The choice of an open-casket ceremony was my fault, the result of an unfortunate aside I had made to a group of friends at a tea-tasting party I had hosted at my gallery. Among them was a two- hundred-year-old lacquered coffin of paulownia wood made by a eunuch singer who had performed in palace theatricals. In death, most eunuchs, except those in the upper echelons of service, were given only the most perfunctory of burials, without ceremony, since their mutilated bodies were not fit to appear before spirit tablets in the temples.
Alas, this adored eunuch drowned while fishing along the Yangtze, and his body went sailing without a boat, swept away to oblivion. The subsequent generations of this family grew impoverished by a combination of drought, extortion, and too many gifts to opera singers, all of which led to their losing face and their property.
Years went by, and the new landowners would not go near the shed with the coffin, which was reputed to be haunted by a vampire eunuch. Derelict with neglect, the shed was covered with the dirt of winds, the mud of floods, and the dust of time. Amazingly, the coffin had only superficial rot and not much cracking from shrinkage; such is the quality of paulownia, which, though lightweight, is more durable than many harder woods.
The exterior had more than fifty coats of black lacquer, as did its short four-legged stand. Beneath the grime, one could see that the lacquer bore whimsically painted carvings of sprites and gods and mythical beasts, as well as other magical motifs, and these were continued on the interior lid of the coffin as well.
Having been protected from sunlight, the interior art on the lid was still exquisitely colored against the black lacquer. Well, I presume it was a lady, though one never knows with some Chinese names, does one? I could immediately see the coffin was both a millstone and a treasure.
I had a few clients-people in the film industry-who might have liked this sort of odd decorative piece, particularly if it still held the petrified peas.
But the proportions were awkward. The top extended beyond the length of the coffin like the duck-billed prow of a ship. And it was monstrously heavy. I asked the farmer to name his price, and he spit out a number that was a tenth of what I was mentally willing to pay.
I then split the difference and said I wanted the infernal box only to store some surplus items I had bought, after which I would chop up the coffin for firewood. I heaved the biggest sigh I could muster, then countered that he should make arrangements for his men to deliver it to Wuhan harbor for shipment with the rest of my brilliant bargains. Back in San Francisco, once the coffin arrived, I put it in the back room of my shop and did indeed use it to store antique textiles woven by Hmong, Karen, and Lawa hill tribes.
Soon after, I had guests over for the tea-tasting. We were sampling different pu-erh tuo cha-which is, by the way, the only tea that improves over time; anything else, after six months, you may as well use for kitty-cat litter. A superbly executed, good-hearted farce that is part romance and part mystery With Tan's many talents on display, it's her idiosyncratic wit and sly observations San Francisco Chronicle.
With humor, ruthlessness, and wild imagination, Tan has reaped [a] fantastic tale of human longings and of course their consequences. Starred review. Tan delivers another highly entertaining novel, this one narrated from beyond the grave. San Francisco socialite and art-world doyenne Bibi Chen has planned the vacation of a lifetime along the notorious Burma Road for 12 of her dearest friends. Violently murdered days before takeoff, she's reduced to watching her friends bumble through their travels from the remove of the spirit world.
Making the best of it, the 11 friends who aren't hung over depart their Myanmar resort on Christmas morning to boat across a misty lake—and vanish. The tourists find themselves trapped in jungle-covered mountains, held by a refugee tribe that believes Rupert, the group's surly teenager, is the reincarnation of their god Younger White Brother, come to save them from the unstable, militaristic Myanmar government.
Tan's travelers, who range from a neurotic hypochondriac to the debonair, self-involved host of a show called The Fido Files, fight and flirt among themselves. While ensemble casting precludes the intimacy that characterizes Tan's mother-daughter stories, the book branches out with a broad plot and dynamic digressions. It's based on a true story, and Tan seems to be having fun with it, indulging in the wry, witty voice of Bibi while still exploring her signature questions of fate, connection, identity and family.
The tour group learns, for example, that one of the reasons the villagers have hidden in the jungle is that some of them were forced by the Burmese military to act as human mine detectors. When the mine is exploding, no more danger, and then soldiers they very happy.
But it has too many of all of these, jumbled up together. Would it have hurt to save some of them for another novel? The tour begins in Lijiang in Yunnan province, and then makes its way along the famous Burma Road, which the Japanese captured from the Allies during the Second World War.
Even as the tourists absorb the beauty of the landscape they misinterpret people and signs. During an early visit to a Chinese shrine, Harry comes upon an outdoor urinal.
Unfortunately the "urinal" turns out to be a sacred sculpture and Harry, who is caught with his pants down, nearly causes an international incident. In Burma, a woman beckons Wendy into the shadows. Wendy feels certain the woman is desperately seeking American assistance. In fact, she only wants to exchange some money. In Burma, the act is illegal, and when armed soldiers pass by, the situation threatens to turn deadly. The American tourists tend to see what they believe, rather than the other way around.
They are trapped in their personal and collective fictions of the region, and perceive their exotic surroundings as a play staged for their benefit. And yet they fail to note that they are becoming characters in another people's story.
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