Under The Scholar Tree-Historical Fiction

-Written for a final project For history Class-Historical Fiction Piece as the 'lost last chapter' of the fabulous work of nonfiction, Wild Swans. I didn't ever write historical fiction, but I've been trying it lately and it has been an interesting experience. This is FAR from my typical piece of writing.-
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29. Under The Scholar Tree
(1985)

She ushers me under the scholar tree and motions for me to sit. She is a small woman, her hair is loose and greying but well cared for. She reminds me vaguely of my grandmother and her religious brushing of her hair. I smile politely and sit down. May follows suit, sitting besides me. She looks out of place with her  dirty blond hair and blue eyes. I breath in deeply. I never expected to be back here. The teahouse is under the embrace of a tall canopy of trees, low wooden square tables are placed around, bamboo chairs that give off a sweet aroma. 


It's 1985 and I am back in Sichuan, visiting with a British friend. By now, I have embraced London, made my home there. London  confused and scared me at first. I remember being lost in the train systems, unable to understand common English expressions, bewildered by the sea of English faces and signs all around me.  Though my English was strong, nothing prepares you for the actual experience of being in an English speaking country. My scant experiences with the sailors in China had barely prepared me for fluent conversations. My thirst for knowledge has by no means  been sated by my new life. I continued to read incessantly. I still fondly page through Little Woman, the first book I ever read in English. My ability to read English had benefited me greatly in China, and would continue to help me improve my English in London. The more I read, the more my English improved. I would sometimes read lines in books out loud, when alone, pretending I was the one engaged in the conversation: 


 “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine!” (Pride and Prejudice.)


And so I have made my home there though sometimes I feel I left my heart in China. China is becoming very different from when I moved,  stains completely erased. The teahouses have opened back up, the standards of living have improved.  Slowly the taint of the past is vanishing. As I look around, the people seem more at ease, I even catch a few smiles. This is quite different from the China I left. 
 
 I too am different. England has given me a chance at freedom untasted in China. Comfort and leisure is no longer something that I have to mentally convince myself is morally wrong. When I first moved there  and had moments to myself, moments to sit, I  almost had a physical aversion to it. Mao had taught us that we must always be trying to work to build a better China. This was the purpose of our lives, and now my purpose was altered. I've come to love stolen moments of leisure like this, though I've never  quite been able to shake the feeling that they are indeed stolen. 
 
 Simple things have become extremely important to me. For example I have developed an extreme love of flowers. I remember ripping them out in Sichuan, tearing out the roots, dirt caked beneath my fingers. Mao urged us to rip out any plant life that could be deemed 'bourgeoise.” Now, I can't help but smile every time I see a patch of especially beautiful flowers. I sit under the scholar tree and take in the lush green shade of its pods, the moment to sit underneath it and simply breath. 

 But I've kept many things inside, blocking out many memories. I don't want to confront my past. In China we had all learned how to be actors and actresses, hoping to play our cards right. I remember when Mao died and those around me sobbed hysterically. I still wonder how many of those tears were real, how convincing my own acting had been.  Tears are left unshed.

 But now I am in this little Sichuan teahouse. May makes a few comments on how charming the atmosphere is. We make polite conversation as the woman begins to fill our cups with a kettle from two feet away, steaming jasmine tea.   I stare at the steam dancing in front of me in white wisps.  An old man is playing 'majiang', Chinese chess. I stare at him closely, as if looking at a ghost.


He smiles at me, revealing an almost toothless grin. 
“You play?” He asks
“No.” I reply truthfully.


 I may have once, but tea houses were banned along with chess during the Cultural Revolution. If I ever knew, I've forgotten how. I avert my eyes. I told May that this visit might be hard for me. 
The last time that I was here was in 1966 and I wasn't ordering tea. I remember being with the other students as they had yelled “Leave this bourgeoise place!!” to the customers, the old men playing chess. I remember my shock at how these elders were treated, my refuse to act with such aggression. But gentleness was  considered bourgeoise along with teahouses and chess. And yet here I am in the teahouse again, the epitome of 'bourgeoise.' Those sitting in a teahouse drinking tea, chatting and playing chess are not out making revolution, they aren't out building a stronger China. 
I look down at my clothing, a simple black dress and patent leather shoes. The last time I was here I was a teenager dressed in trousers, covered in patches to look 'proletarian.” My hair hangs loose around my face, the last time I was here it was in two plaits, not a hair out of place. Soon it would be cut off by my grandmother, never to be adorned with silk flowers by her again. 
The old man playing chess addresses me again. “Would you like to learn?”
“Maijiang?”
“Yes..your friend too?” May nods at me encouragingly.

