The Kitchen God's Wife Part 17

Anyway, when Helen complained about her arthritis that day, I told her I would finish twisting the wire on the wreaths. I didn't say this was to thank her for saving my life in Nanking. She wouldn't have understood. But I knew what I was doing.

And now I will tell you how we escaped with our lives and didn't even know it.

Only one suitcase each, that's all we could bring. And only one hour until we had to leave Nanking. That's how it was-we had to decide what we needed to survive, what we could not bear to leave behind, all in one hour. No time to sell anything. The whole city was taonan-crazy. I was scared.

But Wen Fu did not know how to comfort me. When I started to tell him what had happened in the marketplace, he waved me away.

"Don't you have eyes?" my husband shouted. "I have more important things to do than talk about your shopping." And then he walked over to speak to a man in a truck. He lit a cigarette, smoked two puffs, then looked at his watch and stamped the cigarette out before lighting another. So that's how I knew he was scared too.

Jiaguo was the one who told Hulan and me that we could pack only one suitcase each. "What about my new table? What about my two chairs?" Hulan cried. A few days after we arrived in Nanking, we had both bought a few extra pieces of furniture, thinking we would stay longer in the capital city. And while Hulan's table and chairs were cheap, not very good quality, they must have been fancier than anything she had ever owned.

"Don't worry about those things," Jiaguo said, and then he took Hulan to the side and whispered something to her. I could not hear, but I saw Hulan's face was like that of a little girl, pouting one moment, beaming the next.

"Hurry," Hulan said to me in her new bossy voice. "No time to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves."

I wanted to tell her, "I was not the one complaining." But we had no time to argue.

As we packed, our air force servant went in and out of the room, carrying in the things we asked him to find: Wen Fu's other air force uniform; my sewing basket, so I could take just the needles; two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks, a set each for Wen Fu and myself.

The servant chatted nervously to us the whole time. "If you listen to the radio, if you read the newspapers, you would know nothing about the j.a.panese coming, nothing," he said. "But all you have to do is look at people's faces in the city."

The more he talked the more urgent our packing became. He said that runaway soldiers were robbing, even killing people to steal their clothes and disguise themselves as civilians before the j.a.panese came into the capital. Anyone with money or connections was running away. Even the mayor-the one Chiang Kai-shek appointed because he promised he would protect Nanking forever-he was running away too, and with lots of money.

"We are not running away," Hulan said sharply to the servant. "The second and third cla.s.s have a new a.s.signment in Kunming, very important business there. That's why we're going."

I wondered if she really believed this. Is that what Jiaguo had told her? And what kind of important a.s.signment was in Kunming? Long time ago Kunming used to be a place where they sent officials who fell into disgrace. If they didn't chop your head off, they sent you to Kunming, almost to the edge of China, a place filled with tribal people. Of course, that was not the case anymore, but still, I thought about an expression Uncle once used: kunjing Kunming- "stuck in a tight corner, just like living in Kunming," meaning you had been pushed out of the real world. Living in Kunming would be like hiding in a secret spot where no one could find us, a safe place. I was glad to go.

After I finished packing Wen Fu's clothes, I started to fill my own suitcase. At the bottom, under the lining, I could still feel the ten pairs of silver chopsticks I got from my wedding dowry. On top of this, I put a small biscuit tin containing all my jewelry and a little blue perfume bottle my mother had given me long ago. I covered these things up with some good clothes. And then I saw I had packed only winter clothes-as if I would not live through more than one season. What bad-luck thinking! So at the last minute, I took out a sweater and put in two summer dresses.

The pots and pans and some old shoes-those were given to the cook and her daughter. As to the other things I could not take, I saw immediately who I should give those to. Wan Betty was walking down the road and I called to her to stop a few minutes.

"Where will you go?" I asked her. "Back to Nanchang, to your husband's parents?"

She shook her head quickly. "They don't want me, I don't want them," she said, so strong, so brave. "I'm staying here."

"Help me take a few things, then," I said. And I called to the servant to bring over the rest of my clothes, Wen Fu's radio, and my little black sewing machine. I instructed him to put these things into the pedicab, still sitting in front of our house.

"You take those things home," I told Wan Betty. And then I saw Hulan biting her lips, watching the servant carrying out the sewing machine. I saw how much she wanted that machine for herself, even though we had no room for it.

Wan Betty started to protest, and I stopped her: "We have no time for this kind of polite argument."

