Notes:
Because this story is from China's point of view, Chinese country names are used in the narration.
(don't worry: only the top two- maybe three- bear major significance)

Zhong-Guo= China
Xiang-Gang= Hong Kong
Ying-Guo= England
Yue-Nan= Vietnam
Mei-Guo= America
Bei-Han= North Korea
E-Guo= Russia
Yin-Du= India

Grasping Ghosts

Spring, 1997

Xiang-Gang's luggage arrived before he did. Two sixty-pound suitcases. What does a young man need with so much… stuff? Zhong-Guo wondered as he paused to rest his aching joints on the landing before the door of his eighth-floor apartment. Well, it was alright, he decided. Xiang-Gang was coming home and that was all that mattered. He had to fumble for a moment before managing to get his key in the lock and turn it. Leaning a shoulder into the faded, peeling red of the double happiness, he nudged the difficult door open. When it did give, he stumbled inside under the weight of the suitcases.

After kicking off his shoes to step into his house slippers, Zhong-Guo heaved the luggage into the room he had prepared for Xiang-Gang, set it on the floor… and then stood there. The food was prepared, everything was clean, everything was in its proper place… and he stood there… in the middle of the empty room, wondering what he should do now. A bird fluttered onto the telephone wire outside the window. She had a few twigs and some red string in her beak. What did one do in the last hour before something he had been anticipating—longing for— for more than a lifetime? How did one prepare to meet a dream of more than a hundred years?

Zhong-Guo had seen his son already, shaken his hand, exchanged a few words with him over an elaborate commemorative dinner with their bosses, but that was out of formality. This—what was about to happen—would be real. Xiang-Gang was moving in with him, into his house, into his life. After all this time alone, he was going to have a child—a family.

But then… what if having Xiang-Gang back was not at all how he imagined it? What if it… but suddenly he realized that he did not know how he imagined it. Until now, he had assumed that he did… and, at one time he had. At one time, he had thought about it every night—the little boy in red silk running joyfully back into his outstretched arms, the feeling of picking him up and holding him again… but the boy Ying-Guo had pried from him under gunfire and poisonous smoke had grown up. The innocent, bright-eyed Xiang-Gang Zhong-Guo had loved now existed only in his memories, like… like... well, he supposed he did not really have very distinct memories of little Xiang-Gang... only of wanting him back. It had all been so long ago. He did not even remember the face of the little boy who had belonged to him. Somewhere among the rebellions, the revolutions, the floods, famines, wars, earthquakes, and tens of thousands of tons of opium, it must have gotten lost. Sad.

Zhong-Guo sank down on the bamboo bed and exhaled into the empty silence. His hands shook. He clasped them together. For so long, he had been so confused, so unstable… Did he even remember how to have someone depend on him?

No! He slapped his hands down on his knees. None of those thoughts now. This was a good day. From where he stood, there was only an upward slope… and, finally unfettered, he intended to take it at run. After an agonizing era of subjugation and turmoil, he was at last himself. He was whole. He was strong. And now, what had been stolen from him more than a century ago, was being returned. His kingdom had come again… as it always did… as he had always known it would.

He would unpack for Xiang-Gang.

Kneeling on the wood floor, Zhong-Guo unlatched the first suitcase and opened it. Suits. There were Western suits, wrapped in plastic, folded and packed in beside books, magazines, video cassettes, a radio, headphones, a shiny new Walkman and, boxes and boxes of tapes. Zhong-Guo had a radio that played tapes, a VCR, and one or two things to play on them—just some Peking Opera and a couple of old martial arts stories—but nowhere near this many. Picking up one of the boxed sets of tapes, he looked at the side and found that he could not even read it. It was in English. What was all of this useless stuff? Zhong Guo turned over a magazine to the lipstick smile of a busty American actress.

I'll just put the books and cassettes on the shelf, Zhong-Guo thought to himself, and hang up his clothes. He can sort out the rest himself. But Xiang Gang's expansive collection did not fit. After packing the two available shelves to their capacity with the martial arts movies, Zhong-Guo stacked the remaining foreign films—the bulk of the collection—beneath it. There were not enough hangers for Xiang Gang's blazers and dress shirts, to say nothing of all his casual clothing—baggy, bright colored stuff printed with brand names and cartoon characters.

