Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Read online

  As the woman recounted her journey, others congregated around her bed. Not only was traveling to Lhasa technically prohibited at the time, but nearly impossible, requiring two grueling weeks of travel. During her trip, the woman had contracted dysentery. She became so weak, she’d had to be hauled to the monasteries on a yak.

  “But oh.” She sighed rapturously. “Tibet is the most extraordinary place on earth. Even if you are hallucinating.”

  When an angelic-looking Canadian mentioned that she’d participated in a smuggling ring that paid Western women to fly to South Korea with Rolexes stitched into their coats, Claire and I were just about ready to kill ourselves. We had been in Shanghai exactly five hours. All we had managed to do was walk a few miles and buy a bottle of orange soda, and the most risqué thing either one of us had done so far was pee. And already we felt overwhelmed.

  ———

  When Jonnie arrived, we climbed gratefully into the back of Harry’s van without protest, and gazed out the windows, happy to be borne aloft through the streets. Jonnie held up a small tape recorder. “Look what I brought.” As the soundtrack from The Woman in Red began playing scratchily, he sang along. Soon all of us—even Harry—joined in.

  I just called to say I love you.

  Gunter sat between us, his hands on his knees, leaning forward to peer out the windshield. He hadn’t bothered to ask where Claire and I had gone while he traded on the black market—either our absence hadn’t registered or he took it in stride. Seeing him, I felt strangely melancholy. As he sang, his voice was surprisingly high and tender. Around us, soft gold autumn light filtered through the sycamore trees along the boulevards.

  At the restaurant, Jonnie’s friend “Mike” insisted we sit at the best table. He brought out hot and sour soup. Dumplings in hot sesame oil. Chicken with chilies and curlicues of onion. Barbecue pork. Piles of freshly sautéed greens. Prawns the size of tangerines, still in their shells, coated in salt. Crispy glazed duck. Bottles of Tsingtao beer. Even Claire ate without hesitation. The platters kept coming. So did the beer. Through the ginger-scented steam, we grinned at each other dopily and tilted our glasses: To arriving in Shanghai, we chorused. To our new friends Jonnie and Harry! To Mike and his restaurant!

  The meal grew increasingly raucous. More friends of Jonnie’s and Mike’s arrived, pulling up chairs and picking up chopsticks. By the end we could only sit back with glassy looks on our faces, watching a social interaction that looked increasingly like water ballet, until there was nothing left to drink or eat at all, and a bill suddenly appeared, brought to the table on a little porcelain dish that somehow wound up before me, Claire, and Gunter, the three of us digging into our money belts and wallets. I had the vague impression we’d insisted on paying.

  After that, back in the van. Jonnie had another friend. “Please come meet Tony. Tony speaks English.”

  Harry steered us into a narrow cobbled back alley where a man was waiting for us dressed in a cheap button-down shirt, Mao pants, and rubber flip-flops.

  “Hello, welcome to China,” Tony cried. “Please, come to my house.” He led us through a back door up a narrow flight of cement stairs. From everything we’d heard, it was highly unusual to be invited into a Chinese home; the government apparently forbade it. But if what Tony was doing was risky or illegal, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

  Tony and his wife lived in what Americans call a “studio” or an “efficiency” that was probably all of 350 square feet. Although Claire and Gunter seemed appalled by its compactness, by New York City standards, it looked pretty fabulous to me. “Wow,” I said as I walked into the rectangular living area. “You know, this would rent for, like, seven hundred dollars a month back in Manhattan?”

  Off the main room were a separate dining and kitchenette alcove and a bathroom. The modern furnishings were unlovely, but functional. A tweed couch. An oak veneer sideboard draped with a cheap doily on top of which sat a small boom box, a vase of plastic roses, and a porcelain kitten. I’d expected Chinese apartments to double as shrines to Mao Zedong, but in Tony’s home, at least, there were family photographs everywhere and not a trace of the chairman.

  “Wow, this place is really, really great,” I said. I must have said this several times, because Claire finally had to tell me to cool it.

