I’m calling to break up with you because I love you. You’ll have to go down that great path alone …
“J ING-NAN ,” SAID M RS . H UANG . I had been mumbling to myself out loud.
Mr. Huang was bringing in people I didn’t know. Mrs. Huang stood over me and touched my shoulder gently. Time for me to go.
“You loved each other so much,” she sobbed.
I could only nod as I rose to my feet.
“Go talk to them, your old classmates. Find out if they talked to Julia when she came back.”
“I’ll find out what I can,” I said.
I RODE THE ELEVATOR down and hit the ground floor with a thud. The door lurched open, and I had just managed to step out when it closed with a slam.
How could Julia have told her mother everything? She hadn’t promised not to, but I assumed she would be like me and only tell her parents the parts of our relationship appropriate for the general public. For example, our impending marriage.
“Still going to marry Julia, huh?” were among my father’s last words to me. It was as close as he could come to expressing approval.
I grabbed my helmet and leaned against my sun-baked moped seat. I hadn’t been in touch with my high-school classmates Peggy or Ming-kuo in years, and I wasn’t sure they were two people I wanted back in my life. Funny how I needed to get in touch now. Maybe it was time for me to start a Facebook account.
Peggy Lee was from a well-off mainlander family. Her great-grandfather had been a confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, and their family had privileged status when the Generalissimo established the capital of the Republic of China on Taiwan after bravely retreating in the face of inevitable failure.
Peggy’s family had a fancy house that Japanese officials had once lived in, the nicest one I knew of in Wanhua District. It had clay roof tiles that ended in slightly upturned corners. Every few feet there were fanged and horned demon faces making agonized expressions. I can only describe the roofs because I couldn’t see anything else over the exterior wall. Apparently Peggy’s family had a private garden with stone lanterns and a pond with kumquat-colored koi as long as your arm.
Mainlanders who didn’t come over with money or connections grew up in
juancuns
, military residential communities hastily built on public land for families of low-ranking officers and soldiers.People from every province were thrown together—something the normally clannish Chinese weren’t pleased by—as those
juancuns
were meant for temporary housing. Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang party and Republic of China Army were going to launch that counterattack any day, after all. That day never came. Several generations of families ended up living in
juancuns
, patching up crumbled cinder blocks in their walls to keep the rain out. Meanwhile, Peggy grew up leisurely feeding the same koi in the Lee family pond her father and grandfather had cared for years before.
Today, most of the
juancuns
are gone. It wasn’t the typical
waishengren-benshengren
politics that pushed them out—it was money politics. Condos had to go up.
And Peggy’s family had a lot to do with that. The Lees were big in real estate and helped the government “monetize” the land. Let’s face it. The
juancuns
were a major eyesore. Gangs like Black Sea were originally formed by disaffected mainlander youth living in those blocks, but a lot of those kids made it out and did something with their lives, including Ang Lee, the film director, and Teresa Teng, the immortal and yet dead singer. Supposedly Teng’s lifelong asthma was caused by childhood exposure to asbestos in a
juancun
.
After a public outcry to preserve
juancuns
as historical sites, the Lees recently turned their wrecking ball against their own antique Japanese house. A hotel stands there now.
T HE LIGHTNESS I HAD been feeling earlier was gone. Thoughts of Julia weighed on me again. I had been tasked by her parents to find out more about her mysterious return
“J ING-NAN ,” SAID M RS . H UANG . I had been mumbling to myself out loud.
Mr. Huang was bringing in people I didn’t know. Mrs. Huang stood over me and touched my shoulder gently. Time for me to go.
“You loved each other so much,” she sobbed.
I could only nod as I rose to my feet.
“Go talk to them, your old classmates. Find out if they talked to Julia when she came back.”
“I’ll find out what I can,” I said.
I RODE THE ELEVATOR down and hit the ground floor with a thud. The door lurched open, and I had just managed to step out when it closed with a slam.
How could Julia have told her mother everything? She hadn’t promised not to, but I assumed she would be like me and only tell her parents the parts of our relationship appropriate for the general public. For example, our impending marriage.
“Still going to marry Julia, huh?” were among my father’s last words to me. It was as close as he could come to expressing approval.
I grabbed my helmet and leaned against my sun-baked moped seat. I hadn’t been in touch with my high-school classmates Peggy or Ming-kuo in years, and I wasn’t sure they were two people I wanted back in my life. Funny how I needed to get in touch now. Maybe it was time for me to start a Facebook account.
Peggy Lee was from a well-off mainlander family. Her great-grandfather had been a confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, and their family had privileged status when the Generalissimo established the capital of the Republic of China on Taiwan after bravely retreating in the face of inevitable failure.
Peggy’s family had a fancy house that Japanese officials had once lived in, the nicest one I knew of in Wanhua District. It had clay roof tiles that ended in slightly upturned corners. Every few feet there were fanged and horned demon faces making agonized expressions. I can only describe the roofs because I couldn’t see anything else over the exterior wall. Apparently Peggy’s family had a private garden with stone lanterns and a pond with kumquat-colored koi as long as your arm.
Mainlanders who didn’t come over with money or connections grew up in
juancuns
, military residential communities hastily built on public land for families of low-ranking officers and soldiers.People from every province were thrown together—something the normally clannish Chinese weren’t pleased by—as those
juancuns
were meant for temporary housing. Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang party and Republic of China Army were going to launch that counterattack any day, after all. That day never came. Several generations of families ended up living in
juancuns
, patching up crumbled cinder blocks in their walls to keep the rain out. Meanwhile, Peggy grew up leisurely feeding the same koi in the Lee family pond her father and grandfather had cared for years before.
Today, most of the
juancuns
are gone. It wasn’t the typical
waishengren-benshengren
politics that pushed them out—it was money politics. Condos had to go up.
And Peggy’s family had a lot to do with that. The Lees were big in real estate and helped the government “monetize” the land. Let’s face it. The
juancuns
were a major eyesore. Gangs like Black Sea were originally formed by disaffected mainlander youth living in those blocks, but a lot of those kids made it out and did something with their lives, including Ang Lee, the film director, and Teresa Teng, the immortal and yet dead singer. Supposedly Teng’s lifelong asthma was caused by childhood exposure to asbestos in a
juancun
.
After a public outcry to preserve
juancuns
as historical sites, the Lees recently turned their wrecking ball against their own antique Japanese house. A hotel stands there now.
T HE LIGHTNESS I HAD been feeling earlier was gone. Thoughts of Julia weighed on me again. I had been tasked by her parents to find out more about her mysterious return
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