  and i . he ht be trouble. he might go to prison. the prediction sounded reasonable at the time, ainst businessmen and many suicides and arrests. the youngish fortuneteller looked like a shop assistant in his gabardine goh i needed badly to have my oot a small job in peking as predicted. life  kong this time, i heard the son had et out again. checking his application for permit to leave, the authorities seized on the fact that he had once joined a nationalist group in college. he  the sofas for american dollars. he has all comforts, even servants to stand in line for the daily rations. but three years h punishment.

    i heard about my mother's family from on of my uncle's married daughters, the only one out. the other th nationalist official, chose to stay. one of the sisters had died.

    "so did my brother's  kong. "and both men remarried before their  everything in the land reform. mother is  h and his nes are finished."

    looking back, i saht by our ancestors to hang onto land, the only clean and solid thing, by comparison to  as they did not slap land deeds on a gambling table they h and resigned themselves to the yearly income from the land?acut doreraves this spring. her family belongs to the village commune. it is still the farmers, aletting the  heard of the food shortage, the amah brought in a bit of cooking oil and salted fish of her oe quantity of rice and small quantities of cooking oil and pork as a special favor. the pork  her family and neighbors because they had not tasted meat all year. so irl gathered for her from a pond.

    there  hall. everybody queued up et the rice and h t in the kennel-sized temple of the earth god. ot home the food  a man beat a gong to summon everybody to the fields. breakfast at nine. ain at one. supper at six. ain at seven. but not in the fields this time?ausually it  coal or mud. quit at ten at night. sometimes "leap forht. no sundays or holidays, only a fean "let the farmers rest." es varied from a dollar something to fifty or sixty cents jen ming piao a month. medicines had been free but noid frame, even in poetry . it's  family, coming into every moment and aspect of life er can feel right?aup to a point.

    those  as a hundred, fighting the machine guns of pursuin motorboats ht. the trouble  kong last may. the border guards , the government having al revived in the area around canton.

    advance t has said this is his  progress.  on, hoping to outlive their tormentors.

    (1963)

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