Well, that was alright, Zhong-Guo decided, determined to maintain his good mood. He would just use the hangers from the closet in his room and then buy some more the next time he was out.

Upon entering his room, he paused. He realized then, that it was the only room in the apartment he had not scrubbed and dusted within an inch of its life. Everything was put away and in order, but it wasn't clean. Suddenly—maybe it was the way the sun sliced in through the window at just that angle—he was aware of all the dust hanging in the air.

He swept the modest bedroom with his eyes, trying to imagine what it would look like to a newcomer—to Xiang-Gang— aware that this was the first time in a long time he had actually observed his room. In spite of years of habitation, it was empty but for a few books, a clock, a little bamboo plant in a blue chipped vase… no more than what he had already unpacked in Xiang Gang's more spacious room.

Then—oh… he had forgotten the framed Mao portrait on the low altar-like table against the wall opposite his bed. It had been there so long that he had almost forgotten it was there… as he had the image of the Chairman that hung still over his dining room table. He had passed back and forth under the gaze of those benevolent, fatherly eyes for a long time now without ever returning it as he used to. Strange. It didn't feel like long ago that the man had been the center of his universe. Mao's image had not always been the only one Zhong-Guo kept out in the apartment either. But it had been a long time since there were others on that table…

He had put away the photo of fearless Yue-Nan in her guerrilla uniform years back… after realizing that with each time he looked at it, that steely, resentful glare seemed directed less at Mei-Guo and more towards him.

His eyes moved to the left of Mao's portrait, where he could still see the framed picture of himself leaning against a store pile of snow-coated sandbags, one arm slung over Bei-Han's shoulders. The image had captured the comrades bundled into their winter military attire, both battered, chilled and exhausted, but smiling as a rare respite between attacks allowed them time to share a moment of camaraderie.

Zhong-Guo's fingertips brushed the dust to Mao's right, where he and E-Guo had stood together in dignified black and white for years. The larger man's hand had clasped his awkwardly, in a political mirror image, meant only for the camera. But he had kept the picture there for the fond human smile—the subtle knowing glance— between the two of them that no one else would ever have noticed… of course that too was broken now.

Zhong-Guo ran his hand down the length of the table, letting the dust of years of neglect stick to his palm, unable to keep from thinking that it was tragically fitting. These days, even Mao, who was supposed to endure forever in the heart of his philosophy and his gratitude for all he had become, had not escaped the gray film… clouded and distant… just another memory.

...

Xiang-Gang was still in his suit. He ducked his head to get out of the cab and stood—he was so tall—blinking around him, immaculate black against the bustling brown and gray of the surroundings.

"I…" Zhong-Guo thought maybe he should cry his name, run to embrace him… Heavens, he had wanted to for so long! But when he opened his mouth hopefully, all that came out was a feeble, "Hello."

"Hello." Xiang-Gang nodded curtly.

Now, for the first time in a century and a half, they were together. Just the two of them. No Ying-Guo. No officials. Just father and son, standing face to face. And that was all they did… stand.

Wasn't something else supposed to happen? A surge of excitement? Tears of joy?... a smile? The traffic honked by around them. Zhong-Guo stared at his son, dumb, stuck mid-fall in the silence between them. A cart rattled by.

"So… this is where you live?" Xiang-Gang asked in a monotone.

"I—yes." Zhong-Guo responded, his stuttering tongue feeling like it belonged to someone else. "Eighth floor. Sorry, it-it's a bit of a climb."

"You don't have an elevator?" The boy asked, eyeing the stacked apartment complex, expression unreadable.

"It's broken."

"Figures."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"But… there's no need to stand our here." Zhong-Guo pulled his slack face into a smile since none bloomed on its own. "Come, come, come. Come in. Welcome…" why did the word 'home' stick in his throat? "Welcome."

