Ghost Month Read online

  When Jianguo Road was mostly clear, I shuffled across the street and entered Da’an Forest Park. On a superficial level, I registered that it was a beautiful place as I walked among the maple and camphor trees. I should come here more often. If I had a better nose, I could probably pick up the magnolia and jasmine scents, but years of grill grease and smoke from the night-market stall have destroyed my ability to smell anything but a customer.

  It’s a fairly big park considering it’s in the middle of Taipei, about sixty-four acres. I had entered at the northern border, Xinyi, right where the MRT stop is. A group of melting Australian pensioners had tentatively entered the park and couldn’t decide whether to explore more or enter the subway.

  “Pardon me,” I interjected. “Are you all lost, mates?” I looked from face to face. About a dozen of them. I searched for the one with the biggest smile. She was wearing a traditional Taiwanese farmer’s hat, which featured a wide brim topped with a cone.

  “It’s our first day here,” she said. “Do you think we should spend it in the park or go to Taipei 101?” We all looked up and to the east. Taipei 101, which had been the tallest building in the world from 2004 until 2010, loomed in the distance, a jade pendant hanging down from the sky.

  “I think you should be ambitious, since your flight wasn’t that long—not as long as it takes the Yanks to get here,” I said, pausing for the laughs I knew would come. “Go to Taipei 101, take the elevator up and see Taipei from all directions. Get your bearings and enjoy the air conditioning. You can come back to the park some other time, when you’re used to the humidity.”

  “That’s what we’ll do, then!”

  “Oh, by the way, tonight or any night, you should come to the Shilin Night Market and check out my stand, Unknown Pleasures.” I dealt my card out. “My name’s Johnny and I’ve got the best food in Taipei. Follow the map on the back.”

  “We will definitely stop by,” she pledged. I gave it a fifty–fifty chance.

  “Please come by,” I said, adding, “I’ll put a shrimp on the barbie for ya!” They laughed again. Maybe it was fifty-one–forty-nine now.

  I waved goodbye. Ah, the happy-go-lucky Johnny Taipei persona. Cultivated over years of calling out and bringing people in like a sideshow barker. Johnny was everybody’s best friend. As Jing-nan, I didn’t have any friends. Johnny loved being out with people, but Jing-nan wanted to be alone. Johnny was Mr. I Love Taipei. Jing-nan was distant and lost in his thoughts.

  With Julia’s death, I felt that much more removed from my Johnny personality, even as I slipped him off. I coughed and wiped my mouth. There. Now I was sad again.

  I WALKED BY THE children’s playground. The multicolored slides and tunnels made it look like a giant board game, big enough to climb over and crawl under. The kids in the sandpit tried to form mountains and monsters before pulverizing them to look for buried treasure.

  I continued walking south. The park was just like any in Los Angeles. Palm trees. Big bald spots in the grassy areas. Elderly men playing Chinese instruments.

  I came across the open amphitheater near the center of the park. When I was a kid, I’d seen an Elvis imitator on this stage. I remembered that when he spoke English he seemed to have a Filipino accent, but when he sang he sounded just like the recordings.

  I looked at the people hanging out on the benches before the barren stage. All the guys seemed to be with their girlfriends or families. I didn’t have either anymore. As an orphan I had more in common with the squatters and homeless old soldiers who’d been thrown off the land to make the park.

  Somewhere in the park was a Buddha statue that a typical Taiwanese in my distressed state would probably seek out to pray to. I decided that I’d rather see animals than a good-for-nothing statue, so I headed northwest to the giant lotus pond. I leaned against the railing and listened to hidden insects make whirring sounds. The egrets seemed to be out to lunch. I looked over the floating green muck and found a group of turtles doing nothing. It seemed to be a life free of worries.

  To my left, three older men in baggy slacks sprawled on top of a bench, mirroring the turtles in the pond. They spoke in a Chinese dialect I didn’t know. Maybe they were soldiers who’d been stranded in Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War ended sixty years ago. More likely, younger relatives had brought them over more recently from rural China, thinking they’d be better off in a modern city. The men didn’t look or sound too happy to be here. Content Chinese people do tai chi in the park. Bitter Chinese people complain until the sun goes down.

