Jiang. “You should do an article with her. It would bring you attention.”
Tan leapt in. “You could have at least suggested the two of you drink tea! You could have discussed the matter as a civilized person.”
Sam understood. A civilized person meant a Chinese person. After the first few years of instructing him in the kitchen — the two of them barking directions, shouting at his mistakes, harrumphing their approval when he cooked well — the two old men had turned to teaching him etiquette. They showed him the web of manners and considerations that held together the Chinese world. Unfortunately, he had been raised in America; he was possessed of willful foreign ways. And he was only half Chinese. Luck was with him that the other half was Jewish, as Jews were admired for their intelligence, but still, here in China, it was bad to be only part Chinese. This was always the first thought of Sam’s detractors.
Those critics called him an outsider even though he was old-school. They didn’t seem to care that he was one of the few still cooking in the traditional way, that all the other top cooks in China were showcasing some modern edge. But he had determined to do what his grandfather had written and his uncles had taught him. He knew cooking well was the best revenge.
“I wish you had invited the female person to meet you,” Tan said.
“Yes, Uncle.” Sam did not argue. In their minds, being single at his age was almost an affront to nature. It was something they felt a duty to correct. He had long ago understood that the best way to love them was to let them interfere. Let them scold him and insist upon meetings with the female relations of their acquaintances. These meetings were at best a waste of time and at worst painful — and not only for him. What he’d quickly realized was that the women didn’t want the introduction any more than he did. They too were there only to appease elder relatives.
Certainly there were beautiful, intelligent Chinese women to be met in the internationalized top layer of Beijing society, but so far Sam had not found the connection he wanted. Part of it was them. For Chinese women who liked foreigners, he was not foreign enough. For those seeking a man who was Chinese, he was too foreign. His status placed him somewhere below all of the above on the instant-desirability scale.
It had not been like that at home in Ohio. There, his dark, high-cheeked face had seemed exotic to women, especially corn-fed girls with athletic strides and sweet smiles. The women here were lovely too, but different, sinuous, cerebral, fine-skinned. They were cultured. He found them fascinating. It was never hard to begin affairs with them. What was hard was to connect.
That, he sensed, was his fault; he wanted a connection that was complete. Here, he could never get over feeling that he was using only half of himself, the Chinese half. Everything from before, from America, now hid unseen. And he wanted to be seen. At home in the West he’d had a similar feeling, only it was the Chinese part of him that lay dormant. He’d had the idea that coming here would change things. No. He was still half.
“You could have talked to the American about the book,” Tan said.
Sam shook his head. “Respectfully, Second Uncle, I don’t see them doing an article about a book that came out in 1925 — oh, and in Chinese.”
“You are translating it.”
“It’s not done.”
“You’re no further?” said Jiang.
“I ought to be more hardworking,” Sam said, which was the evasive and Chinese thing to say. Actually it was his father who held up the translation. Now retired from the post office, Liang Yeh spent most of his time in a dark room with books and the things he remembered. Sam couldn’t get him to do his part, which was rendering his own father’s formal, premodern Mandarin into a rough English-and-Chinese mix Sam could understand.
He had not told Tan and Jiang this, preferring to let them admire the old man. To them, Liang Yeh had triumphed. He had made his way to America. He had established a family. They didn’t know that Sam had been largely raised by his mother, the no-nonsense and tireless Judy Liang, née Blumenfeld, while his father was mentally remote. Exile was in the heart, and Liang Yeh carried it with him everywhere. He seemed determined to