The Lost Garden Read online

  The professional voice-over now turned affectionate, with a hint of a smile: “Zhu Yinghong was able to renovate Lotus Garden with the help of her husband, Lin Xigeng, a real estate tycoon. It is rumored that he promised the renovation as a wedding gift to his beloved wife.”

  The camera moved from a sweep of the government officials and local gentry to a close-up of a man in his forties. The face, which must have been very handsome in the man’s younger days, had filled out, but that added a measure of self-assurance and confidence that bordered on haughtiness. His tightly pressed lips were thin but nicely outlined; the glasses resting on his high nose lessened the severe look and added a genteel air. With sunlight reflecting off the lenses, it was hard to see the expression in his eyes, only that they seemed dark and harsh. A unique sense of confidence betrayed an untamed expansiveness, particularly when he turned his head to look around, chin held high.

  The voice-over resumed its flat narration:

  Lotus Garden, built prior to 1850, is more than ten acres in size, and, owing to the hills around it, has the feel of a mountain forest. Some of the terraces, pavilions, and vegetation are arranged in clusters, others set off by themselves. Undulating structures of varying heights are a sheer delight. Lotus Garden is centered on a large pond filled with lotus flowers and flanked by rocky heights from which a waterfall cascades. Surrounded by a number of paths, winding verandas, high towers, and terraces, the garden is a perfect place for a visitor to lose himself as he becomes one with nature, his mind soaring freely.

  The camera paused on an octagonal doorway, where an unusual rock formation and a stand of short bamboo were framed by a red-brick door through which the camera entered, taking the viewer to a long meandering loggia that seemed to twist and turn without end. Before long the camera panned over the lotus flowers and tilted upward to display a tower. A quick turn around the tower led the viewer to a terrace, a pavilion, and the waterfall.

  As the camera moved faster and faster, it traveled through dense trees and flowers, past swallow eaves and green-glazed tiles, over red bricks and white walls, all repeated on each of the thirty-six screens. The group had been focusing on one screen, but it was hard not to look at the entire wall of screens for fear of missing something. As the viewers’ gazes shifted, the thirty-six screens seemed to move, creating a surreal tapestry, so they all quickly looked back to the first screen, but by then everything had changed; it was hard to shake a feeling that they had missed something when their eyes moved from screen to screen. The endlessly shifting gazes increased the illusion that everything was undergoing continuous change.

  “Wow! It’s like a labyrinth,” Shen said as he rubbed his eyes.

  “Hurry. We have more bars to visit.”

  At that urging, the short young man with the cardboard sign turned around; framed by garden scenery on thirty-six TV screens, the blood-red writing on the sign looked shockingly gaudy. The red paint looked like intertitles on the TV screens:

  Help Charlie

  And the Chinese text beneath it:

  Cha-li bing le.

  It was nearly midnight, but the summer night was still plagued by the high temperature and humid air that wrapped itself around the thoroughfare, with its endless flow of traffic, car horns, and engine noise. Neon lights along the street turned into a river of colored light shining down on sidewalk stalls suffused with the din of clamoring people. On this bustling, noisy, chaotic, and yet colorful street in the city of Taipei, the large wall of TV screens continued to display a breeze blowing over flowing water and swaying willows. Terraces, towers, and pavilions, with their soaring eaves and green tiles, seemed to replicate themselves as they turned into a fantastic illusion of an endless sequence of images.

  ONE

  “I WAS BORN IN THE LAST YEAR OF THE FIRST SINO-JAPANESE WAR …”

  Zhu Yinghong’s teacher had chosen the word “I” as the theme for the first assignment in her third-grade writing class. Nine-year-old Yinghong picked up her pencil, sharpened to a fine point, and wrote the opening sentence in her notebook without hesitation: I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War.

  What next? She wrote something on her cheap notebook, erased it, wrote something else, and erased that, until the thin paper was creased and torn by her pencil point and eraser, and the board she was writing on had slipped off her desk more than once, and still no second sentence. Finally, she picked up her copy of Sample Essays, turned to the “I” section, and finished her first essay in accordance with the sample given in the book. Naturally, that included all the third-grade practice sentences like “I have a Papa and a Mama. We are a very happy family. I also have two elder brothers. We live in the middle of a large garden.” When she couldn’t write a Chinese character, she used the standard phonetic system.

  Her teacher, known by her Japanese name, Keiko, was a small woman with stumpy calves that, visible beneath her skirt, were devoid even of the normal curve of ankles. Yinghong had heard from someone, probably the maid Mudan, who had come along with Mother when she was married, that those were called “turnip legs,” the shape a result of all that kneeling on tatami mats. Only a few years had passed since the Japanese had been repatriated, and the adults were now saying that “turnip legs” were ugly.

  Her mother often sat on her legs too, but they didn’t look like turnip legs to her. And every time her mother tried to get her to sit that way, she refused unrelentingly, harboring a secret dread; not only did adults call those turnip legs ugly, but the very thought of them terrified her somehow. There was a time that whenever the maid muttered “You don’t look right whether you’re sitting or standing,” Yinghong petulantly refused to do what she was told, and all Mudan had to say was “You’ll wind up with turnip legs” for her to turn obedient.