  Tony made us all tea and insisted that Claire, Gunter, and I take seats on the couch; he then gave Jonnie and Harry the two folding chairs. He himself stood in the archway between the living and dining alcoves. We all sipped our tea, made polite remarks about the tea—Yes, it’s very nice. No, it’s not too hot at all—then hit the inevitable wall of silence that rises uncomfortably between any group of six strangers with absolutely nothing in common.

  Finally Claire cleared her throat. “Tony, do you mind if I ask what kind of work you do?”

  “I am teacher at technical university,” he said. “I teach mechanical engineering.”

  “Oh, wow. And your wife?”

  “My wife, she a teacher, too. She teach biology. And my daughter, she go to university.”

  “Oh, you have a daughter?” I said. “How old is she?”

  “She is seventeen. She be eighteen next month.”

  “Oh, so she’s a Scorpio?” I exclaimed. “Uh-oh, watch out. Scorpios are tough. Incisive. Analytical. Passionate. Suspicious. And highly sexual, of course. In fact, you know, they say Scorpios are the real nymphomaniacs of the—”

  Claire shot me a vicious look and I shut up. I realized I was much drunker than I’d thought.

  Tony, however, was intrigued. “Scorpio?” he smiled, not comprehending. “Please. What is this word?”

  “It’s a zodiac sign,” Claire said, rolling her eyes. “Susie here doesn’t believe in self-determination. She thinks our fate is entirely written in the stars.”

  “Not entirely,” I corrected.

  “Self-determination?” Jonnie smiled. “Please. What is this word?”

  “Oh, astrology. Chinese love astrology,” Tony exclaimed. “I am born the Year of the Horse. What year you born?”

  “Self-determination?” Claire turned to Jonnie. “It means that you exercise free will and shape your own destiny. That you, yourself are responsible for your choices in life. Nobody else.”

  “Both Claire and I were born in 1964,” I told Tony. “The Year of the Dragon.”

  “I see,” Jonnie said to Claire. “You think this is possible?” He smiled at her so strangely, I almost felt embarrassed for her.

  “Oh, Year of the Dragon very good!” Tony said to me. “Most auspicious sign in whole zodiac. Very powerful.” He turned to Gunter. “What year you born?”

  “The Year of the Yeti,” I murmured to Claire.

  “Nineteen sixty-one,” Gunter said.

  “Oh. That Year of the Ox. Quiet, steady, but very smart.”

  Claire wriggled around on the couch as if by doing so she might be able to redirect the conversation. “So, Tony, please, back to your daughter. Where does she live?”

  A look of confusion passed over his face. “Why, here, of course.”

  Claire paused and blushed. “Oh, of course. How silly of me. Do all Chinese have apartments as nice as this one?” She smiled prettily.

  Tony beamed. “Not every apartment as special as this. This very good apartment.”

  After that, we stared down into our cups and glanced around the room. It seemed unimaginably rude and intrusive to ask all the questions that I was really dying to ask. Are you happy? Do you have any idea what the world is like outside of China? Do you long for freedom? Do you feel hopelessly oppressed, a mere cog in the wheel of a totalitarian Communist regime? Are you allowed to read books? What’s with the public squat toilets?

  Instead, I sat on the couch alongside Claire and Gunter, my hands knitted respectfully in my lap like a guest in a museum.

  Tony, however, seemed to feel no such compunction. “May I ask, please, some questions to you?” He set down his teacup and kneeled before us by t
he couch. “Is it true that in United States you have to pay for health care? The doctors, they are not free?”

  He asked not antagonistically, but with genuine curiosity.

  “Well, yeah. Sure.” Claire shrugged. “We’re not Communists, you know.”

  “Yah, but West Germans are not Communists either,” Gunter interjected. “And we are not paying for the medical care.”

  “If I may ask, please,” Tony continued. “Are the doctors expensive?”

  “That depends,” said Claire.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “They’re a fortune.”

  Claire turned to me. “C’mon, you get what you pay for.”

  “How can that be?” said Tony. “Is that not like paying for air?”

  “Well, for starters,” Claire took a deep breath and twisted her watch around on her wrist, “doctors have to put themselves through medical school, and that’s very expensive.”

