Shamian Gate, page 1
SHAMIAN GATE
by Christopher Fulbright & Angeline Hawkes
Entire contents copyright © 2015 by
Christopher Fulbright and Angeline Hawkes
http://www.fulbrightandhawkes.com/
Cover illustration by Sean Jun
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Published by ND3 Press
Printed in the USA
First printing: August 2015
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Chapter One
The ground trembled beneath the old monk’s feet as he fanned wafting incense toward the blue-gray stone gate. As the appointed time neared, tremors shook the mountain temple with sounds like the roaring of some great dragon deep within the earth.
The monk touched the gate. Tendrils of smoke curled beneath his wrinkled hand, caressing the age-worn barrier that had waited centuries to be opened. The man breathed deeply of the woodsy, pungent fragrance, feeling a calm envelope his being.
It was almost time.
Eagerly he awaited the coming of the prophesied Guānjiàn—the key that would open the gate’s lock, revealing the magnificent powers beyond. He wished to be this beautiful key, this release, this longed-for sacrifice. He wished his name could be written in the scrolls, books, and computer documents of their modern time as the savior of the world: He who opened the gate.
With every creeping year he came closer to his end, and time would go on without him, much the same as it had for the many decades he walked these stone corridors.
Huge jade lions, perched atop the gate posts, peered down at him as the monk waved a censer of incense. With one finger, he traced the characters that were chiseled into the stone. Inset in the center of the gate was a circular bronze mechanism. Time weathered the bronze to a green patina, but the deeper indentions were still a brownish hue. He pressed his sagging cheek against the cool rock, listening.
The gate hummed, a low sound only heard with an ear against the stone. Lovingly, he moved his hand to the bronze disc. The metal pulsed warm as if it were alive beneath his flesh. He had always been tempted to place his fingers into the lock, but fear of death gave him power to resist. With death from old age now so close, he finally chose to act on his desire. Slowly, wistfully, he placed three fingers into the three-pronged star-shaped keyhole and tried to force it.
“Ah!” the monk shrieked, pulling away his fingers. He dropped the incense censer with a loud clatter onto the quaking ground. His flesh blistered and bubbled—burned from contact with the lock. Fearfully he eyed the bronze keyhole while blowing on his injured digits.
The humming droned on, now loud enough to hear while standing beside the great stone barrier. Purplish vapor seeped from the keyhole, gathering into a wispy cloud, spreading itself out, covering the gate.
A penetrating cold enveloped him. His teeth chattered violently as he wrapped his arms across his chest in a futile embrace for warmth. The mist grew thicker. The ground shuddered beneath his bony feet, pitching him forward onto the worn stones of the corridor floor. Something akin to a tired gasp hissed from the gate.
The old monk looked up just in time to see the massive head of one jade lion crack, tilt lopsidedly, and careen down onto his cowled figure as he huddled before the Shamian Gate.
Chapter Two
Jeff lifted the steaming teabag from the white porcelain cup, absently dunking it in and out of the amber-colored water. Seated before the small hotel desk, he turned the pages of the dossier he’d read a thousand times before. All of their information was here: Jeff and Ashley Russell, both 40 years old. Address. Phone numbers. Health information. References. The compiled information covered everything from their blood types to photos of their home. For over a year, he and Ashley had completed documents, sent money, sought notarizations, and generally ran around like proverbial chickens with their heads cut off in anticipation for this moment, this time: now.
He glanced into the corner of the hotel room to the rolling cot where their new son slept. Soft snores emanated from beneath crisp, white sheets pulled over the boy’s head. Jeff returned his attention to the papers beneath his hands. The folder on the desk also contained paperwork for their slumbering, newly acquired child. Lee, Fu-Han: written surname first in the traditional Chinese fashion. Age four. Abandoned in Lanxi Park, Lu’an, Anhui Province. Bounced around from orphanage to orphanage. Classified as a waiting child. Special needs. Waiting until the age of four years to find his forever family simply because of a deformed right hand twisted into the shape of a three-pronged star.
