stateline at South Shore Lake Tahoe,
travel Highway 50, the Loneliest Road
in America. Objective correlative everywhere—
lonely Sierras, lonely turkey buzzards, lonely
railroad tracks, ghost towns, lone
pines. You can stay on Highway 50
all the way across the U.S.
of A., but they turn off in Reno.
Husband and wife walk its streets hand-in-
hand; they keep ahold of each other;
they could divorce in an instant. They arrive
in the middle of Mario Ah Sing the Real’s
Magic Show. (The father a mere monkey,
a trickster; the son a magician of the actual.)
There he is—our dear, only son.
Father and mother feel shock, thrill
at sight of him—grown, a man, a strange-
looking man. It’s the Hapa eyes;
he’s got the epicanthic fold and
the double lid. The better to see you with,
my dear. Mario spots his parents
heading in the dark for the last empty table.
And his patter changes. He is strange-
sounding too, his voice deep even as a
hairy baby. “… Raised in Hawai‘i, no
picnic. Too much da kine. Da
bad kine. You dink it’s all
aloha, you got another dink
coming, Haole. Take dees, Haole.
Take dat, Ho’ohaole.” He socks,
he punches, takes socks, takes punches that
clobber him against invisible walls. The audience
laughs “But. Yet. On the other hand—”
shaking out each sleeve of China Man gown.
Nada up his sleeves. “—the wahine are beautiful.
I love the wahine, and some of them have loved me.
They swam out to meet my ship.” He
chants spooky-voice mele, calls
upon his ‘aumākua—and a hula girl
appears out of nowhere / somewhere. She
hula hula up to him, her hands
making the “ ‘ama‘ama-come-swimming-to-me”
moves. Mario the Real snags a rope
of flowers in air, raises them above her head,
places them around her neck and shoulders. See?
No strings, no mirrors, no
hologram. Upon being circled, the Little
Brown Gal (in the little grass skirt)
says, “Aloha-a-a, Mario,” and on the long
out-breath becomes air. The flower
lei falls to the floor. The audience applauds.
“Aloha to you too,” says Mario. “A fine how
do you do. Hello goodbye.” He confides
to one and all, strangers and family alike:
“I’ve just been dumped. My wahine alohaed me.
Auwe! It hurts. Aiya!
My chi is broken. Aiya!” He lifts
his elbows; his arms dangle—broken wings.
The poor parents just about cry.
Oh, our son, our only child hurts
so bad, he presents his pain
for all to see. Oh, the guilt—to’ve raised
him among Hawai‘i’s violent people and heart-
breaking girls of every race. “Auwe-e-
e-e. Ai-ya-a-a.” And pidgin-speakers
teaching him to howl and yowl and keen. Our fault.
We should’ve stayed in California, mainland,
home after all. Having a kid
gets you running the hamster wheel.
But the audience is aiya-ing and auwe-ing.
He has an audience, and they’re with him, mourning along.
“My penultimate gal, Lori, girlfriend-
before-last, had the ring I gave her assayed.
Assayed?! I’d give her a fake?!
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not fake.
It’s good—twenty-five hundred
dollars. Oh, Mālei. Oh,
Mai’a mālei, I love you.’
No, you don’t, Lori. You don’t
love me. You had me assayed.” The poor
parents should’ve broken him out of magic.
But he keeps truck with the Little People
(who live in the rocks at the edges of old gardens).
The sharma thrush was his ‘aumākua. The pair
that lived in the Surinam cherry hopped in the grass
behind his feet, sang on branches above
his head. All day they sang him night-
ingale songs. All year they flashed him
Hallowe’en colors. Now he plays
clubs and lounges—like night all the time.
Mario the Real uncoils a length of rope.
“This cowboy rope belonged to a paniolo
I rode with on the Big Island. Most likely
any old rope will do.
I throw it into the air like so—and something
or someone catches it. I can feel him or her
or it grab ahold. I better go
exploring, and see … ” He shinnies up the tense
rope, lifts one foot, sets it down,
then the other, sets it solidly down,
and pulls himself into the invisible.
Mario does not reappear for a curtain call.
The audience waits a stretch of dead time, then
disbands, wanders, examines the rope, which
collapses on the floor, an ordinary thing.
Such relief when the missing son (Oh,
too many dead sons!) in regular
T-shirt and jeans exits the side door
into the parking lot in daylight.
Those who’ve seen a baby erupt into being
will ever after fear that he’ll as suddenly
slide, slip, crash out of life. Now
you see him, now you don’t.