So she smiled and said, "Fine, then. I will use the sewing machine to make a good living for myself and my baby." She took my hands and squeezed them. "This is a debt I will always owe you," she said. "Even if I can return ten times all this, I still have to repay you forever."

I knew this was her good-luck wish that both of us would be alive to meet again. And then she quickly pulled something out of her purse. It was a picture of herself as a bride, a cheap photograph. She was dressed in a wrinkled long white satin gown, her pilot husband in black pants, a white dinner jacket, and a crooked bow tie. They were the same clothes every couple borrowed from the photographer who did the Western wedding pictures.

I thanked her for the photograph. I thought she was very brave to stay, because I think she could have argued with the air force to take her along.

And now Jiaguo shouted, "We're going!" Then Wen Fu shouted the same thing, and the servants hurried us along. We threw our suitcases into the back of an open military truck, then climbed in after them. The back of the truck was so high Wen Fu had to pull me in as Hulan pushed me from behind.

"Hurry!" Jiaguo shouted in a higher-pitched voice. And suddenly my heart started to beat hard, thinking we were not escaping fast enough, that just as we started to leave, the j.a.panese would arrive. Everybody seemed to have the same fear.

"Hurry, we're going!" people were now shouting together. "Hurry, get in. Don't waste time!"

The back of the truck was quickly filled with nine people, all of us elbow-to-elbow crowded. Hulan and I were the only women. Besides us and our husbands, there were two pilots from the third cla.s.s, two officials, one who acted much more important than the other, an old man who paid a lot of money to ride in the truck, and of course, the driver, a man we called "Old Mr. Ma." He wasn't really old. That was a term of respect. He was in charge of taking us all the way to Kunming.

And then Old Mr. Ma shouted a curse in his hoa.r.s.e voice, the truck started with a big roar, and we were going down the street, past other houses that had lost their elegance like the one we had just left. We turned down another road and then drove out the West Wall Gate.

We made many turns, traveled down the small roads hidden on the sides by tall trees. And as we left the city, we pa.s.sed Sorrowfree Lake. Even in the wintertime it was beautiful, calm and quiet, with willow trees hanging down, sweeping the banks. It looked as if it had not changed one leaf since the first emperor. I was sorry I had not come there for a walk to feel that kind of unchanging peace in my heart.

And then I saw a boy standing next to the lake. He was very far away but we could see him waving. He jumped up and down, shouted something. We thought he had seen the pilots' uniforms and was now cheering us as heroes, so we waved back. He started running toward us, then jumped up and down, waved both arms, crossing them above his head. He wanted us to stop. Of course, we could not stop. As we drove past him, he stamped his feet. And then we saw him pick up some rocks along the edge of the sh.o.r.e. He threw them into the still lake, and the water broke and shivered. He threw his arms up in the air, wide like an explosion. "Poom!" he shouted. "Poom! Poom!" And then that bad boy picked up another rock and threw it at our truck. Although he didn't hit us, we now heard what he shouted. "Runaways! Cowards!"

We drove to the Yangtze River harbor just outside the city. We were told that once we were there we would catch a boat to our halfway stop, Hankow-Wuchang, in the central part of the country, a place nicknamed "Demon's Furnace"-so hot that people joked a native from this area would think bathing in a vat of boiling oil was a good way to escape the heat. But of course, it would not be that way now; this was wintertime, this was wartime, no joking around.

We were on the boat for maybe a few days, maybe as long as a week. I don't remember now how long it was, because I have taken other boat rides since then, and sometimes I confuse them all.

Anyway, after we got off the boat in Hankow-Wuchang, we rested one night in a hotel. The next morning, we found Old Mr. Ma had already loaded our suitcases into the back of an army-style truck, the same kind we jumped into when we were in Nanking. This one, however, had a big tank on wheels attached to the back for carrying gasoline. That was the only way to get to Kunming back then. We didn't have gas stations every ten miles, no such thing. And we did not travel on big highways, with seventy-mile-an-hour speed limits. When we left Hankow, we drove on narrow dirt roads, two lanes, sometimes only one. We went twenty miles an hour, because that's how fast that truck could go. So if there had been any j.a.panese along the road, all they would have had to do was run by our truck and pull us out.

The first day, I was worried we weren't escaping fast enough. The second day, I was still a little worried. But after that, I forgot about my fears. I was bored. We traveled inward, away from the fighting. It was like going backward, to another world, a place from long time ago, before the war. And none of us minded. We would be safe.

On the way west to Changsha, we drove alongside the river and through villages with lots of narrow streams running through. In one place we saw the water was thick with fish-Hulan said it looked like some kind of rich soup.

