A Map of Betrayal: A Novel

1955

In February 1955, a month before Gary’s thirty-first birthday, he was notified of the agency’s imminent departure for the States. Thomas asked him to move with them, and Gary agreed, saying he was a refugee anyway and had better hold on to his current job. Now, most of his personal belongings had to go. He sold his noisy jeep for two hundred dollars to a local businessman, a Taiwanese merchant of wine and liquor. He gave away his tatami mat, his two chairs and sideboard, his kerosene stove and utensils, but he was possessive of his books, which, for as long as possible, he wouldn’t let go. He even kept those he had read and marked up.

In early March they boarded a large rust-colored ship. A month later they reached San Francisco, then took the train across the American continent. Gary had read quite a bit about the States but was still awed by the immense land, which looked sparsely populated in many places despite the abundant water supply and the farmable soil. No wonder the Chinese called this country the Beautiful Land. The sky looked higher and deeper blue, a match for the boundless landscape. He was struck by the sight of forests, mountains, deserts, lakes, meadows, vast crop fields, and farms. On every farmstead stood a house, a barn, a silo, sometimes a windmill; viewed from the distance, they brought to mind a set of toys. There were also a lot of cattle and horses that looked content, lazing around without a harness on them. The animals seemed to have a lot of leisure. The fields were flat, and some stretched beyond the horizon. What’s that for? Gary thought about a tall gleaming structure that slid by, but he couldn’t figure it out. Probably it was a water tower or some sort of refinery. Passing a prairie in Nebraska, he saw a herd of bison and wondered if they were domesticated. He had read somewhere that bison had been wiped out by the European settlers by the end of the nineteenth century, but George Thomas assured him that those were wild.

Their agency settled down on a quiet backstreet in Alexandria, Virginia, as an extended unit of the CIA, for which it provided translation services. Gary had his own office in the small three-story building; to the east spread a wood of spruces and oaks. He lived just a few blocks away and walked to work. His apartment, for which he paid forty-two dollars a month, had a bedroom and a den, which he used as a study. Against a side wall of the den stood a pair of bookcases, their bottom shelves filled with a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, the 1913 edition, left behind by a former tenant. The bathroom was shabby, the mirror stained with coppery blotches and the slats on the venetian blind drooping with age, but the claw-foot bathtub surrounded by a new shower curtain pleased Gary and made him feel like a man of means whenever he ran a hot bath. What’s more, the tap water tasted good, better than anyplace he’d been before.

American life amazed him, particularly the good wages (some jobs even paid by the hour); the fabulous libraries, out of which he could check as many titles as he wanted; the streets, big or small, all illuminated by lamps at night; and the supermarkets, where even spinach, celery, and mushrooms were wrapped in cellophane. He liked the fruits here, especially bananas (fourteen cents a pound) and oranges (a quarter a dozen). He was also fond of American nuts, their kernels full and plump. But he didn’t like some meats, farm-raised fish, and vegetables, which tasted bland.

In spite of everything, Gary was sure he’d feel miserable if he lived here for long. Wherever he was, he couldn’t shake his wariness. Twinges and jolts of fear often galvanized him. Sometimes when passing a street corner, he was afraid that a hand might stretch out to grab him. Walking home alone from work, he had to force himself not to spin around to see if he was being shadowed. He hoped he could return to China soon and again walk on solid, familiar ground. In his first letter to his handler he insinuated that he felt homesick and out of place, but Bingwen replied that they had to “stick to the original plan.”

Soon after Gary settled down, a tallish young woman walked into his life. That was Nellie, who waited tables in a small restaurant where Gary often went for lunch. She noticed him because of his quiet disposition and gentle demeanor. Unlike other men, he never raised his voice and seemed to prefer to eat alone. Yet whenever he saw someone he knew, he would greet them warmly. He seemed easygoing and good-natured. One day toward the end of the busy lunch hour, Nellie got up her nerve to speak to him, to see if he could talk at length like a normal man, especially with a woman. For a brief moment, he looked perplexed, his eyes intense, staring at her. Then his face relaxed into a smile that showed his square teeth.

