The Wangs vs. the World(51)

“Impossible!”

“You’re a Communist Party member—”

“How can that be?”

“You have three children. And a wife named Mei Li.”

“But I do have those. That is me. Who else could it be?”

“Don’t lose heart; we’ll figure it out. I have a colleague in Beijing looking into it; we’ll surely be able to know if this is just some sort of paperwork issue.”

“But the land?”

“You must have patience, Mr. Wang. China’s not like America. Things take time.”

“It’s been weeks!”

“And we are edging forward. You don’t clap your hands and make things happen over there. We have colleagues who help us, but it—”

“Alright, alright. Enough. I expect more next time we connect. You know, my colleague, he had only good words to say about you.”

“Mr. Wang, this could turn into a long journey. The government won’t be handing land out. There is no set reclamation process. There are no guarantees of any sort. Even with last year’s new property law that you’re so hopeful about, nothing is straightforward. I cannot say what will happen if you insist on going to China.”

“I know all of that. I don’t expect you to be able to figure out how to proceed—I’ll take care of that. Your job is to give me all of the information I need to formulate a plan. Be sure that you know more than I do the next time we talk.”

When Charles hung up the phone, Barbra was staring at him.

“The land??”

He kept his eyes on the road.

All his life, the land in China had been a promise. Starting back before he could even remember, his father’s friends had gathered nightly around the mah-jongg table, cracking melon seeds, drinking tumblers of gao liang, and talking about the land in China. Later, through all the long, humid evenings in Taipei, as he did homework in the next room, their big words had floated in and settled all around him: “We’ll get back the land in China,” they reassured each other. “We’ll go back and demand it.” Qu ba di yao huei lai. That’s what they told themselves, those displaced men who had once ruled a continent and were now exiled to an island—the landinChina, the landinChina, the landinChina, until it became a promise that seeped into little Wang Da Qian’s very bones.

Could they have been wrong?

Or were they so right that he was there already, living out another temblor of his fault-lined life?

“Ah bao, what is ‘the land’?”

He didn’t want to tell her. Barbra knew, of course. He’d talked about it before often enough, but he didn’t want to tell her now that the last of their money, his money, had gone to hire this lawyer who might prove, somehow, that the land was still part of the Wangs. The Nazis had to return looted artworks—why shouldn’t the Communist Party return looted birthrights?

“Is this about your such-a-big-deal family, hmm? I tell you before, there is no way you get anything back from the government!”

His wife was never easy to ignore, but Charles kept his lips pressed shut and his eyes on the road. Barbra couldn’t understand because she had never had anything. Not really. She grew up in school housing—a single shared room with bedrolls spread every night, showering next to the janitor’s kids—and had barely left that meager house before she slipped right into his bed.

If you never have anything, you can never lose anything.

Charles tried to think of an analogy Barbra would understand. What if, he imagined telling her, what if all the Persian kids in Beverly Hills torched their Ferraris and smashed their bottles of Dior Homme before joining the Taliban? What if they marched through the city and snatched up properties, pulling you onto the street and calling you a godless capitalist pig, kicking you with feet still clad in the tasseled Prada loafers they couldn’t bear to relinquish? Wasn’t your house still rightfully yours? Wouldn’t you want it back after they were inevitably vanquished by some makeshift Arizona militia? And wouldn’t you just burn with anger at the thought of the state taking ownership of your property after the rebels had been routed? At a ragtag bunch of false politicians trying to build a new America on your hard-won acres?

Of course. And you would be right to feel that way. Everyone would think so. Your wife would support your every effort to regain that home instead of insulting your family and turning up an unappreciative little nose at your goals.



“Big deal, small deal. You would not know the difference,” he said, defiant.

“What do you mean?”

Charles shrugged his lip.

He wanted to say it.

He didn’t want to say it.

He said it: “You can’t understand this! I give you everything you have! You never have to worry about anything!”

Barbra stared at him, eyes big. Her nostrils widened as she breathed in.

Now he couldn’t stop, didn’t even want to. “You think all I want is the land, the land, the land? No! The land is important because it is Wang jia de! Part of the family—”

“And because my family is poor we—”

“You don’t know what it is like.”

They stared at each other until Charles had to turn his eyes back to the road. It wasn’t just the Wangs’ land that mattered, it was all of China, every road he’d never trod, every mountain he’d never climbed, every monument he’d never beheld, every bush he’d never pissed behind—it all should have been his.