Jeff glanced at his wife, also asleep in these wee hours of the morning. She looked drained: physically and emotionally. He removed the teabag, setting it on the saucer, nervously tapping the thick stack of documents before him. Sure, the dossier contained their information—theirs and the likely pack of lies passed off as Fu-Han’s story; but what wasn’t detailed in those officially stamped papers was the humanity of this process known as international adoption.
What wasn’t contained in those documents was the fear. The fear in Fu-Han’s eyes when he was handed over to Ashley—a tall woman with skin the color of snow and eyes that sparkled like the blue ocean. The fear in Ashley’s face as she folded her arms around Fu-Han’s tiny, underweight body for the first time—after a year of waiting for the son who existed only in a photograph. His own fear: the fear that caused his heart to pound as the reality of the responsibility of raising this traumatized child settled over him, a dark promise of uncertainty to come. None of the fear was penned into those documents, not in English or Mandarin. Everything in the stack of papers beneath his thumping fingers was hunky dory. The type of stuff Hollywood dreams up to jerk hearts and wallets: Little Orphan Annie, Tarzan, The Box Car Children, Anne of Green Gables, The Jungle Book, Batman and Harry Potter. The fiction world was full of orphan-makes-good tales of triumphing over adversity and less than pleasant origins. Jeff sighed. This wasn’t Hollywood, or a comic book or a novel. This was real life and in real life there was no way to predict the outcome of the journey.
All the morose thoughts aside, at least the hotel was beautiful; the staff accommodating. Yesterday, the three of them, along with their agency representative, Mei-Mei, walked through Jinxiu Garden and toured two temples. The days were pleasant enough, but not enough to mask the toll of sleep deprivation both he and Ashley were suffering. Night after night they took turns being kicked, slapped and screamed at in Mandarin; or they sat, backs bent, on the edge of the too-narrow beds singing and rocking their confused, fearful child. Fu-Han fluctuated from rage to sorrow and they never knew which would surface or for how long.
As a professor of Ancient Asian Studies, Jeff believed he was prepared to teach Fu-Han about the marvelous history of China. He could speak his dialect, allowing them to communicate with words—but the boy resisted most physical contact; the exception being the occasional need for an embrace after hours of raging against the inevitable outcome of his unfortunate—to this point—life. No one asked Fu-Han if he wanted to be born deformed, abandoned, or adopted by strange-looking, odd-smelling people he’d never met before. No one had asked Fu-Han anything at all. Jeff felt the heavy weight of the daunting task of teaching this small boy, not about the triumphs and inventions of an illustrious people—but of teaching this child the harsh realities of his beginnings and somehow not allowing those unfortunate origins to shape his future self. They would have to teach him he was more than the sum of his parts, parts that, in his case, were deemed “less than perfect” by two governments and a myriad of medical and immigration documentation.
Jeff sighed. It was five o’clock in the morning. He looked at the cup and wished it were coffee. Maybe it was history and reputation that prevented China from offering him a decent cup of Joe. Maybe it was the fact that no major coffee shop had sunk roots here in this city. Whatever the reason, since he left Korea, all he’d been able to procure in the form of hot beverages was tea or this ghastly shit called “milk tea” that came in a paper pouch and stirred up instantly in hot water. He grimaced at the memory of the taste. Oh well, as the adage goes, “When in Rome....” Although, if I were in Rome, I could probably find a damn cup of coffee!
Just in the event he hadn’t had enough experience with tea on this journey so far, today they would be joined by Mei-Mei, their ever-energetic agency representative, for a tour of the Tea Markets. They rented a stroller to whisk Fu-Han around in for quicker walking. The little guy would probably protest, but Mei-Mei would give him a talking-to and into the stroller Fu-Han would go.
One thing was certain, this emotional rollercoaster of a trip to bring home their boy, was drastically different than academic jaunts to Beijing required by his career. It was one thing to discuss changing political atmospheres with stuffed shirt professors. It was another thing altogether to pry a screaming child from your wife’s body every night. And Ashley wasn’t fond of traveling in the first place.
