A short story. Ages 8-13

       
The Last Peanut Vendor of Shanghai

Siyu (i as in ‘sir.’ u as in ‘you’) = Thinking about the world

Jintian (i as in ‘in.’ tian as in ‘tea on’) = Today

Last night’s rain was still cool to the touch.  
In his lush and tiny patio, Siyu stooped to comb his hair in the mirror 

of a little puddle. Peaking over orange rooftops was the sun. 

He greeted it as he brushed his teeth. He listened to the familiar tweets 

coming from a bamboo bush and closed his eyes softly to welcome a new day.

Cracking the shell of a peanut, Siyu reached into the bamboo bush to open the arched door of a bird cage.  His friend flapped and chirped and stretched toward the door to welcome breakfast.  One peanut a day.  As she chomped, seeds of sesame and sunflower and fresh water were added.  Her name was Jintian.  As with many quiet mornings, Siyu and Jintian whistled songs of ole and new together.  Life was in perfect balance.  For now.

Now.  In-between the past and what is to be. Are you aware of the rushing of now, now?

Siyu and Jintian could remain in this little patio forever, with its potted plants, wet stones and bamboo.  But the sun was above the roofs now.  Time for them to leave for work in the other place they loved to be—at the corner where Siyu sold peanuts. His bicycle and cart were packed, awaiting to go. A careful hill of peanuts.  Sticks of dry plum wood to roast them. Jintian’s bamboo cage gently looped over Siyu’s handle bars. The corner was not far, yet they still left early to fan the fire to roast fresh peanuts.  A lucky man was he, Siyu knew, for he was the last peanut vendor of Shanghai.

Every morning, like a ritual, Siyu would ride his peanut cart under the canopy of a sea green magnolia tree and hang Jintian’s cage.  She believed it to be the best of all possible worlds, chirping with glee, safe and shaded by the leathery leafs of her domed canopy.  She sang songs to Siyu’s voice as he called out, “Peanuts!  Glorious peanuts!”

Siyu valued his work. How he served others such a wholesome snack. How morning dew drips formed on leaves with glimmers. How he knew where his customers came from as they approached on the clean-swept bricks. How the severe heat of fire could be controlled to create a harmless treat. How boys and girls who stopped for peanuts would share a lesson learned at school. Siyu believed that everyone had a lesson to give.

When the city’s rushing noises rose, he would close his eyes softly to be very awake to the sounds of his corner.  Its trees gathered the buzzes, rustles and chirps of the morning.  Maybe a stealthy stray kitty, or screaming cicada, but always the calming tweets of his special friend.

“Peanuts!  Glorious peanuts!”

Siyu earned his living with pride.  Each of his peanuts was handsomely shaped with a squeeze in the middle and perfectly toasted for a tasty crunch.  Scooped into a mountain, they sent a wee, wispy smoke into the cool, bricked corner.  Both the busy and the sauntering were tempted to stop and linger when their noses perked up at the aroma.  Siyu watched smiles develop on his customers’ faces as he scooped hot ones from the center for adults and warm ones for children, taking care to wrap them in a perfect newspaper cone. 

Children stopped to smell the roasted peanuts on their way home from school.  They would say hello to Siyu and wait for him to ask each of them a question.  His bushy eyebrows made them smile.  His stories were remembered.  His chuckle arose in their dreams.  They took turns buying a cone of peanuts and sharing on the way home.  Through the years, Siyu managed to embolden every child to share his or her story.  Except one little boy.

Just one—the boy whose eyelids lowered to keep others out.  Who was more shy than a single peanut wrapped in its own shell.  Siyu tried to help him open up.  This young man was a tough nut to crack.  But there would be many tomorrows to ask him just the right question.

“Peanuts!  Glorious peanuts!”

Again and again.  Siyu’s work selling peanuts on this corner was certain, as many yesterdays made it so.  Certain like a ritual.  But there was one unsure notion Siyu could not close his eyes to.

His neighborhood was losing the rhythms of yesterday, from the whiz of spokes to the slow sipping of tea.  Siyu often closed his ears to the hum of air conditioners and honks, wondering about tomorrow.  The air around his cart had amplified with the hammers, grunts and blasts of building.   All of Shanghai had changed around him.  The China of his adulthood was a different land than that of his boyhood.  The friendly man who owned a little restaurant at the corner always said that things were getting better.  Only happy chirps from Jintian assured Siyu of continuity.

Continuity, when yesterday is found in today.  Siyu treasured it. 

When he was 8, his family boarded a train to find that kind of treasure. The train was bound for Qufu, where the Kongzi family lived. “Kongzi” is Chinese for “Confucius.” Confucius was a wise man who lived 24 hundred years ago. He set straight the instructions for living in harmony. Confucian temples were all over the country, but Siyu’s father said the one in Qufu was special. They would meet the man who ran the temple, Mr Kongzi, who was directly descended from Confucius himself almost 80 generations later. Siyu’s mother and father wished the family to build continuity by observing Confucian ways. They also had a secret to share.