He kept looking back at Xiang-Gang anxiously as they climbed the stairs. But the young man's expression was impassive as he continued to look around him. Zhong-Guo could not begin to guess what was going on behind the stern countenance under those too-thick eyebrows… when had he gotten so bad at reading people?

"And here we are." Zhong-Guo held the door open for Xiang-Gang.

"Thank you."

As Xiang-Gang passed him into the apartment, he caught the flat scent of men's shampoo and frowned. That was not right.

One of the things he knew he remembered about Xiang-Gang the child was his distinctive, beautiful scent. It was a vague memory, bordering on something out of a dream… burying face in that head of dark hair and inhaling that fragrance… oh, what had it smelled like, again? Like… like… he could not quite remember. But, whatever it had been, there was nothing of it from the man in a suit standing before him now.

Xiang-Gang's dark eyes passed over the small dining room and the kitchen behind it, his expression blank.

"You can keep your shoes on or take them off," Zhong-Guo said, sliding his feet into his slippers. "It doesn't matter."

Xiang-Gang's shiny dress shoes clunked across the wooden floor as he walked further into the dining room, still looking around him silently. There was something unexpectedly strange about seeing him actually stand inside the apartment, despite how many times Zhong-Guo had tried to picture it for himself in the past hours. Maybe it was just that Zhong-Guo had been the sole inhabitant of the place for so long, but Xiang-Gang seemed oversized—a little too tall for the space. Maybe it was the suit. Maybe it was the shoes. He saw Xiang-Gang's eyes fall on the portrait of Mao and linger there for a moment. The boy made a small, almost inaudible, 'tsk' sound behind his teeth before turning away from the image with the trace of something shadowed in his eyes.

"Your house is lovely," he said politely.

"Oh, no, no," Zhong-Guo protested according to formula. "It's a mess. And it's so terribly cramped…" It was true… it wasn't supposed to be, but it really was. "I'm thinking of buying bigger apartment, but this is the best I can do for now." Also true.

"Oh, no worries," Xiang-Gang returned insistently. "It's a great little place."

This was wrong. They were alone. There were no bosses, no other nations here. There was no reason to put up a façade, no one to court or impress. This was Xiang-Gang's home now. They were both home, so why… why were they still speaking to each other in this dead formulaic dialogue, like a host and a guest? This wasn't right. But, even as he became aware of it, Zhong-Guo could not stop. He could not break from the formality.

"Your room is just in here," he said, leading Xiang-Gang to the door off the dining room and opening it. "Please, make yourself comfortable while I prepare the meal."

"Thank you."

"You can…" He was going to say 'change,' but it came out as, "just relax."

"Thank you."

And Zhong-Guo busied himself setting the table. The movements were automatic, even as his mind reeled with unease. He wondered vaguely if Xiang-Gang thought it odd—the way they were acting. What had he been expecting?

Zhong-Guo had worked hard on the dinner. While out shopping for ingredients at the morning market, he had tried to remember what little Xiang-Gang's favorite food had been a hundred and fifty years ago and found that he had no idea, so he had just had to guess. The dinner he had prepared was not a full-blown multi-course meal with expensive delicacies, but what there was of it was his best… arguably the best in the world.

When he called Xiang-Gang to the table, the young man took his seat and observed the spread. Impassive.

"It all smells delicious," Xiang-Gang said politely. "I hope it wasn't too much trouble."

"Oh no, no," Zhong-Guo returned, plastered smile firmly in place. "Just regular old home cooking. Would you like green, jasmine, or red tea?" He asked, taking out two teacups.

"You got any soda?" Xiang-Gang, sounding actually there for the first time in the interaction.

"Oh…" Zhong-Guo paused. "Yes. Yes, I think so." And he slid the second cup back into the cupboard alone.

There were a couple of month-old cans of Coca-Cola—no wait, knock-off Coca-Cola, wasn't it?—in the back of his fridge. Zhong-Guo honestly didn't drink much soda.

So, Zhong-Guo sat down with his tea and Xiang-Gang with his soda and they started to eat.

"Food's good," Xiang-Gang commented without emotion.

