Yiyun Li - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll all go to the county and become beggars.”

“It’s illegal to beg.”

“I don’t care.”

“If you want to do something illegal, why be a beggar and be spat at by everybody? I would go to the county and request to be fed.”

“How?”

“With my fist and my axe.”

“Don’t talk big. We were there once with our fists and our axes.”

“But that was for the dead boy. This time it’ll be for our own sons.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“You have to try.”

“Nonsense. If it works, it would have worked last time. Lao Da wouldn’t have had to kill and we wouldn’t have to be punished.”

Nobody talks. The sun has slowly hauled itself to the southwest sky. The cicadas stop their chanting, but before we have time to enjoy the silence, they pick up the old tune again. Some of us draw and puff imaginary smokes from our pipes that are no longer lit; others pick up dry twigs from the ground, sketching in the dust fat clouds, heavy with rain.

A ROCKET SCIENTIST, MR. SHI TELLS PEOPLE when they ask about his profession in China. Retired, he then adds, out of modesty, when people marvel. Mr. Shi learned the phrase from a woman during a layover at Detroit, when he tried to explain to her his work, drawing pictures when his English failed to help. “A rocket scientist!” the woman exclaimed, laughing out loud.

People he meets in America, already friendly, seem more so when they learn his profession, so he likes to repeat the words whenever possible. Five days into his visit at his daughter’s place, in this Midwest town, Mr. Shi has made quite a few acquaintances. Mothers with babies in strollers wave at him. An old couple, the husband in suit and the wife in skirt, show up in the park every morning at nine o’clock, her hand on his arm; they stop and greet him, the husband always the one speaking, the wife smiling. A woman living in the retirement home a block away comes to talk to him. She is seventy-seven, two years his senior, and was originally from Iran. Despite the fact they both speak little English, they have no problem understanding each other, and in no time they become friends.

“America good country,” she says often. “Sons make rich money.”

America is indeed a good country. Mr. Shi’s daughter works as a librarian in the East Asian department in the college library and earns more in a year than he made in twenty.

“My daughter, she make lots of money, too.”

“I love America. Good country for everybody.”

“Yes, yes. A rocket scientist I am in China. But very poor. Rocket scientist, you know?” Mr. Shi says, his hands making a peak.

“I love China. China a good country, very old,” the woman says.

“America is young country, like young people.”

“America a happy country.”

“Young people are more happy than old people,” Mr. Shi says, and then realizes that it is too abrupt a conclusion. He himself feels happier at this moment than he remembers he ever did in his life. The woman in front of him, who loves everything with or without a good reason, seems happy, too.

Sometimes they run out of English. She switches to Persian, mixed with a few English words. Mr. Shi finds it hard to speak Chinese to her. It is she who carries the conversation alone then, for ten or twenty minutes. He nods and smiles effusively. He does not understand much of what she is saying, but he feels her joy in talking to him, the same joy he feels listening to her.

Mr. Shi starts to look forward to the mornings when he sits in the park and waits for her. “Madam” is what he uses to address her, as he has never asked her name. Madam wears colors that he does not imagine a woman of her age, or where she came from, would wear, red and orange and purple and yellow. She has a pair of metal barrettes, a white elephant and a blue-and-green peacock. They clasp on her thin hair in a wobbly way that reminds him of his daughter when she was a small child — before her hair was fully grown, with a plastic butterfly hanging loose on her forehead. Mr. Shi, for a brief moment, wants to tell Madam how much he misses the days when his daughter was small and life was hopeful. But he is sure, even before he starts, that his English would fail him. Besides, it is never his habit to talk about the past.

IN THE EVENINGS, when his daughter comes home,Mr. Shi has the supper ready. He took a cooking class after his wife died, a few years ago, and ever since has studied the culinary art with the same fervor with which he studied mathematics and physics when he was a college student. “Every man is born with more talents than he knows how to use,” he says at dinner. “I would’ve never imagined taking up cooking, but here I am, better than I imagined.”

“Yes, very impressive,” his daughter says.

“And likewise”—Mr. Shi takes a quick glance at his daughter—“life provides more happiness than we ever know. We have to train ourselves to look for it.”

His daughter does not reply. Despite the pride he takes in his cooking and her praises for it, she eats little and eats out of duty. It worries him that she is not putting enough enthusiasm into life as she should be. Of course, she has her reasons, newly divorced after seven years of marriage. His ex-son-in-law went back to Beijing permanently after the divorce. Mr. Shi does not know what led the boat of their marriage to run into a hidden rock, but whatever the reason is, it must not be her fault. She is made for a good wife, soft-voiced and kindhearted, dutiful and beautiful, a younger version of her mother. When his daughter called to inform him of the divorce, Mr. Shi imagined her in inconsolable pain, and asked to come to America, to help her recover. She refused, and he started calling daily and pleading, spending a good solid month of his pension on the long-distance bill. She finally agreed when he announced that his wish for his seventy-fifth birthday was to take a look at America. A lie it was, but the lie turned out to be a good reason. America is worth taking a look at; more than that, America makes him a new person, a rocket scientist, a good conversationalist, a loving father, a happy man.

After dinner, Mr. Shi’s daughter either retreats to her bedroom to read or drives away and comes home at late hours. Mr. Shi asks to go out with her, to accompany her to the movies he imagines that she watches alone, but she refuses in a polite but firm manner. It is certainly not healthy for a woman, especially a contemplative woman like his daughter, to spend too much time alone. He starts to talk more to tackle her solitude, asking questions about the part of her life he is not witnessing. How was her work of the day? he asks. Fine, she says tiredly. Not discouraged, he asks about her colleagues, whether there are more females than males, how old they are, and, if they are married, whether they have children. He asks what she eats for lunch and whether she eats alone, what kind of computer she uses, and what books she reads. He asks about her old school friends, people he believes she is out of contact with because of the shame of the divorce. He asks about her plan for the future, hoping she understands the urgency of her situation. Women in their marriageable twenties and early thirties are like lychees that have been picked from the tree; each passing day makes them less fresh and less desirable, and only too soon will they lose their value, and have to be gotten rid of at a sale price.

Mr. Shi knows enough not to mention the sale price. Still, he cannot help but lecture on the fruitfulness of life. The more he talks, the more he is moved by his own patience. His daughter, however, does not improve. She eats less and becomes quieter each day. When he finally points out that she is not enjoying her life as she should, she says, “How do you get this conclusion? I’m enjoying my life all right.”