In those poor, backward places, you would not think China was in any kind of war with outsiders. People there did not get newspapers. They could not read. And in any case, it was the beginning of the war and those people did not think their one mu of land was worth fighting over. They had no time to worry about anything except the price of grain at the market, the cost of seed for next year's crops, and how they would eat when no money was left over.

Along the way, we did not run into any j.a.panese. Our only enemies were a fallen-down tree blocking our way, a big hole in a tire that slowed us down, things like that.

One time it was a pig who would not get out of the way. Old Mr. Ma honked many times, drove forward very slowly, and nudged the pig with the truck b.u.mper. And the pig just turned around and b.u.t.ted his head on the truck, attacking it as if it were another pig. Wah! We laughed so hard. But then Wen Fu said he knew how to solve our problem. He jumped out and pulled a gun from the holster strapped across his chest.

"Don't shoot him!" I shouted. "He'll move away soon." But Wen Fu was not listening to me. He walked over to the animal, who was now snorting around the truck's tires. Hulan closed her eyes. Jiaguo said, "He's only joking." And then Wen Fu pointed his gun at the pig. We all stood still, just like that pig, his ears now twitching, his tail stiff and pointed, watching Wen Fu with a wary eye.

Suddenly an old man came running up the side of the road, shouting, "So that's where you are, you stinky old thing!" Wen Fu turned to look. The old man was waving a little ta.s.sel for a whip. "Bad pig!" he cooed. "Come here, you bad thing."

I was so relieved! We all started to laugh. Just then, Wen Fu turned back to the pig and fired his gun, only once, hitting the pig in his stomach. And that poor pig was screaming, blood streaming out. He stumbled to the side of the road before falling into a ditch, his four legs pointed into the air.

The old man's mouth dropped wide open. He ran over and looked at his pig. He began to curse, slapping the ta.s.sel on the ground, before shaking it at Wen Fu. "Are you some kind of crazy demon?" the old man shouted. Wen Fu frowned, then pointed his gun at the old man, whose eyes grew big as coins.

This time Jiaguo stood up and shouted: "Stop!"

Wen Fu put his gun down, then smiled at Jiaguo. "Of course I was only joking," he said. He put his gun away, then quickly climbed back into the truck. But I could see how nervous everyone around me looked. We were quiet for the rest of the day.

Just beyond Changsha, we drove past hills with rice terraces cut into them. This is the kind of China you Americans always see in the movies-the poor countryside, people wearing big hats to protect themselves from the sun. No, I never wore a hat like that! I was from Shanghai. That's like thinking someone from San Francisco wears a cowboy hat and rides a horse. Ridiculous!

In any case, the people in those places were simple, also very honest and friendly. During the day, we would stop at little villages, and children would crowd around us, only staring, never touching or asking questions. The air force servant would buy things for us to eat at the food stands. It was all local food, already made: a bowl of spicy dan-dan noodles or fatty pork with cabbage. Once it was a bean curd fried with chili peppers-oh, very tasty, the best dish we ate in two hundred miles.

When nighttime came, we had to quickly find a place to stay. The roads were too dark to see, and a sleepy driver could easily drive into a field-the same way Wen Fu did with his little car in the cemetery. So when the sun stopped, we stopped. And that's when we learned what kind of luck we had.

One time it was a pleasant place, a simple hotel, with clean beds and a common bathroom. Another time it was a roof over our heads in a school or a hospital dug into a hill. And once, it was a plank of wood in a pig shed, and at night the animals would be grunting at us from the outside, trying to get back in.

We didn't complain too much. Chinese people know how to adapt to almost anything. It didn't matter what your background was, rich or poor. We always knew: Our situation could change any minute. You're lucky you were born in this country. You never had to think this way.

On our journey, we pa.s.sed all kinds of places filled with tribal people, dirty hats on their heads. They ran to the truck and tried to sell us things, cigarettes and matches, a cup made out of a tin can, that kind of junk. And when they gave us their best food, their highest quality, all you could do was stare at the two pieces of dried-out meat lying on top of watery rice and wonder what kind of animal this meal had once been.

I remember when we finally arrived in a bigger city, Kweiyang. We were going to stay there for a few days, so the air force could fix the truck and get more gasoline before the long, hard drive into Kunming. Wen Fu knew a saying about Kweiyang, something like this: "The sky doesn't last three good days, the land isn't level for even three inches." That was because it rained all the time. And the city was very b.u.mpy. The buildings and streets went up and down like the back of a dragon. And behind the city stood sharp rocky hills, looking like ancient men, too stiff to move.