       Siyu remembered the train trip…

Pressed to the window, my eyes grew wide to see the masses of people bending together in the fields.  It was as if they were dancing on a stage, creating something magnificent.  And they were:  “Food out of dirt!” Mother confirmed.

Father pointed out tall furnaces as we passed.  Stacked beside them were old bicycles, wires, pots and pans waiting to be melted down.  He taught me how metal was made and how a man named Mao would make tractors and even airships if the furnaces burned hot enough. Mother explained to us all, with zeal, what to look forward to in a new China. 

I asked my father why we were taking such a long journey just for a temple. So he told me the secret: They had bowed together many years before in the temple, asking for harmony in their future.  It was time, he said, to teach my brothers, sister and me what his parents had taught him.  And so, the train arrived.

How excited I was to see where my parents had begun our family. This is where they worshiped heaven and earth and the ancestors and served tea to the family elders. And where I would meet Kongzi himself!

How shocked we were to find the temple closed!  Mother read a sign that said it was sealed by authorities and that it was against the revolution to enter.  Security forces brusquely escorted us away from the gates.  For the first time, I observed the face of my father growing downcast.  Mother watched too.  Something was very wrong, I sensed, for the family cut short our visit and returned home. 

Downcast.  What your eyes do when they follow a mind that can’t look forward anymore.

Upon arriving home, Father began to spruce-up the small shrine in their bedroom, carefully out of view from visitors.  Even mother set out framed photos of her grandparents, their faces lit by a candle.  As in other homes, a portrait of Mao hung in the living room.  Yet even mother didn’t carefully dust his frame as she had before the trip.

Father’s eyes would close when kneeling before our ancestors.  I enjoyed hovering near the wispy rise of incense burning at the shrine.  I would kneel too, considering the ritual ways my parents taught.  But I would not attempt to visit a real temple for many, many years.

Many, many years, with so much alive in my memory.  I remember Father’s squinting pride when I bought my own bicycle cart with a roasting furnace for peanuts.  This pleased Mother too, for she believed peanuts offered perfect nourishment directly from the earth.  She made up a story of peanuts for me about a new China forming from the sweat of the peasants who planted them.  Energy in the form of peanuts would arise from dirt from the farmers’ labor. Like two peanuts in a shell, we all could be held close in the ritual of family.  But in society, there was no us or them; we were all in the same nutty pile in the end.

Years later, Siyu’s parents grew too old to live.  Jintian would appear in his patio, chirping from the bamboo bush.  Siyu offered a bird cage with an open door and his company.

Peddling up to his corner this damp morning, Siyu looked forward to what he savored in his life: Predictability.  That is why what he saw was shocking.

In his ears, noises, quick and banging.  In his eyes, crumbling, scraping and trucks off-loading barriers.  In his chest, a pounding.  In his head, confusion, as workers barked for him to move on.  “Demolition Area, by Order of the Municipality of Shanghai,” a sign read.  School children were crossing the street to avoid the chaos.  The restaurant owner was untying the last lantern from outside his door. 

Days before, the restaurant man had told Siyu about the future.  And now it was here: The entire neighborhood would be demolished.  A glorious glass restaurant and hotel expansion were planned. Opportunities would come, the restaurant man believed:  People would get apartments in the sky with washing machines, TVs and views.  Siyu could run his own snack shop if he gathered enough “capital.” But Siyu was doubtful and he did not know what “capital” was. 

Siyu waved both hands and called to the restaurant owner.  The man’s silver watch flashed bright under the overcast sky.  He could not hear Siyu over the chaos.

Police officers approached Siyu to help him leave the area.  One gently escorted him by the arm as the other took his bicycle and cart.  There was nothing he could do but look down at his corner’s gravel and grime as he was shuffled past the demolition.

He was led over great sheets of steel, brushing by lines of construction workers exiting buses and around the block to a side street.  Siyu spun around with wide eyes to look for his cart.  Sure enough, rounding the corner was his bike and cart, pushed by the police officer with a face bent out of shape.  Siyu saw why.  The door to the bird cage was wide open and Jintian was gone!  The restaurant man whizzed past in his automobile and flashed a smile. 

Both officers blocked Siyu from going back.  Not even pleading could convince them.  Out of breath, he bent at the waist to put his hands on his knees.  The thundering of the city weighed loud upon his body.  He wished that Jintian would not spend the night alone. 

Where would she go?  Disheartened, he wondered if she would find her way to the countryside.  What would she eat?  How would she find peace?  Maybe a tree somewhere in Shanghai?  Please, he hoped, do not try to go back home to the bamboo bush!