He said, “I don’t think I’ve introduced myself. I’m Gary.” He stretched out his hand.

“Nellie McCarrick.” The second she said that, she felt stupid to have mentioned her last name. She must have sounded as if she was at a job interview, but Gary didn’t seem to have noticed her unease. The grip of his hand felt forceful, and she liked that.

There were few customers around, so she sat down across from him and put her elbow on the table, her face rested on her hand to check the shivers of excitement and to keep her lips from trembling. Yet she managed to hold his gaze while a pinkish sheen crept up her face. Even the tops of her ears turned red and hot.

Already done with lunch, he took out a pack of Camels and offered her a cigarette. She declined, saying she didn’t smoke. He put it into his mouth and struck a match, shielding the flame in his cupped palm. After taking a deep drag, he let out a puff of smoke. He seemed at ease and spoke to her as casually as if they’d known each other. They went on to converse a little, about the DC area, new to both of them, and then about Japan, where Nellie’s older brother, Jimmy, had fallen in the Battle of Savo Island thirteen years before.

“Was he in the army or the marines?” Gary asked.

“On the Astoria, a cruiser,” she said. “The U.S. Navy had lots of casualties in that fight, thousands.”

“I’m sorry about your loss. Was he your only brother?”

“Yes, my parents took it very hard.”

“I can imagine.”

That started their acquaintance. Sometimes he seemed deliberately to come late for lunch so that he could chat with her after the busy hours. She got more and more interested in him despite his accent and Asian face, which was smooth but energetic. He spoke English with impeccable grammar, but everyone could tell he was a nonnative speaker, lacking ease and spontaneity. Some words seemed too wayward for his tongue to manage, and at times he missed the interdental sounds, mixing “th” with “s.” Yet he was a professional translator, something of a learned man, working for the government. This made Nellie eager to know him better and to find out how old he was. He looked youthful, probably in his mid-twenties. No, he might be older, because his bearing, polite and composed, indicated that he must have lived quite a bit. He seemed to have a steadfast character, which Nellie appreciated. In truth, at twenty-six, she didn’t have many prospects, and still had no real job. She looked neither plain nor pretty, with a broad forehead, fair skin, and gray eyes, which were a little wide-set, giving her a preoccupied look. Her bones were thick, though she was thin, as if undernourished. Her mother often said to her on the phone, “Find yourself a man soon or you might end up an old lady.” Nellie had gone to a two-year community college in Miami, and though her major was economics, it hadn’t helped improve her livelihood one iota. Her father would tell her, “You’d better find a guy who’s qualified for a mortgage and can make an honest woman out of you.”

Gary, isolated and lonely, was predisposed to friendly conversations, which brought the two of them closer and closer. Soon they began to go out. One night she let him kiss her outside a movie theater after they’d watched Singin’ in the Rain, but before saying good night, she warned him that she’d give him hell if he jilted her. He hung back, his lips parted. That thought had never occurred to him. He’d been dating her in earnest, as if looking for a wife, though he felt he might be able to handle it if she said no. He was used to losses and thought he could manage a new one with some equilibrium. He assumed that an American woman was entitled to drop a foreigner like him on a whim. Not in a position to choose, he always viewed himself as a married man and couldn’t date a woman without qualms.

