Page 67 of If You Could See the Sun
Chanel just winks at me, while Henry stares down with extreme focus at the single sesame bun on his plate, the tips of his ears pink.
More waiters soon step forward bearing trays of popular local dishes: deep-fried fish glazed with a thick tomato sauce, the meat so tender it slides off naturally from the bones; delicate red date paste cakes cut into the shape of diamonds; round wontons floating in bowls of golden broth.
It’s all mouthwatering, but across the table, Julie Walsh wrinkles her nose at the fish and asks, very slowly, “What...isthat?”
A pause. No one seems to want to answer, but when the silence drags on too long, Chanel rolls her eyes and says, “It’s Mandarin Squirrel Fish.”
Julie’s hand flies to her chest.“Squirrel—”
“Not actual squirrel,” I can’t help interrupting. “It’s just the name.”
“Oh. Well, good,” Julie says, though she still makes no move to touch the dish. Instead, to my utter disbelief, she retrieves a packet of trail mix from her handbag and dumps the contents out onto her plate.
Irritation flares up inside me, and I realize that Henry was right the other day: my anger does make me brave.
“Excuse me,Dr.Walsh,” I say, raising my voice a little. “I thought this was an Experiencing China trip?”
Julie blinks at me, a salted almond half lifted to her painted lips. “Yes?”
“Then surely eating the local cuisine is part of the experience, is it not? Especially when the teachers are expected to lead by example?” Without giving her a chance to protest, I go on, “And weren’t you saying just the other day, in our social ethics class, that world harmony could be achievedif onlypeople were willing to practice empathy and explore new cultures?”
The almond drops soundlessly and rolls over the tablecloth. Julie doesn’t pick it up; she’s too busy staring at me like I’m a bug she wants to squash.
I don’t think a teacher has ever looked at me with anything other than affection or concern before. Then again, I can’t recall ever talking to a teacher like this before either.
Then Mr. Murphy stands up at the next table and claps twice to get everyone’s attention, snapping the thread of tension—and conveniently saving Julie from having to respond.
“Listen up, guys,” he booms, using his presenter-at-assembly voice. “Since we have a very full afternoon planned out, and won’t be in the Autumn Dragon Hotel until late evening, we’ve decided to save some hassle and give you your hotel room numbers and cards now, all right?” He peers around at us as if we’re really all sitting down before a stage. “Is that something I can trust you guys to keep safe for eight hours?”
He receives only a few lackluster nods in response, but seems to deem this good enough.
“Great.” He takes out a crumpled paper folder not unlike the one I stole the history exam answers from. Guilt lifts its head, and I quickly stomp it back down. “I’ll call your names one by one, and if you or your roommate can just come up in an orderly fashion... Let’s see... Scott An.”
There’s an evident discrepancy between Mr. Murphy’s idea of “orderly fashion” and our interpretation of the words, because soon everyone’s standing up and jostling each other trying to get to the front.
“Orderly!” Mr. Murphy cries over the squeak of chairs and the countless voices talking at the same time. “I saidorderly!”
In the chaos, I manage to squeeze close enough to get a view of the paper in Mr. Murphy’s outstretched hand, the tens of names printed in tidy rows across it. But it’s not my name I’m searching for.
Peter Oh and Kevin Nguyen: Room 902.
I carve the number into my memory. If everything goes well, this is the room I’ll end up in tonight.
Once we’re all back in our seats and our plates are scraped clean, Wei Laoshi takes over, leading us out to the bus again. I think he’s really starting to embrace his tourist guide role, because he puts on a red bucket hat, waves a little flag with the school logo on it high over his head and says, with sincere enthusiasm, “Now—who’s ready for some sightseeing?”
The old districts of Suzhou are beautiful.
Like a magical secret kept safe and hidden from the outside world. A soft, milky fog spills across the winding waterways, the crooked, crowded alleys and faded white houses, blurring the lines between land and sky. There are women wringing out their laundry by the banks, leathery-skinned men hauling nets of fish from the murky green canals, college-aged girls posing and snapping photos by the willow trees, pretty oil paper umbrellas rested over their shoulders.
“Oh—oh, it’s like the Chinese version of Venice!” Julie Walsh gasps when we step out of the bus, her high heels clacking against the century-old pavement.
But the place doesn’t look like Venice to me. It doesn’t look like anywhere else in the world.
We start walking down the side of a canal, with Wei Laoshi leading the way. Every now and then, he stops to point at things—a statue of a solemn-looking official, a slanted inn, a boat drifting atop the waters—and call out random facts, saying how the Qianlong emperor once stayed in Suzhou for ten days and couldn’t bear to leave, even reciting a few lines of the emperor’s poetry.
I’m sure Qianlong’s poem is great, but all I can get out of it is something about a bird and a mountain and blood—no, snow—no—
“Wait, Wei Laoshi,” Chanel ventures. “I keep forgetting—which one was Qianlong and which one was Qin Shihuang again? Like, who was the dude that buried scholars alive?”