The old man gives me an eager look, taking a puff from his long stemmed pipe over a plate of nuts and melon seeds. I am elated by this simple fact..I am really truly in the very same teahouse that so many years ago I pasted slogans on the walls of.  I feel a wave of guilt, remembering asking a man quite like the man in front of me if he would go home.


My face must have given me away my troubled thoughts.
“Miss, are you alright?” Croaks the old man
“I'm fine..It's just..when I was younger myself and many other students, we invaded this tea house. We..we closed this place down. We were young..we..”
I feel May take my hand and squeeze it firmly for reassurance.
The man takes another puff at his pipe. He nods“Then you never got a chance to learn how to play Maijang, did you?”
I grin, widely. “No, I guess I never did.”
I take a sip of the jasmine tea, savoring its pungent flavor, feeling a cloud of steam against my face as I tip my cup towards my mouth. I place the cup and saucer down, careful not to burn my fingers. I grin again and sit down next to the old man.
He begins to point each of the characters, the elephant, the soldier etc. May is enraptured, I can tell she is taking in every instruction, rapt. I listen, politely. But my head is elsewhere. I think of when when Lin Bao called for everything that represented old culture to be destroyed.
All around me people are drinking tea and playing chess. A waiter is shuffling around the bamboo seats pouring hot water from a kettle, which he pours from feet away. His aim is accurate and pinpointed, hot water tumbling into the pale yellow tea cups. 
This is one of the happiest moments of my life, I decide. For who are we without our culture? Who are we without our teahouses, our libraries, our chess games and old men?
“You ready?” He asks.
I nod. 


I am a wonderful Maijong player.












Notes-
Jung Chang would not begin to write Wild Swans for two more years. Her mother visited her in London and told her the stories of her and her grandmother (as stated in epilogue). She would then reconcile with her past and begin to write Wild Swans. This fictional scene happens two years before this, as the 'lost chapter.” Jung Chang did in fact invade a teahouse in her youth , a scene she describes in her bool. And in 1985 she revisited it with an English friend, after it had re-opened. The book  Wild Swans makes the briefest of mentions to this visit, simply stating that she revisited it and it was the one of the happiest days of her life. I chose to imagine her scene at the teahouse and explore some of the thoughts she must have been thinking about the scene at hand and her experiences in London. I imagine what a shock it must have been to suddenly be in London, like discovering a new world. Jung Chang says that she chose to avoid thinking about the China she had left behind. However, her past would continue to catch up with her. I wrote this scene imagining how it would be like to reconnect with her past in ways that had been once deemed illegal by the Cultural Revolution.The Cultural Revolution was all about  'out with the old, in with the new.”  However, I believe that without our pasts we have no definition of our present. I believe Jung  Chang would say the same, leaving an amazing legacy in the form of  Wild Swans.

We'll Meet Again

 -When I grow up I want to be an old person.It is amazing how much of life..doesn't need any fiction added to it.-

We visited him today. He had lost weight and his skin was wrinkled  and pulled across his bones. His long gaunt hands were colored with purple veins. His eyes were bright, a cover of fog touching them. He was in the hospital, contained by white walls and smooth tile. He clutched a red pen in his hand, a note book of drawings at his side. When we walked in I clasped his old hand and he called us his family. He showed us paintings he was turning into place mats, still a business man with his gears turning. He said he went broke but he's turned out all right. He always says that. We always laugh. 

I told him that every morning when I wake up, in the room he used to sleep in the first thing I see is his painting of the birds and the sea. He told me those birds could be any bird I wanted them to be. They are. Sometimes I call them my silly geese, other days they are my swans. When he signed his name on that painting he added a little flag to the sail boat. I remember that every morning..what use is a boat without a proper sail? He's no different today.

He tells us about World War Two and his little white cap. He says everyone steals money. Everyone is a thief. But I know he loves them anyways. He talks about Carlos, who recently choked on his own vomit and died. He talks about how drunk Carlos could get. But when I think of Carlos, I think of the way he smiled shyly and always forgot my dog's name. He told me he had a dog once. The way Carlos said it, I know that dog was much more than a dog. I miss that old drunk with his greasy hair.

Sometimes I feel like I'm grasping at time, desperate to save these moments....because if I don't who will? He says no one calls and we write our number on a whiteboard and we ask if they'll let him hang his paintings on the wall. He says today the nurse said he could now. But his best painting is him. Every story is stretched across his forehead and his fingers are long like paintbrushes.