He perceived Nellie as a windfall. She was a good bargain indeed. She wasn’t a looker but had blond hair and glossy eyes. In a way, her ordinary looks could be an advantage, making her less likely to flirt and less distracting to him. Her slightly freckled face, strong arms, and solid bone structure all suggested a reliable character that could become a backbone in a household. Over and above these qualities, she was not demanding — in this respect she was totally different from George Thomas’s bride, Alicia, for whom the man frequently had to buy flowers and gifts. Yet Gary wouldn’t say he loved Nellie; his heart was numb and unable to open to another soul. He was pleased that he didn’t even have to go out with her on weekends. More often they just spent time together, sharing a meal cooked by themselves at his or her place, or taking a long walk on the waterfront or in the parks, where bullfrogs squawked like crazy after rain. He liked the pasta and lasagna she made, while she loved the chicken and fish he cooked. “The best Chinese food in town,” she often enthused. Once in a while they’d go to the movies. He was fond of Westerns, having seen all the John Wayne movies despite knowing the actor was a die-hard anti-Communist. In secret he was also enamored of Audrey Hepburn but was content to watch her on the screen — he wouldn’t talk about her in front of others, afraid that his praises of her fearsome beauty might make him sound silly and unbalanced.

By September 1955, three months into their relationship, Gary began to introduce Nellie to his colleagues as his girlfriend, but she wasn’t happy about the slow progress. It had taken her some trouble to persuade her parents to consider a Chinese man for a prospective son-in-law. They didn’t like Gary that much; not only was he too starchy but he also had an unclear background. Worse yet, he didn’t belong to a church. He’d told Nellie that he had no family in China anymore and had only a cousin in Hong Kong. Now that her parents had finally given the green light, why was Gary so hesitant about popping the question? It was so tiresome having to come up with plans for every weekend and holiday. Nellie believed that together they could make an outstanding couple. She’d be a good wife and they would raise husky sons. Time and again she hinted they should get engaged, the sooner the better, but Gary didn’t want to rush.

“Give me some time, please,” he said one day on their drive back from shopping. He was steering with one hand.

“Tell me, what part of me d’you still have doubts about?” She stared at him from the passenger side.

He didn’t turn to her but felt her eyes boring into his cheek. He said, “Not because of that, I’ve told you so many times.”

“Then because of what? What’s there to worry about? You’ve no parents to ask for permission and no siblings to consult. I can’t see why you’re so wishy-washy. Tell me the truth, am I not good enough for you?”

“Please don’t get fired up like this.”

“You can’t dump a girl after sleeping with her, you know. It’s not like in China or Japan.”

“I am serious about us. Just give me a couple of weeks.”

She sighed. “Guess I’ve gotta bite the bullet.”

“If that’s too hard on your teeth, you don’t have to do it.”

“Gimme a break!” She swatted his shoulder, and they both laughed.

A few months back he had applied for a green card so that he wouldn’t have to get his visa renewed every year, which he’d heard could be a hassle. Also, the U.S. permanent residency would make it easier for him to travel abroad. His plan was to get naturalized as soon as possible so he’d be able to access more-classified documents at his agency. By doing this, he also meant to take a part of his life into his own hands, to have some legal protection here. There was no telling what might happen between the United States and China, and the two countries were likely to have another military confrontation, probably somewhere in East Asia. If that happened, his higher-ups might not call him back in the near future.

He had constantly agonized about that possibility, which seemed unavoidable in light of some recent events. In January 1955, the People’s Liberation Army had launched a massive attack on the Yijiangshan Islands, off the Zhejiang coast. It was a coordinated operation of the air force, the navy, and the infantry — the first in the PLA’s history. The overwhelming forces crushed the Nationalist defenders and wiped out the whole regiment deployed on the islands, whose commander, Colonel Shengming Wang, fought with his men doggedly and in the end blew himself up with his last grenade. Tactically Gary believed the Communists had scored a complete victory, but politically it was a disaster. Within ten days of the battle, the U.S. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution and granted Dwight Eisenhower the power to protect Taiwan and its adjacent islands against invasion from the People’s Republic of China. The legislation made the liberation of Taiwan much more difficult, if not impossible. From now on, the PLA would have to fight the U.S. forces if it attempted to cross Taiwan Strait. That would be unimaginable, given that the Chinese air force and navy were both in their infancy. Eisenhower even declared that he might authorize the use of nuclear weapons if necessary. In response, China’s premier, Zhou Enlai, claimed that the Chinese people were not afraid of atomic bombs and would continue to confront the American imperialists. Gary saw the attack on the Yijiangshan Islands as a political mistake that had widened the gulf between Taiwan and the mainland. While the hostility between China and the United States was escalating, he felt plunged into deeper isolation. In his heart he couldn’t stop blaming the Chinese Communist leaders and generals, some of whom he believed were too shortsighted. “What a bunch of idiots!” he’d say to himself.