Everyone got out of the truck, very tired from the day's drive. Old Mr. Ma pointed to a restaurant across the street and said we should eat there while he went to find us a hotel. So we walked across the street. And in front of the restaurant we saw a giant wooden tub. And when we looked inside the tub we saw many white eels-alive and still swimming! In Shanghai, this was a rare treat, very special. Here we learned the white eels were so plentiful you could order them as an everyday dish-morning, noon, and night.

The cook dipped a net into the tub and drew out the slippery eels, calling to us, "Fresh, see?" That night we ate plenty, big platters piled high with eels cooked whole, as thick as our fingers. We all agreed the meal was the best we had eaten. So when Old Mr. Ma said he had found us a hotel, the finest in town, first-cla.s.s, we expected a palace!

Let me tell you, it was terrible-primitive, dirty. When I asked where the bathroom was, they said, "Outside." I went outside and there was no bathroom, no toilet, not even a curtain. When they said outside, that's what it was, outside!-a dirty spot on the ground where everybody's business was right in front of your eyes. I can laugh about this now, but back then, I said to myself, I'd rather not go. I went back to my room. I stayed there until I was about to burst, tears and sweat dropping from my face. It's true. I waited that long before I forced myself to go outside again.

The inside part of the hotel was just as bad. They used any kind of thing for a mattress-dirty straw with little rocks still clinging to it, old feathers and things you did not want to imagine. The cloth holding all this in was thin, had never had hot water poured over it to tighten the threads. So it was easy for bugs to hide inside the mattress-just walked right in as if the door were open. During the nighttime, they crawled back out to eat our blood while we were sleeping. This is true, I saw them on Wen Fu's back.

I said, "Hey, what's this? Here, there-like little red dots."

He reached around to touch them, then yelled, "Ai! Ai!" He was jumping up and down, slapping his back, trying to shake them off. And I was trying not to laugh. When he finally calmed down, I helped him pluck them off, and where that bug's mouth had been, there was now a bigger red spot underneath. And then Wen Fu shouted that I had one too-on the back of my neck! I started jumping and screaming too. He laughed, showed me what he pulled off, then crushed it in half with his fingernail. Stinkbugs! What an awful smell!

The next day, I heard everybody had the same stinkbug problem. Over breakfast we complained to Old Mr. Ma in a joking way. And then Jiaguo came into the room and told us the news. The j.a.panese army had invaded the capital city: Nanking was cut off completely. He could not tell us whether people there did not resist, whether good treatment was given as promised. n.o.body knew yet what had happened.

I thought about Wan Betty, her strong words. Did she bow down to the j.a.panese? I was sure other people had the same kind of thoughts, although we did not discuss our feelings with one another. We were quiet. We no longer complained about our conditions in Kweiyang, not even in a joking manner.

After we left Kweiyang, we drove higher and higher into the hills, then into the mountains. Hulan and I were staring over the side of the truck, very quiet. Just to see that steep cliff made us feel as if we were already tumbling down. The road became skinnier and skinnier. And every time we hit a little b.u.mp or hole, we cried out-"Wah!"-and then laughed a little and covered our mouths. We were all sitting in the back, bouncing up and down on our suitcases, trying to hold onto something so we did not slide too much and rub our bottoms raw.

Sometimes Old Mr. Ma let me sit up front with him because I was pregnant. He didn't say that was the reason. He never gave anyone any kind of reason. He would look at all of us every morning when it was time to leave, and then he would nod at someone and that meant the person could sit up front.

On the road, Old Mr. Ma had become the most powerful man in our group, like an emperor. Our lives depended on him. And we all knew a seat up front was the same as a throne. The seat had a cushion, and if you were tired, you could stretch your legs forward, lean your head back and fall asleep. It was not like the back of the truck, where everyone was always fighting over two inches and someone else's rough knees. On that mountain road, we didn't own anything more than our own lives and a chance for the front seat, and everything else, even the things we had in our suitcases, was worthless out there.

Of course, we all had reasons why we should sit on the seat. We talked about those reasons during mealtimes, when we knew Old Mr. Ma was listening. One man was old and complained of arthritis. Another man had caught a bad sickness in Kweiyang, not contagious, but he was still very weak. Another mentioned many times what an important official he was. Jiaguo admitted he was the top-ranking pilot, a captain, recently promoted. Hulan paid many compliments to Old Mr. Ma for his quick thinking while driving. And Wen Fu gave him packets of cigarettes or challenged him to card games which Old Mr. Ma always happened to win.

