itinerant

When the seventh tout asked to sell a watch to me I raised my voice. I was surprised that his aggression vaporized at that minor inflection and he stepped aside, but after I’d gone ten steps he hurled at my back all the English he could muster: “fucking!” I forgave him after some minutes over a cappuccino in a cafe on Sinan Lu where even the chair on which I sat was antique and was price-tagged for sale. Near Huai Hai, where it happened, touts once sold fakes comfortably in an informally designated fake market, and now the market is pulled down and those who have only fakes to sell must try other methods.

From Sinan Street, and from other small establishments near it, they hatched the plans and conducted the several revolutions that founded the Chinese republic and made it communist. Just when I arrived they closed off the entrance to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s former residence to let in a long VIP convoy. So I walked on down the street to Zhou En Lai’s former residence, which they say was his residence in name only, but his close comrades and other comrades who dealt with foreign diplomats and the press, and visiting comrades from across China, they all lived there. Down in the basement is his black car, which was registered 00070 when it served him, a lovely beast with a lunging snout and hollow (dimpled, some might say) cheeks. Its radio-antenna rose from the brow and fell backward, like hair slicked back. Not all may call a Buick a beast; I don’t know cars so well.

The Buick is restored by Repair Factory Number Three of General Motors, Shanghai. Inside the house, which is (of course) a museum, there is a picture exposing the fact that America allied with KMT to widen the civil war. Learning a little of olden-day affairs, of western people in Shanghai’s Concessions, the thought drifted in my mind that maybe the Maoists did a damn good job in uniting their nation and restoring its dignity, but that’s all I’ll say—politics I know very less and anyone can whittle me to the ground in a political debate.

When I returned to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s the convoy had gone and my respect for the fathers of the Republic had risen enough and so I was moved by the man’s achievement. My grief for the Last Emperor (which persists from when I watched the movie) melted somewhat, seeing the simple life of Sun Yat-sen in that house. Now, writing, my remembrances are of the charm of his wife (her picture on the wall, in which she’s at a table with a book, pensive), the grace in her letters, and her flowing elegant handwriting. I’m retiring thinking that this couple lived a good life. Their marriage lasted ten years, ending with his death when she was thirty-two, when he was fifty-four, or perhaps fifty-eight.