You’ve heard, always heard: China’s
changing. China’s changed. China gone.
Old China nevermore. Too late.
Too late. Too late. Too late.
Voyage far, and end up at another
globalized city just like the one you left.
Vow not to stop until you can alight
in green country. Country, please remain.
Villages, remain. Languages, remain.
Civilizations, remain. Each village
a peculiar civilization. The mosh between
cars did empty. You got to sit
in the seat you’d paid for. Hillsides
streaming by on the north; on the south,
a river. Arched doors built into
slopes of hills. Cry “Open sesame!”
and enter the good earth. People walking
the wide, pathless ground, placing on the thresholds
flowers and red paper, wine and food,
incense. Ah, altars, doorsills of graves.
Ah, Ching Ming. All over China,
and places where Chinese are, populations
are on the move, going home. That home
where Mother and Father are buried. Doors
between heaven and earth open wide.
Our dead throng across the bourn,
come back to meet us, eat and drink with us,
receive our gifts, and give us gifts.
Listen for, and hear them; they’re listening for
and hear us. Serve the ancestors come back
to visit. Serve them real goods. If
no real goods, give symbols.
Enjoy, dear guests, enjoy life again.
Read the poems rising in smoke. Rituals
for the dead continue, though Communist Revolution,
Cultural Revolution, though diaspora. These hills
could be the Altamont Pass, and the Coast Range
and Sierras that bound the Central Valley. I
have arrived in China at the right time, to catch
the hills green.
And where shall I be buried?
In the Chinese Cemetery on I-5?
Will they allow my white spouse? We integrate
the cemetery with our dead bodies? It’s been my
embarrassing task to integrate social functions.
Can’t even rest at the end. Can’t
rest alongside my father and mother.
Cremate me then. Burn me to ashes. Dig me into
the peat dirt of the San Joaquin Valley.
Dig some more of me into the ‘aina of Hawai‘i.
Leftovers into the sipapu
navel at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and more
leftovers at the feet of oaks in Oakland
and redwoods in Muir Woods and eucalyptus
in the Berkeley grove, and around Shakespeare’s
plants in Golden Gate Park. All my places.
Yosemite. The Sierras. A few handfuls of me
off the Golden Gate Bridge, which I skated across.
And my last ashes on Angel Island, where
my mother was jailed on her way to my father and America.
Thinking about death and far from home, Wittman,
a skinny old guy with nothing to eat, looked
lonely. Chinese cannot bear
anyone being lonely. Loneliness is torture.
(What’s the word for lonely? “Nobody,” they say.
“I have nobody.”) Passengers this side and that side
proffered food. Buns, bow. Pickled
vegetables. Candied vegetables. Chicken fingers.
Beef jerky. They said, Eat, la. Eat, la.
Chinese can’t eat unless everybody eats.
“Daw jay,” he said, “Dough zheh. Jeah jeah.
Je je nay. Je je nee.”
Thanking in variations of accents and tones.
An old lady (that is, a person
of his own age), wiped the rim of her vacuum
bottle cup, poured, and with both hands
handed him tea while saying, “Ngum cha.
Ngum, la.” Being given tea,
accepting tea, you drink humbly, but think:
I am being welcomed, honored, adored. Out of all
who exist, we 2 tea drinkers
together. Be ceremonial and mindful, we
are performing Tea, performing the moment of eternity.
The tea woman, in the facing seat, held
a box in her lap. The size of a head.
The Man Who Would Be King’s head.
Pointing with his chin as Chinese do,
Wittman impolitely asked, “What
do you have in there?” Can’t be nice with small
vocabulary. She answered, or he understood
her to answer: “I’m a-train-riding
ashes and smashed bones.” “Aiya! How did he die?”
“Martial arts killed him.” Or “Bitter work
killed him.” Kung fu. Kung fu.
“Aiya-a-a,” chorused the Big Family.
Everyone listening, the widow told her life.
It went something like this: “Not so
long ago, a loon time, an era
of loon, this man, this very
man now ashes and bones, swam at night
from China to Hong Kong. A boat family,
who harbored in the Typhoon Shelter, gave
him bed on the water, and shared him 2 meals.
Day, they rowed him to a station for signing up
to live in a safe place / haven / sanctuary /
refugee camp. I.I.” Illegal Immigration.
“Aiya-a-a.” “O, Big Family,
hear me. For loon years, he—I too—
I was I.I. too—lived
up on top of the barbwired hill.
We met at the fence at the farthest edge. He
looked off the shores toward his lost country.
I looked off toward my lost country.
His was that dark mass that looms right there
forever across the Straits. Han Mountain.