  Turnip legs were, of course, white. Mudan loved to say that “Keiko’s skin was as white as a Japanese woman and as puffy as a pastry,” and Yinghong would never forget her teacher’s white, round face and her fair, soft, gentle, red-tinged hands.

  Turnip legs and the color white, these distinct characteristics of her teacher, formed enduring impressions of Zhu Yinghong’s childhood. Even many years later, they had not gone away.

  And that afternoon, as Keiko stood at the rostrum, calling out the names of the students and handing back notebooks with their essays, Yinghong walked up and, as always, kept her eyes fixed on her teacher’s hands so as not to look at her legs; her notebook was clutched in one of those soft, white hands. Suddenly, she heard her teacher abandon herself to loud laughter.

  “Zhu Yinghong, so you were born at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War!”

  She was laughing so hard she could barely get the words out. Everyone in the class, infected by their teacher’s laughter, started laughing.

  “If you were born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, do you know how old you are now?”

  Zhu Yinghong shook her head. Tears glistened in her large eyes.

  “Go home and ask your papa, and next time watch what you write.”

  Keiko forced herself to stop laughing so she could pass out the rest of the notebooks. A red tinge suddenly showed on her fair face, after briefly returning to normal; deep blushes spread out evenly on her snowy white cheeks.

  The teacher’s face turned red easily, usually when boys in the class disobeyed her or when girls were arguing. Yinghong, a third-grader, was well aware that in the two years Keiko had been her teacher, this was the only time she had laughed out loud, and she had no idea in the world why her teacher blushed afterward.

  By the time Yinghong finally understood that her teacher had blushed owing to embarrassment over a momentary loss of self-control, Keiko had by then chosen marriage over her teaching career and become a mother of five.

  That was what he said when he met her for the first time:

  “You look like you were born …born in the last century, the end of the last century.”

  “Eighteen-ninety-something.”<
br />
  “That’s about right.”

  He nodded, and she was still smiling. Then, without thinking, she blurted out:

  “Sort of like I was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War …”

  Even if Keiko hadn’t told her to, Zhu Yinghong would have gone home and asked her father. The way her teacher had, uncharacteristically, laughed so hard that afternoon, and then blushed afterward, had humiliated and frightened Yinghong more than at any other time in her life. Always the class leader, the girl with the best grades, she had simply written an essay in which she’d said she was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, and her teacher and all the students in the class had laughed, followed by the teacher blushing. What had she done? She had to know.

  During those years, her father had suffered from poor health. When school was out, she knew that he had probably just gotten up from his afternoon nap and was still at Flowing Pillow Pavilion. Not wanting to wait till she reached Upper House to put down her school bag, she ran, passing under the archway where the words “Lotus Garden” were written in cursive script. At Yinghong Pavilion, she could still read the parallel lines on the red pillars in the late-afternoon sunlight:

  At a quiet little garden startled wild geese fly off on the wind

  In the fields of green leaves winged guests enjoy stirring up shadowy red

  Every time she came to Yinghong Pavilion, she reached out and touched the last two words—ying hong, shadowy red. It was where she’d gotten her name, from this garden and this little pavilion, and even the illiterate Mudan knew that her name and this pavilion were linked.

  But on that third-grade afternoon, she was in such a hurry to find her father she ran and skipped all the way to Flowing Pillow Pavilion without stopping to touch “Yinghong” on the pillar for the first time ever.

  She pounded on the door with the back of her hand, yet only managed dull, barely audible thuds. Her father had told her she was always to knock before entering his room. It was a heavy, sturdy door, and her little fingers could hardly produce a sound, but he would not permit her to slap the door with her palm, so the only way to make any noise at all was with her knuckles and a shout:

  “Is Otosan in?”

  “Come in, Ayako.”

  Recently, Father had taken to calling her by her Japanese name, Ayako, and had told other members of the family to do the same. Mother, whose fluent Japanese was well known in Lucheng, called out in a lovely soft voice that made her name pleasing to the ear. Mudan was the only one who could never master the language, and usually called out: “Aiya! Kou!” especially when she was out in the yard calling her to come in: “Aiya! Kou!” “Aiya! Kou!” If Yinghong did not want to come when called, she’d have to plug her ears with her hands. Fortunately, Mudan usually forgot even how to “Aiya! Kou!” and simply called out “Ah-hong.”

  For as long as she could remember, everyone had called Yinghong “Ah-hong.” Her playmates were Meizi and Wuxiong, for her father had originally banned Japanese names. She had no idea her name was Ayako. But when her schoolmates began using their Chinese names, he took to using Japanese; that went for every member of the family.

  “Otosan, I need to talk to you …”

  Yinghong pushed on the door, but it didn’t move; it was bolted on the inside. She felt a momentary sense of panic. For some reason, in recent years Father had gotten into the habit of locking doors in the house, and once he did that, there was no way to open them. And he wouldn’t open the door until he was sure who it was.

