Katherine by Anchee Min Read Free Book Online

silent.
    I got up and walked away. I heard Katherine tapping her pen on her notebook.
    “Hey, Zebra!” she yelled after me. “I thought you wanted me to play you more songs. Would you still like me to do that?”
    *   *   *
    I ran into Lion Head on my way home. We were both on our bicycles. Lion Head was in a washed, white traditional jacket with grape-shaped buttons, blue pants, and a pair of army shoes. I was in a similar kind of outfit. We rode along the street with willow trees toward the city. Waves of wheat made the early evening a sea of warmth. Just before we joined the stream of bicycle riders entering the main road, a rider in red shot between us.
    It was Katherine. She rode like an arrow. She was wearing a red jacket. Her bicycle was painted red. She was gone before we could find her in the crowd.

L ion Head invited me to his home to look at antiques he had recently collected. He lived on the west side in the Pu-Tuo District, known as the “lower corner” of the city. His house was located at the end of a long lane. We walked through a makeshift black market. People were selling clothes, rice, sesame oil, bamboo mats, and kitchenware from displays on the front of their bicycles. The merchants’ eyes darted as they made their deals, always on the lookout for a police raid. Lion Head told me that their customers kept watch too. Anyone who spotted a policeman or recognized an undercover cop would whisper to the nearest merchant, “The black bear is out of the cave.” In a few seconds the alley would be cleared. The entire market would disappear. When the policemen left, the market would restore itself in no time.
    Lion Head’s place was on the second floor. His room was narrow and dark, about ten by fifteen feet. No windows. There was a tinyporch in front where he cooked and tended a little garden. He lived with his eighty-year-old grandmother, who slept in an attic cupboard at night. During the day she practiced tai chi and volunteered along with other old ladies collecting tickets at the entrance of public parks.
    Lion Head called his place Treasure Island. His neighbors thought he must be crazy to collect old garbage like “lotus-foot shoes,” triangle-shaped, delicately embroidered shoes women wore at weddings during the Ching Dynasty in 1600 A.D. ; ceramic tiger-patterned “cooling pillows” that old men used to sleep on in hot summer months; a “kettle of one hundred roses,” a man’s chamberpot, made from fine ceramic, with extremely detailed carvings and white and blue drawings inside and out. Colorful red wooden masks of Chinese gods and goddesses hung on the walls and dangled from ceiling beams. If not for the noise from the street, I could imagine I had stepped into an ancient time.
    Lion Head’s ceramic pots belonged to his ancestors in the last century. The only reason these objects survived the Cultural Revolution was because of the political reliability of his working-class family. Not only was his home never looted by the Red Guards, he was able to trade cigarettes for antiques with former Red Guard officers. The pots were so delicate it looked as if they would dissolve into dust at any moment. Lion Head was careful when laying them out. He said his room was too damp. He was afraid that the pots were deteriorating. I helped him lay the pots out on the porch piece by piece to dry in the sun.
    He said that he was a self-taught history lover because his hero, Chairman Mao, was a lover of history too. Mao had only an elementary-school education, but he learned everything he needed to be a modern emperor from history and tradition. He studied
The Art of War by Sun-Tzu.
To Mao, people were chess pieces and hewas the greatest player. “I admire him,” said Lion Head. “He was such a brilliant tactician. He was a free man. He didn’t spurn convention, but wasn’t going to be deceived by it. This was precisely what made him a hero. He was able to use the dynasty as an instrument