客从何处来

Twenty-ninth of March, 2039, a Tuesday, 6:40 in the morning, Tianfu Airport, Chengdu. Few people at arrivals. I stood under a pillar with my uncle, who came from Qingshen by bus yesterday, slept at my place and was up at four, sitting on the bed edge waiting for light. A new navy jacket, the sleeve label still on; I cut it off. A bamboo basket he wove himself, lined with blue resist-print cloth; what's under it he won't say. The flight landed. He stepped forward twice and back again, gripping the basket handle till his fingers whitened. At 7:20: a small old woman, hair all white and cropped short, a thin grey padded jacket, pushing a trolley with one modest case, walking slowly, looking left and right. She saw the two of us and stopped. Neither moved; a dozen paces apart, they looked. At last she pushed the trolley aside and came empty-handed, and didn't hug him: she slapped his arm, smack. And out of her came a sentence I had never heard my mother speak: "Xiushan! How did you get so old!" Sichuan dialect, Qingshen's, the tail flicking up, crisp. I grew up in New Jersey; she spoke Mandarin to me, with an accent, the same for decades. I never knew this other speech was hidden in her. "Sister, you're old too." She slapped him again, gently, kept hold of his sleeve, and wept aloud; he stood straight, basket in one hand, tears running, not wiping them. Forty-five years.

At noon she wanted Jiuyan Bridge. At fourteen she came with my grandmother, two quilts of cotton batting on their backs, a day on the bus, to sell in Chengdu; afterwards her mother walked her over this bridge and bought her a bowl of dandan noodles at the end of it: fifteen fen. Her first time out of Qingshen. The same stone arches; new glass towers at both ends; the same green river flowing slowly east. She leaned on the rail a long time. Ten years ago, on this bridge, a point of light fell on the wet brick at my feet. At the far end, an old man with a white beard to his chest, a loose old robe, a gourd at his belt, face red with wine, humming. "He Zhizhang, of Yuezhou. I write poems, and a few characters. That one's just come back? I was gone fifty-odd years. I left for the capital young and went home past eighty; a crowd of children looked me over and asked, laughing: Grandpa, where are you from? At my own door I'd become a visitor." A girl of seven or eight with a sugar-painting butterfly: "Granny, where are you from?" My mother crouched to her height: "Granny's from Qingshen." "Qingshen? But you don't talk like my granny. You talk so old. Like on TV." She ran off laughing. My mother didn't get up for a while. "Xiushan, do I talk old?" "You talk the way Mother talked. Kids now speak more Mandarin; even their Sichuanese isn't said that way. Some of your words I haven't heard in years." He Zhizhang, at the rail beside her: "My accent hadn't changed. When I wrote that I thought it meant I hadn't changed. Later I understood: I hadn't changed because I carried it away with me, and no one changed with me. The people at home changed along with home. I went back speaking fifty-year-old speech. To them I sounded like the ancients." My mother: "He's right. All these years, who did I speak it to? Myself, at night, in my head. Mother's words. I thought I'd taken Qingshen with me. I took Qingshen of 1994."