During the daytime the mountain road was very busy, but not with motorcars. There were no cars out there, only children carrying heavy bags of rice on their backs, or a man walking next to his ox-drawn cart, or people with stands set up for trade. When they saw us coming, they would squeeze up against the side of the mountain to let us pa.s.s, staring at us the whole time, then looking back down the road from where we had come.

"The j.a.panese will be here soon," Wen Fu joked to them. And those poor villagers became frightened.

"How far behind?" an old man asked.

"Nothing to worry about!" Jiaguo shouted back. "He's only joking. No one is coming." But the villagers acted as if they did not hear him. They were still looking down the road.

And then one night Old Mr. Ma stopped the truck on the side of the road, jumped out, and told us no villages were coming up for many, many hours. "We'll sleep here," he said. And then he lay down on his front seat, no more discussion.

It was so black at night, you could not tell where the road ended and the cliff and sky began. n.o.body dared walk too far from the truck. Soon the men had made a little table out of suitcases piled on top of each other, and they began to play cards by the light of a gla.s.s candle lamp.

The baby was now so heavy in my womb I often ached to let my bladder go. "I have to do some business," I said to Hulan. "How about you?" She nodded. And then I thought up a very smart plan. I took Hulan's hand and told her to follow me. I put my other hand against the side of the mountain, the part that stood away from the cliff. And as I moved my hand against the rocky side, we walked away from the men to a place just around a curve. And that's where we both did our business. I had changed so much since Hulan and I first met-I was no longer embarra.s.sed over matters like this, not the way I was in the bathhouse in Hangchow.

Afterward, I realized I was very, very tired. I was not yet ready to walk back. So we both leaned against the mountain and looked up at the sky. We did not speak for several minutes, no need with a skyful of stars like that.

And then Hulan said, "My mother once showed me the patterns of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the night sky. She said they look different, depending on what part of the cycle it is. Sometimes you can see the front of the face, sometimes the back of the head."

I had never heard of such a thing. But I was not sure whether this was true in her family's province, so I only asked, "What patterns?"

"Oh, I've already forgotten," she said sadly, and was quiet again. But after a few more minutes' silence, she spoke up. "I think maybe one was called the Snakegirl. Look there, doesn't that one seem like a snake with two pretty eyes at the top? And that one there with the big cloudy part going across, I think that's the Heavenly Cowherd Maiden."

Oh, I had heard of that old story before. "He was the cowherd, she was the weaving girl," I corrected her. "One of the seven daughters of Kitchen G.o.d."

"Perhaps, or perhaps I am thinking of the cowherd's sister," she said. I did not argue. It did not matter what Hulan remembered or forgot or was making up. I was so tired I let my mind wander away, and I too was looking for make-believe patterns in the sky. I found one that I called the Separated Goose Lovers, and then another that I named the Drowned Woman with Her Hair Unbound. And then we both made up stories to go along with them, and they always began, "Long time ago," followed by some made-up place from our childhoods: "in the Kingdom of the Lady with the Horse's Head," or "in the Eye of Heaven Mountain."

I don't remember the stories exactly. They were very silly, Hu-lan's more so than mine. Her stories always ended with some sort of hero popping up and marrying an ugly animal who then turned out to be a kind and beautiful princess. I think mine had to do with lessons learned too late-not to eat too much, not to talk too loud, not to wander out at night by yourself-in any case, always about people who fell off the earth and into the sky because of their willful ways. And although I can no longer see those bright patterns in my mind, I still remember that feeling of friendship as we looked at the whole sky.

We all clung to little things like that-a make-believe story, a faraway star that became something closer to our hearts. Along our journey, we looked for signs of contentment in the world, a peace that would never change. Nothing else to watch for. Once we saw a bird sitting on the back of a grazing cow. We imagined they had been little and big friends forever. Once we saw a skinny boy in a village who waved to us with a genuine smile, not at all like the boy at the lake outside Nanking. We talked about that good boy all day, how handsome he was, smart too-how much he reminded us of our boy cousins, who now, in our memories, were very well behaved.

And one day we felt something in our hearts that made us forget for the rest of the journey all the miseries we had already gone through, all the unknown troubles that still lay ahead.