Since the early summer of 1955, he had noticed a spate of documents from Taipei that touched upon the role of General Sun Lijen, who had been the commander of the Nationalist land force in Taiwan. Gary was fascinated by this man partly because Sun and he were fellow alumni, both having attended Tsinghua University, though the general had been many years ahead of Gary. At college Sun had played basketball and even joined China’s national team briefly. Then he went to Purdue on a scholarship, majoring in civil engineering. After earning his BS, he worked in a New York architecture firm for a short while. Later he enrolled at Virginia Military Institute (class of 1927) and studied military science for two years. He then returned to China and served in the Nationalist army, in which he rose rapidly through the ranks.

He fought numerous victorious battles against the Japanese and the Communists. Among Chiang Kai-shek’s generals, Sun was the most capable, feared by the Red Army and dubbed the Eastern Rommel by Joseph Stilwell, the U.S. commander of the China-Burma-India Theater during the Second World War. But Sun was isolated in the Nationalist army, whose generals were mostly graduates of the Huangpu Military Academy, which Chiang Kai-shek had once headed. Owing to Sun’s American background, Chiang had never trusted him and, in the summer of 1954, removed him from the command of the army and appointed him a staff general in the president’s cabinet without any commanding power.

Through translating some reports and conversations, Gary suspected that Chiang Kai-shek might have begun purging Sun Lijen, who was suspected of attempting a coup to seize presidential power and to set himself up as a U.S. puppet. Groundless though the accusation might be, Sun was fired in August 1955 and soon placed under house arrest. Gary could see that the CIA might actually have engineered the alleged conspiracy, though he wasn’t sure how deeply Sun had been implicated. His instinct told him that Sun’s career might be over. If so, Chiang’s army would be weakened considerably, if not in disarray. He checked out the documents concerning General Sun’s situation, telling the clerk in charge of classified materials that he had to translate parts of them at home. That was common among the translators when they had to work late into the night. Gary took photos of many pages about Sun’s case, believing these were significant intelligence.

In mid-October he took a two-week leave and went to Hong Kong. He met Bingwen and handed him the films. His handler was thrilled, since the mainland was still dead set on liberating Taiwan, and the loss of Chiang’s top general might open a window of opportunity. Gary also reported on his relationship with Nellie and asked for instructions from their superiors.

Two days later he and Bingwen met again at a teahouse. His handler told him, “As for this woman, do whatever is necessary. You must live in America as long as you can.”

“You mean I should marry her?” Gary asked.

“Yes, that will make your life easier. We all understand the situation. Besides, that’ll make you appear more normal among the Americans.”

“How about my wife and parents back in Shandong?” Gary muttered, his heart gripped by a numbing pang, even though in recent months he had managed to suppress most of his memories of Yufeng.

“Our country will take care of them. You can set your mind at rest.”

So Gary spent ninety-four dollars for an engagement ring with a tiny pear-shaped sapphire. He flew back to the States three days later. He had no idea that he already had two children. His superiors must have instructed Bingwen to withhold the information so that Gary could settle down more quickly in America.

My sister, Manrong, insisted that I stay with her family, so I checked out of the inn late in the afternoon and left with my niece Juya for her mother’s house. Juya, a strapping woman with an ample chest and wearing a purple kerchief on her head, was carrying my stuffed suitcase with as much ease as if it were empty. On the way, whenever we ran into acquaintances of hers, she’d tell them I was her aunt, and I just nodded at them without speaking.