This was where Zhong-Guo was supposed to deny it, say the guest was being overly kind, but found he couldn't muster animation. Not when everything was so static on Xiang-Gang's end. He pinched together a clump of rice absently between the tips of his chopsticks and watched the other eat.

Zhong-Guo was fairly sure Xiang-Gang knew he was observing him, but he kept his gaze on the table, not meeting his eyes. There was something about the way Xiang-Gang stabbed into pieces of meat with his chopsticks, the way he crammed the food into his mouth and slurped at the almost-Coke—Was he nervous? Annoyed?... or was this just the way he ate? Zhong-Guo honestly couldn't remember what little Xiang-Gang had eaten like under his rule… ah, the things one wished he had given more attention in retrospect. Gunpowder. Who knew?

Xiang-Gang's chopsticks clicked against his bowl faster. Almost angrily. It was too hot, Zhong-Guo thought. Maybe he should open a window. The clicking reached a furious pace. Maybe he should say something.

"So, Xiang-Gang..." There. Words.

"Hn?" Xiang-Gang grunted around a mouthful of rice and green beans.

"Did you have a good trip here?"

Xiang-Gang shrugged noncommittally. "Sure."

And the chopsticks kept on clicking.

Sure? Just… sure? So, now that form was broken, Xiang-Gang wasn't going to make any sort of conversation? Zhong-Guo watched the boy's chopsticks attack another piece of beef. Why the stabbing? It really was rather hot. Maybe the humidity was bothering him. No, that was silly. He was a southern island. But in that stupid suit… Why was he still wearing it, anyway? Why hadn't he changed?

Zhong-Guo should really say something… something to diffuse the awkwardness.

"Xiang-Gang," he said.

"No one calls me that." Xiang-Gang blinked, looking almost surprised at the words that had just dropped from his lips. Then he buried his face in his bowl again.

"Oh. Okay, uh… Hong Kong… I just wondered if, after dinner you would… help me with the dishes."

Xiang-Gang's thick brows crunched together. He mumbled something beginning with "England never…" into his rice bowl and resumed shoveling food into his mouth.

England never… Zhong-Guo set his teacup down. A nagging fly buzzed against the window. He had not realized the thought—the insecurity—was in his head until it burst from his mouth.

"I am going to take care of you."

Xiang-Gang's chopsticks stilled. Black eyes peered over the rim of his bowl. Hard. Skeptical.

Zhong-Guo felt an aching heaviness set into his chest. His whole body sank under it. His voice was faint, desperate when he spoke again.

"You believe me, don't you?"

Xiang-Gang's eyes flicked away from his, into his bowl. The fly buzzed again against the glass.

"Xiang-Gang… I promise…"

"Can you promise not to hold me down?"

Ice stabbed through Zhong-Guo.

"Look at me." The bottom of Xiang-Gang's bowl clunked sharply onto the tabletop. His voice filled with bitterness that hardened into a cutting edge. "I'm rich. I'm educated. I am modern." His eyes narrowed and suddenly Zhong-Guo found the right word for what had been shaded there all evening—disdain. It was a knife.

"And look at yourself." Xiang-Gang's stare stabbed through his worn dusty world, hurting him. "You're just a pathetic old man." And he strode into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Zhong-Guo's fingers shook around his teacup. He felt like paper. He could not move. Pathetic… He looked down into the blackness swirling the cup, into the eyes of a weary ghost face that shivered in and out of existence with his trembling fingertips. Old… Lines rippled across the face in the teacup, nearly sweeping him away. England never… England never…

"England never loses," Yin-Du had once hissed to him in a breath of poppy—a warning as an old friend covered under a challenge as an enemy— through the grating of his unwilling soldiers' swords against Zhong-Guo's. England never loses…

But he had. He had lost Yin-Du decades ago and now he had finally lost Xiang Gang as well…

So, why was this the first time it truly felt like he had won?

