The Local Dialect

(Originally appeared in Transpacificism, July 13, 2020.)

Old Yang

I didn't want to hire Old Yang. That was my husband's doing. His secretary had set up the meeting, but I told John that her recommendation meant nothing; Old Yang was probably a cousin or neighbor, or maybe they were from the same ancestral village. John insisted. At the meeting, Old Yang was sitting in a cafe cutting his fingernails except for the left pinky, two inches long and filed to a sharp point. His hair was greasy, and he reeked of smoke. He wasn't even that old, maybe forty, tops, though it's hard to tell. Chinese faces don't seem to age the way ours do. As I age, my face shrinks, the skin becoming papery, but Old Yang's looks thick, tanned, and full, like a grapefruit. 

I told Old Yang I'd give him a try, but I was seeing other agents too. You've got to make them think you don't need them. That's the advantage they have over us, you know. They know the lay of the land; they have endless resources. They don't need us. 

On our first outing together, Old Yang seemed in no hurry to show me an apartment. He meandered along the road, pausing to talk to the women selling black-market DVDs. He thumbed through the stacks of TV series, then held one up: "Friends," complete with a poorly photocopied picture of the cast. The text read like it had been through Google Translate. "Amidst this frenzy, an eclectic group of friends... where time hastens forward, traffic and the city masses move backwards..." 

  "You look like Jennifer Aniston," Old Yang exclaimed. When I told him, with some irritation, that I looked nothing like her, he was disappointed. "But," he persisted, "You seen this, yes?" I said no, I was too busy to watch TV. He signaled to the seller with his hands, signs I now recognize as numbers. A slight shake of the fist for "ten," pointer finger crooked for "nine." He handed me a black plastic bag with ten seasons of Friends before I could say anything. "You take this home and watch. It make you laugh!" I resolved not to call him again. I returned to the hotel and threw the bag in the back of the closet, with the still-packed boxes of photos, linens, and kitchenware.

I tried two other agents, both women, but they were too pushy. I like to take my time when I see a place. I like to ask questions about the heat, the light, the neighbors. To close my eyes and smell the air, listen to the traffic, and feel the sun trace the day from one window to the next. I have to imagine how it would feel to come home. One agent kept opening drawers and doors, explaining features to the minutest detail, and trying to close the deal. The other one kept making loud phone calls, either to impress me or to show she wasn't intimidated by me; I'm not sure which.

So, one month later, it's just Old Yang. He doesn't buy me any more DVDs. Each morning I stand at the entrance of our residence hotel and watch the children get on their school bus. They're happy to go; there are no young people in this part of Lujiazui. It is a corporate kind of place, all the buildings in that International Modern style and the streets full of bankers. It had seemed safer somehow, close to John's office, away from the crumbling buildings of the old Concession areas, but now as fall edges towards winter, it's become cold and dark between the skyscrapers. After the children leave, Old Yang appears from somewhere between the tobacco store and the place selling steamed rolls. He shows me his list of five apartments, scrawled in his long, straight hand on a piece of notepaper. Somehow even his English writing looks foreign to me, like Chinese calligraphy. 

Old Yang likes to walk, and so do I. He avoids the big roads where the fumes from the traffic are the worst. Instead, he leads me through alleyways where undershirts hang from balconies and old men and women idle on plastic chairs. They gape and point as I pass, and Old Yang pretends they are staring at him. "I very famous," he tells me, with a grin that reveals his tobacco-stained teeth. He tries to convince me to taste some animal cooking on an outdoor spit. It smells good, but there's no running water nearby and no separation between the sewer and the makeshift restaurant. Can't possibly be sanitary. Men in white caps and robes turn the spit. "Xinjiang yangrouchuan," Old Yang says, then shrugs when I ask him what that means. I tell myself I'll ask someone else; I'll lead them to the same place and ask for the translation. But there is no one to ask, and I'm not sure if I can find the place again. 