Manrong’s husband, Fanbin Liang, greeted me warmly and shook hands with me. His palm felt thick and meaty. He had been a low-level official in the county administration and had just retired. In China the retirement age for men is sixty and for women fifty-five. I often half-joked with my colleagues in Beijing that I wished I were a Chinese woman so I could retire at fifty-five, which meant I’d have only one year left. By and large, China was still a good place for older people — in some areas life could be slow and easy. At age sixty-one, Fanbin didn’t look that old, though his eyes were pouched and his mustache and temples grizzled. He kept saying to me, “What a happy day this is for our family.” Indeed they were all in festive spirits. Manrong had called over her son-in-law and granddaughter, a small girl who was a bit rambunctious, wearing a tiny pigtail on either side of her head. The six-year-old gaped at me and brought out, “You don’t look like American.”

“Shush, Little Swallow!” Manrong scolded the girl, then turned to me. “She hasn’t started school yet but is already a big mouth.”

“I just told her what I think, Nana,” Little Swallow cried back.

That made the grown-ups all laugh. I touched the girl’s apple face and patted her hair. In response she placed both palms on the back of my hand. This indeed felt like a family reunion, as if every one of them had known me for ages. I was moved — rarely had I been among so many relatives. My mother had an older sister who had a son my age, but I’d met him only twice in my whole life.

Manrong’s home was clean and spacious, the floors made of fine bricks sealed with cement. A large flat-screen TV stood against the back wall in the sitting room, a stainless-steel floor lamp inclined its gooseneck from a corner, and framed family photos were propped up on a long oak chest against another wall. “This is my mother,” Manrong told me, pointing at a black-and-white picture. I leaned over to see Yufeng in her mid-forties: a smooth egg-shaped face, narrow cheekbones, a straight nose, bright but pensive eyes, a mole above the left corner of her mouth, and graying bangs covering a part of her forehead. She looked healthy and somewhat citified, like a nurse or schoolteacher. She must have been very capable both inside and outside the household. Next to this photo stood another one, a wedding portrait, in which she and my father, shoulder touching shoulder, were smiling blissfully. They were a handsome couple, lean-faced and rather elegant, a veil over the bride’s head while the groom’s hair was pomaded shiny and parted on the side. In his breast pocket was stuck a fountain pen. Above their heads, toward the right-hand corner, was a sloping line of characters: FOR WEIMIN AND YUFENG’S HAPPY UNION, JANUARY 16, 1949.

“Your mother was very pretty,” I said to Manrong.

“Yes, she was voted the number one beauty back in our home village in Shandong.”

“Voted by whom?”

“By some men in the village, secretly.”

“No wonder it was so hard for her to live there.” I remembered the proverb and quoted, “ ‘Gossips always cluster around a widow’s house.’ I mean, without her husband around she must have lived like a widow.”

“You really understand the Chinese, Lilian.”

“Our father always demanded that I learn Mandarin. One of my fields is Chinese history.”

I saw a bottled watercooler stand in a corner, similar to the one in Henry’s superintendent’s office in our apartment building back in Maryland. Fushan County is right on the Songhua River, whose water must have been quite polluted. The bottled drinking water also indicated that Manrong’s family was doing well, though I noticed she used tap water for cooking. In the back of the house was a low-ceilinged office, where I saw a computer, a scanner, a fax machine, and a laser printer. I was impressed that even in such a backwoods town the family was savvy about electronics. Juya said that she went on Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site, every night. She had online pals in other provinces, even one in Mongolia. I told her I didn’t blog. That was a surprise to her, because she thought that most Americans were bloggers.

“Why don’t you blog, Aunt?” Juya asked me in her throaty voice.

“It’s too time-consuming. I prefer to spend my idle hours reading books. That’s part of my job besides.”

