Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

My mother lost her parents, both factory workers in Canton, when she was only fifteen. Out of sympathy, her aunt, who worked as a janitor and could barely feed her own three kids, took my mother in. But when she heard that an uncle had planned to escape by sea from China to Hong Kong at the next full moon, she dragged my mother to the pier to send her on the uncle’s boat.

When my mother arrived in Hong Kong, she was hungry, penniless, and bitterly hated by the adult relatives. The treacherous sea had engulfed three of them, and the survivors, all blaming my mother for bringing bad luck, abandoned her at an orphanage the following day. For two years, while working as a janitor in exchange for lodgings and meals, Mother was often beaten and starved by a sadistic attendant. One day after a severe beating, she ran away and wandered the streets for hours. Then she spotted a church and her tired feet carried her in.

My mother cleaned for the church in exchange for meals and lodging. Considered a beauty because of her slim figure, oval-shaped face, and silky, waist-length, ink black hair, Mother was soon noticed by a middle-aged man. He came to the church to atone for his sinful nature—dishonest merchant, negligent father, philanderer. The sinner then seduced Mother, got her pregnant, and took her as his mistress. That man was my father, and the to-be-born baby was me. According to Mother, after my father had taken a look at my face and then my lower body, he exclaimed, “A crack! Money losing stuff!” then left without a word. In old China, girls were called “money losing stuff” since they only grow up to marry and adopt another family name. A crack is, of course, where the fortune leaks.

After that, my father rarely came home. When he did, he would first eat my mother’s cooking, then fuck her hard—as if she’d not already been fucked hard enough. Even though my parents tried very hard—my mother suppressing her scream and my father pressing down the thin bed’s violent shakings—it sounded as if they were right underneath me, as in fact they were, because the tiny, rented apartment had room for only the one bunk bed where I slept on the upper level and my mother the lower one.

But each time after my father’s departure, there was a small pile of money left on our multifunctional table (eating meals, doing my homework, doing chores, ironing clothes)—his only redeeming act.

Gradually my father stopped his visits completely. While he was busy enjoying his other woman’s wifely favors, feeding both his mouth and his lust, my mother wore herself down cleaning and running errands to support us. She never missed a day of work, never took a vacation, never asked for a raise, and never complained. This may be considered stupid, but it also generated good karma. Because of her sacrifice I was able to fulfill my dream of studying creative writing in New York. The church, to reward Mother’s hard work, gave her a small pension after she completed her thirty years’ service keeping the church as immaculate as the virgin birth.

No matter how hard I tried to persuade her, Mother refused to spend any of her savings but insisted that I should use it for my study in the United States.

When I told her that she should at least splurge on something she really wanted, her answer was always, “I don’t need anything.”

This reminded me of a saying I read somewhere: “Most people don’t get what they want because they forget what they want.”

How very sad. That was my dear mother, whose dreams had, day by day, leaked through the windows she cleaned, between the planks she mopped, the sinks she washed, and the toilets she flushed after other people’s business. Now she’d completely forgotten that she, a maid, had once had dreams. However, she never forgot mine, and that really touched my heart.

That was why I loved my mother but never felt I was my father’s daughter. I was sure that the feeling was mutual. I wondered sometimes, was my infatuation with men compensation for my “fatherless” childhood?

I had no answer for that.

Right then, I only wanted to continue my journey and collect my three-million-dollar fortune.

After that, que sera, sera . Whatever will be, will be.

Astranger who suddenly claimed to be my only relative on earth wanted me to have strange sex with a man I had never met who, worse, was a monk.

Of course, I thought, I might not mind it if the monk was young and handsome, but what if he was ugly to death, or if he wanted to tie me up before sex and beat me up after? But if he was indeed young and handsome, then why would he have chosen to be a monk who has to take the vow of celibacy?

If I did have sex with the monk, would this be considered betraying Alex, or even Chris? But hadn’t they already become my exes? Nonetheless, I was willing to face the challenge, of course for the pending fortune, but also to satisfy my dying-to-be-relieved itching curiosity. And on top of that, to prove that I was not a wimp and that I was different.

Anyway, maybe I could think of a way to get out of the situation while still managing to achieve my mission.

So one day, I took a donkey cart to the next village and asked the coolie to drop me first at Lop Nor’s store—in case my healer friend had returned. But his store was still tightly closed. Disappointed, I shouldered my heavy backpack and boarded a bus that took me to Urumqi, and from there a minibus, then a car to another part of the Mountains of Heaven, this one more remote than the Heavenly Lake.

It was already late afternoon when I arrived. However, to reach my destination I still had to ride a special “sedan chair”—a hammock attached to two poles—up a narrow, zigzag path. After a half hour the two coolies who had been carrying me, one middle-aged and the other in his twenties, put me down.

Wiping big beads of perspiration from his face with a rag, the older one said, “Here you are, miss.”

I got off the hammock and paid him. Then I saw a cliff of sandstone soaring up about three hundred feet. “How am I supposed to go up there?” My question came out high-pitched and angry sounding.

The older coolie’s twiglike finger pointed to a weathered path. “Miss, from here you have to climb all the way up to the top.”

“Isn’t there an easier way to get there? Like…”

He laughed, revealing a few yellowish, broken teeth. “You mean an elevator? Miss, where are you from?”

Beside him, his young partner laughed out loud.

“Oh, never mind. I’ll try.”

The older coolie smiled. “Climbing is good exercise. That’s why all the mountain monks are invincible martial artists.”

Probably to get my attention, the young man executed a few kung fu chops in the air.

I ignored him, having completely lost my sense of humor. I turned back to Old Coolie. “You know those monks up there?”

“Miss, I don’t know any monks. I watch kung fu movies where the monks are masters of the floating martial arts. And that’s how they fly up and down mountains. Ha!”

To my extreme irritation, now the youngster made a high jump while exclaiming a loud “Ha!”

I cast him a dirty look, then turned back to his boss. “Why didn’t they just build some real stairs?”

The coolie looked at me curiously, then pointed up. “See? It looks like there were once stairs, but now not much left.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because monks don’t want visitors.”

Some silence, then he took off his stained gloves and held them out to me. “Take these.”

“What for?”

He pointed to the remains of the path. “Because you might lose your grip. These will help you hold onto the boulders better. They’ll also protect your hands from bleeding during your climb. Two renminbi .”