  She was about as tall as most third-graders in public schools, which meant that when she tried the door, she would push at the exact spot of the long wooden bolt on the other side. That presented a formidable obstacle. Had she been taller, say the height of a young woman, she’d have been pushing above the bolt, which would have caused the old door to creak and move a bit.

  For years she had been frightened by the prospect of a bolted door, and on the afternoon in question, she tearfully waited for her father to open the Flowing Pillow Pavilion door.

  He saw the tears at once and pulled her inside. Between sobs, Yinghong told him about her “born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War” essay.

  Instead of laughing, as she’d expected, he surprised her by asking sympathetically:

  “How do you know about the First Sino-Japanese War?”

  “Mudan told me about it. When she tells me stories, she says ‘During the First Sino-Japanese War,’ or ‘Back then, back then it was like this and like that.’ I was born a long time ago, so why can’t I say I was born during the First Sino-Japanese War?”

  “Hold on.” Signs of a gentle smile creased Father’s face. “A moment ago, you said the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, that you were born during the First Sino-Japanese War. But do you know what ‘last year’ means?”

  Knowing how her father doted on her, Yinghong said confidently:

  “The last year? That means I was born last, later than Mudan and later than Otosan.”

  Father had a good laugh over that, a rarity in recent years. He got up out of his carved sandalwood bed, and walked up to put his arms around her, having to bend over to do so, since he was so much taller. She recoiled briefly when his beard touched her face, but then quickly leaned back toward him. Father took her over to a bedside table, where he picked up a thick Japanese book and, without even opening it, began:

  “The Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894. This is now 1952. So tell me, if you were born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, how old are you?”

  She had already memorized her multiplication tables, so simple addition and subtraction were no problem.

  “Fifty-eight,” she said and began to laugh, her eyes still filled with tears.

  He obviously didn’t know when the First Sino-Japanese War had taken place, so when he heard her say she was born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War, he said, without thinking, “Indeed!”

  She didn’t correct him. Rather, she asked:

  “Why do you say I was born in the last century?”

  “Because there aren’t many girls like you these days.” He thought for a moment, then added: “You’re too smart and, I’m sure, very competent.”

  After he’d gotten to know her better, she asked him the same question, and he’d said:

  “I wasn’t wrong. You’re as competent as you are precisely because you were born into that family. You have the mannerisms of the matriarch of a large clan.”

  After they’d been married many years, she asked him again:

  “Do you still feel that I was born in the last century, the end of the last century, during the First Sino-Japanese War?”

  This time he merely looked somberly out the window without answering.

  … You can say you were born at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War if you want to. The war broke out in August 1894. In September, the Manchu court lost a battle in the Yellow Sea. On the twelfth of February in the following year, 1895, the Japanese defeated the Northern Fleet and Ding Ruchang committed suicide. On the seventeenth of April, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, ceding Taiwan and the Penghu Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan for thirty years. On May twenty-fifth, Taiwan declared itself the “Democratic Republic of Taiwan,” with Tang Jingsong as its first president. Tang fled the island on the sixth of June. In October, the Battle of Guangzhou was lost, and Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan. During that same month, Japan crushed all opposition in Taiwan …

  The letter was written in Father’s simple and concise Japanese, and touched upon his rereading of modern history in his old age. The more he thought about these major events, the more he felt that, at some level, his daughter hadn’t necessarily been wrong when she said she was “born in the last year of the First Sino-Japanese War.”

  Yinghong finished her father’s letter from home with tears clouding her vision. Snow fell heavily outside her New York window, the worst snow-storm the city had s
een in half a century, according to meteorologists. As dusk settled in, large, dry snowflakes kept falling, and as the snowfall continued, it increased to the point where it was a wall of shifting white, a haze that blurred heaven and earth.

  In her mind, that afternoon in Flowing Pillow Pavilion was a clearer and more concrete image than anything else she had seen in her third year at school. More than a decade had passed, and now, as she stood there watching snow fall on New York, the passage of years merged with her memories, creating a picture more detailed than those memories, until they were no longer merely impressions of things seen by a third-grade girl.

  Father had his back to the light. His living quarters faced south, looking out on a large lotus pond. In late October in central Taiwan, the sun set slightly to the south, which meant that Lotus Garden, built at the foot of a hill, blocked the sunlight shining westward, casting shadows on one side of the garden. Early autumn scorching heat, what the locals call the autumn tiger, was not to be taken lightly, and the garden was brightly lit; Flowing Pillow Pavilion, too, was, for the most part, washed in sunlight.

  Father was in his room, in which a warm, yellow glow from the sunlight slanted in through windows shaped like two fans with overlapping sections. He sat on a Chinese-style armchair with his back to the window. He was only in his forties, and, though he was gaunt and pale from a long illness, he was still an undeniably handsome man. Deep-set eyes so typical of the Zhu family were lusterless. A high nose bridge and full lips were set off against an angular face with high cheekbones that seemed even more prominent because of his bony features.