Zhong-Guo straightened his legs, pushing his chair back from the table. It was all the movement he could manage. It was all stupid, wasn't it? The picture of balding Mao hanging over the table, his bookshelf full of simplified-character communist songbooks, the peeling brush painted fish sticking pathetically to the side of the fridge, the chipped cobalt and porcelain serving dishes, the scuffed wooden floors and furniture, the sixteen flights of stairs… Zhong-Guo's worn-out cloth-buttoned shirt, his oversized house slippers…

Everything that had seemed perfectly ordinary only hours earlier… It must all seem so stupid to Xiang-Gang in his suit. He could not feel anger. Only misery. What a pathetic spectacle he must be to someone so rich, and successful, and Western. He could not blame him… but this was all he had to offer.

...

Days passed. Zhong-Guo did not yell at Xiang-Gang. Even after his pride returned and properly bolstered his rage. He wanted to. Heavens, he wanted to. He yelled at other things. One day, on his post-dinner walk through the park, he found himself near tears, cursing at a stack of stones. "Who the hell do you think you are? With your trashy American magazines, and your fancy suits and- and your stupid Walkman! You spoiled, selfish little bastard! You think spending a century and a half as Ying-Guo's prized lapdog makes you special? What have you done? What have you accomplished that gives you the right to judge me? Nothing! You just sat there, getting fat eating out of Ying-Guo's hand while I broke my back working the land, and building factories, and fighting wars to earn my prosperity! Just because the pain of civil war and poverty were never yours to bear, you think you're better than me? Well, let me tell you something, you ungrateful, imperialist, Western cock-sucking—" That was when a policeman came over and told him that he was disturbing the passersby.

But after that Zhong-Guo continued to seethe with the sting of rejection… of his wounded pride. He spat things at a suit he saw in a shop window and spent extended periods of time glaring at Xiang-Gang's empty chair at the table... but never at the boy himself. No, he did not yell at Xiang-Gang. Maybe he should have, should have put him in his place. But he did not have it in him… not after so many years of fury and conflict. Besides, it would not work. That was how Western powers treated their dependencies—how he himself had treated many of his throughout history— and he knew it only led to festering bitterness. So he left Xiang-Gang alone. He let him play movies loudly into the night, let him out whenever he liked, let him eat anything out of the kitchen or use his money to buy whatever he wanted… but always had a meal on the table for him when he felt like sitting down to eat it. They walked by each other without seeing or hearing the other, living under the same roof, but not on the same plane of reality.

In this house, Xiang-Gang was just another passing reminder of something that would never come back.

Zhong-Guo would not have been surprised if one day he walked right through him.

...

"Can I listen with you?"

Zhong-Guo was not sure if that was what he had planned to say when he had knocked on the door. It was just what came out when Xiang-Gang opened it. In truth, he did not even know why he had come to the door… or what had pulled his knuckles up to tap against the wood. Maybe it was the scent he thought he had smelled when passing… sweet freshwater meeting the sea and curling incense meeting salt air.

"Wh-what?" The room behind Xiang-Gang was silent. The normally constant music had clicked to an abrupt halt following Zhong-Guo's knock.

"Can I listen with you?"

Everything stilled.

Xian-Gang stood frozen, one hand on the doorframe, the other on the doorknob. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck grinned at Zhong-Guo from the front of his oversized t-shirt. His normally unexpressive eyebrows, caught off guard, had lifted in surprise. But there was something else different about him…

"Um…" the scene jerked awkwardly back into animation as Xiang-Gang shifted his weight. "I guess." Neither enthusiastic nor grudging.

And Zhong-Guo entered the room for the first time in over a week. As Xiang-Gang stood back from the door to let him in, he realized what was different about his appearance. Just a small thing; his hair lay flatter than usual… no product in it. Maybe he had forgotten to shower.

The two sat down on the bamboo-mat-covered bed together, a calculated distance from one another.

Zhong-Guo could not help but notice that, while the black suits remained untouched in the closet, Xiang-Gang had made a healthy mess of the rest of his room. T-shirts, magazines, and cassette cases littered the floor like a collage… so much color.

Xiang-Gang's hand twitched, picking at the bamboo, making a nervous crackling sound. It bristled against the air and Zhong-Guo realized that he should say something.

"How are you feeling?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, how are you adjusting with everything?" Zhong-Guo asked cautiously. "You know, with y-your separate system."