“It’s really wild out there. You can make all kinds of friends through blogging. Also, it’s fun and helps me follow what’s going on in the world.”

“I have many students already. I might lose my mind if I have to deal with more people.”

She gave a chesty laugh. I admired her carefree manner that showed she was pretty content and got on well with her parents. My sister was lucky to have a daughter like Juya, not to mention her granddaughter, Little Swallow. I had always regretted not having children. My first husband disliked kids, and my second marriage took place too late, when I was already forty-eight.

At dinner I learned that besides Juya, Manrong and Fanbin had two more children, Juli and Benning, twins in their mid-twenties who were both working in the south. (My sister and her husband had been fortunate: their firstborn was a girl, and at the time the one-child policy wasn’t strictly implemented in the region, so they were allowed to have another child, but the second-born turned out to be twins.) How the family all wished those two could join us. We were seated at a lower dining table on the long brick bed, heated from underneath, which was very warm due to the cooking of the big dinner — the heat and smoke from the kitchen range went through under the bed before reaching the chimney flue. I couldn’t sit cross-legged like they did, so I bent one leg and let the other one hang over the edge of the bed. I apologized for my bad manners, but Manrong said, “Just make yourself comfortable. You’re at home now.”

They kept putting food into my bowl: a chunk of fried catfish, or a piece of chicken, or a spoonful of sautéed mung bean sprouts mixed with baby shrimp and wood ears. I liked the food but couldn’t eat much. They all had better appetites. I wished I could eat heartily without being concerned about my weight. Even though I wasn’t on the heavy side, I was always wary about overeating. In my mind’s ear would ring my mother’s voice, “Lilian, don’t stuff your face.”

That night Manrong chased her husband to another bedroom, saying she wanted me to stay with her so we could talk about our father and also “girl to girl.” In fact, we had hardly mentioned him during the day. I would not confide to my sister that he’d been a Chinese spy caught by the FBI, or that he’d been a lousy husband. I told her instead, “He missed your mother a lot but couldn’t come back.”

“We all knew he was on an important mission overseas,” Manrong said. “Did he know about my brother and me?”

“Yes, in the late fifties his higher-ups informed him about the two of you. When he died, he assumed our brother was still alive. He often mentioned your mother in his diary.”

“My mom had a hard life.” She paused, as though expecting my response, but I didn’t know what to say. We were lying on the brick bed in the dark, two feet apart. The room was so quiet that there was only the tick-tock of the wall clock.

Manrong continued, “Mom often said my dad was a distinguished man with a degree from Tsinghua University. That was really something. I don’t know who else in our home county went to Tsinghua. On her deathbed my mother said to me, ‘When you see your dad someday, tell him I was a good daughter-in-law to his parents and a good wife to him.’ Well, I wish I could’ve let him know that.”

“I went to Maijia Village in Linmin last month,” I said. “I was told that you and your mother had left because our brother died.”

“He was born runty, not like me, although we were twins. In the fifties we lived decently on the money from the government. But when the famine struck, we became worse off than the villagers, because we couldn’t grow crops and money became worthless, like straw paper. Our brother and I were eleven that year, both skinny like bags of bones, hungry all the time. It was reported that lots of people had died of hunger, so Mom was terrified. Then our brother died and my mother almost lost her mind with grief. When Uncle Mansheng asked us to join his family here, we left Maijia right away.”

“It was a smart move,” I said. “More than two hundred villagers starved to death in the following years.”

“As a matter of fact, later Mom told me there was another reason we’d moved.”

“What’s that?”

