A small inheritance came from her father’s family and this was laid aside as the beginning of the church she dreamed of building, where in a place set apart those who wished to enter might find a quiet place for communion with God. Into this building she put her dowry pearls, at last.
On her fiftieth birthday the people of her village laid the corner stone of the new church and even those who followed still the ways of worship of their fathers lent their hands to the building.
Wherein the
narrator
becomes
Kuei Ping’s pupil
and is
filled with
wondering questions
and is witness
to a dream
come true
in its
threefold parts
THE key to new treasure is often found in places unexpectedly near. It was midforenoon of a day in early spring. I approached the stuffy cubby hole, in which my private teacher waited, with lagging steps, struggling with the temptation to be finished with school for the day. On Hatamen Street a fortune teller squatted, reading fates with his magic paraphernalia; outside of Chen Men an old man in a lantern had promised to teach me to paint on parchment; there was a temple bazaar on at Lung Fa Fsu—a dozen different allurements called. Reluctantly I tapped upon the door several minutes late.
A woman older than my former teacher bade me enter. It is the custom in the school where I study Mandarin, or official Chinese, to change instructors often lest one copy too accurately mannerisms in intonation. Perhaps had it not been spring, or had I not been late we would have conned over lessons for weeks and gone no deeper behind the veil of passive expression on either face, each of us busy with her own thoughts while we droned over Chinese proverbs. As it was I had seen the official looking document laid upon the table and the light in Chia Kuei Ping’s eyes that told better than words the story of a long hoped for dream suddenly come true. Perhaps she felt the need in mine. I count it among the most precious treasures of my life that she did not pass me by with only a drilling on Chinese proverbs.