China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

me happy to imagine being loved by such a venerable member of the family. That night, however, I heard my mother say to my father: “If the old man’s got any money, he really ought to leave it to us now that he sees we have a healthy son to carry things on. I mean, he has no children of his own. Who else would he leave it to?”

Whatever the motives behind our visit, I was excited to be going to Beijing. It was the autumn season, which was very dry that year, and I remember that the leaves falling from the trees beside the road were all brown and crisp, as though they’d been baked.

We walked the whole way. Every so often my father would pick me up and put me on his shoulders, but I must have walked about half the distance myself. At noon we stopped and ate the food my mother had given us for the journey. We arrived in Beijing in the evening.

The old man had owned a place that sold noodles. My father knew where it was, but it was already getting dark and the lamps were being lit when we reached it. Grandfather’s brother wasn’t there. The people who were running the noodle place then told us the old man had retired, but that he still lived in the next street. So off we went.

We found his house quite easily, though it didn’t look big at all. In fact it was tiny. After my father knocked softly on the door, there was a long pause before somebody opened it cautiously.

People shrink when they get old, and Grandfather’s brother was tiny. He seemed hardly bigger than me. But he looked quite sprightly all the same. He held up a lamp in his hand to inspect us, and I remember thinking he looked like an inquisitive bird. I knew at once that this was Grandfather’s brother because he had a little face just like my father’s. I had supposed he would be wrinkled, like the old men in the village, but his skin was rather smooth. He might have been a monk.

“Nephew,” he said to my father. “You look a little older than when I last saw you. Who is the boy?”

“My son,” Father replied.

“Bo gong,” I murmured, and bowed very low.

The old man looked at me. I could see in the lamplight that his eyes were still quite clear and sharp. “He’s quite good-looking,” he remarked. Then he led us into his house. It was just a single room, really, with a tiny kitchen behind. In the main room there was a broad kang to sit on, which extended through the dividing wall to the kitchen fire, which heated it. There was also a small wooden table, one wooden bench, and a chest in which I suppose he kept his clothes and other possessions.

He asked my father if he had a place to stay, and Father shook his head.

“Well then,” he said, “you can sleep here.” He didn’t seem to mind. “There is room for me and the boy on the kang, and if you sleep on the floor beside the kang, you’ll be quite warm.” He looked at my father appraisingly. “I hope you’ve eaten,” he said, “because I haven’t any food.”

“We brought you a present,” said my father, and handed it to him.

My mother had gone to great trouble over that present. Eight little mung bean cakes she’d made herself—she was a good cook and could make a meal out of almost anything. Each cake was beautifully wrapped in red paper. And all neatly set in a little bamboo box.

Grandfather’s Elder Brother put the box on the table and inspected it in the lamplight.

“This looks very beautiful. Did your wife make it? How lucky you are to have such a good wife. What does the box contain, may I ask?”

“Cakes,” said my father.

“Well then,” he said, “normally one doesn’t open a present in front of the giver, but as it’s cakes, let’s open it now.” He turned to me. “Would you like a cake?” As I had not eaten since the middle of the day, I was very hungry, so I thanked him and said that I would. “We’ll all have some, then,” said Grandfather’s Elder Brother.

While my father and I each ate a cake, the old man made a pot of tea and put three cups on the table. Nobody said very much, because we were so tired.

“If you need it,” Grandfather’s Elder Brother said to my father, “there’s a latrine just along the street.” My father went out, but I didn’t want to go, too. Seeing this, the old man said to me: “If you have to go in the night, there’s a chamber pot over there, under that cloth. You can use that. It’s quite clean.”

I saw it in the corner. Even by lamplight I could see the dusty cloth. So I thanked him and lay down on the warm kang, and before my father even got back, I had fallen asleep.

—

In the morning I went to that latrine along the street with my father. I had never been in a place like that before. In our village, the richer peasants with courtyard houses had their own latrine, usually in the southern corner of the courtyard, which could be emptied from the lane outside. Some of the farms had little covered sheds, and the waste fell down into an open pit from which it could be carted for manure or fed to the pigs. But we didn’t have a latrine. We went to the communal place, where there were holes in the ground and you did what you did in the open air. You tried not to go when it was raining. But I still prefer those open-air latrines because the wind carries a lot of the smell away.

Whereas when I went to that public latrine in Beijing, which was in a closed shed, the smell was so