“There was a man in the village, Uncle Weifu, who was from our Shang clan, a distant cousin of our father’s. I remember him, a quiet, humble man. He was a bachelor and very kind to us. He often came to help Mom with household work, like thatching the roof, digging ditches to drain rainwater out of our yard, killing a hog for the Spring Festival. He was a handsome man, tall and muscular, with a straight back and sparkling eyes. His family was so poor he couldn’t find a girl willing to marry him. The village was whispering about him and Mom. The two were fond of each other for sure. Mom later told me that Uncle Weifu had asked her to marry him, but she’d never do that because she was still married to our dad. She said to him, ‘What if my husband comes back one day?’ In spite of everything, she couldn’t help but develop a soft spot in her heart for Uncle Weifu and would get heady with joy whenever he was around. She confessed to me that if we hadn’t moved away, soon enough she might not have been able to restrain herself. She dreaded a scandal.”

Something surged up in my chest, and tears welled out of my eyes, bathing my face. I covered my mouth with my palm, but still Manrong heard me sobbing.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

“I feel so sad for your mom. She was a good woman. I wish she had lived differently.”

“You’re a good woman too. The moment I saw you I knew you were someone I could trust.” She stretched out her hand and gripped my arm.

We went on talking. Manrong said life was much better now, but most people were unhappy because of “the unfair distribution of wealth.” I was impressed by her use of that phrase. She hadn’t even gone to high school, but she liked reading books, especially romance novels from Taiwan and Hong Kong, so she was articulate and at times could be eloquent.

I WENT TO MANRONG’S SHOP the next morning, eager to spend more time with her. She had hired two full-timers and also farmed out work to housewives in the neighborhood, paying them piecework rates. The sewing machines were purring in the side room as Manrong and I sat at the counter chatting. Now and then a customer stepped in, and she turned away to handle business while I resumed watching the street. People passed back and forth, and there were also panniered donkeys and mules, whose hooves clip-clopped on the cobbles. As a three-horse cart loaded with stuffed gunnysacks was wobbling by, I noticed a Mongolian pony branded with “283” on its haunch; perhaps the little shaggy nag had served in the army and had been decommissioned. Across the street some vendors squatted behind their wares along the sidewalk. They were selling chickens and ducks, tobacco leaves, hothouse vegetables (mostly cucumbers, leeks, bell peppers, and oyster mushrooms), wicker cages, and willow baskets. From time to time a voice cried out at potential buyers.

Through our conversation I learned that Manrong’s twin daughter, Juli, was a migrant worker in Guangdong province. She was in Dongguan, a city near Guangzhou, doing a factory job. The girl used to come back once a year, at the Spring Festival, but this year she had not returned, saying she’d have only a week off and the long trip would have tired her out, so she decided just to send her parents money and to get some rest in her dorm during the holiday. As for her son, Benning, my sister was unclear about where he was. He seemed to be based in the south and traveled a lot, sometimes on ships going abroad and sometimes in different Chinese cities. Perhaps he was with the merchant marine. His mother hadn’t seen him for more than two years but was certain that he was doing fine. Among her three children, he was the smartest, had gone to college, and might have a bright future. In the past his letters had been forwarded to his parents by his sister Juli, so Manrong never had his address and phone number.

Around midmorning the next day, my niece Juya took me to the Songhua, saying we should watch the river opening its frozen surface, which she assured me was a one-of-a-kind spectacle. It was still chilly in mid-April, and many people were wearing heavy coats and wrinkled calf-high boots. On the streets some men still wore fur hats. Juya and I headed north, taking shortcuts whenever we could. She was walking ahead, picking the way. The backstreets were a wholly different scene from the downtown, many houses ramshackle and enclosed by slapdash wooden fences, some windows still covered outside by tattered quilts, and heaps of trash everywhere, some four or five feet high. Besides muddy puddles there were half-thawed feces on the narrow streets, and it was hard to pick our way through the sludge. The down and dirty alleys brought to mind a swamp of compost giving off miasmic fumes. Just a few blocks from the bustling commercial district, the back alleys were like a ghetto without any drainage or sanitary service. If all the garbage and waste remained here, disease might break out in the summer. I’d seen similar scenes elsewhere in China — behind the shiny façade were the hapless people jettisoned by the ship of success.