  Tony looked stunned. “You have to pay for university? Doctors have to pay to train themselves?”

  “Yeah, but they make the money back once they graduate,” Claire said. “It’s an investment.”

  “You can take out loans,” I interrupted. “Borrow money from the banks and the government to go to school.”

  Tony seemed floored by this. Jonnie, too. “Borrow money?”

  I shrugged. “I did it. To go to my university.”

  Tony looked from me to Claire. “You go to university too?”

  “Uh-huh, both of us did,” she replied. “That’s where we met.”

  “Oh,” said Tony, pressing his hands together and bringing them to his lips. “So both of you are very rich, yes?”

  ———

  As the afternoon wound down, we all said goodbye. Jonnie had business to take care of, and Harry had possession of the van for only another hour. “Do not worry. I come see you soon,” Jonnie insisted. “I will make arrangements. In a few days, we will all leave for Dinghai together, yes?”

  Claire and I nodded hesitantly, guiltily, noncommittally. We set off with Gunter through the old Shanghai Concession neighborhood, working our way back toward the riverfront.

  It was twilight. The sky had ripened to dark violet. The Bund was cordoned off, each palatial European building illuminated with ribbons of fairy lights. It was the night before China’s National Day—the anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic, Communist China’s very own version of the Fourth of July. All of Shanghai seemed to take to the streets carrying sparklers and sticks of candied fruit. The crowds kept accumulating, tributaries feeding into each other, people gathering and pressing in around us as the three of us walked arm in arm along the Bund, swept up in the tide of celebration. As soon as night fell, there was an explosion, followed by a collective chorus of oohs and aahs, which appear to be the same in any language. Fireworks rocketed up and bloomed over the Huangpu River in great sunflowers and starbursts, brilliant geysers of red, silver, and gold reflecting off the faces of people like firelight.

  Amid this jubilant crowd, I experienced a rush of pleasure, something close to ecstasy. Standing in the middle of the Bund, feeling the breeze from the river tangling in my hair, seeing the faces of the children as they waved their sparklers giddily, spraying white hot glitter into the dark, I felt my fear dissolve. For the first time I felt suddenly capable—as if everything might, in fact, be all right. My life, this trip: It could be a torrent of wonder.

  “Claire!” I shouted, pirouetting in the middle of the street the way she so often did. “Claire! We did it!” As fireworks exploded above us, I grabbed her hands and spun her around deliriously, tossing my head back and laughing. “Claire, we’ve made it to fucking China!”

  Chapter 5

  The East China Sea

  THE FERRY TO Dinghai reeked of bilgewater and gasoline. On the pier, everyone was pushing, loaded down with bedding, cabbages, melons, rags, nets of silvery, stinking, dead-eyed fish. In the midst of the melee, some people lit cigarettes and started spitting even as they jockeyed toward the gangway. Military officers blew whistles attempting to corral the crowds. It was amazing no one fell in the water.

  Nighttime in Shanghai, we’d discovered, was almost a blackout. Except for a few pale lamps along the Bund, all the street lights went off at once, plunging the boulevards into darkness. It was as if someone had pulled a plug on the entire city each night.

  “Please, you follow me.” Jonnie shouted.

  It was hard to see the gangway. We burrowed headlong into the crush. Claire, Gunter, and I gripped each other’s hands. People were packed so tightly, I could’ve lifted my feet off the planking and been carried along. But then our Western faces caught the beams from the officers’ flashlights. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and people began stepping back, giving us a wide berth and staring.

  “See, being a freak has its privileges,” I whispered to Claire. Then I began coughing so violently, I doubled over.

  “You okay?” she said. “Take a moment.”

  I stood panting with my hands on my knees while she whacked me on the back. Like the Chinese around me, I spit a huge gob of congestion down into the bay.

  ———

  Days earlier, on our first morning in Shanghai after the riotous night of fireworks, I’d awoken at the Pujiang Hotel to a symphony of bronchial infections.

  It began innocuously enough, with the squeak of a bedspring and a lone sandpapery little cough. But within minutes women across the room were keeled over in their beds clearing their throats, sniffling, wheezing, expectorating into their fists. It sounded like a tuberculosis ward.