Last time I saw him, he demanded to know if the kids at school know how beautiful I am. I smiled.  But does he know how beautiful he looks to me right now? I wish I could bottle each of his queer funny sentences, his stories, and hang them from the ceiling of my room. When we leave he begins to sing in his croaky voice

"We'll meet again..

We join in, out of tune, smiling, filling the white hospital with loud flat notes..
"Don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day."
See you then, Peter.

Bird Bones

Every time you close your eyes
what do you see?
Catch the moon and the sun
but too weak to see between the two
Sometime I feel inadequate like paper dolls
in a paper world
scissors through my white confidence
I don't bleed 
I just find the wind and sweep myself away into it
And I wonder if I seem too tongue tied around you
breaking into me
and all my mache walls
because I'm paper thin and waste deep
two steps forward and I'm your sinking sand
did I tell you I write because it's the only thing I'm true to?
the only thing I find myself as how
I want to be
I am
I will be
and I was
they said make your face delicate with bird bones
and I tried
But now i'm stuck with the feathers growing from my thoughts, hummingbird heart beat
and no where to fly
or maybe too many clouds to perch, but afraid of leaving my roost
Graffitied heart with pencil shavings between my nails
I'm a space cadet with a bad case of head dreams
and a broken image of skewed memories
I want them to write on my head stone 'She is Love'
not she was
but she is
But instead my life stone says 'she is a scatterbrained chatter bird with a mousy soul'
if you read my palm, you wouldn't see a fortune
just the pattern of a little girl with wide eyes and sheered hair, staring up at you
without the smallest clue of what she is doing, looking at you

                       ~Lady Of Bolinas~

Ode To My Dear Friend, Trouble.

-listening to Lenka's song  Trouble Is A Friend Of Mine..and voila..Trouble wanted me to write a story about my relationship with the imp.-


Trouble is a friend of mine. We first met at a young age. He was freckled, with sharp green eyes, an imp with long feet and even longer hands, which he never washed. I've found over time he has many forms, though. He recommended I steal marshmallows and feed them to my young brother.His logic was "You aren't allowed to eat them, but who said you can't feed them to your little brother?" No one. Once, Trouble told me to throw a banana at my mother. He was always imaginative like that.  To this day,Trouble convinces me to stay up late,till I rub my eyes and my eyelids threaten to peel off my face in the morning.


But the most annoying thing about Trouble is the fact that he makes me so mad at myself. I've never been a rebellious, radical child. But Trouble distracts me when I am supposed to be working and makes me forget simple things. Trouble convinces me that I have more time to waste then I do. His absolute favorite thing to do,  is hide my common sense from me. After that, he hides my lipgloss and logic from me. He tends to hide them in the nearest sock drawer (when he hasn't fed all my socks to a washing machine).


Trouble dropped my phone once and cracked it. He has a history of this. He also dropped my favorite book in the bathtub,a prior phone in the toilet and multiple favorite pieces of jewelry. This impertinent imp also rips up paper, loses assignments and stains my shirts when I'm not paying attention.  One of his proudest achievements is pouring bleach into a load of my favorite clothing. He is also quite proud of the time he put salt in my baking rather then sugar, while blowing up an entire tea kettle of hot cocoa. He even managed to make the hot cocoa explode all the way across the kitchen.


 Trouble is very skilled. I wouldn't suggest otherwise. The time he locked me out of my house, which was for sure unlocked ten seconds before, will attest to this.  This is not to mention how he likes to treat me to parental lectures on a weekly basis. 


And we seem to be inseparable. I should say that I don't like him very much. My record would say otherwise. Why just today he turned my alarm clock off and laughed as I had to get dressed and run to the bus in less than five minutes. He keeps me on my toes, if nothing else. He sat next to me on the bus and purposely dimmed the sun, so I couldn't study my math. He followed this up by hiding my gym shorts and stealing the lock for my locker. Sometimes I wonder if he is a magician. It would certainly seemed so today, when he ruined all the erasers on my pencils and blew my history papers onto the floor, without moving a muscle. 


Trouble, is a close friend of mine. Now, if you'll excuse me, he seems to be currently feeding papers the wrong way  into my printer.. ...

Show. Don't tell.

~ prose poetry attack..again!~

Show. Don't tell .

Here's the thing.