John says I'm stalling. He says it's my passive-aggressive way of resisting the move and quitting my job. The kids are settling in. Why can't you? Find a project, he says: collect antiques or help migrant workers or hold babies at an orphanage. I want to smack him. 

When I told my friends we were moving, I said, "What an experience it'll be. Shanghai! I could use a break from work. Use the time to see the world. To reconnect with John and the kids. Who knows, maybe we'll come back in a year or two, speaking the local dialect!" If I hadn't said that, I could go back next week. Now I'm counting the days, hours, and minutes that I'm stuck in this place.

Today I tell Old Yang, Let's get out of Lujiazui. Let's look for something closer to the children's school. He gestures to a taxi, eyebrows raised. I reach out and lower his arm. He studies me for a moment and takes me to a convenience store, where he helps me purchase a "jiaotong ka." We walk past the other real estate offices, and the young men handing out flyers greet him with a smile and offer him cigarettes. Sometimes he accepts them, and sometimes he gives up some of his own. I can't figure out if it's information being exchanged or if the cigarettes themselves are currency. We stand at the bus stop with a schoolboy wearing his uniform, including a red scarf. Old Yang asks the boy questions and slips him a treat. The boy accepts it with a small bow and tucks it into his pocket. 

The man sitting in the front of the bus has a live chicken in his bag. The crowd entering the bus pushes me to the back, where Old Yang indicates an empty seat next to the window. A young woman is sitting in the aisle seat, too busy texting to notice me. Old Yang nudges her, and she moves her legs so I can climb across and sit. They exchange a few words, and over the noise of the engine, he shouts, "This woman Dongbeiren. Not Shanghairen." I nod though I don't understand the judgment behind this. I have lost my bearings. 

The apartment is in a complex of one hundred forty-story buildings. The guards at the gate check Old Yang's ID, glance at me, and wave us in. Groups of ayi push strollers and children with split-bottom pants and no underwear squat in the playground. Two middle-aged women stroll arm-in-arm wearing pajamas. Men drag the leaves and debris from the miles of fountains that line the paths. "Water makes quiet," Old Yang explains. "Also have frog, to eat mosquitoes. But frog noisy at night!" He pulls out a handkerchief to mop his brow. He has a thick scar on one hand, clear across one palm. He probably lives in an unheated apartment on the edge of town with his wife and extended family. I try to imagine him with her, them touching each other in the throes of passion. But all I can picture is a woman as worn as him, her hands thick and chapped from work, her cheeks permanently red, her hair thinning. I see her slurping down noodles and laughing with her mouth open at some variety show on television. I picture them like livestock, their house dark and crowded and full of smells, the door always open. This image helps explain why he is so unfailingly joyful on our excursions. When we enter the apartments, he is careful not to sit on the chairs or use the bathroom, but he touches the shelves and rubs his fingers together like he's checking for dust. I think it's his way of experiencing the place, imagining what it must be like to live there, maybe pretending he lives there himself. Sometimes, especially if we're up high, he goes to the balcony and looks down over the city, laughing at the lives of people below like he's watching a show. Sometimes he looks deep into the distance as if he's searching for something, and I wonder about the stories I hear, of babies abandoned, of mistresses kept, of government spies and persecution.

This apartment is currently owned by Americans, he tells me. Maybe it will suit me better than the others. He opens the door and steps aside to let me in first. The first thing I notice is the smell of cinnamon lingering in the air and a sharp puncture in my chest. The dining furniture is the same set we had at home, the first grown-up furniture we bought after we got married. Everything about this apartment seems familiar, from the photographs and Christmas cards on the buffet to the books on the bookshelf and the brand of hand soap in the bathroom. 

I go to the balcony where Old Yang stands, looking over the city. Like so many things in Shanghai, the rain has come without warning— at least no warning that I detected. We stand and look down at the rush of cars, the motorcyclists covered in billowing plastic. "This is not it either," I tell him, and without looking at me, he nods.