Little secrets of Wanhua

As children, we shared little secrets, in big ways, which were often spontaneous and couragous.

• Short story

								
Teacher Li wrote three big Chinese characters vertically on the blackboard, LIN (wood), XUE (learn), JIN (progress), a new name to me. “Student Lin Xuejin just moved here from Yilan City. I want you all to give him a warm welcome,” the teacher said, pointing to the awkward skinny boy standing in front of the blackboard. We all yelled, in unison, “Welcome, Student Lin.” “Now I want you to sit next to Student Gau,” Mrs. Li, the all-subject teacher for our third-grade class, pointed at the empty seat next to me, toward the back. As Xuejin moved slowly toward me, I noticed his shirt was so well pressed that it hung on his tiny body like a paper bag. Its stiffness and shiny whiteness stood out among the wrinkled, yellow-tinted short-sleeved white shirts the rest of the class mostly wore. I knew instantly his family had money.

One day, during a usual ten-minute recess, a bunch of us were playing a game called ‘show me yours,’ in this case, our identity cards. The Taiwanese IDs, in addition to the usual information of name, age, birth date, gender, etc., contained a few columns unique to that period (the 1960s): the names and marital status of one’s parents and their occupations. Someone’s father was announced as a teacher. No wonder he always got good grades! I knew it. We had housewives, fish mongers, butchers, garbage collectors. Mine said a truck driver and a housewife, even though my mother owned a small noodle making business. Then it came to Ting Ting, a wild-eyed girl who had been sitting next to me for the past year. Her card said she had no father and her mother’s occupation - prostitute. Suddenly the usual loud and nosy questioning and commentary stopped, replaced by an uneasy exchange of looks between us. Ting Ting pointed to her ID card and said, calmly, with a tinge of tears in her eyes, “This is what my mama does. And I have two other siblings.”

Xuejin’s ID said ‘father – business owner.’ “What kind of business?” I asked. 
“Entertainment.” “Like a theater?” 
“Well, sort of,” he replied, with a mischievous smile. I wondered what business would make someone move to Wanhua, the oldest part of Taipei, and to a neighborhood like ours? 

One afternoon when school was over, Xuejin asked me whether I would like to come over to his house to do homework with him. I jumped on the invitation, curious about him and his home. His apartment was not far from the school, sitting next to the Wanhua police station. It was brand new and by far the tallest residential building I had ever seen, let alone setting foot in. 

“We will go up to the eighteenth floor,” Xuejin declared as we entered a lobby almost as big as our classroom. 
“The eighteenth floor? We have to walk all the way up?” 
“No, we take Dian Ti (electric stairs).” 

I had taken Dian Tis (escalator) before at large department stores but they only went up a couple of floors. But for eighteen stories? While busy trying to picture a very tall, meandering escalator, I found myself standing with Xuejiun facing a gigantic box, which just magically opened its door. My feet inched into the box. The elevator ride was more curious than scary, but the disconcerting feeling never left me the whole way. I kept wondering how gigantic the rope must be to keep all of us dangling in the air from this high up! 

As I stumbled out of the big black box onto the eighteenth floor, my mind was still racing to compare this new box with the escalator from which I could see everything with my hands safely placed on the handrail.
“How come your Dian Ti is so different from the department stores’ Dian Ti?” I asked with earnest confusion. “You mean Dian Fu Ti (electric hand-holding stairs) at the big store?” 

An instant embarrassment and relief hit me. With my feet safely planted on the moving stairs and the assuring view, I began to understand I had been missing the middle word - Fu (handhold) - the whole time! But then again why did they call both Ti (stairs) anyway? Wasn’t it more correct to call a spade, a spade and a box, a box?

Xuejin’s home was spacious and bright. The solid wooden furniture sat mightily in the living room. There was even a shiny white tablecloth. I had never seen a tablecloth before except in some restaurants. I did not know anyone who would bother to cover their tables with white cloth at home. Neither could I figure out the logic of deliberately placing something so white and clean on a surface destined to be oily and dirty - is not a table meant to hold what was not consumed such as scraps, bones, shells, etc.? The floor was made from dark wood, spotless and surprisingly dry, without a hint of water stain. 

We finally settled down on our assignment. But my stomach began to rumble. I knew I could not hold it any longer. “It must be very troublesome to go to the bathroom from this high up, the eighteenth floor, right?” I asked Xuejin sheepishly. “No, no trouble at all. Shall I show you?” He pointed to a small room next to the study and said that was the bathroom. Reluctantly, I walked in. Very much to my surprise, there was only one toilet similar to the ones that girls used in the public toilets at school. But I am a boy, how am I going to go while sitting down, especially when I need to do is more than just simple peeing? How can this be possible - I have never seen a boy using a sit-down toilet before! The only way I know is to squat. After a few minutes of struggling, I decided to try to find a way to squat on the toilet. First, I planted both feet firmly on the seat, and then slowly bent my knees. But my butt was always in the way, hitting the water tank half way down. After several tries, my butt remained uncooperative as ever. Frustrated, I turned around, with my buttock away from the water tank, which by now was being held tightly in both of my hands, and carefully squatted. But my white butt now firmly exposed half of its good self, protruding way beyond the toilet bowl, making a true aim out of the question. I tried to reign in my butt to no avail. I tried to rotate a little. But it would not budge. Sweating and outwitted by this plastic device, I gave up and sat down on the toilet, thinking sitting might be the way, as awkward and hard-working as it might be. It turned out to be quite a workout. 

Finally, I was done, tired, sweating but feeling relieved. But there appeared a new challenge. I looked down into the bowl and saw my stinky contribution still floating proudly in the water. At home, we had a large pit built into the ground and you directly dumped into the pit. How then do I make what’s still floating in the water disappear? I struggled for a while and still couldn’t figure out what to do. I finally had to ask for help yet again. “Xuejin, what do you do with all this stuff inside the toilet?” I cried out. Xuejin came in, raised his hand and flushed the toilet. All of a sudden, a flood washed away my problem. 

As the water disappeared before my eyes, I was seized with a new panic. Xuejin, where do you keep your ancestral altar? I could not help picturing in my head all these tiny yellow and brown bits, being rushed down all eighteen floors, passing above the noble tablets bearing the names of our deceased ancestors placed in the living rooms. Those tiny bombs, hidden in the enormous tall columns, ready to strike an insult on everybody’s ancestors in this building, any time, any minute, with just a push on a knob! Incredible. These unbearable thoughts forced me to conclude that if someday I had to live in a tall building like this, I would need to live on the very top floor, just to protect my fore-bearers from this deadly and stinky insult. 

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