He’d say, ‘They can see us. They can see us better
than we can see them.’ Hong Kongers
are rich, they waste money on electricity,
keep lights open all night long.
I could not see my country, Viet Nam.
Too far, and China in the way.
We married. We wrote: ‘We marry.
Free or in prison, forever, we marry.’
If only we could write ‘legal immigrants,’
and be legal immigrants.”
Why always
Illegal Immigration? Oh, no one
ought be made alien to any country.
No more borders. Nosotros no
cruzamos la frontera; la frontera
nos cruza.
The Vietnamese Chinese
woman addressed tout le monde, including
her husband, a ghost, who was standing behind
Wittman. He was a ghost in the listening crowd,
and he was the ashes and bones in the box.
“You were a good man, Old Rooster.
You worked hard. A farmer works hard.
He’ll always work hard, his life hard,
though he leaves the farm. Though farm /
ground / earth / floor be taken from him.”
The chorus intoned: “Aiya. Hai, la.”
“Taken by the government.” “Taken by business.”
“Taken by brothers.” “Deem the land.” “One
day mid-harvest, a middling harvest,
you, Old Rooster, gave up the fields,
and went to ‘seek your fortune.’ ” She said
in English, “seek your fortune.” A generation
had learned the language from fairy tales broad-
cast by loudspeakers across the commune
agricultural zone, across orchards,
furrows, paddies, dairies. “Farewell,
dear Father. Farewell, dear Mother.
The open road beckons me.” “Farewell,
my child. Go forth. Win your fortune.
Make money, my son. Find love.
Marry the princess.” The widow spoke addressing
her husband, telling him his own story.
“Following the waterways, you walked and swam,
swam and walked from duck pond and streams
and rivers to the Mouth of the Tiger. You had no
Permit To Settle. All through nights,
lights beckon Hong Kong Hong Kong
red red green green. Liang
liang. Ho liang. You swam
for those lights, and came to the ten thousand
sampans, the floating town gone now.
Free and safe for a night and a morning. Boat
people fed you and let you sleep, gave you
bed on the water, fed you twice, supper
and breakfast. JAWK!” She hit the box, caged
it with fingers and arms. “They CAUGHT him.”
Wittman jumped. She laughed; everybody
laughed. “Don’t be scared, foreign
Chinese person. They did not
torture my husband to death. He got
hit a few times was all. You know
the Chinese, they hit to teach you a lesson.
I saved him out of I.I. I got
out of jail because China and Viet Nam
became normal. Han and Viet same-same.”
“Hai, law. Hai, law.” Her American
listener chimed in: “Hola! Hola!
In California, we, Chinese and
Vietnamese, together celebrate Tet.”
Sing dawn. Tet nguyen dâ.
“I took you, my Chinese husband, by the hand,
and we left prison. I’m the one,
freed you, you Old Rooster. Woman
is better at living than man is. We
went to live in public housing just
like everybody else, the sampan
people, everybody. I made
money. All I do, each meal,
I cook enough for more than 2—
2 people eat very little.
The extra, I sell on the street. A hungry man
always comes along; he’ll buy
breakfast or lunch or dinner or suey yeah.
Life is easier on a woman. Your abilities,
my good Old Rooster, were to swim and to farm.
In the city, you had to sell your lick.
Ladies and gentlemen fellow travelers, he
sold his kung.” His strength, his labor. “You
rode a water-soldier boat out
to one of the warships from all over
the world. I watched you be lifted and lowered
by ropes. You hung from ropes down the side
of the ship’s mountainface. Using rags,
you painted the gray ship gray,
ashes, ashes, gray on top of gray.
Fields of gray above you and behind you, you
and the cadre of painters—many women—women,
who adore flowers—oozed gray everywhere
you touched. Metal doubled the sun’s heat,
and baked you, baked lead paint into
your skin. You could’ve let yourself
fall backward into air and water. But you,
everyday you went to Pun Shan Shek
and toiled for me. For me, you caught yang
fever. You breathed poison. Skin and lungs
breathed poison, sweated poison. We
could not wash the gray paint out of you.
It was painting warships killed you. That work
so dangerous, the foreign nations don’t order
their own water soldiers to do it. Old One,
I thank you for your care of me. You are / were
a good hardworking husband to me.
I’m sorry / I can’t face you, my gray
Old Rooster, we never had a son.
Okay. We’re each other’s child.
I take care of you, and you take care of me.
I bring you home. I’m sorry / I can’t
face you, I have taken too long
to bring you home. Stacks and stacks of caskets
and urns wait to get out of Hong Kong.
I pulled you out of the pile-up. We’re on
our way home. You’re a good man.
You worked hard. Jeah jeah jeah.
Daw jeah. Thanks thanks thanks.
