Twice the Love by Berengaria Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

and felt capable of finding her way
around the city. She was surprised how quickly she understood where the various
gates were and how the ring road system worked.
    Beijing
had originally been two walled cities—the northern “inner” city,
the
Forbidden City
, and the southern “outer”
city. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the outer city had seven gates, the
inner city had nine and the
Imperial
City
had four. All these
gates stood either on the central axis or bilateral symmetrically so the main
streets in both inner and outer cities seemed to form a big chessboard in
appearance from a bird’s-eye view. Most of the streets ran from north to south,
and narrow streets, called hutongs, mostly ran from east to west. The ring roads
spread out in circles from this inner core.
    As soon as Cherry could visualize this,
everything fell into place and she understood how to travel around the city.
She felt like a cartoon character with a tiny light bulb flashing above her
head. It was as though she’d been standing in the dark and someone had opened
the drapes for her. Everything made sense. She finally grasped the geography of
her new hometown.
    One day she was sitting in the courtyard with
her language books practicing making up sentences. She had managed, “The sky is
blue today” and “There are three pomegranates on the tree”, when a soft old
voice said in Mandarin, “Well done, Granddaughter. What else have you learned?”
    Something Cherry had learned was always to
respond in kind, so she bobbed her head in a respectful bow and replied, “Thank
you, Grandfather Wang. I can say many words, but my sentences are not good
yet.”
    The old man pointed to various items around the
courtyard and Cherry carefully said the words she knew. He corrected her
pronunciation, and at times, taught her a few new words, which she wrote in her
notebook. But mostly he nodded happily at her attempts.
    “Let me see your book.”
    Cherry handed him the children’s Pinyin
dictionary and he helped her first to say the words, then string them into
simple sentences. Before Cherry was aware of it, more than an hour had passed,
and she felt much more confident about her Mandarin skills. It also seemed
she’d made a friend as the old man said, “Tomorrow, at this time, you will come
to my house and we will have tea.”
    “Thank you, Grandfather. I will be honored.”
     
    ****
     
    Cherry had made her birthday her goal, and when
that day arrived she set out along on the now-familiar walk to the bus stop,
and caught a bus to the
Summer
Palace
. Once there she
bought a guidebook, read the map and directions—which were fortunately mostly
pictures—and managed to find her way to the front lake area to see the
Empress’s marble dragon boat. The lake was enormous, stretching almost to the
horizon, the water blue-gray, but smooth and calm. The boat was made of big
pale stones and a two-story, white superstructure. At thirty-six yards long it
was huge, and ornamented with four dragon heads.
    “Ahh, lovely. I can see why Empress Dowager Cixi
liked to sit in it,” she said softly to herself, unable to resist snapping a
photo of it on her cell phone. It was so pretty, the elegantly carved white
stone boat sitting on the blue-gray water. Cherry stood and just looked at it,
absorbing everything for long moments, once again appreciating the Chinese
ability to make everything much more beautiful through balance and symmetry.
    She walked through the Long Corridor
appreciating the delicately painted ceiling in blue, yellow and green, then
bought a ticket on a tourist dragon boat for a trip across the lake, which took
her to the exit.
    Deciding she’d had a big enough adventure for
one day she located the bus stop, found the correct bus and went home very
pleased with herself and her brand new independence.
     
    ****
     
    Li Chang and Song Hao had told her they would
take her out for a Peking duck dinner to celebrate her birthday, so