They say "Show. Don't tell." But isn't everything written on my sleeve, bleeding out from my heart? Maybe we all ought to tell a bit more. This whole showing thing is starting to drain me. I've shown this and I've done that, but in the end I've barely told anything. 

I'll show you how I feel about them, how I feel about you. You can read my face and the cracks in my skin. Feel free to watch me show you how to mess up and trip over one's own feet. I'll show you how to cry over nothing, how to get confused by the voices in your own head. I'll show you how to care so much your veins pop and your eyes bulge. I'll show you jittery nerves and perspiration on my brow. I'll show you every little paranoid quirk in me. I can walk up and down stairs with no purpose, just so my blood keeps pumping and I remember how to breath. It's perfectly acceptable to watch me raise my hand and bite my lip, waiting for the teacher to call on me. I tap my feet with nervous energy and burn it off by flipping my hair like a manic hair stylist. I will breath heavily so that you ask me what I'm thinking. When you don't I will sigh like a lonely hound dog. I won't howl at the moon but I will sing underneath it. That way  you know what a once sane person morphing into a night lunatic looks like. I will show you everything. Every layer of my rainbow skin and red blood, blue within.

But I wish I could tell you more, so I didn't have to make it all so painfully obvious. If I knew how to tell more, speak out better, then you could have a better sense of me without me falling over my feet and scraping my knees. I could tell you about blood, rather than you seeing the crimson dripping from my knees. But it seems I'm doing better with this showing, though not what I want you to see. I don't want to be the know-it-all with her nose in the air. Is that what I'm showing? I'm not the sure, steadfast door with wooden frames. But they said show, don't tell. 

I'm botching it all.

I'd tell you about the way the sun kisses the ocean and the birds sing to the trees. I want to tell you about the way I laugh in my head at every single strange thing you say. I'll tell you about the dreams I have, that clutter my eyes and are scattered through my bedroom.

But instead I'm stuck showing you how I can answer every question and still get it all wrong.

I Steal Words-Prose Poetry

-YAY FOR PROSE-Y POETRY!-

I collect words. I keep them in my pockets, smashed against my textbooks, in little golden cages, stuck to the bottom of my muddy boots. I drape them around trees and put them in glass bottles. I pick them up along the beach and steal them from people's mouths. I pluck them out of the wind and sweep them into dustpans. I sleep with words crumpled inside my hands and pressed against my closed eyelids. I step on words and hear them crackle satisfyingly beneath my feet. I throw them against walls and suck their meaning dry. I bake and broil them, candy and pickle them. I ramble and rant, toying at words with catlike menace. 

I devour words,smothering them in half formed ideas with a side of confusion. I bath them in delusions and scrub them till they glow. I keep them on leashes and drag them on long walks, pulling them through the dirt and mud of my mind. When they howl, I scold them and prod them with pens and pencils. I iron out their wrinkles for hours and hang them out to dry on rainy days. I cradle them till they fall asleep and steal their secrets one by one. I analyze and hypothesize about them, muttering like a mad scientist about their inner cores. I put them under microscope and strip them bare. I paint them bizarre colors and drop them in house paint. I rub them across my skin and absorb them in. I collect words

But when I need them most...

I can never find a single one

But then again....

maybe they find me

The Story Peddler

-For all of you who have wondered where stories REALLY come from-

He started like this "People always ask me where I get my ideas. They ask how I can phrase my sentences so. They ask where I find my characters."

We nodded, we wondered this as well.

He continued. "It's very simple. But it starts, as all things do, with a story. A story about me, because the stories about me are the best, you know." He winked.

 ~~

He walked silently, the rain washing away the sound of his footsteps and most of his thoughts. He pulled his jacket against his thin frame and shivered. His mousy blond hair was matted against his skull, wet and dripping and he didn't bother to open his umbrella. He loved the feeling of the rain pouring onto him, caressing his exposed face and skin. He walked with the awkward gait of a young boy, growing into his skin. His bright green eyes darted around aimlessly, taking in everything and processing barely anything. His book bag was slung across his shoulder, bulging and burdensome. He had one goal: get home and dry off.

He didn't notice the man at the end of the sidewalk, sitting on the wet sidewalk with a patchwork umbrella over him, so tattered that it served barely any purpose as an umbrella. The man was wearing an old faded top hat and he wore a bright orange tuxedo. A variety of luggage and strange items were laid out in front of him. The boy  kept walking, lugging his book bag around, unsuccessfully trying to flip a wet string of hair out of his face. He collided into the man. He caught himself from falling and began to profusely apologize, blushing bright red. The man stood up and looked at him intently in the eye.