We had stayed overnight in a village called the Twenty-four Turnarounds. That was the start of a winding pa.s.s in the mountains. Someone in the village said it was best to cross the pa.s.s that day, because the next day an army truck was going to come from the other direction, starting from a village at the very top of the pa.s.s, called Heaven's Breath. If we met them going up-what trouble! There was no room for two army-style trucks to squeeze by each other. Our truck, the downside one, would have to go backward a long ways until we found a wide spot. This was dangerous: if our driver lost control or made even a small mistake-over the cliff, gone!

"How many li before we are finished with these twenty-four turnarounds?" I asked a local man.

The villager laughed. "It is not twenty-four all together, young miss," he said. "Maybe twenty-four each li. Oh! A person must go forty-eight li before his head and stomach stop spinning. But watch out for Lady White Ghost up there. She likes to pull people off the road, make them stay longer and drink ten thousand rounds of tea with her. The tea of immortality, we call it. You drink one sip, you never want to leave her cloudy house. Maybe you forget to come back!"

What a terrible sense of humor this man had! Jokes that could attract disaster! I did not know why everyone was laughing, Hulan too.

When we started that day you could see the clouds blowing above. The wind cried in little gusts, "Hoo! Hoo!" and then got quiet again. We wrapped blankets tight around us. And then our truck began to climb. After the first twenty-four turns, we were inside the bottom of those thin clouds and the wind was blowing even stronger. After another twenty-four turns, we were in the middle of the clouds. It was growing much thicker. Suddenly our whole world turned white, and our driver shouted he could not see very far in front. The truck stopped. Everyone except me jumped out, murmuring, "How strange! How strange!"

I heard Wen Fu's voice shouting, "Why are we stopping? Didn't you hear what that man said? We have to keep going!"

I looked at Wen Fu, the dark hole of his mouth shouting into the wind. I looked at the others. Their faces wore swirling veils of mist, like ghosts, so beautiful yet frightening. Ai! I wondered if we had already died and only I knew this. I looked down and saw no road beneath us.

"What will become of us?" I called out. But my voice seemed to vanish as soon as the words came out. And again, I had this feeling we were dead. I imagined my voice soaking into a cloud filled with other ghosts' laments, until the clouds became so heavy they turned into tears and rained.

But then Hulan climbed back in the truck, stumbling over suitcases. And I decided we could not be dead, because a real ghost would never be this clumsy.

"It is just like that story I told you about," she said, "the Heavenly Cowherd Maiden. This is heavenly cow's milk spilled from the sky." And I told myself, A real ghost would not have said such a silly thought.

She opened her suitcase, dipped her hands inside until she pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned red wedding skirt. What was she thinking? She threw this to Jiaguo, and he was very calm. He ordered everyone to hurry and get back into the truck.

And now I could see that Hulan had taken my idea from several nights before. Jiaguo ran one hand against the side of the mountain, the roughness letting him know he was still in touch with the world. In his other hand he held the red skirt so it flapped in the wind, a marker the driver could follow as Jiaguo walked forward. The truck began to move, very slowly, but at least we were moving again. After a half-hour, Jiaguo climbed back into the truck, completely wet with exhaustion from his uphill walk. Wen Fu took over, and after him another pilot, until, inch by inch, the sky above us became brighter, the clouds turned thin, light blue in color, and we no longer needed the red wedding skirt to see the dangers of the road.

We continued to turn and climb, turn and climb-so many curves you could not tell what lay ahead beyond yet another bend. Until finally we came out of the wind and the clouds entirely. And we all gasped out loud-the surprise of it-then sighed. Because where we now were was like a place you read about only in a story-the blue heavens above, the white clouds beneath, all the problems of the world forgotten.

For the rest of the afternoon we traveled along the tops of those mountains, above the clouds. We were so happy. We were like people who had truly died and come back as G.o.ds: happy, healthy, wise, and kind.

The man who had become sick in Kweiyang, now he said he felt strong. The old man with arthritis, he held up his wrists and claimed he too felt much better.

"This place is like a magic spring I once saw," said Hulan, "able to cure anything. It releases a power inside that you didn't know you had." It was that same silly story she had told me in Hangchow, but now everyone was agreeing with her, even I.

And just as Hulan described it, I found Wen Fu talking from a place in his heart I never knew he had.

"This is what it is like to fly," he told me. "This kind of joy. To look down and see the clouds beneath-that is the best. Sometimes I dip like this, up and down, into the tops of the clouds, then back up into the sunshine, like swimming in waves."

"Is that true? It's always like this?" I asked with an excited voice.

"Truly. Always," he said. "Sometimes I'm so happy, I sing out loud. "