“Cousin Juan threw away BaBa’s
poems. Juan stole the book box.”)
Yuan means Mongol, and their leader was Kublai Khan.
I had to research for myself the glory of Sung.
Sung was the age when the ecosystem was healthiest.
From atop the Great Wall where now you see loess,
you would’ve gazed out at forests of elm,
planted as the Great Wall was being built.
Women were teachers; they even taught their sons
military strategy. General Yue Fei
and his mother were Sung. The Sung mapped the land
and the sky. Its navy patrolled the rivers and seas.
(But the Yuan had a larger navy; the Mongol
women fought on horseback and on warships.
The Sung deforested the Xiang River Valley
for wood and metal to build ships and to forge
weapons.) Movable type was invented during Sung,
and paper money. They discerned true north.
Artists made Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
There was a poet named Poet. Poet
wrote about travels that take but a day
then home again. Painters painted the long
journeys. The long golden handscroll,
“18 Songs for Barbarian Reed Pipe”:
Nomads capture Wen-chi, poetess
and composer, daughter of the librarian. She
is the barbarians’ treasure, taken from her home
of many roofs and courtyards. She rides
a dappled horse escorted by processions of men
on dark horses and camels across the yellow
grass of the steppes and yellow sands of the desert.
They play flutes as they ride. Hooves of the horses
beat percussion. The earth is drum. Falcons
ride on shoulders and wrists. She sees migrating
geese make words in the sky; she reads them as letters
from home. She pricks her finger, and writes with blood
a message from her heart. “Let my heart
be heard from the ends of the earth.” The wild geese
can read words written in the blood of a loyal one’s
heart, and fly them to those who wait to hear.
The nomads, Liao people, women and men,
girls and boys fight, hunt, play
with crossbows and longbows and arrows.
They gallop their horses under the geese, and shoot
them down. Birds become afraid of people.
“I want to kill myself. I am among
nonhumans. I want to kill myself.
I am a prisoner with ten thousand anxieties
but no one to confide them to. I want to kill
myself. I have to make finger gestures,
yes, no. I have no speech.
I want to kill myself. The barbarian
with a pretty face wants to make me his wife.
I will kill myself. Yes, I shall.
I am pregnant with a barbarian child.
I shall kill myself.” At her wedding to the prince
of barbarians, musicians play pipa,
horn, and flute. They have 2 sons, half
Liao, half Han. An envoy comes bearing
ransom. The covered wagon with red wheels
is waiting to carry her home. The nomads stand
in groups and alone, and weep into their long sleeves.
Wen-chi, wife and mother, holds
her baby for the last time. Her husband, whom she
has learned to trust, holds their son by the hand.
The children do not understand to weep.
Liao horsemen and Han horsemen and infantry
in procession escort Wen-chi’s return.
Husband and sons, elder son on his own
small horse, the baby carried in a rider’s
lap, accompany her partway. The prince
rides his wife’s dappled horse, saddled
with snow-leopard fur. He constantly looks
back at her wagon, which is drawn by 2 oxen
with up-growing horns. The scroll ends
at the home with many roofs and courtyards.
But now people are everywhere, enjoying themselves,
the streets alive, the teahouse open; the baker
sells buns to the returning soldiers;
kids walk with their mothers and fathers.
And the house comes to life as Wen-chi
goes up the stairs toward her kinswomen;
one kowtows to her; the rest shrink
away from her, cover their mouths with long sleeves.
They are protecting themselves from her strangeness.
Wen-chi will help her father compile
a new library.
My father wrote
that her legend reminds him of 2 prisoners,
Su Wu and Li Ling. In 100 B.C.,
during the thousand-year war, Su Wu,
ambassador to the Mongols, went to their country
to negotiate for peace. The Khan poisoned him, beat
him, kept him from leaving the desert. His labor
was to herd sheep to grass and water. Meanwhile,
in battle against the Mongols, Li Ling surrendered.
He was a valuable P.O.W.
because he could be forced to write letters
to Su Wu, and influence him to favor the enemy.
The 2 men carried on their correspondence
for 19 years, on paper and by wild goose.
“No matter I am in a foreign land.
No matter the hardship. My heart that loves
is always with Mother Earth / Land, China.”
