Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

“That’s nice.”

“I believe they divorced because of me.”

“How?”

“It’s too complicated to tell you now. Let me take you to tea.”

I looked directly into the young man’s grayish green eyes. “Alex, you’ll soon go broke if you pay for every stranger you run into.”

A smile bloomed on his face, sweet and innocent like a child’s. “Don’t worry. Let’s have tea, please.”

I insisted that, instead of going to a teahouse—fancy or simple—we should just look for a place nearby to sit down and talk.

Outside the museum, we walked for a while and soon found a bench in a quiet corner shadowed by a heavy-foliaged tree.

We sat down. Alex looked me in the eyes and uttered softly, “Lily, I was adopted.”

The statement came as a surprise. “Oh….” I didn’t know what more to say.

“It’s OK.” He covered my hand with his for a moment, then went on. “My mom and dad had been married for years, but Mom could not conceive. So they decided to adopt. Dad’s friend, a gynecologist, told him about me, a perfect baby, whose mother had a healthy pregnancy—no diseases or drugs. She was Chinese from Taiwan—a theater student.”

So he was half Chinese—I wondered, what was the other half?

He chuckled at my intense scrutiny; now his eyes appeared the same shade as the temple roof in the far distance.

“Something funny, Alex?”

“No, ironic. I was an extremely coveted baby for a couple desperate to adopt. But my own mother didn’t want me.”

“Do you know why your Chinese mother gave you up?”

He shook his head while staring at an elderly couple playing with a chubby toddler under that far-off temple roof.

“What about your biological father, you know anything about him?”

He turned back to me. “Only that he’s American.”

So Alex was Eurasian—he seemed to have gotten the best from two ethnicities.

He went on. “Even after they adopted me, my parents still tried to conceive. But it never happened, and so they began to fight and ended up divorcing. Then, somehow, they both had children with someone else.”

This was a story even juicier than my Chinese family saga novel in progress. But I hid my smile and asked instead, “Then what happened?”

“After their divorce, I lived alternately with Mom and Dad, their new spouses, and my two sort-of half brothers.”

“Do you get along with them?”

“I know my place in their families.” His voice came out low-watted.

I put my hand on his shoulder, then, feeling his body heat, quickly withdrew it.

He looked happy again. Was it due to the physical contact, brief as it was?

“Your parents nice to you now?”

Alex lowered his head, thinking. Silhouetted against the clear, distant sky, his profile was etched in the air like a haiku—simple, crisp, sharp.

“Yes and no. I believe they still care about me, but I also think they care more about their biological children, although they try not to show it.”

“Do you know where your biological mother is?”

“No. Only that after she gave me up for adoption, she went back to Taiwan.”

I remained silent, not knowing what more to say.

Suddenly his face lit up. “Soon my parents will be visiting me here in China for a few weeks.”

Poor kid, he looked so happy just to have a few weeks with his parents, not even blood relatives.

Some silence, then I asked, “Alex, what are you doing here in China?”

“Sightseeing, but mostly trying to improve my Chinese.”

Moments of silence passed, then he asked again, “Can we… travel together?”

“No, I can’t.”

“But why not, since you’re traveling alone?”

Yes, why not? My aunt Mindy Madison did not specify that I couldn’t make friends during my journey. I was still very tempted to have him along for company, but I hardly knew him. What if he learned about my inheritance?

Though my heart was melting, my voice came out firm. “Hey, Alex, look, you seem to be a smart young man. Very nice, too. But I’m older than you. You’re just a kid, and this is a kid’s fantasy. You need to find someone your age.”

“I am not a kid and you are not old.”

“I’m twenty-nine, and you’re only twenty-one. Alex, please, I don’t want to take care of a younger brother when I have enough problems myself.” Of course I couldn’t tell him the real reason—my inheritance. I swallowed hard.

“That doesn’t matter. I like you and want to travel with you.”

I blurted out, “Jesus, Alex! Stop being ridiculous and acting like a child!”

“Stop calling me a child!” he retorted.

A young Chinese couple walking out from the museum turned to stare at us.

A long, awkward silence.

Finally I said, “Alex, we’re basically strangers.”

“You’re a traveler, an adventurer. I am, too, so I think we’re very compatible.”

I gave him an annoyed look. “But you have no idea why I’m traveling and what I do when I’m not traveling.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

This kid was really persistent. And annoying.

“Alex, I really don’t want any company. Please accept that.”

He cast a dour glance at me, his expression frozen. “You really mean that?”

“Yes!”

“You sure?”

I nodded.

“All right then, good-bye.” He stood up abruptly and walked away.

After a few steps, Alex turned back to stare at me, his eyes fierce and sad—seemingly awaiting a signal from me to return. But I waved good-bye, hardening my heart like the thousand-year-old stone tablet we’d left behind in the museum.

I felt more than a little sad and guilty. Now I wished I hadn’t discarded Alex Luce as if he were my old calendar, or my worn-out running shoes. The kid did seem genuinely concerned about me and wanted my company. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a young man’s company, if not for his youth and beauty to feed my vanity, at least for some pleasant background noise to fill my vacuity? But I warned myself—a dessert-sweet romance should be pushed to the bottom, if not totally off, of my Silk Road menu. What I should be putting on the table now was nothing but the financially nutritious entrées—Dunhuang, Xinjiang, the Mountains of Heaven, Turpan, and finally the Go-In-But-Never-Come-Out Taklamakan Desert.

Early the next morning, I headed down to the hotel’s simple dining room, gobbled down a steaming bun and scalding hot rice soup, then went back to my room. I quickly packed, checked out, hopped into a taxi, then boarded my flight to Jiayu Guan. I thought of visiting the famous pass with its legendary Great Wall fortress and painted bricks from a thousand-year-old tomb, but I couldn’t wait to go to Dunhuang. So as soon as I got off the plane, I took a five-hour train ride to the Land of Grand Prosperity, then a bus to Mogao.

Although Dunhuang was not a required destination, I decided—before undertaking the daunting tasks on the Mountains of Heaven—to treat myself to some aesthetic relief by visiting Mogao’s exquisite Buddhist treasures.

I read that starting from the fourth century, pilgrims, scholars, and especially Buddhist monks passing through this section of the Silk Road decided to stay here to meditate and translate sutras. However, the first cave had not been built until 366 CE by a Buddhist monk who had a vision of thousands of golden dancing lights and a thousand Buddhas. Thus the Mogao Caves are also called Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.

Later, during the religious persecutions in the Tang dynasty, Buddhist monks had come here to hide both themselves and their treasures inside the caves dug by their own hands. They transported hundreds of thousands of treasures across the desert in mule carts and carried them up the cliffs on their own backs.