"I'm fine," he replied.
"Have you made peace with your adoption?" I asked.
He was surprised and for a while he just looked at me. Then tears slowly gathered in his eyes. "No, I don't think I ever will." He shook his head and wiped the tears from his face. "There always seems to be something missing in my heart. For all these years I've longed to be part of my real family, which is only next door. I wanted to go back, but I couldn't. I will always have to push my sadness far away from my heart and mind. It is a constant battle."
It was only then, after so many years, that I told him I'd overheard his conversation with our niang that day, the day he'd begged her to take him back.
"How did you cope with it for all these years?" I asked.
"It has been hard, sometimes impossible, especially in my teenage years. At times I blamed my real parents for giving me away, other times I blamed my adopted parents for not giving me back, but most of the time I blamed myself."
"Why blame yourself? It's not your fault."
"But I did blame myself. I blamed myself for all the desire and guilt in my heart. I felt bitter that my life and destiny had been decided by two sets of parents, but I loved them all. I could do nothing but be a faithful son to my adopted parents. If I hadn't I would have hurt everyone. I would have torn the Li family apart. What is done is done."
I tried hard to swallow the hot ball of tears in my throat. "Third Brother, I've always loved you like one of my other brothers. We all feel the same way," I said.
He nodded then, and we raised our glasses and drank a toast to happiness.
Mary and I went to visit my fifth brother Cunfar next. He was now married to a lovely lady who loved him dearly. They had no children, but secretly wished for a son.
Cunfar and my fifth sister-in-law took us to a restaurant on the Laoshan mountain, a place I had always wanted to go to, but could never before have afforded. In front of a spectacular view over the blue ocean, we sat and watched the fishermen row their small boats in and out of their sea-farms.
Cunfar told me that he had replaced my dia at the Laoshan Transportation Company when our dia had reached retirement age- that was the rule: one of his children was to replace him at his work and, had I stayed in Qingdao, I would have been the one, not Cunfar. But even as a child, Cunfar had dearly wanted to be the one to replace our dia. He too wanted to get out of the well, and becoming a truck driver or a factory worker was his only way. He loved the transportation business. He worked hard and was quickly promoted to a director's position. Now he was in charge of a large fleet of trucks.
My brother and I exchanged many childhood stories. "Remember the dead champion cricket you kept for me?" I asked.
"How could I ever forget!" he said.
After lunch we all walked along a rocky mountain path towards a small Buddhist temple, an old one built high on a hill, one of the few that had survived the Cultural Revolution. Suddenly, Cunfar and I stopped. "Listen! Did you hear it?" I asked excitedly.
"Yes! But I heard it first!" he shouted.
"No, I heard it first!"
"What is it?" Mary walked up from behind us with my fifth sister- in-law.
"A cricket!" I answered.
My fifth sister-in-law laughed. "You brothers and your crickets, you never change, do you?"
30 Another Wedding
Qingdao, 1988
The time for Mary and me to return to America was fast approaching. But before we left, there was an important event to attend. During our last week in Qingdao, my youngest brother Jing Tring was to marry. His bride was a beautiful woman, the younger sister of one of my close friends from the local school.
It was mid June and a very hot day. Everyone was busy decorating my parents' house for the wedding. Many different shapes and colours of double happiness papers were glued onto the walls, the doors and the windows. Even the chests of drawers were covered with them. Now, instead of using sedan chairs for the bride and groom, my family had hired two cars and decorated them with big red silk flowers and ribbons.
Around eleven o'clock the wedding cars slowly rolled into our narrow street. Cunsang and Cunfar immediately lit up long strings of firecrackers. I was the official photographer, with a video camera in one hand and a stills camera in the other. The groom helped his beautiful bride out of the first car. She was dressed like a Western bride in a long white dress with a lot of frills and a floral veil. She even wore high-heeled shoes. My little brother wore a cream suit with a red silk rose pinned over his heart. A huge crowd of people gathered around and everyone murmured lucky words: "Handsome dragon attracts beautiful pheasant," "Arrival of daughter with many sons to follow," they would say. In this wedding there would be no kowtowing in front of a fire, no stepping over a horse's saddle, no three-day sitting for the bride. But the bride and groom did get a bowl of "widen your heart" noodles and the dates and chestnuts were still tied to their chopsticks, just as they were for my parents so many years before.
The two refrigerators that Mary and I had sent on ahead for my family still hadn't arrived, so there was nowhere to keep the food cool on the wedding day. Everything had to be bought and cooked fresh. Cunmao and Cunfar were the designated chefs and Cunsang was the kitchen hand. Both lunch and dinner receptions were held in my parents' house. The courtyard was crammed with tables and chairs: fifty guests, five tables of ten, and my brothers did all the cooking on one coal burner. Endless dishes were served. It was a feast. And since Mary and I hadn't had our wedding in China, everyone insisted that Mary too should dress up like a bride. Somewhere they found her a Western wedding dress. It was pink and she looked beautiful.
To say everyone had a merry time that day was an understatement. Many of the old traditions might have gone, but excessive drinking was one they'd certainly kept. Guests were falling on their faces from over-drinking. Some of the new traditions helped here, like trying to pick up hard-boiled eggs from a flat plate with a pair of chopsticks. Mary and I, and the bride and groom, had to walk around carrying trays laden with glasses of wine to give to each guest as lucky drinks. Before each of them could take one, they had to say something lucky to us, such as "wishing you a happy life with many sons" or "love each other until the silver beard touches the ground". They were not allowed to repeat other people's lucky wishes or more penalty drinks would be awarded. Trouble was, the more they drank the more likely they were to forget what others had said before. And so it went on.
Suddenly, in the middle of the drinking binge, my big uncle, my niang's eldest brother who was head of the propaganda department for the Qingdao Building Materials Bureau, made a request and everyone cheered him on. He wanted Mary and me to dance. We happily agreed and decided to dance one of our favourites, the second act pas de deux from Giselle. We'd had a few drinks too, but it didn't matter. We just hummed the music and danced while our adoring audience clapped and cheered our every lift and movement. It was one of our most rewarding performances ever.
After our dance, our dia spoke as the father of the groom. I'd had no idea this was part of the new custom. "Welcome, dear relatives and friends," he said. "This is one of the happiest days for the Li family. As you all know, I don't talk much. My wife always takes the words out of my mouth."
His audience laughed and our dia looked over at our niang on the ladies' table. She gave him a happy, loving smile.