  It was a common story, that elderly Chinese couldn’t enjoy the urban conveniences of Taipei. They could have anything they wanted except for the foods, places and people they had left behind—which was all they wanted. I know what it’s like to be unhappy where you are.

  I STILL RUE THE day five years ago when I came back to Taiwan from UCLA because my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My mother was killed in a car accident on the way to the airport to pick me up. After that my father lived only three more weeks.

  It was the hardest thing in the world for me to tell my father that his wife was dead. He burst into tears, and the rare display of emotion created an uncomfortable situation for both of us. Then he told me that it was up to me now to keep the food stall going after he was gone. There was an old gambling debt my grandfather had accumulated that had never gone away, and those people had to be paid. I’d known about it, but I hadn’t realized how large it was and how little of it we had whittled down over the years. Selling everything my family owned would cover maybe a quarter of the debt. If I tried to return to UCLA, leaving the country without repayment would put a price on my head.

  Just like that, my American sojourn was over. I didn’t even get to finish my sophomore year.

  If only I had taken a different flight or not come home at all, my mother would still be here, I would have an American job and Julia would be alive. Maybe she’d be sunning in her bikini on a California beach with me instead of being shot dead in her bikini at a highway betel-nut stand.

  Before we left for college, we had both known that carrying on a long-distance relationship would only distract us from our schoolwork. It would hurt our grades and therefore our prospects for American jobs.

  We promised ourselves to each other in the nicest love hotel we could afford, and I told her that while I wouldn’t be in touch, I would come for her when I was fully set up in the US.

  “I’ll just show up at your door with my best suit on, and we’ll head to the city hall and get married,” I had told her.

  “That would be so romantic!” she had said. “You don’t have to wear a suit. I know you hate dressing up.”

  “I have to for the photos! For the kids to see.”

  “You’re so stubborn. I know that’s exactly what you’ll do.”

  Now when I remember that exchange, I see her eyes flicker with doubt, her eyebrows twisted with concern. She knew even then I wouldn’t come through.

  A turtle plopped into the water and startled me. How pathetic was I? I was taken by surprise by one of the planet’s slowest-moving creatures.

  I checked my phone. No more news on the murder, but I got a text from the Daily Times, noting that I might be interested in a related story. I knew there’d be a drawback to registering for updates. The new offering was a story about how an incarcerated member of the infamous Black Sea gang was making allegations that the American Central Intelligence Agency was helping them smuggle in heroin and other drugs on American vessels that weren’t subject to search by Taiwanese authorities.

  Who cares? I deleted the message. Damn, it was getting late. Almost three o’clock.

  In my haste to get back to Jianguo Road, I inadvertently walked by the Buddha I had wanted to avoid. So you got me after all, huh?

  At least it wasn’t the fat, happy guy my parents had prayed to. This statue was of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion. She stood with a serene expression on her face, eyes closed, her dres
s flowing down in smiling folds.

  I WAS STRAPPING ON a helmet when a bus swerved to a stop just inches from my face. A stern-looking man—apparently a shipwreck survivor, judging by his tattered clothes—held a thick rope in one hand and with the other thrust a bottle of cologne at me. “LA Calling.”

  LA certainly had come calling, and I had gone. Now I was stuck back in Taipei. Pride had kept me from calling Julia and telling her of the change in plan. After all, I might still someday make it back to UCLA, and then everything would be back on track. All I had to do was find a buyer for the night-market stall, and then I could pay off the debt and fly back to Los Angeles. The recession killed that plan, though.

  I never heard from Julia when my parents passed away, even though she must have known. I admired her discipline and how she could stick to a promise. Sometimes I was angry she hadn’t broken down and called me, but I always loved her for it. Every day I didn’t hear from her meant we still had a chance.

