上海弄堂（一）

English (for the teacher)

“Shanghai.” Grandma said quietly, “The first time your mum went on a trip with me, that’s where we went.”

With that, she closed the notebook and put it away. Yuan waited for her to go on; he waited a long time, and all he got was: “It’s late. Off to bed.”

That was October. For the next two months and more, Grandma never mentioned Shanghai again. Yuan asked once, and she said, “We’ll talk about it when the time comes.” He asked again, and she went off to the kitchen to wash the dishes, with the water running loudly. Yuan knew by now: if Grandma didn’t want to talk about something, asking ten times got you nowhere.

January came, and the winter holidays.

The night before he left, Grandma helped him pack: two sweaters, a very thick pair of trousers, and a big bag of food she had made herself. “Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, Harbin: each one colder than the last.” She talked as she packed. “When you get to Harbin, don’t stand outside on the phone, or your ears will freeze off.”

Baozi sat by the bag the whole time and wouldn’t let anyone touch it. The last time Yuan went away, the dog had waited at the station door for days. It seemed to remember everything.

Last of all, Grandma put the blue notebook in the bag, then took it out again and opened it at page eleven. A very small lane, old houses on both sides, lots of washing hanging overhead, and a little girl standing in the middle.

“There’s a tailor’s shop at the mouth of the lane.” Grandma said. “It was already old forty years ago. Now… I don’t know if it’s still there.”

“What’s in the shop?”

Grandma thought for a moment. “A man who makes clothes very, very slowly. You’ll see when you get there.”

The cold in Shanghai was not like the cold in Canada.

In a Canadian winter, the cold stays outside. The wind is strong and it rains a lot, but once you’re indoors the room is so warm you can wear just a T-shirt. The cold in Shanghai is on the inside. It doesn’t snow, and it’s only five or six degrees, but the air is damp, and the cold creeps in through your clothes bit by bit, first your hands and feet, and in the end, it seems, into your heart. His first night in Shanghai, Yuan went to bed in his sweater and still woke up three times from the cold. He remembered Grandma’s words and laughed: she had only said Harbin was cold, not Shanghai.

The next morning, the sun came out.

All Grandma remembered was the name of the street. Only when he got there did Yuan find that the street had more than ten lanes off it. Each one was so narrow that when two people met, one had to stand aside. Old houses on both sides, black doors, bikes and little chairs by the doorsteps, and flowers people had planted.

What surprised him most was the washing. As soon as the sun came out, every family brought its clothes out and hung them outside the windows: sweaters, quilts, children’s trousers, old people’s coats, every colour there is, hung all the way from one side to the other. Sunlight came down between the clothes and fell on the ground in patches. Walking underneath, with the clothes moving gently overhead, it was as if the whole lane were breathing.

Just like Grandma’s drawing. But every lane was just like Grandma’s drawing.

The lanes were full of sounds too. Someone was brushing their teeth at the door, someone was washing vegetables, and an old woman stood at a window talking to someone downstairs, fast and loud. Yuan listened for a long time and didn’t understand a single word. Only later did he find out that she wasn’t speaking Mandarin. He had lived in the little town for half a year and thought his Chinese was pretty good now, but here it was as if he were back in July, the boy at the bun-shop door who couldn’t get a word out.