  “It’s the ‘Shanghai hack,’ ” the British woman in the bed next to me rasped. “Give yourself two days, luv, and you’ll be spitting your lungs up like the rest of us. It’s from the bloody pollution. The Chinese burn coal for everything.”

  Claire was gone. Her bed was already made, the top sheet pinioned to the frame with military tautness, The Basic Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche propped against the pillow like a Gideon Bible. As I got up she reappeared, fully dressed, her face scrubbed to a waxy sheen, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She’d taken great pains to rinse her extra polo shirt out in the sink; the white knit fabric clung to her skin damply, as did the gold bracelets on her wrist and her horseshoe charm necklace.

  “Even at six a.m., the water’s still freezing,” she said. “I swear. The plumbing alone in this country is a human rights violation.”

  We had assumed, of course, that traveling would elevate us to a higher level of consciousness, that by backpacking through China, we’d absorb great wisdom the way a chunk of bread might soak up a plate full of sauce—that our minds would dilate with insight—and wherever we went, we’d spout razor-sharp cultural observations worthy of great philosophers. Instead, as we trudged around Shanghai the next few days, our thoughts became nearly pre-verbal: Can I eat that? This is itchy. I need to pee.

  We took a boat tour of the muddy Huangpu River. We visited the Yuyuan Gardens and the decrepit Shanghai museum full of forgotten treasures. But the grime from the streets clung to us, and our clothes became saturated with a chemical stench of car exhaust and shellac. We had trouble finding drinking water. Claire got blisters. We found ourselves preoccupied not with Ming dynasty porcelain or Maoist ideology at all, but with figuring out how to read the goddamned bus map, hunting down extra Band-Aids, and finding time to wash our socks out in the bathroom sink at the hotel.

  Most of all, we became preoccupied with food.

  In 1986, there were few Chinese restaurants outside the tourist establishments. Unless you could read Mandarin or didn’t mind risking hepatitis from street carts, you were pretty much the culinary hostage of your hotel.

  And in a poor nation of one billion, the Chinese ate things we average Americans found repulsive. At the Pujiang Restaurant, “chicken” consisted of feet, necks, and chopped-up spinal columns; “pork” meant bone shards with strings of fat clinging to them; “beef” was tendons, joints, an
d gristle. Any vegetables that had not been cooked to a sodden mess were to be avoided as health risks.

  Plus, every meal at the Pujiang quickly became a standoff between hungry tourists and the apathetic waitstaff. The dining room would fill to capacity with desperate diners, who’d then wait and wait. When a single waitress finally emerged from the kitchen, the place was like an auction house, everyone waving napkins, hands, and menus, bidding for her attention while she glided around the tables as if it were her job not to serve us but to model. She seemed to have decided I’m not getting tipped and I’m never getting fired, so why the hell should I bother? Having waited tables myself, I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  The only places where Claire and I could eat outside the hotels were in the ancient back-alley neighborhoods called hutongs. They had dumpling houses—storefronts, really, consisting of little more than a hot plate and a wok. All we had to do was buy a ticket and stand on line as a woman sautéed dumplings in hot oil and her daughter wrapped them in squares of brown paper. As soon as we got our order, we’d rip the steaming bag open and devour the contents right there in the street. For the very first time in our lives, we were chronically hungry.

  Each day that we ran around sightseeing, we grew more acutely aware of just how coddled we’d been all our lives and just how foolish we were.

  Without knowing Mandarin, we were, in the end, just voyeurs. All that set us apart from any other slack-jawed, gum-chomping tourists was the fact that neither of us had a camera. Our second morning at the Pujiang, I’d pulled my Instamatic out of my backpack to find its shutter button had jammed.

  ———

  Inside the Dinghai Ferry, it was bedlam. People elbowed their way through the corridors with enormous bundles wrapped in cheap, sulfurous green plastic. Relentless broadcasts blared over the ship’s PA system. Inexplicably, members of the crew had decided that this was a good time to wash the decks. They stood amid the mayhem with soapy buckets, swishing mops over people’s feet as they passed. Through the din, I also heard—was I making this up?—chickens squawking.