Disheartened.  Have you felt that way?  Imagine the people and places and customs you treasure.  How does your heart feel when you close your eyes and picture them gone? 

Siyu felt this way.  Jintian was gone.  So was their corner, their patio and the whole neighborhood.
  

The faces of schoolchildren would now appear in shiny shops, eyeing colorful candies behind glass.  Siyu would have to move away.  His bicycle and cart would not fit in an elevator.  No corners remained in Shanghai that would welcome a simple peanut vendor.

People of his block were temporarily moved into an apartment building across the street.  Siyu took the stairs to his apartment on the 4^th floor.  For a week he watched the demolition from the window.  Dust, tea, scrapes and tears.  On the far end of the block was the dirt he used to live on.  Then, for a month backhoes and bulldozers dug a massive hole in the earth.  Never before had Siyu been so attached to an empty space.  What phony mountain would be built from the earth that was stolen away, he wondered?  A banner along the demolition area fence read “A Future of Opportunity Awaits.  Do Not Close Your Eyes.”  But it was too late.

“Peanuts. Glorious peanuts,” he murmured.

Three seasons later, the building had risen.  A few trips across the street were needed to move Siyu’s belongings into the glimmering skyscraper.  His new apartment looked empty.  Instead of a patio with bamboo and stones there was a view. Down at the street, in front of his shimmery new restaurant, the owner stood smoking while looking into the mirror of his phone.  He wore a gold watch that glimmered under the grey sky. It was unclear if he remembered Siyu at all when he walked past.

From his window eight stories up, he saw a vast expanse without a peanut vendor. Was the boy with lowered eyes who did not speak somewhere down there? As the city swarmed, did it have a chance to speak up for its own good? Would the far away temple not be choked by the dust and smog of change? Was Jintian alone on a pile of bricks, wondering too? 

One day, on the anniversary of his father’s death, Siyu lit a candle by the photo of his parents.  He remembered the sad day when his Father’s face grew downcast.  It had been so many years.  So much had changed.  Siyu made his decision. From his window, he studied where to go, then hurried down eight flights to jump on his bicycle in the direction of the old temple.

Peddling in thick traffic, Siyu barely had room in his head to think. Would he feel silly to be there? How useless would the statues seem? How meaningless the rituals? Should he turn around?

When he found the temple and climbed its stairs, those noises of the city were forgotten.  Words of Siyu’s father came to mind.  The courtyard of the temple was lively, peaceful and harmonious. There was brightness and darkness, warmth and coolness.  Some practiced tai chi, others meditated or held up incense to the four directions.  Friends played Chinese chess in the corner of the courtyard.  It was a living space.

Cypress and magnolia trees surged into the sky.  Ivy crawled up toward ancient decorated beams. Pools of water spilled out generous leaves of lotus. Siyu’s eyes grew wet too.

Tears. Sad with memories, courting surprise, alive with beauty. Have you felt such tears?

Up through the branches and bamboo, birds danced in shapes carved by wind.  Their sounds in flight greeted Siyu as he breathed deeply in gratitude for finding such a place.

Across the temple courtyard, he recognized the shy boy in his own shell. He was now a young man with eyes making contact with those around him. In fact, he seemed to crack a joke, and his friends erupted in laughter.

It was a happy sound indeed.  He sat on a bench to gaze into the branches where a new family of hatchlings stretched their necks toward the sky.   A parent flew into the nest.  It was the same kind of bird as Siyu’s old friend, Jintian.  They gazed at each other.

Could it be?  Siyu stood up, his mouth agape at the possibility. He breathed in deep with hope.  Stretching out his arm, palm up to the nest, he closed his eyes to remember.  He recalled the songs they sang together before so much had changed.  Siyu could almost feel the tiny weight of Jintian in his fingertips. A long time passed. 

Then, light waves of air blew over Siyu’s palm from the flapping of wings.  His eyes opened to cheerful chirps arising from his open hand.  It was Jintian! 

There were stories to tell. Songs to sing, free in a new age of life, yet captive in one another’s wide eyes.

Nowadays, Siyu peddles his bicycle to the temple courtyard as the sun appears between the high rises.  He plays a game of cards with new friends.  He chats with the man who once was shy and young as they wipe clean the shrines together.  Then, contemplation in the courtyard, as incense hovers and car horns are hushed by the high walls and chirps above.  Siyu brings a few peanuts every day for Jintian and her family.  As he holds out his hand, his eyes close and soft wings of yesterday blow over his memory. 

Memory. Decorating the now with yesterday. “I wasn’t the last peanut vendor of Shanghai,” he realized. “There were two of us.” 

So much had changed.  So much stays the same.