This Is a Bust by Ed Lin Page B

shower with a bar of sandalwood soap, and cut myself shaving. In the mirror, I saw that I had bruises in the shape of fingers around my neck. I didn’t remember getting them, and they didn’t hurt, so I ignored them. I got into plain clothes and went back out. The streets were flooded with tourists going in and out of the restaurants and shops. I headed for Columbus Park.
    The rundown park wa s jammed with groups of Chinese people talking loudly while eating rice cakes, leading
    some to choke on too-big bites. Grandmothers spitting into their hands and wiping children’s faces. Old men standing together, each adding another sentence to an imagined story about this guy they all used to know. Teenaged boys and girls slapping handballs around on the courts. Someone had a soccer ball, but with no field or goalposts in the park, the kids took turns trying to bounce it on their knees. Everyone was dressed in red or wearing something red.
    A little boy sucking on a dry plum stared at me and I buttoned the second button to my red flannel shirt. When he spat the seed out, it would slip into the cracks in the asphalt, where there were hundreds of other seeds that had been spat out by his father and uncles.
    I found the midget sipping sweetened soy milk from a plastic bottle. He nodded and said, “Officer Chow,” without taking the straw out of his mouth. He was wearing a red cardigan over a t-shirt that had turned pink from being washed with the sweater. He was idly playing a game of Chinese chess against a little boy dressed in a suit with a red tie.
    â€œI didn’t see you at the parade,” I told him.
    â€œI don’t have to go to the parade,” said the midget.
    â€œAren’t you proud of your culture?”
    The midget took the straw out of his mouth.
    â€œI’m very proud of the Chinese people,” he said. “We invented soy milk, right? What a wonderful drink. Anyway, if you’re talking about things like the lion dance, I don’t support that. You know where that originated from?”
    â€œThere’s that old fable about that guy who wanted to show how brave he was by playing ball with the lions.”
    â€œYeah, there’s that. But the whole ritual of dressing up  dancers as lions and going around to businesses to collect red envelopes was just a big bribery scheme cooked up by government officials in ancient times. You give enough money to the lion, you buy some ‘good luck.’ Sound familiar?”
    â€œThat was a long time ago. It’s not like that now.”
    â€œWell, they use more than lions now.”
    â€œIf it were a crime, we’d have detectives on the case.”
    â€œI heard about the dustup at the parade today,” said the midget. His soy milk bottomed out and he tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder into a trash can. “Fighting amongst ourselves is in our culture. Think about China’s history. How many little countries were defeated and consolidated and broken up again over how many thousands of years?”
    â€œA lot.”
    â€œYes, a lot. Think of all the regional beliefs and traditions that each of those countries had, even before the Mongols and the Manchus colonized us. Everyone who’s Chinese is really many different ancestries, with the blood of a hundred different nations that are now gone.”
    To the little boy in the suit, he said, “Take that piece back. That’s a bad move. Very bad move.” The boy sadly dragged his cannon back and bit his lip.
    The midget went on. “All the Chinese people feel this internal struggle. That’s why Chinese leaders are so terrible.”
    â€œBoth the KMT and the communists are lousy,” I said. “But you know, if Sun Yat Sen hadn’t died suddenly, China would be farther along than Japan is now.”
    The midget blinked. “Sun, he would have ruined China if he had lived.”
    I was shocked that the midget