  Why did we want to be Americans so badly? We were both smart and ambitious. Not that people who wanted to stay in Taiwan weren’t. But whenever there was a global event and Taiwan was allowed by China to take part in it, our national flag was banned, along with our name. It was embarrassing. Especially since we were one of the most advanced economies and societies in the world. Taiwan’s continuing strange and strained estrangement from China wasn’t going to end anytime soon, and it sure wasn’t going to end well—certainly not for the island.

  The US didn’t take shit like that. The Americans stood up for themselves.

  I had wanted to be an American since July 1, 1998. That was when American President Bill Clinton, while on a formal visit to China, said there was only one China and that Taiwan was a part of China. The Daily Yam, Taiwan’s most inflammatory tabloid, ran a huge headline on its front page: US TO TAIWAN: DROP DEAD.

  I showed the newspaper to my father and he said what he always said: “doesn’t matter.” When I showed him a perfect test score, when I pointed out that another stall in the night market was charging more or less for the same items, when I told him I was going to marry Julia someday.

  “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter!”

  I wanted to live a life that did matter, and maybe it would in America, because it sure didn’t seem to here in Taiwan.

  My father was right, though. It didn’t matter what I wanted. I was trapped living the same life he had, cutting, cooking and skewering meat for most of the night, a shadowy existence in a shadowy country the US didn’t even formally recognize. I had no time for friendship or love, and if I’d had a family, I wouldn’t have had time for them, either. My life in Taipei was exactly what I had been afraid it would be—exactly what I’d sworn I’d never be—except when I’d sworn that I’d thought my parents would both be alive until I was old.

  Now, I was twenty-five, and my sense of smell was grilled out. But my sensory receptors had compensated by deepening my hearing function, making music more meaningful. My little house was filled with the sound of music, almost always Joy Division. I liked to start the day with a studio or rehearsal recording and end the day with a live album, to hear and be part of an audience providing visceral reactions—something the band was always able to provoke.

  Joy Division’s music captured what Taipei looked and sounded like. Martial beats of constant construction. The detached vocals of automatic announcements. Blocks and blocks of dreary, grey concrete walls scrolling by. The paranoia of closed-circuit cameras everywhere. Some people say that the songs are depressing, but I think that they represent life as it is. Here, anyway.

  I STARTED UP MY moped, checked both ways on Jianguo Road and headed north. I went by the noodle stand and saw the offering table was all set up. It made me feel less bad about being a jerk to the woman.

  At every intersection, the looming Taipei 101 skyscraper to the east regarded me silently, as the Buddhist statue had. When I reached Xinyi Road I could see the building in full profile, and the segments of its body. Driving east on Xinyi Road would bring me out of the Da’an District and into the Xinyi District, where the building stood. On the other end of Xinyi Road, to the west in Zhongzheng District, was the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall complex. When my class visited the hall, I must have been six years old. I stood in front of the giant, seated Chiang Kai-shek statue, scared out of my wits. I couldn’t move. Even though he was smiling, I intuitively knew this man was capable of doing horrific things to his perceived enemies. The Generalissimo, after all, demanded complete loyalty. Sure, many fathers were that way, but they didn’t have a network of spies and secret police ready to round up and “disappear” perceived enemies of the people.

  I do not believe in spirits, but there are some seriously bad vibes in that hall. I will never go there again.

  The haunted past and the hopeful future of Taiwan shared Xinyi Road but stood at opposite ends. The sun rises in the east, lighting up Taipei 101 until the green exterior of the building glows white-hot like a giant joss stick. The evening sees the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall lit in red, orange and yellow by the primordial gas cloud that passes for dusk in Taipei.

  Facing west, the homesick statue of the Generalissimo gazes beyond the sunset, toward China.

  Chiang Kai-shek was once the face of Taiwan, or Republic of China, as he would have insisted on calling the island. Now every tourist guide to Taiwan had to feature Taipei 101 on the cover. It took the tallest building in the world to replace the Generalissimo.