He Zhizhang: "There's a second poem; people only remember the first. It says: gone so long, half the people and affairs at home are gone or changed. Only the lake by the gate: the spring wind still raises the same ripples as when I was small." He nodded at the river: "Her lake is this one." The dandan stall under the yellow-fig tree, its old leaves fallen, new ones sprouting tender red, is run now by the original man's son, in his fifties: twelve yuan. "The same. Fifteen fen became twelve yuan. The taste is the same." "You ate here before?" "1982. Your father was young then, with a mole on his face." "Here? That was my dad!" He wouldn't take her money. At three, the old building, the faded fu character still on the fifth-floor door; Auntie Qian waiting across the way: "This is your mother?" "I'm his mother." From Auntie Qian's fifth-floor window, the window I lived behind ten years: "Every night his light burned till midnight. After my husband died I couldn't sleep, so I watched his light. When it was on, I slept." My mother: "Over there I have a light by the door. I turn it on at four every afternoon, before dark, so he can see it from far away." "Then for ten years he had a light kept at both ends." "He didn't know." "He knows. I told him last year." Both old women turned to look at me. At four my mother's watch, still on New Jersey time, said 4 a.m.; she typed to Teresa letter by letter: "Teresa, 4pm today, the light. Thank you." He Zhizhang at dusk: "Those who leave take home as it was on the day they left. Coming back, people have changed, speech has changed, prices have changed. What hasn't is the lake by the gate and a certain taste. Recognise the things that haven't changed, and you're home." That night my uncle opened his basket: a wooden cotton-fluffing mallet, its head worn smooth, a hollow worn into the grip. "Sister, this is Mother's mallet. The bow is too long to bring; it still hangs on the wall at home. The string had gone slack; I put on a new oxhide one. At Qingming let's take the bow down and show it to her." My mother took the mallet; her hand fell into the worn hollow; she held it a long time. "Mm." — M.

Memo to file. Chengdu, 29 March 2039. The price of forty-five years.

1. Arrivals. My uncle up at four, stepping forward and back under the pillar. My mother, small, white-haired, pushing one modest case. A dozen paces of silence, then a slap on his arm.

2. The voice. "Xiushan! How did you get so old!" Qingshen dialect, tail flicking up. Forty years of Mandarin with me; this speech was hidden in her the whole time.

3. The bridge. At fourteen: two quilts of batting, a day's bus, a bowl of dandan noodles at fifteen fen. Her first time out of Qingshen; my first night in Chengdu, ten years ago, the same bridge.

4. The child. "Granny, where are you from?" "Qingshen." "But you talk so old. Like on TV."

5. The diagnosis. My uncle: "You talk the way Mother talked." He Zhizhang: "I hadn't changed because I carried it away, and no one changed with me." My mother: "I took Qingshen of 1994."

6. The Wall Street version. A private stake carried for six years at the price of its last trade. A real buyer offered half. The old number wasn't false; it was true of one day six years ago. But the buyer added: the land under the factory was worth more than before.

7. Stale marks, both ways. Some things changed; some held their price. The trick is knowing which.

8. The second poem. "Half the people and affairs at home are gone or changed. Only the lake by the gate keeps its ripples." "Her lake is this one." The river under Jiuyan Bridge.

9. The taste. Fifteen fen to twelve yuan; "the taste is the same." The stall-keeper's father had a mole on his left cheek; my mother remembered it after fifty-seven years. He wouldn't take her money.

10. Two lamps. Auntie Qian watched my window for ten years; my mother turns on the porch light at four every day. "Then he had a light kept at both ends." "He didn't know." "He knows."

11. The line. "Those who leave take home as it was on the day they left. Recognise the things that haven't changed, and you're home." At four, my mother texted Teresa about the light.

12. Next. My grandmother's mallet, brought in a basket; her bow, too long to carry, still on the wall in Qingshen, restrung by my uncle with new oxhide. "At Qingming let's take the bow down and show her." My mother's hand found the hollow worn in the grip.

"I left home young and came back old; my accent has not changed, though my hair has thinned."
He Zhizhang wrote these lines in his eighties, after more than half a century in the Tang capital. Village children, not knowing him, asked where the visitor was from. His less famous second poem adds that most of the people and affairs he remembered had changed, and only the lake by the gate still rippled as before.
Every emigrant carries a snapshot. The words, prices and faces are true, but true of a particular date, and the longer one is away the more the snapshot diverges from the place. Investors know the same problem as stale marks: an illiquid holding carried at its last traded price can look stable for years, until a real buyer reveals how far the market has moved.
Yet stale does not always mean wrong. Some components of value hold steady, like the land under an old factory or the taste of a noodle shop run by the founder's son. The work of returning, for a person or a portfolio, is to re-mark everything and then recognise what never needed re-marking.
"Recognise the things that haven't changed, and you're home."