Big thanks.” No verb tenses,
what is still happening? What is over?
Yet refugee camps? Yet piles
of unburied dead? Yet coolies painting
ships with lead? All that’s happened always
happening? “I too am walking mountain,”
said a man dressed Hong Kong styly,
expensive suit, expensive shoes, expensive
luggage. “I’ll sweep the graves, I mean, fix them.
Find my people’s bones, and bury them again.”
(Oh, to say “my people.”) “Cousin
was mad; he dug up Po and Goong.”
Mr. Walking Mountain laughed—heh
heh heh heh. Chinese laugh
when telling awfulness. “Cousin dug and cried,
dug and cried, ‘Out the Olds! Out
the Olds! Out! Out, old family.
Out, old thoughts. Out! Out!’
He dug up our grandparents and scattered
their bones—ha ha ha—because
I was rich in Hong Kong and did not
send money—heh heh heh—
did not feed him, did not make good,
did not make good him.” Chinese
laugh when pained. “I return. I shall
walk mountain, and follow li. I’ll
make good the ancestors.” Jing ho.
Make good. Fix. “Dui dui,”
said the Big Family. “Dui dui dui.”
Oh, to hear dui dui dui
to whatever I have to say.
The listening world gives approval, dui
dui dui dui. The train stops
at stations in built-up places. Where’s
open country? The planted fields, water
and rice, rice and water, are but green
belts around factory-villages. Those are
50-gallon drums of something rusting
into the paddy. That apartment and that
factory is a village. Legs of Robotron
stomp through the remains of the old pueblo.
Gray pearlescence—marshes and lakes,
mists and skies mirroring mirroring. Beautiful,
and alive. Or dead with oil slick? Mist
or smoke? Why are Wittman and I
on journey with the dead, and escorts of the dead?
Toward sunset, there swung past
a series of pretty villages, yellow adobe
houses, almost gold in the last light,
almost houseboats, wood railings
on the river for laundry and fishing. Half
the homes hung on either bank. Make
up your mind, Monkey, get off the train,
see the rivertown, enter its symmetry.
Paddle the river straight down the valley;
stream with the sun’s long rays. Walk
the right bank and the left bank. Get
yourself invited into those homes. Sit
on the balcony facing the river and the neighbors
on the other side, everyone’s backs to mountains.
Upon Good Earth, lay the body down,
open the mouth wide, let song rush through.
RICE VILLAGE
At the next station, Wittman, nobody else,
got off. The moment his feet touched ground,
the Chinese earth drew him down
to her, made him fall to his knees, kowtow
and kiss her. Gravity is love force. It bends
light and time and us. Mother pulls us to
her by heart roots. I have felt Great Spirit
before: Touching the green wood door
of Canterbury Cathedral. Hearing the air
of Hawai‘i singing ‘Aina. Standing in the fire
zone, where my house and neighborhood were burning.
Lofting great balls of pink mana
at the White House and Bush, and Iraq.
The interested traveller walked along the railroad
tracks, then up on path atop bunds.
In the San Joaquin Delta, we walk and run
and bicycle upon dikes too, call them levees.
Many kinds of plants. Crop diversity.
Rice in all stages of growing and going
to seed. All seasons happening at once.
Plains and terraces, levels and hills, greens
dark and light, blues, and straw, are dotted
with moving red—the farmers are working dressed
in red. They can see where one another are.
They are seen; they are lucky. It’s beautiful
and lucky to dot red on anything—cookies,
buns, baby carriers, envelopes, white
chicken meat, white dogs. On one’s self,
who blesses the earth good and red.
Wittman got to their village before they did,
nightfall ere home from work. The yellow
adobe pueblo was one conjoined structure.
Neighbor and neighbor lived with common walls
this side and that side. Each life impacts
every life. You’d have to live carefully.
You’d watch your moods. And your actions.
Curious Monkey entered through an opening
in a wall and faced another wall,
decided to go right, right being
the right way, usually. The next doorway
took him to an alley; he could look-see
into courtyards, like outdoor kitchens
and laundries and pantries and even bedrooms.
An old squatting grandma was stirring a wok.
Another was washing vegetables. They paid no
mind to the stranger shadowing by. Kitty
cats and a big pig and chickens—swine flu,
bird flu—slinked, lumbered, scratched,
came and went into and out of houses.
That alley jigjagged into another
alley that opened on to the public square.
La plaza at the center of the pueblo. And at the center
of the plaza was the waterworks, not a fountain
but two porcelain troughs with PVC
pipes above and below, and faucets in rows.
Cupping water in worship-like hands
(turn off tap with elbow), quaff
as if welcoming myself with ceremony,