My father wrote on the margin of my writing
on Wen-chi:
Su Wu
Li Ling
My biographies
I feel so bad. BaBa
lived in the Americas for over 60 years—
left for Cuba as a teenager, not
meaning to be gone forever—and never became
at home anywhere. He was a prisoner of barbarians. I
should’ve brought him with me to China. I’d gone
10, 12 times (counting Taiwan,
counting Hong Kong), but never thought
to ask him to come along. Because his papers
were fake. He was an illegal alien. We should’ve
chanced going, if only to join for a while
the hosts and hosts of people whose joy it is
to be a crowd walking along the river.
Without Father, without Mother, I traveled
to China, the Central Nation, and found out
that I myself am Empress of the Center. I
was bowed to; I was addressed “Your majesty.”
I walked down the steps of the music temple.
I walked with the crowd, my people, along
a stream of Pearl River. I felt the crowd full,
complete; they are all here—Wen-chi
and her retinues, Fa Mook Lan and her army,
the Vietnamese princess and her
celebrants, Chu Ping and the dragon boat
racers, the Long Marchers, John Mulligan
and the shopping cart soldiers, and old people
from long ago and from yesterday. All
these people belong to me. The ground
I’m walking belongs to me. I feel ownership
of the fields before me, and the hills I see and the hills
beyond my sight, and the river and the connecting rivers
to the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and more
oceans, and lands the waters touch. I own
and am responsible for all of it. My kuleana.
My duty. My business. Up to me. I walk
my land and territory, and see how, what
my people are doing. I’ve felt this majesty before—
at Cal Berkeley, my universi
ty, where I studied
and taught. I walk that campus of groves and daylight
creeks, and hills, whence I watch the sun
set into the horizon and compassing sea.
Mine: the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
the Radiation Laboratories, the ones in Livermore
and Los Alamos. And the cyclotron and the stadium,
both sitting on the Hayward Fault, on the North
American Plate crunching past the Pacific Plate.
My failure: U.C. Berkeley sawed down
and wood-chipped the oak grove and Grandmother Tree.
The next task: Prevent British Petroleum,
which endowed 50 million dollars to Cal, from
building labs along—over—Strawberry
Creek and up and across Strawberry Canyon.
Jingyi, the English teacher who recognized
me—“your majesty”—teaches at Jinan
University. MaMa had a friend
who taught there, visited us in California;
I couldn’t find her at Jinan, moved to Australia.
I took Jingyi’s hand. Holding hands,
laughing, we walked from the music temple, walked
along the river, walked with our village.
(Ours, though she’s from Xinjiang, where Uighurs live.)
I joined, a day late, the 10,000
old people. And the crowd walking
jam-packed along the Red River in Viet Nam
(Red River too in Minnesota) and the Perfume
River through Huế. And the lines of mourners reading
the names on the Vietnam Memorial, and seeing
ourselves, like a platoon, like a peace march, reflected
in the black granite. Crowdstream everywhere
always walking, moving, moving, migrating,
connecting, separating, losing the others, off
on one’s own, finding them, losing them again,
finding again. We are a curl of the scroll,
“Along the River during Ching Ming Festival.”
People dressed in holiday clothes are leaving
their huts and villas, crossing bridges on foot
and on horses and camels, rowing little boats
along the banks and around islands and shoals.
Ladies are riding sedan chairs from out
the city gates. Men work the festival,
selling food and tree branches, juggling
balls and plates, staging a play, staging
a puppet show. Men carry loads.
Men drive wide teams of mules,
10 mules wide. Poor men beg;
monks beg. Mid-river, mid-scroll,
the Rainbow Bridge carries people and animals
up and over the river. Oh. Oh.
A ship is blowing sideways into the bridge;
sailors are lowering the sails as fast as they can.
Teams of men on the shore and under the bridge
are pulling on tow ropes. A few people
at the railings watch for the ship to slide beneath them.
I remember: I was one of many tiny people—
the grown-ups tiny as well as the children—
walking through blue space, nothing
above and below but sky. We were refugees
fleeing war, carrying babies, carrying
bundles of all we own, herding and leading
work animals and pets, yet we were
happy and gay, dressed in layers and layers
of our prettiest clothes, out for a walk
on a bright and sunny day. Warm sun
lit scarves and blankets red and turquoise,
colors everywhere. I looked down
at my feet; I was wearing high-ankle shoes
of white light. I was walking on a floor
that was gold-brown skin, the back of a giant,
who had made a bridge of himself. His hands held
on to an edge of a mountain crevice, and his toes
dug into the opposite edge. My father
walked alongside me. I was safe;
I was not scared. I have a sure memory
of this scene of my life, but could it be
memory of a dream, a former incarnation, a movie?