It was blustery on the river; howling gusts of wind buffeted trees and people’s hair and coats. Time and again large chunks of ice were tossed up and splashed the dark greenish water. I saw a number of fish, carp and pike and bass, floating by, belly-up, crushed dead by the ice. The river was roaring, and if I closed my eyes, it sounded like an ancient battle in full swing with all the clangs and clatters of blood-drawing metal. It was terrifying to see the immense body of water churning small icebergs and rushing them eastward, smashing whatever they met along the way, and gliding against the backdrop of gray woods on the other shore, where patches of snow were still visible.

Behind us, the sloping riverbank was covered with rocks, and up beyond the slope, on the esplanade, some kiosks stood, though they were unmanned. There was also a restaurant that would open to tourists in late May. Atop that structure squatted a loudspeaker that must have remained voiceless for the whole winter. On the west of the pavement spread a small cemetery, and in its center stood a tall bronze statue of a Russian soldier against an obelisk, wearing a rain cape and holding a submachine gun that had a thick, round magazine. A flock of crows perched on his helmet, shoulders, and arms, cawing hungrily. Around us people were all excited, some jabbering, some shouting, and some snapping photos of the floating ice blocks. Downriver to the east, across the water, was a cement factory where two smokestacks were spouting whitish fumes.

Juya said the riverbank was a hot spot for social gatherings in the summer and also a place where young people would come for a date. You could rent a rowboat, and if you were willing to spend more, could take a two-day cruise downstream to the Russian border in Tongjiang and Fuyuan.

“We used to pick up fish from this water when the ice was breaking open,” Juya said.

“You don’t do that anymore?” I asked.

“Uh-uh, it’s too dangerous. Besides, a lot of farmers raise fish now, so folks no longer eat fish from this polluted water. My brother, Benning, was once trapped on a block of floating ice while he was reaching out for a killed bullhead. He was scared and hollered like mad.”

“At this spot?”

“No, down the river, close to our village.”

As we were speaking, a flock of oil drums bobbed past, some glistening with patches of grease in the glare of sunlight. “He was rescued?” I asked about her brother.

“Yeah, an off-duty firefighter jumped into the water and brought him to the bank, but the man’s leg got crushed. He became a local hero for a couple months.”

“Where’s Benning now?”

“I wish I knew. He only told us he travels a lot. He’s been in touch with Juli, though. They’re very close.” There was a trace of petulance in her voice.

“I’d love to meet him,” I said.

“He used to be based in Guangdong, but I’m pretty sure he sometimes goes to Beijing.”

Her father also mentioned Benning before I took my leave the next morning. His parents wanted me to meet him when he went to the capital the next time, and they asked me to urge him to find a girl, start a family soon, and give them a grandchild. “Treat our son and daughters like your own kids,” my sister told me. At her repeated request, I promised to visit them again in a year or two.

Their warmth and hospitality moved me and made me reflect again on my parents’ secluded life. Both Gary and Nellie had been loners and rarely mixed with others except for a few relatives. Although I loved my mother, I often felt uneasy when spending time with her alone. Unhappy and frustrated, she tended to take her anger out on me, perhaps because she believed I was closer to my father than to her. When I finished my PhD and was hired by the University of Maryland, Nellie appeared underwhelmed and closemouthed, as though to show I could never live up to her expectations. She had wanted me to go to medical school, but I hated medicine. When I published my first book, a monograph on the U.S. role in the Opium War, and got tenure, she remained unimpressed. I used to tell Henry that my mother was a troubled woman; yet the two of them got along and were fond of each other. Whenever Nellie came to visit, Henry would make shrimp scampi or chicken Parmesan for her. He was much better at cooking Italian than I was. My mother often joked about me, saying, “A slow girl can have a late blessing.” That was her way of approving my second marriage. I think she envied me.