The Wangs vs. the World(99)
After waiting almost ten minutes for the elevator, which seemed only to go up, Charles found a glass-enclosed staircase that ran along the exterior of the hotel. He descended two dozen floors by foot until, nearly at ground level, he reached an elevated walkway connecting the building to one across the street. Eager to get out into the city, he pushed open the heavy glass door and walked into the smoggy heat of late afternoon.
On the street below, a dark brown ox hitched to a wooden cart stood calmly at a seven-way stoplight. The leather braces around its neck were broken and held together with a length of soiled rope; its horns swung up on either side of its head, an ineffectual crown. To the animal’s left, there was a gold Lexus, one blacked-out window rolled down. From a floor above, Charles tracked a plume of smoke from the driver’s cigarette as it floated up towards the beast and into its giant eye. The ox blinked but didn’t move, just switched its muddy tail from side to side as scooters and bicycles—so many bicycles—pooled all around.
Plunging down the last flight of stairs, Charles finally stepped foot on a real Beijing street. He wanted to lose himself in the city. At random, he chose a direction—East. East was best—and began to walk as quickly as he could on leather soles and three airplane meals. A group of schoolchildren in uniform ran ahead of him—little girls in braids, little boys with their downy heads shaved—and crowded into a shop whose walls were lined with clear bins full of snacks. In the grassy median of Wang Fu Jing Street, men lounged around a metal trash can that they’d turned into a makeshift barbecue, flames licking the juicy, dripping skewers of meat. One man turned the kebabs as the others squatted on the ground playing a game of liar’s dice. Next to them, a woman peered into the ear of a white-haired grandfather who sat splayed on a stool, his shirt open and belly hanging out. Charles hadn’t seen a long-handled ear pick in decades, but now he remembered his aunt and uncle taking those same positions in the shaded courtyard of their Taipei home, digging out each other’s ear wax.
Charles’s right pants pocket sagged. After going through security, he had taken the jade seal out of his carry-on bag and put it in one pocket, then taken the small piece of bone and tucked it in the other. He curled his fingers around the bone, that last vestige of his father.
Charles had missed seeing his father alive one final time. When he finally made it back to Taiwan, it was only for the funeral and cremation, both of which took place on the day he arrived atop a burial mountain on the outskirts of Taipei. Jet-lagged and weeping, he had bid the other mourners farewell one by one until he was the only one left, waiting as his father’s body was reduced to ash. As the dark crept into the empty hall, he sat in a plastic chair cursing himself for having been a neglectful son while the crematorium manager—a menacing joke of a man in a Hawaiian shirt with a perm and a pinky ring—ate a fried pork chop and watched a variety show on his boxy television.
When Charles startled awake, he had slid half off the seat, and the man was nudging him towards a still-warm metal box filled with ash and bone. Next to it lay a pair of silver chopsticks. Charles knew what he had to do. He picked up the chopsticks and reached into the pile, picking up the pieces of bone and placing them in an urn and then pouring the ash on top. When the man turned away, Charles had reached in and pulled out one of the pieces, light as driftwood, slipping it into his pocket. And now here it was again, back in his pocket, back in China.
He walked by the entrance of what looked like an old hutong neighborhood, its narrow alleyways and crumbling stone walls promising a glimpse of his father’s dream of a lost China. It turned out to be a warren of small boutiques selling remarkably avant-garde clothing, each occupying a rammed-earth-and-sun-dried-brick building that would have been home to a branch of a family. Lesser relatives of the Wangs might have lived in a place like this three generations ago. Picking up a thin white shirt with one arm sewn across the front like a straitjacket and the other missing entirely, Charles boggled at the price. Was it really 2,150 yuan? He calculated quickly. Could this student art project of a shirt possibly be selling for $350? And here, in this nondescript area of town? Just outside, a makeshift noodle stand straddled a narrow alleyway, and the proprietor, a teenager in a dirty apron, stirred a steaming pot of stock as his minispeakers blared out Britney Spears.
Charles was hungry now. Something deep in his belly growled and rolled, and he felt empty enough to consume the entire country.
He’d been following the tourist signs to Tiananmen, but as he crossed a wide plaza, he spotted a giant topiary display three times the size of a Rose Parade float, a leftover from the recent Olympics. A rose-studded banner spelled out LANE CRAWFORD: FASHION IN MOTION. Lane Crawford. The logo made him feel light-headed. It stoked the anger that had not dissipated since the day he and Barbra had left their beautiful home.
Six months ago, in the last flat-footed attempt to bring some money into his coffers, Charles had contacted the luxury retailer, sure that they would be interested in investing in an American brand formulated for Asian faces. He’d been to the Hong Kong branch as a teenager and still remembered marveling over the glamour of the foreign brands as he tried out every settee and love seat in the tea shop and munched on cream cakes. But that was then. The Lane Crawford of 2008, in all their shortsighted ignorance, didn’t even consider his proposal for a full twenty-four hours before issuing a categorical no, claiming that they were developing their own makeup line.