I have searched high and low through archives
of movies, and cannot find the Rainbow Bridge
Giant helping people like my family and tribe
walk across the sky. I found proof
of happenings which I have no bodily nor
mental memory of—snapshots of me
riding a camel, sitting on a red and gold
blanket between its humps, riding on a cold
windy clear day atop the Great Wall.
Behind me and before me, the Great Wall
rises and falls, rises and falls with the domes
and kettles of the Qilian mountain range,
crenellated spine of Dragon. Guard towers
at interval peaks. With mittened hands,
I am tufting and petting the tawny liony fur
on the hump in front of me. The camel’s hair
and my hair are blowing in the Gobi wind.
My hair—salt-and-pepper hair, not
long ago—blows across my face
and into my eyes. I should’ve said to myself
out loud, “I am astride a camel;
we’re traveling the Long Wall. We’ll take the Long Wall,
then the Silk Road, and arrive in the West.”
As Empress of the Center, I see from on high:
all/no space and time, human
populations and individuals forever
on the move, migrating like bears and whales
and cranes, walking, riding, flying along
and across rivers and oceans, islands and continents.
“You twain! and all processions moving
along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you
till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.”
I rented a bicycle, left my passport
as collateral, and joined a river of bicyclists.
Entering, merging, I pedaled, glided apace
in the steady, balanced surge of fellow cyclers.
Bells burr burr-ring burr-ring.
I wheeled along with families of 4, 5,
high-heeled ladies, pets (an illegal puppy
peeked out of a box), poultry, furniture,
produce. All streaming along, streaming
on and on, rolling through intersections,
through markets, past pancake and corn-
on-the-cob venders, street barbers, podiatrists,
bicycle repairers, through the clink clink
clink of women breaking up rocks,
past the stadium, site of mass executions,
swooping left turns in front of honking
trucks, taxis, oncoming rivers
of other bicycles. Pulling, drafting, we flow.
We are blood. No moving over
to a curb, no getting off. Give in
to being lost; ride to unknown parts,
until the cycling mass lets me go.
Once I was on an airplane beside
a village girl in the window seat. At takeoff
I asked her, “Where are you going?”
“Waw!” She shouted in surprise, and grabbed
ahold of my hand, “You speak like me!”
“Yes, I speak Say Yup language.”
“Are you from the village?” “No, my MaMa
and BaBa came from Say Yup villages.
They left for New York. They lived in New York,
then California. I was born in California.”
I feel like a child, younger than this girl; I’m
telling about parents as if I still had them;
I’m talking in my baby language. “Waw!”
&
nbsp; she exclaimed, loud as though yelling across fields.
“I am going to New York! I
am meeting my husband in New York. He’s
waiting for me in New York. He works
in a restaurant. He’s rented a home. He sent
for me, and waits for me.” She did not
let go of my hand; I held hers tightly
as we flew the night sky. She looked
in wonder at webs of lights below.
“Red red green green,” she said.
“Red red green green,” my mother
used to say, meaning, Oh, how pretty!
The lights were white and yellow too, and gold,
blue, copper. And above, stars and stars.
Mother, MaMa, as you leave
the village family you’ll never see again—
Grandfather walked her as far as he
could walk, stood weeping in the road until
she could not see him anymore when
she turned around to look. She’s off to that lonely
country from where he returned broke—“I felt
that I was dying.”—MaMa, girl,
you are not traveling alone. I am
traveling with you, here, holding your hand.
I know that country you’re leaving for,
and shall guide you there. I know your future.
I’m your child from the future. Your husband
will certainly meet you. BaBa will
be at the East Broadway station.
You will recognize each other,
though he be dressed modern Western style.
You will have a good, good life.
You will have many children, and live a long,
long life. You will be lucky.
“You are lucky. Your husband has work.
He’s rented an apartment, and made you a home.
He saves money. He bought your plane ticket,
he will be waiting for you at the airport.”
She listened to the wise old woman teaching her.
But how to instruct anyone the way to make
an American life? How to have a happy
marriage? For a long time in the dark,
dozing, dreaming, thinking, we sat
without speaking, without letting go
of warm hands. The red red green
green appeared again. I told her,
“That’s Japan. We’re over Japan now.
We’ll be landing soon in Narita.”
“Waw! You speak Japanese too.”
She admires me too much. Inside
the horrible confusion of the international
airport, how can a mind from
the village not fall to crazy pieces?
I found a nice American couple making
the connecting flight to New York, and asked
them please to take this Chinese girl