Father and mother both have nightmares—
war, the war, the wars happening at this
very instant. A missile drops from the star-
warring sky. A rocket shoots up
out of the mined earth. Harming our child,
who is all the ages he’s ever been. Shrapnel
rips through his face, his baby-fat cheeks,
his goateed chin. His mother holds
his head. His father holds his hands—
they’ve been chopped off. The magician’s hands
chopped off. Don’t try to comfort me,
that it’s only a dream, only a dream.
I answer for what I dream. Kuleana hana.
Our son was born year of the Rabbit.
The character rabbit under the character forest
under the radical home equals the word
magic. It’s all right that he didn’t graduate
from a 4-year college, didn’t become
an engineer. Admire the magician most
of all the artists. He makes something out of
nothing, can himself become nothing.
The Ah Sing
family is together again; the parents hug
and kiss their grown son; he hugs and kisses
them back. You are safe. You are safe.
“Happy birthday, Dad. Howzit feel
turning sixty?” The father takes a deep
breath, and answers his son, “Old. I feel
old. I am old. No. No.
I don’t mean my looks. People of color
revenge: We always look good.
I feel time. It’s like a wind
cutting through my skin and insides. When
I was your age, time and I moved
at the same rate. I was in time. I went
with the music. The ancestors say: In China,
time moves slow like yearly rice, andante.
Chan / Zen has been working for 2,500
years to stop time—get that now-moment
down. I want to be where no
-beginning–
no-end. I’m not good at staying put.
The older I get, the more tripping out
and flashbacks. I live again feelings
I’ve already gone through. Pink
embarrassments, red guilts, purple guilts.
I see your life too. Your life flashes
before me. I look at you, my son,
and you are every age. I saw you being
born, face first. I saw your face,
eyes, mouth tight, then maw!
You were mouth, all mouth—red
tunnel into a universe. Then I saw
your whole body, your hairy little wet
body—you were so small, how
can you make your way in the world? How
could I, myself small, safeguard you?
I saw you—I see you—sit up—an owlet
in a nest, blinking big eyes at me, at everything,
ears perky, hair perky. You
were not a cuddle baby. You kicked and punched
out of swaddling, out of diapers, out
of the little gown. You sledded down the stairs
in your walker, bawled at the bottom—alive! You
said, ‘My eyes are little, but I can see
so-o-o much!’ Your toddling down-
hill faster and faster, and not falling.
Your announcing, ‘I am Second Bull
of Second Grade.’ Oh, I just now
got it—you were in a fight. You
came out second. I saw you
take your time running the bases—you hit
three men home. Grand slam!
Your popping up out of the ocean—
alive! Rell Sunn the Queen of Makaha
was watching too. Your concentrating for an hour
on the written driver’s test. Your telling us that
you obey the law, you registered for the Draft.
I am constantly remembering you.” Meaning,
I am constantly loving you. I am constantly
worried about you. Old people suffer,
too much feeling, shaking with feeling,
love and grief over too many dear ones,
and rage at all that harms and hurts them.
“Mario, I’m going to China. No,
no, I don’t mean I’m going to die there,
home with the ancestors. I’m curious to know
who I am alone among a billion three
hundred million strangers who look like me.
I am Monkey of Changes.” Hero of the talk-
stories that he raised his son on.
“I regret I missed the Revolution, and ongoing
revolutions. I was kept busy claiming
this country. ‘Love it or leave it.’ ‘Chink,
go back to China, Chink.’ I had to
claim my place, root down, own
America. This land is my land.
Why should we leave? We who made
everything wonderful, why should we leave?”
It’s easy to talk yourself out of leaving.
Easier to move in, stay, than to move out, go.
The troops will never come home.
“But now my work establishing Asia America
is done. Our nation won. We have a people.
And passport home. My leaving is not exile.
I must, I need act out my deep
down monkey nature. Wife, son,
let your indulgence set me free.”
And so, wife understanding and son
understanding, Wittman Ah Sing
begins his Going Forth. (Buddha left
wife and son. Confucius’ wife left him.)
From his bank, the Bank of San Francisco,
China Man took out his money.
Sittin’ in the sun,
Countin’ my money
Happy as I can be.
How very grand—there’s money, money
to spare. Grandparents and parents had had
leftover money too and passed it on.
There’s money. Enough to live in a rich country
for 6 months, or in a poor country
for the rest of my life. So-so
Security will send a check every
month to wherever I’ll be living.
China
begins at the Consulate, where you get your visa.
The last couple of times I, Maxine,
went, members of Falun Gong were protesting
against China persecuting them and their way of
kung fu. At first, they merely moved
and breathed, doing slow, quiet exercises
on the curb in front of the door to the Consulate.