"Oh, that." Crackle.

"Is it working alright? I haven't impeded your autonomy, or your free market trade, or—"

"No, no." Xiang-Gang waved a hand dismissively. "It's fine."

A pause. Crackle.

"Thank you."

Zhong-Guo looked up in surprise.

Xiang-Gang turned away, switching to fiddling with the wire of his headphones.

"I mean—I just wasn't really expecting… I-I mean, you are—were— a commun—I mean, I feel fine… better than ever." It took Zhong-Guo a moment to identify the nervous something that seemed to have a hold of Xiang-Gang's tongue—guilt. "Thank you."

"No need for thanks." Zhong-Guo smiled, feeling a great invisible weight lift from his shoulders. "We're family."

"Right…" Xiang-Gang relaxed too, his shoulders loosening almost imperceptibly.

Zhong-Guo could not hear it, but he felt Xiang-Gang exhale when he did. And that particular string of tension dissolved between them, leaving an empty space… an open space. Zhong-Guo let the emptiness gape in the room before him for a moment, as it had the day he had lugged in Xiang-Gang's suitcases… enjoying the idea that he could fall into it… or leap uphill into its open arms.

Then he hit the play button on the boom-box and a foreign voice sang out to drums and guitars.

"Oh." Xiang-Gang wound the headphones' wire around his finger. "This is just—"

"So, you understand all of this?" Zhong-Guo asked.

"What?"

"All the words." Zhong-Guo nodded towards the boom-box. "When you listen to these songs."

"Oh. Yeah, most of them."

"Impressive." He nodded. His English had improved greatly since the government had started allowing its teaching in schools decades ago, but he had catching up to do yet… so much catching up to do.

The songs from Xiang-Gang's collection were still just catchy gibberish to him.

"This song is nice," Zhong-Guo commented, referring of course to the tune. Who knew what the lyrics were about.

"Ah, I'm actually not a big fan of this one."

"Oh. Why?"

"Well…" Xiang-Gang scratched the back of his neck. He used to do that, Zhong-Guo remembered—Zhong-Guo remembered!—when he had broken an expensive teapot, or lost his new shoes in the river, or folded important documents into paper boats... "Well, I was listening to it when I totaled my first car, for one thing."

"Oh." Zhong-Guo smiled. He could sympathize. In the brief time since the introduction of the automobile, he had crashed more than he could count. Other people said it was the way he drove. Silly. His driving was fine.

"I didn't tell England. He would have told me it was because of my reckless driving. He's always after me about that… and talking with my mouth full. But that's just the way I roll, you know."

"I do." Zhong-Guo's smile widened.

"But I know why I really crashed," Xiang-Gang said seriously.

"Do you?"

"Yeah." His face darkened. "I stepped on a spider that morning."

At that, Zhong-Guo failed to suppress a burst of laughter. "A spider?" Honestly, even he couldn't get too worked up about that one. It was no snake. "A little, superstitious, aren't we?"

"Hey, I'm still Chinese, aren't I?" Xiang-Gang said defensively. "You're the one who taught me those rules. Anyway, to make things worse, I had to drive England to a meeting that morning… and there was a spider on the dashboard."

"Oh…"

"And I drove so carefully. Just that day, of course. Afterwards, I went back to driving like I normally do. England asked me if I was ever going to drive like a sane person again."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him not to wait around for rabbits to run into trees."

Zhong-Guo stared at Xiang-Gang for a moment… then their straight faces simultaneously cracked into smiles. They fell against one another, convulsing with laughter. Xiang-Gang's hand grabbed his. In a dream of salt spray and undrugged smoke, the same hand—warm and tiny—had grasped his thumb and silently promised to hold on forever.

Zhong-Guo laughed until it hurt his stomach. Warm fingers intertwined and squeezed. And, for the first time since Xiang-Gang had come back, he felt truly happy… just because he knew that had England, or Russia, or India, or anyone walked in at that moment, they would not have understood what they were laughing about. Because after death, and occupation, and division had passed, they were still Chinese.

He leaned into his son, inhaling sea air and incense.