Jeff heard a rustle and turned around in his chair. Fu-Han was sitting upright on the little bed in the corner, surrounded by twisted sheets and stuffed animals recently purchased when they discovered all the boy “came with” were the clothes on his back and a backpack of candy. The orphanage didn’t even send an extra pair of underwear.
“Nǐ hǎo,” he said to the sleepy preschooler.
&
“Lèi le ma?” Jeff asked Fu-Han. Of course the child was tired; he’d only been asleep for a couple of hours at best.
Fu-Han shook his head no, snarling still. And then, in a blur of motion, Fu-Han bolted from the bed straight to the door.
“Oh, shit, not this again!” Jeff muttered under his breath, glanced at his sleeping wife, and wondered if he could at least keep the boy quiet enough not to wake her. Doubtful.
Fu-Han was throwing himself against the door, fumbling with the latch. He wasn’t tall enough to reach the slide chain, but last night that didn’t stop him from pushing a chair to the door and attacking it with all his preschool ingenuity.
“No, no, no.” Jeff tried to pull Fu-Han’s good hand away from the latch, but the boy smacked him right in the nose with his little twisted fist, while continuing his escape with his “good” hand.
“Huíjiā!” Fu-Han wailed. It meant, “I want to go home.” It sounded like way-ja. Fu-Han screamed the phrase for four hours straight the other night, working himself into a sweaty frenzy before finally collapsing in tears.
“I know you do, buddy,” Jeff said in English, meant as words of comfort. He was wrung out like an old dishcloth from the same argument, the same breakout attempts, and the same feelings of guilt at somehow wrenching this boy from the only life he knew to whisk him half way around the world to things he’d only seen on television.
Fu-Han exhaled loudly, his little body shuddering with the force. He slumped against the door and sobbed.
Ashley leaned forward, around the wall leading from the little foyer to the sleeping room. “Everything okay?”
Jeff sighed. “Yeah. More of the same. Trying to make a run for it again.” He stood and walked closer to Ashley to say something, when Fu-Han flipped the latch and began pulling on the door like a wild animal. The door clanged and banged against the metal frame. He glanced at the boy and back at Ashley. “He can’t get out. Chain’s latched.”
“He’s going to wake the whole floor.”
Jeff laughed. “I’m willing to bet no one is on this floor aside from us.”
Fu-Han screamed and ranted. He ran to Jeff, launching himself at Jeff’s lower legs. Jeff grabbed the nearby counter for support.
“Fu-Han!” Ashley protested.
The boy slapped, kicked, clawed and sunk his teeth into Jeff’s hand.
“Okay! That’s enough!” Jeff got him in a hold, restraining him. “I’ll put up with the kicks and slap-down, but I’m drawing the line at biting.”
Ashley slipped into her bathrobe and got out of bed.
“Huíjiā! Huíjiā!” Fu-Han shouted, curling his fist, his little face screwed with anger.
Ashley drew near, cooing words of comfort. Fu-Han ripped one arm free of Jeff’s hold and raked his jagged nails across her face.
“Ow!” Ashley clutched her cheek. “Little shit!”
“Cussing,” Jeff said, half-laughing.
“Like he knows anything I’m saying!” Ashley looked at her face in the mirror and looked for the first aid kit. “Great. I’ll probably get an amoeba or something from his claws. We really need to cut his finger and toe nails.”
“Not a priority, honey,” Jeff said, fighting the struggling boy.
Fu-Han then clutched his own crotch, indicating, in any language, that he needed to potty.
“Okay. Okay. Niàohú. Potty—” Jeff opened the bathroom door with one hand, and flipped on the light. He slowly released the boy. Fu-Han stood there, grumpily, staring at him. “Niàohú!” Jeff pointed to the toilet.