They looked like other Chinatown ladies
who exercise in the parks of San Francisco.
Then, they started showing color photos
of torture—purple black eyes, a red rectum.
Wittman, lover of street theater, come,
talk to them. Three old women meditating
beside their yellow banner with the pink flower.
Look again. The poor things aren’t old;
they’re younger than oneself. But they dress old,
home-knit vests, home-sewn
pants, the same style patterns passed
along for generations, old country
to new country. They’re coifed old-
fashioned, Black Ghost hair.
It is raining. Martyrs praying in the rain,
beseeching China, shame on China. Two
sit cross-legged on the cement, eyes
shut, palms together. The woman who stands
also has her eyes closed; she holds
the banner out from its stanchion, one hand
in prayer position. Bags full of food
to last days. At Tiananmen
Square, the man faced off the tanks
with a bag of groceries in either hand, danced
stepping side to side, tank moving
side to side. A Chinese can dare
anything, do battle, armed with bags of food.
Wittman feels guilty, about to break
his vow never to cross a picket line.
Talk to these women, justify himself.
“Excusu me? Excusu me?” he says
to the woman standing. She opens her eyes,
about Falun Gong.” She reaches into a bag,
and gives him a CD, says, “Falun Gong
is good.” He goes for his wallet. She waves
No no no—shoos away
payment. Amazing—a Chinese who
doesn’t care too much for money.
The label has no info, only
the pink flower logo. “You hear
good. Falun Gong good.” “Thank
you. Daw jeah. Jeah jeah. I go
now to apply for visa in-country, your
country, China. I vow, I’ll do
something for your freedom of religion. Don’t you
worry.” “Dui dui dui.” I love it
when Chinese make that kind sound.
Dui dui dui. Agree agree agree.
We conjoin. Understand. We match.
(The CD turned out to be blank.
The true scrolls that Tripitaka Tang
and Monkey carried on the Silk Road also blank.
Meaning Noble Silence? Emptiness? Words
no good?) A purer citizen of the world
would boycott China—for tyrannizing Tibet
and Xinjiang, for shooting nuclear missiles
off Taiwan’s beam, for making weapons
and selling them to all sides. Better to
communicate or to shun?
Inside the Consulate,
the Chinese diaspora are seeking permission
home, yelling its dialects and languages,
the Cantonese hooting, honking like French,
lispi
ng like Spaniards, aiya-ing, the northerners
shur-shur-shurring. We’re nervous.
The borders are sealed, the homelands secure.
Every nation state is mean with visas.
Especially the U.S.A., especially
the P.R.C. We shut
them out, they shut us out.
Even Canada, even Mexico.
(But here’s a deal, brokered by our office
of Homeland Security: 39,000
visas back to China for aliens and/or
refugees. Can you trust that?)
Wait in line at the Applications window,
come back next week to Payment,
then Pick Up. In plain sight is money
heaped on a table, piles of banded bills
and loose bills. We’re the rich; we saved up
for years, for lifetimes, able to afford
travel to the other side of the world.
The form asks for one’s “Chinese name.”
At last, I’ve got a use for the Chinese name.
Space to write it 2 different ways:
characters and alphabet.
Hong Ting Ting. The poet Liu Shahe,
who sings Walt Whitman, sang my name,
“Tong Ting Ting, the sound of pearls,
big pearl and little pearls falling
into a jade bowl bell.” His fingers formed
pearls and dropped them into his cupped hand.
Now Wittman writes his Chinese name:
Chung Fu. Center Truth. When I first
imagined him, I gave him that name
as a brother name to my son’s,
Chung Mei. Center Beauty. My son,
child of Center Nation and Beautiful Nation.
Hexagram 61 of the I Ching
is Chung Fu, Center Truth. Don’t
believe those who tell you Chinese
have no word for truth. (Ha Jin
told me “we” have no word for truth,
nor privacy, nor identity.) Truth’s pictograph
is the claw radical over the child radical.
Americans understand, eagle snatches
Truth in talons. But to the Chinese,
the brooding mothering bird’s feet gently
hold the hatchling’s head. A cap of eggshell
clings to baby Truthie’s fontanel.
The superior person broods the truth. And if
his words are well spoken, he meets with assent—
dui dui dui dui—at a distance
of more than 1,000 miles. We won our visas.
Our names are legal, and we win countries.
Though we Chinese and we Americans
shouldn’t need passports and visas
to cross each other’s borders and territories.
President Grant and Emperor Tongzhi
signed a treaty giving freedom of travel—
“for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or
as permanent residents.” The right to curiosity!