  Caught between the past and the future on Xinyi Road was the famous Din Tai Fung, the xiaolongbao restaurant that constantly had lines out the door. The juicy little pork soup dumplings, or “little-basket buns,” they made were famous in their now worldwide outlets, but the restaurant on Xinyi was the original location and was everything that an eatery should be—great kitchen, lousy seats.

  The preparation area was featured prominently in the window with the staff dressed in immaculate uniforms and wearing face-masks. Making xiaolongbao is a precise undertaking, as much as assembling cell phones—each bun has eighteen folds.

  The seating area was rather plain and cramped. All the pleasure was in the eating. I’d eaten upstairs a few times with Julia, and we’d always count out the folds of the buns before biting them open to drink the meat-gelatin-and-soup base. One time we ate there, a Japanese film director and his crew were eating near us, becoming progressively louder and drunker. I saw him on a talk show the next day, looking extremely sad. Makeup couldn’t cover up his bloodshot eyes. That was the first time I realized how big Din Tai Fung was, and how small my family’s business was.

  The last meal I’d had at Din Tai Fung was with Julia, so it’d been more than seven years. Shit.

  I CROSSED XINYI ROAD, which was choked with traffic. Half the road was being torn up for the construction of an MRT line, and men in hard hats and flip-flops directed traffic to merge. I watched out for frustrated motorists who might try to tear onto Jianguo Road to get by.

  I only managed to go a few blocks before stopping for a red light. I put my feet on the ground and sighed. Seven years. All that time felt like my own personal Cold War for love, in that nothing had actually happened. No face-to-face meetings, no negotiations and no quarter given, certainly not to myself. In the face of harsh reality, I’d never doubted my delusion that I was still going to make it out of here and win all my battles. I had been cocky. Now I hunkered down over the handlebars, trying to hide from everything and everybody.

  I turned my head and stared at the corner of Jianguo Road and Shimin Boulevard and thought, Julia and I went to that place in junior high, when that 7-Eleven was merely a 7-Eleven knockoff. Our history was disappearing in the present.

  Across Shimin Boulevard, I regarded the lobby of Miramar Garden Taipei, a fairly new hotel. That hadn’t been there, either, back then. I saw a young woman in a white dress standing just outside the lobby with her back to me. She flipped her chin-length hair with her right hand the way
Julia used to. But a lot of girls did that. She looked about Julia’s height and the more that I looked at her stance, the more I thought that it could be her.

  I wanted to see her face. While I stared at her, waiting for the light to change, she would sometimes turn her head, but not enough. Of course, as soon as the light changed and I took off, she slowly turned to where I could have seen her in full.

  She shrank and slid into the chipped lower right corner of my rearview mirror. Had she just stared right at me? I suddenly had to swerve to avoid slamming into the back of a motorcycle carrying two passengers. I don’t think they noticed how close I came to hitting them.

  What a strange and awful day. I continued north and passed by the trees lining the street at Zhongshan Girls’ High School. I thought about my brief walk in the park, going by the children’s playground, the pond and the bodhisattva. I sat up in my seat. I’d honestly thought that I’d forgotten where the Guanyin statue was, but maybe subconsciously I had wanted to go there to pray for Julia’s soul.

  No. She was gone. She didn’t have a spirit or a soul. Still, for her to die on the eve of a big holiday for the dead seemed more than coincidental.

  I sank back down over my handlebars. Why dwell on it? Why think of anything, anyway? I could hear my father saying “doesn’t matter” on repeat. He was right. Nothing mattered in the end.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In high school we read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. In the book, Jerry Cruncher derisively refers to his wife’s praying for his salvation as “flopping.” I thought that was a perfect way to describe the act of baibai, bowing to an altar while brandishing a lit joss stick.

  Students, who should be the least traditional segment of society, were out in force, baibai-ing at the temples like it was a contest. I felt bad for them. Most of them were taking their summer classes, studying their brains out for that senior high school test at the end of ninth grade. I know how hellish it is. Maybe they didn’t want to jinx themselves by pissing off the undead.