Activity

Chen’s got a class in contemporary Chinese literature. He lectures without notes. It’s all in his head. This cat’s amazing. Quotes passages. Talks dates, anecdotes. Like he knows the authors. Maybe he does. Paul goes home and finds the books. It’s all there in his library, in Chinese and in transla…

“He was a friend of my family in Paris, but I wasn’t even born. He came to Paris to paint around 1920. He hung around Chou En-lai and the others at the Pascal Restaurant, on the Rue de l’Ecole de Medicine.” Chen speaks the last words in French. “He helped Chou stage a protest of the Chinese Legatio…

Night before Ching Ming, MLK Jr. is standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, gets shot through the neck. Next day, the flags are all at half mast. School’s abuzz. They’re rioting in DC, in Chicago. What’s gonna happen here in SF? The Panthers over in Oakland calling for …

“Oh,” she notices and says to Paul, “you found his old Pentax box camera.” She approves. “He loved that camera and took so many pictures with it.” Then she notices a book resting in the satin. “What’s this?” she asks.

“Favorite book, you said,” Paul mutters quietly.

“Capital?” she whispers. E…

Like the lady at the front of the Cathay mortuary who is burning paper—joss paper, otherworld paper money, paper clothing, paper replicas of cars, televisions, houses, servants, everything going up in symbolic smoke to send along with Dad in the next world.