The Western people did not understand this, was what Liang Yeh had told him by phone from far away in Ohio. A meal for them was nothing but food. When it came to the food of China they had their own version, a limited number of dishes that always had to be made the same way with the sauces they would recognize from other restaurants. Sameness was what they wanted. They went out for Chinese food, they ordered their dishes, and they did not like them to change. Liang Yeh said he had met other chefs who’d tried to offer real Chinese dishes on their menus too, but each said the foreigners wouldn’t order them, and each, in time, gave up. Liang Yeh had heard there were enclaves in New York and Los Angeles and other cities where discriminating diners demanded real food, but these diners were always Chinese, never American. There was money in the West but no gourmet, was what Liang had concluded. Xie still remembered the sadness in his voice.
Liang Yeh’s son could change that. This was Xie’s hope. Nephew would be the bridge. So the question was not whether he would succeed in the contest, for he must. The question was how.
As soon as Xie had heard about the Chinese culinary team, he knew the competition was a door that had been opened by fate. The boy had to serve a banquet greater than any Beijing could remember. It had to be such that it would immediately pass into legend and become magic, join the pantheon of stories that swirled around China’s Gods and great adventures. It had to be so fantastic that people in the future would argue about whether it had ever existed at all.
Xie felt a smile touch his own pouchy and soft-hanging face. He thought of raising a hand toward the window, toward the bamboo, but his fingers only fluttered in response. He looked down at them sadly. These hands had been as precise as any surgeon’s. He’d been able to flash-cut vegetables almost thin enough to float up and away like butterflies on a breeze. He had been strong enough to fling an iron pan across the room in a second’s displeasure.
Now all he had was his voice. Never mind; he could still use it. And he would, too. Nephew was coming. He lay still with his eyes on the door.
“Let’s talk about our strategy,” Maggie said to Sam the next morning on the bus to Shaoxing.
He turned, still looking only half-awake despite their quick inhalation of tea and small baozi, plain steamed white buns, before they left the hotel at six-thirty. That was after landing in Shanghai at ten the night before and then going out again, because of course they had to eat.
Shanghai was a gleamingly futuristic place that looked as though it had been built overnight, out of a dream. Tall, jaunty buildings were topped with finials in the shapes of stars or balls or pyramids. The Pearl TV tower, brilliantly lit against the night, looked like a spaceship about to lift off as they looped past it on an elevated expressway. Exuberant capitalism seemed to have been crossed with a 1960s sci-fi TV show. In fact, she thought, the principal design influence on the city really appeared to be The Jetsons. The kitsch of her childhood had become the city of tomorrow: Meet George Jet-son. Jane, his wife.
Shanghai ran around the clock, even more so than Beijing – Sam had explained that to her on the flight down. Beijing had the profundity of government and history, but Shanghai had the aura of culture and excitement. And don’t forget money, he told her. When they came near to their hotel and drove down Huaihai Lu, with its brilliant glass-fronted department stores, the sidewalks were as crowded as they might be at high noon. And after they checked in at the hotel he walked her through the French Concession neighborhood to the restaurant, the plane trees rustling overhead, past the blocks of old stone buildings with their tall windows and wrought-iron Juliet balconies.
She saw people look at him. He didn’t seem to see, though maybe he did and was just used to it. With his angled bones and precisely bumped nose he looked enough like them and enough unlike them to make people stare. And then there was his hair, always bound at his neck by a coated elastic band. Few Chinese men wore long hair. Judging from what she’d seen on the streets in the four days she’d been here, those who did were the young and bohemian, not men Sam’s age. So this too set him apart. It was a choice. It made certain things clear about him at a glance.
By the time they finished dinner it was late. They walked back to their hotel and said good night in the corridor quickly, exchanging only brief wishes for a restful night before retreating to their rooms. She felt grateful for the respite. They had been together for many hours, and even though she was surprised at the ease they had felt, talking throughout the plane ride and the drive into the city and the meal, she was hungry for privacy. Thoughts of Matt and what he had done with this woman were constantly in her, and she had to face them and feel them by herself. She had cried in front of Sam once. That was enough, even though he had seemed not to mind, had actually seemed to like it. She would not do it again.
She latched the door, lay on the bed, and looked down at herself. She saw her pants, unattractively wrinkled in fanned sitting lines. Her shirt had hiked up to show a soft white stripe of stomach. She laid a hand on herself. Middle-aged widow in a Shanghai hotel room. She thought back to walking on the streets outside, the lights, the late-night crowds. Everyone she saw on the street seemed to have been tied to someone else, in pairs, in groups, connected, while she walked beside Sam Liang, acquainted but apart. They were here for other reasons, for business. They were here by arrangement. They talked, they joked, they were companionable, but she was sure they both knew why they were here. In the stretches during which both fell silent, she could feel this awareness bumping against them.
This would be her life now, outside her small circle of close friends. This would be the kind of time she’d have with people, people she interviewed, people she met. She had her friends. She had her family – her mother, anyway – and the people she knew from work. If there was nothing else after that, just business acquaintances like Sam Liang, she could accept it. That would be all right. One thing she would not allow herself to do was become an aggrieved woman. That had been another one of Maggie’s Laws for living through this past year. Now it was even worse, for he had cheated. But she was sticking to the rule she’d set.
At midnight Shanghai time, Maggie dialed Sunny. It was morning in Southern California; her best friend would be up. “Hey,” Sunny said warmly, picking up, knowing it was Maggie. “How are you doing today?”
“Things are moving, at least. This has been an amazingly long day. I’m in Shanghai, seeing the grandparents tomorrow, but I’m not with the original translator – he’s with me.”
Sunny was surprised. “The chef?”
“Yes. He’s down the hall.” Maggie told Sunny what had happened in the twenty-four hours since they last talked, and felt immense relief just at telling her, sharing it, and thus by some subtle magic of friendship dividing her burden of news and surprises in half. This was what people did for each other when they were in alliance. It was the blessing of connectedness. She hung up feeling not just alive again but more peaceful, as if she’d been transported back to a gentler time, before. As soon as she turned out the light she slept.