Fu-Han still didn’t like western toilets. He was accustomed to squatty potties: a porcelain or literal hole in the ground. Rural farmers weren’t too picky about their plumbing fixtures. The first day they had Fu-Han, he spent an entire hour in the hotel room bathroom watching the water run, flushing the toilet, and laughing his little ass off. They let him do it. Hell, Jeff thought, if he had never seen water coming from a silver tube in the wall, he would’ve wanted to play with it too.
Jeff pointed at the potty again. Fu-Han pushed on the bathroom door, indicating he wanted to close it for privacy.
“Okay.” Jeff closed the door.
“Shouldn’t you leave it open a crack?” Ashley asked.
“He’s big enough.”
“Hmm.” Ashley walked to the coffee pot containing hot water. She dropped a tea bag into a cup and filled the cup with water. “I sure wish I had some coffee.”
Jeff laughed. Then he heard Fu-Han laughing. He pointed to the bathroom and frowned.
“What’s he doing in there?” Ashley asked.
Sighing, Jeff walked to the bathroom and opened the door a little. “Fu-Han?”
The giggles grew louder. Jeff opened the door. “Oh, my god.”
“What? What is it?” Ashley ran to the door and peered inside.
The bathroom—with its glossy white tiles and counter—was covered in excrement. Small hand prints and finger smears swirled around like vacation bible school chocolate pudding finger-paintings. Fu-Han was relatively unscathed with the exception of his poo-covered hands. He grinned up at them, having the time of his life.
“Oh, my god.” Ashley echoed Jeff’s sentiments. “I am NOT cleaning that shit up!” She stormed from the bathroom and plopped herself on the edge of the bed. “What in the hell? Why?”
“Probably trying to think of bad things to test us with.”
“Well, he did a damn good job.” Ashley picked up the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the maid. I’m not cleaning that up. That’s disgusting. I’m paying $200 a night to stay here. The hotel staff can clean it up.”
Jeff held Fu-Han’s hands under the faucet and poured hand soap and liquid sanitizer over the mess. He talked softly to the boy in Mandarin. “Why did you do this, Fu-Han?”
The boy laughed, but then grew silent, allowing Jeff to clean his hands, almost remorseful, but not quite. In a small voice he answered in his native tongue, “Ayah told me if I was bad, you would send me home. I want to go home.”
Jeff shook his head. “We’re going home to the U.S.A. Fu-Han is my son now.”
Fu-Han watched the soap lather into bubbles over his hands. He turned as he heard the knock on the hotel room door. “Huíjiā.”
Ashley let in the maid and explained as best as she could to the woman, who spoke limited English, what happened. Jeff took over in Mandarin. He led Fu-Han from the bathroom, drying the boy’s hands with a towel. The maid grimaced at the sight of the smeared crap, then turned to the boy, bent over and wagged a furious finger. She launched into a rant meant for the misbehaving child. Fu-Han hung his head and watched his feet, perfectly aware of his crime. When she was finished with her lecture, the maid stood, squared her shoulders and entered the bathroom to clean the boy’s artwork from every surface he’d been able to reach.
Ashley turned on the television, flipped the channel to inane Chinese cartoons, and settled Fu-Han onto the bed.
Jeff sighed, sat down at the desk once again, and drank his—now very cold—tea, knowing, as the sun broke through the misty rain clouds of the early morning, they were one day closer to home.
Chapter Three
Mei-Mei met them downstairs in the marble-heavy hotel, which was a sight to see on its own: three stories high, with a huge center atrium, a tall waterfall and a koi pond crossed by a bridge that spanned it as well as a faux creek running throughout the opulent lobby. It was clear why the Chinese wanted foreign visitors to stay here. It was breathtaking, even if a closer examination revealed the age of the hotel in cracks, leaks, and worn carpeting in the upstairs halls. The roar of the hotel waterfall couldn’t drown the chattering Mei-Mei, who talked a mile a minute from the moment she met them.
“You look forward to Tea Markets, yes?” She was short and smiled a lot, and talked like an animated used car saleswoman. She wore a sun visor and sunglasses, and carried a purse the size of Rhode Island.