"No harm done."

"I'M SO SORRY, SIR.I DIDN'T SEE YOU! I AM SO.."

"Oh, shush your blabbering boy!" the man grunted.

The boy's lip quivered. "I'm sorry! I wasn't trying to blabber. You see I just feel really.."

"Do you have any stories, boy?" The man interrupted.

"Any what?!"

"Any stories!"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Sir.."

"Then obviously you don't have any. I'm a story peddler, you see."

"A what?"

"I buy, sell and trade stories, of course. Sometimes school children have the best whoppers and characters, so I buy 'em off them."

"I don't really understand. How can one sell stories? Like books?"

"No. How do you think people write books? They need to buy a story or an idea, first. Right? You can't write a proper book without one, now can you?"

"So you sell people..plots and such?"

"Exactly! Why I sold Shakespeare half of his stuff. He was one of my best customers! You know Stephen King?"

"Yes?" The boy said, scratching his nose

The man grinned and proudly declared "You are looking at his main source!"

The boys eyes widened. "You sell stories? Like really truly, real authors buy things from you for their books?"

"Well yes. Bad authors and amateurs buy them too. But my stories are hard to handle and they end up killing a lot of 'em. A real shame, but business is business."

The boy looked at him in awe, still perplexed "Can I buy a story?!"

The man chuckled. "Well if I have anything you can afford, sure. But you will have to start with a tamer one. Nothing experimental or crazy or steamy. Youngins like you gotta' start simple. Understand?"

The boy nodded, excitedly. "Do you have anything about pirates?!"

"I might." He began to check through one of his overly large pockets and pulled out a small jar. "This should do."

"It's empty!"

"Well you think I would just let anyone see my prime merchandise right off the bat?!" The man said scornfully, his multiple wrinkles very visible. "If you buy it, when you get home you can see it!"

"Oh... How much?"

"A dream."

"How do I give you a dream?"

"You tell me a dream of yours. Keep in mind, nothing really big. And then I take it and put in in meh pocket! Got it?"

The boy gave him a strange look. "What's the story about?"

"Lord have mercy..what's the story about? It's about pirates!"

"What about them?"

"It's about a pirate named Will Ferdinand who.."

"That's a dumb name!"

"WELL NO ONE ASKED YOU! Look boy, if you aren't interested I can go sell it  to Cornelia Funke or J.K Rowling!"

The boy sighed. "Fine. I'll give you one of my dreams. I just say it?”

The man nodded and wiped some rain out of his eyelashes

The boy shivered and spoke “ Here's my dream. I want to fly."

The man clucked. "Well that wasn't a small dream, but fine. Here is your story!"

The boy felt his stomach make a strange grumbling noise and he coughed loudly. He heard a whoosh in his ears. "What was that?!!"

The man rolled his eyes and pushed some of his gray hair out of his eyes. "Your dream leaving you of course. Here is your story! Now better get out of the rain before you catch a cold." He tossed the open mouthed boy the jar.

The boy caught it his hands and looked at it. He lifted his eyes to the man to realize..he was gone. The boy blinked over and over again. The man was just gone! He walked away slowly, glancing back at where the man had been. Finally, totally confused he began to run home. His heart was beating loudly and he could hear his feet slam against the pavement as he ran. He reached his home, ignored him mom and ran up to his room. He locked the door and stared at the jar. It was still empty. He opened it slowly. He looked inside. It was still empty. He became frantic. THERE WAS NOTHING! Then he became angry. He felt cheated. There was nothing in the jar. He sat on his bed and kicked the air.

The End

We looked at him, confused. "WHAT? Wait..there was nothing? WHAT? So you buy your stories?!"

He laughed. "Of course not. I fill that jar."

"What?!"

"The jar was empty. And I was so mad. I felt cheated and used. I had given away a dream for absolutely nothing. But then I realized how silly it was. It was silly to think that I could buy a story for a novel about pirates from some old man. He sold me another story."

"What other story?"

"The one I just told you. He gave me that story. It's not everyday one get's a story like that. And when I looked back into my jar I could swear I could see little words in it. So I wrote that story down, and another one grew out of it. The more I put into the jar, the more that comes out. That's where I get my stories." We looked at him like he was insane. "That makes no sense!"

"I know!" he laughed. He kept laughing

That's a dumb story!”we roared

“You want another one?” he asked

“YES!” we demanded

“Well it will cost you a dream, then.”

He winked.